Real?- Think about it...

[drew]

Here and there in the forums I see comments about no maps, no info about weapons or monsters, etc. because the role-playing aspect and reality of the game requires you learn this on your own. However, think about real life for a minute. Although we (hopefully) have not used all of these, we all know the difference between a shotgun, AK-47, M-16, 9mm, .45 pistol, .22 pistol, hand gernade, land mine, and so on. Same idea about starting a fight with a Hell\'s Angel, active duty marine, or an accountant. We know what parts of town are unsafe to walk alone at night. We also know where japan is, where london is, and how to get to Nashville whether we\'ve ever been to these places or not. But our characters can\'t have any information about the world they live in?
     So my question would be- Were our characters born and raised in a bubble? Is this their first time time out in the real world that they\'ve never heard anything about? A little info would certainly go a long way towards making the game more playable and more real. If not specific statistics, at least an idea of what monsters we\'re capable of fighting with some chance of success, what exists in the world and where it might be, what weapons are quicker or more damaging than others, and so on and so forth.

[Draklar]

You\'re forgetting in PS there is no TV or internet (without which prsonally I wouldn\'t know anything about those weapons... heck, I still don\'t know what a .45 or .22 pistol is). A peasant or simply someone who so far had little experience with fighting wouldn\'t know much about weapons.
About maps, there will be some. Just not mini-maps. See the difference.

[Karyuu]

I don\'t see anything wrong with holding off your RP until you are familiar with what your character should be familiar with. Then again, to say that your character was born in Hydlaa, for example, will be iffy if you haven\'t been here during previous releases, when a lot of past roleplay gave certain things more significance over others, when great events occured, etc. There is just a lot of RP history that you\'re going to have a hard time merging with a new character, unfortunate as that is. The great majority of players prefer to have characters that come from elsewhere, for that very reason - and thus have them just as unaware of their new surroundings as you might be.

[Tenteki]

Hmm well, I haven\'t even played the game yet but I played some other games (Ultima Online i.e.), where the problem was the same. On the Shard I was on in Ultima, they made a libary where the players were able to add their expiriences and everything.
One month after the libary was ingame, there were hundreds of books and papers all over the libary, there was a \'monsters\' section, \'weapons\', \'history\', \'special events\' and everything.
I don\'t know much about PlaneShift yet, but maybe it\'s possible to add something like that ingame - just a thaugt

[TheMinority]

you could always become the resident newsman and just walk around, catching up on news and dispensing it to those who want it.

that would be more realistic than a library. it would be silly to have to update a book every time something big happens. books take time to write, and even if we had a printing press or something like that to make the writing process faster, i don\'t think jayose would be too happy having people bringing in new books all the time for him to sort out. XD

[Seytra]

However, this sort of thing would be the perfect use for a newspaper archive. Like IRL, newspapers would cover what is important around the date of issue. And like IRL, a copy of each newspaper would likely be archived for everyone to read later on. That way, a book needs not be updated, and the archive automatically does, in the natural way. Sorting out what players put in that is an entirely different but nontheless important matter.

[booiiing]

encyclopedias and history-books would also be cool. but then again, some amongst us can\'t read (IC) ...

[Zan]

Originally posted by drew
 So my question would be- Were our characters born and raised in a bubble? Is this their first time time out in the real world that they\'ve never heard anything about? A little info would certainly go a long way towards making the game more playable and more real. If not specific statistics, at least an idea of what monsters we\'re capable of fighting with some chance of success, what exists in the world and where it might be, what weapons are quicker or more damaging than others, and so on and so forth.

Ways to get info in planeshift:

1) Read the Player Guide
2) Read the Story: History, Races, Economy, ...
3) Read these forums
4) Ask people

Obviously with the latter two you have to be a bit careful what to believe and what not but I think there are plenty of sources of information out there.

Allowing players to write books and make them available in-game can be a very good feature but it can also be abused to death. Personally I would like to see a limitation on the writing of books. For example only high level teachers or writers could make such books. Of course this doesn\'t stop anyone from making a book as long as they can hire a writer. But it probably will stop a lot of kids who think it might be cool to write their own booky full of nonesense.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by drew
Is this their first time time out in the real world that they\'ve never heard anything about?

Yes.   (Why not?  People could for the most part be fresh off the farm.)

[Drey]

think about it in older times there were groups of people working together to discover things then these things would be kept in the groups (guilds, many of then have information pages about things)

but what you really want to be asking yourself is, what is the sky and what does it taste of, a question i have been stuck on for a long time...

[Eaglehawk]

it really annoys me that we cant find out how powerful our weapon will be when we buy it.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Eaglehawk
it really annoys me that we cant find out how powerful our weapon will be when we buy it.

What do you mean?  Can\'t you just use common sense?  I mean, a battle axe is OBVIOUSLY more powerful than a shortsword, but the shortsword will OBVIOUSLY be faster.

[Drey]

also at the moment you can go around with the knowledge that pretty much anything you loot will be better than what you buy from harnquist.

also i would like to take this moment re introduce my question of \"what is the sky and what does it taste of\"

[Zan]

Originally posted by Eaglehawk
it really annoys me that we cant find out how powerful our weapon will be when we buy it.

I don\'t get you people .. you keep saying: we don\'t know this, we can\'t find that out .. just because planeshift doesn\'t pound you to death with specific numeric information. You obviously have a keyboard so I suggest you use it and ask questions. There are plenty of experienced players around that don\'t mind answerring questions and we also have an amazing feature called a help channel. People in there live for these kinds of questions ... they thrive on answerring them and I know they can answer them.

[TheMinority]

People in there live for these kinds of questions ... they thrive on answerring them and I know they can answer them.

a cardinal source of our daily nutrition, sadly. we cannot survive if there are no questions to be answered. ^_^

and by newsman, i meant someone who is basically the town gossip. i think this would be a great RP addition, and to use my character as an example, because some people just don\'t quite fit in among library types and prefer conversations to reading. i\'d rather be walking along and spot the town gossip and ask if anything new has happened rather than go to the library, sit down, and read what has been going on. the town gossip would also know and be able to dispense information on events much faster than a chronicle would be able to print it.

my two cents, anyhow...