PC Journals - IC significance

[Kiaring]

Hiya,

In our day and age, we have computers, mobile phones, laptops and all sorts of nifty things we can use to compile our thoughts and organize them. But in the past, when such things were unavailable, people often used journals and notebooks as a means of compiling and organizing information.

It is my personal opinion that a trade such as adventuring, one that is time-consuming and is comprised of various efforts over the course of days or even months or years, would have journals as one of their main 'tools of the trade'. So, that Arcane Symbol you just spotted in this dungeon is exactly the same as the one you saw all those years ago in the archmage's study? And you know this because you doodled the symbol in your journal for further study. Know everything there is to know about ghouls, eh? And it's all in your journal, ready for you to look up, whenever you need such information. Thought up an awesome system of government over the course of a few weeks, matching your ideas against information obtained from others and several meetings you had with various different people? Thank God you had that journal to write things in, eh?

The point is most characters in EfU would have pretty decent reasons to keep a journal of their thoughts and exploits, and certainly, some already do. But I've never felt very inclined to write journals as anything other than a means to offer fellow players a privileged insight into the minds and motives of my characters. As such, I've always felt that journals lacked an 'IC significance' that we try to instill everything else in EfU - from forum posts to engine limitations - with.

My suggestion is that an item - Journal - be created and sold for a decent price at one of the NPCs. Upon purchase, the journal would have a single-charge use, and the PC XYZ the Mad Wizard would then use it on himself, receiving an item named "XYZ's Journal".

From this point on, everything written in XYZ's journal thread in the forums can be considered IC knowledge to anyone in possession of the IG item. This, I feel, would encourage players to:

 1) Make journals a bigger part of their characters' lives. This helps characterize your creation, as you spend more time thinking about their back story, motives and goals, and innermost thoughts. With journals given an IC role, people would be inclined, I feel, to write more often in their journal threads, and to include significant IC information in there as well.

 2) Make journals effectively plot devices in EfU. Aleczumberzeil's Tome of Politically-Correct Necromancy could feature untold secrets, ready to be discovered at a glance by PCs who could somehow get their hands on his journal. The journal of Missy the Unlikely Assassin could be used as a damning and powerful piece of evidence, as it depicts in raw details the deaths of 10 people whose disappearances were never explained. Upon the death of Johnny Factionleader, his disciples and followers, now in possession of his hallowed writings, would be given a sense of where things were headed, what important secrets Johnny chose to keep to himself, and what loose ends still need to be tied up, etc.


The main problem I can see with this is that if we indeed notice a surge in significant journal entries from PCs of all types (rather than entries that serve as simple background/flavor), the open and public nature of journal threads could lead to instances of metagaming. What's to stop people from finding out your character's greatest secrets if they can access them at the click of a mouse? As a matter of fact, what's encouraging you to put your innermost secrets onto a forum post that can be accessed by anyone and everyone?

With this in mind, I would propose, should this suggestion find echoes amongst players and DMs alike, that the journals forum be split into two: Journals and PC Stories.

PC Stories would continue to function much as our current journal forum. As a place for us to store characters' stories, background tales and other such flavorful writings.

Journals would be made a forum in the same model as the current Applications forum - only the player can access their journal, and the DMs can see all journals. Upon a certain character's death, other PCs coming into IC contact with their journal would then be able to access that thread as well, and treat it as IC information.


It's just always made me a bit uncomfortable knowing that, unlike nearly everything on EfU, journals have little to no expression in the IG lives of characters, serving as more of an outlet to characterize certain PCs further, or to keep track of information, or anything else, really. It's my opinion that should this suggestion go forward, they will become tools for PCs involved with long plots, shady dealings with other PCs - but, especially - they'll offer some sort of continuity for those secret-seeking PCs who meet an untimely demise, but had followers/allies who may want to take up their mantle and carry on their work from where it was left off.

[Snoteye]

Though a nice idea, the truth is that there are a lot of outright absurd journals. I think something like this would require far too much moderation by us to be worth considering.

[Meldread]

I support this, so long as the journal can be kept private.  I don't think it'd require any more moderation than scribing IG notes.

My character Kedrick Reynolds had a private forum which was set up just for his journal and other documents.  Simply because it was too spoilerish to be posted in the general journal's forum.  Also, the point was to do exactly what was expressed here.  Upon his death his journal was supposed to pass onto another.

[ExileStrife]

What do people feel about the idea of a journal-esk system through both in-game and efusl?  All journal writing would be done on efusl, it would be intuitively linked to your characters who currently possess journals.  In game, these journals could be viewed by whomever gets their hands on them.  They could even edit or tear out pages, for instance.

I think this could potentially be kinda fun.

[Ommadawn]

I love this idea!

[9lives]

MySpace.

[Cruzel]

You can already do this, without adding a system.  Scribe a note and call it "So and so's journal" When killed or robbed/whatever, the person can then consider the posts IC knowledge after taking/stealing/being shown the journal.

I have had several PC's of mine 'give' their journal to another player.

It's possible, tbh I'd rather see other things scripted than something you don't need a script to do in the first place.

[bob7el]

I'd love to see an effective, private journal system.  This would be very cool (for all the reasons already listed); it'd also allow journals to become an object of value.  All the knowledge contained within the journals would be ICly written (and therefore, fair game to the reader I should think).  It's often saddening when a good PC dies, and they have nothing but the memories of the living to carry on their legacy.  This would be a cool, IC way for the heroics, stories, and plans of epic PCs to carry on after their deaths.

[ExileStrife]

Scribed notes leave much to be desired.

[Johannes]

And EXILESTRIFE totally steals my idea. Way to go. :'(

[lovethesuit]

This is a good idea, would approve of it.

[ArizonaBlueEyes]

I'd really like seeing something like this, IG. It's a step up from the usual "keep a scribed note, with a link to the journal forum" game.

[Snoteye]

You could actually write small journals in game, you know. With the BINDERS. >.> Although I think you're limited to a 512 character max on each note.

[Egon the Monkey]

Yeah, Elwicket used one of those to keep his Journal and Killed Things List in, although they were both link notes.

[Yalta]

Love this idea, my Gondite is often emoting [taking notes] for research, so anything that adds to this IG would be excellent.