User:King Of Yuri/sandbox


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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 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.

= OVERVIEW =


 * Dates and Time Periods
 * Calendar's and seasons
 * Traveling
 * Measuring Distance
 * Scaling
 * Towns and outposts
 * Combat
 * Weapons and Armor
 * Prefix's and Suffix's
 * Using Spells
 * Classes
 * Adventuring
 * Monsters and Foes

DATES AND TIMES
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 games 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.

Calendar's and seasons
Each of the 3 campaigns has its own calendar system. They are as follows.



! Game / People Use By || Calendar System || # Of Seasons / Months || # Of Days Per Year: This is a breakdown of each of the 3 mentioned above. (NOTE: Only 3 are listed because ETON uses the same system.)
 * - 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
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 * Nightfall / Elonian || Dynastic Reckoning || 4 seasons || 360 days
 * -align="center"
 * }
 * The Mouvelian Calendar, Full Article Here

! Name || Season of the year || Days || Element || Guardian Deity
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 * Spring || Zephyr || 1~90 || Air || Dwayna and Lyssa
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 * Summer || Phoenix || 91~180 || Fire || Balthazar
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 * Fall || Scion || 181~270 || Water || Melandru
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 * Winter || Colossus || 271~360 || Earth || Grenth
 * -align="center"
 * }
 * The Dynastic Reckoning, Full Article Here

! Name || Season of the year || Days || Element || Guardian Deity
 * -align="center"
 * Spring || Zephyr || 1~90 || Air || Dwayna and Lyssa
 * -align="center"
 * Summer || Phoenix || 91~180 || Fire || Balthazar
 * -align="center"
 * Fall || Scion || 181~270 || Water || Melandru
 * -align="center"
 * Winter || Colossus || 271~360 || Earth || Grenth
 * -align="center"
 * }
 * The Canthan Calendar, Full Article Here

! Days || Canthan Months|| Mouvelian / Dynastic Reckoning Seasons 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.
 * -align="center"
 * 1~30 || Changhai||rowspan=3| Season of the Zephyr
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 * 31~60 || Zhoyo
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 * 61~90 || Nongkam
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 * 91~120 ||Zalfawn||rowspan=3| Season of the Phoenix
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 * 121~150 ||Saita
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 * 151~180|| Mikan
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 * 181~210 ||Nemnai|| rowspan=3|Season of the Scion
 * -align="center"
 * 211~240||Beibacah
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 * 241~270||Suzhen
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 * 271~300||Yundinfang||rowspan=3|Season of the Colossus
 * -align="center"
 * 301~330||Songtahn
 * -align="center"
 * 331~360||Kainengtah
 * -align="center"
 * }
 * 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.
 * Canthaís 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

When addressing the seasons and dates in your writings looks at the following examples to get an idea of how they might be used.

 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 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 of ours sits down 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 decide to start you afternoon workout by beginning with a light jog. 30 minuets later you friend arrives in Droknar's Forge, at the same time you finish running as well. 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 really 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 will take to get from 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 weeks 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 dayís 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 dayís travel.



Note that the physical features you see on 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 (well none that they ever showed to us players), therefore most of the time your characters will be walking, hiking, or using magic perhaps. 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.

Towns and Outposts
Undoubtably when you write you will have your written subjects travel to places such as town or outposts. These are the places the common folk of the Guild Wars world gather and settle down to live out their lives. When you write try and make these places believable. We all know that in real life towns have more then 20 people in them and that these people do more the sell items. While in Guild Wars there may be only a few thousand NPC's or so we need to think about population in a more realistic since. Below is and example chart that might give you an idea about what a more realistic Guild Wars population might look like.

Others things to remember when writing about places is the people that reside in those places. In an ideal world not every person is going to be a guard or a merchant. Think of farmers, smiths, bakers, judges, or maybe even politicians. Just look at were you like in and think about all the people who live there with you and what kinds of things they do, then just throw a medieval sort of twist on it.



! In-game Place Reference || Recommended Population Sizes
 * - align="center" valign="top"
 * - align="center"
 * Capital City || Thousands
 * - align="center"
 * City || Hundreds to ~1000
 * - align="center"
 * Town || Hundreds to ~400
 * - align="center"
 * Village || ~40 to ~100
 * -align="center"
 * Outpost || Less then ~50
 * -align="center"
 * }

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 would take then northward and over the Iron Horse Mines in a sweeping arc 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 
 * "Your from where again?" the man asked staring at Kim as though what he had answered made no sense . "The Kaineng Docks, south of Kaineng Center. It is a great many leagues from here - 400 or more I would reckon." Kim replied again for the second time. He was growing frustrated with the man at the gate. He was weary from yet another long day of travel and when he had at last had sighted the stony and broken walls of the Tanglewood Copse, he had figured that he would have easy access to a good nights rest. For some reason or another, the guard who was standing watch that evening at the gate had ideas of his own. He had questioned Kim for nearly an hour now about his business being so far from home and why he was even at the copse at all. 


 * At length Kim turn to the man and with a raised hand bayed him to be silent. The man looked confused as Kim remounted his horse and simple rode back out to the north and away from the gate. Kim decided he would simply ring the town and make for the open road and be done with the questioning guard once and for all. He would just sleep alone the road if it meant he didn't have to answer any more questions. He still had many miles to leagues to cover before he would get to the great Vasburg Armory, his final destination.

 Elonian Traveling example 
 * WIP.

COMBAT
And so we have reached the combat section. Combat and conflict will undoubtably somehow find its way into your fan fiction at one point or another. Its important to remember that combat is more then simply swinging swords, shooting bows, and casting spells at enemies. Conflict can be many things if you take a minute to think about it. Emotions, throwing a punch, heated words, internal struggles, and rivalry are all forms of conflict and some could lead to combat, but thats for you to decide.

So lets touch on a few do's and do-nots of writing about combat before we more move on to the good stuff. Firstly I would like to say that writing fiction that involves combat is nothing like what you would see a bunch of 12 year olds in a yahoo chat-room role-playing. Good fiction is more then Bob swung his super magical sword and the dude died. It pains me to see people write like this. You need not articulate every single sword swing in a battle but you can't just use an endless stream of one line hit-and-die BS. Just just give the reader a good foundation for their imagination to do the rest of the work as your words direct the battle but not dictate it. Just keep this in mind as we go into the next sections. Below are a few examples you can look at to help you get the idea.

EXAMPLE HERE

EXAMPLE HERE

Weapons and Armor
Weapons and armor. They are many and varied, with different sizes, shapes, functions and looks. These will be essential to properly describe when you story comes to blows. Lets get to to the good stuff I guess.


 *  Weapons 
 * As you already know, the world of Guild Wars has many weapons already created for you to easily choose for your writing purposes. In fact I would encourage you to make good use of a vast source so readily available at your fingertips. but even more so I hope you come to use weapons that have not yet implemented into Guild Wars yet. I know for the longest time I wanted scythes in the game so bad I could hardly stand it. Well I got that wish and now I'm happy, but just thing of all the other stuff they could add. Be creative and add your owe weapons to your fiction, don't think you are solely limited to what is in the game. Try something fun and unique like nunchaku for example or maybe whips or a pole-axe. The weapon a warrior wields says a lot about himself and his particular combat style. I once read a book where a priest used a crossbow and a yo-yo as as weapons. You can only guess as his extraordinary fighting style.


 * Another thing you might want to remember in that many weapons are given names by their owners. While in most fiction a weapon that has been given a name is most likely one of renown. Such titles have great meaning and can even insight fear in a foe. Just take Sting from Lord of the Rings, the mere mention of the name would make goblins and orcs cringe


 * Just make sure you describe well the functional limits and likeness for the weapons you end up using. Here is and example below.

 Weapons Description Example 
 * Jerard sat his long watch at the edge of town this cold night. He wondered really if there was a need for him to be sitting out here in the freezing night air. He could not recall the last time the town had ever been attacked or even the last time a stranger had even come this way. Perhaps this was the reason he almost missed the sharp rap on the large frame of the towns wooden gate. Again came the knock and this time Jerard nearly jumped out of his rickety wooden stool as he turned to regard the noise. There standing under the arch was a lone figure. He was tall... to tall to be from around this region 


 *  Armor 
 * Armor is much like a weapon in its own regard. There are many styles each suited to the

Prefix's and Suffix's
We must take note of the subject for this plays a large part in how you will describe your descriptions so to say.