QUOTE
TRADEMASTERS NEWS #234
Date: 4/1/2009 at 22:22
From: the Charites, the Administrators of Crafts
To : Everyone
Subj: New Design Policy
After months of hard work and careful consideration, we are finally
ready to release our new design policy! We have known for a long while
that our design rules have sometimes been unclear and confusing and
hopefully these amendments will go a long way towards making lusternia a
better design place for everyone. We have looked at the design systems
used in other realms and taken from these the aspects that seemed to
work best and attempted to incorporate these into the Lusternia system,
we are quite happy with the end result and hope that you will be as
well. Following is a small summary of the new rules, for full guidelines
please check the appropriate helpfiles.
- We are aware that our guidelines for things that may not be seen under
certain circumstances have not been clear so we decided to make this
policy simple: if you can't see it, do not describe it. In practice this
means that sparkling, shining, reflecting etc are only allowed if you
clarify that this only happens when light is available. Things cannot
reflect in a dark room! This also goes for all other senses; specify
that certain things may be smelled under certain circumstances or heard
under certain circumstances. We will no longer allow 'smells of peach'
however, the phrase 'in the event of careful study and under
circumstances where no other smells are masking the object, the delicate
scent of peach may tangle the senses. Be creative!
- Make sure that what you describe is logical, do not write that items
'have been left', what if their owner is still standing near them? Do
not describe how items will look when worn, they might not be worn at
the time they are viewed! If such rules are allowed, we should logically
also have to describe how they would look when lying on the ground,
hanging from a peg or flying from a flag post on the top of the
necropolis and we can all agree that that would just be plain silly!
- We have noticed a trend with appearances becoming too long. We have
decided to take a leaf out of Imperian's book and specify that from now
on, appearances may not be longer than 50 characters and may not include
any commas, colons or semicolons. This is to make these items appear
better when worn.
- We take objection to the increasing number of small designs being
submitted, we are of the opinion that this stifles the creative process,
for this reason we have implemented that all designs must have an
examined description of around 200 words. Standard essay guidelines
apply here: a 10% leeway on either side is allowed, making the range for
an examined description between 180 and 220 words.
- We feel that the restrictions on commodities are getting out of hand,
therefore we have decided that from now on all designs must have a base
commodity cost that will be represented by raw materials. For artisan
this will be wood, for bookbinding this will be leather, for cooking
this will be meat, for forging this will be steel, for jewellery this
will be gold and for tailoring this will be silk. These commodities will
now be all that is both allowed and required for new designs, so simply
take the required amount of commodities and substitute them with the
commodity of your tradeskill.
Last but not least we announce a new feature of the design system!
Compound interest! This is a system whereby the trademaster who owns
multiple cartels may combine and upgrade their cartels into a trade
imperium (HELP IMPERIUM for more info). This will allow the trademaster
to take on multiple cartels while decreasing annual costs. To do this
however, the trademaster must make a connection with a major city or
commune and SIGN CONTRACT at the bank. This will provide the trademaster
with a free cartel for which the bank will provide a loan at 5%
interest. These 5% will scale according to the amount of cartels you
have, therefore, it is economically viable to have more cartels and grow
bigger: the more cartels you have, the more credit you can have with
your bank! Another feature of this new system are the annual bonuses, at
the end of each year, the trademaster will automatically get a bonus
equal to 1% of the total value of the imperium minus the credit at the
bank times the number of cartels the imperium owns. Be careful with this
however, because if your imperium is in danger of going bankrupt, the
bonuses will still be paid after the cities have give you emergency
funds to keep you afloat. This is known to lead to anger among the
populace and may lead to enemying or even reclamation of earlier
bonuses!
These crafting rules become effective starting today. Please check the
date on this post and make sure that any designs submitted after this
date comply with the new design policy.
We hope everyone is just as exited about the changes as we are. If you
have any comments we would love to hear your feedback; just start a
thread on the forum and we will be happy to engage in a discussion on
how to improve the trade system.
Sincerely,
The Charites
Penned by My hand on the 21st of Dioni, in the year 232 CE.
So, joke or no joke?! I know what I think, but I'll let you decide.
me some Charites, but they aren't usually this active in coding stuff for us. 
what if Sarrasri is involved in all of it from the beginning?!