DISCUSS: Building Policies

[Linda]

One item on our to-do list is a potential reworking of the guidelines we use to determine when private rooms are built. At the moment, our policy looks something like this:

1) For the most parts, we allow only one private room per house. The exception is the manses for the great houses which consist of two rooms.

2) Most housing is done within the castles, only a few manses outside of those available for the great houses have been approved.

The aim of the policy is to minimize the number of private rooms since one common complaint about MUSHes is a lack of roleplay on the public grid and to make building duties as light as possible for staff.

Our current policy is pretty good at fulfilling the above goals, but it is not necessarily great at replicating what is IC. There probably would be more manses and all members of a house definitely wouldn't be staying in the same quarters, especially given how extended our families can be.

That said, building on a MUSH always has to be a bit of an abbreviated reality. The King's Landing grid roughly corresponds to the map but much is simplified, so perhaps it isn't such a problem if the same approach is taken with personal rooms. One would then have to assume that the actual room objects are an abstraction of what is actually available; to some extent, this is already done by players descing their single rooms as multi-room quarters.

Still, we'd like some thoughts from the players. How could we tweak the policy to still fulfil the stated aims but allow for a bit more of a reflection of IC circumstances? No promises that we'll implement any changes, but we'd like to at least take a look at it.

[Riverrun]

I would reccomend more common rooms or something? There is already one inn, but if you purposebuilt another rather close to the red keep you could have a place for nobles outside the main line to stay, etc. Merchant sons and daughters, black sheep of greater lordly houses, what have you, could meet up there, and 'have a room here' as the justification for setting it as their chars "Home". I figure that would really help, just set up a single 'bedroom' that is identical for all of them to be used if anyone needs to move aside, but make the inn itself a gathering place both icly and oocly...

I mean, there is probably a lot wrong with that somewhere, but it would create an area with loads of people around in reach of the rest of the city instead of having most of us secreted in out own rooms when not actively looking for a scene, might be fun! Or just places to eat what have you, a little variation might really help diversify the player base and make most people happy to be in the 'group living area' or whatever rather than stuck in their room with 0-2 other PC's. Or maybe a barracks for goldcloak, kingswood, or crackclaw men, for them to have a reasonable IC location to set as home but is far more reachable and easier to justify walking into than say, the Tyrell manse uninvited.

[Riverland Lady]

As far as families sharing an area in the manses (If I am gathering you correctly here,) I suppose there could be generic template for personal rooms, for each of the different types of nobility (Greater lordly, Lordly, Lesser lordly, and their equivalents) .. Sort of a "one size fits all,' so say Noble's in Greater Lordly houses would have this type of "stuff', to this caliber in their personal rooms on a normal basis, keep that template and use it for all greater lordly.. It would be more of a 'drop and go' situation instead of having to look at countless apps for rooms... this is of course in a manse/apartment setting.. as far as generating a new apartment all together, I suppose the same could be applied, where only small bits are changed to reflect the house to which they belong.

Of course in the case of the Lannisters they would be much more lavish, but these rooms are supposed to be used as an IC "way station," place to idle, or for married chars's in a house, unlike the main part of the house where meetings and the like can take place. It sucks at times that we have to "kick each other out" on occasion to accommodate RP, when they could instead be in their own rooms idling.... I might be way off on question here.. as per usual... but it is a thought anyway.

Revised.....

Perhaps, instead, depending on how many actives are in one house. Like right now, for instance, in house Tully there are 3 active PC's and 2 NCP's (Melene and Toren). When Sarya Baratheon and Brynden wed, there will be 4 actives waiting in the manse. Maybe if there was one "Bed chamber" in each apartment or room then the private scenes --Husband/Wife-- can remain private within the house but leave it only accessable to the 'married' couple. Then you wont have to worry about any improper shenanigans trying to be hidden from court.

I would think it rare that there would be more than one in house married couple per Manse/Apartment, in which case another "bed chamber" could be added. Again, in the "Drop and go" manner I mentioned above. So Manses, in this set up, would have 3 rooms, Apartments 2: Courtyard, main room --that describes the doors and rest of the manse-- and the married couples bedchamber. I am sure, it would be very awkward to be sceneing a private moment in the main part of the home and have your RP "Little Sis" popping in on connection just as you hit enter. That is just a suggestion, but it makes the most sense. I understand the want to not have people pulling off the grid and not sceneing elsewhere in King's Landing, but building a +groups every time you want to have a private scene and mess with code is more of a hasstle than a non descriptive room that says.... Tully Manse <Bed Chamber>. I don't think that would be detrimental to RP at all if it was a specific room allowable only for certain people.

Thoughts?

[Linda]

The idea of more barracks might not be a bad one, but I am not sure about an inn. After all, we're all playing nobles. Yes, there are some bastards and black sheep, but most every character is setup to be playable at court.

This means that hanging out at inns and hanging out with merchants and commoners isn't something we want people thinking is appropriate for everyone or something that people would do regularly. Especially noble women. Its a common approach on most fantasy MU*s, I've done a fair share of hanging out at inns with noble characters, but it doesn't really happen in Westeros.

[Askatla]

I think that by implementing a command (as is being discussed in +pub as I write this) to allow for a 'clean up' of a room with idlers for over a certain time, would let there be more public RP on the board. During the US overnight, there's a tendency to just have people idle in the public rooms, meaning that for the non-US daytime members, we find ourselves ignoring the PC in the room, and risk having prospective players think a 3+ person scene is going on in one room, and they're excited and go to watch... only to find out that, in fact, they're all idle. This would allow for a more regular usage of public rooms and, hopefully, encouraging people to use them for RP rather than the private rooms.

As far as having easy build things to minimize grid size and requests from the staff, we already have templates for things on the website, and enough people have put in requests that there's usually someone who can help with any sticky questions. You can also explore existing rooms to see what there is (it's what we did for the Serry Apartments). For the people who don't have personal quarters, I wonder: is it that nothing has been requested, or that their request hasn't been processed yet? I'm thinking of people with just 1 member of a household, who may honestly not want quarters, but the ability to just say "My rooms are in the Kitchen Keep", and there can be one or two generic rooms therein that are usable for private scenes if needed. Or something.

Just spitballing ideas.

[Riverrun]

Okay, I can see why an inn wouldn't work... the barracks thing, though... I can really see it being helpful for male PC's to have a great ooc and ic 'home' set to meet with people and create a new area with a lot of interaction. But yeah I agree the inn thing would very likely lead to misuse by people who want their char to participate in the socializing but ICly wouldn't be allowed, would be kinda cruel really!

The barracks, though. I can see a lot of scenes there. They could be multi-purpose, leaving people with rooms to plot and scheme with their comrades, be payed a visit by family and spouses, do pre-fightscene prep or what have you, I can really see the idea contributing to the game. Though granted it would mostly benefit the officers of those three groups rather than their relations, it would still be a very helpful base for players to stay in, instead of having us all in secluded rooms across the Keep when many of us could have an IC reason to spend far more time together.

As for Askatla's idea, I agree that the idling can sometimes confuse new players into thinking a fun new scene is going on. Maybe if someone has been idle for an hour, their name stops being displayed as IC when you check +where? I dunno, just an idea

[Azirafal]

Well, the Outer Yards are mostly used instead of any barracks (the fighting, preparation and all). And instead of plotting in the barracks it's much easier to plot in the Godswood (so as not to be overheard) or in the Solar (for comfort). Barracks might be ok for some lesser household knights/bastards, yes (the bastards, poor scions, black sheep mentioned earlier), but as a place of socializing? Don't think so. Especially that if noblemen are RPing in the barracks, noblewomen wouldn't have any reason to be in there, really - and that would split RP even more and restrain the mingling of sexes. So overall, barracks as an "inn inside the Keep walls for bastards, black sheep and poor scions" - yeah. But not I wouldn't encourage for it to be a new point of socializing.

Yes, cleanup of idlers could be welcome. I rarely leave my char idling, only if there's a scene I've participated in and want to see it's end (but I think until now I've only done it twice?). So such a command could help - sometimes the idlers irritate, as they should not hear what is being said and they;re... just -there-! ;)

As to building - if there's any way to allieviate the strain on you guys, go ahead and do it. If not - I'm for the status quo. It was a bit strange to write the desc for the room at first, but them fun (as with all the creations in BoD). So people can give them their "personal touch" and a feel of their house and their character. At this point it's just a matter of the deadlines you have and the +jobs backlog (I know there are a couple people waiting for Mansions/Appartments), so other than that - no problems with the building matter on my behalf.