Another novelty that should soon come to your favourite mud is the long-awaited revised teaching system. With it come more options, but also more challenging choices and restrictions. It is not yet fully coded, but I'm already presenting here to let you ask questions and offer suggestions.
The current system
Currently, you can teach all the skills you know at GM, and you can impart only a small fraction of your knowledge. With the "teacher" feat, you can teach a bit sooner, but not that much.
The new system - an introduction
The new system is based on 2 axes on which you can evolve. The first axis is the "teacher" axis that indicates how good of a teacher you are. The second axis is the "scholar" axis that represents how scholarly your character is.
In a few words, better teachers can impart more knowledge to their students, and sooner. They do not need to be as much of an expert as others to share their knowledge with others; they do not need to have completely mastered a topic before they can start teaching it. They are also able to communicate more of their knowledge than others.
Scholars, on the other hand, have studied extensively not only how to do things, but also how things work exactly. Thanks to their extensive studies, they are able to share knowledge of more complex topics with others. They are also able to use every little information they find to improve their own knowledge and thus learn more than others from teaching. Some people say that the best way to learn something is to actually teach it; that's especially true in the case of the best scholars.
The new system - feats
The "base" situation is not much different from the current system, but there are many ways to improve where there was next to none before. The two axes I mentioned above are actually coded as feats. There is the "teacher" feat and the "scholar" feat and each of them can be taken/learnt twice.
In the following, I'll use Teacher-0 for a character without the Teacher feat, Teacher-1 for a character with 1 "rank" in the Teacher feat, and Teacher-2 for a character with 2 "ranks" in the Teacher feat. Same with Scholar-0, Scholar-1, and Scholar-2.
Getting those feats is not as trivial as just spending a feat point to buy them. When you go to a mob trainer and type "train", you spend money and experience and get your skills up. When you go to a PC trainer, you still spend experience to learn and get your skills up, but you do not have to pay money. This does not mean that the teaching is free though: it means that it's up to the teacher to make you "pay" for it.
Now, some teachers might just ask you for coins, but other teachers would ask you for services, or set up some master/apprentice relation between you and them, and evolve the whole thing into long-term roleplay. That is actually what we expect of in-game teachers: we expect them to spur roleplay in the game.
That is why most of the feats I cited above won't be buyable in game but only obtainable through special applications.
Now, when the imms get an application, they discuss it between them, share their opinions, comment about what they have observed of the applicant, then take a decision. This can be seen, from outside, as a biased process. I do not think it is biased, because there are actually many opinions expressed, it's far from being a single-person's decision.
Yet, to make the decision even broader and take in even more opinions, simple applications will not be enough for those feats; you will need to send in an application along with "positive recommendations" from characters. Those recommendations would be communications from other players/characters where they vouch that you would actually make a good teacher and that they think you deserve to be given access to the more evolved feats.
After all, the teacher and scholar feats benefit mostly others, more than yourself ... so if you play them right, you should have no trouble finding people who accept to vouch for you.
The new system - how it works
Practically, the command will be the same as before (teach <student> <skill>), but what you can do depends on your teacher and scholar feats. The system has a base case - that is, what happens when you have no feat; then modifications brought to this base case depending on the feats you have.
The restrictions of this base class can be alleviated by investing into teacher/scholar feats.Base case wrote:You need to fill a few requirements to be able to teach: you need to be sufficiently clever, wise, and charismatic. Dumb, unwise, or repulsive people don't make good teachers.
In the base case, you can teach only basic skills. Technically, basic skills are skills (including spells, weapon skills, languages, ...) that are given to your guild before level 20. For wizards, that means spells of level 1, 2, 3, or 4; for fighters, it's up to third attack. That's enough to take a novice as an apprentice and teach him the ropes, but not much more.
In the base case, you need to be at least Expert in a skill before you can teach it. That means that, as an expert, you will be able to teach only the very basic. The more skilled you are, the more you can teach, up to making your students Amateur in skills that you have grandmaster'ed.
In the base case, when you teach a lesson, you learn a bit from it: while explaining things to your students, you discover new points of view, new approaches and your knowledge increases ... slightly.
Teacher-1. This feat is buyable in-game as any other feat and does not require special applications. You need to be charismatic enough to benefit from this feat. With Teacher-1, you can start teaching sooner (i.e., with a lower skill level), and better. You can start teaching skills as soon as you are mid-way between Journeyman and Adept in them. When you give lessons in skills that you have grandmaster'ed, you can educate your students into Novices (actually one notch above Novice).
Teacher-2. This feat cannot be bought in game, but only obtained by sending an application accompanied with positive recommendations from 5 different players. You need to be very charismatic to benefit from it. As a Teacher-2, you can share your knowledge of all the skills much sooner, as soon as you have reached the rank of Apprentice. When you teach people about skills that you have grandmastered, you can instruct them into Journeyman (that is, a notch or two higher than most mob trainers).
Scholar-1. This feat cannot be bought in game, but only obtained by sending an application accompanied with positive recommendations from 3 different players. You need to be both clever and wise enough to benefit from it. With Scholar-1, you are able to share your knowledge of more complex skills (including spells). You can now teach all the skills that are given to your guild at level 30 or before. Practically, that means up to 6th level spells for primary spellcasters, up to 4th level spells for rangers/paladins, up to fourth attack for fighters, up to circle stab for thieves. You also learn twice more from your lessons.
Scholar-2. This feat cannot be bought in game, but only obtained by sending an application accompanied with positive recommendations from 5 different players. You need to be both very clever and very wise to benefit from it. With Scholar-2, you can teach anything you know, even skills/spells normally not given to those of your guild. You learn much more from teaching too.
The new system - final notes and comments
Note that the broad ideas given about are more or less final, but that the details might change completely. Since it's a whole new system, it might be too generous/easy, or too hard/unattractive; the only way to see it is by testing it. We won't take any special applications in a first time, so we can see how the base case system works, then we'll allow them if everything works well (though there will certainly be a limitation such as: you must wait for 3-4 months between two applications). We might select older players who have been known for their "teacher" roleplays to test some of the new feats though.
Basically, it's still a work in progress, but those are the main ideas behind it. Feel free to comment below, ask questions, and so on. It's been a very long time in coming, so think twice before posting extremely negative comments!
