Product of Brainstorming meeting

[John Shockey]

Yes, by all means. Anyone who wants to continue discussing the nature of the Guild's Ages (discovered or Written) can do so in http://forum.guildofwriters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=62.

Is the October 13th, 14:00 KI time meeting still planned?

Oops. Sorry Gorobay. I didn't see this request until after I'd written my previous post.

[ChaosSong]

Is the October 13th, 14:00 KI time meeting still planned?

Yes, it is: a casual meeting just to talk about the proposal. All are welcome.

Here's a thought to add to the discussion I was trying to get past in my last post, I guess my brain isn't as ready to leave this alone as I thought it was:

I had a thought overnight that is really going to help reconcile me to a non-D'ni Age.

I guess the real reasons that I wanted the D'ni was because I wanted the three Chemsists and the Miner who were in charge here to be members of the respective D'ni Guilds, using the D'ni Guild Symbols and D'ni Numbers in their logs. It occured to me last night that this might not be a problem in storyline number two if we imagine that the Guild system expands to more than we actually see in cavern. In other words, we have our own Guilds of Chemists, Miners, Healers etc... it's just that they are not explorers the way you and I are, they are fictional characters living with us in the cavern.

If I was playing Dungeon's and Dragons, I'd call them NPC's, that is characters created by the storyteller for the purpose of moving the plot. The discrepancy between OOC time and IC time involved for our Guild members to inhabit the age and do their thing is not one that bother's me much. If this idea is amenable to most of you folks maybe we really can move on with just one storyline.

[bluewyvern]

John: Welcome, and thanks for your thoughtful post. You're pretty much exactly right -- there is no way that we can "Write" a new Age and have it be one already visited by the D'ni. If it's a D'ni Age, then we just "found" it. You laid the situation out all out quite clearly, which I think is helpful for this protracted and somewhat anguished debate. (And don't worry about being long-winded...I never have. )

ChaosSong: Wait, now I'm confused. You mean you wanted the D'ni in the Age to be *contemporary*, that is, living in the Age in the present day and having the disaster happen now? So once we find this Age, we have a bunch of old D'ni Guildsmen running around? That would be a pretty major revelation, since there are no known D'ni survivors anywhere except Releeshahn...even as a discovery Age, that might be too big a chunk to bite off. (I'm having some kind of metaphor breakdown here -- isn't there some standard expression I want? Too much to chew? A big bite to take? Too big to swallow? ...Am I just hungry? Er, anyway...)

*rereads post*

OHHHH... I see. You want these to be members of the new, reconstituted D'ni Guilds...as in, we wrote this Age a while ago and explorers moved in and started working in their capacities as Miners and so on, and then things went wrong, and then the Age was released to the public afterwards. Hmm. Now that's even trickier, I think, for a lot of reasons...

Why not just have the new Age's indigenous version of those professions represented instead? Why does it have to be D'ni Guilds? Is the use of the D'ni symbols and numbers itself that important? Can't we just design new symbols and numbers and leave the rest of the concept the same?

[ChaosSong]

Yes, "reconstituted" Guilds are what I'm thinking now.

Sneaking this post in while I'm at work, so I must be a bit terse in my answer bluewyvern:

I feel strongly that there need to be just a few familar elements in the age to enhance the experience of the explorers who will enter it.

[Pryftan]

In summation:

The original, ancient D'ni Guilds are cool!

So let's use them if we can.

[Gorobay]

Familiar stuff can be good. So can unfamiliar stuff. But yes, the age should not be completely foreign. Is it the sense of familiarity you want from the guilds' being D'ni? If so there could be native guilds that are similar to D'ni's but slightly different (not too much to be weird and unfamiliar, but enough for people to know it is not D'ni). What specifically is cool about the D'ni guilds? The cool aspects could be put into this world's new guilds.

Now for some prospective storyline, so this post isn't completely hypocritical with my last post. I had envisioned multiple miners, not just one. The chemists and miners from wherever decided to mine this place for its gas. The gas is denser than air, otherwise mining it doesn't make sense and they would drill for it. Three chemists have journals and at least one miner does too.

They stay underground mining for a long time, sending gas to the surface via some machine (a gas elevator or something). The two groups have an internal conflict. The miners get annoyed that the chemists are ordering them around when they, the miners, are doing all the work. One of the chemists gets homesick for the surface (since he hasn't left the mine for years) and goes a little crazy. The journals show the points of view: miner, insane chemist, chemist in charge, and some other chemist.

It's unclear to us modern explorers at first who does it but someone sabotages the place (hence the broken machinery). The miners and chemists leave but since they don't like each other they take different routes. The miners take a tunnel out. The chemists go through the gear door. Either way out is accessible to us modern explorers and each way has its puzzles. When you get out, there is a scenic reward (kind of like Releeshahn in Myst V in that you can't explore it, but you can see part of it). When the modern Writer (or discoverer, if you insist) of this Age links in he disrupts a gas bubble which blows up. Then people are invited to explore it in order to try to figure out what happened.

[BAD]

I think it would be a good idea from this point on that if someone goes back to the D'ni vs new age debate we should split the thread to keep on track.

So if you want to discuss that topic, you should go to the link posted above.

This one.

It seems that the idea of using the Dni as a part of the story is winning out. If it happens that Cyan would prefer us to not use the D'ni in the story, then we can deal with that when it comes. This age could be the first test to see what Cyan would accept.

I think it would be a good idea for us to write up a structured and detailed description and story for the age and submit it to Cyan with the intent to build it as an age for Uru single player. If they accept that, then we can negotiate further and it will give us an early look at what Cyan may or may not accept in the future.

[Gorobay]

If we do it as an age for single player, why do you think Cyan will care what is in it? They have never said anything about using D'ni in explorer-made ages. They would only have rules about it if it was made for Live.

Anyway, now the main point of this post:


I made this map so we can have something to look at while we're discussing this place. I made a few changes from the original idea: The link-in spot is one of the chemist's rooms. That would explain why there are his notes there. Another idea I had was that you link into a room full of broken machinery, which was their junk room.

The gas delivery tubes take gas from the mines. From there it is diverted in amounts, which are set by a lever next to the pressure display, to either the surface or the welding torch. The credits book would credit everyone who worked on this age, but in an IC way (e.g. so-and-so wrote this age, these people helped restore it, these maintainers worked on it, etc.). Obviously there will be puzzles and more stuff but this is just a starting map.

What do you think?

[BAD]

Nice picture. Layout looks decent.

Cyan has to protect their copyrights no matter what it is for. If we are to do anything to Uru we will need their approval, and they won't allow anything that people will be able to publicly access to interfere with their story.

Also we will mention that this age may possibly be added to MOUL if and when that becomes a reality, if that would be ok with them.

[ChaosSong]

Wow Gorobay this is great!

I read your first post at work and didn't want to give another short answer like I had to do for bluewyvern, so as I'm driving home - you give me even more to behold, lol. So forgive me if this becomes a large post.

So first off I'm going to continue to ignore my own advise to put this debate on the back burner to address why I'm so resistant to native scientists and guilds.

Is it the sense of familiarity you want from the guilds' being D'ni? If so there could be native guilds that are similar to D'ni's but slightly different (not too much to be weird and unfamiliar, but enough for people to know it is not D'ni). What specifically is cool about the D'ni guilds? The cool aspects could be put into this world's new guilds.

Why not just have the new Age's indigenous version of those professions represented instead? Why does it have to be D'ni Guilds? Is the use of the D'ni symbols and numbers itself that important? Can't we just design new symbols and numbers and leave the rest of the concept the same?

I'm a little bit suprised that this isn't obvious.

It comes down to this: If we completely remove every single mention of D'ni or even the DRC project, then in what sense have we written an age for URU Live? It could be a planet in Star Trek if there is zero refrence point on how the age is connected to rest of the cavern.

Another point: by using the D'ni Guild symbols, we can comunicate a great deal of information about the jobs and lives of these individuals, the power structure that existed in this age, and their likley attidutes towards each other and the "workmen" around them. All without writing a single word about it. The motivations, social structure, and duties of natives would have to be all spelled out in order to be half as complete as all the information conveyed by that one symbol.

Finally, (as you said to me yourself, bluewyvern) the community loves D'ni. It is my belief that the community would enjoy the D'ni related elements that I am proposing. Shifting the action to the present day by using "Reconstitued" Guild members should kill the argument about conflicting with anything, all I've got left really are two Guild Symbols and some single digit numbers. And just in passing I'd like to comment that I don't know how many times I've heard explorers wish for another D'ni number puzzle.

I am not afraid of Cyan asking us to change something, I don't even care if they change someting without asking, they are they ones who gave us this oppurtunity in the first place. I want feedback from Cyan. I hope they all jump on board and really help us make it cool.

Okay this is too long, already, so I'm gonna write another post about all this good stuff that Gorobay gave me to look at after I get some coffee and cookies into me.