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March 25, 2001
Event Tool idea, a tool for player events
I had an idea for an in-game tool for Ultima Online, called the “event tool”. This uniquely colored canvas, only superficially similar in function to Guildstones and Factions stones, would allow a number of guilds to collect their efforts into developing enhancements for player-driven events and activities.
All the Participants attached to the event tool would be able to “feed” the tool with such resources as logs, ingots, and gold, and these resources would automatically convert into “event tool points”. Event tool points would be used by the Director of the event tool to generate deeds for special Actors (superficially similar to player Vendors), house or “lawn” Ornaments, Props that can be carried, and even a limited amount of Adversaries.
Community leaders and Guildmasters which have groups split onto multiple Guildstones would be able to enhance play for their respective groups without conflicting with Guildwar or Faction wars mechanics. For example, a player-city could have an event stone that includes those characters on its Citizen Guildstone (which is not involved in any Guildwars or Faction Wars), its Guard Guildstone (which is involved in temporary Guildwars but not involved in Faction Wars), its Mage Guildstone (which is not involved in Guildwars but is involved in Factions Wars), and its Rangers Guildstone (a splinter of the Citizen and Guard Guildstones which maintains permanent Guildwars with role-playing groups but is not involved in Faction Wars). All these subgroups would be able to enjoy the benefits of the event tool.
Non-Participants would not be overly affected by the application of the event tool by any specific group, as event tool created entities will not be able block, attack, be blocked, or be attacked by non-Participants.
The complete event tool concept can be read here. Please feel free to make any comments on the BS&R message board. (A zipped version of the current event tool documentation in RTF format, openable in most word processing programs, is available here. It is about 12k in size as a Zipped archive, and about 12 pages long.)
Although I've posted several smaller & simpler ideas here and to places — such as for hitching posts, gardening, and players being able to label cakes, I guess every "idea person" such as myself eventually bubbles over with their "Big Idea", like Joshua Rowan's and his Nobility System, and Talanithus's recent broadcast crystal idea. I've only shared this so far with a few people, such as the aforementioned Joshua Rowan, Hazard of Baja's Freeborn Press , and one or two other people when it was merely a two or three paragraph idea a few weeks ago.
Thanks for your indulgence in reading & critiquing my latest idea, and thanks in advance for your feedback.
Posted by Keith at March 25, 2001 12:00 PM