In-game adverts, spam and fixtures:

[Nitro]

Do people not realize how much time goes into these particular fixtures? And its not just a bash and have to repair it. its a bash and bin it most times.

That's probably exactly why they get stolen so frequently. They're a valuable commodity that a lot of people just leave out in the open, so enterprising thieves just grab one instead of going through the rigamarole of making their own.

[Taerl]

If I walk past all the signs enough times, I will eventually have read them all. Most do nothing for me unless a rarely crafted item that I of course use on a normal basis is mentioned.

My rangers hate seeing a build up of any fixtures pop up in any of the woodlands/forest areas. And I deal with it icly.

I've posted up ads for my shops with many of my characters, but I would only generally leave one sign in a very high traffic area for 1 real life week. And honestly only if I thought my store was one of very few making my product needed. If I make the same stuff as everyone else, I don't advertise myself, but best bet my prices will piss the others off

Over all I dislike the clutter and wish people would clean their mess after a week and not post 5 signs all over the servers.

Once I gathered all the fixtures in the old map before entering the minmir Manor, piled it all up and made more fixtures resembling mini fires burning those fixtures. Each 24 hrs I'd come visit it and bash one item and hang out there some in case someone wanted to confront me. I had also posted a note at the message board there saying I was doing so with a signature. Eventually everything got destroyed and I cleaned up any and all of my own temperary fixtures.

[ReverentBlade]

Fixtures and advertisements are a fantastic way to encourage players to organize their RP and make encounters happen. How else does that information get shared? OOC channels like these forums and discord. I am 100% for anything that makes it so that people don't feel required to use outside social media in order to be part of the Arelith community.

Is it super setting-appropriate? Probably not, honestly, but I am more than willing to sacrifice "immersion purity" for the sake of anything that gets people's butts IG.

What I -wouldn't- mind, is if perhaps settlement leaders took it upon themselves (or hired someone to?) clean out signs and billboards that aren't relevant anymore. Groups form and dissolve all the time, and shops change. A little custodianship is just a basic part of maintaining a landscape or city. I don't think there's any harm in smashing a sign thats -clearly- no longer relevant.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I'd love if all signs and advertisements were restricted to settlement hubs, and then removed from everywhere else.

Cordor's market/hub should just be this eyesore of all kinds of advertising, and market stalls, and it's the "place to go" when you're looking for something to buy or sell. (This isn't the case right now)

This sounds solveable in-game but a savvy merchant guild. Imagine the infinite powa you could achieve by becoming the legal regulator of Cordorian advertising.

(if advertising is placed on the road, it should have some sort of expiration or wear/tear system. Why would goblins let the Darrowdeep advertising stand? nasties)

[The GrumpyCat]

This sounds solveable in-game but a savvy merchant guild. Imagine the infinite powa you could achieve by becoming the legal regulator of Cordorian advertising.

I get where you're coming from with this, and it's a good idea and in fact probably OK to do - but this sort of idea can run a cropper with the rules of 'destroying/moving no more one fixture per 24 hours.' So it would need to be carefully done.

[The Kriv]

My half-ork walking through the bramble see's all the bramblewatch signage.. Hacks them up with his bastard sword... Is that allowed too?

oooh.. it's on now... that signage is HELPFUL... we ain't' got no "Hey, come to the Campsite for cheap arrows" signs... our signs are "Hey! watch out! Bugbears gonna kill you n' stuff!"


If I find a half-orc bashing up my signage in the Brambles... I can consider that an aggressive act of PvP, right?? -that's IC ain't it?? Cuz I got +6 damage vs. Favored Enemies, and Half-Orc happens to be one of 'em... *glares foreboding in The Doctor's direction*

[The Kriv]

Fixtures and advertisements are a fantastic way to encourage players to organize their RP and make encounters happen. How else does that information get shared? OOC channels like these forums and discord. I am 100% for anything that makes it so that people don't feel required to use outside social media in order to be part of the Arelith community.

Is it super setting-appropriate? Probably not, honestly, but I am more than willing to sacrifice "immersion purity" for the sake of anything that gets people's butts IG.

What I -wouldn't- mind, is if perhaps settlement leaders took it upon themselves (or hired someone to?) clean out signs and billboards that aren't relevant anymore. Groups form and dissolve all the time, and shops change. A little custodianship is just a basic part of maintaining a landscape or city. I don't think there's any harm in smashing a sign thats -clearly- no longer relevant.

+1


I've always wondered why 'advertising' signage inside Cordor City Limits doesn't require a permit and a tax or fee to: a) put the sign up and b) collect a fee every year to keep it up.

[Dreams]

I don't think we need to take anything away. It could be dealt with:
- IC laws or oversight by local guards
- Bashing the spam, trash binning 1/24hrs

[Mr_Rieper]

I don't think we need to take anything away. It could be dealt with:
- IC laws or oversight by local guards
- Bashing the spam, trash binning 1/24hrs

This was never a suggestion thread.

At no point did I advocate for removing players abilities to place fixtures. This is more about an OOC trend that has bled into IC, and I wanted to find out more about why and whether it was actually helpful.

This sounds solveable in-game but a savvy merchant guild. Imagine the infinite powa you could achieve by becoming the legal regulator of Cordorian advertising.

I get where you're coming from with this, and it's a good idea and in fact probably OK to do - but this sort of idea can run a cropper with the rules of 'destroying/moving no more one fixture per 24 hours.' So it would need to be carefully done.

This is one of the main problems with playing as a city official who is trying to keep things in order. As far as I'm aware, the rule is in place to prevent one player or faction from doing too much harm to fixtures, too quickly - and to give the defending parties time to react. The problem is the OOC outrage that comes with having their fixtures policed, which tends to become an OOC problem rather than an IC one.

[Bibliophile]

I'm curious what exactly you want to see on the message boards if it is not information about things currently happening such as guilds looking for members or X shop selling Y goods?

I personally put an advert for some shops up on every message board I could remember and haven't heard any ic complaints so I would say if you have a thought, complaint, opinion, or advice to please please come get me ic and lets chat about it. I would honestly love the rp.

I liked the idea when I did it and plan to continue. If it is hated or unwanted I'd prefer to know that. It is a lot of time I'm putting into it for something not even my own.

[Mr_Rieper]

It's the excessive nature of it, and the inability of settlements to control the spam on their main boards. It's fine if a faction is recruiting. It's fine if two or three factions are recruiting. When it starts to get uncomfortable is when more than 60% of the front page of the settlement board is taken up by recruitment notices and advertisements. And these aren't even new adverts, they are the same ones, removed from the board and stuck to the front page again. This, in turn, pushes all the other notices down.

Again, which wouldn't really be a problem if just one or two people were doing it. You eventually wind up in a situation where everybody is so desperate to stay on the front page that they are constantly removing notices and reposting them, and the front page is just this ever-shifting tide of the same adverts. More often than not, this is a player behaviour. Players wanting to ensure that their factions and shops are getting the most attention. The settlements have no control over this, and nothing can be done to regulate it.
Couple this with arguments taking place on boards, snarky OOC responses with anonymous signatures, OOC and ego-driven threats made with little to no context and you can see how the boards will rapidly become completely unusable as the player base grows. Like a swampy mess of semi-OOC garbage. They might even pick up the same habits. But more than likely, they'll just avoid the boards completely.

It is a terrible shame, because the message boards used to be one of the easiest ways to gain some context or insight into what was happening in a settlement, and who its leaders or factions were.

The messages on boards have multiple uses. Even an advert can provide some context or insight into a faction or why it's intended for a particular settlement. This is a bit complicated and writing letters is difficult sometimes, so I don't expect everybody to do this. But fun messages to read are the ones that give clues into a faction's history, their motivations or even their relationships with other factions.
Does the recruitment notice for Guild X imply that they have a good relationship with Cordor, the place they are attempting to recruit from? That's interesting. Does it boast of its long history, or prominent members? Interesting too. Little bits of exposition are great, even in recruitment ads you aren't planning on answering.

I don't want to pick on any particular factions here because that isn't the purpose of the thread. But we all know how easy it is to just copy the same recruitment letter and stick it on every board they can get their grubby fingers on. I wish I was kidding. I came across a general messageboard for the Knights of the Road and it had recruitment messages for unrelated factions on it, like somebody came along, considered the possibility of somebody reading it and just slapped their own notice on it. Do they have a working relationship with the Knights of the Road IC, and thus the message was allowed? I wouldn't know, it was a carbon copy of every single other recruitment message they post.

It's not just one faction either. You see it on every single board that is open to the public, people just slap their notice on it without even considering if it belongs there. This is the desperation I was talking about earlier. It's so important that everyone see their message that they put it everywhere they can, even if it doesn't make sense.
My character has brought this up with others in RP, and everybody just seems to admit they hate it and quietly tolerate it, because regulating messages and fixtures is seem as the jobs of the DMs. People want others to find new recruits for their factions, or new customers, so they tolerate it. It's not just limited to one settlement either.

As for fixing it through RP, it seems like such an odd thing to want to become a settlement leader JUST so you can deal with everybody's unspoken gripes about fixtures and messages. When you have entire factions in a settlement scoffing at the idea of using the settlement board for any sort of communication, you have a problem. I think it's important for the playerbase to develop some sort of etiquette when it comes to using letters, to prevent the tidal wave of junk/irrelevant information and the inevitable disconnect that comes with it.

[Crookedblossom]

This does sound mostly like a "handle it IC" problem.

If your character would dislike seeing a lot of clutter, then work to resolve it, if you can. Just because that's not really something that can be policed OOCly. They are posting their advertisements to draw attention. There's nothing that says that attention has to be positive. You also don't need to be a faction leader to address problems like this. Go through appropriate IC channels.

Have your character find the faction/vendor/etc littering and address it to them IC. That's really the best way I've found to handle excessive postings. I can tell you from experience that a little RP can go a long way.

I hope you can have fun with it, regardless of what's done.

<3

[MissEvelyn]

Perhaps a second message board (not a fixture, but an actual one) needs to be set up in the module next to the main board and then it's main purpose would be exclusively for merchantile advertisements, while the main message board would be exclusive to community messages.

This isn't the best idea to tackle things, I admit, because nothing would be stopping a person from posting on both boards.

Alternatively, impose a small fee upon posting on the message boards.

But elsewise, yes, I agree that it is an IC issue best handled in the game.

[Ecthelion]

I think we can honestly say that this is an inconvenience that will hardly be resolved IC. I doubt much characters will listen and actually change behaviours or anything, although the RP may be good and fun of course. Once.

It is particularly annoying to see the same notices posted and re-posted on main boards really. The board does not give much information anymore, and events notices etc get throwned at the end of those quickly unless you head through the pain of reposting them all the time. What I expect to see on a main message board are directives about town, official messages, etc.

As about signs, for example something that'll irk me is "Warning, Cordorian leyline transition ahead", if some sort of example needs to be provided.

[Twily]

I actually do think this could be resolved IC, only because I've seen it done in the past.

At one point all advertisement signs in Cordor needed a date stamp on the bottom less than an IG year old. The laws said if a sign was out without a date or with an outdated stamp, the signs could be removed and disposed of.
My guard at the time regularly toke down signs that were in violation of this.

[Lunargent]

When placing a fixture, any fixture, in a public space, players should really ask themselves:

Am I adding anything to the experience of other players?
Is my piece enhancing the environment?

If the answer to both of these is no, do not place your fixture. Full stop.

The public areas of the server belong to everyone, and every player has the right, I think, to see the server as the builders meant it to be seen. Fixture and sign clutter is out of control, I feel it is common courtesy to be a bit more mindful of what you're putting down and where. Keep it simple, as few as possible, and in appropriate areas to be kind to your fellow players who are sharing the server with you.

[Zavandar]

yeah half the cordor board is usually reposted stuff

but that can be handled in game

[Cerk Evermoore]

Hopefully one day bashing and trashing becomes a rule violation.

Pretty clearly is not nice, and I am sure any dickhead could make up an IC excuse to go smash up some graveyards.

Nothing is more annoying then someone is stealing your fixtures and trashing/vendering them. In game mechanics exist to repair things, trying to find a magical in game way to instantly /remove/ the items from the server quite honestly sounds exploitative to me. Considering these trash cans are infinate black holes designed to delete items to curve server lag, they should not be used to make items /disappear./

[Anime Sword Fighter]

Any sign I make I make with full understanding it may be bashed and forever lost the day after, and I'm fine with that. Signs take literally ten minutes max to make, it's not a big deal.

[Mr_Rieper]

One immediate problem I can see by handling this IC is that player-made messageboards are going to be bashed or binned. Repeatedly. You can save a fixture's description and with a small amount of effort, just remake it.

It's a bit more difficult when people's letters are getting binned along with the messageboard fixture. I can imagine anybody in settlement leadership who attempts to remedy the problem will draw the ire of those who would bash the settlement messageboard if they could.

[Subutai]

Personally, I strongly believe that bashing or trashing player-made message boards, or even leaving them out someplace with too many fixtures so they disappear, like I've seen happen when people take over quarters, should be a violation of the Play Nice rule.

There is a huge amount of irreplaceable history on those boards that can be very important to characters, and I've seen how upset it can make players when their 2-year-old message board goes missing and they lose everything that was posted on it. There's really no excuse to ever destroy one, anyway, and even if you take over someone's quarters, it isn't hard to send a message telling them to come get their message board, instead of just junking it. It really should be common courtesy, but it doesn't seem like it is, unfortunately.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I actually enjoy advertisement clutter over soul poured into paragraph description art. Not because the latter is worse, but because I personally get nothing out of long detail descriptions inside my mind's. (I highly prefer in person DnD as I am an extrovert who falls asleep from too much reading. I understand i am not the norm in this medium)

"Advertisements" on the other hand actaully provide me a visual in game. There is a sign with said words on this board, great some character is taking advantage of the city's lack of regulations to try to further their goals like any ambitious entrepreneur should. That literally sets an atmosphere for me.

That being said, it should be up to local settlements to regulate sign boards, ads, etc. Fine those who never got permits or broke regulations or whatever.

[Brandon Steel]

Criers and boards are fine, usually. The thing that really annoys me is the few dozen other fixtures littered everywhere, especially the main roads. Didn’t know I was cruising down I-85.

[Subutai]

I tend to be bothered most by the unnecessary ones that don't necessarily add to RP, like crafting stations next to shops when there are other crafting stations two steps away, in areas where that are otherwise at or near the fixture limit. I know it might be a little more realistic for every blacksmith to have their own forge and anvil, but when fixture limits are reached, courtesy should outweigh the smidge of realism added by every crafter in the area having their own separate work stations.