The Role of Writing in Role Play

Multon

I have finally finished my book I've been writing about Evil! It is nearly five thousand words long, barely makes any sense, and I've totally forgotten what on earth I was trying to do with it in the first place!

Now what...

But, in all seriousness, seeing all of the literature produced by Achaean players was really exciting for me, and immediately inspired me to make a ham-handed attempt of it myself.

What are people's thoughts on the role of player written books, plays, manuals, histories, poetry and things? What should they be about generally? How long do you prefer them? What makes one stand out as particularly good? How can they best be made to enhance the RP landscape of Achaea?

Achimrst

I love that we can write books in-game, they add a lot of interesting things for Lore and RP don't have to necessarily be true or believable.

Books are great and I have written several.

Sarathai

I've been meaning to write a book (possibly a series of books) for a little while now.

Honestly, they can really be about anything. Ditto for length. Some things will need to be longer than others, and that's fine.

Tristyn

As a person who has read many of the player written books for tasks/enjoyment, one of the tips I can say is to keep the words limited to 300-500 words at max per page. Also, avoid word fluff and keep the information succinct. I don't want to, as a reader/player, have to dig around for the information I'm looking for. If you need to, you can break up your book of evil into several smaller books and divide by topics of interest. History, philosophy, tenets, things like that would be better broken up as people like to look by subject. You can also break up the monotony of the words with Ascii, graphs, bullet points, quotes, anything that will keep the reader engaged. There is a book on darkness that does this super well, but I, unfortunately, don't know the title right off my head.

Ruth

My interest is in writing books/journals/scrolls based around in-game philosophy and history.

Philosophy wise, I always found it best if you formulated points you wanted to get across, then try to be as succinct (you do not need to use flowery language, but Ruth likes to use flowery, impressive language as a character quirk) as possible in your explanation. Give an example to illustrate your point.

History wise, capture the essential details of the subject, and you may want to point out any themes that you want individuals to pick up on as they read the history again.

Blujixapug

Edit your stuff down. Be ruthless. Just because you wrote it all, doesn't mean people want to read it all.

Paragraphs = small bites. Unformatted textwalls = choking your audience to death.

If you're struggling for direction, think about what you would like to read.

What is making your content interesting? Good answers: interesting subject matter, interesting ideas, the captivating cadence of your unique writing voice. Bad answers: nothing.

Short is totally fine. I consider 5-6 pages with 1-2 paragraphs per page quite acceptable. If it's much shorter than that, maybe put it on a single-page scroll. Long is fine, as long as you aren't padding it out. This isn't some high school essay you need to stretch out to a certain length. If you can make your point in 1-2 paragraphs per page, why go longer?

I love player-written stuff. People fleshing out little facets of the setting. Every org should have a library stuffed with their own books. Many are sadly sparse. If someone says, "Where can I learn more about Pazuzu," it's great to be able to say 'the library!' rather than 'um nowhere'. I have written a couple of in-game books and understand how hard it can be to see one through to the end, get it all done, and avoid the doubt-fuelled temptations to abandon it along the way. Good luck & I believe in you!

Oh also definitely consider doing a write-up of any org events that occur. Writing them up in news posts is good too, but it's a great excuse for a book. Even if you just write down the facts, and maybe include any adapted logs you can get (adapted into more descriptive writing so it's not verbatim output from someone's client), it will be interesting for people to read later on. Recording these things is a great way to preserve game history, because anything that goes undocumented will inevitably be rapidly forgotten.

Mishgul

Take a hint from games like Morrowind when writing.

Aurom

Morrowind.

Nostalgia.

Feeeels.

Treyal

@Mishgul So, you're the one who wrote The Lusty Xorani Maid?

Mishgul

I admit nothing

Athelas

One of the first things you'll learn about Athelas, should you meet him, is that he wrote three books before he was 100 years old. Today, you can find copies of it in various libraries. It's not what I'd call professional and there are lots of typos, and it will come across as self aggrandizing, even though it was never meant to be.

That book is a HUGE part of Athelas's history. It's almost impossible to know him without hearing about it.

Silas

Athelas said:

One of the first things you'll learn about Athelas, should you meet him, is that he wrote three books before he was 100 years old. Today, you can find copies of it in various libraries. It's not what I'd call professional and there are lots of typos, and it will come across as self aggrandizing, even though it was never meant to be.

That book is a HUGE part of Athelas's history. It's almost impossible to know him without hearing about it.