I suggest that bards be allowed to write books, and they be sold in-game.
Clicky to the bard poll.
Books are in the engine and easy to create, simply cut and paste the text, set a price and a name - done.
Bard level 6 - Can write a 2 page book (200 words)
Bard level 8 - 3 page
Bard level 10 - 4 page
Bard level 12 - 5 page
Bard level 14 - 6 page
Bard level 16 - 7 page
Bard level 18 - 8 page
Bard level 20 - 10 page
This will:
Let the players get their stories into the game
Promote creative in-character stories
Enhances bards with a new ability
Soak up gold, reducing the amount floating in the economy
Let DMs pass on information via books if desired
Flesh out the custom History skill
Causes no lag
Devs - 30 minutes to set-up, 10 minutes/month upkeep
Adds another reason to go to the world capital
But wait, there's more...
I suggest that an area of the forum be made, only viewable by a new group - Bards. Surely there are a few long-time veterans that play bards, allow them access to promote to the bard group/admin for that area. From there they can police themselves, deciding what is worthy to be printed, what needs to be reworked, etc. Basically they'll police themselves and can simply post finished products for each month in a separate thread. They can even limit the number of books out there to X amount of titles, so the vendors don't get overloaded in a year.
After that, it should take minimum amount of time to add a book to the module.
How do the players get the books? Put a librarian/antiquarian/bookseller in Hampshire. For pricing, I suggest this:
1 page X 1000 gp X number printed = cost to submit
1 page X 500 gp / number printed = cost to purchase
Each page = 100 words
Number printed = how many the vendor holds, 10 being unlimited.
Example: Dork the Orc wants his exploits against the dragon 'Claw' written up. He finds a mediocre bard (level 12, 5 page max) and wants everyone in the world to be able to read it (unlimited copies).So 5 pages X 1000 gp X 10 copies (unlimited) = 50,000 gp to print. The orc pays, the bard pays - who cares, that's up to them.The cost set for a player to purchase that book would be:5 pages X 500 gp / 10 copies = 250gp.It's actually an easy system, and could even be made into a short little auto-program in a few minutes by someone who knows C++.
Another benefit is that pricing system does is completely balanced. The larger the book, the more it costs to print (we're talking scribes here, not printing presses). The more copies printed, the more the printing costs are - yet the more copies printed, the more that are available so that price drops for the buyers, and they will be more common on the server. An additional benefit of using a set amount books on the vendor is that they will run out in-between resets. If a player is to use their 'History' skill, this can even modify it. Say Leaf the genious and gorgeous mage wants to search for Conan's sword. The DM laughs, and says sure thing - if his history is a 52. Leaf whips out the Scrolls of Skellos and gets a bonus for searching for that particular info, or asks the DM to check the bookcase in his house to see how many titles he has that might apply, giving a possible bonus to his check.Say a DM wants to be sneaky about a quest, and have an entrance exam for it. They write a book (or add slight edits to one being published) that drops clues about who to see/talk to/what to do/where & when to meet a DM at.
An optional system would be to have a bookseller vendor that has a conversation tweaked so that it will only sell to bards and at a lower price - allowing them to sell at whatever markup they think will work and affecting how common/rare some books will be. Or, change the printing prices. Or perhaps multiple booksellers with the other locations having a limit as to how many of each they can carry (say max of 3), it can be tweaked in lots of ways. It's not a bad idea for a rough draft - post suggestions, poke holes in it, point out the flaws, and play with it. The only possible stumbling block I see as it is now is that you might not be able to limit forum admin rights to one particular area.
