[jintheblue]

I'll ask you forgive me for having my first post on the forums be here, but I've been a player for at least a year now, and honestly I'm fairly happy with the state of the game as a whole, so I'll keep my comments to 2,4, and 6, since I feel their nature relates them all quite closely.

The vast majority of the world has no strictly defined laws, and with how all over the place SL's world is in terms of time period, I don't think it's fair to think one is assumed. Obviously one can't murder, or steal, but what about duels to the death, or spell theft? Void magic, is pretty dangerous, and I've heard it's illegal, but how illegal? Do these things vary country to county? How do rights work for the Undead, and mechinations?

I bring this up because right now SL supports two types of antagonists, social antagonists that at best force players to confront shame, anxiety, and the like, to achieve their social goals, and world ending villains, where GMs and eventmins, and the occasional ambitious players create powers that are one and done, perhaps with a mini boss or two along the way. Sure you can try and play something in between, but imagine for a moment you want to play a thief? You either do it all off screen, in which case you aren't an antagonist, or you try to rob someone, a fight breaks out, guards get called, and you sit in Arjav for a few days. The next week some people are bitter, you robbed them, you're where you started and the guards are watching you a bit closer if they're around, which largely they aren't.

I should also say I don't blame the guard for not being around, since it's a viscous cycle. The imperial guard are an incredibly powerful faction with power that have powers beyond that of a regular player, or guild, so any criminal will always eventually loose, and others will have second thoughts about making a new criminal. With no new criminals, the guards will get bored, and people will be on there other characters.

What if Arjav only took prisoners from Celsvitch, and the other cities had other prisons of varying quality? We have a Dormeho militia that has been begging to be given legitimate authority to run that town and there is a team of GM's and eventmins that could handle running the other towns. Allow for prison breaks, and jurisdiction to matter so that people can flee one city, and have to worry about bounty hunters dragging them back. We can foster thieves guilds and smugglers to steal, or run protection rackets, and give them the same kinds of treatment as the Celsvitch guard gets. We have eight perfectly valid cities and Voilegrad, but everyone roleplays publicly in Celsvitch, or Dormeho, because all the spaces are equally valid, to role play in, and everyone is already there.

We don't need full charters, just some general rules, and beyond that they don't have to be fair. Are you a mechination? Maybe it's legal to sell you in Karatyn if you aren't already property. Maybe Celsvitch keeps true to denying Shaitans exist, and the guard don't let any Shaitans in, but a local gang can help you sneak in so long as you stay hidden. Let legitimate honor duels to the death happen in Chaturanga, but only there(and laws end) so social antags can "settle things like men" or lord it over others. Laws end could live up to it's lore, and be a place for those who have bounties in every other city state.

All of these things would require ooc consent, like death perms, or guild/eventmenin help to happen, but it's a lot of rp hooks for people to make a difference. Eventmins, gms, and guild leaders would also need to openly communicate in a big way, and take a lot of work, but I believe it can happen.

Also it would help if we had a people finder that wasn't lfg. Lfg is a huge beacon that will draw every desperate user to a location. If the portal screen listed the number of users in each city with a mages guild, and player houses had a toggle where they could display "we're open" and list the number of users inside, we'd see a lot more people in places that aren't the two squares, and badlands.