Thanks, Arii. Our culture is in its infancy, and some things should become traditions. Btw, I've been alive to see my own headstone, so it must stick around awhile.
...Wouldn't it be cool if you could pick up headstones and move them? Then we could have an graveyard, or maybe one in each region, that players could move headstones to, and then whenever a player came back to life, they'd be wherever their headstone had ended up. XD
...aaaaand now our EOTW party is gonna be a bunch of Glitchen hanging around singing to butterflies whilst standing in an orderly line, so as to enter Hell leaving tidy rows of gravestones behind. ;)
Cue everyone crabbing about how the EOT party was in another "exclusive" area....lol!
I honestly believe one should leave pork. Here is why.
Pork comes from pigs. Pigs come from eggs. Eggs come from trees. Trees come from beans. Beans come from ... wait, trees again? Okay, fine, but THOSE trees (just work with me here) come from the ground.
Now, hell is ALSO in the ground, right?
And, so, do we not wish for our dead to rise from the ground like pork? It's as touching as it is deeply symbolic.
I like the idea of meat and not just for that reason ;) .Then we should make it known that the meat is there for the waking dead, not for passers-by to take for their own use.
We should do a DIA DE LOS MUERTOS PARTY! When you think about it, it makes perfect sense, the dead need a lot of food and drinks when they come back from hell.
I do think it would be cool to have an emote especially for gravestones. "Mourn" or "Offer pork" or "Water the plants" or "Graverob"...Okay, maybe not the last two, but you get the idea. And the dearly departed could see it from hell, but could only shake their fist impotently as their grave was defiled.
I suppose a graverobbing ability that allowed you to sell zombie chunks to NPCs would be too much to ask?
The thing about traditions is that when they start out--y'know, before they become actual traditions--they do actually serve a useful and practical purpose.
For example, Jewish kosher has a lot of seemingly "random" rules about what you are and are not allowed to eat. If you look at it from a modern perspective, yeah, the particular restrictions seem unusual. Why the ban on pork and shellfish, for example? What's wrong with delicious bacon? If you look at it from the perspective of people wandering around in the desert 2000 years ago, on the other hand, it makes a LOT of sense--pork spoils *really* quickly in heat; so does shellfish. In addition, there's no way to transport shellfish into the middle of the desert without then serving up a death sentence to whoever eats it. If you look at it that way, the kosher rules are suddenly Useful Guidelines For Not Being A Dumbass and Accidentally Killing Yourself By Food Poisoning.
I'm not saying that the party idea isn't a great one--it is. It sounds really fun, actually. But if we want to develop a culture and traditions that people will keep practicing, they need to be ones that serve a specific purpose, and preferably aren't a huge hassle to follow. One of the lovely things about the leaving of food (specifically, meat) is that is both 'symbolic' (at least, if you follow Kipple's reasoning ;D) and functional--it'll be a nice thing for the Glitch to have when s/he comes back from Hell and needs those boosts.
Actually, yeah, there should probably be a sort of ceremonial note left at any be-snack'ed grave admonishing would-be graverobbers of the bad juju they could incur.
I also like the meditation idea. Especially if those meditating possess the transcendental radiation skill. I see graveside vigils staged by priests and priestesses of Cosma (with catering by Potian monks).
(Maybe you could click on the gravestone to place an offering, and if the meat is taken by anyone other than the returnee from hell, there is a foo% chance of a negative effect, such as a juju bandit appearing.)
Well, I put an offering of meat down by a headstone in northwest passage, and dropped a note on top of it, explaining why it was there and asking people to leave it alone.