More Than Books - Publishing Formats & Options

It's one they've been using to describe the opportunity that some players will take to do lewd things with names, or other design features, if given the opportunity. "Time to P----". I'm not coming from a UO background so I don't know how it was handled there.

 

Yeah. Pretty much. It all seems pretty much like an insiders club to Captain Jack. Least you are up front about it.

Well. To be honest, this was presented to the community as a little bit of a Hobson's choice, take it or leave it style. Have a read of this quoted from FireLotus:
The Council of Scribes will be a player run group similar to the College of Arms that will be working with the Development team, under my guidance,


So yeah. Some guy was hand picked by the devs, for what reason? Who knows. Then FL releases the information that not only is there a player run group now, but they are working with the dev team and directly with her. That about says all you need to hear on the matter. You want your stuff in the game, you have to give it to the scribes.

Then you have the following quote from FL:
Unless the work is approved by myself and the Dev team, it will need to be published using the player publishing mechanic.

To Captain Jack that sounds very clear again. Since work needs to be approved by FL and the dev team, you either have to wait for the "player publishing mechanic" or submit it to the council for review! Here is the false choice everyone, because there IS no player publishing mechanic at this time. Thus, you do actually need to submit the work to the council if you want it in at this point and it WILL be reviewed and approved or not before it gets to FL's eyes.

That clarity should have been presented at the start of this, just tell us up front guys, this is the ONLY way to do it at this point in time, this is what you do, this is who reviews it, and this is why we picked them to do it. Not putting this information out there is only going to result in a bad outcome... As you can clearly see. Because it wasn't fair.

 

I agree with you and I also think Bowen should be given credit for speaking about it in the forum. I always imagined that the forum was the primary place for discussing things, but I don't know if it remains so.

 

Like the one at timestamp 1:01:12 in Hangout of the Avatar ~ Nature to Nutrition?

 

Here are some potential recipes for crafting books. There is plenty of room for variations.

Recipes

Book Cover =
Hardened Leather x 1
Cubit Measure x 1
Tailoring Scissors x 1

Large Book Cover =
Hardened Leather x 2
Cubit Measure x 1
Tailoring Scissors x 1

Supple Book Cover =
Supple Leather x 1
Cubit Measure x 1
Tailoring Scissors x 1

Cheap Book Cover =
Piece of Canvas Fabric x 1
Cubit Measure x 1
Tailoring Scissors x 1

Book =
[Parchment] x ??
Book Cover x 1
Glue x 1

Book =
[Parchment] x ??
Large Book Cover x 1
Glue x 1

Book =
[Parchment] x ??
Supple Book Cover x 1
Glue x 1

Substitute other forms of paper for [Parchment] as needed. Add a Leather Strap for larger books or if the graphic shows a strap. Add Iron Binding, gems, or such for fancier books if there are existing 3D models for them.

[Book] + [Dye] to change color of the book.

Book covers are made by Tailors on Tailoring Stations. Not really sure where books would be assembled, but they don't have to be limited to just one crafting table type.

 

The short answer is, you don't. With a mechanic going in that allows anyone to write and publish. The best you can achieve is a player self-policed system of some kind. I've suggested on a couple occasions that there be a way to 'report' a book for inappropriate content. If X number of players report a book then it gets flagged for review. If it passes that review then that report option is removed so people can't abuse the system and report the same book over and over again. If it doesn't pass then it's flagged and removed.

This would only apply to books published to the world. On a little more thought they could also put a timer on newly published books. If not enough people report it after say.. 1-3 months than the book essentially passes a "public review" and can no longer be reported except through regular channels.

That is probably how I would handle it. It would essentially be the entire community who polices that.

 

I think it would also be appropriate to create barriers to publication so that it's not such an easy process. Either with cost or licensing or such. Since it won't be limited by a particular crafting skill, they should limit it in other ways.

 

This is an interesting thread. I'd like to throw in a couple of suggestions which I think will be very useful in creating a viable book publishing economy in game:
- Unique author/crafter identifications incorporated into the crafting process. This could be similar in concept to the crafter's information already planned to be attached to weapons, and could consist of a standard (unforgeable) page listing the player(s) involved in publishing as well as (in the case of an anthology) the various authors.
- Built-in crafting support for limited editions with numbered copies. Possibly this could be done by pre-loading a printing press with a certain number of blank pages, and selecting some kind of 'limited edition' attribute that numbers each copy and uniquely identifies this print run as a limited edition (possibly via visible publication date).

 

@Jack

This is one reason why I say there is a perception problem.

For starters we can't say (to my knowledge at least) that a Dev picked someone. Such as in the cases of the Poet's Circle and the College, both groups appeared out of player interest and approached Portalarium on their own. I seriously doubt FL simply picked Winfield and asked him to put a group together. They would have been talking about and it was most likely Winfield who brought it up.in the first place. Though you'll have to ask them about the particulars.

I'm not sure what the complaint is between waiting for the mechanic or submitting for review. The one vital piece of information you're not mentioning is that the devs were looking for material to use to seed EP1 with books and that means every one of those books would either 1: Have to be written by Portalarium or 2: be reviewed by Portalarium. It is NOT at all the same as simply publishing your own work in game.

Self published material doesn't need to be reviewed by Portalarium.. but material they used to seed EP1 as "official" lore needs to be consistent not just with canon but with the other works. In this case, making sure that happens is a LOT of work potentially going through more submissions than Portalarium could process. That is why a group was necessary but it never meant your work couldn't be self-published.

Not having your material used to seed books for EP1 is not such a big deal is it? Really? But it is kinda cool for the authors who were willing to go through that process. It was an opportunity for players to contribute on that level. It would not have stopped anyone from writing their own material to publish.

And is it such a big deal to wait for the mechanic? We're still in pre-alpha of all things. Most player's won't publish anything until well after launch. This may just be my personal opinion but it's making mountains of mole hills whether anything gets published pre-launch or not.

I don't know whether precise criteria for seeded material will be posted or not but there's a few things I think you can count on.

1: Must be Richard approved. They need to like it.
2: It needs to be "lore consistent".
3: Needs to be well written technically. That is no obvious errors. (Subject to some opinion, I don't think anyone expects absolute perfection)

This is going to remain true whether you use our services or not. The job of the scribes were to make sure that #2 and #3 were met. Everything that finished that process went to FL. We filtered nothing. Only 3 works were pulled and in each of those cases the authors had decided to wait and/or rework their piece. It's a shame so many were left hanging with the big to-do that got everything put on hold.. but the point is we were never a censor club. Nothing was ever rejected out of person preference. Or to put it another way.. everything that finished editing and passed lore checks was "approved". If were didn't put submissions through this process, Portalarium would've had to do it (again talking about potential material to seed EP1.. not all player written work) and the devs still would've had to like it and have Richard's stamp of approval.

 

You wouldn't expect other player groups to have their internal discussions publically on the SotA forum. It's just not practical. There's been a few meetings with TeamSpeak, a couple meetings in IRC and currently we have a private forum on AvatarsCircle.

I'm happy enough to talk about stuff as an individual from within a group (though I hope I'm not saying anything prematurely.. but I don't think I'm giving anything away here) but no player run group holds their internal discussions here publically.

Not sure if it's been brought up in this thread or not but I imagine that publishing would be a gold sink. That it should cost X amount per book depending upon whatever options are used/available. It only makes sense that you'd pay for 1: The cost of the physical books produced and 2: the printing service (which may or may not include shipping fees).

There has been some talk on ways to achieve these things. Among the Scholars we've been talking about maker's marks (author) and publisher marks. There's also the idea for a possible publishing code which might include numbering each book published (imagine getting your hands on #1 out of 5000).

It would also be very neat if you could choose the number of books to be published.. that would allow for limited edition prints.

 

There are differences. First, the scholars were supposed to get additional "lore" information that others didn't have. As far as I know the other two groups don't have special access. Second, these other groups aren't producing things that will be replaced by a mechanic in game, creating a murky pre- and post-release situation. Third, these others didn't seem to have an extensive "review" function - they were just more about helping you create what you wanted to do. Fourth, they weren't the only option for submitting things.

My interaction with the College of Arms was enlightening and quite helpful to what I wanted to do. My interaction with the former scholars was murky and involved. It didn't feel like I knew what was going on behind the scenes and also felt a lot like gate keeping. That's just my perception. I think it could be helped if the process was not so involved and a little more up front.

 

I sure would when their work affects other players directly. If it's something they're doing on their own that's fine, like a guild or a POT.

 

Let me enlighten you a bit then. Both the College and Poet's Circle with directly with Portalarium and have access to some information/lore early. The College for example has had some access to lore to help them produce Arms for the various towns. Even the Poet's Circle can use bits of lore to customize and fine tune the music they make for particular areas. These have both been talked about in live chats with members of both groups. It's not complete access to lore. It's just what they need to do the job. It should be the same with us.

You may also not know that the current thinking is that the heraldic generator is intended to go in-game. The College helps people basically reserve their arms to as close of an approximation as realistically possible but new players who earn arms in-game will be able to go to the in-game College and create their arms in-game. Current thinking but it's the best long term solution.

On #3 The College does work to ensure consistency in style much in the same way we check for consistency in lore. The College has well defined rules which exist for a reason. Yes they help you make what you want.. within their very limited rule set. We're doing essentially the same thing only with grammar and lore.

The Poet's Circle on the other hand is providing a service directly to Portalarium.. not the players. So neither the mechanic or review comparison is really applicable.

As for your personal experience all I can really say is.. we're new at this. It's not an excuse, just a fact of the situation. For me personally, everything felt a little a rushed and we're still finding our way. I'm sure once we get going again this week we'll be happy to take feedback on the process.

The College's work affects player's directly. They don't have their internal discussions here.

 

Gotcha.

Basically, nothing will prevent defacing a draft book, if the author puts it in a place where other people can access it.

I suppose Portalarium could go the whole hog and tag ownership of a draft book to Person A while showing any alterations by Person B, C, D and E in different coloured texts, but let's face it, Shroud isn't going to be a word processing program. Protecting your stuff is up to you.

I thought there was going to be limited by cost, and/or by how many times a press can publish per day.

Do you mind if I put in my 2 cents here?

Originally I was "that guy" (or girl, actually) approached to head the Council. Why? Basically, LB asked me if I'd be interested, due to my experience in writing for Ultima mods, fanfics, wikis, and running the Ultima fanfic website. In short, I seemed to have the experienced required to help run and organise a community writing group for Shroud. From what I gathered before I ended up declining to be involved, those who were asked to be Scribes were people who had established themselves in Shroud's community as competent writers and reliable people (or that's how it seemed to me).

Their main purpose, such as it was when I was there, was to read content submitted by the community and pass on content to FireLotus if it met certain criteria (1. The writing is good! 2. It keeps within the rules Portalarium has provided (wordcount, appropriate content etc)).

Basically, the devs only wanted to see content that was worth reading, and they wanted a few community members they felt they could trust to highlight any gems (and provide proof reading/editing if required).

Yes, it completely was a gatekeeping process. That was the point.

 

Again that's in the context of finding material to use for seeding EP1. Not player publishing as a whole. (Just saying)

 

Here is the initial afore mentioned announcement.

https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum...of-novia-an-introduction-and-a-charter.14518/

 

Maybe it's a matter of degree then not of kind. Arms/music doesn't require the same level of lore that writing good fiction does. I only half-jokingly took on the Tales from the Vale to see what I could do with a vacuum of information. The others don't have such a strong limitation. Music can work with general descriptions, arms are more personal in nature. I admit I haven't paid as close attention to the other groups because that's not where my interest lies. But I bet if it did, it would be a whole lot easier to create there. I remember when the College of Arms started - they were very good about disseminating information about what they were doing and bringing people in. Poet's Circle from what I remember too. Like I said I think this could benefit from a little more public discussion.

 

You might also recall the College had a lot of early trouble with confusion, people claiming censorship and such. It took awhile before some of those people seemed to "get it". We were only active for less than 2 weeks before we had to put everything on hold because of a handful of players.

 

The point for me is I don't care what the College of Arms has access to because it doesn't change the way I will craft my arms. And I would imagine 99.9% of those who use them would agree.

In contrast, if the Scholars get special lore, that could very much change my writing. It's a little bit like the guess what number I'm thinking about game. I have to hope that I don't transgress hidden lines that I will only know about after the fact. But lines that others, who can also write books, get to know about in advance. Do you not see the frustration in that? This is not a worry about censorship, it's about the writing itself.

So as the good dragon mentioned, gatekeeping. Gatekeeping from an editing perspective - maybe. But when Tales from the Vale were announced there were three pages of them in 2 weeks, over half by 2 authors! A Port employee can easily work on that. Why do we need an involved process for such a little bit of content? Gatekeeping from a lore perspective? Please no. It would only be fair if the scholars have no special access to lore and only provide the fact-checking against what has already been publicly released. Or if the scholars are prevented from writing books themselves.

Plus this doesn't change the whole issue which brought the whole thing down in the first place. Compensation for content included in the released game!

https://shroudoftheavatar.com/forum...of-novia-an-introduction-and-a-charter.14518/

There are a lot of unanswered questions and inconsistencies here. This is not encouraging.

 

First off, compensation issue only comes into play IF Portalarium uses material officially. You will note that all Tales from the Vale submissions have been invalidated. They can't be used now unless the authors resubmit their work (unsolicited by Portalarium). You will also note that our charter (now public) makes no mention of Portalarium using submitted content. And I say this again.. that was ONLY for works to seed EP1. If that means EP1 won't have any books written by players at launch well.. that's kinda sad but it was players who brought it up in the first and made an issue out of it.

To date we have not been given access to any lore unnecessary to confirm consistency in a piece of writing. The lore we check is the same stuff you all have access to. Known canon such as BotA and FL's work.

You know that 1 page in the forum lists 20 threads right? 3 pages is 60 submissions in 2 weeks. Portalarium could not be expected to handle that much content on a long term basis. Which is rather moot now. We are not directly involved in helping to seed EP1 with player content.

I remind you again. Our services are optional. There is nothing preventing you from publishing your own work. We can't stop you and we don't want to. Going on about 'gate keeping' to any degree at this point is meaningless. It was limited in scope then and after the fact it simply isn't happening and if Portalarium doesn't use player content to seed EP1 than the compensation thing is meaningless.

There is really no point in continuing on about it here. If you have questions or concerns.. please bring them to the Scholar's forum. That is where that discussion belongs.