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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Desire for the ability to create player-written books in game? Perhaps based on player voting?
As an aspiring fantasy author who's beginning to create short stories to supplement my novel-length work, I think it would be excellent if people were able to create their own short works of fiction and have them converted to books able to be shared in-game. You could choose to either print them yourself on only one character, and distribute non-tradeable copies to your friends, or if you're part of a city that's large enough, enter it into a library and allow anyone to retrieve a copy.
Obviously, you wouldn't want the game world / library inventory flooded with just any old guff, so I think it would be really great if there was a section of the Ashes site dedicated to uploading text files, "The Writer's Guild", where people could vote to have an entry allowed in the game. If an entry reached a certain number of votes, the text file could be converted to an in-game "draft copy" sent directly to the author's character of choice where the player could pick the color of the binding for the icon, give it a final draft title, and print it themselves. From there, they could decide to either exclusively print non-tradeable copies off the first edition, or submit a copy to the library and make their work publicly available. Maybe have a rating system of sorts and rewards for the top authors of the month/year? Could also be a way for aspiring real world authors to get their name out there and generate interest for their work.
What do you think?
Obviously, you wouldn't want the game world / library inventory flooded with just any old guff, so I think it would be really great if there was a section of the Ashes site dedicated to uploading text files, "The Writer's Guild", where people could vote to have an entry allowed in the game. If an entry reached a certain number of votes, the text file could be converted to an in-game "draft copy" sent directly to the author's character of choice where the player could pick the color of the binding for the icon, give it a final draft title, and print it themselves. From there, they could decide to either exclusively print non-tradeable copies off the first edition, or submit a copy to the library and make their work publicly available. Maybe have a rating system of sorts and rewards for the top authors of the month/year? Could also be a way for aspiring real world authors to get their name out there and generate interest for their work.
What do you think?
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Comments
I am not sure how much the fee should be or how much control over the price of the books the author should have.
What do you think?
I do think there should be an option to sell a book, by your character for in game currency, but I am not a fan of being rewarded by the game for "this month's author." I think that might bring in tons of scripts from people that just want that title but our submitting asinine stories. Now if there is a similar in game monthly reward for "best bard" and so forth then I would not have an issue here. If there is a leader board perhaps a category for "most books sold."
So maybe put a limit on the length of the books so that it stays within the "readable in less than XX hours/days". The author will have to divide his story in multiple books but it's better than nothing.
Maybe a limit to how many of them you can publish per month?
So I see mostly 2-3 pages narrations.
What I would like to propose is that perhaps you can have a server-wide or maybe even node-wide newspaper that is managed by the playerbase and serves as a creative outlet.
There can be articles written about cutting edge developments, plot-points, events, tales and even crafting/market advertisements. These can be run by trusted players who enjoy chronicling this game's events.
Legends may rise as tales are told about a band of heroes who uncovered certain legendary items or who defeated the tyrannical dragon threatening the defenseless village.
Let me know what you think of such an idea.
I think this idea works really good on a guild basis. Guilds could potentially put out their own, even if it does contain obvious exaggerations. Cities could put out their own as well, meaning you have to have citizenship to submit but there is still the problem of who chooses what to publish.
If these things could be worked out where libraries published short stories (1-2 pages text) and guild put out newspapers/magazines (1-2 pages text) it would be super awesome.
From the DEV side my biggest concern would be those trying to alter or manipulate the lore and make it their own. They seem to really enjoy what they have planned and might be hesitant to allow random players (including trolls) from "publishing" material surrounding their lore.
As far as fan fiction and "flaggable" content goes -- this is why I propose a forum of sorts where people can *apply* to have sometime entered into the game, and have it be approved by a certain number of supporters. This way you can easily sort out well told stories/musings/poetry etc from people trolling with random gibberish, fan-fiction from other established IPs, or X-rated content. I don't think it would be too complicated to set up, and it would also help to keep the library system from getting flooded with entries. Also, if someone on the dev team were required to read each entry that gets voted into the game, requiring it to be popular enough would keep them from having a backlog of entries to scan through. I do however like the suggestion that there should be a monthly submission cap. I don't think anyone could pump out a decent short story or short collection of poetry worth reading more than twice a month while still spending free time in-game.