Minimal Acknowledgement of Other NPC

[Domi]

I understand the convenience, of course, but it still rings false to me. Even if you have the long list of names before the end of the day, will it work in the end? New people will come, and all will begin anew.

 

If it is a generally accepted trend in the communty, then the new people would be intrudced to this culture without problems. Just like nobody agonizes over checking Globals.

 

Besides, there are not so many NPCs now. Look at the modlist. Half of them are One-Days, another half is Betas, and from the last ones six have been developed by Sillara's creative team, and contacting them is easy. Jason made his opinion clear. I do not think sending 10 PM's is that difficult, and it's not the sort of thing one has to do every month, anyway. My opinion only, of course.

 

Well, in my opinion it is a chore to compose endless PM's, especially to people who will not reply to them, and over things that as Grim had mentioned, do not modify or affect their NPC in any way.

[Kulyok]

Once again, I'm trusting that modders are decent people. The only time I said it would be polite to contact them was when you were having dialogues about the NPC in question. I would assume it an enormous amount of cases that the modder would write back saying 'thats fine. I look forward to seeing what you've come up with' or words to that effect. I'd hope that very rarely (if ever) people would say 'okay, I want to read it first and I may have some serious suggestions for changes', but if that was the case, its good to respect their wishes. I'm just trying to avoid the situation of an author getting a nasty shock when a mod comes out and someone else tells them 'dude, did you read what they said about your mod', as that could get ugly.

 

Then I wonder: if modders are decent people, why bind them with a contract? But all right, I voiced my opinion on the matter, I am grateful it was heard, and I do not think that defending the point "community agreement"="sounds bad" to the death is worth it, anyway. I just fear that there will be

"Hey, someone made an interaction into my every lovetalk!"

"Didn't you know? it was a community agreement!"

- and then things *will* get ugly.

[Grim Squeaker]

Its not a contract its trying to put into words what we mean by 'the little things'. I already said I'm not expecting people to be treating it as a contract and looking for loopholes (e.g. it doesn't say how many times I can do this!). I trust that people wouldn't want to interject into every lovetalk as that would be a stupid thing to do from a character and gaming perspective. My suggestion was made so that people would have some general guidelines to follow so everyone is on more or less the same page. Yes, I admit that what you said could occur but in the unlikely event that it happened I'd hope that the person in question would contact interjection writer and diplomatically suggest that they might want reduce the number of interjections.

[Domi]

There are risks, yes. But on another hand, the character won't be interjecting jelously in every Anomen's lovetalk, while smiling benevolently on another character courting the girl/boy.

[jcompton]

Once again, I'm trusting that modders are decent people.  The only time I said it would be polite to contact them was when you were having dialogues about the NPC in question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

But what you're proposing, and Kulyok's #2 and #3 scenarios, all create the rather bizarre result that modders are supposed to consider other mods more sacred and inviolable than the core game.

[Grim Squeaker]

Once again, I'm trusting that modders are decent people.  The only time I said it would be polite to contact them was when you were having dialogues about the NPC in question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

But what you're proposing, and Kulyok's #2 and #3 scenarios, all create the rather bizarre result that modders are supposed to consider other mods more sacred and inviolable than the core game.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I suppose so, yes. The thing is I don't know the designers or the dialogue writers for the core game. I don't know what they intended and what they didn't for their characters. If one were to appear on the forums and say that I'd completely gone against what they wanted for that character I would change it, but that's unlikely to happen. However, with the majority of mods, the authors are still around or will be around in the near future, so I wouldn't feel comfortable making assumptions about their characters without their 'blessing'.

[jcompton]

If one were to appear on the forums and say that I'd completely gone against what they wanted for that character I would change it, but that's unlikely to happen.

 

Yeah, we really do look at this differently.

[Domi]

But what you're proposing, and Kulyok's #2 and #3 scenarios, all create the rather bizarre result that modders are supposed to consider other mods more sacred and inviolable than the core game.

 

It is a natural bias by the reasons Grim described. Defining a zone that is 'comfortable'/'not objectionable' could only do good.

[Grim Squeaker]

If one were to appear on the forums and say that I'd completely gone against what they wanted for that character I would change it, but that's unlikely to happen.

 

Yeah, we really do look at this differently.

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Not meaning to be rude or sarcastic but how do you see it?

 

To go into more depth about what I said before: When I write for a core game character I try and write within the confines of the character, in same way I would about the Forgotten Realms. I wouldn't have Nalia get into a fistfight with Elminster any more than I'd have someone inventing a semiautomatic. I have to try and interpret what the characters are when I write them though. However, with mods thats not the case. The writers are still about and still expanding their characters. So, if I want to write something for their character, I'll ask them first. If I want to interject into their conversation, I'll ask them so that I don't wreck what they had planned because its polite to do so. Were it as simple to do that with 'the lead Nalia writer' or 'the person who came up with the character and invented more backstory for her than is written in the dialogues' I would do the same, but I can't.

[Kulyok]

The way I see it this, the #2 approach (i.e. ethical="do not modify anything unless both modders are in agreement") works well in some cases. Few, most - it does not matter. But its fundamental difference from the community borderline suggested is that modders actually *are* in agreement. With borderline, you take the approach some would embrace, some would dislike and some would violently protest against, call it etihical and add community prefix to it. What is the point? It's either working with other mods *with* the creator's agreement, or *without* it. There is no third way, and saying "we all agree about this" when, in fact, not all do, is pointless. Yes, it may bring some moral satisfaction - see how many people agree with this borderline? - but in the end, it remains unethical.

[jcompton]

Not meaning to be rude or sarcastic but how do you see it?

 

As a rule I don't write and publish it if I don't feel pretty confident that it is a sustainable, defensible, and valid interpretation of the character. Short of them pointing out some glaring contradiction in a part of the core game that I'm somehow unaware of or had flaked out about, I have a difficult time envisioning a scenario where I would defer to their judgment. The game is out, they had their say. Having put out a few mods over the years and taken the measure of the reaction, I feel quite comfortable about my ability to assess the aspects of someone else's character and deliver suitable, matching new content.

 

Plus which, at this point I've pretty clearly spent more time and energy exploring these characters than they have. This is not to say that long-term effort inherently trumps a short-term exercise of talent (pushing on a brick wall with your bare hands for five years doesn't make you smarter than the bricklayer) but in this case I seriously doubt there's anything visible about the characters they could tell me that I didn't already know.

 

(And if there's something not visible that they think is important to have in the game, I'd be delighted to point them to some WeiDU tutorials and get into a bidding war against Lost Hollows for the right to host their output.)

[Borsook]

Not meaning to be rude or sarcastic but how do you see it?

 

To go into more depth about what I said before: When I write for a core game character I try and write within the confines of the character, in same way I would about the Forgotten Realms.  I wouldn't have Nalia get into a fistfight with Elminster any more than I'd have someone inventing a semiautomatic.  I have to try and interpret what the characters are when I write them though.  However, with mods thats not the case.  The writers are still about and still expanding their characters.

What if they're not? Modders do disappear from the scene.

So, if I want to write something for their character, I'll ask them first.  If I want to interject into their conversation, I'll ask them so that I don't wreck what they had planned because its polite to do so.  Were it as simple to do that with 'the lead Nalia writer' or 'the person who came up with the character and invented more backstory for her than is written in the dialogues' I would do the same, but I can't.

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PS. Assuming I want to mod your mod, adding dialogue, removing etc. But I make my mod so that it'll only work if yours was installed first (so again coming back to modding mods vs modding game) would you then consider it ok or not?

[Domi]

Yes, it may bring some moral satisfaction - see how many people agree with this borderline? - but in the end, it remains unethical.

 

Ethical means conforming to accepted professional standards of conduct; if we accept as a modding community a standard than the ethical dilemma will be resolved.

 

I fail to see what is unethical -ie morally wrong- about what Grim suggested as the acceptable things to do without the author permission. Look at it as long as I may, I just don't see any of them as impediment on the author's freedom or as an insult.

[Grim Squeaker]

Jason: Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I can see where you're coming from and I do agree to an extent, but I'd still want to collaberate to some degree with the original author, were it possible.

 

Borsook: Yes, modders do disappear. I would attempt to contact them and investigate what the current situation was (i.e. are they on holiday? disappeared entirely? decided to give up modding?) and based on that decided whether I felt it would be a good idea to do something. It would entirely depend on the situation.

 

As for your second point, it would also depend on the situation. I mean, if its just adding some interjections or similar with their mod or something, thats fine. If they thought something I'd done wasn't so great and wanted to change that, I'd like to talk to them, see what their suggestions are and see if I could improve the mod based on their ideas. If it was something like, adding a romance where there wasn't one before, I'd definitely want to talk about it as that is a big thing involving in depth character stuff. Like I said, its all based on the specific scenario.

[Kulyok]

But the fact that you are accepting it does not mean that community as a whole accepts it. If you think there is no difference whether to do this with the other modder's consent or without it, that does not mean every menber of the community believes so. It is "community policy" I object to, not consent, since there will never be universal agreement, and I strongly object against pretending otherwise.