Improving the Dragonrealms World

Novices

1.0
DR could use it's own special newbie villages, not Crossing or Riverhaven, I'm talking small villages specificially set apart and built to accomodate new people, complete with a starter quest or two, from which older players are banned from setting foot inside of. This will give novices the chance to learn without being bullied by PKer's. You all know who you are.

1.1
Once a novice advances to their next level, perhaps they could be shuffled to another new village, from there they could set up with parties of folk approximately their level. Upon reaching level 20, they can go anywhere they please without worry of being 'reshuffled' someplace else.

1.2
I know some attempts have been made to transform Riverhaven and Crossing into newbie villages, but this really doesn't help any, because it makes the majority of older and younger players miserable. The older ones get annoyed to death by repetitive newbie questions, and the younger players get annoyed when they don't understand the answers given, or are ignored by everyone.

1.3
An automated Hint system for younger players should be implemented along with an official player's guide for them to read on the website. A verb: Hint: would give a player a game hint.

1.4
Only Mentors, GH, GM's and Novices would be allowed to travel in these 'newbie' villages. Newbie villages must be easy to navigate. A long street with a few north and south directions would be best, also with a few shops to look at, but nothing more complex than 15 rooms to explore when first starting out.

1.5
A help request system should be put into place so that if a novice has a question they can't easily find the answer to, a GH or Mentor could answer via a special world long-distance gweth channel for novices.

1.5
Better formated novice maps of towns.

Roleplaying

1.0
A special online Journal made available from Simutronics Corp for any players who want to write journals, diaries, etc. for other players to read, about an adventurer's life. (and to help clear up some confusion hither and there. Or maybe players should start their own character blogs right here!

1.1
Instead of banning OOC disruptive players for a month, give them the option to stay in game, entrapped in a magical castle where they can continue to practice a few skills, but can only do so if they take the time to read various books on proper behavior in DR. Time being the essense here, they can turn a page every 45 seconds, ensuring that they are indeed reading these books. Also, they would only be allowed to practice skills after spending a substantial time reading the material in the books. Perhaps experience use would be disallowed until one had recently been rewarded an RPA for studying a book from the library? Players who end up in this special area could be considered candidates for chaotic nuetral alignment.

1.2 Player Drama Points.
Give all players 10 Drama Points to distribute as they will per month. These Drama Points will eventually add up to a full Roleplaying Award, and will not be deducted from the player's own total earnedDrama Points. These can only be distributed to character's not on the same accnt. as the player. If one person is seen giving all their Points consistantly month after month to a single character, it may be investigated, as a possible RPA abuse case. If RPA abuse is found, that character will be permanently banned from giving out RPA's again. These are not 10 rpa's per character, this is 10 rpa's per accnt, which may be drawn from and used by any character in the account. Player's are not required to use all their Drama Points for the month they are given, however, unused RPA's would never stack from month to month.

Once a character earns 20 drama points, they are flagged to receive a Role-playing award at the end of the month. If they earn more than that, up to 100, they may receive a stronger role-playing Award.

Drama Points would be earned by players at the rate of 12 hours of Roleplaying earns 1 Drama Point to give away, up to 10 Drama Points or 120 hours of active playing a month.
Drama points earned by role-playing and receiving awards also gives performing bards a boost to bardic mojo.

Trader's might get their own version of charisma bonuses, and to be a little more fair. A Barbarian might get a small, immediate boost to Inner Fire.

Any player that is nominated for 10 or more Drama Points within the space of an hour is flagged, if they continue to role-play particularly well then it is possible they may receive a GM RPA.

1.3
Practice dummies to practice those attack combos on! They have billions of hitpoints, shudder back and forth when you really kick butt, and don't bleed and can't be killed.

1.4
A true alignment system based on what a player - character does. If they do a good deed, during an event, they can be nominated automatically by an NPC or perhaps an Event GM running the show for a good deed, if they do an evil deed during an event they can be nominated for evil. However, if a player repeatedly gets nominated for an almost equal amount of good and evil deeds over the course of a few years, they become chaotic. Burning down a village one moment, and rescuing the prince might be a good example of chaotic.
If a character is often avoiding conflict, but participates a few times to aid a some friends that character can be considered nuetral, with the addition of whatever acts they have commited to become good, lawful, evil, or perhaps they've earned chaotic with the neutral. A chaotic nuetral player would be considered 'insane'.

1.5
More NPC's wandering around and about their daily lives.

1.6
If a player - character continues OOC behavior despite being thumped. Perhaps a new system could be implemented to make it so that they're credibility would be questioned. Like... hmm don't wanna call it alignment... when you appraise someone. Personality: A highly improbable character to A highly credible character. :)

1.7
Require all players to find and eat food. Make a system of intoxication.

Travel

1.0
Expand the world, sure it takes 1-2 rl days to travel from the farthest northern end to the southernmost tip. Why are players still limited to the coast and islands? What else is there and where is it? Now make more islands, perhaps a new mainland out east. Then what the heck is west of crossing, theren, and shard? An imperial kingdom of somesort? Expand everywhere going out west.

1.2
Ever played chrono cross? The whole game revolved around for the most part a bunch of islands! Have island quests and events spanning Ratha, Aesry Surlaenis'a and Mer'kresh. Not just tiny ones where the villians escape to the isles for a few days, but bigger ones!

1.3 (actually I love this idea, if only I was a gm, i'd try and build it myself!)
Also, add just a peaceful fishing village on a single island. Call it a character's vacation spot! Make all rooms a safe, no fighting area, except on the beach. And give it some fun features!

Suggested Features:
Exotic fish which are constantly updated and added too.
pearl diving,
coral diving - for various crafts that can be done exclusively on the island,
sheep shearing - expanding on this a bit, offer to shear a few sheep every autumn, it would be wild, you catch the sheep, hold it down with your strength, keep it down with your dexterity and cleanly shave it of it's wool. Later you could opt to sell it or keep it for carding practice (mech lore anyone?) taking it all the way up to a spool of wool (quest of discovery) that you could barter in a village shop for something really nice.
Village shops on this island don't accept gold, they have no practical use for it (unless a merchant vessel is approaching!) and will commonly barter for items they need, like 200 spools of wool for a special cloak with hidden pockets. (okay maybe not) just an idea.
A craft shop at the back of the hut, where you can pick up different tools and experiment with your coral, fish, and pearls. The right combinations will give you the chance at creating something beautiful. The wrong combinations will give you an odd bit of junk.

Post a few ads on the mainland advertising its' existance! Have nothing but fish, some villagers, a small library, a village gift shop, a few npc quests, and a few sheep there! No collosal mountain to climb, no big slavering beasts in the forest out beyond, no pirates interested in barging into paradise because there's really no place to hide a pirating vessel, there's no amount of gold there, not even a bank. Just a peaceful small place where players can sit back, relax and say, Aahhh! Wonderful! The island could be limited to gweth-thoughts only from others on the island. Also it would be free to any player-character that wanted to go visit. Not a priemie only area, not a plat-only area, a nice place anyone can go to anytime they want, completely free from outside 'stresses' of the rest of elanthia. A merchant vessel might show up once in a while and give a concert for a set amount of golds. Island would have it's own history.

1.4 a set of visual ascii directions available in every room. A north, east, west, ne, nw, se, sw, up, down.

1.5
Underwater travel.

1.6
Ariel travel by those handy gnomes.

Messages

1.0 We've all used AOL IM for years, now it looks like AOL is going to be cut altogether. Players want and need a way to communicate OOC, either by use of website PM's, chat rooms, or message services. If free games can pull it off there's no reason Dragonrealms shouldn't have it. Especially since so many players are already paying for it. Usually players use them to hook up with each other so they can all get together in a party of friends to go hunting. Not so they can share game secrets.

1.1 PM's Private messages available with the board system. Although I suspect this could lead to a great deal of trouble, I feel it a neccessary suggestion. Dragonrealms hook up with mygo.com?

1.2 In game pigeons. Perhaps characters if they really wanted messages right away could keep pigeon cages on them? An idea. NPC pigeon keepers in town?

Houses

1.0 Semi-completed with invention of Personal Ships for players. 11/16/04
Make it so that anyone 60+ can own a house, not just priemies and platties. Don't care if it costs 10 million plats to buy one cottage for a non-plat, non-priemie player. Or 100 million plats to buy my own personal castle.

1.1
Make houses variable sized, multiple rooms if you will. Different house sizes available to everyone. From 1 room to 200+

1.2
Custom room descriptions that can be changed by the owner at whim, magical lighting gaethzen spheres which can light the room in a variety of colors, From peach to blue, yellow, green, red.

1.3
Courtyards, with optional objects like stone fountains, statuary, a shallow bathing pool, and the like. Special moods that can be set for day and night, winter, dew, frost, etc. (if the courtyard has ice, the bathing pool should transform into a private skating rink.) A garden could be even added (akin to a piece of furniture) purchased in a shop to bloom with roses that can be plucked at first spring, trees of all kinds too, fruit bearing, etc.

1.4
Custom-built furniture for the cost of half a million plats each.

1.5
Save-item furniture that has a key and lock. I call em personal house vault.

1.6
Personal bookshelf, a safe place to put diaries, books and other bits of paper, maybe even store some old scrolls.

1.7
Grandfather clocks that chime the hour.

1.8
Stages, Arenas, indoor gardens.

1.9
multiple doors, balconies, windows.

2.0
food renewing rooms, a kitchen or wine cellar permanently stocked with all kinds of foodstuffs.

2.1
Ability to order pig carts or other forms of entertainment inside to entertain friends and guests at whim.

2.2
A house owner could have the option of buying non-janitorial rooms, and viscious buckets of gloop.

2.3
House owners should be able to specify rooms where only 1 person, or 2 people may be in. The Out House, or a private bedroom would make a good example.

2.4
House owners get the option of buying NPC's and placing them in their homes. A maid for example, or a butler to greet guests.

2.5
Home owners should be able to pay for duplicate keys and give them to friends to use the house.

2.6
Stables should be available in mansion and castle housing areas.

Decay

1.0 Some foods should decay, others like wines, and cheeses, preserved jams should not or if they do, it's a slow progression.

1.1 Decay for anything should be reasonably slow, nothing should decay overnight.

1.2 Decay should only happen on items that are being used. For example I'm wearing a bright red skirt everyday, so it should be worn down to tatters. However if I pull my 'dressy dress' clothes out of my red leather case which they've been neatly packed away in, they should be as fresh as the day I put them away.

1.3 Grape juice put in a waywerd pyramid and left there to rot should decay into wine, and then not decay any further after it's removed. In a word, sometimes decay should be good for items. Other things would be properly seasoning wood.

Quests

1.0
A few more quests that anybody can complete if they want to. Puzzle solving, intuitive quests, with small treasure items at the end. I don't mean the apocalyptic rapier from hel, I'm talking a small decorated weapon, something sold in a store already perhaps, something you'd find in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, Treasure System, a minor or simply mundane bit of treasure an example would be a carving knife from the general store, with a griffin head on the pommel. The more difficult the quest the more interesting and rewarding the item would be. Perhaps a crossings scimitar that casts Swirling Winds on the wielder? With very low or limited uses.

1.1
Group quests, small puzzles that anyone can sign up for once to complete. Meant for fun & enjoyment of the game.

1.2
Enough with the invasions already! I'm sick of bashing a million monsters at a time, or worse, getting bashed by a million monsters at a time. I'd rather pursue the rumors of pirate's plunder waiting to be found in the middle of the ocean or go diving for pearls.

1.3
Have different NPC's hand out different quests. Let player's submit ideas for quests. Might require a new verb, or a gm's email addy.

1.4 Rumor Treasure Quests: Reading about this, I think it's an awesome idea. I like it, yes I do.

1.5 Okay there's how many castles in DR prime right now? How many of them are rigged with elaborate dungeon traps, deadly surprises and scary moments just awaiting a bold party of adventurers to try for Prince Vorclaf's crown jewels? I'm proposing a regular dungeon crawl available under all castles in DR, as a free continuously available event for everyone who plays DR.

Pits of acid, sand-traps, you name it. Perhaps an insider NPC could for the right amount of coins, a secret handshake or two, and some assurances could sneak a party of 6 into the back door to the dungeon, where they would then need to use their wits, cunning, and stealth to outwit wandering monsters, traps, and other diabolical nasties. This would be something a character could do as many times as they wanted but it would also be a requirement that they could only do and complete one trip to a dungeon every 6 months. The dungeon's would need to be constantly restocked with treasures, have their rooms moved around, and have regular dungeon maintenence done.


Ideas

1.0 Reward all player's who contribute to the game with constructive and good ideas that perhaps lead to lots of people signing in and playing. 1 month half price subscription, or perhaps some custom decorative work on that old longsword.