News Media

[Frank_Stein]

Throughout the round, there should be a news periodical that the crew can check. The content would mostly be flavor text with occasional bits of lore, hints, tips, and player generated content. The news could be read from PDA, and read and updated from computer consoles like the ones found in the lab by the AI on Cog2 and in various departments.

Some sections of the news might include:

• Politics - A section that mostly includes stories related to NT, occasionally mentions players who have roles like diplomat and VIP
  
• Weather - Gives hints about upcoming random events
  
• Health - Gives tips about medicine and surgery
  
• Home and Garden - Gives tips and hints about botanty and cleaning
  
• Food and Drink - Gives tips and hints about food and drink recipes
  
• Economics and Business - Gives tips and hints about QM prices and stock market changes
  
• Crime - Gives hints about latejoin antags, has a section editable by security
  
• Dear Addy - An advice section. Players can submit questions, and admins can answer them similar to prayers
  
• Obituaries - Contains list of players listed dead in medical records. Editable by Chaplain
  
• The Funnies - Contains a comic with speech bubbles, editable by the clown
  
• The Classifieds - List of things wanted, jobs needed done, things for sale, etc. Players can submit to the list
  
• Celebrity Gossip - Fluff. Occasionally mentions players with the actor or musician role
  
• Sports - Reports various games, with updates on wins and losses. Occasionally mentions players with the coach and boxer roles
  
• Journalist - This is a section that is completely editable by the journalist
  

Some of the stories could develop over the round, such as having several games covered tournament style in the sports section, allowing players to return to it for developments and even make bets.

Obviously, this idea would require a lot of writing. One way it could work is if some of the generated articles were madlibs style, where certain words were filled in from a list.

[Grumpchkin]

Sounds interesting.

[ZeWaka]

it would definitely have to be mad libs style similar to the stock market

[misto]

sounds cluttered and complex, but good basic concept.

i recommend a more brief news ticker style thing controlled by sec, heads, and ai with only limited space for entries from lower jobs, except maybe the chef to announce feasts or chaplain to announce funeral service, and the journalist gimmick job can have bigger influence. i do like the weather report part for upcoming random event hints, though. econ and business section would be ok if some kind of qm and stock market improvement goes ahead but not before

but where will ppl tune in to check this report? tvs? radio? printers? ppl hardly ever click a tv, hardly ever tune their radio to other freqs, and rarely check printouts

[Cirrial]

Obviously NEWSBOT spams everyone's PDA on a regular interim. This is a fantastic idea that will in no way drive everyone up the wall.

actually wait hm a lot of this stuff would need an event system to fire off

ok better get back to Pocketbuddies soon

EDIT: okay, giving this a look in more detail, some observations:

• Politics - could potentially trample on lore, although it's not like NT wouldn't spin everything involving them on their newsfeeds to be positive
  
• Weather - should absolutely be highly variable on its accuracy (just like real weather reports!)
  
• Dear Addy - players should be able to answer questions, though they'll all be listed as from dear ol' incredibly-mercurial Addy
  

[aft2001]

Maybe have something similar to Bay or Paradise where there's news feeds everywhere and (I think) people can put new articles and stuff in. Randomly generated articles alongside playermade articles would be neat, like "MISSING: Billy McStaff Assistant has lost his bejazzles unsulated gloves. Last seen in the bar. 5 buttcoin reward." or "Earlier this shift, Honko Bonko the clown assaulted and robbed the mime using a banana and a sponge"

So, news feeds panels around the ship/station and a program for all PDAs which display randomly generated news, Admin-made news, and player-made news. Also possibly the permanent implementation of journalist or possibly a new job that's the Head of Media or something, but doesn't have bridge access but does have command channel access.

I dunno. I like the idea of news feeds. Really adds flavor to RP as well!

[Sundance]

This could be the kind of thing that persists round after round, based on RNG. Stories like the Tale of Heisenbee.
My only concern that this may create a cult of personality if certain names crop up now and again, but it's of minor concern.

[Vitatroll]

I was gonna suggest the possibility of grabbing real headlines/stories to send through a blender/bot, but realized that's generally a bad idea. Even if restricted to certain topics.

I like the idea of news. So long as some of it has utility.

[Cirrial]

<WrongEnd> can you post for me on the news suggestion that i want headsurgeon to respond to posts if we dont get to it in time for the dear addy section