I know I saw someone posted an idea about an in-game newspaper or newsletter, but what if we had other literary sources of information in the world of PFO? I’m talking more specifically about publishing in-game books.
While I believe paper, blank books, and scrolls should be utilized by player characters to write notes, create spell books, and scribe scrolls with magic spells on them, I feel it would be a disservice to PFO to not allow for player characters to pen and publish their own mini books in the game world. However, I also feel there should be some limitations.
Firstly, anyone should be able to pen anything (a pseudo-first amendment for PFO). After all, are we really going to call the town guard because someone penned a book that just says “butt” 50 times in a row? Additionally, stuff like that will phase itself out of the market because no one… okay, hardly anyone would buy it because it serves no practical purpose and carries almost no inherent role-playing value.
Secondly, crafting a book should take a measure of actual writing skill as well as the appropriate crafting skills to bind the paper and use calligraphy to clearly write words. While an individual should be able to conceptualize, craft, and sell any book they wish, doing so should not be cheap.
Third, what about GW sanctioned in-game mass publishing? Perhaps if a player character submits a copy of their book (and a hefty editors fee to avoid the spamming of “50 Butts to End Any Conversation”) to an in-game publishing house, a real to goodness GW editor could look over the book for spelking errors, grammar mistook, and marketability to the PFO community. If they decide they want to publish the book, the book could appear in libraries, item vendor inventories, or player owned shops with the author gaining royalties from the sale of each in-game item.
Just a thought.
This could be pretty neat! Sadly, I've no idea of the technical aspect, knowing next to nothing about how video games work. XD
But I can see this being a lot of fun. Even if it won't work as you described, it'd be cool if Goblin Works found some way to insert some player-written stories into the game.
Goblin Squad Member
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How to publish character created books, RP and weekly/daily newsletters:
In every npc city there's a Town Hall, in side the Town Hall will be a Town Crier. Players can write books (for RP and stories of adventure) and newsletters (for player made content and events). These books and newsletters are submitted to the Town Crier, whenever a player clicks on the Town Crier he will present you with a drop down menu of player submitted stories and events.
So if you enjoy writing anventure stories all players can do so and have them logged by the npc crier.
If you want to run a player created event you could submit all the info about the event ( time-date-what the events is etc) by submiting a newsletter to the Town Crier.
Anyone can visit the Town Crier and look up player made books or events, some books and newsletters will be public to any to read, while some will be private and only your Chartered Company can read.
Another way to go about it, at least from an item creation standpoint, would be for the original author to craft a "blueprint" of the book or newsletter, and for the original "blueprint" to be what is used to make copies of the book or newsletter. If they want to publish to a 3rd party their book or newsletter, they have to give the 3rd party (NPC crier) either a copy of the "blueprint" or the original.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The Caeruxi's (The Seventh Veil charter) heart is a massive library, the collected works from across Golarion; this library is ideally our charter base and later the foundation of our town/kingdom. Of course, we will be bound by the mechanics of the game. I do not expect that there will be much ability to place objects within the environment, especially since they doubt buildings will not be enter-able (In this case, we will probably call whatever we can build, the Library). I am not sure about the logic of allowing books, if there is no where to keep them. In light of this, we are developing an out of game library in the form of a wiki, and anyone is welcome to apply to be a scribe...giving them author access to that wiki. The wiki is suppose to "represent" the content of our library. We expect to have stories from character development (we already do), fictional works related to the Golarion world, and even reference materials concerning the in-game world.
Ideally, if books (and the Library) were ever really possible in game, we would transfer all of our collected works in the wiki into in-game books for realization within the game world.
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Goblin Squad Member
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this could be simple enough to implement technically:
1) books, scrolls and paper sheets as readable and craftable items
2) craftable (quills+inks) and consumable writing kits
3) erase spells to remove current content
4) use writing kit to add text to books/scrolls/paper sheets. Ability to copy+paste from textpad or similar. (in-game printing presses could still exist).
hmm.. what else?
5) paper sheets and scrolls have limited storage, long texts require proper books.
6) papermaking and bookbinding skills. The real market should be spellbooks and blank scrolls, with mundane books as a sideline.
7) no copyright laws, but option to add 'signature' to text (so that inspecting the book reveals "written by NN" independent of the content).
7a) Personally I think _any_ crafted items should have option of adding a 'crafters mark' or 'signature'.
7b) If the signature cannot be forged, this could effectively become currency!
i'd love the idea of written declarations of war delivered by courier, or ads for crafters posted in the town square, which brings me to
8) message boards in settlements or inns where players can post their papers, but with limited space (settlement leaders should be able to make 'sticky' posts, otherwise new post overwrites the oldest).
I think city boards should have unlimited space on which to post, but posts should have a limited time frame. This way, you don't have people spamming the boards to post their thing while covering up other people's posts.
Otherwise, I'm all for the above mentioned idea.
