Zalanthan Historical Preservation Society

[moab]

I was thinking that in order to avoid the problem we currently have (which is no one has any detailed information on past historical PCs / not-so historical PCs with a few exceptions) that we should start a new policy.

What if every time your PC died before you could app another you would have to submit (through the online editor) a brief blurb about your character.

Larry, the dark-haired militia private did this that the other thing and then died when he snuck into the 'rinth looking for a whore.

If we did that for _every_ character we would _never_ find ourselves in the position we are now and we would generate tons of historical data, some of which could be useful.

[Mook]

I think moab should have to do this for us.  

The staff is accepting character histories though, so hopefully some histories are being kept.  If not.. well.. guess some people aren't worth remembering

Edit:  I log most playing sessions.. so toss me an email in 20 years, and there'll be some decent gigs of text to sate your curiosity.

[Cindrak]

I like the idea; it would definitely be cool to read through character histories on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

One caveat, though. I don't think you should be required to do this before you app for your next character. I think you should be able to add a history -at any time- for any of your deceased or stored characters. There should be a menu item "Submit Character History", which when selected gives a list of your former characters; you select one and it puts you in an editor. That would make it easy, and wouldn't put you on the spot right after you died. Anyway, it makes more sense to submit your next character app first, since that will take time to get approved, and then you can do a 'debriefing' of your last character at your leisure.

Well, two caveats: the second is that you can't just make character histories immediately available to the general public after the character has died, because they will no doubt refer to IC people and events which are still on-going. Perhaps a waiting period of 5 or 10 IG years before a character's history becomes available for browsing?

Lastly, it would be neat if this whole archive was available online with a nice search function so you could search character histories for specific people or events you're interested in. But I'm getting ahead of myself, here

-Cindrak

[Xygax]

We don't need more barriers put in place to prevent new players from submitting their 2nd character.

We already accept character histories, which we carefully archive for staff reference in an indexed, searchable repository.  If you feel your character was significant enough to warrant this sort of reference, please e-mail a history (long or short, up to you) to mud@armageddon.org

-- X

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

What I think might help a lot, in terms of having history for characters, is adding a feature which allows you to add to your BG at will. I would add quite a damned bit, truth be told.

addBG

>You are adding information to your Background. You may type ~ to exit or .h for commands within the editor.

I ran from Joe today and sexed up willy and a templar named Kriminy jailed me for three or four hours. Damn
the Nakki's, but damn the Tulukis too. I don't know what they all want.

>>

.f

>Your entry has been formated.

~

>

Stat

> Kings Age 0, Moon 4: THoiwdfnweroahtraoistngfvoishcngferstvgoicxhfgtorestrc
gsrstvgrjcoithnvtrgoxicjgvbtdifjgbitodovutnjgcrlvtbjgxdvrt
rtvgoirtgdjijcdvt9pojrtgcfdtvhgiuucjrpovtaowserdtgrtcrsztghbte
erytghtyhdvtstfgyrhdyrdtcfstdgsfhdrybtvdgxfghedydnhdtbgdjy
rthyrdgdrthyrgthjunjytjkjugtrgdhbrt.
Kings Age 1, Moon 7:
I ran from Joe today and sexed up willy and a templar named
Kriminy jailed me for three or four hours. Damn the Nakki's,
but damn the Tulukis too. I don't know what they all want.

>

[Larrath]

I'm not certain about that idea, Venomz.

It looks promising, though of course we shouldn't have ten or twenty journal entries clogging up our Stat when we want to check our cucumberence.  If it were given a separate command though, I think this will result in people focusing more on idling off places to write short story after the other in their PC's journal.
One or two things like that aren't bad at all, but overall, I believe this may take more from the game than it will give.

The best way is to have a Word file and not be lazy about it.  That's not always easy, sadly.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Bleh. You have a point, L.

[Delirium]

I'd like the background to be separate from Stat.

Have titled entries to it.

>background
1. [Jun 1 2005] Creation Background
2. [Jun 3 2005] Sexed up Willy and Ran from a Templar
3. [Jun 8 2005] Sexed up Willy again

>read background 2

I ran from Joe today and sexed up willy and a templar named Kriminy jailed me for three or four hours. Damn the Nakki's, but damn the Tulukis too. I don't know what they all want.

[sacac]

But our characters can't read or write.

I feel that that would be adding more to the grey area that I don't want to see.

[Delirium]

...

It would be completely OOC and for player reference only.

[Maybe42or54]

Use Notepad? Thats OOC and doesn't require any new code. The best part is noone will get it confused with anything else IC.

[Delirium]

Immortals can't read your notepad files unless you email it to them.

[Maybe42or54]

.......... *blink* *blink*
Do you want a pat on the back?

[Larrath]

Immortals can't read your notepad files unless you email it to them.

In that case, this defeats the entire purpose.  You can't keep ten notepad logs for each character in your 50 character account.  It doesn't sound practical.

Again, I believe that players should do these things outside of the MUD itself because it may otherwise promote too much internal roleplay.  I'd rather not have to wait on a tavern-sitter because they only need another fifteen minutes to finish that last paragraph.

[Delirium]

:roll:

My thought was not to suggest this for personal gratification, ego flattering, or anything of that sort.  It was merely to suggest an idea.  An idea for something that could help to keep character backgrounds and histories all in one easily accessible place, able to be viewed both by the player who wrote them and any curious immortals wanting to know what has been going on.

Is that not partly what this thread was all about?

Yeesh.

[Larrath]

Sorry.
I'm tired and cranky and blah blah blah.  Sorry.

I do support the general gist of this idea, but perhaps in a different manner.  How about this?
When viewing your list of characters, one will be able to write a 'summary' to each one, including the one they currently play.  A summary could be, say, up to four times the limit of a background.

This will keep people from writing long paragraphs about every action that happens while still allow them to write about their characters.  They also won't have to be idle in order to do it.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

My idea was meant to improve the accuracy and accessiveness of the BG/overview to the IMMs as a whole. You're right, it might create some idlers. We could always have rules for it, of course, but....

All in all, it's not important and I should never have brought it up.

Use Notepad.