Skills for the future.

[Nikodemus]

Dungeon Master? Why not Dragon Master? Or even better! Dungeons and Dragons Master. What is it anyway? A guy who cares about his dungeon and dragons he keep inside? This title is just stupid everywhere besides the certain game the title was created for.
Call them GMs or RMs (Realm Master).

A skill for writing books is pointless. We don't have many people who are capable of writing something decent and making a needed skill for it, would only discourage those, if we had any left at all.
What we need is a setting team to validate books written by players. Would be nice if our setting team would be a little bigger, to meet requirements of this task.
A character writes a book, then player ask setting team if it is good. Setting team is more than happy to have 80% of the job they are doig done by someone else or they say the book isn't good and point out the mistakes. If there are too many of them, they just sent the player off till he learn more about PS.
After few successfull validated books without questions, the player don't have to ask for permission anymore and his character may act without disturbing his IC life. Of course, ike any crafter items, books carry the sign too and if books of such players are found to be wrong, the player meets some consequences and looses his status. Simple. Of course there needs to programmed system for this last paragraph, but it is how i see it.
For now we just go on proper IRC channel and ask proper people.

[zanzibar]

Allow players to write anything they want on manuscript, and then GMs could run an ingame printshop.  So if you want to release a book, you write a really long manuscript and then submit it to the printshop.  The GMs then decide if it's suitable for mass production.  Players could pay for the service, or players could be paid by the printshop for their work.

How does that sound?

[Nikodemus]

We don't know if the books are being printed. They all may be as well being written by hand so all the books are manuscripts. The thing is that sometimes you just want to write simple note, or few pages as there is need and you an't to do it without permission. Obviously not everyone can do it, so maybe at least those who proved to be trustworthy.

[bilbous]

I could actually see a use for a writing skill if you are going to allow players to be trainers. It might work like this: The player who wants to be a trainer must train his writing skill to be able to to make training manuals and could only impart wisdom to the level of this ability. For example I have maxed out my light armor and want to make some money by training others. I work my writing skill up to level twenty and so can now produce manuals for skills up to level 20. Joe comes to me and wants to increase his light armor from 15-16 so using my writing skill I produce a manual for him which he reads to acquire the technical knowledge and now all he needs to do is go practice.

It might be that the greater the difference between the average of your skill level in the skill to train and your writing skill would affect the quality of the manual and the time required to consume the material. I am thinking that getting training like this might take time similar to the time it takes to repair weapons.

It might also be that there is a further requirement for directed study of the writing skill in each particular discipline so that to produce weapon training manuals you will need to get training in weapon training manuals on top of your basic writing skill. That might be overkill, I don't know.

This idea would make a writing skill something that is actually useful albeit abstracted in that the manuals produced are merely "switches" and do not contain meaningful content as a real book would. It might even be that there could be a magical skill which used in concert with this mundane skill would allow you to make manuals that remove even the need to practice but this too is likely to be too much. Such skills if implemented could have high requirements and costs to balance the power they offer.

[Seytra]

I'd like to keep the settings team and even the GMs out of the process as much as possible, because they already have other stuff to worry about.
With books I don't see much trouble if, and this must be guaranteed, the book is clearly designated as being done by a player, and not verified.
Books written by players could become verified if there is time, possibly they can be put in a queue. This can easily take quite a while and noone should expect any particular book becoming verified. It'd be like stickies on the board.

I have to say though that some people seem to view this rather restrictive like if you had this skill you could only RP the books actually there. Although in my eyes if the only books actually there are a trades "how-to-do" books it's rather obvious there will be other books not implemented yet.

What I meant was that one can only write the books that are already implemented if the original proposal were to be used, simply because the book would be pieced together from preexisting blocks, possibly distorted by lower skill levels, by the system. And the system is unable to create, it can only reproduce.

Obviously one can RP what is logical, including unimplemented books, most importantly stories. I had therefore dismissed this approach as not worth the effort. However, bilbous's latest post made me rethink this, at least partially.
In VtM - Bloodlins, for example, there are books that do more or less what he proposes. And they actually have content to be read by the player. This content, however, is only a few lines of text mostly, and most often glaringly inaccurate, or merely joking in nature, to phrase it nicely.
This could be improved by the originally proposed system, creating books that are mainly for the characters use, but also have something akin to a summary for the player's enjoyment, and possibly to even aid their RP (i.e., if someone has no idea about how magic is supposed to work, then the summary could give them ideas on at least what phrases / words to use when talking about magic).

I am still unsire if this would justify the effort (both coding-wise and writing-wise), but it sounds better this way than it did before.

For all other books, which should not have to be approved, the free-form approach seems to be the only actually feasible one. The only problem would obviously be the obvious discrepancy between books written in the two modes, by one player / character. This might end up hurting immersion, but maybe not - would need to be tested.
If it turns out to be detrimental, I'd rather opt for removing the text from the insta - training books (wasting the effort of coding and writing), than to remove free-form books, as they are much more universal.
It would be nice to be able to for example create your own poetry book, or write letters, or notes, and have them actually appear as items in your inventory, to give to others, or add to, or whatnot.
Speaking of adding to books: it would be nice to be able to scribble in them, like you do IRL when you think something important is amiss, or you are bored, or whatnot. Maybe be able to rip out pages or parts of them? Or put new pages in (either loosely, or glue on, or seamlessly using a book-binding skill).

The idea about the printshops also appeals to me. This could be a form of crafting as well, and therefore use (most of) the crafting system. If not only the name of the author, but also that of the printshop would appear on the finished book, the printshops might even be interested in quality. At the minimum, it would make it possible to track down bad apples. All possible to be done by players.

[zanzibar]

I'd like to keep the settings team and even the GMs out of the process as much as possible, because they already have other stuff to worry about.

The GM team will be expanded in the future though, and there could eventually be two people who are entirely dedicated to in game literature.

I could see it working this way:  There's a NPC who you can give manuscripts to.  The manuscripts have zero weight and the NPC can hold an infinite amount of them.  Game Masters can then access that NPC's inventory and read through the manuscripts.  Ones that get a pass can be turned into items that can be bought from another NPC for a limited time.  Players will be told not to expect their submitted manuscripts returned.  The limited nature of the print run will keep things realistic.  Certain books will become rare and desireable.

The idea about the printshops also appeals to me. This could be a form of crafting as well, and therefore use (most of) the crafting system. If not only the name of the author, but also that of the printshop would appear on the finished book, the printshops might even be interested in quality. At the minimum, it would make it possible to track down bad apples. All possible to be done by players.

This could work as well.