[OOC] A Game of Trust

The Journals of the White Dove

I've been wanting to create a catalogue of this thread in the Story Hour section for a while now, to condense it down in order to help out both current players (in reviewing the information) and prospective players (in auditing the game)... Niccolo's reference to the Journals of the White Dove gave me some inspiration in that regard. Here's two thoughts on that matter:

- First, I like the idea of writing it from Niccolo's perspective, as though it came straight from the Journals he referenced recently. I want Uriel's consent first, of course, and then there are one or two things to sort out after that.

- Second, since it represents quite a workload, I'd like to open it up for the current players to advance as well. Ideally I'd like to reward XP for it as well (I'm thinking 500 XP per page covered; or, 20 XP per post, although I'd probably prefer a minimum of 25 posts covered in a given update). This brings up a few more issues:

-- Do people have a problem with awarding XP for that sort of thing? It does give an advantage to players with a lot of free time; on the other hand, keep in mind that it would be a resource that benefits players with less free time.

-- Would you prefer a greater or lesser amount of XP? (For fairness or motivation respectively; even if you don't plan on contributing to it, if you want this resource, you might want to vote for higher XP awards, just to make sure it gets done.) Should it be scaled to fit the party's current XP totals? (This creates some problems, making it beneficial to wait as long as possible before posting. If anything, I'd prefer to strategically bump the amount of XP awarded once the thread is brought up to date.)

-- If you were to post to it, would you prefer taking the POV of your character, of Niccolo (should Uriel consent), or of some omniscient narrator?

-- If XP is to be awarded, would you prefer if I didn't post (thus taking away the opportunity for XP?)

- Finally, any other thoughts on form? I definitely want it laden with links to the initial thread, to allow people to view events in more detail. Any other suggestions to give it shape?

Oh, and of course, does this strike you as a good idea or a completely silly one? :)

On an unrelated note, things are looking a lot less dire for the end of March, and I don't imagine I'll be off-line for all that long. Nothing's certain yet, of course, but it's been looking better and better as time goes on, so we'll see.
 

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Just off the top of my head:

I've got some free time lately, being out of the work force. I can write to such a journal.

I would only want to write as Fendric, though. It's the character I know best, and I wouldn't presume to write from Niccolo's or any other PC's POV.

I have no problem with XP being awarded. As far as how much is concerned, it shouldn't ever be as much as one gets from roleplaying IC, but any amount short of that is fine with me.

I also have no problem with GP posting to the Journal; in fact, I'm kind of looking forward to it, in case we missed/forgot something that our PC would have remembered.

I can link. It's probably good practice for something I need to do more often when I post, anyway.

Finally, yeah. This is a good idea. If we ever finish it, I wouldn't mind seeing GP write it up as a Story Hour (complete with all the behind-the-scenes narrative), in fact. I don't care how stupid it makes Fendric look. :)
 

First of all, I don't have any problems with giving XP to players for writing in-char journals. As a gamesmaster I never do though. Here's just a few thoughts as to whi I don't , although I have no problems whatsoever with you giving XP.

One of the problems is that Dimwit Halfbrain the Blood-Soaked Barbarian is very unlikely to be able to write, never mind writing a personal diary. So whoever plays Dimwit is "missing out" on XP. You could, however, allow "fireside tales" to be told, or something like that. On th other hand, they might be a bit hard to build in.

Another one is that not all the players are able to write a tale or diary. Writing, like singing or painting, is a talent. If you give XP based on the quality it would disadvantage some, if you give XP on just writing, expect some pretty pathetic prose :D .


Last one, maybe specific to ENworld: Some people don't speak english as their native tongue. I spent a year in England, read a lot of english fiction, and I'm pretty convinced my spoken english is very good. My written english is something altogether different (as you've noticed by my many spelling disasters), and writing prose in a different language is extremely difficult. You just cannot get the same fine distinctions as you have in your mothers tongue (one of the reasons we had the "poofter incident")

Anyways, I don't give a rat's ass about XP, I've enjoyed the game tremendously so far, haven't levelled up yet but don't really have time to do so and I don't mind waiting a bit. What I'm trying to say is, if people wanna write something and you wanna give 'em XP , by all means do so. I won't write because Raven isn't the writing type, but I'll enjoy reading it.
 

BTW, I'm moving house this weekend, so I'll be offline for a bit. My sone is starting to learn how to crawl, and all those books look SOOOOOO inviting. So it's bye bye appartment, hello house with garden and, yes, finally, after years of dreaming, a role-playing attic. YEEEHAAA. Now if anyone is in belgium this weekend and doesn't mind breaking his back towing away my roleplaying- and fantasy book collection, feel free to drop by. (since we have a spare bedroom now, if you guys fancy a holiday in europe, feel free to drop by anytime anyway)

BTW, moving house is bad for buisiness. My wife usually doesn't notice me buying roleplaying books, but now she smells a rat. Two years ago I had 15 cardboard boxes stuffed with RPGs and assorted odd things, now I have 21. Ooops.

Anyways, have fun and don't get killed.
 
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Hello, for some reason the site wouldn't let me log in for a few weeks, but it seems to have settled down now. Just letting everyone know I'm still interested and haven't lost interest/left.
Thanks :)
 

The Journals of the White Dove is now up and open to posting in the Story Hour forum. Feel free to contribute, but please follow a few simple rules:

- If you start cataloguing a page of posts, complete it. It makes it easier for the next person to know where to start off, and it also helps if there's ever a need for a table of contents somewhere. (BTW, when I say page, I'm referring to the default posts-per-page of 25, for ease.)

- Indicate the start of every new page using the {I, 1} convention. This should occur at the start of a new paragraph, not embedded in the text, to make it easier to follow.

- If you refer to a specific post, and it's worth linking to, use the [1] convention. This should immediately precede your reference to the post, and may or may not be embedded in the text. Note that I overused these references in this particular instance (sort of testing the "worst-case scenario")... You only need to reference a specific post if you can see someone reading through and wanting more info on that specific event.

- End every post with a note about which character authored it. I'll be using various NPCs, myself. You can write about a certain event from a perspective other than your own character's, if you like (since many of your characters weren't around for a lot of the earlier events) -- use NPCs or retired characters, as necessary.

- Please post any questions/comments/corrections in this thread, not that thread.

- Here's the code for the reference tags:
Code: 
[size=1]
Page:
[#b]{[#url=http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35699]I[#/url], [#url=http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35699&page=[color=Magenta]1[/color]&pp=25][color=Magenta]1[/color][#/url]:}[/b]

Post:
[#size=1][[#url=http://www.enworld.org/forums/showpost.php?p=571316&postcount=[color=Magenta]1[/color]][color=Magenta]1[/color][#/url]][#/size]

Signature:
[#right][#size=1][#i]- [color=Magenta]Character's Name[/color][#/i][#/size][#/right]
[/size]

Delete the # signs, of course... Information which needs to be changed each time (both in the url and in the reference) is highlighted in magenta. Once we catch up to Casual D&D II, I'll post some updated urls for reference...

XP will be awarded on a 100 XP-per-page basis... Small enough that it shouldn't unbalance things in favor of certain characters/players, but hopefully enough to justify the investment of time required. This amount may be raised in the future (as 100XP becomes less and less substantial), but not at any specified time (as that almost becomes motivation to wait until later).

...whew. That cover everything? Honestly it took about as long to figure out the format and put together this post as it did to catalogue the first three pages -- so really, it's not as much work as it might seem like at first glance.
 

Impressive effort out of the gate, that new Story Hour is, even if I don't completely understand the notation conventions. I'll probably refrain from writing in it, though, as it requires some 'behind the scenes' knowledge I obviously don't have about this campaign to write well. I'll continue to read with interest, though.
 


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