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Hello there, good people of the Massivecraft! I wasn't entirely sure whether to put this under General or Faction Announcements, so if I'm in the wrong spot, apologies.
You can skip to the next bolded section if you don't wanna listen to me gush, it got a bit out of hand.
I'm here to propose a little idea to the lot of you, but first, let me give you all a little context...
Waaaay back, when the dinosaurs ruled the planet (aka, 2001), there was a little game released by the then unknown company named Bethesda. As I'm sure most of you know, they later became one of the front running game developers after some of their massive hits such as Fallout 3, Skyrim, and recently, Fallout 4. However, the game that started Bethesda down it's path to glory seems to be relatively unknown by the common gamer, and that little jem was called The Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind.
Quite possibly my favorite game of all time, Morrowind helped define the sandbox RPG. From it's incredibly large map, to it's plethora of collectible items and gear, the one thing that made Elder Scrolls stand out from it's competitors was it's incredibly deep story and lore. Not only was it as vast as the ocean, but it was displayed to you in what was, at the time, a very bold and unique way. Very little lore or story was explained through forced cutscenes which the player had no choice but to listen to, no, the player had to actively FIND scraps and clues throughout the world to put the larger picture together. Many of the NPC's had over 50 lines of dialog (text based, albeit) to share with the player, but not every NPC had the whole story you were looking for, not even close! To make make it even more realistic, some NPC's would even have different opinions and viewpoints over another, blurring the lines of fact and fiction even more. The game world felt like it could be real, and that was one of the many reasons the game won multiple awards upon it's release year, including game of the year.
I realize now that I've started to gush, and I should really get to the point of this post. So, other than the immersive NPC's and gorgeous game world (hey, it was amazing in the early 2000's
), Morrowind had one other way of displaying it's lore, and it was probably my favorite; the books. Over 200 books existed in game, some being simple stories, others in depth histories. Some where extremely common and available, while others were hidden away, usually containing the most juicy secrets. But when I was a wee lad playing this game for the first time, the books I loved the most were the History and (beleive it or not) the guide, or "tourist" books.
Now I FINALLY get to my point, thank's for sticking with me. While Morrowind had the the ability to use NPC dialog to bolster it's immersion within communal settings, or world of Aloria (or whatever you want to call the Faction worlds) isn't so privy to that. Sure, you might run into a local when traveling around, but odds are that's not going to be the case, 9 times out of 10. Many of the factions within Massivecraft have a very deep, and sometimes lore compliant backstory, yet very few people outside of their faction will ever hear about it. So how do we change that? How can we share our builds/ideas/communities with everyone who would like to see them, ranging from the darring explorer to the noobiest of noobs?
Here's my idea! About 6 months ago, I wrote a minecraft book serving as a sort of "tourist guide" to my faction's capital in the northeast of New Ceardia. Although mostly just a practical guide to locations around the city, I also used it as a chance to explain some of our faction lore, outlining a very brief history of the town. Granted, it has a few typos (try writing a minecraft book without any typos, it's almost impossible), but after sharing it with a few friends and garnering much praise, I decided to release it to the public through my market shop. For whatever reason, the book is one of my best sellers, usually selling about 5 copies per week (I don't even know man, I'm confused myself). This gave me another idea; why not do this for more factions?
So here is my proposal to all of you: how would you like to have a guide/history/lore book on your own faction? Many of you have already made one I've found, and many of you might be asking, "why the hell would I have this guy do it if I could just do it myself?" If you'd rather do it yourself, I'm all for it! But, perhaps you're not too keen on writing, or maybe you just can't stand the minecraft book GUI (I can't blame you, it's pretty awful). For any reason, I'd be willing to do it for you, for free. There's only a couple things I would need from you first:
Thanks for reading!
You can skip to the next bolded section if you don't wanna listen to me gush, it got a bit out of hand.
I'm here to propose a little idea to the lot of you, but first, let me give you all a little context...
Waaaay back, when the dinosaurs ruled the planet (aka, 2001), there was a little game released by the then unknown company named Bethesda. As I'm sure most of you know, they later became one of the front running game developers after some of their massive hits such as Fallout 3, Skyrim, and recently, Fallout 4. However, the game that started Bethesda down it's path to glory seems to be relatively unknown by the common gamer, and that little jem was called The Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind.
Quite possibly my favorite game of all time, Morrowind helped define the sandbox RPG. From it's incredibly large map, to it's plethora of collectible items and gear, the one thing that made Elder Scrolls stand out from it's competitors was it's incredibly deep story and lore. Not only was it as vast as the ocean, but it was displayed to you in what was, at the time, a very bold and unique way. Very little lore or story was explained through forced cutscenes which the player had no choice but to listen to, no, the player had to actively FIND scraps and clues throughout the world to put the larger picture together. Many of the NPC's had over 50 lines of dialog (text based, albeit) to share with the player, but not every NPC had the whole story you were looking for, not even close! To make make it even more realistic, some NPC's would even have different opinions and viewpoints over another, blurring the lines of fact and fiction even more. The game world felt like it could be real, and that was one of the many reasons the game won multiple awards upon it's release year, including game of the year.
I realize now that I've started to gush, and I should really get to the point of this post. So, other than the immersive NPC's and gorgeous game world (hey, it was amazing in the early 2000's
), Morrowind had one other way of displaying it's lore, and it was probably my favorite; the books. Over 200 books existed in game, some being simple stories, others in depth histories. Some where extremely common and available, while others were hidden away, usually containing the most juicy secrets. But when I was a wee lad playing this game for the first time, the books I loved the most were the History and (beleive it or not) the guide, or "tourist" books. Now I FINALLY get to my point, thank's for sticking with me. While Morrowind had the the ability to use NPC dialog to bolster it's immersion within communal settings, or world of Aloria (or whatever you want to call the Faction worlds) isn't so privy to that. Sure, you might run into a local when traveling around, but odds are that's not going to be the case, 9 times out of 10. Many of the factions within Massivecraft have a very deep, and sometimes lore compliant backstory, yet very few people outside of their faction will ever hear about it. So how do we change that? How can we share our builds/ideas/communities with everyone who would like to see them, ranging from the darring explorer to the noobiest of noobs?
Here's my idea! About 6 months ago, I wrote a minecraft book serving as a sort of "tourist guide" to my faction's capital in the northeast of New Ceardia. Although mostly just a practical guide to locations around the city, I also used it as a chance to explain some of our faction lore, outlining a very brief history of the town. Granted, it has a few typos (try writing a minecraft book without any typos, it's almost impossible), but after sharing it with a few friends and garnering much praise, I decided to release it to the public through my market shop. For whatever reason, the book is one of my best sellers, usually selling about 5 copies per week (I don't even know man, I'm confused myself). This gave me another idea; why not do this for more factions?
So here is my proposal to all of you: how would you like to have a guide/history/lore book on your own faction? Many of you have already made one I've found, and many of you might be asking, "why the hell would I have this guy do it if I could just do it myself?" If you'd rather do it yourself, I'm all for it! But, perhaps you're not too keen on writing, or maybe you just can't stand the minecraft book GUI (I can't blame you, it's pretty awful). For any reason, I'd be willing to do it for you, for free. There's only a couple things I would need from you first:
- I'd need to know where your faction is on the dynmap. You can opt out of this if you'd rather not have any raiders and whatnot showing up at your door (keep in mind, they can use dynmap, they'll find you eventually)
- What is this place? Who lives here, how'd they get here, why do they live here?
- A detailed history of the city itself as well as why certain building are where, who lives in/uses them, and how they came to be.
- I'd reeeeally prefer to keep each book focused upon one city/town/settlement at a time rather than an entire kingdom/empire, but if you'd consider the area of interest a city state (A central city with smaller villages that depend on it), we could probably work that out.
- Ah, and let's not forget, I'd need you to specify if there are any details about your city that could be used to help raiders, as I can leave those out if you wish.
Thanks for reading!
