Social, Trade, and Governance Systems¶

Direct Trade¶

Players should be able to trade freely. This needs two-way confirmation, clear item snapshots, and server-authoritative settlement.

Player Job Board¶

Once a player proves competence through relevant skills and local standing, they should gain the right to post contracts on a public board. These contracts should be templated and server-verifiable.

Recommended contract types:

hunt targets
gather quotas
delivery jobs
escort jobs
survey requests

Contracts should use escrow, deadlines, and reputation.

NPC boards should follow the same town-demand model, with supply shortages and town projects generating their own work.

Teaching and Apprenticeship¶

Advanced players should be able to teach lower-skilled players for free or for a fee.

Recommended formats:

private free mentorship
paid public lesson listings
apprenticeship contracts
guild-sponsored academy sessions

Teaching should accelerate skill growth, improve guided practice, and help establish better combat habits, recipes, or route methods earlier, but it should never bypass actual action-based progression.

Guilds and Clans¶

Guilds should handle social coordination, group identity, storage, and town-level ambitions. Clans can be smaller social units or specialized sub-groups depending on final design.

Guilds should also be able to support training halls, sponsor teachers, and run internal apprenticeship programs.

Town Ownership¶

Major guilds should be able to control towns, but only through systems with cost and friction:

influence or control points
upkeep
scheduled conflict windows
tax caps
public treasury logs for officers

Controlled towns should still rise or fall based on food, water, security, medicine, and building material flows. Ownership changes policy, but it does not bypass the settlement simulation.

Why Governance Matters¶

Regional markets, taxes, and production become more interesting when powerful groups can shape local policy without permanently ruining the game for everyone else.

Town taxes, guild treasuries, and player contracts all need logs, caps, and delay windows so leadership abuse does not become a permanent server problem.

Teaching fees, apprenticeship contracts, and guild-sponsored training should also be logged so the system cannot become a hidden abuse channel.

See guilds-clans-and-town-control.md, ../economy/market-contracts-and-logistics.md, ../progression/teaching-and-apprenticeship.md, ../../tech/unified-board-item-and-player-contract-model.md, and ../../tech/expedition-acceptance-and-settlement-model.md for the expanded technical direction.