More Than Books - Publishing Formats & Options

This concern can be pretty much corrected if anyone on the Council of Scribes can confirm they are not receiving any additional lore from Portalarium than what's in the current release of Shroud (FWIW: they hadn't while I was there, only restrictions in what could be written about to start off with).

[Edit: Bowen just said that they have received no more lore than what we have, so there we go!]

Well...not exactly, IMO. If the scholars are confirming that the fiction lore matches the game lore, that's fine. I see it as checking consistency. Lots of fan fiction writers ask people to do lore consistency checks.

However, that said...Shroud's lore vacuum. The lore vacuum made this a flawed process to begin with in an official capacity, as if we assume that scholars had no more access to the lore than we did they could only confirm lore consistencies with what's shown in the (always subject to change) test releases...not the full scope of the game.

That doesn't matter so much now, but I don't think it's unfair for the Council to still want submissions to be checked as a form of quality control.

If Portalarium's not directly involved any more, it's a moot point, and they have officially stated they are not.

As the Council hasn't said in their latest post anything about passing books along to devs, it's safe to assume the writing project is now officially a hobby endeavour, just like fan fiction.

[Edit: And also as Bowen said, you can still publish your own stuff.

[Right now, the Council's library is just going to be a selection of books they themselves like and think are good. And that's fine.]

 

Actually it was one thread with three pages and 51 submissions. The submissions slowed as time went on, and were not going to be kept open forever. I don't see how reviewing 51 submission would be a lot of work, especially since it was done before with the Cave Fables.

We are now one step removed behind a curtain.

Not entirely true since this impacts book publishing in general, but I will transfer my questions there.

 

The difference is that's usually done post-release. We're talking special access to lore pre-release that could affect the writing process for those who aren't so lucky to be included. But Bowen disavowed receiving anything unique, so that satisfies me as long as that continues. As far as lore checking, I think a lot of players can do it, and there's no reason to have a special council for it.

If all you said is true, there's really no reason for the scholars to exist as a special entity on the forum. That grants them a semi-official status if not in actuality, certainly in appearance. And if another group wanted to do the same thing, I doubt they would be allowed. This is a little bit of sleight of hand, if the recommended works of the scholars do get picked up and used in Ep1. We shall see.

I don't want authors to think that this is their only route now to write fiction for SoTA.

 

The topic here is technically publishing formats and options. All talk of the Scholars and the like are indirectly related at best. I haven't made a big stink about it since I wanted to help clear matters up before the Scholars got rolling again.. now that we're officially no longer "on hold" I'd like that discussion to be kept in the official forum.

I'm about >< to committing myself to working on a design doc to include most (if not all) of the ideas in both this and past threads regarding all stages of the process from crafting to publishing. There's so many great ideas that have come up over the past 18 months. Compiling them all into a doc seems like a worth while endeavor. I'm also inspired at having seen the food to nutrition doc.

 

While reading some of the really old book threads I just got another idea.

Way back last year redfish mentioned perhaps dev written books should have illustrations. Stuff like reagents or images for a bestiary. Well what if Portalarium had a basic set of stock images. I know it's extra work but I thought it could be something they could build on gradually.

Basic stuff really.. a lot of which they could probably pull from existing concept work. Such as images for a bestiary or common NB symbols (ie such as from the sigils or heraldry charges). Make that stuff available to place in books.

Also following that idea.. perhaps some decorative design work for pages. (At a price of course).

edit: ok technically the stock images is redfish's idea. I'm trying to keep track of who thought of what ideas.. at least the most original ones.

 

Stock Shroud images is a nice idea. Depending on how books eventually end up working, maybe an image could even be selected for imprinting on the cover of books, or wax seals for scrolls.

 

Wax seals.. now you've done it.

Detailed formatting options isn't something I expect to see any time soon.. but a markup language for formatting purposes could provide the basis for a solution and has been suggested as early as.. ohh.. October of last year by DEricF.

Imprinting would be something akin to applying a normal map to a smooth surface. It would have to be limited either to players with a coat of arms (either personal or guild) or a generic seal with text display. They could probably make a normal map out of the vector data from the Arms.. at least I'm pretty sure they're using vectors.

 

You definitely do not need to work with the Scholars in order to be published. Our pre-release endeavors are only to help those who need assistance with writing, or want us to check against existing lore (what little we have). Our main involvement post-release will be in collecting books, scrolls, music, etc, and placing them in a public library, printing copies of books on behalf of those who do work with the Scholars, and organizing events (book signings, readings, lore discussions, book clubs, etc). We will also be taking books not created by us to be placed in the library; no censorship is implied.

Yes, even standard HTML markup would allow a large range of formatting options, including the addition of images.

It sounds like there will be some sort of library of images, that will be assembled to create a given set of Arms. This same set could easily be extended to allow their use in books as images, imprints, or even completely separate endeavors (tattoos, wax seals, maker's marks, etc).

 

Ok. maybe it's time for me to start a new thread as my focus is starting to seriously shift here a bit.

I've just finished compiling most of the ideas related to books since April of last year plus 5 or 6 hours of research online in regards to the crafting related aspects. There are some major areas that need to be covered.

These are mainly Crafting, Editing/Formatting, Rights/Permissions and finally Publishing and Distribution.

There are a lot of awesome ideas from different folks. Most of which are probably beyond EP1's scope but hey, you never know. I think though that with careful planning and implementation the groundwork can be laid to expand related systems to include most of the ideas that have been put forth to date.

For the sake of keeping things fresh in my mind and also because I think of the stuff I learned and new ideas are kinda fun I'm just going to ahead and tell you about it!

Ok so most of the stuff I worked on today is related to crafting. Actually making everything from scratch. This was largely inspired by Richard's Food & Nutrition doc and I wanted to go through much the same process. Like food and all things related.. it's ALL craftable. Even the ink.

The idea of special inks came up and it occurs to me that certain reagents might be added to dye based ink or carbon ink to create magical properties. ie moon runes.

3 basic types of paper are possible.

Wood paper made from bark or wood chips.
Cotton or fibre based paper.. this is an interesting one as cotton can be mixed with other fibres to make the pulp for paper. This includes silk.. or spider silk.. (use your imagination on that one). Wheat or flax straw can also be used.

Mummy Paper! Seriously. At one point someone actually suggested that mummy wrappings be used in paper production. Like cotton based papers, the linen is broken down into pulp. (Cotton paper is actually made from recycled cloth rather than directly from raw cotton). This could have interesting properties.

Finally parchment. Well you guys who are keen to use skins.. well parchment is made from animal skins. Parchment would actually be made by a tanner. Technically speaking any animal that can be field dressed and supply a hide could be used to make parchment. Dragon parchment anyone? The production process is similar to tanning.. minus the actual tanning.

To make scrolls you simply glue your paper/parchment pieces together. If you consider the potential materials involved there's all sorts of potential for things like making spell books and magic scrolls.

Other possible media.. Tablets! Which can be wax (or wax covered wood), clay and stone.

Some of there materials require special 'furniture' on the book. For example, a book where the pages are made of parchment will often have metal clasps or leather straps to keep the book closed tightly as parchment is effected by humidity conditions (pages would expand etc).

Then we come to actual book binding.

Book covers can be wood panels covered in cloth, leather or vellum (vellum is parchment specifically made of calfskin which is supposed to be of higher quality).

Books could also have 'limp binding' (no wood panels).

Whether the binding is sewn or glued (of which there are many styles) probably wouldn't be noticeable outside of the actual recipe but it may also depend on the style of book being made. A codex for example will always be sewn together.

Well that's just some of the stuff I took notes on. It would be awesome to have 'furniture' and texture options based on material and dyes. That would allow for about as much variety in crafting books as say.. designing your outfit.

Now to organize everything...

 

I will take this opportunity while being off topic to ask Bowen if we have had any hints as to if & how the Magical Printing Press will be implemented?
If it actually works like advertised then I for one would be happy to let mine aid the Council of Scribes for the library and I think that there are lots of others that would do the same.
Maybe when we are closer to the release, then the Council of Scribes could have a volunteer list for this purpose? (I think this has been mentioned before but that must be over 12 months ago IIRC).

 

Well we're not the Council of Scribes anymore.

We don't know any details about the printing press. Magical or otherwise except what's advertised. 1 free use per.. what was it 1 week? We're hoping to get our own but we don't know the features. The actual functionality probably won't even be designed for a couple months still.

I'm hoping we'll end up with a bookbinding skill and the printing press can double as a crafting station for that purpose. Paper can probably be done through textiles (blast it I forgot to research papyrus.. must do that tomorrow). parchment can come from the tanner.. wood boards for book covers from wood working..

If Richard can be sold on a bookbinding skill there are all sorts of options for customizing hand made books.

 

Regardless of name etc I do hope that there are still plans for a player driven library in game? Or do we need to recreate it?
It is such a lovely little idea.

 

I am hoping that there is a thriving "book economy". I hope it's more than just a little idea! That means libraries, book shops, publishers, authors, events, reviewers, crafters, and more. The mechanics will determine how far it can develop.

 

@Bowen Bloodgood

sorry for throwing out some random mad ramblings here
1) papyrus paper is really bad (but cheap), you can't fold it, it doesn't handle humidity, it doesn't handle dryness, its a scratchy surface so the ink blots, the thickness is hard to control so the same paper would have different thickness leading to ruptures etc.
This is why you had them on a roll and why they never really worked in europe or india.
Given the steampunk elements to Novia I think we can safely say that papyrus is out. Its also bad for the economy since it comes from one source only - parchment is such a better fix to the economy.
2) vellum isn't necessarily calf unless you are speaking french, instead the most common historically was baby goats. There was even reindeer vellum produced on the scandinavian peninsula which was very popular due to its lighter hue. Why calves were a thing was that you got a lot of area out of one hide.
3) almost all fibre paper is mixes or crap, so we would definately want recipes to "get it right"
4) you didn't cover textile paper, which is making silk or cotton cloth to write upon directly (without pulping it)
5) yes mummy papers was likely a real historical thing
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/10/...tween-egyptian-mummies-and-maine-papermaking/
6) on that note you could do paper out of ground bones, but it has to be mixed very cold otherwise you get jelly, its also bad quality, but don't say that aloud
7) as you mention lots of ancient books were sewn together using needle and thread hence bookbinding - then the cover was glued on. So in lots of cases the glue wasn't necessarily for the papers going together, it was so the nice cover wouldn't come of all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookbinding#Historical_forms_of_binding
Since it makes sense from a crafting perspective to have the codex and the cover as different products, which as a final act are put together, so I'd propose that we stick to sewing paper together and leave gluing to the cover.
It makes for a nicer crafting tree. But that might just be me.
8) don't think we'd want to go into tablets and such media etc, then we should be able to write in the sand or on wooden sticks, like chinese bamboo books of Sun Tzu fame. Its better to limit writing to high economy/quality concepts. Otherwise everyone will do it and there will be less an incentive for actual books and thus ruin that economy. It would also be soooo hard to moderate if they want to keep out the *!!!* stuff out of it
9) love metal on old books - that would be soooo nice to have book closure of metal, or scales...
10) wooden paper pulp is a very late thing and is almost impossible to do using hand-power alone, you'd need a mill of some sort


How aobut a revised list?
Paper types
-textile
-pulp (fibre paper)
-hides (parchment, vellum etc)

-textile paper
--cloth (mix cotton+linen - need a better name)
--silk
--spider silk?

-pulp paper
--wood + a mill
--linen
--cotton
--rags
---cloth rags
---mummy rags

-Parchment
--size depending on animal
--vellum (if from baby animal skin)


lets reverse engineer a book shall we, I leave out the objects that are common to other trades

TOME is made from BOOK, CLOSURE and NAILS [tool HAMMER]
CLOSURE is made from METAL [tool PEEN-HAMMER & FULLER] or WOOD [tool CHISEL & MALLET] maybe DRAGON SCALES [tool MAGIC] (closure is things like dressing+clasp)
BOOK is made from CODEX, GLUE and COVER
COVER is made from LEATHER + WOOD or VELLUM + WOOD (hides can be given a color property with DYE)
CODEX is made from several (8,32,64) MANUSCRIPT + THREAD (tool NEEDLE & MALLET)
MANUSCRIPT is made from PAPER and INK (tool PEN & TIME or PRINT)
PAPER can be high qulity VELLUM or SILK, medium quality PARCHMENT or CLOTH PAPER, low quality PULP-PAPER, necrotic quality MUMMY-PAPER or SKIN-PARCHMENT, maybe magical quality SPIDER-SILK-PAPER
lets not dive into INK just yet

compare to

SCROLL is made from 2 WOOD, few (1,2,4) MANUSCRIPT and THREAD/GLUE

ROTULUS is made from WOOD and MANUSCRIPT

 

Whenever I'e used the term books in reference to SOTA I've also included pieces of paper within that category. For me, books is both a type of item and a generic classification for items in the game which have the same behaviour. Part of my thinking here is that the functionality of paper will be very similar to that of a book. How these items are graphically rendered is mostly superfluous; pieces of paper and books would be the same type of object. That's how I've been thinking about it anyway.

I see great potential in books. Not just for the aspects that everyone here has mentioned (which is mostly RP, imo) but for the mechanics which are facilitated by the inclusion of editable books. There is a lot of scope for emergent gameplay here. In previous topics I've suggested that books can be used to create contracts / record agreements.

For example I've discussed how books could be used as a type of currency:
http://rsfie.com/books-as-currency/ & http://rsfie.com/books-as-currency-update/

They could also be used to record details of "companies", which is part of a process that I'm proposing which will eventually allow for the creation of a stock market:
http://rsfie.com/projects/company-registration/


Without knowing how books will be fully implemented I can't say for definite if my ideas will work. Needless to say, I'm positively excited about the potential that books will offer.

 

From a player point of view, I agree - it doesn't matter. You want to click it, place it or read it.
But from a crafting objects point of view you need to be able to tell the difference between a paper with or without writing on it. Then depending on recipes the devs can take shortcuts, maybe the recipe for a BOOK is simply 16 PAPER, INK, GLUE, THREAD, 2 HIDE and a predefined text+cover image and likewise a SCROLL would be 2 HIDES, 2 WOOD, INK and GLUE.
But given it is an RG game there might be some more depth to it and if we work something out it might get the attention it deserves.
As bowen said most of these thoughts are not for E1.

 

@Spoon

I appreciate the feedback but I only spent about 5-6 hours on a broad range of stuff. The only actual process for paper making that I found during that time was for wood paper.. there were several processes actually and the one I settled on is called the Sulfite process.

It is a chemical process for separating lignin from the cellulose fibers in wood and has in fact been around for a long time and can be done by hand. There are other chemical processes and mechanical processes but the sulfite process seemed the best fit for our crafting system and building a paper mill is among the least feasible options. With the sulfite process we have everything we really need in-game already. Translated into SotA crafting it goes something like this..

Sulfurous ash + water + heat = Sulfurous Acid (note NOT sulfuric acid)
Sulfurous acid + salt = cooking liquor. Note here several different substances can be used.. if memory serves this is about controlling the Ph of the liquor
liquor + wood chips (or possibly bark) + heat =.. wood pulp

The wood pulp recipe could probably be simplified to one step. Like all game recipes 100% accurate simulations aren't the goal. We're looking for reasonable approximation.

The wood pulp can be bleached and is then poured into a mold through a deckle which is a wood frame with a wire mesh. Presumably then pressed and dried.

I'm aware of cotton paper but like I said I only found wood paper processes during my first pass.

My thinking on papyrus and tablets is more to do with older writings. Tablets for example may have been used while the population lived underground after the cataclysm. Resources and tools were likely scarce.. but clay and stone? I'm also thinking long term potential for archeology type stuff.. discovery of ancient texts and also just being thorough.

In the end if I send all this stuff in as a design doc and the devs like it they will pick and choose what they want to do.

On the making of scrolls. Scrolls are basically parchment which have been glued together. So you would need multiple pieces of parchment (say 4), 2 rods and glue.

Manuscript is a handwritten work regardless of media.

I have elected to overlook bamboo books for now.

 

The Scholars so far intend to have at least one player built library. I personally will have a personal library and a guild library (the later will probably be open to the public.. or at least parts of it).

Incidentally, every process I can find for cotton paper involves a pulping process that mixes cotton with either rags or old paper. Similar to the sulfite process except without acid. The recipe would probably look something like this..

cotton + fabric + water + heat + mixing tool = pulp.

Of course there are also possible variations previously mentioned such as blending with silk or spider silk.

I've little doubt there will be a lot of books in circulation. What kind of economy can be derived from them though will likely depend on many factors. The stuff I'm working on now should allow for an actual economy.

For example.. crafting and customizable options would go a LONG way. If all books are limited to a generic set of mesh/textures there won't be much of an economy because crafters would not be able to make a visually distinct product. If on the other hand there are a handful of base meshes with 'dyable' options.. the texture combinations between dyes, leathers and cloth cover options along would give both the bookbinding skills and books themselves more value.

Suddenly you might have the generic Wizard of Oz which has over 5000 copies in print.. of the special edition dragon leather cover Wizard of Oz with only 500 copies in print. One of those is going to be worth a lot more than the other.

Being able to control the number of copies you publish at any given time would allow a publisher/author to control rarity and make publishing multiple versions worth while.

Then there are distribution concerns. If you simple publish to the 'world'.. you could have unlimited generic copies.. but if you could say "I only want to publish 50 copies with no distribution so I can sell them myself".. limited edition, rare, suddenly you have value.

Where product has value and sufficient quantity there will be an economy.

As for stuff like reviewers and publishers.. it'll be interesting to see how things develop.

 

Have not tried sulfite process myself, but that sounds like almost modern - *goes googling* - yupp that is 1840s.
Hmm, my personal opinion on that is that the crafting tree is extremely flat. There is no real economy going on there - all you'd need would be Sulfurous Ash and Wood Chips. Where the Sulfurous Ash would be rare due to magic.
With parchment we would have all these hunters and PVE players getting hides from all over the place - which could be processed.
And with linen or cotton you'd have to farm and wait etc. Wood is all over the place and already in plenty of recipes.
But that might just be me.

Oh, I like that idea of archeology, that would be amazing as a concept. I'm totally fine with finding stone tablets or such and trying to decode it.
Where my opinion veered of was if it is too easy to put user written text into the Novia world, that it would take away the worth of actual books.

Now I was just trying to expand on your thoughts but I'm getting the feeling that I'm coming on too strong here so I'm going to back off a little.

But I'd still want to know if the Library of Novia idea needs some resurrection magic or if it is going to happen anyway.

 

It may be more modern but it is something that can be done by hand. There's also a few things to consider. This isn't Earth and books have existed in Britannia for many centuries. I believe we have a little room to be flexible.

Technically speaking we don't have to go through the steps of removing lignin from the pulp. There probably won't be any mechanic that ages paper in-game in any way so the need for that level of accuracy is moot but I kind of like it.

My criteria has been first looking for something that can easily be translated into the game.. and secondly produces high quality results. No one can complain about paper not aging if the processes used produces quality paper the holds up well over time. We could just as easily use older methods but I think paper/book related technology in SotA is probably up to the task.

On libraries I'm sure there will be both game generated and player run libraries. We'll probably know more after R12.