Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Skylocke]

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There seems to be a lack of In-character, player-written books circulating around. That sucks because I am a voracious reader of anything written in an in-game book, as are many others. But alas, my appetite goes mostly unwetted.

I know there are some libraries out there, though most are in a perpetual state of construction, or merely have the NPC books that everyone has, or just a handful of IC type books. Out of these libraries, only a handful are actually accessible, or even known to the broader populace, so to me there seems to be an in-game knowledge void. I want to be able to discuss certain author's works with other people in game and be on the same page (no pun intended) with them because they happened to have read it somewhere, too.

I think more in-character, player-written books should be written and distributed so they don't just exist in someone's bank somewhere or hidden under a pile of NPC books in some library people rarely visit. There is a huuuuuuge amount of lore, history, mythos, and knowledge that exists due to us players over the years, but how many of us really know much of it? We all have small bits and pieces which we have been part of, but the rest, as they say, is history. If I told someone about my old days in MTC and the way things used to be, they just look at me cross-eyed because they never heard of the battle of stonegate, even newer MTC members. Or they never heard of the Stormreaver orcs. Or they never heard of Rivendell, or the Yew Militia.

Many characters are scholars, yet few, if any, write any books. There are large numbers of rituals, chants, enchantments, etc that should be documented in various tomes throughout the world, and yet there are none. Having more books would create a much broader, in-depth world to RP in, and it would go a long ways to preserving our communities' history, as well as establish cultures.

My suggestion is this:
Create an in-character, in-game book. This could be something one of your character's writes, or it could be a tome depicting an ancient ritual your character stumbled upon, or it could be a history book written by some 'unknown' author, or whatever else that strikes your fancy. I would try and keep it as factual as possible. It is impossible to accurately depict history without bias, but don't make up random stuff that never happened. I want to read books about how certain guilds or organizations were founded, or about the great leaders of yore; not about some fancy fable about how Talon uppercutted a dragon until it was unconscious (unless he really did that). I would love to see some old treaties between guilds (I have a few of these from about 8 years ago), and other political documents. The more books, the better.

I would then say, if enough people wrote a book (or more than one) then we all could gather in some neutral town at some point, make copies of our books, and trade them to one another. So if 10 people did it, each of those people would be leaving with 10 unique, player-written, in-character books/treaties/tomes/whatever. Then they could be added to the various libraries around the world and then people like me who enjoy looking for and reading new and interesting player-written content can be satisfied. This will also help many of those who are newer to the community, or those who missed a gap somewhere, to learn about our communities' rich past.

Or maybe it's a bad idea. I know we have some of this type of thing on the RP wiki, but honestly, that is no substitue for in-game reading. What are your thoughts?
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Sometimes you must lose yourself before you can find yourself.

[Darrien Church]

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There is a 1,500 player-written book RP library in Tokuno the ARPC maintains now suh!

We happily take all new submissions in the mailbox outside!

Let me know if you need a rune.

[Malicite]

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You're correct Sky! I would suggest going to the library Darrien was referring too and judge for yourself. If you find any areas lacking, I would post it within this thread so we can all know what areas require some attention. I remember bits and pieces of the old history, but I don't think my memory can be called upon for anything accurate. Ahh the Battle of Stonegate... the Yew Militia. Good ole times they were. Good times indeed.
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"Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife."
-Justice Holmes

[Sarian]

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Aye..The largest Library in UO is located where Darrien said. 1, 500 player-written books should occupy you long enough.
Once I do the Blackmarsh archives, I will be adding all of those to the Grand Library as well.
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Brianha ‎(10:04 PM):
lol oh no worries with teasing.. it takes ALOT to get me really goin
Brianha12:54 AM
cool... i will hook up with you tomorrow night ... maybe you can help move my chests too

[Skylocke]

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I remember the library back when it was in another location. It didn't have as many books then, and am glad to hear it is still around. I do remember being underwhelmed back then though with the books, as a number of them were really not books at all but merely a sentence or two, or had nothing to do with anything. I hope that has changed. But still, there needs to be MOAR books! 1,500 is not very many when you consider each UO book is only about 1-3 pages of most novels in length, with some exceptions of the 40 page books (assuming someone actually used all 40 pages). I am also willing to bet that many are just esoteric works, but I am reserving judgement until I scour the shelves for myself. There needs to be chronicles of as much history as can be remembered and recorded. The old people who've been around forever are in shorter and shorter supply and before long, those histories and works will be gone forever unless recorded.

But I will see what this library has to offer and give comments about where it is lacking in more specific detail when I get home from work (typing this up at work now so can't go and see the library now). Where exactly is the building in Zento? I know not everyone is welcome in Zento, but is the library considered neutral, or is it guarded like the town itself?
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Sometimes you must lose yourself before you can find yourself.

[Sara Delan]

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WOW! Where is this library?
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I have no idea what you are talking about.

Sig curtisy of Yasamin

[Grignag]

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[Skylocke]

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[Sarian]

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[Yasamin]

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[Cear Dallben ZOG]

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you get to read all you want from my library if you join my guild forever!
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U6Online|| Welcome to Blackrock||Sunrise, Isle of the Avatar||Automatic Roleplay

[Ariana Lenoir]

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Has it ever been considered now that we the gargoyle books with a lot more pages in them... combining books where appropriate?

For example if we have Plants of Britannia I, II and III by the same author... perhaps putting them all into one book.

Be a big job, but would salvage lockdowns for even more books.
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[Sarian]

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[Skylocke]

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So I went there and checked it all out and poked around and had a good time of it.

My initial impression of the place was good. I liked the entry room with the fountains, very welcoming and inviting. The second floor library seemed more akin to a personal study than a library; not enough book shelves. Then I was very disappointed to see that there was nothing but junk above that and no more books.

I found the biographies to be VERY lacking. There are many awesome characters who deserve to be in there, but unforunately are not. I hope people start writing more biographies!
I immediately jumped to Richard's biography, seeing as he was one of my best friends for a long time in UO, and although interesting and creatively written by Beo, it did not do the justice Richard deserved. I might need to write one about the things that Richard actually did and his involvement in MTC and events. Plus 1 of those gargoyle books would definitely cut down on the 8 volumes of his bio.

I liked the lore/dark lore/spells/magic sections. They were interesting and there is some good RP potential there if one were to look for it. I did not spend much time in the song and verse section, so can't comment much. The political and legal section was very, very lacking unforunately. Alliances, wars, and everything else happens all the time. There should be documentation so that someone, if willing, could trace back histories of a particular group of people. Perhaps that is hoping for too much, though.

One thing I noticed was that there were duplicates of some books in various bookcases. I found a couple, but don't remember off the top of my head which ones.

Aside from being loosely catagorized, there was little rhyme or reason to how the books were clustered. So if someone was looking for something specific, there is no way of knowing where it is without just going through and looking in every shelf of that catagory. Not a huge deal with the few books there are there, but if there were more, that would become a major hassle. Speaking of which, are there really 1500 books? I went through each shelf and maybe it just didn't seem like it, but maybe I missed something.

Overall I was happy with most of the books in terms of length and quality (of the random sampling I took, which was a number of books from each shelf / bag), there really were not many books which only had one or two sentences. But there were some. There are also some which are terribly disappointing in length. I saw a book regarding gargoyles, and being one myself I felt that I should read it. It boiled down to "Gargoyles are different. The end" so it didn't really feel like a particularly interesting or insightful book, and it was only a few short sentences long. Speaking of which, the sections regarding races and peoples is also lacking, unfortunately, but that just means more people need to write more books

So really, I stand by my first post. More people need to write more books! The history section was esoteric at best, and if someone wanted to find the history of a particular guild, they are pretty much out of luck. Where are all the historians, eh?

Loved the music box. Listening to Stones while poking through the bookshelves is a wonderful experience that anyone, who played UO 10 years ago when the intro screen was an opening box, should have.

So in summary: still need moar books! Not to mention it would be nice to access some of these in places other than zento. I will write up some and contribute.

(If anything sounded particularly harsh, I apologize. I am tired and working 100 hours over the next 10 days straight. I do love me some books and libraries, though.)
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Sometimes you must lose yourself before you can find yourself.

[Sarian]

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Do something about it then.
Write up some Biographys. Do justice for those who don't have any done.
Write stories on battles. Go nuts
You're complaining -alot- about the lack of books and making mild suggestions and begging for more. To take the lead. Start the pack. Make like 50 books or something about old battles or stories or biographys.
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Brianha ‎(10:04 PM):
lol oh no worries with teasing.. it takes ALOT to get me really goin
Brianha12:54 AM
cool... i will hook up with you tomorrow night ... maybe you can help move my chests too