Books/Publishing

[Harwen]

I am constantly reminded of some games that do not deserve to cross my glowing keyboard, and a feature where you could type something out on a peice of paper, and well, mainly it was used for fooling newbies out of some money. I was thinking that it wouldn\'t be a bad idea really with some enforcement, or some way of checking that it wasn\'t totally full of gibberish.

Then I thought:
You\'re a skilled crafter, or a teacher, a ministral(to you uncultered heathens, bards ), pharmacist or a writer even better!

Decision:  

You buy a few slips of paper, or if you are willing to spend a little more, you can buy blank books, choose your cover color, cover icon, e.t.c.

You decide you want to make a cook book with some recipies, write down a potion recipie, a song, or a story of a legendary hero that will be a series, so you think you could make some money out of it and perhaps help some newbies out with some basic tips. Okay good.

Content:  

After you write your story/recipie list/whatever. Make the title text, choose the icon that\'ll go onto the cover. The date will be added when you complete the book for things such as rarity. Also, you get to write the description for the book, like reading the back cover or dust jacket of a book. (What, the server is going to summarize your book for you?)

But now, you have a book or a piece of paper full of writing that no one can read until they own it. This is what happens in other crappy games more or less.  This is how people get to be cheated out of their money (sometimes its deserved, most of the time not) Well.

Limbo:  

Until you go \"publish\" your book, or \"leaflet\", I\'ll call it. It will have the words (Unpublished) next to its name and in its description it will say (This book has not been published) This is to tell the buyer and the writer that the book has not been verified as being authentic as to its title and description.

Publishing:  

This is the tricky part really, because the player must go to a publishing guild that is npc controlled and submit their unpublished book or manuscript, for inspection. Now, the publishing is just a person GM or otherwise to check that the description matches the content. The title doesn\'t have to, cause, hey, its a title.

Also, perhaps things such as foul language and er, minor-sensitive subjects should be warned about (cause of freedom of speech or whatever, but I prefer it not be allowed at all UNLESS used with tact)

Then the GM can do a few things, (this through a simple form-type menu interface of some sorts, if anyone wants drawings, i\'ll be happy to \'blige)

One, let the writer know that some things need work, by sending it back to the office with \"Flags\" because only a few things can be wrong with it, this can be a simple as a checkmark button on the interface :

Red Flags:
1) Your title is inappropriate (foul language or a just stupid phrase \"I have sex with cantalopes\" or \"Kiss me I\'m not retarted\" , I can think of worse, but I like to keep the boards more or less clean )

2) Your Description Does not match the content (Bad description of the content, example: (its a book about the crystal mines) Description: Meh. My head hurts.

3) Your Description is Misleading: (You\'re saying its a book of spells and the nessecary runes, but its really just a description of what you were wearing at the moment)

4) Your Content is Inappropriate: (You\'ve given away quest information, are trying to pass along possible cheats and/or exploits (idiot), or are saying very nasty things about someone, or are trying to publish a script of a harcore pornography movie )

5) Your Content is incomplete: Faliure to add a \"To be continued\" at the end of the story if it was meant to, or trying to pass off three sentences as a book.

6) Bad grammar/Formatting: You type with the ball of your heels and do not understand english. Your indentations and line breaks are whacked out, whatever.

Loose Strings:  

A bad book, or a book with red flags is sent back to the publishing office, and awaits the pickup of the author for re-editing. Perhaps a fee for checking the book could keep jerks from re-submitting bad books to mess with the GMs, or the Publishing fee would be given upfront. Incentive for spell-checking!

If the Publisher GM wants to add suggestions or comments he may do so, but must leave his/her name. Though with the possible large amount of books, this will be rarely used except maybe with really good stories and such.

When approved, the GM sends it back to the publishing office with a green flag. When the author wants to pick it up he must pay a publishing fee. Then, he can make copies of his published book (only published books can be copied) for the price of the printing material. Then the (Unpublished) text is gone, and (This book has been published by \"GM Name\") is now in the description.

This is of course, if there is some sort of text editor in PS that allows you to either import .txt files or to save in some other format to your harddrive (cause I doubt many people could write an entire short story at one go)

Also, your \"original\" can be sold, but it cannot be destroyed or thrown away, and there will be an (original) status in the book description.

Hmm?

I wonder if this is plausable, in accordance to volume of books to be inspected, but with cost of printing material, book or leaflet, the writing skill maybe? and the cost of publishing it will be kept down.

[ForteX]

Really good idea. I mean it, after all teachers would have a true chance to show what they are made off
I like it very much. There could even be special guild books and such.  For some short stories maybe a manuscrit... but better stick with books, less trouble to GMs.  I think that for PS size would be hard to have only one person to read everything (I mean, with such system even I would want to publish something), they could ask for players help (trusty ones ).
Really good idea, congratulations.

[FlippySeal]

I think that would be a great idea. I also think it would be cool for guilds to create certificate thingies!
And a suggestion, once it\'s written, it cannot be moved from your inventory unless to submit to the publisher, to prevent unpublished circulation.

[Icefalcon]

I have thought about the writting of books for a long time, but your suystem seems to have taken most of the flaws out. The problem I see is that it is going to be way too much work to have GMs \"publishing\" the books. Once this game grows to a large size, it will be nearly impossible to keep up with all the books being written. I mean, every newbie is going to want to write his own book, and there will be thousands... IMO, the GMs are going to have a heck of a time keeping up...

One of the earlier ideas I had was that a book would get ratings to show its quality. Say there is this great story, properly titled and summerized. People read it and give it a good rating. But then some noob wants to be funny, so he writes useless junk in his book. That book would get poor ratings. But then there is always those who abuse the system, and some noob is going to make a crap book, get his little noob friends to give it a high rating, then sell it for a high price (assuming people cant read it before they buy it). One way around this would be a \"show\" option on the interface, where someone can show any item to a friend. Books, swords, recources, whatever could be shown before sold. This would prevent most trade scams as well.

[Harwen]

Ahh! No I got back too late! I forgot to add some features!

Yes, I\'ve also been working out this idea and its flaws for a while Icefalcon, I think I rubbed out most, but there is always room for improvement

Like here:

Only the author can make copies of the book.  
To make copies, buy the same type of book, and use the original on the blank book.I don\'t want it to be too complicated with licenses and such so I\'ll leave it at this.

The Original copy has the word (Original) replace (Unpublished) when sucessfully published .

The first five (I guess maybe its too many or few) books that you copy have (First Edition) added to the title.  This adds to the rarity of the book, as well as the Original copy status.

The date is added to the book every time its edited, (last edited) in the description is changed to (Completed XX/XX/XX).

The Original can be dropped, sold and traded . Because It would be a nice little treasure to find when dungeon raiding. Some nice tome of spells or an adventure story.

Cost for the whole process:

Money for material (Book, Leaflet)

Money for publishing (Paid upfront)

Money for Re-Publishing, if failed

Money for copies


To keep there being 1,000,000 books, pamphlets written a day:

Any single player/account (dependin on how extreme you wanna go) can only submit up to 1 book a day, and 2 leaflets a day for publishing.

To keep the strain on the GM publishers down:

1 Page = 200 words?

Leaflet: Cost: 10 Tria; Max Words: 200 words, whatever.

Mini Zine: Cost: 50 Tria; Max Words: 600

Paperback: Cost 100 Tria; Max Words: 1000

Hardcover: Cost 150 Tria; Max Words: 2000 words

Tome: Cost 250 Tria; Max Words 4000 words

Word count does not include title or description ( always 50 words max) but does include spaces between paragraphs and formatting like indentation and characters. Not spaces,...like \" \" that one.  

Oh, and you can stock your book in libraries for a small fee, so you don\'t have to sell it yourself. Like a 20% comission on every book sold. Jayose has got to eat too!Though, any shop that has your book can sell it, like you can sell it yourself, but of course, a library would be the idea choice sell books.

Oh, and also, for recipies, spells, weapon smithing, e.t.c. you HAVE  to say what you are describing to make in a list, in the description. Ex. This is a book showing how to make the Sword of Passion, Green Eggs and Spam, and The Red Spell of Hot Foot.

Also, OOC books/leaflets are not allowed . Everything MUST, I say MUST be in IC form. Spell lists, monster guides, and smithing, newbie guides all have to be IC.

Ex.

How to cast the Red Spell of Hot Foot:

First, seek out the Glyphs necessary for the spell.

The Crimson Glyph can be found in the region of \"blank\".

The Darkness Glyph can be found somewhere in the caves of \"blankety blank, blank\"

Ex.

Guide to hunting Yliakum Volume 1:

The best way to hunt monsters in Yliakum is with the proper tools; a bow, arrow or a spear are always great. You want to run whenever possible. Do not forget to take plenty of supplies as you will be stalking the creature for some time. Remember not to overload yourself though, as carrying a freshly felled beast back to market can be quite a burden with a heavy stock of food. Perhaps a party would be wiser as they can pool their resources....

You see how that\'s like if it was a real book? Doesn\'t seem too hard for me.

A OOC red flag option should be added to the GM menu, which means automatic rejection.

Rejection means you get a message saying that your book has been rejected (if its published you get the opposite message) and you go pick it up and a slip of paper saying what was wrong with it. You must then RE-submit it paying the fee over again.

This will keep jerks, noobs and otherwise idiots from messing with the GM\'s. Also, if a rich jerk wants to send alot of books that are stupid every day with multiple accounts, then that person can be banned from the publishing office. But I doubt that\'ll be a problem, I\'d rather talk it out or punish with a /mute

[Waylander]

And I doubt anybody will get rich if he is that annoying anyways.

This is one of the best ideas I have ever seen, but don\'t make it a job.  Heh, I would continue praising you but that would be bad.

Maybe a quick copy option would be good, like sending it into a printing press, ordering so many copies to be made and paying for the material.

[shadowkhan]

What a cool idea. Would also put Jayose\'s library to good use XD

[ForteX]

IC of course .....
Anyway, would be very fun to have a guild personal library, with tomes that narrate the guild history, its battles and all ^_^
I was just thinking of the various options of writng you were faster XD
Also, about the book, you could do a check on the summary that the author writes before buying the book, of course, he could cheat, but that would mean he was a thief and, why not, he should be arrested
I really like the way the ideas were developed, Devs should take specialy attention to this topic.

[Darkmoon]

I would actually prefer to limit the submissions to:
- books: once per week
- leaflets: twice per week
(just to cut down on Dev stress of reading massive amounts of work)

But, I think this idea has merit, and would like to work out the finer details of setting up something like this system in PS.  Harwen, you\'ll probably be hearing from me post-CB about this.

Good job!   )

[Waylander]

Good job? Great job!!

And maybe not limiting by books and leaflets but something like
1 Tome per month
2 Hardcovers per month
1 paperback per week
2 mini zines per week
2 leaflet per week

[Adeli]

I like this idea, and I was going to suggest limitation on the number of tomes etc.. then Waylander beat me to it. Good idea Harwen.

[Cyberchu]

Why not have writing books as an option only for higher level/skil players. that would prevent noobs from swamping the market as well as preventing alts from doing the same thing. If a newbie writes a good book then he can give it to a higher level person (like his guild leader) who will publish it for him.

[Harwen]

First thing\'s first:

I think I might have made it a point within the jumble of my many paragraphs.

But how the Publishing system works is that you are allowed to read the description of an item during trades, in shops, off the floor, e.t.c. AND the description tells you that the book was published or not. Meaning the description wouldn\'t be misleading.

And Yes Darkmoon, I like your idea better, I could imagine how a daily limit would be trying. And I doubt many would have so much to write that they had to send in six books a week.

I think though that it should be separated into two categories, Small Texts, Leaflets and the next level, and Large Texts to determine how many can be submitted.

Because I could very well submit two leaflets, two mini zines, a paperback, a hardcover and a tome -- I mean lookit my posts!

Edit

I sorta don\'t like the thing of high-level players being the only ones to write a book. While I do admit it would be a little useless to give the average(I stress this word) noobot a 3000 word tome to write. A wonderful few though would want to write guides or journals of their adventures in wonderous IC!

[ForteX]

I agree with Harwen, no skill limiting on the possibility of writing or not. There are some pretty cool newbies willing to roleplay and to be helpful. Limiting to high skilled people... well, how would the person get their skill high anyway? After all, they would need to practice it
Great Job Harwen.

[Slovenian Man Ilja?]

Originally posted by Harwen
I am constantly reminded of some games that do not deserve to cross my glowing keyboard, and a feature where you could type something out on a peice of paper, and well, mainly it was used for fooling newbies out of some money. I was thinking that it wouldn\'t be a bad idea really with some enforcement, or some way of checking that it wasn\'t totally full of gibberish.

Then I thought:
You\'re a skilled crafter, or a teacher, a ministral(to you uncultered heathens, bards ), pharmacist or a writer even better!

Decision:  

You buy a few slips of paper, or if you are willing to spend a little more, you can buy blank books, choose your cover color, cover icon, e.t.c.

You decide you want to make a cook book with some recipies, write down a potion recipie, a song, or a story of a legendary hero that will be a series, so you think you could make some money out of it and perhaps help some newbies out with some basic tips. Okay good.

Content:  

After you write your story/recipie list/whatever. Make the title text, choose the icon that\'ll go onto the cover. The date will be added when you complete the book for things such as rarity. Also, you get to write the description for the book, like reading the back cover or dust jacket of a book. (What, the server is going to summarize your book for you?)

But now, you have a book or a piece of paper full of writing that no one can read until they own it. This is what happens in other crappy games more or less.  This is how people get to be cheated out of their money (sometimes its deserved, most of the time not) Well.

Limbo:  

Until you go \"publish\" your book, or \"leaflet\", I\'ll call it. It will have the words (Unpublished) next to its name and in its description it will say (This book has not been published) This is to tell the buyer and the writer that the book has not been verified as being authentic as to its title and description.

Publishing:  

This is the tricky part really, because the player must go to a publishing guild that is npc controlled and submit their unpublished book or manuscript, for inspection. Now, the publishing is just a person GM or otherwise to check that the description matches the content. The title doesn\'t have to, cause, hey, its a title.

Also, perhaps things such as foul language and er, minor-sensitive subjects should be warned about (cause of freedom of speech or whatever, but I prefer it not be allowed at all UNLESS used with tact)

Then the GM can do a few things, (this through a simple form-type menu interface of some sorts, if anyone wants drawings, i\'ll be happy to \'blige)

One, let the writer know that some things need work, by sending it back to the office with \"Flags\" because only a few things can be wrong with it, this can be a simple as a checkmark button on the interface :

Red Flags:
1) Your title is inappropriate (foul language or a just stupid phrase \"I have sex with cantalopes\" or \"Kiss me I\'m not retarted\" , I can think of worse, but I like to keep the boards more or less clean )

2) Your Description Does not match the content (Bad description of the content, example: (its a book about the crystal mines) Description: Meh. My head hurts.

3) Your Description is Misleading: (You\'re saying its a book of spells and the nessecary runes, but its really just a description of what you were wearing at the moment)

4) Your Content is Inappropriate: (You\'ve given away quest information, are trying to pass along possible cheats and/or exploits (idiot), or are saying very nasty things about someone, or are trying to publish a script of a harcore pornography movie )

5) Your Content is incomplete: Faliure to add a \"To be continued\" at the end of the story if it was meant to, or trying to pass off three sentences as a book.

6) Bad grammar/Formatting: You type with the ball of your heels and do not understand english. Your indentations and line breaks are whacked out, whatever.

Loose Strings:  

A bad book, or a book with red flags is sent back to the publishing office, and awaits the pickup of the author for re-editing. Perhaps a fee for checking the book could keep jerks from re-submitting bad books to mess with the GMs, or the Publishing fee would be given upfront. Incentive for spell-checking!

If the Publisher GM wants to add suggestions or comments he may do so, but must leave his/her name. Though with the possible large amount of books, this will be rarely used except maybe with really good stories and such.

When approved, the GM sends it back to the publishing office with a green flag. When the author wants to pick it up he must pay a publishing fee. Then, he can make copies of his published book (only published books can be copied) for the price of the printing material. Then the (Unpublished) text is gone, and (This book has been published by \"GM Name\") is now in the description.

This is of course, if there is some sort of text editor in PS that allows you to either import .txt files or to save in some other format to your harddrive (cause I doubt many people could write an entire short story at one go)

Also, your \"original\" can be sold, but it cannot be destroyed or thrown away, and there will be an (original) status in the book description.

Hmm?

I wonder if this is plausable, in accordance to volume of books to be inspected, but with cost of printing material, book or leaflet, the writing skill maybe? and the cost of publishing it will be kept down.

Wow dude , great idea ,it would be quiet cool if i could write a story and it would be published in the Library , but some players are scum and they would write sick and sex storys which might be a problem i think a good player should be the Libraryan and he should look the storys and publish the good ones , but stop the bad storys from being published. Know what i meen?