Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Currency Feature for Groups

A fun feature I've seen in other forums/roleplaying group settings is the ability for players to gather up 'currency'. This is usually based off of a user's post count - for example, making one IC post gives you X amount of credits. These pieces of gold or credits or whatever you want to call them can then be spent acquiring special features in the game.

(Mostly I've seen this in the form of Dragonriders of Pern games - the 'marks' are usually spent on things such as pets for characters, or ensuring a character bonding when a hatching is about to take place, etc.)

Players can also transfer credits between themselves as gifts, and admins or moderators can give them out as prizes for players participating in contests or activities.

Would it be possible for something like this to be eventually implemented here?

Wow, interesting idea, but probably not something that will be added to the list.

To make the currency useful, this would require creating customize-able stores for groups that give out... I'm not sure what! It sounds like something that is very game-specific, and not suited for forums meant to encompass any type of RP. I think it may be outside of the scope of this site. If it were ever to happen, I am certain it would turn out to be a feature only available to "epic groups" or their equivalent.

I'm not sure a store interface would be required; most of the time that I've seen the setup elsewhere, the credits are just transferred to an administrator or other designated banker-type person, and they dictate the results of what form the bought object takes if any further action or mod input is needed. Certainly having some kind of shop interface would be neat, though!

It can have its uses outside of specific games/genres - think of 'restricted character classes', something that is meant to be rare, and therefore only given to people who are sufficiently active. Perhaps certain types of superpowers, in a superhero game, or having the chance of coming across an enchanted sword in a fantasy RP.

But yeah, I figured it would be a long-shot. Thanks for the looking, anywhoo!

I tried this on my forums before. It seems like a good idea, but even on strictly moderated forums people find excuses to make more posts, to earn more credits; gradually, post size and quality declines for people to accumulate money or statistics (mine also had minor stat growth). It's probably better to come up with your own gm method of dispensing coinage.

My apologies if it seems as if I've resurrected this conversation, but I thought I'd add my eighty-eight cents' worth.

On one of the forums where I participate, I'm a quasi-administrator - ergo, I can modify just about anything, but I don't have full administrator rights. We use SMF for our codebase as I found it far easier to use compared to ProBoards or any other PHP software. (Though I admit my own coding skills have atrophied over the years...)

There are two scripts ("packages") that can allow you to define on which forums players can earn marks/points/currency, and fine-tune it to where they have to make quality posts otherwise they get nada.

Our forums are 100% custom. No packages written for other forums will work here, I fear.