Book Publishing

First off, I love the idea of being able to publish books. But there are a few things I've been thinking about that I believe need support. I don't believe I've seen these issues discussed before:

1. Players should have an option to create a book and not publish it to the world. I hope that functionality exists.
2. Players should have the ability to mass produce books without publishing them to the world. (It makes it easier to sell if they're not showing up free in some cave somewhere)
3. Players should have the ability to reasonably protect their intellectual property within the world of New Britannia. Meaning that if I decide to publish a book, someone else shouldn't be able to take a copy of it and resell it without permission from the original author.
4. Players that hand copy books they did not write and then resell them for profit are bad people. I'm not sure what to do with them, but I'd like to think something could be done on behalf of authors that work hard to create good material.

That is all.

 

1: Check
2: Check
3: Safe bet?
4: Check.. I think..

Rather than a shameless plug I will simply comment and provide some almost.. insider info.

A short while back I compiled most of the book related ideas into a single doc and sent it to Portalarium via FireLotus. While I haven't gotten a reply.. you may have taken notice that Richard took a day for "book planning" . Among those ideas included both crafting and publishing options like how many books to print and whether or not they're published to the 'world'.

A published book shouldn't be allowed to be copied or edited in any way. Only manuscripts (hand written) should allow for manual copies or editing. I'm pretty sure allowing the author to set permissions on manuscripts was suggested.

Between crafting, editing, publishing and other options the doc ended up around 8 pages.

 

That's awesome, man.

 

1. I believe most books will be "single print" so to speak, where you pay per copy and not necessarily to get the book mass distributed across the game world. The mass distribution bit is only for winners of the Scholars contests, if I understand right. You'll probably also be able to create hand-written manuscripts.

2. Mass producing books pretty much is "publishing". Can you clarify what difference you mean?

3. That would be neat but very challenging to implement. Heck, that's not even something that actually works in real life. You can very easily copy someone else's work and sell it. The only thing that might stop you is the law, but the law is a human system that leaves room for interpretation. I'm not sure how you could write logic to recognize and prevent plagiarism in the context of the game world.

4. Off with their heads!

 

The impression I originally had of the Printing Press description was that once you used it, your product was not only in your own hands, it was also being used by the game as an asset for dungeons. I feel like there should be an option for that controlled by the player.

 

Oh heavens, I hope not. I wouldn't want to kill a lich only to get a book that reads, "LOL NO LEWTS 4 U!"

 

Well, that's probably what's going to happen isn't it? I mean, how can they (Portalarium) choose what has value and what doesn't? I think the best thing to do is let players decide what has value. If you or I get a book that reads "I like cheese1s. Coleslaw no mice jump 4ever" we'll probably both pitch that immediately. But someone else may decide that's worth building their entire library around. Art is not black and white.

And really, if you think about it. Having all that nonsense in the game is what's going to shine a bright light on the stuff you find that actually IS worth something.

 

Actually, it kind of is. It's fine if people want to write their own little notes or books like that, but mass publishing is something that one person can't really do on his or her own. It requires equipment and capital. That's what the Scholars are there for. They're the New Britannian Publishing Company.

 

It's my understanding that there have been some major changes to that arrangement.

 

There have been. The Scholars are running contests now. The winners of the contests have their work published. See here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...m-starts-september-24-2014.14712/#post-249208

 

Richard confirmed some of this over Twitter (current thinking at that time). I will add some of my own interpretation around it.

1. You publish a book using a printing press which makes it uncopyable except by you. So it doesn't become available anywhere. Only you can create the items and then sell them.
2. This is covered by the answer to 1. You control the flow of the physical items. Publishing just makes them uncopyable (probably non-modifiable too).
3. Covered by 1. and 2.
4. Guess those players will have to be reported? Perhaps there an be a plagiarism detection system?

 

No, what I meant was that they're not the gatekeeper of published books. Anyone can publish a book, the last I heard.

 

That seems like an easy thing to implement if there's not. Certainly it could be circumvented, but a very basic compare could be performed to keep it from being super easy.

 

Where'd you hear that?

 

I think it's always been that way. See below...

I think the Scholars program toyed around with the idea of having some kind of role with that, but nothing more become of it.

 

My first though on that was that by "publish" here, all they mean is "print a copy". I really hope they don't give people the ability to publish straight to loot tables. That'll summon the spirit of Trololol, Bane of Immersion.

 

I'm pretty sure that's what publish means -----> straight to loot tables.

How else can they do it? Who's going to say "this person can write to loot tables" but "this other idiot can't"?

 

Yes, that is my interpretation as well You could use the Magic Printing Press once per week to print one copy of your book for your personal use (or to give to someone else), but mass production (i.e., what appears in libraries and loot tables, etc.) would be regulated by Portalarium.

 

O @FireLotus!

Beats me. In most games devs just populate the game world with NPC lore, then let players create books one at a time. Honestly, I don't care if books ever get to loot tables. Why would a skeleton have a book?

 

I think it's more like when you adventure in the bandit caves (I can't remember what they're called, the guys that wear some kind of hat or something - who cares?) and there's a stack of books in the corner....that's where you'll find "Hey man, I was walking my dog today and he just stopped. And I just stopped. Then I remembered the USC game was on and I was like...man."

It's going to be awesome! lol