Wiki trick and progress

Turns out that more things are underway!

Averland Abendessen has been translated in full, by Thomas Munkholt, but a bug was found in the game, so it sits at “90% done” until its Johs, the author, finds the time to fix it.

Olle finished translating The Warhammer, which now awaits copy-editing.

Slaaraphenland is a scenario which Olle just began translating, and he shares a wiki tip:

When partitioning a long text into several smaller pieces, for use on a wiki, it’s good to put the pieces in good places. I named my pieces slaaraphenland:scenes so that they get to sit in their own so-called namespace (slaaraphenland:, in this case). This is the way Project pages are made, too. They just sit in the projects: namespace.

That way, there is no problem that I call my list of scenes “Scenes” and my list of gamemaster instructions “Overview”, even though those names are quite popular. No collisions will occur, using namespaces. OK, thanks bye!

That’s it for now! Happy trails, people!

Returning Home released!

Long time no see, but here are some Gnavpotveksler news.

Just released: Frederik J Jensen’s Returning Home. Brand new translated scenario. Yes, with a CC license, and with neat pictures.

Update on Dyst (English: Joust): Jonas has completed translating Part I of the text, and waiting for language feedback from his helpers.

Juhana Pettersson from Helsinki reports that Roolipelaaja #21 is soon published. If you look at the picture, and you can’t read Finnish, you can probably make out the word Fastaval. At this point in the project, you might know what that word means. (If not, make an Internet search.) Anyway, cutting to the chase, Butterforger is in that issue. In Finnish! Thanks to liberal CC licenses, they didn’t even have to ask. They were gracious about it, and let the author know, and all.

Having to run, I salute your upcoming solstice.

Third scenario almost done

I just heard from Kristoffer Apollo: he challenged himself to do the entire translation of “A Midsummer Night’s Story” by Martin Svendsen in 24 hours. And he did it!

The scenario is part of “The Empire” anthology and are now going through the final proof reading and layout process. Anyone willing to help with either please contact Martin and Kristoffer through the wiki-page.

Layout help from overseas

Out of the blue, Remi Treuer told us that he’ll try to re-layout Butterforger. Great! Rumor has it that he took an InDesign course. The author’s own current PDF is quite rough: it’s the product of a beginner’s 20 minutes with LyX, the LaTeX document processor.

The Hunt also has the layout conundrum: it will be a while before the full Empire anthology is translated, but The Hunt is already playable. If it had some layout, people could play it, submit bugs and actual play reports.

Update: The Hunt now has layout, and a minor homepage. In the comments, Emily links to a remix, which she found useful in play. Download, remix, play!

You game for a layout challenge?

Project update!

Butterforger is now ready. The text now exists in English, and anyone can download and play it. Thanks, all collaborators! This is going so well.

Emily Care Boss has been working hard with spell-checking and grammar-correcting The Hunt, the text of which has been translated roughly. René Toft, the intrepid author of the scenario, used the wiki itself to hold the text of the scenario.

Want to contribute some words? All you need to do to help out, is register at the wiki, and get cracking. Registering is called “becoming a member”, but you’re all invited. As we’ve said before, the secret code is at the bottom of the front page of the wiki. Look carefully.

Much welcome!

Due to unstable web access I might not be able to update as often for the next few weeks.

Rumours will have it that both René and Olle are almost done with their first translations. Two scenarios in two weeks. I hadn’t imagined this drive when I started this.

We rock!

Let the games begin

We’ve updated the project wiki with clearer structure and project pages for all the scenarios in phase 1. You should now have all the info needed to get going.

We’ve got GOs from almost all of the authors, and more than enough to keep us busy for a while.

Lots of folks have offered their help and support during the week. Every single line translated takes us closer to the goal and what seemed like a crazy idea earlier in the week actually feels achievable now.

Everyone deserves a special thanks and honorable mention here, even though I can’t keep the standard of writing bios for each of you:

• Tobias Demediuk Bindslet
• Frederik J. Jensen
• Eva Fog
• Elias Helfer
• Lars Vilhelmsen
• Morten Greis
• René Toft
• Johannes Busted Larsen
• Jesper Wøldiche
• Alex Uth
• Anders Frost Bertelsen
• Claus Kliplev
• Mike Ditlevsen
• Kristoffer Rudkjær

This list is in no particular order, and if you feel you should be in it, you probably should. If you have blogs or websites that you want me to link to your names, please drop me a mail and I’ll update it here.

Whoa, camel! Whoa!

Everything is developing very fast. I’m doing my best to keep up. Please be patient for a little while longer.

I’ve contacted almost all of the authors, and I’m waiting for word back from a few of them. So far, everybody loves the project.

Even more people are volunteering to help translating and generally offering their powers and help. It is so cool. I am in awe of this community.

Due to general work-related busyness, I might not be able to do much more before the weekend, but don’t worry, I’m not fleeing. I expect to have almost everything up and running by Monday.

(The title is a quote by Yosemite Sam in a Bugs Bunny, or some other Looney Tunes. In case you wonder.)

Friendly Tip: Using Creative Commons Licenses

Dear reader! Let’s talk about online publishing, since stuff we translate will at some point be published, on the Internet in some form. Works submitted to Gnavpotveksler are sometimes covered by some kind of Creative Commons license, which is more permissive than an ordinary copyright. It is, of course, up to the author to decide exactly how permissive this license should be. But in short, Creative Commons enables you to assert your right to be identified as the author of the work, without restricting remixing and innovative use that can further rock your work. (In the role-playing community, we obviously always remix published stuff, but this way you give the users official permission to do so and even publish the results).

So, for example, let’s say you’ve already run your scenario at a convention, it’s available for download at Alexandria.dk, and all is well. You said “OK” when Alexandria asked you for permission for distribution of your scenario at their website. (I.e. a quite ordinary role-playing hobbyist situation.) The following is applicable also to printed, non-Net materials, but this project isn’t really looking at publishing on those platforms.

Now, people want to translate your scenario into new languages, because they want to spread the love. You probably don’t know these people. But, you want the scenario to fly on its own wings, and you wouldn’t mind using all the free and friendly labour. So how can you trust that what they do is respectful?

Creative Commons is a license that works like Open Source licenses for software. (That explanation makes more sense if you’re a geek). You can for instance allow people to distribute your scenario freely, provided that they state your name in the text (aka attribute it to you). If you choose, you can add a few further restrictions, the simplest being Share-Alike:

CC-3.0-BY-SA: “This is BY me, and when you remix & redistribute it, you must Share-Alike (i.e. if you publish it again, which you are welcome to do under Creative Commons, you can’t change the license to something else. You have to share the way I chose to do it – that is, under my variant of Creative Commons).”

Another restriction that you can select is that other people can’t benefit financially from your work. This is called Non-Commercial, and probably won’t give you a share of advertising revenue from the site from which your masterpiece is downloaded a million times – but does give you the right to sell your baby to a commercial publisher, should you choose to (and the rpg industry radically change to make that feasible).

You can put together any rules combination for your version of the Creative Commons license in a simple-to-use wizard here. Include the final license text as the small print somewhere in your work.

The most obvious benefit of just spelling it all out from the very beginning is that people won’t have to try to reach you all the time for licensing & permission questions. In the future, when you may have lost touch with role-playing scene, been hit by a truck or are taking that extended offline vacation in Bora Bora, this will be especially beneficial. Because who does not want to return from Bora Bora to find one’s favorite scenario translated into Mandarin and played and loved by one billion Chinese geeks?

OK, ciao!

Wiki

The masses are screaming for something to sink their teeth into. Olle started a project wiki for sharing knowledge and maybe even working on the texts.

As soon as I get a few hours in a row (most likely during the weekend) I’ll start distributing the texts. Until then you are all very welcome to help me moving into the wiki: create the pages you think we’ll need.