Kumi Azai’s Suggestion Board [Week 2]

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Hello there! It’s your friendly neighborhood Fox-Avali! Again…

This is the second week of the suggestion board I started, and I have been thinking long and hard as I have been playing on the server of generalized interesting ideas that could be potentially very useful. Let me break up some of the topics I wish to discuss in this week’s blog post so that it isn’t a giant wall of unorganized text like last week.

These are the topics I would like to discuss with our community this week,

Economy
Rules on Marketing
Community Suggestions

Let us start with the dreaded topic of building a basic economy, I am no economist first things first, I don’t know how inflation or taxes or public funding work. What I do know is that sometimes players want to work towards a goal, since that can be something that having an economy provides, I figured that adding a standardized and basic (But OPTIONAL) economy and currency system would be a nice choice.

I have thought for a good while on how to go about this form of Sinder currency, contemplating coinage, tap-cards, credit chit’s, and paper legal tender. I have done the various research and economic study to try to figure out what the best choice for the server would be, considering the various backgrounds of different amounts of tech level, cultural heritage, ferality, and various other factors, and I have come to a somewhat educated conclusion that the one of the better choices out of the four would be a tap-card currency environment with backup usage of legal tender (Paper currency).

People of course do not have to partake in the economy, and it should still remain open to interpretation, but a way I also devised to encourage the people on the fence about joining Sinder’s economy would be to create a Bank of Sinder, that would house various differing currencies and functions, and deal in the trade of what I have coined “Interplanar Assets”.
These “Interplanar Assets” are simply what your character might have owned before getting thrown into the world of Sinder, for example, if Kumi Azai owned a car, a house, and had a small business before his arrival at Sinder, the bank would be a good place to turn those unusable assets into money to be used in the roleplay world.

The idea I had for a standard currency would be the usage of a tap-card, a small magical (or technological slip, potentially a choice upon arriving.) would be issued to a character upon going to the bank and applying for a bank account. To back this currency up and prevent a tap-card collapse, I also thought about having issued backup legal tender as stated earlier, so each Sinder Credit would be worth about two and a half USD today.

There would be ones, fives, tens, twenties, and one hundreds for the paper currency but there would not be coinage, since tax does not exist here (yet) and since the economy is just forming we could expect to see prices sit at a solid single number instead of being a cent less like advertised in today’s world. A tap card could pay more precise amounts of course and quicker, and would be easier to use than bills though, so business preferences might spring up over time.

Now, a clarification, this would only be the legal currency of the town as the town expands.
Another thing to keep in note is proper Roleplay balance which is always important. So please don’t go too overboard on criticism until we can band together as a community about what should and shouldn’t be allowed for community economy building. I encourage anyone who is interested in working on the economy proposal with me to reach out on Wolfery and here to offer ideas!

Now onto the second topic, I wanted to ask Accipiter directly in a way that everyone can see what he thinks about the idea of writing a short but simple guideline about how to invite your friends to the world of Sinder. My current way of doing it is if I know them for long enough, know they are 18+, and know they are a somewhat decent roleplayer, I invite them without much other than, “Hey, if you are interested by the concept of furry roleplay in a text based environment based around old MUCK systems, come join this website!”. I know that sometimes introducing someone to something new can be a bit overloading, and can be a bit overbearing to newer roleplayers, so since then I have refined it to a much more concise and welcoming message.

This also brings up the topic of advertising this in the proper environment, for instance, I could see us not wanting people going and posting a long winded message depicting what Wolfery is and recruiting for it in the wrong places. I have done some small time advertising already for us by word of mouth and have made a few posts in my furry servers to friends I know are 18+, Word of mouth is still massively helpful right now though so I am sure that as it currently stands inviting everyone you think fits appropriately isn’t a bad plan. If I am wrong on this please feel free to correct me.

Finally, onto the community suggestions I have been accumulating…

Firstly from a couple different people I have been hearing inspired ideas about some sort of music bot for the nightclub that can be set up to send links to playlists people propose.

Second, SOMEONE wants automated fennec petting stations at every major location.

Third, I have heard passing talk about it, and I think it’s a phenomenal idea, but having a community notice board in the park would be a fantastic idea if implemented properly.

And lastly, maybe seeing if we can look towards once getting an official Patreon going, looking into hiring a dedicated commission worker for constructing various different assets, be it artwork, animations, map art, or scenery for new rooms and buildings!

Thank you for tuning into this week of my Suggestion Board, apologies if it was somewhat shorter, but I figured it would be good to voice my ideas and statements that I have heard around! That is pretty much it for this week, and I wish you all a wonderfully fantabulously fantastic week filled with enjoyment and fun times on Wolfery!

P.S - Don’t forget to pet the fox-vali.

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I don’t think Sinder should have much of an economy at all, for most purposes. I think that Mucklet should have support for it. It’s a complicated thing.

I think you already have most of your marketing answers yourself. Spamming it isn’t going to help most places. If you know people that are cool, tell them about it! Especially if they haven’t found other RP environs immersive or friendly - we do those two things better than most. Wolfery is “fully open” so there’s no concern about how many people you bring! There wasn’t really before it was open either, but we were dealing more with technical matters than the moderation issues a big influx brings.

A feature to embed a music player is very interesting and… I don’t even know the legal side of it. Having it be able to point at a shoutcast server might be nice, there’s a DJ I know who sort of wants to do a show here sometime.

I was going to thread up the notice board, I was hoping one of the others would do it, I’ll do that after dinner. The rest of the stuff is being worked on, really. :slight_smile:

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This is a great summary of whom to invite, and how to sell it! I’ve been struggling to “elevator pitch” Wolfery to friends who might be interested. “Immersive and friendly” is a great starting point.

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I don’t think Kumi was suggesting an embedded player, necessarily; maybe just some way to post a “This YouTube playlist is what my character is currently playing in the club” link that stays available in the space, somehow. (Both he and I were at a really fun event in the Cinnabar club the other night with a curated playlist, and the DJ simply repeated the link occasionally for newcomers, for lack of a better method.)

A specialized bot seems like overkill, versus a “whiteboard” or some other way to let folks temporarily tack simple notes onto a space… or using this very forum to post links to event-associated media!

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To put a finer point on it, Discord, F-List… those things are not immersive, they’re IRC with furries in it. Oldschool mucks have that, minus the graphical capability of Wolfery. (Fuzzball/Trebuchet’s MCP notwithstanding, which is reasonable since nobody actually uses that.) But they tend to not be… friendly. Both in the user friendly sense - you have to have a lot of technical knowledge to get on and work it - and the culture carries decades of built in behaviors, terms and even memes that makes the learning curve steep.

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THIS. (To borrow from our Tumblr friends…)

Wolfery isn’t intrinsically better than those systems, and it (or places like it) will never be nearly as popular–it’s so insanely easy to just crash into a Discord and start chatting within seconds, after all.

But the sense of place and embodiment unique to MU*-style spaces offers so much especially to the experience of furry role-play, which is all about casting your mind into very different, imaginative bodies. I really cheer on Wolfery (and its underlying technology) for making it so much more accessible.

And on top of that, it’s run by volunteers who clearly really care about building and maintaining a welcoming, and I dare say inclusive space, bringing to bear concepts about online community that I’m fairly certain weren’t even in the language when traditional MU*s were established.

Summarizing all the above as “immersive and friendly” is useful for me!

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If the recent closures of popular discord bots like rhythm say anything, it’s that streaming music to a group isn’t very legal in the eyes of the rightsholders unfortunately. I don’t know how it’d work with a Shoutcast server or just links to videos/songs, but it’s something that’s tricky. The last thing I’d want for this place is to get Google lawyer spies raiding our furry roleplaying site :rofl:

I know there’s some framework code for item ownership beyond rooms and areas (Yea Acci I’m poking around in the code) that could be used in the future. Something like this could be possible with some sort of non-character (because a bot is just another character) entity that has the information when interacted with, and could possibly automatically repeat the information to the room on a timer with some Lua scripting (again, future Mucklet, not today Mucklet, I have a lot of ideas ready to make me work and stress out once Lua scripting is available).

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I’m very much against Sinder having an economy. I do agree that it’s a cool feature for Mucklet to have, much like a method of synchronizing or streaming audio links for music/DJ kind of stuff. But the more you try to mechanically gamify roleplay interactions, the more you hinder them. MUDs are fun and you can roleplay in them plenty, but this is a MUCK. It’s chill. Money isn’t needed here.

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Yeah, let’s reply to this! :smiley:

Economy

Yeah, I can totally see realms wanting to have an economy, a common currency, and a way to trade.

In more MUD like realms (once I can support such things), it would probably be some actual currency that is tied to your character, that you have to earn through dungeon crawling. It would probably be something supported by LUA scripts.

And in realms like Wolfery, it could just be just something that would be part of the lore, without any actual game system behind it; it is all roleplay.

But I still wonder if we really need that? Nimbats don’t deal with money. Dragons might want gold. And protogens might… eh… do something digital, I guess.

For now, let’s roleplay, and see if something more common emerges! :slight_smile:

Rules on Marketing

Are you asking me for an elevator pitch? Oh dear! :sweat_smile:
No. I am not good with that. I just use to call it something like “A textual roleplaying environment in a world that you can build yourself.” . But really. Most everyone can give it a better sales pitch than me.

Or are you asking if we (as a community) should write together something?

For me, that sales pitch is sort of what I wrote on the welcoming screen:
https://wolfery.com/welcome/

Community Suggestions

  • Music - Has actually been a thought of mine too, that you can set background music to a room which players can opt-in on listening to. However, there are both technical and legal hurdles for that, so it would probably have to wait.
  • Petting stations - It’s @Raeth, isn’t it ? :wink:
  • Community notice board - See this thread
  • Patreon - I have been looking (not much, but some) for some artist with a suitable style who would be able to take on recurring requests for things like art for rooms and puppets. If you have suggestions, I’d happily take them! But my ideas for the future are not as much using Patreon (or other similar services), but rather to build a supporter payment system as part of the over arching Mucklet project. Though, my thought has been to first focus on this realm, and once we have most of the features we need, I could go on with building this supporter payment system + functions to create your own realms.
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One possibility for art is this artist whom I’m commissioning Talon’s Cabin from (and she’s doing great). She has a particular style that isn’t the cel-like Wolfery Style, so it’s only appropriate for some things. (She’s also needing work right now due to… the major thing going on. :confused:)

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I just wanna put my two cents in that I’m not for an economy. Unless it’s quartered off into a specific rp zone. Realm wide, expectations turn to nails, and I’d rather not nail down this part of the lore at all.

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I would 1000% put money into helping this site, I was originally going to make a specific topic on it but found your post ^w^.

I wouldn’t expect a patron to have any perks at all and instead be a place where you can help the community.

I myself don’t have nearly enough time for multiple hours of roleplay which help so it would be nice to help in another way ^w^.

I believe it would also help @Accipiter run the server and buy art for the realm ^w^

(Yes I know I’m a little late to the chat >w<)

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Aaw! Thanks, Ico! :grin:

For those wanting to support me like that, it is possible to do so through the gateway project which is powering the game… since I am the one behind that one too. But, I am currently working on open sourcing the client, which will make it possible for those of you with some coding skills to help out by implementing planned features and squashing bugs too!

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