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+--- Thread: Books! (/showthread.php?tid=5125)
Books! - Goodfellow - 10-17-2013
Alright, first of all, I'm not expecting anything on the level of The Elder Scrolls here, but I am wondering something.
Are there any well known books in Eorzea (or anywhere in Hydaelyn, I guess)? For those of us with scholarly characters, it would make sense for there to be a sort of established or semi-established (de jure or de facto) academic canon; great works that no one could call themselves classically educated without having first read them. They don't have to be physically available in-game, but is there any mention of that sort of thing? On Aether by What's-his-name or What's-his-face's Primal Primer or anything?
And if not--and I'm asking this honestly, noob that I am--should we invent some? Not write out whole tomes, obviously, but should we supply titles and basic ideas around some famous books that all of our characters would have read? Or is that presumptuous on the part of the player community?
That excludes, of course, any works written by our own characters (the authors of which Lolotaru would be thrilled to meet, insatiable bibliophile that he is).
Anyroad, I wanted to see what the community knew/thought.
Thanks folks!
RE: Books! - Olofantur - 10-17-2013
Hello Goodfellow,
to start i'll provide you with this link to the wiki literature.
http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Literature
I quite agree with you. I would be enthused to find a set of established literature to pour into and pull from, or at least reference. Which unfortunately seems not to be the case.
To be honest I am working on a couple of projects, one among them will be a book, from which I will provide a few key excerpts. (The main topic is a study in the changes of flora and fauna since the decent of Dalamund, I had many personal notes from my 1.0 adventures, found myself going over them with corrections in 2.0 and decided to make it in character.)
I would be ecstatic to find a similar project in the works, or if you fancy it, some collaborative effort could be made. At the moment I am making in roads to finding an escort or two to accompany me into some of the more hostile lands and do a bit of dirt digging for me, but it simply hasn't been my focus.
Excellent idea how ever. Please let me know if there is anything I can clarify, or any questions.
RE: Books! - Nimarhie - 10-17-2013
You could take some real world book names (from the same time frame of Ff14 roughly) and turn them into Eorzean titles.
Like Culpepper's Herbal could be Culpryfwyn's Herbal, written by the famous Roegadyn herbalist of the last era.
Or just make up your own book names, such as Lalala's Theories and Treaties on Magical Formulae and Applications.
RE: Books! - Goodfellow - 10-17-2013
@Olofantur - Thanks for the link. It's a start. Maybe we should start peppering our RP with more literature along the lines of what @Nimarhie brought up. And if we make a slight effort to remember a title or two from these conversations, we might, as a by-product, start producing a canon of reference material.Â
Like I said before, it's great for our characters to write things. Lolotaru will eventually (and could be interested in your project, Olofantur, although I didn't play 1.0), but coming up with some background works (not taking them as SE-level canon, but our own RPC microcanon) might just give some cohesiveness to our disparate invented academic environments.
Now, if SE would just give Eorzea a few libraries...(another thing for us to solve when we get housing?)
RE: Books! - Olofantur - 10-18-2013
(10-17-2013, 09:57 PM)Goodfellow Wrote: Now, if SE would just give Eorzea a few libraries...(another thing for us to solve when we get housing?)
Yes please!
I agree in that creating a "side canon" would allow flexibility. Perhaps using a forum vote for pieces that are a wider in scope? This could work along the lines as the "Duskwight Clan" system on the wiki, with some changes of course, but a list of agreed upon works.
I also like the idea of pulling from IRL books, "All about Birds, an Eorzean guide to winged dangers." Just spit balling ideas, I think there's a lot of niche room as well which can be nice. Not everyone will read every tome in the Sacrarium so we can afford to have a few more whimsical texts.
RE: Books! - Goodfellow - 10-18-2013
(10-18-2013, 12:06 AM)Olofantur Wrote: I agree in that creating a "side canon" would allow flexibility. Perhaps using a forum vote for pieces that are a wider in scope? This could work along the lines as the "Duskwight Clan" system on the wiki, with some changes of course, but a list of agreed upon works.
I also like the idea of pulling from IRL books, "All about Birds, an Eorzean guide to winged dangers." Just spit balling ideas, I think there's a lot of niche room as well which can be nice. Not everyone will read every tome in the Sacrarium so we can afford to have a few more whimsical texts.
Yeah, I just looked up the Duskwight Clans page and some sort of summary format like that could work.
And your second point would add a lot of flavor. Not just faux-heavy academic works, but all sorts of silliness to accompany the seriousness. While trying to maintain the lore as best we can, if there is anything that falls too far outside to be acceptable, we just call it fiction or say it's been debunked. After all, in our own world we don't just read and study things that everyone agrees are true (what a white whale that would be).
And several of the books under the literature tag could be linked through the summary page, as well. We could add and make distinctions between "side-canon" and "character-penned."
RE: Books! - Olofantur - 10-18-2013
I heartily agree that there can be any number of texts that could be deliberately fictitious, or old tales passed down. For example fairy tales that Hyurans before their migration may have told becoming twisted into a kind of "grimms fairy tales."
Perhaps some books are notable because they are such wonderful flights of fancy, a Eorzean Terry Pratchett
Hm, food for thought.
RE: Books! - LeCard - 10-18-2013
you could do exactly what we did for the Duskwight page. There is a wiki entry that was made by one of our more proactive DW players, but it started out as just a simple Forum post Duskwight thread. We did all our behind the scenes discussions and lore checking in the thread, and from what we pieced together(and what we built up for our clans) the wiki page was made.
You could do a special wiki entry titled something like "Official RPC Litureature of Hydaelyn" or something along those lines. And on that page you could list the works that have been made/found by the RPC and provide links to the original works for reading. You could even list things under headings once you got enough titles listed. (in fact if you get this up and running I would even be willing to "curate" the collect in the wiki page.)Â
If you use the Forum thread to vet titles and help people edit their works for grammar and such, you could easily use this to help build our collection.
RE: Books! - Olofantur - 10-18-2013
I had the Duskwight Discussion in mind, which I have been fortunate enough to follow since its inception.
there is already an "official" literature page on the Wiki with a sparse few texts (which I linked in my first post). and If possible I would like to use it as the foundation for added works, since some listed are player made already.
We have also considered using the forums as a meens of validation, particularly with more broad topic works. (also mentioned up there.)
Things are looking promising.
RE: Books! - LeCard - 10-18-2013
(10-18-2013, 06:18 PM)Olofantur Wrote: I had the Duskwight Discussion in mind, which I have been fortunate enough to follow since its inception.cool stuff. Also, I will be working on collecting info about the corrupted crystals(already found a little lore in game) and how they can be used. I will try to put together an IC book with my finding for this project.
there is already an "official" literature page on the Wiki with a sparse few texts (which I linked in my first post). and If possible I would like to use it as the foundation for added works, since some listed are player made already.
We have also considered using the forums as a meens of validation, particularly with more broad topic works. (also mentioned up there.)
Things are looking promising.
RE: Books! - Nimarhie - 10-18-2013
When I was a part of the swtor site on enjin there was a person who would makeup titles of bad_romance novels and write snippets of them. It was a lot of fun, and some were hilarious... I could do the same if you make a wiki page...
RE: Books! - Goodfellow - 10-18-2013
(10-18-2013, 06:32 PM)Nimarhie Wrote: When I was a part of the swtor site on enjin there was a person who would makeup titles of bad_romance novels and write snippets of them. It was a lot of fun, and some were hilarious... I could do the same if you make a wiki page...
Haha that sounds great.
Some titles I'm thinking about/working on for background filler so far: Summa aetheriae, which would be an overall treatise of the workings of aether, and De potentia primorum, a sort of foundational theological text concerning the Twelve. I'll be out of town this weekend, but I can have some summaries and background up for them. I doubt I'll go down the road of writing out text for them explicitly just yet, but more just to name drop them for flavor. In my mind so far they're huge, multi-volume collections in the vein of Aquinas' Summa theologicae, maybe with a couple volumes lost (future adventure hooks), and mostly recomposed from quotations and references made by other ancient authors.
As an aside, I can't figure out how to fix my signature and the more active I become on the forums, the more it bugs me. Halp?
(10-18-2013, 06:18 PM)Olofantur Wrote: there is already an "official" literature page on the Wiki with a sparse few texts (which I linked in my first post). and If possible I would like to use it as the foundation for added works, since some listed are player made already.
We have also considered using the forums as a meens of validation, particularly with more broad topic works. (also mentioned up there.)
Yeah, I don't want to ignore what's already out there (I was particularly impressed by Kannadi's contributions), but I think reorganizing it somehow into a clearer or more inviting format like the Duskwight wiki might be a good idea. Myself? Not a wiki wizard; I'm more of an ideas guy.
RE: Books! - Olofantur - 10-18-2013
(10-18-2013, 06:28 PM)LeCard Wrote: cool stuff. Also, I will be working on collecting info about the corrupted crystals(already found a little lore in game) and how they can be used. I will try to put together an IC book with my finding for this project.
Ooh, that sounds very interesting. I wonder if you'd be amenable to sharing any preliminary works you do. In Character I don't study the crystals themselves much but I do make some cursory notes on Aether, its alterations and the natural consequences. Perhaps even an IC peer review? that might be neat to do of material put forward, an open Socratic style discussion of points maybe? just a thought.
(10-18-2013, 06:43 PM)Goodfellow Wrote: Yeah, I don't want to ignore what's already out there (I was particularly impressed by Kannadi's contributions), but I think reorganizing it somehow into a clearer or more inviting format like the Duskwight wiki might be a good idea. Myself? Not a wiki wizard; I'm more of an ideas guy.
Excellent point, i'll speak with Deirdre about what we have to work with. If you'd be alright with it i'll send you messages (or post here) the ideas and limitations suggested, maybe mock up a test page before rolling forward. Thoughts?
RE: Books! - Zope - 10-18-2013
We could take sections of the lore (via wiki/lodestone/ect) and organize them into unique sections with extra added information, like in-game theories, different racial/city opinions and conspiracies to make them feel less like the basic wiki info blurbs and then title the sections and make up an author name (unless your character is a scholar and may have written it or something).
That way, we have legitimate "books" that the community can both refer to but also use in character as reference.
RE: Books! - Goodfellow - 10-18-2013
@Olofantur: I think some limited IC peer editing could be very cool, as could some development symposium-style. Â And feel free to message me, but I'm good with working with the community here in the thread, too.
@Zope: Good points, and it fits with the short of organizational structure that I think is coalescing as we discuss it.