Story Writing

[Tom]

Stories are written in chapters, by multiple authors. Each chapter consists of a text describing what is going on, and effects encoding the events of the chapter into game mechanics.


Workflow

Any immortal can start a new legend at any time. Starting a new legend costs some Prime.

The immortal who started a legend also writes its first chapter. Writing a chapter is a three-step process:

   
• Write the chapter. Take all the time that you want, but no more than 7 days. If you do not submit the chapter to the 2nd step within 7 days, the chapter opens for open writing. An open writing chapter can be submitted by any immortal and whoever submits a chapter first becomes the new author of that chapter.
• Once submitted, a chapter enters discussion, which lasts up to 3 days. During these days, anyone can comment on the chapter and the author can edit the chapter to accomodate comments.
• After the discussion period, the chapter is voted upon. Players can vote up or down. A chapter is accepted if at least 2/3rd of votes are positive. It is rejected if at least 2/3rd of votes are negative. If the votes are inbetween that, it goes back to discussion (and the author can edit it) the first time. When the chapter comes up for voting a second time, a simple majority decides. If a chapter is accepted, it becomes part of the story and its effects are applied upon the game world and the relevant Prime is spent. If it is rejected, nothing happens.

During the discussion and voting phases, immortals can also bid on being the author of the next chapter. Bidding is done in a Vickrey auction style, meaning all bids are secret and the winner pays not his (highest) bid, but the 2nd highest bid (which means that if only one immoral bids, he can write the next chapter for free). Payment is done in Prime. The current author cannot bid, so consecutive chapters are always written by different authors.

One of the effects that can be included in a chapter is THE END, concluding and closing the story. Like any other effect or part of a chapter, this is subject to discussion and voting. THE END cannot be used until at least 3 chapters are written.


Effects
Anything can be an effect. Game development will largely consist in coding newly invented effects into the game. For the beginning, several basic effects are offered:
Creations can be created, changed and eliminated. A basic creation costs 1 Prime to create and will have a name and a type. It can be further fleshed out by adding more details to it. This is explained more thoroughly in the chapter on Creations. Existing Creations can also be entered and exeunted (removed from) stories. This allows the re-use of existing creations, for example places, heroes, etc. for a flat fee instead of creating them entirely from scratch for a large amount of Prime.

Influence and Control can be placed upon Creations. This is further detailed in the chapter on Influence and Control.
Magic can be used in stories to enable supernatural events. Compared to the mighty powers of Immortals, the magical effects of mortal mages are puny, so most of them require only a single unit of Prime. The actual magic used can be freely described, and can be anything from fireballs, illusions, mental control to summoning of ghosts and virtually anything else.


Scaling
There is a soft rule that says the story has to fit to the effect it creates. If you want to shake up the world, write a tall, long, complex and interesting legend about it. Expenditure of Prime alone will not be sufficient (maybe later a limitation of how much Prime can be spent in a single chapter will enforce this limit). Essentially, small things can happen in a sentence, earth-shattering changes take a whole story. Maybe the event at the end is short and powerful, but in such case a legend would tell everything that led up to the event, how heroes tried to stop it, which forces intervened, how everything is connected, and which strands of fate came together to make the big thing happen.

[Tom]

As this test is done manually, all writing and discussion/voting will be on the forum.

The "Legends of the World" chapter should be limited to ACCEPTED CHAPTERS. I don't set restricted rights on it, trusting you all.

The "Work in Progress" is where chapters can be written, discussed and voted upon (simply open a poll - we use public voting for now, simply because it is easier).

[Tom]

Addendum:

Chapters within a story should be connected to each other. In other words: One story is one story.

I haven't yet figured out the best way to make this a rule, I'm thinking that every chapter has to use at least one creation that is already active in the story, but I am not yet sure about the exact rule.