GuildWiki:Sandbox

Hi, this is an article on tips for writing well rounded fan-fiction about Guild Wars. I would firstly like to mention that this guide is a working progress and will be continually updated as new ideas arise. This guide will address issues relating to how you can take your ideas and writings to the next step by merging them with the world that Arena-net has created.

I would encourage all of you to add your ideas and comments to this article to help make it better. All I ask is that you run something by me if you are going to make drastic edits. Also, in this article, sample text for writing will be in green. Now lets move on to the good stuff.

Important Issues

 * Dates and Time Periods
 * Calendar's and seacons
 * Traveling
 * Measuring Distance
 * Weapons and Armor
 * prefix'x and Suffix's
 * Classes
 * Adventuring
 * Towns and outposts

Dates and Time Periods
Date and time period are an important when you are considering your works. Knowing the right dates and times can drastically effect your work and how others perceive it. Having dates that match the game’s timeline are important. Your story cannot be about Shiro slaying Margonites at the time of the Exodus and hoped to be anything but a joke to many readers. The following is an examination of the dating and calendar systems on the game.

So lets get a few of the facts straight.

Calendars
Each of the 3 campaigns has its own calendar system. They are as follows.



! Game / Pelple Use By || Calendar System || # Of Seasons / Months || # Of Days Per Year:
 * - align="center" valign="top"
 * - align="center"
 * Prophecies / Tryian || Mouvelian Calendar || 4 seasons || 360 days
 * - align="center"
 * Eye of the North / Tryian || Mouvelian Calendar || 4 seasons || 360 days
 * - align="center"
 * Factions / Canthan || Canthan Calendar || 12 months || 360 days
 * - align="center"
 * Nightfall / Elonian || Dynastic Reckoning || 4 seasons || 360 days
 * -align="center"
 * }

A more thorough and detailed description of the calendar’s can be found below. - When you are writing using the Mouvelian Calendar make sure that when you list important dates that you use (BE) and (AE) so your readers can have a rough idea of when your story takes place. Since the Mouvelian and Dynastic Reckoning do not use months be sure to make regular use of the seasons. Below are some handy things to remember for when you write. - When addressing the season in your writings looks at the following examples to get an idea of how they might be used.
 * The Mouvelian Calendar Here
 * The Canthan Calendar Here
 * The Dynastic Reckoning Here
 * Years before the Exodus (BE)
 * Years after the Exodus (AE)
 * All years in Elonian history include the letters “DR,” measuring years after the Dynastic Reckoning.
 * For a good reference, 1072(AE) is when the Prophecies game starts
 * To convert Elonian years to Mouvelian years, subtract 200.
 * To convert Canthan years to Mouvelian years, subtract 510.
 * Cantha’s history is broken into 3 sections of times. Please note that most all history involving humans in Cantha takes place during the late pre-imperial era. The 3 sections of the history are as follows.
 * Early pre-imperial era
 * Middle pre-imperial era
 * Late pre-imperial era

Mouvelian Calendar / Dynastic Reckoning / Seasons example
 * It was miserably hot outside. The sun bore down on the small valley with such intensity that Joshua though he might be cooler if he were on fire! He could not recall any time when the season of the Phoenix had ever been hotter....

Mouvelian Calendar / Dynastic Reckoning / Dating example
 * His hands thumbed through the ancient tome carefully not wishing to bring any harm to the delicate pages. He searched for a few more minuets until at last he had found what he was looking for. At the bottom of a faded page in scribbled handwriting was a date; Day 203 of the Scion, 860 AE . There was a worn drawing above the date depicting the massive doors of the newly constructed wall around Nolani....

Canthan Calendar / Seasons example
 * During the later months of the year it would grow somewhat colder out over the vastness of the Jade Sea. Come Yundinfang the first cool breezes would begin to blow down from the north. By Songtahn the small pools of rain-wash might begin to freeze around the edges. The great petrified trees of the Kurzick settlements in the Echovald Forest might even show frost in the chilly air of Kainengtah ....

Canthan Calendar / Dating example -
 * Penned in ink on the bottom of the imperial order was the date 114 Zalfawn, 1207 CC . Even more puzzling then the date was the fact that the order had been signed by the 24th Emperor himself. Emperor Senvho’s imperial stamp had long ago begun to fade away but Ling could still make out the distinct marks....

Traveling
Travel is a difficult issue when it comes to Guild Wars. Problems arise when you try to take the continents found in-game and bring them to scale with your writing.

Comparatively speaking the continent of Tyria would be about the size of a small city in real life. To illustrate what I mean consider the following example.

A friend sits down in and starts to play Guild Wars. He decides he wants to get a runner from Ascalon City to Droknar's Forge. At the same time he leaves from Ascalon City you start you afternnon workout by beginning a light jog. 30 minuets later you friend arrives in Droknar's Forge and you decide your done running too. In the 30 minuets your friends has crossed half the continent of Tyria and you have gone only 4 miles around the block.

Your Friend has not gone a greater distance then you have. This is because the world of Guild Wars is actually very small. You will find that travel can be very important in your writing for many different reasons. In order to make travel work in your writings you will need to learn how to scale the continents of Guild Wars.

Scaling
Before you can scale a map to fit your text you need to decide how long it takes to get to one end of a map to another end. Then from there you can guess about how long it might takes to cross. I would suggest that it take many days or even months to cross a continent, but I will leave that up to your discretion. It should also be noted that most caves do not need to be scaled. Days spent inside caves should be very limited, unless these caves are more like underground cities. - This picture show about how far you could travel in a day if a day’s travel was about two times the distance viewable on the in-game compass. This scale will give you a fairly expansive world in which to work with. The yellow ring from one side to another is about 20 miles or one day’s travel.



Note that the physical features you see one the map do not have to scale to the distance traveled. In example, the rocks you see on the map above do not get stretch to 10 miles long. Just describe them normally in your text. When you scale, a lot of things about terrain get left up to you to decide, so have some fun with it.

Remember that there are no horses in Guild Wars, therefore most of the time your characters will be walking / hiking / running. Very seldom will your characters be riding a mount of some kind, though it is not completely unheard of. This will limit the amount of travel that can be done without the use of Asura type Gates, Magic, or boats. - The following examples are about traveling

Tyrian Traveling example
 * Baric and his men had traveled for many days since they had left the meek comforts of Yak's Bend. They had headed westward into the border-lands of the Stone Summit territory. Their path took then north and over the Iron Horse Mines in a sweeping arch that would add at least a week to their travels. Once they had passed the western tip of the mines they would swing southwesterly and make for the abandoned Deldrimor trade roads through Anvil Rock. If Baric was lucky, they could escape the first snowfalls of the Colossus before they passed into the Deldrimor Bowl.

Canthan Traveling example
 * WIP

Elonian Traveling example
 * WIP