The Official Yammering Thread - Page 3 - OG Myth-Weavers

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The Official Yammering Thread

 
The Resources threadgroup has been officially destroyed. All the information in there has been transferred to the wiki, but the threads are still lurking in the Archive. It's noted in the wiki, but I'm going to say it again here right now: if you find a dead link, just go ahead and fix it. I checked a lot of them, but I haven't gotten to all of them yet, and of course, sites can disappear in the future.

Also, if you have an awesome link, share it here, and you can add it to the wiki yourself. If you don't want to, though, just say so, and I'll take care of it. That also applies to fixing dead links.

The wiki isn't precisely what I'd call pretty, but it's functional and there, and if anyone wants to make it pretty, knock yourself out. My wiki skillz are not really up to that challenge at this point.

Also, the Writer's Workshop has been emptied of anything more than a month old, which is almost everything. The stickied threads will be attacked shortly.

Nice.

For the record I never claimed openly that I was smart, and if I did I most certainly was lying

Edit: Added to writing campaigns, adventures and encounters, will also be adding to the players guide as a resource as well

Quote:
Originally Posted by World of L_Tiene View Post
For the record I never claimed openly that I was smart, and if I did I most certainly was lying
Dragon snot. You wrote a nice continuation to the collaboration. You write well; looking forward to more.

Here's a question for the great writers that frequent these digital pages. When writing a fictional story, be it a short challenge or whatever, how appropriate is it to use real names of people, places and things? For example, if I put my character in a suburb to a large city is it okay to mention say Boulder CO or Denver CO? Or mention the exact make and model of car the individual is driving, or reference a drink by name such as coca-cola, sprite, etc. Or would it be better to keep things general. Describe the car using generic terms like SUV or all-terrain vehicle?

I go with using actual place names, but I don't mention specific products without a good reason. Like, I might mention it's a '63 Mustang because everybody knows what that looks like so it saves me time and effort, but I wouldn't say it's a Coke or a Butterfinger without a good reason - 'soda' and 'candy bar' are generally going to be good enough. It's free advertising of a sort.

I have my own question, though. My experience with collaborative writing projects is pretty minimal, to the point of nonexistence. I game a lot, but that's not the same thing. So, the question is about etiquette. When someone puts in a piece that contradicts previous entries, what is the best way to approach that? Point out the inconsistencies? Roll with it because no one should be expected to read the whole thing? Would it be useful to ask contributors to list out the points they introduce so people late to the party can just skim to get the gist, or would that make it too much work to be worth contributing?

I'll be delighted to update the wiki section with any guidelines people want to come up with.

@kaneval

it really depends on what kind of feel you are going for.

For example, Fallout uses things like Nuka-Cola and Sunset Sasparilla in place of coke and root beer, but they also use actual places like "New Vegas" built on top of old Las Vegas.

The feeling that is created in this world with those products is more comical, but that's not necessarily needed. What is important is that in these cases it makes the world have more of it's own "personality" Where if you were say taking the movie Cloverfield, using coke would be more appropriate because it's supposed to be directly related to real life. both are alternate realities and both methods of writing have their merit, the choice really belongs to the writer, however I can say this, when you make things your own, and you do it to a point where it's really believable, it is a lot more work, but your readers also appreciate it a lot more too because it gives them more escapism. You can also offer the generic route as mentioned by Dauph. And I'd argue not everyone knows what a '63 mustang, that's a connection the reader needs to make. Also, the free advertising route can even be played for laughs as is done in the comedy "wayne's world" or it can be done simply as an off hand suggestion to the reader. All in all it really comes down to writer preference. If planning on having something published though, the more stuff you don't refer to the better due to how people get uppity over nonsense.

@Dauph

I would say just bring it up, keeping the guidelines of MW posting in mind (be excellent to each other, etc.). if you don't it looks sloppy to other readers. If you're talking about the collabo being worked on at present in the writers guild, i would say it's not overstepping to quite the previous wrong post, point out the inconsistency and then redraft the same post with corrections so it makes sense. Just make sure you're keeping corrections to a minimum.

For example, although I didn't explicitly say so, I assumed the female character lived in a NYC apartment. Then you said she had a basement. But since it wasn't clarified we have a new paradigm to work with.

I think any mature person would take direct criticism of that nature and be cool with it. If they don't, well, you can't please everyone.

Hey guys, glad to see this thing kicking again.

I myself am working on a novel thing that seems to fall somewhere in the action-packed thriller area as far as genre goes.

I'm joining this thread, and will subscribe to it in order to keep it going. I have just started playing in MW and am especially pleased with the opportunity to work on fantasy themes for fiction. I'm glad this forumspace is so widely ranging in coverage of the fantasy/gaming world. Already, I've found references to Ars Magica, an obscure but very cool game which I would like to use to develop my Earthly Realms setting. Tschuss!




 

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