General Public Use Buildings

We have been talking a lot about houses but one thing that I realized is we haven't really talked about the other buildings in towns/villages/cities. I'm talking about Libraries, Hospitals, Banks, Universities, Government buildings, Amphitheaters and Parks. These are unnecessary for a video game but would add a ton of depth to the world. like the Library you could actually barrow books, and as you build up a reputation you could barrow more rare books of arcane knowledge. the universities could work as in-game workshops where people can give lectures of how to improve yourself in-game skills or real world lessons in whatever.

 

Libraries and Universities? who is teaching these peasants to read? get back to your farms, that's a lord's business... hehe.. j/k.. but that is getting closer to Renaissance period, (which might be what they are shooting for given the tech level described)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university

and generally you wouldn't be able to take a book from a library until more recently (after the printing press was invented) since books were fairly rare. you would go there to read, not borrow

 

I ended up brainstorming and wrote a small rant on what I thought could be done with the Universities and Libraries, and in the end decided to write a whole new topic about them

But in short, I like all of those ideas, and would love to see them in game. Oh, and Mishri? One should always remember what happens when the "upper classes" start looking down on peasants Besides, where do you think you would get your ingredients and food from?

 

I think we can assume that there will be Banks. There should be Theaters of some kind as that was one of the stretch goals. (One of the ones I was really looking forward to)

I really like the idea of a University for teaching newbies various things about the game. It could even serve as a physical hub for people that want to help others, in place of or in addition to a help chat channel.

 

@Sir Mishri,

Universities and libraries are pretty appropriate for a game that takes place in a Medieval period.

Universities actually started during the Middle Ages, and there wouldn't have been a distinction between lords and peasants, because they were founded by religious orders -- often at monasteries -- and participation in the Church was very egalitarian; unlike with most things in Medieval life, you could come from any background, poor or wealthy. Serfs would run off to monasteries either to become monks or as refugees, to escape their servitude and live as free men.

There were no public libraries in the sense of civic state-funded libraries, but there were private libraries, and there were many libraries that were open for the public -- for example, monasteries had libraries and scriptoriums, and anyone was welcome to come into a monastery. Of course, the printing press still didn't exist, so books were often chained to the shelves, being very valuable possessions.

So anyone who really wanted to learn to read and be educated could have, if they wanted to live a religious life.

 

I really like the word Scriptorium from now on Libraries will be called Sciprotiums. thanks Redfish I forgot the term.

 

@redfish

I really like the idea of a Monastery!
That could cover Education, Books and Beer!

Also one of the things that monks often did was copy books, as like you said pre-printing press books were quite valuble (A Bible was often one of the most valuble items a person would own)

If this game is indeed pre-printing press think it would be a great idea if you could pay a fee to have Monk NPCs copy publications for you. This could be a way to mass produce small one page news letters, or a hand full of larger books.

Heck have the NPCs number the book editions, to add some collector value.

And Beer! who can forget the beer?!

 

@Bloodshard,

The scriptorium was where books were written, library was where they were stored.

Empath Abbey and the Lyceum were basically equivalents to monasteries in Ultima games. Then you had Xenkan monks on Serpent Isle.

 

I do like the ideas of rolling the libraries and universities into a Monastery. And they level with the settlements of village, town, and city with Priory, Monastery, and Abby.

 

I love the concept of many different public buildings. Sadly in so many games they just become part of the scenery and are not used for anything. It would be nice to see them actually playing a part within the game where players would need to visit them.

 

I'm just hoping there will be the ability to create your own books and sneak them into the library. Muwahahahahaha!

 

@macilence, what would be even better is for certain player books to be selected as quality books, so if one library chooses to carry your book, scribes from another library could visit and copy your book and bring it to their library, and to another, and so on, until your book spreads across the game world.

 

I think that's a great idea: to have player books become "best sellers" perhaps (or selected by some literary-royalty) and then appear in different shops and towns. That could be part of the economy too. The designers would just have to figure out how to prevent bootleg copies. Some books could be "free" though too and freely copied by monks and scribes.

 

Y I love all these ideas.

Shrines
Markets
Training

 

Morrowind had a few quests where you needed to find various rare books. This would give players a reason to visit the scriptoriums.

 

What about a guard barracks or a tower close to the town square? Maybe add some usable form of punishment outside like stocks or a pillory? I think that would be an interesting addition for the RP community. Maybe there could be a bounty NPC there for PvP?

 

Nothing like punishing bad behavior like public humiliation. which could be used as a form of temporary ban on PC's who are cheating or something.