Whilyam, you're derailing this thread and interferring with BAD's attempt to gain some useful insight and advice on creating an IC explanation for what the GoW does. Whether that's important or relevant to the GoW's reputation is technically irrelevant to this thread and I apologize for my little pokes which may have contributed to that side conversation.

Can we get back on topic, now? Again, this thread is about how to create an IC backstory to explain how the Writers learned the Art.

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Actually I think Whil and Marcus touches on something that is relevant here.
Bad's post is about coming up with an IC take on the GoW and improving the GoW reputation within the Community.

The "scary" prospect of Age building is something that factors into this IMO. At first the concept of Age building is a daunting one, and being able to take the edge of that may benefit the GoW in the long run.

I do agree with Whil though the concept is a bit wrong, the problem is you have to take that initial first step, I had tried Blender on and off for a while, but decided to take a serious step into it back in September 08, a year later I had released Cass and Fahets, which are nice Ages according to the community, in that year I taught myself Blender, followed the various tutorials on the GoW wiki to build up what I wanted to build.

However unlike Whil, I do come from an Art and Design background, but as you can tell from the awesome work Whil puts out, that doesn't account for much when people really put their minds towards doing it.

The chances of Age building being this simple builder is probably not going to happen, you're likely to always have to put an effort into it.

However, back to the IC stuff.
They've been coming up with some interesting ideas over at this topic on the GoW forums. From my point of view I just went with the "I picked it up whilst the DRC were gone when I was exploring the cavern by studying various Linking Books and Ages etc"

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I felt the baseless reasoning behind people giving the GoW a bad rap (and other guilds like the Maintainers too, lest people think I'm biased towards my current Guild) was appropriate to bring some detail into the discussion. There was animosity towards the Guild because of uninformed anger that was cropping up everywhere at that time for a variety of reasons.

In the end, it seems IC impossible to have written a working Age in such a short span of time. Tweek has accomplished the feat by retroactively having Fahehts written several years ago, rediscovered, and developed in the present day. My Ages simply ignore that, at present. IC I have used reference books and D'ni guides/handbooks/whatever to speed myself along. Incidentally, if my Ages aren't allowed in, I could always say that Gehn-like instabilities in my writing using the reference books as a guide caused my Age to collapse. At this point, though, I don't think we should be putting IC restrictions on the timeline of Age development.

For an IC GoW, I can imagine the IC GoW handing out blank books and Dni resources to Age writers with the Guild of Ink Makers (the plugin programmers) creating the ink for the books. Still, though, this is fanciful IC work and should never be used as an excuse to limit someone. One of the issues I see coming up is that the community tends to blend IC and OOC too much in these important areas. The DRC says something, thus Cyan must want this. In this case, "you haven't gotten a book from us so your Age can't exist!" or something silly like that.

I think the biggest issue the GoW has is that there are many people interested in Age writing that don't know much about it because of the restrictive rules Cyan has put on these forums regarding Age creation. It would help if there was a sticky post out in the open (i.e. where I can see it dashing through the forum) saying "Interested in making Ages for MOULa? Go here!"

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Many good points here, I'd like to respond to a few specific bits.

Whilyam wrote:

In the end, it seems IC impossible to have written a working Age in such a short span of time.

I am curious as to why you feel this way. We think the D'ni writers took many years to learn the Art, but how much of that was a formality driven by religion and a rigorous adherence to rules? How long did it take Catherine to learn to write? Or Anna? Must we assume that all people require a certain minimum time to learn to write, or is it possible that some people have an innate talent or skill, that either they can learn more quickly than average, or may show greater ability?

Quote:

... I don't think we should be putting IC restrictions on the timeline of Age development.

For an IC GoW, I can imagine the IC GoW handing out blank books and Dni resources to Age writers with the Guild of Ink Makers (the plugin programmers) creating the ink for the books. Still, though, this is fanciful IC work and should never be used as an excuse to limit someone. One of the issues I see coming up is that the community tends to blend IC and OOC too much in these important areas. The DRC says something, thus Cyan must want this. In this case, "you haven't gotten a book from us so your Age can't exist!" or something silly like that.

I agree with the above opinions. Flexibility is key.

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I never saw this as a problem. I mean, lots of us have spent more time in the Cavern then Atrus did before he wrote Inception. I think people are trying to mystify the process too much.

On the other hand, my worry is the IC suitability of the content and layout of those ages. After all, it's pretty easy to write an age where you can link within the age, but unless your age was written by Yeesha (which it isn't,) there's no real way to explain that IC.

But actually learning the writing process? Sure, D'ni training took decades, but you can learn it much quicker.

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KI# 02117319

The Students of D'ni Knowledge!

Next SoDK Meeting: Sunday, March 28, 20:00 (8 PM) MST (10 PM EST, 2 AM GMT)
Subject: D'ni Law and Punishment
Moderator: Ahlehn

I'm not ignoring the discussion of why the GOW is cast in a darker light than other guilds, but I have said much about this in the past and really just want to get back on topic.

Let me catch this area up on what has been discussed at the GOW....

Trylon wrote:

I had some time to write a little bit of brainstorm fiction. (Setting: D'ni High, Writers division, sometime in the future.)

Quote:

...
"So, that's how Veovis caused the fall of D'ni. Although it's true that many still blamed Ti'ana for years afterward, as far as I'm concerned she was only the catalyst, someone who's good intentions were nothing more than the final stone that paved D'ni's road to hell.
...
Any questions"

I looked around the classroom. At least when teaching in D'ni, my students were a little better motivated. Back on the surface half of the class would be asleep by now, but here everyone was still full of attention.
One finger was raised...
"Elliot?"

"Mr Timberwood, you've told us a lot about the history of the old D'ni guilds, but to be honest I'm more interested in what happens today."
A wave of murmuring went though the room.
"Is it true that you have been here ever since the first time the DRC closed the cavern?"
"Well, not all of the time," I said, "but basically, yes..."
"Then you've been with the Guild since it began right? Can you tell us how it all started? There's still some time left."
Another wave of murmuring went through the room. I recognized the tactic from my old school days: we would try to get a teacher to talk about his favourite subject, instead of the topic for that day. That way we could sometimes even avoid homework. I looked at the clock. Still half an hour to go. Ah well, these kids deserved a break anyway.

"Okay, I'll try!" I said with a smile, "It's gonna be the short version though! We only got half an hour left, and you wouldn't want to be late for your Writing class."
"Oh, but miss Jennifer will understand", said an 'innocent' voice from somewhere.
"Let's just get started ok!", I wasn't going to get into a pointless debate,

"First off, you have to realize that we can't pick a single moment and say 'That's when the Guild started'. The guild of writers formed slowly!
After the first time the DRC left the cavern, a lot of people stayed in the cavern. Since Victor Laxman protected the Lattice and shut down the KI network, we couldn't reach each other digitally, so small groups formed of people who happened to run into each other. Does anyone know some of those groups?"

"The Cobbwebs!", shouted someone.
"Don't be silly, it was Cobas", a girl said.
"Actually that particular one was called 'Cobbs'", I replied, "But continue... more groups anyone?"
"H'uru"
"AgeCrafters"
"UO"
"AgeBuilders"

"Well, you all seem to know quite a few of the groups!", I smiled,
"At first, most of them just focused on getting back into the main areas of the cavern. Ae'gura, Kirel, and so on. A few people worked hard trying to hack into the Lattice.
Of course, there were also a few who were just bent on exploring as much of D'ni as possible. It was in those days that a few people stumbled on an old Writers school. They uncovered a partially burned copy of the Rehevkor, but more importantly a few volumes of 'Writing for Dummies'.",
A wave of laughter went through the room.
"Well, that's what we called it anyway. In D'ni the title was a lot more solemn. It took like forever to translate it, I can tell you that!"

"You were with AgeBuilders at the time, right?"
"For a while. I also did some freelance work for a group called the New Tree Council. They vanished after a few months though. I haven't heard from them since."

"Mr. Timberwood, how about the Guild! When did that start!"
"Ah, the natives are getting restless...", I joked, "...very well, I won't bore you with details on all those groups.",

"Basically, everyone was just minding their own business right until the time the DRC got back to the cavern and shook things up. A lot of people had to ... well, let's just call it 'adjust to the new situation'.
When they took the initiative for rebuilding the old guilds, they were well aware of the progress we made on reverse engineering the Art. So they included the 'Guild of Writers' in that list and redecorated one of the old Pubs for us.
At the same time a few of the old groups went through some rough times. One or two had leadership crises. So a few of the members of different groups joined together and started meeting in the new Guild Pub. They set up a central library on the Art, and started to supply empty books. Just that! Nothing more at first. But after a while more people flocked together, and in a few months we were almost a real Guild."

"The Guild of Anarchists", said a wiseguy on the second row.
I sighed, "Yes, that was a running joke back then. But as you can see, we developed quite nicely haven't we...."

"Well, considering miss Jennifers Writing class starts in a few minutes, here's the homework for next week:
Each of you has to pick one department of the Writers guild. You can choose between 'Writers', 'Age Restorers', 'Cavern Restorers' and 'Inkmakers'.
I want a one-page report describing what the departments goals are, and what their methods are! On my desk first thing next week!",

"And don't forget to get those permission slips for the Todelmer expedition signed! Dr. Johnson needs them the day after tomorrow."

EDIT: Changed "Restorians" to "Restorers" per suggestion below. (Also punctuation and spelling)

I think Trylon's effort is awesome. It takes the OOC time-line and translates it well into an IC story.

Also now we are discussing a whole new forum section for GOW RP. Suggestions welcome.

http://forum.guildofwriters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4191&start=40

The most important thing with these discussions is we do not hinder writer's creativity in any way. The GOW should in no way hinder someones story as long as it is a valid story in the Uru Mythos.

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DocOlanA wrote:

I never saw this as a problem. I mean, lots of us have spent more time in the Cavern then Atrus did before he wrote Inception. I think people are trying to mystify the process too much.

On the other hand, my worry is the IC suitability of the content and layout of those ages. After all, it's pretty easy to write an age where you can link within the age, but unless your age was written by Yeesha (which it isn't,) there's no real way to explain that IC.

But actually learning the writing process? Sure, D'ni training took decades, but you can learn it much quicker.

Well, /technically/ there's no real way to explain it when its yeesha, either... -- other than "yeesha can break the rules, hokay, guyz?" And this is why most people don't like yeesha/bahro magick. Its canon, but its hardly realistic. =P

Now, I'm really not sure why you have a problem with fan created content having the possibility to include not strictly canon things...

Now, for example, its entirely /possible/ within canon, for an Age to contain an imager/projector that does the famous "Help me obi-wan kenobi, you're my only hope" projection. How is this possible? A lot of us, the people that are "restoring"/"writing" Ages are geeky, in some way, maybe not all of us, but a bunch are. Some of us have figured out how to get Imager tech working, and have learnt a bit about it... Its /entirely/ within the realms of possibility, for one of us geeky restorers, to configure/set up an imager to do exactly that. As a geek toy, as it were. There's plenty of evidence that is is entirely within the realms of possibility, etc. Now, I'm not saying anyone should do that, but, you'd be surprised, it wouldn't break canon.

The d'niverse is the Real World, so Real World references can easily exist there. *including* pop culture references. As I said, many of us are geeks, and might do it just for fun, or as a "toy" project while we're down in D'ni.

Hms, bit off topic, but, I think it needs addressing, and now is a good a time as any.

EDIT: clarification: The D'niverse is set, IC-ly in The Real World.

Oh, I agree. And while I think an obi-wan imager would be somewhat... well, frivolous, it's certainly still IC. Heck, even if it wasn't written by an explorer, it can't be too hard with the work Laxman's already done to hack a D'ni holographer lattice and add your own custom message. We do something similar with our Relto imagers. What can't be canon, though, are things like linking within an age, moving link-in points (there's a reason Gahreesen links to the non-rotating center,) and elements that are clearly non-canon, such as, say, a non-holographic Star Destroyer.

Those are the sorts of things I want some editing process in place to keep from the main server, and which would keep me from considering an age to actually exist within canon.

But again, I've got no problem with explorers learning age-writing, and no problem with them writing ages that follow the D'ni rules. As for "yeesha magic," my personal theory is that she understood the Art much better than the D'ni did. So why can't we replicate her art? Well, as far as I know, we haven't a single descriptive book written by Yeesha. There are, presumably, all sorts of books that teach the Art (probably in the GoW pub, if not brought from the DRC from the ruins of the guild hall.) So even though we don't really understand the science, we understand how all the black boxes fit together and we can recreate them. We don't know quite why they work, but we know they work. We don't have that advantage with Yeesha's techniques. We have no teaching text for those, no way to learn them. I can think of no adequate way for an explorer to be able to write like Yeesha, other than an explorer saying, "YEESHA APPRED TO ME UND TAUGHT ME WRITTING UND NOW IM TEH ONE!!!11!!!!"

Which in addition to violating Cyan's rules on new canon is what we tend to call "twinking". Twinking is bad.

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KI# 02117319

The Students of D'ni Knowledge!

Next SoDK Meeting: Sunday, March 28, 20:00 (8 PM) MST (10 PM EST, 2 AM GMT)
Subject: D'ni Law and Punishment
Moderator: Ahlehn

Well.. the thing with yeesha, is she had to learn herself, /somehow/ and she was taught by two teachers that /didn't/ have what we have, multiple minds thinking together, and two teachers that were taught by people who didn't know what they were doing, and also taught themselves.

Theoretically, we have access to pretty much everything Yeesha did, when learning.

Marten wrote:

Many good points here, I'd like to respond to a few specific bits.

Whilyam wrote:

In the end, it seems IC impossible to have written a working Age in such a short span of time.

I am curious as to why you feel this way. We think the D'ni writers took many years to learn the Art, but how much of that was a formality driven by religion and a rigorous adherence to rules? How long did it take Catherine to learn to write? Or Anna? Must we assume that all people require a certain minimum time to learn to write, or is it possible that some people have an innate talent or skill, that either they can learn more quickly than average, or may show greater ability?

Because the D'ni are still the only example we really have (we could estimate how long it took Atrus/catherine, but I believe we're still talking in years. Far longer than we've been in the cavern). It would help, IC, if Cyan said "there's no minimum time it takes to Write." Still, in the end it's a minor nit. Unless I am forced to retcon my Ages, I wrote Toroolbah and Fens in roughly a year's time (I think). Maw I wrote in a week or two (because the Age was so simple it took my just a very short span of time to create). As present canon stands, that appears impossible. I just ignore that.

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-Whilyam

Atrus learned to Write in about 3 - 4 years IIRC.

Some of us have been in the cavern 7-8 years.

I don't think it's too far of a stretch to be honest.

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This was discussed briefly in the GOW thread as well. I think that given that we are a group of 50 or more active members, with access to computers and the internet making it easier to share all discoveries made within the group.

I think with the full support of the GOW it is possible for someone to learn to write a simple, yet stable, age in under a year.

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Some things are needed, I believe, for a plausible IC backstory.

There is a possible source of books for research in the game as it stands; the cabinets in Gahreesen. We don't need actual access to them in-game, the fact that they're there is enough. But when adding Ages to the online game becomes possible, one of the first things that needs to be added is an area of the City (possible under RAWA's guidelines, I believe, as long as it isn't directly connected to any of the official ones) which contains a store of blank books and ink. (I'm assuming that everyone is going to take it that the whizzy ink and special paper is actually essential, rather than mere obfuscation on the part of the D'ni Guilds to restrict use of the Art; I don't think it should be, but that's my view of the Art as being about the words and not the trappings, and I know most people don't share that view.) An Age for learning in (sharing knowledge, putting out new Linking Books) is also a must, and I know at least one person here has ideas in that direction.

It should be obvious that we'll all learn faster together than we would separately, which is one of my problems with the "secret book" approach.

OOC, I gave up on Blender in disgust and haven't had the energy to wrestle with it since, so IC, I'll probably be a very slow study.

EDIT: it would also be possible, if desired, to have Ages linking off the Book Store Age in which, by some vaguely Er'cana-like process, books and ink could be manufactured. Those could be privately instanced Ages, with the books and ink being transferred to Book Store much as pellet points are uploaded to the hood now. Whether it would be either possible or desirable to make the stored resources finite and replenishable (so that the facility to make a new Age Book would depend on whether people had been keeping up with book- and ink-making), or whether that would smack too much of introducing an economy that we don't want into Uru, I leave as a matter for discussion. It would, at very least, be a more materially beneficial type of grinding activity than cooking pellets for a lake that will never be lit.

The other point is, of course, that some player would have to Write these Ages and "discover" them...

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