As you may know, I've been cooking up ideas with Deutha, Aksu, Tape and Karek, about a Musicians' Guild for players. I'm now looking for comments and suggestions from the rest of you on this. Also, I'm looking for people who are interested in coding parts of it, mostly good coders as we're short on them and this guild will demand alot of coding skill. We need people brainstorming with us too, so all are welcome :) This post is a general overview of the guild, and if you want more information, check out the files under /docs/ideas/musicians/ It's far too much to be posted in a single post here. I started out doing a survey among the players on how many would be interested in a Musicians' Guild. I explained in rough terms how it would be, and I got a huge positive response. So far so good. A Musicians' Guild in Discworld will not be like a Bards' guild in a D&D world, with song-spells that heal, do damage, etc. That is not DWish. The guild would rather focus on roleplaying and creativity instead. In this guild, players could be able to write their own songs (lyric-based with sound descriptions) using a special editor, define lyrics, instruments, etc. Those songs can be scribed and learned/performed by others. You can stand busking in street corners, and if you're good, NPC's will toss coins. There should be possibilties of publishing your song (for lots of money) to jukeboxes (or something likely) with a voting system for the other players that defines top ten-lists of the week, Top ten-of all time, etc. There could be a jukebox in every pub. This "fame thing" is a central idea that we've been discussing. There could be some sort of "fame-ratio" for the members. When a Musician has a song on the top lists, he becomes famous and earns money from roaylties. To keep up beeing famous, he must produce songs that the public like, otherwise... well, curtains untill (s)he has another hit. Fame is then something the members can strive for, besides writing/performing songs/questing and roleplay. The skills would be devided into instrument-kinds, and as you don't go around killing NPC's, you advance by TM's when performing. Songs can have complexity which enables you to perform a task. A complex song, for your skill in that instrument, sounds badly when played, but there's also more chances for TM's, and vice versa. There could be classes and teachers too ofourse. Also discussed: There could be instruments with magic abilities, like in Soul Music, with healing magic, etc. This can help player-interacting. Other nations can have their special kind of music. Players can team up with the system we have now, and become a group. There could be venues for groups to play for fee's and roalties. Bands could be hired to player-weddings, parties etc. So what do you think? The guild can be a great leap from the hacking and slashing mentality. Or to quote Deutha: "A musicians' guild is a very exciting concept and really could inject something totally new, and, in my opinion, very much needed, into Discworld." Starting a new guild from scratch is tough, and especially one like this. We are really in need of good coders, especially for setting up the skill system. In fact, if we don't get any help, the guild will probably never see daylight. Lot's of glory for those who help us coding this ;) Mail me if you're interested.
