Ambrosia Software Web Board: The Future of the Chronicles - Ambrosia Software Web Board

There's some discussion among the moderators (read: not admins) about potentially requesting to merge all chronicle forums into one big "Just Write"-like forum. This would provide both a more concentrated location for stories and a much bigger peer audience to offer constructive criticism. Each member board (like Ares, Cythera, EV, Coldstone) would get one story each pinned every week, along with one or two exceptional stories from wherever, to keep with the old tradition and provide some fairness.

Likewise, the negative portion lies in both the bigger audience of strange and unknown peers, as well as perhaps a loss of identity.

So, *if* it was a possibility, would you writers be interested in it or against it? Please vote, and then explain why below - the why is important.

I'm neutral, as I don't write chronicles much, but I'll argue whichever case you decide (this is partly why the "why" is important).

Hmm, tricky. On the one hand, I've always written chronicles based on the assumption that whoever reads it will know at least a little about the world it's set in. That leads to a certain laziness when it comes to explaining things like the Elementals, what Pnyx is, who certain characters from the game are, etc.

On the other hand, maybe that could prompt someone new to play the game.

Here's the thing: A "Just Write" forum assumes that a Cythera chron and an EV chron are not fundamentally different. I think that they are, being that one is set in space and one is set in a fantasy world. I suppose I could deal with a Cythera/Coldstone chron board and an Ares/EVx board, but it seems like that would create more problems than it would solve.

Cythera has a legacy of superior crons (with the exception of the dearly departed avara crons, they will be missed) and if there is a conglomerate cron-board then these jewels will fade into obscurity among the spam. Furthermore the mods do not have the authority to create new forums (or re-name old ones) like the admin(s) can. Even with overwhelming aproval from every mod and member Moki can still opt to veto the motion. For these reasons I cast my vote on the issue, NO.

cache22, on Oct 7 2004, 12:27 PM, said:

If the author chooses, they could indicate (maybe in the subtitle) that its a Cythera chron, or an EV chron - which means those that want to read fantasy chrons or futuristic chrons can easily decide which stories they read. I don't think that's too much of an issue, at worst each thing might require a brief (sentence?) explanation built into the story. And in a multi-part story, its safe to assume they've read or can read the latter parts if stuff is explained there.

~vIsitor~: exactly, the admins are the ones that ultimately choose. But if it does get open for debate (which sometimes happens), it would be nice to have a feel on what people want.

~vIsitor~, on Oct 7 2004, 02:23 PM, said:

Ya know, he asked for opinions not editorials. By the same logic, all mods and members could be completely against the creation of a new unified board and moki could do it anyway.

Pallas Athene, on Oct 7 2004, 01:34 PM, said:

I agree that the genres are completely different. But I, for one, am confused as to why this would be an issue.

If you wouldn't mind, please help me to understand why such a move would be uncomfortable.

My thoughts are this:

1) The purpose of writing a chron is to tell a story.
2) Posting your story, and allowing for feedback, has a two-fold purpose: To make you a better writer through constructive criticism, and to share your creative works to others.
3) A genre-specific work could possibly influence others into playing a game.

None of these would be affected by moving to a unified system. In fact I would imagine that they could all be aided by it:

1) Larger audience means more people available to hear your tale.
2) Larger audience means more people with experience to give constructive criticism to you in order to help you become better, and more people available to read what you've written and to enjoy it.
3) People that have never heard of the genre that you are writing on will read what you haev written and perhaps be influenced to give the game a try.

The intimidating aspects of this I believe are obvious: more people means more critiques and the possibility of more idiots being stupid. Well, there is really no help for the last one except that any forum would have moderators to deal with twinks. And I would expect that an author would know the difference between true criticism and an illiterate idiot posting to get a rise out of someone and be able to ignore the latter.

Also, different genres on the same board shouldn't be a big deal. If someone is not interested in space stories, they don't have to read them. Just as if an author now writes a story with 27 chapters, and you read the first 3 and hated them, you don't have to read the next 24 as they are posted.

But the other stories are there, and they are available to be read. And who knows, by reading stories that you might otherwise be uninterested in, you might find that you like the style in which an author writes, and adopt some of those stylistic tendancies as your own. The more people to pull ideas from, the more potential you have to learn and to better yourself.

All in all I really only see a positive spin on this. But I also realize that many people may be opposed to it; some merely because it is change, and some for some solid reasons. I'm very interested in listening to the reasons, both emotional and logical.

*poke* Where's my chance to win $5

I wouldn't be completely against it except there are a lot of nuts from other boards (a few from Cythera too, but they are soon spotted and delt with). Mods wouldn't (or shouldn't) take out any post that doesn't support the story, only the ones that are obviously "You SUCK!! HAHAHAHA" and the like.

The problem is that with any fundamental differences between future and fantasy (or any other division), many people from one side won't like the other side regardless, and will have more negative comments than positive. This would be something more like "I like your images, but wouldn't it be cool if there was a laser that blew the temple up when they were running away?" or some such thing. This wouldn't be a problem, except EV has much more people, and I think it's pointless to have 100 more negative posts for every 1 that is more positive. And by "more negative," I don't mean negative, I just mean not really usefully in any serious way.

Anyway, these are my own reasons why people might be against merging the boards. Personally, I haven't read or written any for years, so *shrug*

cache22, on Oct 8 2004, 06:27 AM, said:

On the third hand, one of my story ideas* ties in loosely with my previous Cythera chronicles, but really fits in better as, say, an EV chronicle. A unified chron board would solve that dilemma nicely.

*Centred around the battlecruiser Saroyan, mentioned briefly in one of Lucas Hart's journal entries.

This post has been edited by cache22: 07 October 2004 - 04:44 PM

While I have never written a chronicle, I have toyed with ideas for ones. If I do make a chronicle it would be easier to assume that the reader will be somewhat familiar with Cythera and its background/various info. Here are some basic reasons (not including from the one just mentioned) why I believe Cythera chronicles should remain separate:

• First of all, Cythera does have uniquely good chronicles. They would probably mostly be overlooked in a group with all the others.
  
• Secondly, spammers might find it more convenient for their purposes to spam a single board.
  
• People who may regularly check individual chronicle boards may actually be driven away. In a merged system, one would be forced to search through everything to find the genre that they wanted to read. Being absent for a while would reak havoc for a busy person. With individual boards all someone needs to do is Hop To: (Whatever Board) and click. Board loaded, new chronicles in plain sight. I mean, really, if you want to read the chronicles of a certain board, just go to that board's chronicle page. It is far less time consuming than searching through many other chronicles just to find one.

Those are just my basic ideas on why it would be negative. Personally, I can't think of a very good positive reason that would be worth the time of taking all the chronicle boards down and merging them.

This post has been edited by The Wizard: 07 October 2004 - 05:09 PM

Actually, one of my specific concerns (which I forgot to voice) was the question of who would moderate the chrons. If you're proposing a board which incorporates EV chrons, Ares chrons, Cythera chrons, Coldstone chrons, and Avara chrons... who moderates? If I am going to submit a Cythera chron, Avatara should be on hand to review it; the same would presumably apply to any other category, but the current rule is '4 mods at most'.

There's one active mod for each of the four chronicle boards. They'd (hopefully) all be made mods of the unified one.

The Wizard, on Oct 7 2004, 10:08 PM, said:

Avatara, would there be some way of having individual chron pages and additionally having a merged page? Something like, everyone posts on their individual board, and another board automatically has all the posts from those 4? But make each board have all the stickied chrons for that week, to incourage people to read some they might not normally.

What?

Invision wouldn't have support for that kind of juggling by default; a number of custom scripts would have to be written. I don't see any particular reason it's worth it to take the time.

Pallas Athene, on Oct 7 2004, 07:47 PM, said:

2 things:

1) The proposed board likely would work as these boards do, not as the previous "approval only" chron boards did. Ie., you would be able to post your stories when you have written them, and they would immediately be available for others to read and review. They would not sit in limbo, away from prying eyes, until a mod read, reviewed, and approved it. To keep with the trend of "showcasing" a particular chron for a week or so, the idea has been suggested to pin a chron from each genre for a week or more that the mod(s) have selected so that it gets special attention.

2) The 4 mod rule was a limitation of the UBB board. There are no such limits here, though it hasn't been exceeded to date.

In the meantime, should we continue to submit our chronicle to the Pending Chronicles board, or should we submit them directly to the Cythera Chronicles board?

Don't submit to pending chronicles please, it is a serious pain to root those out (involving juggling multiple logins and accounts) and bring them here without them floundering into the depths of old chronicles.

I'd open up submission for new chronicles, but I'm not quite sure how to manage the flow. If people post their stories whenever, we could have 18 one week and none for a few months, as is a typical pattern on Cythera.

That would also mean I would likely not be announcing chronicles here, unless one was pinned for a week or two for whatever reason (don't know how to work that out either). I also would not be pre-screening anyway, like Slayer used to, which is what I'm not doing anyway - its up to you guys to check your posts for grammar/spelling mistakes and peer review one another.

Sorry for the slight grave-digging...


I am against it for one reason. Having seen pending chronicles multiple times in the past, I know that EV gets about 3 times the chronicles of everything else. This would overwhelm all the other chronicles, and it would end up being more of a "EV: Just Write and Sometimes Other Stuff".

My other, simple point is that it doesn't cost anything to keep the extra boards for the seperate chrons. Ambrosia isn't paying per board on this, so why bother changing it if the current system just works? I understand that the mods might not have time to maintain it, before checking for grammar and spelling and now keeping them stickied, and always sending them out, but if they don't want to do it, I'd be happy to. (I'd have to get on more often, but that's easy.)