The Chronicle of Apolyton

[alva]

Hmm, I don't oppose to this and I think it's a great idea, but ;

How do we know people arn't going to give you false info to influence decisions and or mis(use) even you to setup other teams?

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by alva
Hmm, I don't oppose to this and I think it's a great idea, but ;

How do we know people arn't going to give you false info to influence decisions and or mis(use) even you to setup other teams?

Because information that teams will give me will stay with me until long after the event has passed. It would be like lying to your mom about what you're doing in the game... she just doesn't care and has no intention of letting Legoland know what you're doing.

[ZargonX]

no intention of letting Legoland know what you're doing

Hmm.... talk about sowing the seeds of mistrust...

[Jon Shafer]

Hey, take it up with your mom, not me.

[Jon Shafer]

I was talking with Togas, and he presented the idea that the best way for me to do this would be if I had access to all of the teams' forums.

Would the teams be willing to allow this? I would never post in any of them (aside from "hello," maybe), and no content would ever leave myself or the articles I would be writing. This would eliminate the problem of teams giving me tainted "propaganda" that would ultimately hurt the efforts to record history.

[vondrack]

Even though the discussion on this idea has been only started in Legoland and the opinion presented here is just mine, I would wholeheartedly support this solution.

IMHO, it solves several issues in a very elegant way:

1) keeps Trip, The Father of PtWDG, part of the game
2) solves the issue of "opening" private forums after the game is over
3) makes it really possible to have an unbiased history account

ad 1) As much as I admit that Luxian early demise might have been their own (or Trip's, for that matter) fault, I still find it quite sad that he, who was at the very birth of the idea, would have to stay completely out of the game. I would really be happy if he could enjoy the rest of it in a position of the historian. I am sure this would be as much fun for him as playing with his own team.

ad 2) Having one person being able to access the private team forums seems acceptable, especially if the person is being trusted by everybody else (yes, I do trust Trip to never influence the game by revealing secret information). Such a person will be able to extract the "top level" discussions, reasons, and decisions, while leaving out the stuff that would stir most emotions (like "last night, chatting with PlayerXYZ, he said that PlayerABC is a real a$$hole, as is PlayerKLM"). With this sort of a "filter", things that are really important/interesting will be made public, while those that are irrelevant, but potentially very harmful, would stay buried forever.

ad 3) with the exception of the war and events that lead to Luxians leaving the game, there is no reason for Trip to be biased. And who knows, maybe after Trip has a chance to read through some of the team forums, his point of view may change even regarding the death of Lux Invicta... possibly actually leading to an unbiased account of this event, too.

That said, I would suggest the following two rules:

1) Trip never posts in the private forums, maybe with the exception of a single dedicated thread used for discussions about what information can be revealed and what must be kept secret.

2) Trip never even indirectly touches whatever he may learn in private forums. No jokes, no funny quotes, no double-meaning notes, no nothing. A historian that can watch, but is forbidden to speak until authorized by all teams (I would not even mind if the "History" was made public only after the game ends - it might perhaps be less controversial and easier to do than getting authorizations for individual "chapters"... OTOH, we would have to wait for quite some time...).

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Trip
I was talking with Togas, and he presented the idea that the best way for me to do this would be if I had access to all of the teams' forums.

Would the teams be willing to allow this? I would never post in any of them (aside from "hello," maybe), and no content would ever leave myself or the articles I would be writing. This would eliminate the problem of teams giving me tainted "propaganda" that would ultimately hurt the efforts to record history.

Vox would be willing to consider it

trust is a vocal point of the game anyway

Jon Miller

[UnOrthOdOx]

Let Trip in and look around. At the very least, he will have a decent chuckle over it, I am sure.

Trip, I trust you to use great discression on what you actually release to the public, and what you keep hidden like all those nasty things I may have said about you in our forum...

I once was heavily questioned on my ability to be unbiassed as well by those DIA 'passivists' in the SPDG...

[Thrumble]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Trip, I trust you to use great discression on what you actually release to the public, and what you keep hidden like all those nasty things I may have said about you in our forum...

I'm sure you will now go and edit all your nasty comments.

[FrustratedPoet]

Maybe he'll just write some more about you

[Beta]

I fully support this idea. it will bring some of the elements of the SPDG to the PTWDG forum - which IMHO, would be a good thing.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Thrumble

I'm sure you will now go and edit all your nasty comments.

Quick... It's time for everyone to throw all the papers into the fire.

[DeepO]

Trip, you really want to wade through all that information? I doubt that you've got enough time to catch up on our forum alone, not even mentioning the other 5 of them. We gathered massive amounts of text over the past months. And no, there is no such thing as a quick summary in GS, we're still poking Alva to become our historian

Plus, I'm not sure If I want to let you enter our forum, no offense, but I think I'm going to polish my black ball for this...

DeepO

[Togas]

As I told Trip last night in chat, I like the idea of having one person who could observe our history as it happens, from all sides, especially around key moments in our history, and prepare for us a chronicle of what occured as it is occuring. Those chronicles would be saved and released either at the end of the game or a long time after the events occured.

It serves us little good if Trip merely "interviews" us after events happen (before an event, no one is going to want to tip Trip off) because he may not get the full story and he will only get our filtered version of the events. It serves our history better to allow him to read and review the events as they take place, and to do that we're going to have to allow him to do so from our own forums.

I agree with Vondrack. Trip should not be posting in our forums with the exception of a single thread where he asks questions, clarifications, and perhaps asks if we want certain, perhaps unflattering, information to be made public.

Trip must swear to us that he will be a neutral journalist, not a critic or someone doing an editorial/opinion piece. He should not crack jokes, make comments, or involve himself in any way in our discussions.

We would be putting a great deal of trust and responsibility in his hands. I think that he understands this. I believe that his attachment to the game will be a strong motive to research and read up on all of the events and decisions that shape our history, and I think that his pride will help ensure that the finished product we get will be something we all will be extremely grateful to have.

I am willing to allow Trip access to my team's forum solely for this purpose. I hope that the other teams will also agree to do the same.

--Togas

[astrologix]

I think that this work of Trip could be more significant than it now is thought.

To make the history of the first Civilization III Multiplayer by teams game in the world could be largely appreciated by readers not implied in this game.

If the such a report is well made, that could even give place to a book on the capacity of such a game to reproduce "historical" events.

I think that Trip is likely great to become an actor of first order in such a realization!