[Mikester92]

Hey Minecrafters:

I just wanted to get your opinion on two ideas I had with regards to both roleplay and our Minecraft forum. They may seem unrelated at a glance, and in truth they can each be implemented without the other, but personally I think they're related and work best together.

Let me know your thoughts and feedback.

NPEs
I'd first like to give some credit for my inspiration on the following idea to Dentari, Adster94, JonathanFG and anyone else involved with the idea of bringing in "NPC" RP entities on a larger scale to Utopia (we'll just call them Non-Player Entities for short: NPEs.)

An example of what NPEs are can be found here - in this story arc the Rebel Alliance is the NPE.

In short NPEs are basically individual characters, nations, groups, or super powers that are not under the direct control of a player. These NPEs can attack, be destroyed, and even be allied with. In technical terms they are controlled by a game master who bares no direct affiliation with the NPE he or she has created.

Now that NPEs have been defined, I thought it'd be clever to have some permanent minor NPEs on the server. For example, we could have a pirate or mob organization such as the Hutt Cartel or Orion Syndicate. In this particular example pirates could be an issue nations would have to address on their agenda. How do you deal with pirate ships? How do you deal with smuggling? How about organized crime? If they have their own territory, do you ally yourself with it or try to attack it?

One issue with PvP RP is that the RP must always stop short of action. It's always diplomatic rhetoric and posturing. One can't actually attack another player: that's called griefing. With NPEs however, anything goes; NPEs can be attacked, and if an NPE pirate ship is in your territory, you can sink it.

These different scenarios allow for more complex role-play. Perhaps the ship in my example ended up not being a pirate NPE but a civilian NPE that you forgot to check had a cargo hold full of villager NPC children. Your actions in these RP scenarios can have a variety of positive and negative consequences on the international stage.

These NPEs would also carry a forum presence, announcing ships and news of their own on our Minecraft forum for text RP interaction.

News Threads
So I was looking through our Minecraft forum and couldn't help but feel as though the topics within them could be organized more efficiently to make room for Utopia's multi-nation events and NPE issues.

At the moment whenever someone has some sort of internal news they wish to share, the best way to get it out is by making a topic of its own. This standard has created a pool of threads with different prefixes, hyphens, colons, and so forth. My proposal in this section is to standardize our news delivery.

Instead of creating a topic for every single project we complete, perhaps can instead have individual 'Press Room' threads created by each nation's leader for all local news and announcements; this can include anything from the commissioning of a new battleship to the appointment of government personnel and RP rhetoric like weddings.

International news, or news that involves multiple nations and/or requires action from multiple nations, would instead be delivered in separate threads. I suppose the easiest way to understand this would be to see it, so here's a screenshot.



This style of organization first and foremost allows us to share more personal news. I'm sure we can all relate to projects we've done that may be special to us but are not important enough to have a thread of its own. There have been plenty of times where I and others have chosen not to make a thread because of this.

With individual 'Press Room' threads we can output as much news as we want. Even something as small as a house can be shared in a post within your press room without it competing with 'mega announcements' and looking like spam.

Secondly, this style allows RP events and issues to stand out from our personal news. If NPEs are something we all want, this is definitely an organizational style worth using. With an International News prefix (or perhaps something a little smaller), we can quickly see which threads we may be involved with and which ones are local announcements; both of course still open to comments from the community.

And lastly, and most simply, everything looks nicer when its standardized!

[Noram]

The NPE idea reminds me of some of the stuff thats gone on in the past, like the pirate attack on the Queen Rawrtony. I think it's a good idea, and one that will let us vent some of our...impulses.

As for the news idea, I think it's a great idea to clean up this forum, and hope it gets implemented

[Dentari]

Both the NPE's and the News reorganisation sound like great ideas. The NPC aspect really will allow for greater opportunities to come into conflict. Organised crime syndicates are something I hadn't considered and which I think would be a brilliant addition; these sorts of NPE's would greatly change the existing dynamic.

Imagine having unaffiliated groups such as: pirates, criminals, rebels, primitive tribes, hostile cultures and political/religious terrorists active within Utopia. It would definitely make things more interesting.

[Adster94]

Well, all I have to say - is I like them both, would make things alot more organised, and interesting

[LynxMukka]

Imagine having unaffiliated groups such as: pirates, criminals, rebels, primitive tribes, hostile cultures and political/religious terrorists active within Utopia. It would definitely make things more interesting.

Three Cactus used to fulfil all that criteria, but I suppose they have changed in this day and age.

[Noram]

I've already got some ideas for scenarios I'd like to play out, including the resurgence of the Alliance for a Free Manticore...

[Dentari]

Three Cactus used to fulfil all that criteria, but I suppose they have changed in this day and age.

Burn. How will Three Cacti respond to this comment I wonder..

[Bondgadget]

Three Cactus used to fulfil all that criteria, but I suppose they have changed in this day and age.

The rumors of my past are greatly exaggerated The propaganda against my peaceful nation just subsided as Three Cactus went further into an isolationist period.

OOC - I love the idea. I think it would really add something to the Server outside of posturing.

[Mikester92]

Thanks for the feedback so far, it's something I plan to implement together over the weekend if there aren't any major concerns.

This means a lot of merging and archiving so be sure to chime in if you haven't already!

[Adster94]

I think it also may be a good idea, to have a kind of dossier at the front of each news thread - similar to the Utopia Dossiers. Just so people can read more about that specific nation, whilst then going down their news articles. Just a random idea!

[Mikester92]

The deed is done. Anyone who's posted a news story for their nation in the past has had all their stories merged into a single press office. I've also taken on board Adster's suggestion and added in the dossiers, for those who have them, at the start of each nation's thread.

In order to accomplish this your oldest news post was replaced by the dossier and preserved as a quote in its first replier's post.

I've also archived a bunch of irrelevant threads. Needless to say the forum is now clean! Hopefully this will encourage more project sharing; since entire threads no longer need to be created to share your creations.

If I made any personal archiving or merge mistakes, please let me know so I can fix it for you!

Also, the first NPE thread, Utopia's Celebrity News Tabloid (UMZ), will be going up soon. Yes NPE 'celebrities' are coming to Utopia, these unique personalities will be based on both real and fictional celebrities.

These people will bring both positive and negative press attention to varying nations they visit from time to time as venues from around Utopia are featured in the backdrops of their tabloid fodder.

[Minnow Raydor]

I do like the new system of doing things, I just think that our press offices will look to bunched up when it comes to making posts like policy or important RP related topics from us. The only suggestion I can give is that the comments from others could be removed with in the press office and that comments could be used outside of the press office. The other idea is each nation have a sub forum with in the Minecraft area so we can sticky our own things from policy to Treatys.

[Mikester92]

Erm well I don't think forums would ever be made for each nation as that's an ever changing variable and difficult standard to maintain.

That said though it did dawn to me when merging these threads that these Press Offices could instead act as individual portfolios and archives. So, for example, if a member finished a massive project - like a ship, it could be announced in its own thread for the most attention and after a few months be merged/archived into their Press Office.

This would allow for people to make threads for big announcements and still maintain the Press Office for smaller day to day posts and projects; everything would still eventually merge together in these new offices for tidiness.

[Bondgadget]

I think this is going to be fun. How will the NPE celebrities be controlled in there posting and stuff. Will they have there own forum accounts? Who will 'control' and write the content they post? Should be good fun

[Mikester92]

There's going to be a single "Minecraft NPE" or "Minecraft Bot" forum account that will manage the postings for all NPE content. I'll have the details for it, but I'd be happy to share it with a few trusted individuals who'd want to make stories of their own, including celebrity stories.