I am starting this thread with the idea of getting input from the user community. We would like to brainstorm with players good ways to recognize good Role Players and find ways to reward them.

I would like people to approach this from an idea of "brainstorming" so please follow these rules:

1. No criticism of anyone elses idea. All ideas are welcome. We will likely start individual threads later to go through the pros/cons of ideas that might be generated.

2. No need to go into implementation details. Simple discussion of how to accomplish something (using a voting system for instance, without going into details of how to collect or tabulate votes) is ok, just leave details for later.

3. No flaming, personal attacks, etc.

4. Stay on topic.

So, to kick off the discussion, here's our challenge. In net games we find that sometimes players go above and beyond and deserve recognition for it. Some games give them things that could be considered monetary (a free month access, items that can be bought from a web page, etc) and some give things that could be considered IC (a special piece of clothing, weapon, armour or just a fancy glow to their PC). The problems come in many forms:

- Sometimes staff simply pick whoever is "online the most" and the number of hours you are connected brings you brownie points toward become recognized, regardless of how good you play or even if you play ethically.

- Sometimes staff give these niceties to their friends. Creating a "clique" atmosphere. Again, competence at Role Play is irrelevant.

- There are players out there who are sometimes described as "spoilers" or "griefers" who will simply try to tear others down for the sake of being obnoxious and immature.

What we at Jubal would like to do is find ways for our players to show recognition of those who are the good Role Players, and once found we can generate ways to encourage this kind of activity our hope would be that it would spread through the community.

So, feel free to give your ideas. Thoughts on how to find good Role Players, how to reward them, how to discourage inappropriate play, how to insure ethical staff, all these are welcome.

Hilikiradi