Organizing the first player-run city with a crafting and trading theme

Discussion in 'Player Owned Towns' started by Jatvardur, Jun 5, 2014.

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  1. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    The Free City of Vanguard
    Member of the Tantalus Consortium

    This post provides an outline of the Free City of Vanguard: a player-owned metropolis with nested village that have an emphasis on crafting and trading. The town now can be found in South Paladis (the South West quadrant of Novia).


    Design Principles:​
    • Open & casual player-owned towns
    • High-standard of liberty
    • High-standard of ownership privileges
    • Low taxes and burdens on players
    • Emphasis on Crafting and Trading
      • Free access to all expert level crafting stations.
    • Emergent and sandbox elements of game-play
    • Emphasis on shared game-play and player-run activities
    • Political neutrality
    • Strong links with other towns (embassies and trade routes)
    Metro purchased - Vanguard
    We finally hit our target of a metro. It has been a long time coming and a goal that we waited patiently to achieve with many ups and downs along the way! Massive thanks to all who donated, especially to David for a large donation. Vanguard sits within the Duchy of Elden.

    Village purchased - Vanguard Ruins
    This is a nested POT within Vanguard. Thanks to David. If you have a town, or will purchase a town, and would like to unite under our banner then send me a message. More towns welcome.

    Location :


    [​IMG]




    Introduction

    After the devs publicly announced their decision to sell player-owned towns this was the first thread to be posted.

    This town is open to all players with a solid theme: crafting, gathering, trading. There are no restrictions on play style. The towns are open to all players and guilds.nWe are building strong links with other towns and attracting many entrepreneurial players who want to build their businesses in this town.

    Own a bath house? Sweet, come join. A brewery? You'd fit right in. A farm? We need one of those. Blacksmith? Should I just shut up and take your money? :p

    • Town Planning - One of the underlying principles of town design is of economics benefits and consequences of where buildings are placed.
    • Crafting - there is an emphasis on getting the layouts just right in order to maximize crafting and, consequently, trading. A central area with public access to as many crafting stations is desirable. I can ensure that there are expert level crafting stations in the town which are open and freely accessible. In at least one of our towns.
    • Trading - we encourage all types of traders and vendors to this town. We are also happy to help advertise your business and increase your reknown across Novia.


    Getting involved
    • Avoid the landrush by choosing your exact plot. The earlier the better, as there will be a priority list.
    • Place several houses.
    • If you have a town and wish to join it with ours then send me a message.
    • Join our Guild: Righteous Society for Industrial Enlightenment
      • Our guild was designed with similar principles in mind, but it was developed before player-owned towns were introduced to the community. There is no requirement for a player to join both.
    • Join the Tantalus Consortium.
      • A group of POTs / guilds with the goal of promoting cross-guild and cross-POT interaction.
    New Britannian Stock Exchange

    Vanguard is the home of The New Britannian Stock Exchange: NBSE


    Now what?

    Please reply to this topic if you would like to be a citizen in Vanguard (including Vanguard Ruins), or if you would like to join our crafting guild RSFIE.

    We use Discord for voice. We have a room for Vanguard on the Tantalus Discord.
    • Server Address:
    Discord:
    https://discord.gg/Ndd76uw


    Looking to buy items for dollars?
    Check out Realm Wares:
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f.../selling-resources-gold-realmwares-com.62143/


    (Last Update: 16th September 2016)​


    Historic note: The very first post of this idea is here in the dev+ area: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...goal-store-megapost.11352/page-74#post-191085
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2016
  2. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Old Design Ideas


    City Style & Town Planning
    The main town is hoping to be on a coastal / water-heavy hex and will be centered around the themes of crafting and trading. These two aspects of the game sit well together and so are a good choice for a town theme.

    I'm keen to have row houses in the town centre to give it a busy built up feeling. Hoping for a mix of plot sizes along the internal rivers, with mainly large plots by the water front. Row houses and NPC houses I'm the town centre with large houses in a secondary "centre". I have a rough design in my head but open to discussion. See the following post.

    Town Planning
    One of the underlying principles of town design is of economics benefits and consequences of where buildings are placed. I'm mindful of the potential harmony and optimization of where the npc buildings are placed. While Owl's Head feels organic and almost messy I'm aiming for something more organized without being overly regimented (grid iron).

    Crafting is an important theme for our towns and guild, so naturally there will be a lot of emphasis on getting the layouts just right in order to maximize crafting and, consequently, trading. A central area with public access to as many crafting stations is desirable. We'd have a npc smith if that makes sense, we could also aim to have public / npc buildings with crafting stations inside. For example, it could make sense to have a house dedicated to smithing and smelting which has two of each station.

    I can ensure that there are expert level crafting stations in the town which are open and freely accessible. In at least one of our towns.

    Trading
    I'm happy to encourage all types of traders and vendors to this town. I also happy to help with the advertising of your business. Currently I am in talks with other towns to secure trade routes and would gladly help spread the word of your business (Note that this is being partly superceded by Tantalus).

    Town Map
    It would be great to have dynamic maps of each town once the game has launched. It would also be great to have the location of all vendors (with owners) and what they sell.

    I want it to be easy for other players to find your house and your vendor. I think a good out-of-game map can help with that. If people know what you are selling and where you are then you can more easily sell your wares.

    City councils and Governance
    Thoughts on a city council & similar political issues.

    Now that we have several towns it makes sense to apply this model across all towns. Where it says mayor or governor, it means mayor/governor of a specific town. There will be a good degree of autonomy for you town within Vanguard.

    The city council is going to be as small as reasonable possible and not get in the way of players' enjoyment of the game. The point of the council is to figure out an amicable solution which is the best for the town.

    For this town I'm taking inspiration from Paxlair: there will be a governor / owner and then a fully elected council. The owner of a town will be its governor.

    • Owners are Governors and handle a lot of out-of-character / out-of-game stuff. They will ensure that decisions made by the council are carried out.
    • Elected Mayor (although in the first 6 months I expect the governors will appoint someone while the town is established). The Mayor runs the town from an in-character / in-game perspective. Organizes the council meetings and has the ability to pass in-game laws.
    • Elected council to support the mayor. I will likely appoint for the first council who will hold office for the first 6 months, then there-after elections will be held every 6 months.

    It is not necessary for the town council to have to made a financial contribution to this town.

    I want people who are motivated to be part of the town council and will carry out a good job.

    Lore
    Town name, street names, coat of arms:

    Town name
    I prefer having lore-consistent names. A further consideration is whether to incorporate the themes into the name: e.g.craft-town, or water-town, but in a less obvious way.

    I want to study the map a bit more and see how Richard has used suffixes in reinforcing localized themes, I'd do something similar (if he has done that). This would also apply to street names and regions within the town.

    Street names
    I'd like this to be consistent with the in-game lore, and to some extent our location within the game.

    Coat of arms
    TBD, but something appropriate of course. Player input welcome here.


    Layouts
    This post holds many early drafts of a suggested layout for a city-sized town. Until more details are released by the devs we can't make further progress.

    First attempt at creating a city plan which is more like Königsberg than Venice. While Venice would be uber cool I see that Ardoris is a bit like Venice and perhaps that would be too much for the devs to allow in a player-run city? Could a lot of the art be re-used?

    [​IMG]


    Breakdown of lots is:
    88 Row lots (equiv to 22 vil lots)
    38 Village lots
    8 Town lots (equiv to 16 vil lots)
    6 City lots (equiv to 24 vil lots)

    That's a total of 100 village lots and leaves 12 village lots (or equivalent) undesignated.

    There are two town squares with 5 npc buildings each.

    This is a bit rough but it hopefully it gives an indication of what's possible.


    Design 2
    Adding a second attempt at creating a city layout. This one is a re-working of the above, this time with a more Venetian feel to it. Same number of lots here:

    [​IMG]



    Design 3 - landlocked
    I reworked one of the pictures I have in the 2nd post. The following shows a suggested lay-out for a city if a coastal hex is not permitted.


    [​IMG]

    As before the breakdown of lots is:
    88 Row lots (equiv to 22 vil lots)
    38 Village lots
    8 Town lots (equiv to 16 vil lots)
    6 City lots (equiv to 24 vil lots)

    This gives a total of 100 village lot equivalents (my patent pending method for measuring town sizes :p) with 12 left over as slack.

    I'm also inclined to decrease the number of city lots if the city is land-locked, and to boost row and village sized lots.

    This is just a rough sketch of how things might look. I'm keen to spread the NPC buildings out a bit. If they are all central then the immediate houses become incredibly valuable which sounds cool except that the houses on the edge of town will be far less desirable. In order to preserve some value in the outer lots it makes sense to have either two centres (as above), or to spread the NPC buildings out around the town (no centre). The former seems smarter as I think some NPC buildings will compliment each other in terms of function, and the town looks more natural (not artificial just because we are in a game).




    Design 4 - coastal city hex by Brian

    The lot totals are:

    Row Houses 84
    Village 43
    Town 8
    City 6
    Keep 1

    That is exactly 67200 sq. meters.

    "I am not sure what to do with the NPC structures, so I just stuck them in like you did. Let me know what you think of the shopping district. And I put some row houses right on the water for the Amsterdam effect I spoke of before."


    [​IMG]


    Design 5 - landlocked
    Tried creating a metropolis layout. Decided to split up the row lots a bit more.


    [​IMG]

    Includes full allocation of 139 village lot equivalents.

    124 Row
    52 Village
    12 Town
    8 City



    Water hex designs by Aevans:
    http://s1294.photobucket.com/user/aevans7106/library/LEGO SotA/LEGO SotA Islands?sort=3&page=1

    It would be awesome if we could have something like this:
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2016
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  3. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Added some page to my Guild's website, I will try to keep the website updated with the latest activity.




    Town names
    I've done some researching of the world map and tried to match up themes / styles with the areas. The naming convention isn't completely obvious, so had to take some guesses. As I'm currently aiming for a name which is consistent with the lore then I'd had hoped to find more obvious patterns in the place names. The following outlines my research:

    Norgard has a bit of a Nordic flavour: Estgard (Est = East, gard ~ gård), Valhold (play on Valhalla), Oso, Dysborg (a play on Swedish towns with borg), Jaana (is a bit further south, and is a Finnish female name).

    Brittany (and just north of the city) seem to be based on Latin words, and imply things like regality/royalty, fortune and abundance: Equitas, Libris, Fortus, Sanctus, Regalis, Abundis (not so close geographically).

    Celestis has a light theme, and is perhaps the most obvious: Celestis, Solania, Solace, Spectral peaks, Solace bridge

    If this helps anyone else then a citation back to this post would be appreciated. :)

    The other areas are less obvious to me and I'm still debating what theme I'd attribute to them.


    Embassies
    Here is some thinking on how they could work. For simplicity I shall work with two entities: the host and the guest. The host is the city that has the embassy building within its borders, the guest is the visiting "guild" that owns the building.

    Currently in discussion with:

    Governor Winfield of Paxlair
    Blake Blackstone
    Kazyn Phoenixfyre of Port Phoenix
    Mayor Spoon of Lux Sanctuary

    Where an embassy exists in a host city it should be presumed that strong links exist (in-/out-of-game) with the guest entity (guild / city). The embassy would be a safe haven for all persons of the guest entity. It wouldn't need to be open to the host city citizens, that is entirely optional (cf Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy).

    Obviously this depends on how permissions work, but I think it would be wise to set the building to open for all residents of the guest city (if possible). Not necessarily kindred but just open access.

    I see two ways to way to play this:

    1) The guest guild is granted a key in the host town to place a building. The building is owned by the guest guild, and access permissions are set by the guests. This essentially means that the host city will have one embassy building per embassy link.

    2) The host town places a general embassy building which has open access rights to all players. I don't see it being possible to limit the access to just a few, but distinct, guilds. This is less embassy-like since it wouldn't work as a guest-only safe haven but rather would be a generic safe building. However, a player-run mall would have the same access rights. A mall and an embassy have different characters. That said, it could make sense for an embassy to host a library which contains literature and arts from the guests cities. I could see it working on a donation basis: gifts to build links.

    Additional idea: an embassy is a place where vendors can be placed and sell the wares form the other town.





    More to come.
     
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  4. Father Aquila

    Father Aquila Avatar

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    Hi there, just want to register my interest before reading the thread :)

    Got as far as a port and want to say YES to this - I was thinking a player run marina would be cool so we could have a vibrant trading town plus lots of places to moor our boats.
     
  5. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    I like the cut of your jib. Moar oars n boats please!

    If you have thoughts on funding amounts, rewards etc then please share. What is a fair amount? :)
     
  6. Biblik

    Biblik Avatar

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    The one thing I was wondering up front is how viable is it that a player run town gets a decent area of land to use given the order in which the lot selection is decided (unless I missed something in there of course)

    I am definitely down to talk further on the matter. I have a vested interest as well obviously : )
     
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  7. High Baron Asguard

    High Baron Asguard Avatar

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    Suggest you wait for the new pledge tiers to come out to organise something like this.
     
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  8. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Fortune favours the bold.
     
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  9. High Baron Asguard

    High Baron Asguard Avatar

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    Trust me, there is a good reason to wait but I can't tell you why
     
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  10. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    The megapost suggests that the devs will assign the exact hex on the main map but players can request a quadrant and type.

    The town owner will receive the keys to all potential lots and then distribute those as agreed upon. The order of lot selection can be whatever.
     
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  11. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    I would be surprised if you had inside knowledge on this, if you are guessing then it seems unfair for me to say that you are wrong but likewise why should I trust you without evidence?

    I haven't taken any money nor forced anyone to do anything against their will. I'm asking people to contribute ideas and show interest in a fairly focused concept. It isn't a waste of forum space nor infringing on any rights, so I don't see the problem.
     
  12. High Baron Asguard

    High Baron Asguard Avatar

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    My apologies. I hadn't seen the post today by Darkstar, I thought that Infomation was still locked up in the Dev + forum
     
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  13. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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    I'm certainly interested. If you want the town to be crafting centric, should potential people interested in living in the city carve out what crafting skill they want to focus on?

    Edit: I propose the founding members each commit to purchasing a crafting table. The town will need 10 tables total to accommodate everyone. We share the tables in a public space in the center of town. Under this proposal I would commit to acquiring one of these 10 crafting tables myself as soon as possible. I only have an Edleman pledge and a Village lot. I wouldn't get one for free like a Lord would, but I would commit to buying one in game as soon as possible.

    Blacksmithing
    Carpentry
    Tailoring
    Cooking
    Alchemy
    Smelting
    Milling
    Textiles
    Tanning
    Butchery
     
  14. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Good post. I probably should have asked for people to state their crafting interests. It isnt 100% necessary for people to be crafters but I suspect many will. I agree that we should have public crafting stations in (probably) the town centre. The megapost mentions a smith npc building, will this be like Handac's place in Owl's Head? Or just a blacksmith? I want to guess the former.

    I don't think there will be a shortage of crafting stations either, looks like the higher pledge levevls were given more. Lord Marshall and upwards have 8 expert level crafting stations. I'd be happy to place all if mine in a public location.
     
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  15. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Made a first attempt at designing the city lay-out in paint. Artistic skills aside, I think it gives a fair illustration of what I was thinking (one version of it anyway). Obviously it depends on which players are attracted to the city in the first place but I'm keen for a large number of row houses and village lots. It ought to give the place a busy feel.

    If someone else wants to have a go at designing something using the rough description I gave in the OP, and perhaps with an eye to my image, then that would be cool too.


    Been thinking on possible pledge levels and rewards too, will post that soon.

    edit:
    Added two pictures to the second post. :)
     
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  16. Biblik

    Biblik Avatar

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    Give me some screen shots of overhead layouts or something and I can build a quick HTML town style designer if you want for us to play with.
     
  17. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    I added a pic to post no 2 above, oddly I thought I had said that in my previous post. Clearly not! Oops!

    An html town designer would be cool, other players in rthe community would give you kudos too. :)
     
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  18. Sundews

    Sundews Avatar

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    Looks awesome! You're off to a great start!
     
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  19. Jatvardur

    Jatvardur Avatar

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    Thanks! I appreciate the positive comments. It is a bold plan for sure. Feedback is also appreciated. Hit me with whatever you've got.
     
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  20. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

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    Do you have a name for the city yet?
     
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