Writting in other settings

[Vigil]

It would be interesting to see some of these experiments. You could actually do it in a very organized way through the RoG in a very simple, non-complicated way. Once these ideas have been proposed and implemented on various parts of the site, have a thread posted in the RoG listing all these 'alpha' experiments with their names, descriptions and locations. Then have a person register for them. "I want in X because of Y. I agree to adhere to the terms of the experiment that I am doing this for." Then just have the moderator come in, reiterate what they said for the sake of clarity and stick it in a subforum in the RoG that can be used as a filing system.

Easy.

Instead of having big swaths of change on the website, it is a really provocative idea to start investing in micro change and seeing how receptive we are to it. Um, instead of repeating the same thing over and over again I'd like to suggest a couple of ideas and refine some of those that were already mentioned for these Alphas. I do so love lists, don't you?

1) A section of the forum cordoned off for people where Althanas rules don't necessarily apply to allow more free-writing and creativity. A simple set of rules and terms would be developed to govern them, but that's pretty much it.

2) A rolling experiment with characters who aren't under the regulation of the RoG to experiment with personal growth versus character regulation. Different from free writing in the sense that these characters are identified and populate Althanas, but they have much more lax restrictions from the RoG. During the experiment, they are identified and adhere to special conditions that allow them this liberty. Over time, it would be interesting to see how a sample of characters would develop and advance without regulation or limited regulation as opposed to what we already have.

At the end, once the characters have been observed long enough, the experiment can end and they can always go back to the RoG and re-register under the rules of 3.0.

3) An experiment using accounts as placeholders. Meaning that the accounts of the users aren't necessarily tied to only one character that has been registered. They can submit work from any perspective, style, etc. and the rewards are applied to the account instead of the character itself. To see what it would be like to give people the ability to just write something and submit it to the website for criticism. They then could apply for gear, items, etc. that they could perhaps use in future writings.. maybe. Idea is still fuzzy, but the concept is there.


The first one is Letho's idea. I kept it simple to retain what he's said without really putting words into his mouth, the other ones are ideas I came up with. One is based on an old argument about RoG regulation and the other is just something to experiment with to see how it works. But anyway, I agree with many who have spoken here. Its time to adapt and change with the times. We have new blood starting to come in, but Althanas should start looking on how to change with the times in order to keep building our member base and fix some of the fundamental flaws in the system.

Alpha experiments are a great way to do this with little risk to the overall site itself and allowing anybody to participate in them gives you an opportunity for comprehensive feedback while offering many new things for members to try for the site's benefit.

[Letho]

I figure we might as well incorporate all three of those in a single feature really. Some of the things said in this thread are similar to what was brought up in the mods subforum in a thread I made a while ago, but some I overlooked. Like the third point Vigil made. I imagined that people would have the freedom to make whatever character they want in this potentially new section of the subforum, but after reading what Vigil wrote, I feel that it might not be necessary to do so. After all, when you read books and short stories, there are no character sheets to look over as you do so, so why not do so here as well? It would be up to the writer to properly introduce and develop the character. Which is something I always felt should be done on Althanas anyways, instead of relying on a character sheet to fill in the blanks. That would, however, almost completely erased the concept of EXP, but as someone once said: times they are a-changing.

Maybe instead of EXP, we can set up some sort of a reputation system, and the more stuff you do, more your reputation grows or something. It wouldn't be necessary to hoard these, but it would still quantify the effort in a way.

[The International]

3) An experiment using accounts as placeholders. Meaning that the accounts of the users aren't necessarily tied to only one character that has been registered. They can submit work from any perspective, style, etc. and the rewards are applied to the account instead of the character itself. To see what it would be like to give people the ability to just write something and submit it to the website for criticism. They then could apply for gear, items, etc. that they could perhaps use in future writings.. maybe. Idea is still fuzzy, but the concept is there.

Crazy thing about that one is... I'm doing it already. Even though Vespasian Villeneuve is my pc, whom I may use in tournaments and battles and such, the account of The International is basically a placeholder for his entire family. If you look at my signature most of the links are to character registrations of his sisters and parents. My first completed quest featured very little of Vespasian and more so told the story of his parents' past. It scored very well. I took it a step further in a solo where Vespasian may have only been in the last quarter of the quest, but it was told mostly from the perspective of his parents and focused on their romance. Now to add to it, I have two ongoing quests in which he's nowhere to be found, Deadly Shadows, which is all about the middle sister, and Seeds, which is all about the eldest sister. I believe I also wrote a Blitz with Letho and Amen entirely through the perspective of Esme Villeneuve, Vespasian's father, and Vespasian was nowhere to be seen, and I think we got full credit for it. Needless to say all of these characters are related, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination. No one has even told me I'm allowed or not allowed to do any of that, so I guess you could say I've been gambling with it, but that gamble has payed off so far. I haven't taken it as far as writing a whole story through the eyes of someone that wouldn't ultimately tie the story to one of those characters. Did you do anything like that with your Saxon account? As I recall your pc had and npc family and you took steps to get them all registered. In regards to this particular idea, do you think it would be wise to simply call attention to it or do you think we should institutionalize it in some way? I have a bit of a selfish fear that if it's limited to one feature I won't be able to thrive the way I do outside of it lol

Maybe instead of EXP, we can set up some sort of a reputation system, and the more stuff you do, more your reputation grows or something. It wouldn't be necessary to hoard these, but it would still quantify the effort in a way.

I had an idea similar to that. Discussed it with Vigil last night. It was more of a peer review model that built up a currency through writing, reviewing, and being reviewed, but it was a hybrid system that appealed to the 'gamers' among us as well. I'd encourage everyone to check out writing.com . I think they've created an effective system in this vein.

[Connor Lacuna]

A separate board exempt from these rules may be hard to implement. Would it still have the same XP system as the rest of the forum? If not, why post there? If so, how would it be regulated?

[The International]

I don't think they mean a separate board or site altogether. Rather featured sections within the site.

[Vigil]

Crazy thing about that one is... I'm doing it already. Even though Vespasian Villeneuve is my pc, whom I may use in tournaments and battles and such, the account of The International is basically a placeholder for his entire family. If you look at my signature most of the links are to character registrations of his sisters and parents. My first completed quest featured very little of Vespasian and more so told the story of his parents' past. It scored very well. I took it a step further in a solo where Vespasian may have only been in the last quarter of the quest, but it was told mostly from the perspective of his parents and focused on their romance. Now to add to it, I have two ongoing quests in which he's nowhere to be found, Deadly Shadows, which is all about the middle sister, and Seeds, which is all about the eldest sister. I believe I also wrote a Blitz with Letho and Amen entirely through the perspective of Esme Villeneuve, Vespasian's father, and Vespasian was nowhere to be seen, and I think we got full credit for it. Needless to say all of these characters are related, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination. No one has even told me I'm allowed or not allowed to do any of that, so I guess you could say I've been gambling with it, but that gamble has payed off so far. I haven't taken it as far as writing a whole story through the eyes of someone that wouldn't ultimately tie the story to one of those characters. Did you do anything like that with your Saxon account? As I recall your pc had and npc family and you took steps to get them all registered. In regards to this particular idea, do you think it would be wise to simply call attention to it or do you think we should institutionalize it in some way? I have a bit of a selfish fear that if it's limited to one feature I won't be able to thrive the way I do outside of it lol

I did do this. But it is unnecessarily complicated and choked the life out of what I tried to do. Truth is that there really are no limits in how you deliver or perceive your character, this idea though takes Althanas from being character centric to more writer centric. Instead of having to write things from one character's perspective or a preregistered family, I can write from several. I've even thought of registering an entire town under this context to get by, but then again, its needlessly complicated and there's already several people here with an entire army of characters, and I don't really want to be one of them.

But anyway, this idea, coupled with Letho's suggestion of not having to register and just writing would essentially allow you to write stories, post them and have them critiqued. This is not a wide swathing change and I'm not proposing to change the entire fabric of Althanas for it, but if we were to cordon a part of the site off for this or even do what Visla suggested and experiment with it with little to no cost to the site or the current member base, you could just sit back and watch the results.

This also isn't an attempt to 'legitimize' or instutionalize anything. Its just to make it easier on people like myself or you to write from different perspectives without being tied to one character or having to hop around accounts or even register multiple ones to make a series of main characters for a 'cast'.

I figure we might as well incorporate all three of those in a single feature really. Some of the things said in this thread are similar to what was brought up in the mods subforum in a thread I made a while ago, but some I overlooked. Like the third point Vigil made. I imagined that people would have the freedom to make whatever character they want in this potentially new section of the subforum, but after reading what Vigil wrote, I feel that it might not be necessary to do so. After all, when you read books and short stories, there are no character sheets to look over as you do so, so why not do so here as well? It would be up to the writer to properly introduce and develop the character. Which is something I always felt should be done on Althanas anyways, instead of relying on a character sheet to fill in the blanks. That would, however, almost completely erased the concept of EXP, but as someone once said: times they are a-changing.

Its an idea, but when you're first trying something like this you have to ask what you're looking for. Are we going to be experimenting with it and seeing how the member base receives it or implementing an idea with combined elements to add more liberty and give people space to write about what they want? I can see the temptation to combine all three ideas into one because it does make for an attractive package, but when I had proposed them my intent was to study how these aspects would be received by the member base, but that can get complicated. I suppose I was really fixated on the experimentation and observing behavior aspect of it. Psychology major, go figure. =P

But yeah, if the idea can be refined and given definite parameters rather then just lumping them all together and going with it, that'd be a great idea.

[Rayse Valentino]

A long time ago, Sighter and I talked about how Althanas had the potential to have an evolving piece of literature. I forget the word for it, dia-something, but basically you remove the boundaries of characters and just write a story with multiple writers. Both authors would be writing the same characters instead of just their own, and I know that many people include actions and dialogue from other characters, but ultimately this is done with permission or with the implication that the other party knows you're doing it. Often stories are character-driven instead of story-driven, and because of this you often only see them from one perspective per author. I wouldn't mind people making characters and writing with them, and other can people can write with them too, sorta like a fanfic but you're creating canon instead of just using established canon. So you have a novel that's written from many different sources.

Of course I rarely see this because people have characters that are often just avatars of themselves, personalizing them to the point where it's just a fantasy of self. Because of this, their involvement in threads that don't directly concern their characters is minimal. Playing NPCs, sharing characters, creating new characters together, I don't see much of this. What's considering bunnying in quests should just be a normal, expected thing. The only outlier is battles, where it's a competition. In fact, all of the site's rules revolve around the game aspect of battle.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I think that the idea of a free writing area that has a "currency" of "notariety" or "reputation" or something would be meaningful. Just to throw out random numbers, completing a thread and having it judged at least once would be 10 points. And judges would just be peers willing to read the thread and give brief meaningful feedback. They could assign let's say 1-3 points based on how good they felt it was. Each additional judge could give additional points and every judge would be earning himself 1 point for reading and reviewing the thread. You could game the system by making short threads or spamming into other people's threads and giving short comments, but given the system I don't think there would be much of that.

Letho mentioned doing away with character sheets for the free form forum. I think that's not 100% right. I'd do away with rigidly enforced ability lists that have been approved. A character summary and background is useful reference info. Even the IV had the Library thread that had basic character info on people. Instead, I think the best approach would be a subforum where instead of posting your profile and waiting for it to be approved, everyone creates one thread. The first couple of posts could be reserved by that person to put up a profile, links to active quests, so forth. Then that thread could be a character's "home" thread. I think it would be interesting if instead of always having to do a big quest or recruit or interact OOC, there would be a sort of informal place where someone could meet your character IC and have a kind of ongoing place to do so. Within a person's home thread, their word basically goes and they can do what they like. It would obviously fit some characters better than others, but the thread itself doesn't have to be a house, it could be any place your character would want to meet others. It would encourage interaction and visits and so forth could earn Rep the same as judgments. I think if people weren't tied to "if it isn't a full quest, no exp" they would be encouraged to have short but meaningful IC interactions with people. If it turns into something big, simply link to the quest and continue there.

Rayse's idea about shared characters, settings, npcs is fantastic. I've tried to make this work before but, for the reasons he described, it never worked much. I think in the more cooperative, free atmosphere of a subforum like that contemplated, it might get off the ground.

[Letho]

Peer review sounds nice in theory, but there's always fear that it turns into a popularity contest, especially in places such as Althanas. More so since there's a good chance that those who review it aren't really qualified to score a thread. Granted, this wouldn't matter overmuch due to the fact that you wouldn't really need these reputation points (or whatever the hell we wind up calling the currency) and you could argue who exactly is qualified to score a thread, but I'd still prefer if most of the score was determined by a judge. Because, as much as these reputation points won't really matter, they would still be a sort of a gauge. And besides, judges would review the threads as usual, and they are arguably the most qualified to determine the score. But I don't see why we can't really have both. Let's say a finished thread nets you a certain amounts of points determined by some simple formula depending on the score and on top of that you can get some extra depending on how your peers vote or something.

As for the character sheet, I'm neither for nor against it. But again, I don't see why we can't have both. Since the RoG in this case will not regulate the abilities, but rather just be used as sort of a reference guide to someone's characters, there is nothing to stop people from writing stories about characters that don't have an elaborate sheet. If the story is good, it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter whether you have a character sheet to fall back on or not. And since the reputation points pour into a single account regardless of which character(s) you write about, I don't really see the need to force people to put up character registrations unless they really want to.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Peer review sounds nice in theory, but there's always fear that it turns into a popularity contest, especially in places such as Althanas. More so since there's a good chance that those who review it aren't really qualified to score a thread.

Judging also sounds nice in theory, but we've seen it in practice. What qualifies anyone? Be honest, the qualifications to be a judge are basically a pulse and a willingness to put up with administrative bullshit. I'd rather get 3 different opinions than one supposedly "expert" one, especially considering what passes for expert around here.

Granted, this wouldn't matter overmuch due to the fact that you wouldn't really need these reputation points (or whatever the hell we wind up calling the currency) and you could argue who exactly is qualified to score a thread, but I'd still prefer if most of the score was determined by a judge.

Why? You just listed the same reasons I did that it doesn't matter. I have a year old unjudged thread and while some of that time period is because of my inactivity, a significant portion of was one of the reasons I became inactive. Threads don't get judged. Sometimes when they do get judged, they get judged lazily or poorly. I think it's time to stop pretending judges are some kind of super-members that know more than anyone else. Yeah, some judges are better than some members, but some members are also better than some judges, and some of both classes are twits. There's really no discernable difference.

I view the peer reviews as not "score" based. While judges may be most qualified to fuck about with a meaningless rubric that is designed for an antiquated system of "game" battles, I think there's no reason to give that sort of nonsense undue deference. If you insist that the judge score be more meaningful, maybe it's 2x the normal rewards. I still think rewarding people for having their threads read is the best incentive. The more people are seeking others to review their threads, the better they get, the more people are familiar with eachother's writing and so forth. That's way more important to me, and more importantly it creates more activity and community, than the judge caste system we have now.


I'd be interested in feedback on the "home thread" idea. I think it's interesting and useful regardless of whether there are "character sheets" or not.