While reading through the "Issues" thread yesterday, Pab10S mentioned something that struck a particular chord with me. Minecraft has no central narrative. The towns and outposts we build, we name ourselves. Our adventures are written by our actions, not dictated by quest-givers and scripted events. But what about our adversaries? How did that Zombie come to be shambling around in a forest at night? Who was the skeleton, before he was a bow-wielding bag of bones? What does the pigman think about while wandering aimlessly in the nether? My suggestion is to add written books as random, rare drops to certain mobs (Zombies, Skeletons, Wither-Skeletons, Pigmen - the ones capable of holding a pen & quill). Example: Now obviously this would need a lot of writing and a great deal of variety to really work well - after all, getting the same book from every mob would defeat the point! Hold a contest, an event, or some kind of "open call" for written flavor texts. Give proper criteria per mob, basic rules (no foul language or naughty business), and perhaps suitable rewards. Writing is something everyone can do, as long as they can use a keyboard. Some people enjoy collecting items. Having dozens of new EMC items to hunt for would make things interesting, and give them something to look forward to besides the next /promo Others see written books only as villager-trade, fodder for emeralds. It'd be a new source of books, and prevent Squid from becoming an endangered species Perhaps it'd encourage more people to read. Literacy ftw! One more thing to make EMC unique and special. Referencing past events, EMC locations (such as /graveyard), and the like would help bring a sense of unity to the many and diverse places of the Empire. Thoughts, comments, constructive criticisms?
Sounds interesting, and I like the idea of a story to read for killing a mob (maybe something special with the mob to indicate it is a story dropper) but a +1 from me
that is so like the idea i once had some time ago but never added it on the forums as a suggestion. this would mix well with the idea of adding questing/rpg possibly to our fine EMC
As someone who's first online game was Final Fantasy 11, and primary SP game in child hood was Final Fantasy, where lore played a huge part, I have to say this is an awesome idea. As I ranted about recently, Mojang has abandoned all forms of adventure itself in the game, and lore itself is definitely a huge missing piece, one I would love to fix too. But we could make it even easier to submit - a simple command to submit a book in game - no contest, and then let moderators review it... If its good (ie: relevant and not inappropriate), add it! Then, we can make the server automatically pull a random set of lore pieces every few hours, then when a lore is scheduled to drop, then it picks one at random. (Double random so that every server doesn't have to keep the entire submission database in memory at all times) As long as players constantly submit the text, the lore found in game would be endless. This is amazing! I can't promise when this will get done, but It's definitely going on track.
sweet once again yay to my hero!! so many more hours of coding in store for you all tho, dont forget to eat and sleep sometime!
altho i'm sure alot more coding but would there be the possibility of a small questing/rpg add-on with the lore books?
Can be creative with the text... book named "Partially digested story" found in a Netherhound stomach!
I like the idea. Journal entries that could be combined into a story once I had collected a set especially appeals to me. Sets would be more of something that Aikar might make as permanent drop items with Lore and so forth. Other Books might be user submitted and/or for a limited time only. They could be used as clues in games like treasure hunts or puzzles.
You know, I could very easily add a new crafting recipe that combines books together by appending the pages together
I 100% agree with you. I cannot believe somebody has not thought of this before! It will also be a pretty nice collection to have.
I'm picturing only certain ones fit together, like pieces of a puzzle. Let's say I have Lord Pyre's Journal entries #1, 3, and 4. Once I get Book #2, I can combine them into a complete piece and read his story. Or a list of puzzle clues could work like this.
