Organizing structure
So in the Library game, we took as our organizing structure the list of books we already knew about, and then imposed the very limited arbitrary structure of spreading those books out on shelves throughout the library.

We don't have an obvious equivalent structure in this case. Do we need one? Do we want to revert to the traditional arbitrary structure of the alphabet? Do we want to do something like dividing the mythological history in to eras, so that everyone ends up writing mythology from each era? Do we want to divide it up by gods, so each player writes something about each god (where it is certainly possible to write purely from the perspective of a single priest, and still tells stories that touch on every god)? Do we want to divide it up by scribe, so each player has to write one of the stories told to each of the Prince's scribes (which, like shelf or alphabet is pretty much a purely arbitrary distinction, but might add some amusement value if we end up with a scribe that everyone tells incredibly bloody stories to, or some such)? Or maybe by motif, where we come up with a list of items and images, and everyone has to write one story that touches on each of the motifs?

Or we can try just purely freeform, or the style where everyone has to choose one of the newly created shadow entries to do.

Also, if we are playing with the idea that these are stories told to scribes, do we want to allow scribe entries commenting on the stories, or should scribe entries be done purely as in character comments on the story posts?

I think shooting for entries once a week is still a good plan.

I favor one of the more creat
I favor one of the more creative approaches, because I tend to come up with better ideas when presented a theme to work around.

It would be fun to come up with scribes, I think.

Motifs--
I think I like a list of motifs arranged in a grid or something, so we have to do intersections of two or more motifs. "River" and "night," or "milling" and "blood." Of course, coming up with the motifs could be a game in itself. (We'd need, what: 16 would give us 64 [8 each top and side, unless we want motifs squared: river-river, milling-milling, which I don't think we would].)

Alphabet doesn't have enough oomph, and the gods themselves might be weirdly too limiting, or too distorting.

Freeform would be a bit too loose, especially since we need a table or something that's easy to navigate that lets us know where the empties and phantoms are to be found.

motif chart
Actually, if we are doing a motif vs motif table, I would think we would need as many major motifs as we have players, and as many minor motifs as we want to do rounds, where each player will eventually end up doing one entry for each minor motif (think of each minor motif as a shelf in the library or a letter in a traditional Lexicon game and each major motif as a slot on the shelf), and we can add additional monir motifs if we start to fill up all the ones we have and still want to keep going.

I would suggest that major motifs (say, Salmon, Moonlight, Water, Caves, Swords, Crowns) have obvious ties to major cultural/religious tropes (although they wouldn't need to be used in such a manner in a particular story), while minor motifs (say, drinking, hazelnuts, bridges, rhododendrons, twined branches, snow, mountains, a tavern keeper, antlers, an old woman) have cultural relevance, but less overt grand meaning. I'd suggest coming up with a big list of motifs, and then narrowing it down to so many minor motifs and so many major motifs.

Also, to allow for low-energy weeks, or realizing that I can't do a particular story justice in a full-story form, I think that we should make entries be the scribe's write-ups of the stories, which can range from verbatim transcripts to partial transcript with commentary to simple summaries.

I'm not sure whether we should hold individual players to individual scribes, or to individual priests. Probably we should leave it up to the players disgression, so that a particular player could write entirely from a single priest's perspective, transcribed by a particular scribe, or could move between priest's and scribes.

I'm not sure how we should handle ownership of either priests or scribes. Should multiple players be able to use the same priest or scribe character and, if so, should it be complete open or should it require the permission of the original author)?

It might be fun to share prie
It might be fun to share priests, but the scribes should probably be proprietary for purposes of writing style. (Variations in the tone of the priests can be attributed to the different styles of the scribes.)

Fun, indeed.
I read that as "fun to share pie." But hear hear, either way.

So what's our next step here?
So what's our next step here? Figuring out how many folks will be participating, and generating a full list of themes?

Sounds like the right next steps to me.
I'm in.

I'll poke Emily again by email.

I'm in, obviously. Because,
I'm in, obviously. Because, yay, Monkeys!

Sign me up.
What the subject line says.

me too
Though I won't be able to start until after GenCon. I like the motif matrix idea. I do best with structure too.

And is there stuff that's been talked about verbally that's not written down? I don't want to contradict, though it could be ascribed to the scribe.

I think most of it has either
I think most of it has either been very minor or has referenced what's been put up here. Jake may have said some stuff about Wolves, but more in relation to social policy than actual mythology.

So:

Charles
Kip
Emily
D
So:

Charles
Kip
Emily
Dylan

Does that do us? That yields sixteen entries, at least.

motif chart
Who's up for making that? Charles? Dylan? I'm not volunteering, though you could easily use the code from the library shelves as a model.

well, if we all contribute on
well, if we all contribute one minor and one major motif each, that will set us up with a nice grid right there.

As for the coding, hell no, t
As for the coding, hell no, this database scares me.

Jake, extra slots, coding and motifs
Jake expressed interest when we were talking by email, I'll see if he is still interested. I also assume that we can probably get an occaisional entry from Matt or Kim.

I think that we should have a couple of spare major motifs, so each minor motif either ends up with blanks or has space left for drop ins.

I'm willing to try my hand at some coding (it strikes me I need to learn php, so I'll try creating a little form where you enter the relavent info and it adds it to the table, rather than just a html table where you have to edit the html to add your entry).

As to the motif list, maybe we should just start a thread and start tossing out possible motifs.

I like the idea of minor & m
I like the idea of minor & major ones. Would major motifs return in various stories?

Can I still get in?
I've been prettyu busy this week (and still am) but I kept meaning to respond to this.I may not be able to do much before Gencon, but I'll definetly jump in after. or maybe before. I don't know.

Jenn, too.
Jenn's also expressed interest. I'll poke her.

major and minor
My idea was minor motifs equal shelves (so we have as many as we want to have turns to the game), and major motifs equal slots per shelf (the number of players plus one or two extras), so there would only be a few major motifs, and they'd show up over and over again.

very cool
I like that a lot.

Permission to come aboard requested
Thank you