This thread is about something I've been pondering for a while: trophy case factbooks.
In the decade I've been playing NS, I've found that one of the most successful ways to generate activity is by having a comprehensive set of participation and excellence awards. And key to making an award system successful is making sure that people are showing off the awards they win. You want new members who check out the region or forum to look at other people's awards and think "Oh, shinies! How do I get them?"
In TNP we have a great award culture. Off the top of my head, we give out awards for RP (Stories, old and new version), for NPA activity (ribbons), for the WADP, for special contests and events (theme week awards, trivia game prizes, Zombie Apocalypse awards), for general regional contributions (the Lennarts), and so on. On the forum, we are also doing a good job showing off, through our signatures.
Where we need to become better is showing off our awards at the game side. Nations of course do not have signatures, but they do have factbooks. We should try to cultivate a culture where nations maintain and publicize trophy case factbooks to proudly showcase all of their hard-earned awards. Nations will start competing to get the largest trophy case, and therefore will become more involved in our various activities. At the same time, they will be producing great advertisement for the region, so that even more nations get in the loop. And so on. On top of these, we will also be increasing our overall factbook writing activity, which is always good for the region.
To finally explain the thread's title, here's a half-baked idea about how we could go about achieving the above: We announce a TNP bling factbook (preferably with an appropriately blingy logo
). Nations can submit their own trophy case factbook to be listed in TNP bling. And optionally, we could have some kind of regular competitions for best design.
(In the above, I link to the factbook I made for my nation as an example of a trophy case factbook, only because it's the only one within TNP I'm aware of. I put it together in 2 minutes, so it's definitely not meant as an example of great design.)
In the decade I've been playing NS, I've found that one of the most successful ways to generate activity is by having a comprehensive set of participation and excellence awards. And key to making an award system successful is making sure that people are showing off the awards they win. You want new members who check out the region or forum to look at other people's awards and think "Oh, shinies! How do I get them?"
In TNP we have a great award culture. Off the top of my head, we give out awards for RP (Stories, old and new version), for NPA activity (ribbons), for the WADP, for special contests and events (theme week awards, trivia game prizes, Zombie Apocalypse awards), for general regional contributions (the Lennarts), and so on. On the forum, we are also doing a good job showing off, through our signatures.
Where we need to become better is showing off our awards at the game side. Nations of course do not have signatures, but they do have factbooks. We should try to cultivate a culture where nations maintain and publicize trophy case factbooks to proudly showcase all of their hard-earned awards. Nations will start competing to get the largest trophy case, and therefore will become more involved in our various activities. At the same time, they will be producing great advertisement for the region, so that even more nations get in the loop. And so on. On top of these, we will also be increasing our overall factbook writing activity, which is always good for the region.
To finally explain the thread's title, here's a half-baked idea about how we could go about achieving the above: We announce a TNP bling factbook (preferably with an appropriately blingy logo
). Nations can submit their own trophy case factbook to be listed in TNP bling. And optionally, we could have some kind of regular competitions for best design.(In the above, I link to the factbook I made for my nation as an example of a trophy case factbook, only because it's the only one within TNP I'm aware of. I put it together in 2 minutes, so it's definitely not meant as an example of great design.)
