ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So how fun would it be to write your own lore note, then leave it in a zone... where someone else can find them.

Since this could only be facilitated by some online magic, I suggest the following:
Your created lore is loaded to the server when you leave a zone, with a tag indicating the associated zone. When it is picked up by the server, it is stored for potential use for a limited period of time (an hour, a day, who knows). A call could be made when another player is loading a new zone to the server to see if they pick up the lore. Lore could be single use, or reused for many others.

Come to think of it, something like this would work well for towns, where stores could "share" items.

Indirect player interactions, woot!

shooth

Demon's Souls had a really interesting way of doing this.

Basically you could leave messages on the ground in places, either warning other players of impending danger or leading them astray. Messages could be recommended by other players and every time it received a recommendation that player would get some healing and the message would stick around longer. Granted the above works best with persistent levels but the same principal could apply...

In other words, if player lore could be found and then recommended to the server it could extend the lore's base life span. If it gets recommended enough times then it could be flagged and emailed to Darkgod to see if he wants to permanently include it in the game. If it doesn't get recommended it would quickly decay and be forgotten. Each time a players lore gets recommended it could give the character that wrote it some sort of bonus, maybe a temporary buff or some xp, or whatever. Something to encourage writing good notes instead of garbage.

On the same line I was thinking about tombs.

The idea is this: everytime you die you can write an epitaph that is stored in a database: it could be a pun, an advice, everything. There are tombs in a location (at least one cemetery in the world map, which may also be used for other quests) and randomly in the world. The tombs are randomly generated and appear or in the cemetery or in the place where you died, but they are of limited number so obviously there isn't a tomb for every epitaph or the world would be filled with tombs. Epitaphs are chosen randomly. There should be very few tombs in the world anyway.

This idea could be developed further: you can dig the tomb and take an item belonged to the dead, his ghost may appear and attack you, or may appear elsewhere, asking you to bury something like a piece of body of equipement, or may appear and attack you and reform every time you kill spawning in a random part of the map and you need to find the bones in the tomb and burn them... (ehm that last idea is'nt original ^^;).

That should be fun. The problem is that for both lore and epitaphs, maybe they should be rated or who knows what one can read

[EDIT]
Putting an attacking ghost would be fun, apart from the epitaph thingy, to write down the encounter text, or a phrase that the ghost can say. The item should be something on the body of the predecessor, but it should be checked to be compatible with the actual level, if they are too powerful a random item should be generated instead.

This is also a good way to put curses into the game, although I must still check if that idea has been said before or I'll write it down later (for example 'till you have the object there's a chance that the ghost reappear tormenting you).

So:

-You can write an epitaph when you die
-You can write a phrase that the ghost will say, depending on the situation
-The tomb can be in the cemetery or where the character died, or don't exist in that game, they're chosen randomly
-The tomb can generate (not in the cemetery) an item if digged and/or the ghost attack you, or:
--a ghost at the start of the map that asks you to find an item and bring it to the tomb
--a ghost somewhere that sees you from the start and attacks you, and reform if it dies spawning somewhere in the map, seeking you again and you need to find his tomb to kill it
--curses!

[EDIT]

For example I write an epitaph for my archmage: "I died like a moron". And an angry prhase "I died like a moron, now you too will join me!". And if you kill me you get something of my stuff.

But maybe there should be a limit on how many epitaphs one user could write or it becomes flooded with these things.

maybe to avoid to many tombs there could be a level requirement of 30ish. and maybe if the lore left behind is rated well you could unlock a wraith/ghost race.