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Suggestion Shadowboxes

Soban

Convention Veteran
A while back there was a discussion about paying for aspects of star army to encourage RP. As a result, I got involved in a few ArtRPGs. Let me tell you they are wild! Mostly drawn art? There not really being a cannon? Using other people's characters casually? It was crazy. Anyway, that experience left me with some thoughts about how we could use some of their 'systems' to encourage RP. I've been thinking about it, and I came up with some ideas. However, I want to get community feedback and thoughts before I submit it as a suggestion.

Ok, so there is a military tradition called shadowboxes. I short, they are displays of things that a soldier has done. Ex. Rank insignia, challenge coins, patches so on and so forth. Given that Star Army is a military RP, this seems appropriate. We even have a lot of art assets that we can already use for this.

So what would a shadowbox be and how would it be used?

It would be a special wikipage that only the shadowbox admins could edit. In it would be pieces of art and other awards that are in some way limited.

It would be on a per-character basis. It would contain links to the RP/Art submitted for that character. So if someone else uses your character or you commission art for them, both of them count towards getting stuff in your shadow box.

At a minimum, every shadowbox will have a waist-up or full-body portrait of the character. With a custom or one of a number of preapproved backgrounds. (A custom background might be something that you need to spend Shadowbox points on. Also possibly special backgrounds might be a thing. IDK.)

From there, things can be added. For example, rank pins. In order to gain a rank pin, you will need to have written a certain amount of words or created some pieces of art in addition to fulfilling the requirements for the rank. So let's say you've created a new character that is a Taii for the plot and you want their rank in the shadowbox. As a character, they have been a Shoi and Chui. So what you would do is either write a story or get some artwork as a Chui, then as a Shoi, then use the RP you are currently in as written stuff for qualifying for the rank.

Because of this, a character might be a higher rank in RP than they have in their shadowbox or alternatively, if they have been demoted or are no longer doing a higher-ranking job, have a higher rank pin than they have in their box.

But this sort of reward doesn't just have to be rank pins. It could be anything really. From citations for bravery to Mindyies, to model space ships. ex. the Kaiyo sword. Something that only a few examples exist of. It might also be a ribbon rack, where to get a ribbon you need to either do a rp or write the story of how they got it. For example, your character was at Glimmergold, but the Glimmergold event was a long time ago so you didn't get to participate. You write a story about where they fit in at Glimmergold for that award.

The possibilities are endless and I'm probably not explaining it perfectly. There is going to be administrative overhead, But I think we can use the artificial scarcity of a Shadowbox to encourage RP. Thoughts?
 
I love this idea, the vet in me loves sharing some aspect of our real life culture in other places. But the admins responsible has to be strictly a volunteer basis, seen plenty of people get burned out in SARP and elsewhere.

One question is, how much will the commissions cost? I have no problem paying for my own commissions when I can, but not everyone has disposable income.
 
However much you can get commissions for? That said, there are a few ways we can defray the cost of getting a portrait that looks right. First, due to Nekos looking so much like each other, having a sort of Neko character creator makes sense. Where you can choose hair color, eye color, and other stuff. While it would cost some money to get it done right, it would be a useful resource. Second, we can get outlines of various species, giving artists a guide to work from. Third, having standard background so that the artists don't have to make their own. (In fact, for certain ideas regarding background, it should be discouraged. There are probably some other ideas, but I'm not an artwork person.

It would also be cool to have a similar build-a-bear style of mindy that people could use. Reusable artwork is an expense, but one I feel like we can justify even if the shadowbox idea falls through completely (and I'd be willing to contribute to). We should also set up a way people can contribute art for the shadowboxes.

Shadowboxes are not something that I would want to consider mandatory for RP on the site. It's a way to reward people for doing rp with something cool and perhaps a bit of artificial scarcity of stuff.

We already have a lot of art we can use. Rank insignia, unit patches, and ribbons for example.
 
I'm a little fuzzy on how this would work from the technical perspective, but it sounds kind of like acheivements (think X-Box games or Steam games)?
 
I don't have the technical bit completely worked out. So my understanding is that there are some wiki-pages that only specified users can modify. One would be a log for the approved RP. The other would be the shadowbox. There would probably be a forum similar to setting submissions with a standard template that could be copied and pasted. The reviewer would read the RP, make sure the word count was about right. Then add the template to the log and update any 'currency' numbers or make the award.

Achievements is one way to look at it, yes. I think there should also be a 'currency' store element as well.
 
I'm sorry for the lack of progress on this suggestion, I'm just very clueless how to implement it.
 
I'll be honest, I kinda wanted more discussion and fleshing out before we implemented it. That said, I do have ideas on the technical side of things. I need to set up an example wiki pages to really show what I mean.
 
It sounds like making a :shadowbox subpage for each character might be an easy way of doing things, then have a master link page where you can have a look around other characters' shadowboxes easily?
 
So I'm not sure how that would work as I would want the Shadow Boxes to be 'locked' from non admin tampering. The whole point is that you can't do it yourself, you have to show that you have done the underlying work. (also, you don't have to have a shadowbox.) I think a shadowboxes name space with each character's box being separate would work best.
 
At this point, we could ask someone character to make a prototype shadowbox for.
 
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