Hey, I previously made three long posts (part 1, part 2, part 3) covering a bunch of ideas for Worldbuilding in Minecraft based on my experiences playing in and running a long term persistent Bedrock world. I don't think I'll ever have enough info to make a 'part 4', so I have created this addendum post as a less organized place to put any further ideas or tools I come across :)
Sections:
Ideas
Dumping place for any further ideas I have
Ship-Based Fast Travel
The What: I had this idea to try and create a balanced 'fast' travel system for our world, framed around seafaring ship travel. Heavily inspired by the boat/ship travel in Elder Scrolls Online, it is a similarly convenient means to travel long distances while retaining some roleplay, without being too overpowered like direct teleports (dungeon finder, wayshrines). This system requires foot travel to port areas that are usually somewhat out of town, and multiple 'stops' along the way so that the travel time is tempered. We are also applying realistic constraints like; routes must be able to accomodate a ship's size (bridge height, canal width/depth), smaller vessels have to make more stops, and forcing disembarking/vessel swaps where appropriate (like when a seafaring ship reaches coast or river).
The travel time should end up being comparable to our Nether Railway system, when factoring in multiple teleport jumps and the foot travel on either end. It will also allow us to extend quicker travel to a larger variety of areas which are rarely visited, in a fun roleplay-forward way. In addition it will create a means for town expansion and a creative building outlet. Most towns aren't directly on the coast, so we have began building realistic pathing, neighbourhood extensions, and ports slightly out of the way to accomodate this. Each region can also have a chance to create their own style of vessel, and add a unique 'crew' of NPCs with dialogue to add to the roleplay.
The How: This system requires Bedrock for the inbuilt NPCs and their related commands interface. Essentially this requires building the same ship 1:1 at each teleport location, recording the teleport points (ideally landing on the deck of the ship), and attaching the teleport commands to the NPC Captain's dialogue options. As mentioned before in the NPC section of part 3; the NPC spawn egg can only be obtained through commands ('/give @s spawn_egg 1 51'), and once placed the NPC can only be programmed while your game is in creative mode (can just be your personal game mode as an admin btw). The interface for this is pretty intuitive; you 'use' (right-click, left-trigger, etc.) the NPC to access it's dialogue editor. You can then 'add command' with 'button activation' which allows you to label the button (with a dialogue response for example) and add an associated command (teleport the interacting player to X Y Z = '/tp @p X Y Z'). For the other NPC crew members, we have the option to flesh out the system with dialogue like pointing out nearby places or warning of dangers, or more character building dialogue. The 'add command' with 'button activation' can also be used to make limited dialogue trees, having the NPCs respond to prompts/questions (whisper messaging the interecting player some example text = '/w @p example text').
I have only built one ship route so far between our two oldest towns, which was a good illustration of the system. Our spawn town is seaside with a large port area, I added two stops along the way (with flavour dialogue like 'we must stop for repairs/supplies') before it hits the closest coast to destination town. There I built a port that connects to a nearby railway which has to be taken one stop to the end point (for the time being). I plan to make a smaller river vessel at the new port that will 'travel' directly to the town, and along it's river to further settlements north. I have also planned out a further three or four future routes to connect more settlements via remote areas.
Tools
Dumping place for any further useful external tools I find
Minecraft Bedrock RSS Reader
I came across this while trying to find any official game RSS feeds (there aren't any useful ones btw, if you don't have discord you have to manually check for update news, or I checkMinecraft.wiki because it's less fluff/marketplace advertisements). This is a mod that adds a player-side RSS feed reader into a Minecraft Bedrock Dedicated Server. I have not actually implemented this in our world, and probably won't because I doubt my peers will use it, but it is interesting because (due to the 'marketplace') there aren't a lot of free mods or texture packs available for Bedrock at all. This would be a really solid way to create a 'server updates/news' RSS feed and have it easily readble in-game by all players on the server. Sending server messages directly to players is not really supported in Bedrock, as there is no MOTD (Message of the Day) function included in dedicated servers like on Java. It also appears to be an unobtrusive/non-destructive mod, just adding a new UI thing without touching the world save. But again, I haven't tried this out and I can't really find any reviews.
This mod is a simple .mcpack resource pack addition (if you've added a texture pack, it's a similar process). Once added, players can access the feed reader by jumping/crouching simultaneously or by 'using' a stick. They have to add feeds manually at that point, as it just creates a standard feed reader UI. You could direct players to your (theoretical) server update/news feed which could be hosted on a free site host like Neocities/Nekoweb etc. There is no restriction though, players can subscribe to any RSS feed (reading real world news in minecraft is a funny concept tbh. "where were you when you found out?" "my XP farm").
Anyway, this mod is available on TheFelixLive's github under an MIT license.