EA: volunteers?

[Izaich]

I'd suggest adding a new subforum for those working on the project. It'll give us the ability to break down different tasks, consolidate information, and coordinate/organize IC aspects of the project.

[Alchuilas]

Afraid I've nothing to offer, save for my jaw hitting the floor from how awesome this is.

[Hoeya]

If EA becomes an IG resource... I think I might die just a bit. I would be glad to help as I can, but right now it'd have to be anything OOCly I can do.

What about the possibility of allowing players to add custom tag, pending approval?

[LittleWeasel]

Though wisheth be my command.
Will set a subforum up when I get home

- Done

[dragoneyeIIVX]

What about the possibility of allowing players to add custom tag, pending approval?

I believe that's the long-run plan. Right now we're just trying to fill out what the common tags will be, so it's actually populated once it goes live.

Thanks LW. I'm totally game for a subforum - I'll mention it to UGrab, since he was thinking of starting up a wiki over it, but if we can use the forums I'm sure it'll be just as useful.

[The Rambling Midget]

Could it be a more general "projects" subforum, which would encompass wiki business, with EA/Wiki tags to distinguish threads?

[dragoneyeIIVX]

Just spoke to UGrab - LW, it sounds great, if we could just make it Private?

[Mithreas]

Why private? It's an open project, so why make it hard to help out?

[The Rambling Midget]

Why private? It's an open project, so why make it hard to help out?

It's good to have it open, but I also understand why dragoneye might want to have it private. If it's open, then you get weirdos like me posting inane responses, and unhelpful memes and videos everywhere.

Maybe it could have a dedicated moderator.

dragoneye could start handing out straight-jackets again!

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I've been trying to keep up, but I'm a little confused. Are we inserting history retroactively, or are we providing tidbits of information?

Are we writing from IC perspectives even when there is objective information on the old forums? For example, I had tons of theories on Kohlingen, and so did Pretty Prince, but Artos had a post that basically refuted (almost) everything with a bunch of information that no one has any access to because there's either no in-game memory - on the part of the environment or the characters. How is that handled?

And who's "in charge"? Mithreas? Dragoneye? I understand we want to keep things mystical and not-so-obvious but if you're going to have some sort of database, you need to make sure some things line up. although perhaps blatant historical discrepancies are fun.

[dragoneyeIIVX]

Seven - as far as I'm aware, it's going to work like this:
- Characters submit a book to "The Archives" - IG or through the website
- The character selects a "General Tag" ("People", "Places", etc) for the book
- Then they pick a "Specific Tag" (Daedin, Wharftown) -

Ideally we already have all the specific tags when this rolls out, but new ones could obviously be made down the line. The general tags would be static though.

After the above, the book is then in the system. When people go looking for info, they'll search by Specific Tags, and be given a bunch of information based on (stuff). The system will pop out whatever they find so they can read about it. There isn't really room for "Objective" in this system, because it's all done through RP and writers. What we're trying to do with the project is make sure that at least SOMETHING exists for all of these things.

I could be misunderstanding what the end result is that Mith's shooting for, but that's what I think is going on.

Why private? It's an open project, so why make it hard to help out?

UGrab mentioned potential FOIG stuff that might crop up while we're trying to bust everything out. Events, locations, etc. I'm not, and I don't think he is, opposed to keeping it open, but I'll leave him to comment on that bit.

Edit: Mithreas is in charge. I just opened up the Google doc to get things started.

[Mithreas]

I'm the approver, but I'm not going to manage the project. I have enough on my plate right now.

I hope to be involved to set direction and then leave a team of volunteers to carry out that direction with occasional review/assistance.

[Marsi]

I have a concern.

Once the new encyclopedia rolls out, what happens to all the information on the old one? All that history is so old now that it is likely irretrievable by IC means. Large swathes of Arelithian history will be entirely lost.

[Mithreas]

I'm not sure where you get the idea that we're going to delete all the old information? We have no intention of doing so.

[dragoneyeIIVX]

I imagine they just get attributed to random authors, or just be "Anonymous author" - like so many books in the module.

[The Man of the Moon]

The main problem would be ensuring the published information remains circulated. Books come and go from the item matrix, and player fixtures have a tendency to blow up. If it's possible, I'd recommend setting up a basement or adjoining area to the Library called the Archives. The bookshelves would have dialogue options that would let players sort through events, names, etc. Particularly notable events and people could receive paintings / statues, and notable items and monsters could receive models or stuffed animals.

See, the joy of doing things in the new website, is that I'll be able to pull directly from the archive into the game. So for example, we could have an interface where you search a library for information about a keyword. The authors of the articles flag information as common, uncommon, rare or very rare, and the PC's search check determines what articles they might find. The game then serves up a random article from that pool.

Boom, IG research becomes a thing.

So amazing...

By the way, I am volunteer aswell. As far as I am creating a map of Arelith, I feel bound to its history too...

but then... Could I ask to keep a Chronology Timeline with short descriptions of the most important events and short, so short coment on each one, so anyone, historician or not, could keep tracking the evolution of Arelith or find when certain event or sucess happened?

This could be easily done with the asistance of each DM involved on each event they managed... Like the Zhentarim War, etc. (Asking something that could be reached IG, not with the hidden plots, but with the commonly known sucess or as they were seen openly by the inhabitants of Arelith).

This Chronology, within the Enciclopaedia, keeps an important, very important side of Arelith. Since it is a RP server, we should keep its history as a truth treasure and never letting anything get lost in the forgotten sands of Sibayan...

Thanks for an awesome work.

[Kuma]

A Chronology will be very difficult to do without a lot collaboration, DMs with good memories, and guesswork, and here I am to collaborate and also volunteer for the project as a whole. This appeals to my inner historian and data-organiser. He's been getting very starved of late.

Also, I wrote the above paragraph two days ago and have been trying to organise an edited version of the Encyclopedia Arelithica's month-to-AR spreadsheets helpfully provided by Someonehere123.

I'm going demented, and I need help. Will post another topic about this.

[The Man of the Moon]

A Chronology will be very difficult to do without a lot collaboration, DMs with good memories, and guesswork, and here I am to collaborate and also volunteer for the project as a whole. This appeals to my inner historian and data-organiser. He's been getting very starved of late.

Also, I wrote the above paragraph two days ago and have been trying to organise an edited version of the Encyclopedia Arelithica's month-to-AR spreadsheets helpfully provided by Someonehere123.

I'm going demented, and I need help. Will post another topic about this.

If I could help in any way, let me know...

Also... we could maybe make a GUild IG so we could recruit people to develop the project as an IG thing and thus, interviewing characters about every important event and former characters that were famous?

The same way I am creating a map of Arelith, justifyinf that IG... there could be an IG justification for the encyclopaedia? Just asking...

[The Man of the Moon]

Hello.

Any update on this? Or the project is right now frozen?

thx

[Dalenger]

(Unrelated):

It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that EA did not stand for

[Mithreas]

Once we have all the info, I'll work on getting it online