Claimable RP Characters with Bound Lore Items
I’d like to suggest we implement an official system for claimable RP characters (like Gandalf, Aragorn, the Nazgûl, etc.) where specific lore items are permanently bound to those characters. While general artifacts can still circulate among the player base, character-specific items (like Gandalf’s Staff, Saruman’s Staff, or the Nazgûl Rings) should exclusively belong to the players holding those specific RP roles.
Why we should add this:
Breathes Life into Canon Factions: Right now, a lot of people just make custom factions. Tying powerful, bound lore items to canon characters will draw players back into the mainstream, pre-existing factions (like Gondor, Rohan, or Mordor) because that's where these major RP characters reside.
Incentivizes Roleplay: Tying iconic items to the characters who actually wielded them gives people a massive reason to step up and claim these roles. It will breathe so much life into the server’s RP if people are actively playing these characters to…
Heyo, See my other reply where I have a longer thanks. but in short; thanks for the suggestion! In our discussion of this suggestion we have tried to categorize TOR in a lot of different ways. And honestly, it's pretty hard to do. TOR is not a server that has a focus really. We range from building, to campaigning on a tilemap, to community factions and events, to occasional PvP, to roleplay. We do a bit of everything, some bits more often than other. RP as with any form of it, comes primarily from the players themselves. We can create infrastructure for it, but we cannot (or will not) make it a primary focus of the server. Right now, you can claim many roles through the faction leadership system already. Meaning the person that wears the title King of Gondor, could if they wanted, be Aragorn. The leader of mordor could make his trusted members Nazguls. We like the idea of keeping this freedom for the players. We've had our Dains and Thranduils, but in the same sense we have had woodland realm leaders that weren't any canon lore-characters. They get to decide after they put in the effort to lead that faction. This is why some faction leadership lore items aren't tied to a specific character from the lore (some are because it was too tempting not to). I do agree that a system is lacking for non-faction-leader characters. There is no system for characters like Gandalf or Beorn. You could try it through a custom faction or title, but I understand it might not feel the same. Nor would you be getting a special item through either route. While lacking, I'm not sure if we want to fill this gap just yet. We recognize it is a gap, but over the course of time not many players have had an interest in playing as these characters. A few definitely have, and they RP'd it to the best of their abilities with the tools given. However, it is so rare that perhaps it might also be better that some characters simply aren't playable. They are in the RP of the world afterall, they affect it as they do, they travel, they live, and in Gandalf's case they guide new players. I apologize if this wasn't the answer you were looking for, but again thank you for your suggestion. It really sparked some interesting discussions that definitely improved the server! - Mido