What is the simplest aspect to creating mods (aside from Uber items)?
In my mind its laying out interesting maps. I should really look into how big those maps are when you port them from comp to comp... but here's the crux of my idea.
As NS grows... and everything has all the kinks worked out... what are the chances of adding on areas based on a preset plan? Sort of like... here's the Core NS application, but there's room in all that ocean surrounding NS4 that new islands and lands could be torn from their realities and dumped into NS's reality.
Here comes the community aspect... Solicit map entries from NS players. Have that player whip up an interesting and aesthetic map in some predefined conditions... like it must be 10x10, Desert Tileset, with this sort of focus... And that's all it would be... no creatures, no scripts, no items. Just Maps and a text file explaining the map, interesting features, and ideas for using the map features. Maybe even where it was intended to be used.
Now... that's the core idea... and here are some variants.
First Variant: Hold the submission contest. And use the top four to 8 submission's authors as sub-contractors for coming up with maps. When more content is added to NS4, you now have a cadre of supportive and talented artists to map out new areas to Dev specifications
Variation 2: Accept map submissions with different themes... for example, one month, the goal is to create an interesting Inn layout on an 8x6 map... or a Gnoll Lair on a 20x20 cave tileset, with water, one north entrance, one south entrance and a staircase leading down. Variation 2 could turn into a library of useful maps.
Last, but not least... and this suggestion falls under the REALLY far down the line suggestion. Expand and expand on the NS map to the point where we have wholly different continents. Kind of like Forgotten Realms and Kara-Tur (but without the occidental/oriental difference) Why does this sound neat? Because we can re-create the subtle differences in communities
I don't know about everyone else, but I was incredibly amused by the clashes between old North/Pacific/West players and South players when the Beta first hit. But the trick is to make ways to link the two servers together, so you could have a high-level character on one continent walk their way to the other continent (via boats and stuff) and have them exploring a completely new world Not sure how this sits with current NS cannon, but it sounds incredibly neat to me 
Discuss!
