Design of Gugrontid tavern owner

[Talad]

Hi,
we want to add an owner to the gugrontid tavern, who is interested in designing him? What we need are :

- name
- skin
- traits
- description visible to players
- some background information not visible to players but used in future dialogues/quests
- items
- which goods he sells
- which skills he trains
- greetings, how are you, about you, goodbye answers (even multiple for each if you  want)

Thanks.

[Mask]

What requirements are there, apart from signing the license? It's easy to go overboard with npc design.

[Minks]

I thought the stonehead was supposed to stay player-run.  

[LigH]

http://stoneheadps.freeforums.org/index.php

Maybe not very active anymore, but still present.

Any player interested in supporting us with a character, please contact us there, or the "Gifts of the Dome" in-game.

[Talad]

I thought the stonehead was supposed to stay player-run.  

Having a tavern owner behind the counter doesn't stop players from roleplaying cooks, assistant or other events.

[Elady]

Hopefully even if a NPC is placed in the Stonehead we can still RP player involvement in the running of the place. Having been the player manager there for a while I can certain give some ideas on the types of things a NPC there should offer.

Food Ingredients
Buckets of water - Lots of the cooking recipes need water and currently you have to go into Hydlaa to get buckets of water if you are cooking in the Stonehead kitchen
Lard - since you can bake in the Stonehead kitchen there are a lot of baking recipes that use lard. Many who play cooks and bakers don't have the high hunting skills needed to loot lard on their own. since so much Lard is needed for things like bread and pie dough it might be nice to have lard as something you could buy form the NPC there.
along with some of the more standard food ingredients that are sold at the other taverns.

Food
To make the Stonehead different form the other taverns maybe have the NPC sell things like
Sweet Tinga tea - This is normally only available form player cooks and since the Stonehead has been player run until now it has been available at the Stonehead on a regular basis.
Different types of pie - Again since the Stonehead has been player run there have been several people who are fans of pie who come there on a regular basis. Maybe instead of just having the generic pie offered at the other taverns have different types of pie.

Along with some of the other standard food and drink available at other taverns.

it would be nice if the greeting to the Stonehead, or one of the greetings if there are multi greetings, would make mention of Lady Peckerly the Kikiri mascot of the Stonehead. Maybe something along the lines of  " Welcome to the Stonehead Tavern, be sure to say hello to Lady Peckerly our mascot." since people always wonder why theree is a Kikiri in the Stonehead. If a player asks about Lady Peckerly the NPC can give the short story about how she wondered on one day and stayed around so she was adopted as the Stonehead mascot and the customers voted on a name for her.

THose are my ideas.

[Aramara Meibi]

please please please I am begging you not to add any more npcs. please. they are terrible automaton robots who take away from everything this game is supposed to be. npcs are the exact opposite of roleplay.

instead of someone selling water buckets, how about installing a fountain, a place where players can take a bucket and fill it with water?

if you create an npc that sells lard, you take away the impetus for players to go out and hunt tefus. if you create an npc that sells anything, you take away the impetus for players to craft, harvest, hunt, mine, fish, whatever it takes to get that thing. elady if you need lard for your cooks, i'll gladly hunt tefus all day to supply you. you see... that would be character-character interaction... i've always understood that was the whole point of the game.

what about creating more harvestable items out in the wilds? take away the terrevan berries from grok and put them in the wild to be harvested by players. you do want players to play, don't you? why aren't eggs lootable items from kikiris? why is the only source of eggs a vending machine in the middle of nowhere on the way to oja? Lady Peckery is already in the stonehead 24/7 disposing eggs, but players can't pick them up.

why would a player toil all day making pies and teas if there's a permanent vending machine right there spitting out pies and teas?

here's the thing.... IF you are stubborn enough to want to put a vending machine in the stonehead, have it at least vend items that are not available YET to be created or in any other way found by the player. WINE is a good example... so far the only way to get a bottle of wine in game is as a quest item, which means you need to start a quest and never finish it. BUT!!! Once the crafting of wine is implemented.... destroy the vending machine please. please. please.

[novacadian]

My thoughts are with Aramara on this one. Why not make the Stonehead's management something that can be transferred like a guild hall?  That way it could be sold from management to management as time passes. It could be a good experiment for other such businesses which could be buy-able IC. Such a system could be made generic enough that such things as room renting in a rooming house could also use it. Basically it would be a mechanism that could transfer unique keys to cloned unique locks back and forth between players. In the case of the stonehead it would only relate to the storage areas; it is not to suggest putting a door on it.

It is my feeling that systems should be developed that enable PvP commerce not detract from it as Aramara addresses wonderfully.

The other option is to make it a study in how to put real smarts into the npcs. Things like the npc has as much lard available as PCs sell to him/her/kra. The npc comes to your table and takes your order then goes and gets it. If it is to be another stationary Allelia then this is a sad day for the uniqueness of the Stonehead.

- Nova

[Elady]

Aramara I personally have plenty of lard and there is a good supply in the pantry for the staff cooks. I was thinking of newer characters who don't have the connections or friends who they can get lard from at a reasonable price. I have had lots of people willing to feel me lard at prices ranging form 500 to 1000 tries per lump. Considering it takes more than a lump of lard to make a pie if you have to have bought your lard for 1000 per lump just the lard will cost more than what most bakers will be able to get for their finished pie. This isn't exactly a good way to encourage people to take up cooking or maybe more specifically baking. PLayer to player interactions are always prefered but sometimes other players are not around when you need things.

A NPC in the Stonehead would be welcome so cooks can sell their finished crafted food instead of the current situation. Now if you have cooked a lot of things with the idea of selling them to raise tries you have to store the items in Gug, go to Hydlaa, get items out of storage then go to Kada's to sell your food. Having a NPC in Gug who will buy crafted food would be much better.

Also while we are on the topic of things to add to the Stonehead can we please please please get a girl installed so that the Stonehead has a complete kitchen? Amdeneir has a complete kitchen and the Arena has a complete kitchen. Oja at least has the baking oven close to the broken door tavern kitchen. Adding a grill would give the Stonehead a complete kitchen.

[Earowo]

If your going to make an NPC for the stonehead managment...
It would have to be Illysia, she ran it for as long as it existed [noted her name MAY be spelled wrong..] So  think she deserves to have an npc take her place, until someday she might come back.

[bilbous]

Umm it is a kran tavern how about some kran items, exotic minerals edible by kran, novel drinks suitable for kran consumption. There are enough places selling regular people food. I wouldn't mind chowing down on some calcites or pyrites or whatever. Feldspars seem particularly suitable.

[Illysia]

*hands bilbous some raw bismuth to nom

Thanks Earowo. *waves* I won't be coming back so an NPC taking my place isn't so bad considering the tavern could use someone there all the time. However, I'd like to throw my support behind some of the more likely to be implemented suggestions and make a few of my own.

The NPC should most definitely sell the more basic ingredients for those that don't have pantry access. The tavern is already out of the way for most people, and it's even more inconvenient if you have to do costly supply runs. It should also sell stuff that was already popular at the tavern.The players that were inclined to RP for those items should still be inclined to do so even with the NPC there.

Selling gems and ores along with the food would be good to reinforce that Krans eat such things. That being said, I think the NPC being kran is a pretty good idea, but it doesn't have to be since the book on Gug states that many people do business there.

Also,   mentioning Lady P.

Some of my own suggestions would be to make the NPC a server or greeter but not the owner, maybe like Fruntar(sp?) in Brado's. Ever since Allelia was in kada's, people stopped bothering to jump over the counter and play bartender. Players often won't take over when there is an NPC already in place, but NPCs are not as interactive. Ideally the NPC would serve in some support capacity without it looking like the NPC is running things.

The NPC should give general welcome greetings and let the player know to seat themselves. It would be nice when the tavern has no staff on hand and would help any staff that might be there during busy times, if those come back. It should also give some quests that require players to bring in supplies. That might get people back in the habit of interacting with the tavern again. Also, having some basic training quests for cooking would be good. Not that I want to steal the thunder from Oja, but some people used to seek out the Stonehead just to learn how to cook or to get recipes.

Further, even if the NPC itself is not a kran, it should have info about them. For instance, it could tell players a bit about Gug, how to properly use Gemma and Kra, explain the settings things that make Kran different from the other races. A few players that hung around the tavern in the past used to do such things but unfortunately, they don't play so much either. The tavern is a good chance to warm players up to the idea of krans.


Overall, I think that the NPC should be used to help encourage players to take up the job vacancies at the tavern and to spend time RPing with each other while there. When I was actively running the tavern, the idea was to make it a calm spot and neutral territory where players of all RP levels would feel safe and comfortable RPing with each other. Once people got the feeling that they weren't going to get ganked or have a hail of RP-Hatedom rain down on their heads, they started branching out on their own and looking for ways to support the tavern. That's not to say that things were never shaken up at the tavern, but overall, it was a launching pad that let players grow into interacting more with the game... in terms of RP of course. :3 Just keep in mind that once players got comfortable, they started stepping up on their own.

[Aramara Meibi]

Aramara I personally have plenty of lard and there is a good supply in the pantry for the staff cooks. I was thinking of newer characters who don't have the connections or friends who they can get lard from at a reasonable price. I have had lots of people willing to feel me lard at prices ranging form 500 to 1000 tries per lump. Considering it takes more than a lump of lard to make a pie if you have to have bought your lard for 1000 per lump just the lard will cost more than what most bakers will be able to get for their finished pie. This isn't exactly a good way to encourage people to take up cooking or maybe more specifically baking.

that's because NPCs buy and sell goods at fixed arbitrary prices, that in no way reflect the real-time supply and demand ingame. I could go on and on about the evils of NPCs and how this game would be infinitely better without them... but that is a whole other thread, and one that i'm sure has been beaten to death... so I will not detract from the purpose of this thread. can't stop the devs from doing what they're hell bent on doing. so, to answer the question given, I'll repeat...

WINE

my fenki is thirsty

[LigH]

Solita keeps a Terevan Wine Bottle in case frequenters arrive...

[Aiwendil]

LOL

So I take the Stonehead as an alternative to the OSP player run areas is dead now. That's fine...I already said a long time ago that there are not enough players to run it (Too bad that the thread is very confusing with several pages of posts missing).

Just seems that most people didn't agree with this in this poll or or later. But it's right...even if a NPCs owns the stonehead that doesn't stop anyone from playing bartender there...the same way as it's done in Kada El's all the time.

Oh..and someone already put some work into this and asked people once what they want from the Stonehead. I'm sure this can be pretty useful now for defining a NPC.