Wesnoth History

[zookeeper]

BTW, what Gweddry's parents (i.e., me and my brother) were thinking when they named him was - hey, we need a name for the main character. Let's take the name from the first unit we recruit in a multiplayer game!

That's perfectly fine, but it's puzzling how it never occurred to you guys that inevitably someone would recruit a unit named Gweddry while playing EI, have two units named Gweddry and the campaign would break (which is exactly what happened) soon after.

[santi]

jeremy, I hope you realize Wesnoth history is a LOT more than HttT. Starts with TROW(though people are now writing pre-TROW campaigns) and ends with, I guess UtBS...
My rule of thumb is for every void in Wesnoth history you fill, better leave at least one more story to be told....

[jeremywosborne]

jeremy, I hope you realize Wesnoth history is a LOT more than HttT. Starts with TROW(though people are now writing pre-TROW campaigns) and ends with, I guess UtBS...
My rule of thumb is for every void in Wesnoth history you fill, better leave at least one more story to be told....

Yeah, I'm learning that the more I look through things when I want to avoid real life Thanks for pointing that out. You never know when I'll miss something, like the left turn I'm supposed to take when I'm driving to someplace I don't want to go.

[turin]

Looks cool. Here's some more stuff on EI:

Dacyn and Mal-Ravanal were originally acquaintances in Weldyn, where they competed for a prestigious position in the Tower of Magi (which was like a university, sort of); Dacyn won it, and Mal-Ravanal got pissed and ran away, becoming a necromancer. That's why he hates Wesnoth.

Owaec was a clan nobleman with a stronger allegiance to the Crown than normal for those people. He was one of the only ones willing to man the northern outpost when it needed to be defended.

Also, Gweddry would have been made Grand Marshal of the Wesnothian Army after he saved Weldyn from destruction. That's a notable deed.

BTW, what Gweddry's parents (i.e., me and my brother) were thinking when they named him was - hey, we need a name for the main character. Let's take the name from the first unit we recruit in a multiplayer game!

That's perfectly fine, but it's puzzling how it never occurred to you guys that inevitably someone would recruit a unit named Gweddry while playing EI, have two units named Gweddry and the campaign would break (which is exactly what happened) soon after.

Uh... not true at all - at least it shouldn't be. description= and user_description= are two different things, and the random names should only determine the recruited unit's user_description=. If filtering on description= ever gets a unit other than the one whom I manually gave description=Gweddry, that's a bug in the game, not in my WML.

[zookeeper]

That's perfectly fine, but it's puzzling how it never occurred to you guys that inevitably someone would recruit a unit named Gweddry while playing EI, have two units named Gweddry and the campaign would break (which is exactly what happened) soon after.

Uh... not true at all - at least it shouldn't be. description= and user_description= are two different things, and the random names should only determine the recruited unit's user_description=. If filtering on description= ever gets a unit other than the one whom I manually gave description=Gweddry, that's a bug in the game, not in my WML.

Good that you cleared that up; my memory served me wrong, it seems. The campaign probably didn't break and I suppose someone just found it confusing to have two Gweddry's or something. Breakage indeed doesn't make sense, for the reason you mentioned.

[orcish_orc]

Looks cool. Here's some more stuff on EI:

Dacyn and Mal-Ravanal were originally acquaintances in Weldyn, where they competed for a prestigious position in the Tower of Magi (which was like a university, sort of); Dacyn won it, and Mal-Ravanal got pissed and ran away, becoming a necromancer. That's why he hates Wesnoth.

Owaec was a clan nobleman with a stronger allegiance to the Crown than normal for those people. He was one of the only ones willing to man the northern outpost when it needed to be defended.

Also, Gweddry would have been made Grand Marshal of the Wesnothian Army after he saved Weldyn from destruction. That's a notable deed.

Ok, if we actually want players to remember and care about the plot, you need to do a few things...

Firstly, change the names. Maybe non-perfect names are ok for multiplayer games but when you have a story to tell it is a block at the beginning, and possible makes the story harder to remember.

A good story for Wesnoth should be able to stand on its own outside of any scenarios. If a random person were to stroll in and read the history of Wesnoth he should be able to understand and maybe enjoy the story.

And wouldn't it be good if you have people who just write story, like the art/music developers? I understand that maybe they would be a small group only but it's better than leaving them all to the scenario writers.

And about those scenarios; I think it's possible, even if someone else wrote the history of Wesnoth whether in story or scenario (mainline?), to change it.

[turin]

Uh... no. Just, no. To essentially everything you said.

[Temuchin Khan]

Keep in mind that the more of Wesnoth's history is set in stone, the less creative freedom there will be for those who wish to create custom content.

I think that this is already handled well by the current Wesnoth history account by stating that it is actually scholars’ interpretation of verbal traditions and few written accounts not undisputable fact. So what you read might not be what actually happened – *enter custom content*. Anyway there is no reason why the history can’t change as more contents is added, this seems like a very Wesnothian way of things. And can I say I’m all for a fuller version of Wesnoth history, if jeremywosborne wants to help out I don’t see why not but then again I have no authority in this matter.

This is, in fact, what the study of earth's history is like. All scholarly interpretation, with far fewer incontrovertible facts than textbooks would like you to believe.

[irrevenant]

This is, in fact, what the study of earth's history is like. All scholarly interpretation, with far fewer incontrovertible facts than textbooks would like you to believe.

Yup. But that's not what people are used to in their fantasy settings. I think subjective history is great and I'd like to see that aspect emphasised.

eg. It would be very cool if Wesnoth came bundled with both HttT and a campaign covering the same events from Asheviere's point of view (with some blatant contradictions). IIRC, someone was creating a campaign like that but it hewed very closely to the official HttT history...

[jeremywosborne]

Thank you guys for the follow up, and forgive me for my absence. I'll be gone about two more weeks from the forum.

I get married next week (YAY!) and then I have the fun honeymoon after that.

Have fun until then!