I came up with an idea for the Writers and Maintainers that I would like to share with you all.
The future Maintainer's job will probably involve bug tracking. Writers' Rehearsal you could call it. Anyway, that sounds quite dull if you compare it to what the D'ni maintainers did.
Imagine being a D'ni Maintainer getting a descriptive book that has just been written. You'll be the first to link into the new Age. No one knows what the Age really looks like and you will be the first to find out. You pull on your Maintainer suit, wondering if there will be any dangers in this new Age ... is it safe? is it stable?
The job of the future Maintainers won't be that thrilling. They aren't the first to see the Age, since the Writer of the Age has seen every detail of the Age in his Blender models already. And the Age won't contain great dangers. For example: a Writer that wants to write a Garden Age, will build a Garden in Blender, and certainly not a supernova. So the Maintainers won't face great unexpected dangers.
Here is my idea... wouldn't it be cool if the Writers would give the Maintainers a real adventure every now and then? To remind the Maintainers of the dangers the D'ni Maintainers had to face?
Example:
A Writer writes an unstable Age on purpose. An Age containing a huge, streaming lava river. The Age has been configured to panic link the player away just before the player falls in the lava. The Writer goes to the Guild of Maintainers and says "Shorah! I've just finished writing a Garden Age, could a Maintainer inspect it?". The Maintainer, expecting a Garden Age, links some meters above a lava river and manages to panic link to his Relto by the skin of his teeth!
Wouldn't that be cool to do? Perhaps the Writers could make a few "templates" for unstable Ages that could be given to Maintainers every now and then. It makes the most sense for apprentices to give such an Age, as experienced Writers are less likely to write unstable Ages. The Writers that gives the Age to the Maintainers should talk in an IC way about it, because if the Writers would say "I've just built this Garde Age in Blender" and the Age appears to be a lava river, it would seem to be a very bad joke.
What do you think of it?
Shorah b'shemtee,
Erik