Sleeping Dragon Inn Classifieds Bulletinboard

My suggestion is to (somehow) create a bulletinboard at the Sleeping Dragon Inn upon which players could enter whatever they wanted. Not only could this generate greater interest in reading the already present bulletinboards, but increase our feeling of community and serve some useful purposes to boot.

For instance, there could be separate bulletinboards for "Wanted to Buy", "Wanted to Sell", and "Personals" (such as "Looking for that cute half-elf with the headband who gave me ------" ).

It would be ideal if players could add their entries to these bulletinboards "on-the-fly" so to speak - as we pass by them. The entries could be erased at each server reset since this would serve to keep them all very current.

Bump.

Sounds like a cool idea to me. But wouldnt this be a resource hog?

Does sound like a good idea and I just brainstormed an idea on how to do it ..... anyone been to Madera's Retreat ?... you know her lecturn, filled with pages of pages ?... how about something similar in the SDI... a "Notice Board" placeable filled with blank note pages... these notes can then be picked up and Name AND Item description edited by use of the PC tools and VC commands ((select item using PC tool select and use VC command pc tool renameitem and pc tool itemdesc )) ..... these can then be placed back into the "Noticeboard"....

The name could be changed to "topic title by personX" and the description states the message/ ad/ quick query/ etc .... just for consistency...

They would get wiped and erased each server reset ... unless some form of persistent arkon-style system was set-up.... ....(but that sounds like too much hassle for the aim here.. )

Actually, I think a persistent storage bulletin board item would be the way to go here; not everyone has enough time to log in every reset, and even for those that do, I think having to repost your sale (or personal ad, or whatever) on every new log-in would cause the board to be under utilized. Plus, if say someone were to post a sheet looking to buy 50 BoM or something, another character would be able to "tear it off the board" so that there aren't half a dozen people trying to fill the order.

If this was put into practice, perhaps a line could be added to the barkeep's conversation for the PC to ask "Hey, you got a piece of paper?"

So something similar to an "arkon ethereal chest" accessable by everyone that only accepts paper .... that sounds tricky to implement... but would possibly work so much better....

Problems I forsee: Not sure if you can tell an arkon chest what it can and cannot hold (as it saves as a "henchman" to the database ~ well the Markshire chest does, not 100% sure how they work in Aenea).. would possibly get exploited for item-transfer between same player PC's, and "theft"...
... If not an "arkon chest" then there may be problems in storeing the information using normal chests... it's not easy to put information(items, names, description, item variables) into/out of the database across different modules in my experience (which is essentially what a server reset is ~ to my knowledge) ... ...
... Limiting what can go in/out of a chest can be done using the OnDisturb script and tags/ variables...
.... maybe a merchant that accepts misc items (paper and books) but sells nothing would suffice .... people could add their ads/messages in paperform as described above (by "selling them to the merchant") but no one could "tear them away".... And I know how the items in a merchant store CAN be put into/out of the database by saving the merchant(item) entirely... this would cut abuse but would/could make the database files huge...

Ah; I don't so much know about how scripting works, so I'll take your word for it.

The OnDisturb thing sounds about right; the papers gotten from the bartender would have a particular tag and able to be placed in the board item, but anything else would "fall off the board" and be dropped in front of it.

Would it be any easier to work if it was all handled by the barkeep rather than a placeable? Like, have a special conversation option to "hold onto this note for me", maybe even for a nominal fee?

I'd love to see this idea implemented, but I think there should be a limit to how often one can post, the posts' length and the time it lasts.

Here's an idea:
Why not make it a paid service? Some basic, cheapest message would only last for so long and contain so many letters, but you could extend the possibilities for an additional fee. Options to extend time, length, change form(telepathic message or a messenger even?), set conditions required to receive the message(level, alignment, group, race, items, wealth, quests' states, age... possibilities are endless) and many others. There could be a bulletin "manager" - a mage who sets all the additional options by arcane means when the PC buys them.

Example:
You are on a "Gather food for a feast" quest, but don't feel like bothering with it yourself. However, only people who have done it or are in the process of doing it will know what you are looking for(represented by journal entry), so you set a condition - only people during or after the quest will see the message - 1000 gold coins. You think there might be almighty carnivorous bugs in this corn somewhere? You set a level requirement of 30 - 2000 gold coins. You have all the time in the world to complete it, so why not take the maximum time the message is visible? 1 week - 10000 gold coins. You hate orcs? For only 1000 gold coins no orc will see it! Et cetera.

I didn't think this through enough, so I'm not sure how exactly that would work. Just an idea that popped into my head.

Personally, the first thing I'd do would be putting up a job offer. "Become a punchbag an arcane magic tester! Well paid, no education needed! Get hired for a lifetime!!!"