Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2023-03-15

After a brief intro, Elf jumps straight into cult questions.

Cult Questions

Bearsnake's Meeting With Epic Games and Forgotten Runes Party in LA

Community member Nightowlbirdman asks, "What in the EPIC hell has Bearsnake been talking about?" Bear responds that he will be at Game Developer Conference having meetings with different game developers. One of the meetings during the conference happens to be with EPIC Games. The company recently announced ~20 blockchain-based games, so Bear refers to them as "friendlies" and expresses excitement about speaking with them.

Bear has also been working with LaChness and Nalgene to organize a party to allow Wizards to let off some steam. The party will take place on March 21 during (but unrelated to) NFT LA/Outer Edge.

There is a RSVP link the the FRWC Discord. Limited capacity.

Skramps' Namesake

Elf then answers a question about the origin of Skramps' name and confirms that it is named after BrainDraind's dog. With this, he reminds us that the Runiverse is built upon the Collaborative Legendarium, so it's never known where content might come from.

Cross-Pollination of Wizard and Warrior Head Traits

Another question arises about the existence of some of the Wizards' head traits in the Warriors collection. Elf says this inclusion is just based on a gut feeling. Dotta clarifies that even though they may look like the same heads, they are not, as Wizards are 50x50 pixels where Warriors are 60x60 pixels. The head traits have all been redrawn, even though there are some similarities between certain traits in the two collections. Dotta continues by saying that the team didn't want to inflate or dilute traits from the Wizards collection, as some of the heads rarely appear. He gives the example that there could be no "Dotta Warrior" because "Dotta" is a singular character.

Elf expounds on this this by giving insight into his process behind creating systems. He says that creating these systems to break them adds wrinkles that make the world more rich. For instance, the Brown Hats do not follow the order of the color spectrum as the other Wizard hat colors do. In this "cross-pollination" of head traits, Elf also mentions Kobold Wizards and Kobold Warriors. To this, Dotta notes his surprise that Kobold Wizards exist at all. Elf talks about the archetype of the Wise Fool and how magic isn't always necessarily a purely intellectual pursuit and how there can be a lot of wisdom in bein foolish. Elf laughs and says, "Maybe you have to be a dumbass to wield magic in an effective way."

Elf Speaks on a16z Panel

Elf then pivots to talk about his experience speaking on the a16z panel in which he talked to young entrepreneurs about media in web3. He emphasizes the overall reaction of excitement towards Forgotten Runes "drip" and the stark contrast between Forgotten Runes products versus other tech swag.

Topics on the panel included:

Community building in web3
Media beyond NFTs for web3 projects
Royalties
Scaling versus inflating collection supply.

Elf says he doesn't want to brag, but he slayed the panel.

Open-Sourcing the 3D Models

Then, Elf transitions into more discussion about open-sourcing the 3D models rather than token-gating them. Ultimately, the models were left open to the public, but Elf speaks to concerns from the community and offers Magic Machine's thoughts. The team has made the 3D dashboard to display all of the details behind any singular character, including tname of character, tokenID, lore, and owner.

"If a stranger wants to download your character, they should know who that character is and who owns it."

Dotta chimes in to explains the 3D models have the same non-commercial rights as the 2D characters.

"In the age of infinite content, the risk is not that its overused and stolen, but rather that it's ignored and never seen at all."

BlackSand Races Resume With Mecha Ponies

The team invites Legatus up to speak about BlackSand pony racing resuming with the new Mecha Ponies. Legatus thanks the developers in the BlackSand community. Elf asks if his 1/1 Silly Goat has been minted, and confirms it has not.

Magic Machine Thoughts On the Bank Run and Final 3D Wizard Thoughts

Magic Machine Talks Banks

When Legatus steps down, Elf dives right into the bank run and links it to last week's discussion concerning the Illuminatus lore.

"You can't kill a Wizard."

Dotta then opens up about Magic Machine's decision-making process over the weekend for the sake of transparency. The team talks about pulling Magic Machine funds out of USDC to mitigate risks while crypto Twitter speculated about the "easy trade". Elf points to the crypto rally as the banks crashed and questions if the narrative points to a perceived safety in crypto. The team believes that this is an overall bullish and historic moment for crypto as these events evolve. Bear also takes a moment to commend Dotta and Elf for their coolness during these high-stakes discussions. He says it is a rare thing.

Dotta also mentions that this scenario is also bullish for USDC as well, as it faced a large stress test and seemingly pulled through, unlike many other stable coins which have depegged. He then speaks to the bad risk/reward of the "easy" USDC trade and notes losses by those who traded ETH for USDC, and Ethereum went up by around 10% during that time.

Bear speaks up to say he would make the decision to secure Magic Machine even if it meant a small loss, 100 times over. Elf reiterates, "You can't kill a Wizard."

3D Model Permissions Toggle

As the bank run conversation winds down, Elf turns back to the 3D models to mention a suggested toggle for Wizard permissions for use. He says the rights have not seemed to be a problem, but urges concerned cult members to DM. Dotta says, "We'll negotiate it as a community."

Cult Content

The meeting closes out with Cult Content from Tania del Rio's excellent Cult Content Chronicle. Elf notes that this is the 8th week of the Chronicle and thanks Tania for all of her efforts.