Title:
Statues and monuments
Summary:
With a great expense, players can choose to erect statues and monuments to honor another character on the continent. Having a monument built for your increases your prestige (or fame in the future). Monuments can also be torn down.
Details:
If you have enough gold at hand, you could build a monument to your estate, provided there is room there (if there will be a limit one day in how much stuff you can have at your estate). If these conditions are met, you are given a drop down menu with all the existing characters on the continent. You pick one and write a description. The end result would look a little like the guild interface, where you would first have in big letters "A statue of Sir/Count/King/General Kepler" and then under it a brief statement, and still under it a longer description of the actual statue. Once completed, a message is sent to the realm stating that "Sir Random has erected a statue in the honor of Sir Kepler at Random Estate, Keplerville." Sir Kepler then gains a prestige/fame +1 until the statue is destroyed. You could only erect monuments for the honor of other characters and never of one of your own.
When visiting a region, a new item would be added under the actions menu. You could spend some time to "visit monuments" if some are built. You would then be able to choose between the various monuments there (if any are built).
If a monument is torn down, a realm wide message is sent to inform who did and what.
Also, for the future, erecting a statue would gain you largesse (if it is implemented).
Benefits:
The monuments would store bits and pieces of history of the regions, realms and most importantly, that of player characters. You would only erect a monument when something truly spectacular has taken place, or to look at it another way, you would only let a monument remain if it is of some importance. As time passes, monuments are torn down and new ones erected, but some central ones will likely remain, giving the new players and visitors from other realms a chance to enjoy the history of a region, which in turn may provoke further interest and questions and give each region a sense of unique culture.
Also, once a character is deleted, there is no chance to build a monument for him/her any more. Thus those that are built and remain become rare and valuable, and if the passed on character is still viewed with importance and reverence by some others, tearing a monument down "just so I can have my new stables there" just will not cut it, and there is much potential for conflict there. Just like with most everything else in the game, that which is important enough for the players to keep around will be kept around - the rest of it will vanish. All forms of conflict between the players is ultimately a discussion about that.
Possible Exploits:
No way to game the system. If you get people to waste their gold, time and "estate space" for your honor, you probably deserve it anyway. There is a possibility of bad writing and childishness in the descriptions, but then the same is true with actual regional descriptions. The lords are in charge of regional descriptions, so with the same responsibility they could order their knights to destroy monuments if bad taste has been applied.