Writing In game books

[Talad]

THIS MESSAGE IS TAKEN FROM OLD BOARD:


webworm
    Guest
                            posted 11-10-2001 00:25 GMT        

                         I\'ve allways wished I could do this in Everquest. It seems like a great idea.

                         A way to make money for those of us who are good writers could be to buy some paper in game and write a book. Books could
                         not be sold to merchants but players could buy them, and print them if they wished. Paper should be inexpensive and be able to
                         fit the ammount of text as a regular paper back novel.

                         Now the first problem I realized with this would be players writing a bunch of garbled text, then giving the book a cool title and
                         selling it. So a solution would be to allow the buyer to preview 2 pages of their choosing so they know what they are getting.

                         It would be fun to buy a book from someone and when you are waiting for someone just read it.

                         Hope this makes sence.
    Thekkur
    PS W.T.B. Member
                            posted 11-10-2001 01:37 GMT            

                         It would certainly be cool... you could tell about your adventures (a little exaggerated ofcourse), and
                         adventurers might visit the places you\'ve been. like some sort of a travelguide.

                         Thekkur  
    Buechler
    Guest
                            posted 11-10-2001 03:25 GMT          

                         This idea rocks!!! Players could run there own libary too if they owned a house!!!
    AVATAR
    PS Official Member
                            posted 12-10-2001 05:16 GMT            

                         Wow, I am certainly impressed. I like this idea very much as well. Keep up the great work all, you are turning out some great
                         input.
    Firestorm
    PS Official Member
                            posted 12-10-2001 06:14 GMT            

                         Definatly cool. Librarys of books, shortstories, and guides, written by players for generations
                         Very Kewl
                         -Firestorm- Planeshift Public Relations Manager -
    Hory
    Guest
                            posted 12-10-2001 17:49 GMT            

                         it would be cool if the players could post messages (announcments) in the public plaza or hire a npc to contact X and give him a
                         message, or leave word at the bar etc
    webworm
    Guest
                            posted 15-10-2001 04:48 GMT            

                         Hey glad you like my idea.

                         I sure hope to see this in the game.
    whitti
    PS W.T.B. Member
                            posted 19-10-2001 05:56 GMT            

                         neat my writing skills finally put to use in gaming. *the crowd starts chanting* \"GO WEBWORM...GO WEBWORM\"


                         Webworm the people love you!
    Dwinney
    Guest
                            posted 02-11-2001 03:41 GMT            

                         This is definitely the coolest idea ever, but I haven\'t seen it implemented in any other game before...... Neat, I\'m already thinking
                         up of some fantasy story to write about..........hope the PlaneShift staff uses this idea.
    Thekkur
    PS W.T.B. Member
                            posted 02-11-2001 00:39 GMT            

                         If you have finished the story, you can also submit it to the PS crew.(info@planeshift.it) If it\'s good enough, it might even become
                         part of planeshift\'s background!

                         Thekkur
    AVATAR
    PS Official Member
                            posted 03-11-2001 06:48 GMT            

                         and you can also submit your DARN RESUME AND APPLICATION! yea, you, you know who you are. I won\'t name names, but
                         his initials are THEKKUR. :-)
    webworm
    Guest
                            posted 08-11-2001 00:22 GMT            

                         Hey, thanks for taking the time to read and admire my idea. I have sent in a application for the setting and backround team, and
                         im going to do my best to get this implimented if I am accepted.

                         Thanks again!
                         ~Webworm
    lsupi
    PS Official Member
                            posted 09-11-2001 00:21 GMT            

                         Nice idea. A bit hard in execution (one of the reason noone implement it already). I\'ll see if this is possible at all and see how this
                         will effect the game security.
    Oldman Kay
    Guest
                            posted 09-11-2001 16:57 GMT            

                         FireStorm wrote:

                         \"Definatly cool. Librarys of books, shortstories, and guides, written by players for generations \"

                         Yeah. That would be awesome.

                         But some come to think, how could they put say a hundred page novel into the game? And who would want to read it?

                         Well how about each book has a limited amount of pages.

                         Say around 70. Then you could have a to be continued one so people would REALLY wanna get the next one which would give
                         you more money. Basically it means in the long run you will have more admiriers(sorry bout sp) and more cash.

                         ITS GENIOUS!
    whitti
    PS W.T.B. Member
                            posted 09-11-2001 17:07 GMT            

                         yes and weekly Newspapers etc. But I think there should be any limit to how many pages. If the author is smart however...
    corsairk1
    Guest
                            posted 11-11-2001 18:23 GMT            

                         Nice idea, but I think there should be a librarian or book store owner there to review the book and he can decide whether to sell it
                         / put it in library for the writer. Although, the writer could go around with crap copies of books, but I doubt people would buy books
                         off the street.
    webworm
    Guest
                            posted 12-12-2001 04:45 GMT            

                         Reviving my stunningly beautiful idea with its grace and power. It shall live on sending hope through our hearts.

                         lol

                         ~Webworm
                         Planeshift W.T.B. Member
                         Setting & Backround
    King Larry
    Guest
                            posted 12-12-2001 15:53 GMT            

                         I think that if you are a smith you might do a weapon/armour guide...
    Shadow
    Guest
                            posted 30-12-2001 00:16 GMT            

                         Making pamflets, starting cults and having fun.
                         We need books. (ingame)
    Bigfoot
    Guest
                            posted 01-01-2001 02:18 GMT            

                         For those of you that have played Ultima Online... You could do that in that game. You could even use the scribe skill to make
                         instant copies ^_^... although teh pages where limited to about 12 and anyone could rewrite what you wrote. We used to have a
                         couple of books locked down in our guild castle that was used as ingame message boards for members ^^. I also wrote a small
                         story in a book once and then droped it in teh back streets of britain in UO... hopefully some one picked it up and gave it a read
                         ^_^.
    Corsairk8
    PS W.T.B. Member
                            posted 01-01-2001 03:30 GMT            

                         I would find that very interesting, but it would be better to have a recommendation or voting system where popular books would be
                         put in a dedicated area of the public library. This is to avoid people writing books which are useless and making profit from it. It
                         does seem like a very promising idea and I am sure that the team will try to include it in the game if possible.

[Severed Hope]

I like this idea.  People who wrote things in-game would have visible ratings to everyone... people who wrote trash or HGJDHWGKJHWDKJDKGJWDGKJ for 5 or 6 pages would be known in the game world as scammers.  Popular writers could charge more money... but i think in the spirit of, say, the elder scrolls, such books should be limited to 6 or 7 pages. 10 max.  Not everyone wants to read a story within a story, and a lot of people have the patience of a gnat, so 70 page things wouldn\'t do very well.

have an NPC publisher though, and the player doesn\'t get any money unless people (a) go to the universal library / bookstore and buy/check it out or (b) sells the published \'book\' to his friends or such.

the problem I see with this is people writing one page, and selling it to his Uber-Friends for easy money, easy ratings for undercover scamming, and a false rep.

Good idea, over all, but i\'m not sure there is any good way to implement it... is there?

--
once again, sorry for bringing up dead topics, but like I said before, I am reading up, and throwing in my 2 cents.

[kinshadow]

Originally posted by Talad

                         For those of you that have played Ultima Online... You could do that in that game. You could even use the scribe skill to make
                         instant copies ^_^... although teh pages where limited to about 12 and anyone could rewrite what you wrote. We used to have a
                         couple of books locked down in our guild castle that was used as ingame message boards for members ^^. I also wrote a small
                         story in a book once and then droped it in teh back streets of britain in UO... hopefully some one picked it up and gave it a read
 

Actually, I used to know a guy who sold story books in UO.  The books didn\'t hold to much, so the story usually spanded many volumes.  He didn\'t make a lot of money, but he had many loyal customers and had a blast doing it.  The problem he ran into was people copying and redistributing his books with name changes, etc  (maybe special player \"signing\" is needed to show its an original?).  I think in-game books is a great idea.  Any interface to writing the book should be clean (XML?), so its portable and easy to format.  The straight small text of UO was hard to read and frustrating to write with.  Also, despite the server side space requirements, I think each book should hold a decent amount.  Perhaps, for blank books as pages increase then prices increases exponentially?

[Fantasyfiend]

I once read a story about a mouse who lived in a hole in Lord Britishes Beed Chamber. It was interesting. Was it yours? I never really read much in Morrowind, but player written short stories, histories and stuff would be cool. Especially since my character is going to be a Librarian/Adventurer. When I get my PO\'ed house, I intend to start collecting books.

[Ragnarok]

Anything like this would be a good idea for PS.  It would allow players to advance the game themselves, because i doubt that it would be too far fetched and idea to start a quest off of a well writen book ... ;-)

[Vengeance]

- A fanfic story in PS shouldn\'t have to span many volumes.  The books should be as long as they need to be.

- We will almost certainly make an in-game gui to write the book.  Ordinary mortals barely understand the backspace key, let alone xml file formatting principles.

- Using an in-game GUI will make it difficult to copy the books also--someone will need to take screenshots of each page I guess, and then retype the entire fricken thing in again.  Of course, there is always banning people who have provably plagiarized someone else\'s work as well...

I\'m looking forward to us implementing this system and I hope people like it. :-)

- Vengeance

[LirainIzar]

This is absolutely the best idea!  Yet another reason that PlaneShift is going to be such a superior game.  I\'ll have to dust off my storytelling skills a bit and get going  

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Vengeance
- We will almost certainly make an in-game gui to write the book.  Ordinary mortals barely understand the backspace key, let alone xml file formatting principles.

Keep it simple, but yes, GUIs for anything make it look far more professional.

[Culsoron]

THis is one of the best ideas so far. And it fits really well with the library and all. Rating the books would be great. And people could sell books to the library\'s and make some money on them that way, or they could sell them to people the meet. There could be a top 10 book list in every library so that people would know what books are better. Experienced players could write books about hunting or whatever they do. Newbies could get tips and tricks from this books. Books of fiction would be awsome as well. And maps, maps of far away dungeons for sale somewhere. This is so great.

[Fanomatic2000]

NO MAPS!!!!

If you could just buy a map, there would be no exitement. The players could just walk around and read what way were dangerous and which was safe.

Have you thought about the people who could just copy a story from the world wide web and then write it in a book? Think about this-If you read 2-3 pages and when you bought the expensive book, the rest of the pages were covered with LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL, then what should you do? ?(
People who do stuff like that should be punished! X(
How can you know who to trust? The GMs can\'t read all the books in the world of PS.

[Vengeance]

My thought was to add ratings for books, assigned by users, and also show total ratings for authors, so people can sort of know what they are buying.

This would still be susceptible to guilds spamming the ratings, etc. but would be quickly detected and counteracted by other readers.

- Venge

[Culsoron]

OK, I can see why maps aren\'t a good Idea. But there must be books. A nice gui for making books in game would be nice. To prevent people from copying things from the internet you could disable copy/paste in this gui.

[Silverblade]

I wouldnt want copy+paste disabled for one reason.  When I am logged in to the game, I want to spend my time playing, not standing around typing up a story.

I would most likely type my stories when I cannot access the internet, or am away from home. Then, when I do log into the game, I could just copy+paste my story, without wasting any time.

If you wanted to disable copy+paste, maybe you could make a feature to upload .txt files. That wouldnt really stop piracy though.

[Kiern]

Yea, Silverblade is right...I usually write things up at work when I have nothing to do (3/4ths of the time im there) so then to do this i\'d email it to myself and have it here, then I wouldn\'t want to retype the whole thing up again, and I doubt I could stay connected long enough to do so

[kinshadow]

Originally posted by Silverblade
I wouldnt want copy+paste disabled for one reason.  When I am logged in to the game, I want to spend my time playing, not standing around typing up a story.

Excellent point.  In fact, why stop there.  Why not just allow users to save off the the book to their hardrive?

Who cares if they are re-posted somewhere else (I don\'t as long a they keep my name/alias on it).  That wouldn\'t stop in-game sales of a book.  I can\'t imagine that  in-game books would cost so much that it would deter a person from actually buying them.  The only draw back is the time to read them in-game.

A good example is my post in the \'want to be famous\' thread.  The story is 5000+ words long and I don\'t mind if someone saves it off or prints it out.  The only problem is when they copy it and put their name on it (online or in another in-game book)and hopefully that won\'t be too big of a problem.