I think one thing that could improve the desire to craft things would be for the herd as a whole to be counted as an owner. Right now, things that have been made available to a whole herd is either listed on a single character's record, or just hanging in the air. It might be mentioned occasionally because one player know that this item was made and offered to the herd in one thread, and then another player finds out about it and lets their character use them too but there aren't any official lists, records or other means of knowing what exists and what doesn't.

For example, Lace's dragon scale armor. He crafted the armor and gifted it to the World's Edge herd, to be used by a general in times of war. But it stayed in Lace's records anyway, it never got used despite being available during an invasion, and when he left the herd I had to transfer the item to Dragomir in order to keep the armor in the Edge.

I see the same things happening with items crafted by Kahlua. The Edge's secret board have a list with the things that's available for use, but it's buried by other threads, out of date and personally I don't know if it's really okay for me to pick up ex a basket and carry it around, maybe drop it, break it, actually play with it and incorporate it into my threads because, isn't it still the property of the character on who's list it's recorded?

A public record would make it much easier to make items and structures available and easily accessed. It wouldn't even have to be maintained by admin - the herd leaders already have responsibility over maintaining the herd pages; perhaps another ranked player can be given permission to maintain a record over the possessions of the herd, update it when the things are destroyed, repaired, stolen, replaced etc.

I think it would make it both more fun and more tempting to create things, because you would know that they will be seen, used, looked at and appreciated.

I'll make an example of a list too, just for the heck of it;

----------------------------------------------------------

A Herd's Possession Legend

Buildings:

:: Defensive wall - built by Abcede, Ihjikle - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link to threads as proof)
[Note: N/A]
:: Church - built by Abcede - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: N/A]
:: Greenhouses - built by Abcede, Efghe, Ihjikle - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: N/A]
:: Library - built by Abcede, Efghe - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: N/A]

Large Items:

:: Cart - built by Abcede - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: Need repair, no magic required ]

Medium items:

:: 5 glass lanterns - built by Abcede - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: 1 lantern was chipped during this event, need repair by Glazier (link)]

Small items:

:: 10 library books - built by Restuve - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: Traded from B Herd in BS 4 (link)]
:: 25 Gate keys - built by Abcede - last maintained 2/2-00 (FF year 6) - (Link)
[Note: distributed to (link), (link), (link), (link), (link), (link), (link), (link), (link), (link)]

------------------------------------

People can link references too, maybe sketches and quick maps over the location of the building/item. Eventually items will develop histories of their own, characters might steal them for the honor of wearing the same armor as, say, three consecutive kings of the Basin. Herds could have their own magical items - books with secrets, enchanted tents, an amulet that summons the herd God in a time of great need - etc.

These things already exist, but I find it hard to keep track of everything that's built, there's currently no easy way to go back and check what the description was, what the location looked like, who built it.

This way things will remain even if an invasion takes place, the new regime can't simply ignore everything that was built before, you can see how and why things are constructed and it's easy to keep track of who made what, where it is, when things will expire, what the magic ranks need to do and what other crafters/volunteers can help out with. If things break, they will need to be repaired, replaced, which will stimulate more crafting, more need for resources, more interaction etc.


Mainly, items made for the entire herd won't be filling up space in a character's records. I think this might help now that we have a character item limit - I personally wouldn't want to fill my item slots with things meant for the whole herd. It wouldn't be fair - the crafter suddenly can't have a magic dagger, a pen that writes itself and a nifty hat because they need to carry the herds basket, the herds lanterns, and so on.

Public records could also give the stealth ranks more to do - maybe herd A has a really nice toolkit that herd B wants; they steal it, use it to create a telescope for academic studies; herd C finds out about it, steals the telescope and uses it to invade herd A - but herd A wins, and forces herd C to hand over the telescope as a peace offering. Then herd C comes back, demanding the item to be returned, and off we go again.

Herd relations are stimulated, and no one is hampered by absent players/aa'd characters because the things belong to the -herd- and kept available to everyone.



Idk, it's just an idea but right now I'm very fond of it. x3 and man this got long... sorry for rambling. Oh and I'm really looking forward to the crafting guide! I think it will make things a lot easier to wrap your head around. :D