Yeah, that was my thought about going the cross-FC LS route (or just a forum post, similar to a bounty board), because then people are largely part-time and it becomes more of a service available from a set of characters for the community and their plots. Upon thinking on it further and reading your experience, a full FC might be a bit tough to do without a fair amount of internal plot and NPCs to keep things rolling.
I didn't even notice the in game gil payment thing the first time around. That does get problematic, because people don't usually want to give up their hard-earned game mechanics advantage. You could still charge gil, but it'd have to be handwaved as an IC payment with no actual "real" gil changing hands.
Now that I think about it, an alternative approach might be to work this as a service of favors. If I carry a message for you, your "payment" is an agreement to carry a message for me or someone else at some point in the future. That'd be nearly impossible to actually enforce, but if you had players interested in the concept, it might be workable. This is sort of similar to the way the Corellian Merchant's Guild in the old WEG Star Wars tabletop game worked -- if the guild passed on a message for you via its other members, you'd be expected to do the same at some point in the future.
I didn't even notice the in game gil payment thing the first time around. That does get problematic, because people don't usually want to give up their hard-earned game mechanics advantage. You could still charge gil, but it'd have to be handwaved as an IC payment with no actual "real" gil changing hands.
Now that I think about it, an alternative approach might be to work this as a service of favors. If I carry a message for you, your "payment" is an agreement to carry a message for me or someone else at some point in the future. That'd be nearly impossible to actually enforce, but if you had players interested in the concept, it might be workable. This is sort of similar to the way the Corellian Merchant's Guild in the old WEG Star Wars tabletop game worked -- if the guild passed on a message for you via its other members, you'd be expected to do the same at some point in the future.
The Freelance Wizard
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
Quality RP at low, low prices!
((about me | about L'yhta Mahre | L'yhta's desk | about Mysterium, the Ivory Tower: a heavy RP society of mages))
