Guild Wars 2

Here’s a thought for introducing short stories in-game and motivating players to look for lore bits:

We already have books in-game (eg Ebonhawke, around 20 volumes scattered around)

So do the same thing, only upon reading the book the player can ‘copy’ said book and deposit it much as he does his collectibles.

Upon finding all the pieces of a given book (because lets face it, the 20 volumes in ebonhawke are just one book, or rather one short story), we can do:

a) Player goes to his bank, collectibles tab, new Library/Historian section, and arranges the found pieces. If he puts two consecutive pieces together correctly they merge. Repeat the process until you get entire book => upon which you get an achievement.

b) Pieces merge automatically or just are stored in collectibles until all are collected at which point they assemble into a full book.

End Result:
Achievement for finding all pages of a book
A book stored in players collectibles he can read at his leisure

I would prefer a) way, that way it’s like being a historian and putting the pieces together

I think it’d encourage players to seek those out as he/she will get achievements for them. And collecting a personal library is just great fun for me, I love the lore.

Also, items like quill and paper and ink could be introduced that you have to carry around to be able to copy a book. Like ‘Historian Kit’.

Got this idea after watching one of the last WoodenPotatoes videos, on the shortstory about Rytlock and Rox

Somewhat too interactive for my tastes (copying and piecing together part that is), but I support any and all ideas that might improve the lore-relevant experiences of the game. =)

Well the second option is for it to assemble itself All you’ll have to do is find the book and interact with it (which you already do), upon which it’ll be copied and added as a collectible to your inventory.

Once you get all the pieces it’ll piece itself together and added to your library.

The added bonus here is you can read the full book without running around by going to your library, as well as view all the books you found, and all the books you only found parts of.

Whoops. My bad there. I got too caught up on the a) preference mentioned at the end and let the b) part slip my thoughts.

I love the idea very, very much.

I am a bit of a collector and I’d love to collect for my personal library. I’d prefer a) myself because it’d give me something more to do.

Merging pages would feel a little bit like crafting (remember when we all tried to find cooking recipes?) plus it might require players to actually read them, or at least pay attention to the page/chapter number

And it would be another great idea of how to get some of the excellent b-source material (website short stories, etc.) into guild wars in a nice way.

I like it too. There are so many book carts in DR, books also in Ebonhawke and the Priory, and in 95% of the cases you can only see the title when interacting with them. I want to read that stuff! Read it, learn lore and their relevance to the place they can be found. Not to mention all the book titles that are mentioned in NPC dialogues, even theatre plays and such.
Would perhaps be a lot of work for the writers, but I would love to see it in-game and it would indeed be a great way to get some material from the website into the game.

this idea is really nice! i would enjoy a scholar approach

Really love this idea!! A great way to interact with items and learn lore. Introducing an achievement would be a nice bonus – much like the History Buff achieve for the Marriner plaques.