The Test of Going Postal
The players of Egypt setup a postal organization:
- Each region builds a public mail office close to the chariot stop. After that players or guilds can build additional mailboxes anywhere in that region.
- Players register at one mail office to get their personal PO Box the size of a large chest, but can upgrade to size of huge chest for an extra fee. (This should get rid of a lot of trade chests clattering up towns.)
- Mail can be sent from any mailbox to any mailbox. Mail can be text only or any item or collection of items.
- Using the service costs a fee in the form of stamps. Each mail requires postage in the form of stamps depending on weight and size of the mail.
- Stamps need a picture to make them collectable, a good option would be to use passed Mosaics pictures. That also means that each week a new stamp is released. There needs to be a good variety in stamps (value, color, quality, stamp), so that stamp-albums can create different requirements for each player.
- Mail can be sent as Cash on Delivery. It requires the recipient to send a reply mail with pre-specified goods to be able to receive the mail. That means also there is an extra fee receiving such a mail, since you have to pay for the return stamp.
- Mail from post office to post office moves automatically, but movement to or from a player mailbox requires work.
- Your post box keeps your mail for 60 days, after that its automatically returned to sender. (That timeframe needs to be finetuned.)
A player working on the test can:
- Collect mail from mailboxes in his region to the central post office.
- Deliver mail from the central post office to the player mailboxes. The post office is a bit jealous about the mail, so you have to earn trust by collecting mail before you are allowed to deliver. Once you are trusted, you can get a very heavy and bulky mailbag from the post office together with a list of destinations. To deliver mail, you have to visit the final destination mailboxes and click on them. If you log off for more than 15 minutes while carrying it, the post office will automatically recover it and reduce your trust level.
- The mail recipients graciously tip the postman with the stamps on the mail. The player can then store them in his stamp-album and once it's full he passes the test. (I like the idea of local series for each region, but I don't know how to make sure that enough mosaics pass in each region.)
Generating mail load:
- New sculptures or thought buildings that require voting or judging automatically send a broadcast mail to each postbox within range of 100 coordinates. Each week in which the building has not passed its purpose, the radius is increased 100 coordinates and more mails are sent (nobody should receive one twice).
- Players who don't want that can upgrade their mailbox with a "no spam" sticker.
Further thoughts:
- Overweight/Oversize items or gift wraps might require better packaging. Maybe a new skill: Origami.
Goals
- Get rid of the trade chests near the chariots.
- Unclutter the downtown areas by creating a need to visit fellow players at their homes where sculptures can be voted for.
- Facilitate trade through mail order.
- Reduce chat tabs that are just left as an offline message.
Comments
- There was no space for comments, so I added one. Had to put them somewhere :) ~Shivani
- So anyone can take mail from the central office? And what guarantees that they don't just keep it? That is not at all clear. I also don't understand what one earns from this test. Perhaps these are just issues in the description. ~Shivani
- You could get a bag from the post office, something very heavy and bulky so you would not want to keep it, and it can't be dropped. If you log off its magically returned to the post office.
- What constitutes a full stamp album? Perhaps the player has to collect a certain total number of stamps with a minimum number of unique stamps. The test should therefore be released at least that minimum number of weeks into the tale so that there are enough unique stamps to allow passing. -Meidori
- There are lots of variations possible. They could work like wine notebooks, so you need enough stamps that fit into some categories (value, color, quality, stamp, ...).
- There's a vague mention of trust with regard to the post office. Perhaps there could be some sort of "trust meter" measuring how many packages a person has successfully delivered. Certain types of packages require a certain level of trust in a person to be able to be delivered by that person. For instance, text messages could be delivered by anyone (as there's no material goods there, and the message itself would not have to be visible by the delivering person). Packages containing a certain value (difficult to calculate) or weight/bulk (very simple) of goods would require trust in the form of a history of successful deliveries. It would be best if the contents were not visible, but only the weight and bulk of the package, which ought to be the sum of the weight and bulk of its contents. Maybe in order to pass the test, one has to not only fill a stamp album, but make enough deliveries and be trustworthy enough to deliver any package. If the point is being trustworthy, then maybe the stamp album is even superfluous, although it might make it more fun (and the idea about the mosaic pictures on them is good). -Meidori
- I don't think trust is good enough. People will only send mail if they can be sure that it will be delivered. Shivani's comment was in the same direction. Players collecting or delivering mail would get a single item, a mailbag. If you carry a mailbag, you can interact with mailboxes or the post office, but you never touch the mail directly.
- More thoughts: what happens if there is a backlog of mail? As in, people are trying to send messages/packages, but they don't get through in a timely manner because there are not enough people delivering?
- If you expect mail and nobody works on the test to deliver it, you can pick it up at the central post office in your region instead of your mailbox. If nobody collects mail, you can always carry it to the central post office yourself. I don't know if additional incentives are required to get more people to work delivering or collecting mail.
- Also, it sounds like player mailboxes are at the post offices, or is this just not clear? A person registers for a PO Box at a post office, of course, but can they then put it at their camp so that mail is delivered there? And if mail moves automatically from post office to post office, then where is the mail actually being delivered by players, if mailboxes are at the post offices? -Meidori
- The Post Office exists first and lazy players can have their PO Box there. But for the test to work, we want players to build their own mailbox close to home.
- I really like this test idea. But I would argue for it to be a harmony test, not a body test. It fits with the harmony theme of both knowing and helping Egypt (in the same way that critic and reason involve running around the regions helping society by judging test pieces). Using passed mosaic designs for some of the stamps would be fun, perhaps they could be regional stamps for the region in which the mosaic is built, only useable by players posting items in that region. The stamp album could give more points as you collect stamps from more regions. - Spicy
- I have no problem making this a harmony test, my thought was that all the running around finding mailboxes is related to body style exploration.
- I also really really like this idea, but feel there are potential problems. If people can have a post box near their house and send stuff for free I think there would quickly become way too much mail (even if mail wasn't 100% guaranteed to be delivered). I mean I know I collect wood wherever I am. If I'm two regions away and my inventory is full, I'd mail it home and keep collecting. Then I'm off mining ore and I'm full up again, no problem mail it for someone else to carry, and keep mining. I think this would have the problem of having insane amounts of mail. It may however be easily counterable with limitations to the mail you can send. You could for example have a system where you get 10 weight over 50 coords worth of mail every day (or some such balanced numbers). Also you could run it that the mail you *have* delivered earns you the right to send something proportionate to that. Finally, and this is my preferred option, you might make it that sending mail requires the player to actually buy stamps from the post office (yes trade that money which is supposed to be creatable). This would also make money an item which is useful to *everyone*, which would instantly make it a valid trading item for all players (and fulfill its actual purpose!) Bigger items and further distances naturally require more stamps and are thus more attractive for those test takers to deliver. That way if you want to send something three regions or if you want to send all those mats for your 170 cubit desert obi its gonna cost something real. I really like the idea of also having the automated mail in regards to the art and thought puzzles - it would help keep a constant supply of mail for test takers, and would also make finding judges and players much less painful. As far as the trust issues go, I think it is workable either way (stealable or not stealable mail), but failures to deliver mail would have to pretty much ban the player from ever getting mail again. That way you'd probably send most things save those really valuable items. I think it makes most sense for the player to simply get a 'mail bag' though, and if they choose to open it it's stolen - theres no choice after that to deliver. It would keep the mail system pretty safe, but still have some possibility of theft. - Martogh
- I don't want to make it so complex that we have to agree on a currency for the game first, and I think that complicated costs for stamps would actually add to the test. Think of a stamp that costs 3 choronzon cut amethysts to for a box that weighs 1500 deben or something like that. You are quite right about building a small post office at your mining location and another one at your wood run and so on to deal with material transports. However, is that a bad thing? Currently you have a dozen chests around the mines and a couple bonfires at the woodrun, they would be replaced with a post office instead that is usable for all workers in the area. That might even help moving mining or other working camps away from civilization, where they are often considered eysores. You still need someone to collect the mail though.