The Plot Idea Thread

[Foxtrot]

Oh, and hi Bookworm!!!

This matter has been resolved, right, Yama?

[Yamamoto]

Yes it has

[Foxtrot]

Awesomeness! ^_^

[Kisha-Ra]

Looking over these suggestions I have to say I think many of them are a good idea. I do think it’s easy to get too many firelizards in a weyr and I love the new plot idea (if it hasn’t already been picked I think Renegade Weyr is a great name). However I’m wondering if posting each firelizard, with their owner, weekly is a bit too often, we could end up with nothing but filler posts to allow people to keep their firelizards. I don’t see what’s wrong with guesting them in other character threads (such as if I were to send one of Uu’ian’s firelizards into a thread with a message for Idara) as long as it’s realistic for the firelizard. Maybe monthly would be a better idea, depending on activity.

I also think it might be a good idea to limit the starting number of firelizards a player can create, for example one to start with, and they could earn more by posting. That would encorage people not to give characters their full limit right away.


Because you all know I’m an interfering busybody It won’t surprise you to know that I have some suggestions of my own, mostly based on the fact that the site has become somewhat topheavy, being as it is that the most active players are the ones with golds and other specials and we now have two queen type clutchers for dragons and firelizards.

Some of the best sites I’ve been on have all their queen flights and hatchings organised by their admins. What happens is that the admins make up a schedule of around when golds fly/clutch e.g. late may and the player picks their day and plays it out. It makes sure hatchings are regular events but don’t become too bunched up together, and also lets players know when to be prepared by.

It might be a good idea to limit how many ‘shinies’ a player can have to something like one queen type per player across all species and two specials on dragons, specials being counted as bronze, silver, rainbow, and unique colours. That would put a player like me at or above the limit since in my time here I’ve aquired a gold, bronze, and silver dragon which would limit me, plus an aqua firelizard. So I wouldn’t be able to have my characters impress any more queen types or specials. I think this would encourage new players to join and get active if they knew that no older players were going to be majorly favourited and if it was made clear that queens go only to active players since we did have some trouble with an inactive gold.

Another idea, with regards to keeping the firelizard population manageable might be to say that gold and aqua inhibit each other so they don’t always clutch. OOCly that would mean a longer gap between each firelizard having a clutch to cater to a smaller player base.

On the note of having low clutching queens I wouldn’t mind saying that Tuinth is a sport who doesn’t always clutch and/or has small clutches to bring down the amount of full queens we have around the place, although I must say I don’t really want to kill off Idara.

Anyway, that’s my busybodying done for now. Discuss?

[Bookworm]

I'd be willing to say that Renth has small clutches too. We never really established how many eggs is normal for an Ebony anyway. Even saying that she doesn't clutch every time would be fine by me. (And since Tuinth is from her line, it could explain why she has small clutches too?) I think it would be nice if we could let our Queens rise more often, without worrying about managing big clutches.

I'm all for the specials limit, too. To be honest I've always felt like me having two bronzes, an Ebony, and a sport was too much. >.<

What about wherhandlers? Should we try and incorporate them into the plot? I've been thinking of getting rid of Lyeldran since I don't have much to do with him, but a wher plot would be cool. We might want to just focus on the dragons, though. Any thoughts on that?

[Franny]

whers could be useful on an island situation...
I could see limiting queens of any species for each player. On the clutches, I've been thinking about cutting them because Malaracyth had a huge clutch at 15 eggs. The normal clutch before hers was about three eggs. Clutches should be between 3-15 eggs, and I think at least 3 should be duds. I sort of agree with limiting most of the specials, but I think copper and sapphire shouldn't be limited sonce I normally have a fair amount of those in a clutch.

I do plan on scheduling flights better. The ebony and the rainbow already are known for not flying regular flights and having a long span of time between flights.

I keep thinking about the firelizard limit, and I agree that posting for a month is better. In a week it can be hard.

I think I covered all points.

[Kisha-Ra]

Ah yes, Looking at previous clutches I notice it was mentioned that 15 was considered a large clutch. I’m not sure about the dud count though, I don’t think we should always have eggs that don’t hatch but they should be an option. In the past I’ve found duds a useful tool when a player quit the site.

Copper and sapphire dragons don’t really play out as specials since they don’t clutch or mature super fast, so that’s why I didn’t count them as specials in my earlier post, when you’re writing up the dragon information for the new site maybe you could put in that those are the most common of the new colours. Also what of fire, storm, and sunset? Would they be specials or not, or only if they’re clutching types?

I love whers, so I think we should have them, but I don’t think we should have a wher queen unless we get a fairly large player base, instead people could create a wherhandler, adopt a wher from Jahzask’s clutch, or we could say there’s a wild wher queen around that people can sometimes steal eggs from. If that last idea’s implemented it might be best to do it all by using something like random.com to decide whether a character found whers at all, if they got an egg, if they were injured during the attempt, and so on and so forth.

Another thing I’d say on whers is I’d want to edit their information a bit to say that greens and spectrums don’t clutch at all because I don’t think we’d ever really need extra wher clutches. I’d also want to take out the ‘typical personality’ bit because I got so detailed it kind of limits player creativity when they’re making whers.

[Franny]

Personally, copper and sapphires are fairly common now, they are like blues and browns. Fox and Sierra didn't like the names of the fire storm and sunset (they said they sounded childish and unprofessional). Those dragons would loose their clutching ability and be renamed red or ruby, gray or graphite, and purple or Amethyst (if you have a better name for them, please tell me). Also rainbows can fly, but will only rarely clutch.

I know some people love whers. I like the idea of having people be able to "find" an egg. Maybe the wher "typical personality" could become more general?

[Kisha-Ra]

Hmmm. How abouta single name that encompasses all the fire/storm/sunsets? Maybe the name of a gem that can appear in more than one colour. Fluorite, or quartz maybe, I really want to suggest ametrine, because I like that way it sounds, but that's only purple and yellow so it's not much use.

[Franny]

That sounds good, and then maybe a person can end up with a male, female, or neuter (and they have three respective traits of the three different dragons).(gem name here).

I like the sound of quartz, but I was thinking of trying to find a similar rock, but with a cooler name. Time to research.

[shadowreine]

1. A requirement to post ANYTHING weekly would result in me resigning and leaving. That's far too often. Monthly I might deal with, but that would mean every character had to be posted weekly except the tiny minority with no firelizards. This could not be done without posting a lot of pointless thread starters that would be ignored...it's as bad as word count limits for creating filler. I realize we want to be active, but mandatory posting creates a clique of people who have no lives. I've seen it.

2. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fire, etc, dragon names, but have no objection to them being changed. Quartz, though, makes me think of white or grey dragons.

3. Does this mean rainbows would continue to rise very rarely AND not clutch every time, or rise more often and not clutch? I like the latter, giving more flexibility to rainbow female riders.

4. Finding wild wher eggs is always an awesome plot. (We could also STEAL wher eggs, as we're renegades )

5.

[Franny]

Reply to shadowreine:
1) A lot of people don't seem to like the idea of activity check, and personally I would probably get overwhelmed trying to check everything every week, and maybe every month. I keep thinking about it, and the more I think, the more I don't like it. Maybe once a season activity check.

2) Will get back to this point later if I find a gem that encompasses all colors.

3)Yes, more flights and less clutches for rainbows. They would still rise unpredictably, but more often.

4) I thinking the idea o stealing wher eggs is a go.

5) What do you guys think about the weyr being named Defiance Weyr?

[Kisha-Ra]

Yeah, the firelizard posting thing is one of those things where the more I think about it, the less it really seems like a good idea, and to be honest I’ve noticed that fairly often players will kill off a pet or a character they aren’t playing if they’re given a chance to. Activity checks can be a good idea if you’re going to do something like remove inactive accounts or send inactive characters into a seperate group but they should be random rather than in a set amount of time.

One thing I would like to see activity monitored on is not firelizards but candidates and weyrlings, since we have so many inactives, and I think those characters are the worst for innactivity. Their lessons could run as an activity check rather than a proper lesson post, because really how many times to you need to post a character learning to wash their dragon? At present every time you have a weyrling. So instead we put up a post that says what the class is studying and people post something like ‘G’uy arrived on time for a change, yet Dragonth still embarassed him by knocking over half the lesson equipment.’ To make sure people really are active perhaps their ‘marks’ for the lesson could be based on how much they’ve posted with their character and consistent bad marks in psuedo class results in a weyrling being held back to the next class or a candidate being banned from standing. An exception to this wold be if someone puts up an absence notice, then they’re counted in lessons and given a passing mark. The amount of posts shouldn’t be set too high if this system is adopted though, maybe two or three posts a month since it’s not likely anyone would have a huge number of candidates and weyrlings at once.


Fluorite is still my best pick for the multi colour dragons, or at least my best so far since all the gems that can have more than one colour are normally associated with one colour, as Shadowreine mentioned quartz is normally thought of as clear, we already have sapphire for our female blues, and jade is mostly thought of as green. Maybe jasper would work? It’s not technically a gem but it does come in a wide selection of colours and patterns. Really it’s a shame I used spectrum for whers.


Defiance Weyr works for me.

[shadowreine]

Jasper makes me think red. Fluorite would work.

[Franny]

Sounds good, still looking at good combo name.