Guide to obtaining a FCAL from Cyan

[Kierra]

With Cyan's legal department's speedy response to my request for a Fan Created Age License, now might be the good time to send in those requests!

Having never applied for a FCA license before, I was rather at a loss for what to ask them and what sort of information I needed to supply them with, and I probably am not the first to be a little intimidated by starting that particular email!

So to hopefully help my fellow Age Builders this is the email I sent:

My fellow Guild of Writers friends tell me that it is a good idea to contact you guys before I attempt to share my Age on the Uru Library Manager, for legal reasons.

My Age's name is "Aerie", and it is my MOUL avatar's Home Age. The Age has no D'ni content other than references in my journal to my MOUL cavern life.

Images of the Age can be found here if you are interested: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v621/ ... ges/Aerie/

I plan for Aerie to house Linking Books to various Ages I will be building in the future, none of which will contain any D'ni content either.

If there is any additional information you need to consider my Age Aerie for a Fan Created Age License, please let me know, I will be happy to supply it.

Thank you,

~Kierra

I received my FCA license within 24 hours.

So writing an FCAL request isn't all that difficult. It's been said before that Fan created ages can't have D'ni content (for instance, you can't say your Age was created by the D'ni), so obviously it is a very good idea to tell Cyan's legal team if your Age contains any D'ni content or will in the future.

Screenshots I imagine aren't necessary, but it just gives them that option to look at your age if they want to.

And then of course always offer to provide additional information if they need it.

So really thats it. Keep it simple and provide them with the information they need.

~Kia

[Tweek]

24 hour time frame can vary by the way. I've had things come back from legal in the same day and I've had things take several weeks to get back to me.

[Pryftan]

I'm still waiting on a reply concerning our "Rules for Age Content".

[Robert The Rebuilder]

We're keeping track of all the ages that have received release approval from Cyan on the Alcugs Wiki here:

http://alcugs.almlys.org/wiki/index.php ... ovalStatus

So, once you submit your release request, update this chart with the date you sent the request. [Set your age to the "Work Approval Only" status.] Then, once you receive the approval, update the chart again withthe approval date. [Now set your age to the "Release Approval" status.]

This chart is handy for people who want to find out the current legal status of an age.

[Zander]

(for instance, you can't say your Age was created by the D'ni)

That seems a little extreme. Not using or alluding to persons, places or things created by Cyan as part of their D'ni story, that I can understand and have no problem complying with, but if we cannot create "newly discovered D'ni Ages" at all that's going to hamstring us when it comes to backstory. Basically every Age's history will amount to "well I just wrote this."

if they're willing to consider on a case-by-case basis, I can easily construct backstory that stays within the Age and doesn't touch on any specific thing they've created. If not, what on earth are we doing?

[Nadnerb]

We are the new guild of writers, both IC, and OOC. We make the ages, we wrote the ages. As for hamstringing the back story, do you remember the original Myst? Atrus wrote all those ages, and they all had back story. He didn't control exactly what was in the ages he wrote, and was constantly surprised by what he created. The stories were the history of the native inhabitants of the age, and Atrus's interaction with them. Hence, we can have deep back story without touching on the D'ni except to say that we learned from them how to write.

[andylegate]

Yes, my Camp Bravo Training Age is like that.

The story goes, that the New Maintainers wanted a Age that they could use for Training (a lot like what the Wall in Gahreesen could be used for).

So feeling confident (but extremely new) to the Art, the Maintainers wrote a Descriptive book, matching what they felt would be a safe world, mostly barren of life. Not wanting to have to deal with any natives, it seemed to be a simple mater of making conditions on that world not very hospitalble to life most of the time. There are cycles in which life can get started, but the cycles are too short for anything serious to get a foot hold, such as right now.

But, low and behold, when the Maintianers got there, while they could find no recent signs of in habitants, there is the Mystery Cave.
Going in and down, it becomes obvious that the cave is artificial, and then in the final chamber there is something that seems to have been made from high intellegence.

Did it come from natives on this world?
If so, where are they now?
Is it possible that, while THIS world has no native intelligent life forms, was it perhaps visited by some race with interstellar flight capabilites?

The speculation is just that at this point. Speculation.

But here we have an Age that has NOTHING to do with the D'ni, except for us, those of us that call ourselves Maintainers, and the fact that to get there, we had to use D'ni methods: the Art of Writing.

I don't see it a hamstring at all. Unless the only thing you wish to create is about the D'ni. Then yah, I guess it would curb what you want to do.

But GD said, we're the New Writers. Create our own worlds, Ages, and adventures.....

[BAD]

As far as I can tell, no one has sent in an age idea with D'ni influence in it yet.

If you want to test the waters for us, than that would completely end the debate.

[Zander]

I'd need to get some kind of idea how to make it playable first (still ploughing through Blender For Dummies), but yes, I'm willing. if I get shot down, I guess I can confine myself to in-Age story as Nadnerb said...that just means I can't write about the Writer, who s/he was, why s/he Wrote the Age, or anything like that. Which is mainly what interests me. it's kind of like writing Star Trek fanfic without including the Enterprise, planets, other starships, or anything outside twenty-first-century Earth.

Limits are good.

I guess.

Soon as I can get an Age up to standard, we'll see what happens.

[BAD]

Hmmm.....

You know one of the age ideas I had was rewritten because I didn't want to deal with the possibility of rejection. Instead of just removing my idea of finding a writers journal (having it as my journal was completely out of the question), I made up a modern writer character who was a former member of the writers.

Check it out here.