Although there is nothing wrong per se with the ideas here, due to recent developments, I suggest that we reevaluate this idea in terms of what can be done with it. If nothing else we should decide whether or not we want this to be our first module combat site. If not, this idea might not be so useful to the first module and could be shelved till a later time.
my vote is to keep it for the first module and use it for both combat and goodies (with said goodies coming from both battling bots and scrounging in the junk heap).
This is a perfect opportunity for employing the slot machine affect. if most of the items are fair to poor but there is a chance of getting a
good or
"rare" item, players will come just to see if they strike it rich as it were. All you need is one bot to come up with something good on the first try and then next thing you know there are 10 people scratching around in the heap looking for something good. It will be good for people starting out as playing their bots as becoming more independent.
Another idea would be to have the junk heap as a kind of group or faction and have the reputable robot shop in town as the opposing side. All good little service bots go to the in town shop which has nice clean parts to choose from where as the rebellious and independent bots can go to the heap and get more beat up looking parts with more dramatic upgrades but also more dramatic drawbacks.
This could provide a little conflict, if we have PvP this could be the catalyst for players battling each other as each side might hold a grudge against the other. For any roleplayers, this gives them something to roleplay about. Perhaps the junk heap bots are rebelling because they feel that they are threatened if they complete repairs and clean up for humans and perhaps the obedient service bots feel the exact same way but they feel threatened by the heap bots rather than the humans. (darn those crazy anarchists.
) If nothing else it is just something to do.
A few logistical issues: This would most likely require some NPCs for the junk heap, however, they don't necessarily need to be very complex. There just needs to be a decent alternate quest track for the bots on the wrong side of the tracks. In fact, a good quest idea would be rooting around in the heap for specific items of various rarities. They could be for the repair or creation of new heap bots and the player could get rewards for finding the correct parts, especially if they are done in a particular order.
further, I would say that this idea would need a good sized junk heap to be viable but in order to have constant bot generation, the heap would have had to have been of a good size anyway. Along with all of that is the required art for such a thing but to be honest, we can probably get by with patch work and grungy NPC robots instead of robots with radically different parts and appearances. We can leave that to players as they get their choice of new parts.
Not sure about what else would be needed but they are some things to consider.
Poll