EA: volunteers?

All discussions, suggestions, submissions, organizations required to keep the Encyclopedia Arelithica up to date, and worthy of historical annals.

Moderators: Forum Moderators, Active DMs

dragoneyeIIVX
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:05 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by dragoneyeIIVX » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:09 pm

Mithreas wrote: Boom, IG research becomes a thing.
Seven? Are you still alive? Take deep breaths. This is not a dream.

Seven Sons of Sin
Posts: 2184
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:40 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:37 pm

please stop don't please I'm already god stop
Previous:
Oskarr of Procampur, Ro Irokon, Nahal Azyen, Nelehein Afsana (of Impiltur), Vencenti Medici, Nizram ali Balazdam, (Roznik) Naethandreil

The Pretty Prince of Parties
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:18 pm

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by The Pretty Prince of Parties » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:53 pm

Wooo! I can help with this. I want to. I already volunteered, in fact!

User avatar
Anime Sword Fighter
Posts: 581
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:47 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:03 pm

Sign me up. I posted in the editor. I can help where I know stuff. I've got a bunch written down from playing Euclio from recent things.

Such as this.

Location - Cordor, Northern Bridge
This bridge borders the Arcane Tower from the south, and Cordor from the north. It was a subject of much controversy in the late A.R. 80s all the way into the early 90s. A faction known as the Liberated Territories led by Julio Banderas and Volgbrott Teuveristrum had laid claim to the bridge as an independent settlement, sparking conflict between its much bigger neighbor to the south.

In the years 90-91, many additions were fixated to the bridge and lands around it. Refugees from the destroyed Light Keep made their way into a camp to the east of the bridge, and fortified gates and an expansion to the central area were built to it by the Liberated Territories.

A peace proposal was put forth by the contemporary councillor Armen Roth of Cordor, and was agreed to and signed by Volgbrott.

Eventually, activity of the Liberated Territories decreased, and most conflict came to an end. The day when Volgbrott returns to once again fill out forms for all travelers that pass about the entirety of their physical description is eagerly awaited.

User avatar
Anime Sword Fighter
Posts: 581
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:47 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:25 pm

Also have this:
Events:
The Nebankh Plague
The Nebankh Plague was a series of individual plagues stemming from one curse. It began in Cordor, in the later part of A.R. 90 and ended in the first quarter of A.R. 91. Among the notable helpers, was the Order of the Lantern faction that was newly arisen. A group dedicated to defeating evil and that general paladin-esque ideal. Much of the information in this writing comes from the notes of Fenton Fizzlebiscuits, a member of the Order.

The beginning of the Plagues started when some manner of Magus disrupted the process of the Nebankh Crypt afterlife rituals. The identity of this defiler remains unknown. From the disruption of this, which included the sapping of energy from a light that allows the deceased Mulhorandi to go to the afterlife, came the following plagues:

The undead incursion. This has not been cured completely, noticeable from the increased amount of ghosts that roam the woods, and the skeletons that sometimes arise in the sewers.

An asp invasion. Sand pits would almost randomly appear throughout the City, bringing these poisonous snakes slithering out of them, attacking denizens.

A scarab invasion followed the asps, more annoying and just as deadly and poisonous. Mechanical scarabs are used to guard the inside of the Nebankh Tomb.

The 'most dangerous' plague involved a Disease, with such a myriad of symptoms there is no room for it to be listed here. Divine prayers of removing disease were distributed by the City's priests, helping to combat it. However, due to the Dsease seemingly spreading via water, fighting it was almost impossible. The City's reserves were tainted, water becoming blackened. Indeed, this also helped to lead to the removal of the well that used to be in the Temple District. One day, it became so backed up with sewage and sick, that it simply exploded into a volcano of sickly green slime and waste. Naturally it was removed as a safety hazard.

The final invasion was a plague of locusts on Cordor's crops. Almost all of the crops that were in the Northern Outskirts were eaten before the locusts could be repelled with fire and people. The City has since recovered from this devastation, though.

In order to alleviate the problems, concerned individuals sought out the Nebankh Crypt, which was the epicenter of the curse. Within, a divine Guardian of Mulhorandi origin stated to the individuals the taint the defiler had placed upon the tomb.
Instructions were delivered: Find the defiler, sacrifice them to the afterlife ritual light. If the person was not to be found, someone with an equal taint of necromancy upon their soul was sufficient. If nothing was done, and the City decided to endure the plagues, which was stated it was possible, many hundreds would die- but they could have rebuilt. Or, they could have sacrificed a relatively innocent individual only because they had the taint of necromancy upon their soul. This moral dillema stared down the people of the City.

As most conflicts of the isle, taking battle the Guardian was proposed. Fighting and winning against the Guardian would result in the Mulhorandi buried there who had not yet gone to the afterlife to be damned. This was decided upon as a necessary sacrifice to save the City's people. Aid was beseeched by any lingering spiritsof the Cordor Family Tomb, and the spirit of Lady Cordor, the embodiment of remaining protective Wills of the City's past leaders was summoned. Should a better summoner have been brought, she would be able to fight and aid in battle against the Mulhorandi Guardian.

Some individuals offered themselves up for sacrifice. Kainda Ogden comes to the mind- but, she lacked the taint required upon her soul to be sufficient. She was a goodly priestess of Chauntea, and would never have used necromancy in a sort of evil manner that was required. Adel Xal'rith, however, had in the past been known to be a necromancer of the animating type. She offered herself as a sacrifice to the betterment of the City.

However, before she could do this. Marsael Enderson, another member of the Order of the Lantern, took it upon herself to confront Jinn Nibaru and Harley inside the tomb. Jinn was a suitable sacrifice, and after the confrontation Marsael slew him as a sacrifice. Harley was knocked out and unable to defend her friend. The curse was lifted with this sacrifice. However, due to Marsael technically breaking the law, i.e. committing Murder, she faced a six-month exile which was the minimum at the time. The writer now regrets this decision, and wishes to offer an apology to Marsael should she ever read this.
The City, after this, was able to resume daily life and rebuild and recover after months of enduring the plagues.
-

Was meant to be a book.

dragoneyeIIVX
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:05 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by dragoneyeIIVX » Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:57 pm

For those pitching in, thank you for your support! There's SO much going on in Arelith, it's hard to keep track. And rolling back to older times to retroactively fix some things will take a little manpower. If you're certain about something, make the change and we'll try to push it through ASAP.

I'm going to navigate as much as I can to that google doc, but feel free to post things here as backup/keeping people interested/constant contact.

Once it becomes an IC thing, it's going to take a ton more work to get character's books "Into the archive" - but that's when everything is self-sustaining and entirely on our end. Up until that time there is going to be a lot of auditing that needs to happen to make life easier for Mith.

If anyone is particularly good with dates and times, please hit up the events section and make sure it's all set up and sensible.
Characters birth/death and time played/stopped needs to be fixed also, I'm sure.
And the big one - regimes. If anyone could go through and audit those, you'd be a savior. This includes factions in non-settlements.

Besides that, fill in any major characters that existed (specifically, leaders of regimes, major players in factions, etc) and we'll have ourselves a solid base.

If you have any ideas on how to split up the different archives, I'd be game. Right now I'm thinking:

People
Places
Factions
Bestiary
Flora
Events
Artifacts (AKA: Items)
"Phenomena" (magic and stuff? Basically the "Other" category).

If anyone has better ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Realoms
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:04 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Realoms » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:08 pm

That sounds fairly good to me. I can go through and double check some older stuff for accuracy and rough dates as well. Let me know if anything else is needed.

DM Watchtower
Posts: 191
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by DM Watchtower » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:24 pm

If we're redoing the Encyclopedia, I'd consider a different way of breaking things down. Instead of breaking things down into one of several categories (people, places, etc), we should use a tag system. So for example, an account of Cordor’s council during Year 52 would be tagged with both Places and People.

This is particularly good for IC information, since a lot of it won't be so easily categorized.

dragoneyeIIVX
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:05 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by dragoneyeIIVX » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:34 pm

I can get behind that, WT.

So how does that pan out? If I'm understanding, the tags would look like this:
* Year (x) [one tag for each year, and one tag for pre-age]
* Persons
* Events
* Places
* Resources (as opposed to flora! Can't forget dem gems)
* Critters
* Artifacts
* Factions
* Phenomena

?

Then you'd go to Mith's proposed archivist and he would ask, "What do you want to know about?" You would select from the above options, put in your google search, it would run the search check, and it would pop out what you found?

Realoms
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:04 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Realoms » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:43 pm

I'd not include tags by year. A great many people already get extremely confused with years and/or wildly exaggerate time periods so it's not often 'accurate' anyway. Keeping it easy and friendly seems best.
Particularly because arelith is sort of 'forever stuck' in certain frame with regards to canon and events in years don't necessarily match to the FR's major events.

DM Watchtower
Posts: 191
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by DM Watchtower » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:46 pm

Yeah, basically in the browser you'd just specify tags to filter results (like any advanced search engine), and in game you could drill it down in a similar way in dialogues.

Realoms brings up a good point - it'd be nice to have times simply for organization's sake, but players have a REAL fuzzy sense of when things happened and how long ago that was in real life years. I'm not sure what the compromise is there, especially if this is going to be strictly in-game information (since after all, characters are perfectly free to screw up dates).

More ideas (warning, I'm running with this as far as I can go):
- I love Mith's idea of a lore check. I'd make library browsing possible both in game and in a web portal, but if you're going to browse it in a web portal, you have to tie it to a character you're logged in on, and it shows the same results (via Lore check)
- Any player can add a book both in game and in the web portal. Either way, you select the tags you want to apply and submit the book. It then goes into a queue for mod approval.
- Anyone submitting a book can use the web portal to upload images to that book. This also has mod approval.
- Characters can't edit books (save for uploading images), but they can submit new editions of older books they wrote, which will replace them in the system (but will not overwrite existing copies).

Another crazy idea:
- Another similar system for artwork. (Although I personally enjoy reading meticulously-written descriptions for painting fixtures).

User avatar
Mithreas
Emeritus Admin
Emeritus Admin
Posts: 2555
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2014 3:09 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Mithreas » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:48 pm

Artwork and images require haks, sadly. Or we would have had custom artwork yonks ago.

And approximate years would be a good thing, even if it's inaccurate.
xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1.For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.

Realoms
Posts: 88
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:04 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Realoms » Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:52 pm

^ Beautiful when it's done but from what I know it takes considerable effort putting things into nwn and HaKs to make it viewable yeah.
But art on the EA shall still be fine, it just won't translate IG?


In regards to years, simply because most people are 1) sketchy on how long ago something happened, 2) have no idea on the time period or exaggerate it a lot 3) don't remember how time works in arelith in regards to real time...I'd simply suggest leaving dates out, and then that becomes something additional to hunt for IG. At it's absolute worst with no one having a clue, I believe it falls under 'good metagaming' for the most part if there's no one that can help.

dragoneyeIIVX
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:05 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by dragoneyeIIVX » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:00 pm

If anyone has an idea on a compromise for years, let's hear it! I definitely agree, years can be fuzzy. Maybe even useless. I'll consider as well.

But what if you wanted to say "What was the council doing in year 53?" Maybe that'll be too much/too specific though. Trying to keep the idea streamlined and accessible - Mith, what's possible/worth it?

And I love the idea of publishing only after selecting a character from your vault. LOVE. On the front end website side, WT, you're saying the process would look largely like this?

- Select a character from your vault, who is then the author
- Write the post
- Add tags (from above) and give "Title" (aka: name of person, name of event, name of resource)
- Publish


Edit:
As for years;
* Potentially just leave it to be added to the text itself
* Optional "subtag" in the above?

User avatar
Anime Sword Fighter
Posts: 581
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 10:47 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Anime Sword Fighter » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:18 pm

Don't give a tag for years. But let them be added within the descriptions if the years are available to those writing the actual documents. And may Oghma let it be that there are no more glitches with writings that you have an IG paper saying it was written in 99 when the year is only 89. Those damn Hin and their strange ways of organizing their rulers.

Seven Sons of Sin
Posts: 2184
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 3:40 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Seven Sons of Sin » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:29 pm

Best thing for the chronology would be decades. I wrote something about Cordorian Political History of the "early 70s" because the composition didn't change and it very much was a narrative.

A historiographical approach like that, chronology as narratives, might be an alternative way to navigate the past.

Most people don't know when Ayin Mesmer was kingpin of Wharftown, but if your mention the event (like how he got pwned by Kathele) then people go "oh! Yeah!"

Although where it gets really biased is how you structure "eras" and narratives. But that's history.
Previous:
Oskarr of Procampur, Ro Irokon, Nahal Azyen, Nelehein Afsana (of Impiltur), Vencenti Medici, Nizram ali Balazdam, (Roznik) Naethandreil

Daedin

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Daedin » Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:51 pm

I have just started a replay of Dragon Age Origins (to try and complete the two games before the third come out), and the way its Codex works is rather good.

With that in mind, and speaking more of an IG implementation, having the lore-sources scattered a bit throughout the island,would be neat. As in, you wander into the Tower, browse a library, and an entry is "unlocked" from your codex or something of the sort. I think that is kind of, loosely, what Mithreas was talking about too.

In any case, this all sounds amazing. I will offer my help, but I have no idea how I can contribute. I am one of those players who has a very very fuzzy idea of the time tables, and I can barely remember half the things I did with most of my past characters.

jp.ping14
Posts: 127
Joined: Wed Sep 10, 2014 3:30 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by jp.ping14 » Wed Sep 10, 2014 4:39 am

*Raises hand* ... *looks at everyone... narrows eyes as he looks at them... SHAKES HAND as he's raising it!*

Could add a few things here and there. Well, things that I know at least.

User avatar
Jagel
Posts: 1250
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 3:50 pm
Location: Scandinavia

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Jagel » Wed Sep 10, 2014 6:11 am

There were a lot of entries generated by spambots last I was on as librarian. They seemingly crippled the functionality of the way entries are created and maintained.

User avatar
Marsi
Posts: 549
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 11:34 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Marsi » Wed Sep 10, 2014 6:35 am

I love in-game history, and would love to help where I can- if any more help is needed.

Also, this is a bit out there but it would be cool and tremendously helpful if there was an algorithm or something that allowed you to enter in a real-life date and time, and then returned to you an approximate in-game time. I know I'm not the only one who has a better memory of things from an out of game point of view. I can look at screenshots, or use my brain and go-- 'hey, that was in February 2012'.

I don't know if that's at all possible. Is that possible?

Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?


dragoneyeIIVX
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2014 6:05 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by dragoneyeIIVX » Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:07 pm

Alright, I've updated the EA Google Doc a little, if folks could start filling things out it would be great. Remember, we're specifically doing titles of things, so characters can then write about them later. If you want to write the novel, save it for when the functionality that lets you put it up! For now, we are trying to give Mith an easier system to work with.

Big things that we'll need help with: Events, regimes (leadership of cities mostly - under events), organizations, and locations.

Presumably, characters will be able to spontaneously add their own things down the line (with some kind of mod approval?), but right now the EA is very spotty in terms of congruent information. People will be writing about the same thing, but under half a dozen different names, and if we can streamline it, I think it'll help, if I'm understanding Mith's intent right.

DM Watchtower
Posts: 191
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by DM Watchtower » Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:32 pm

Mithreas wrote:Artwork and images require haks, sadly. Or we would have had custom artwork yonks ago.

And approximate years would be a good thing, even if it's inaccurate.
Sorry, I should have clarified my idea.

I'm not looking to display images in the game itself, more use the EA to supplement the content of in-game books with images. So in game, a book shows up as a normal book (maybe with an "illustrated" tag). Then, a user can go onto EA in their web browser, find that book, and see a screenshot or original artwork attached to the book's entry.

Same goes for an in-game painting.

User avatar
Mithreas
Emeritus Admin
Emeritus Admin
Posts: 2555
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2014 3:09 am

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by Mithreas » Wed Sep 10, 2014 10:01 pm

I would love to be able to open up web browsers in game to display resources. Sadly, I don't know of a way of doing so.

I'm not sure I want to try to tie the game to an external browser, but I'm open to the idea.
xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1.For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.

User avatar
IndifferentPerson
Posts: 649
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 1:46 am
Location: 44th most violent city in the world.

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by IndifferentPerson » Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:20 pm

This new update invalidates my shelved warlock build I didn't play anymore. I demand COMPENSATION.

DM Garynx
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2014 4:21 pm

Re: EA: volunteers?

Post by DM Garynx » Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:25 pm

I think you're in the wrong thread, IP ;)
msterswrdsmn wrote:People play characters, and, well. Some characters will murder you over 50 coins, I guess.

Post Reply