Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2021-08-18

Forgotten Runes invites Sir Ian McKellen to join the Cult (August 2021)

Forgotten Runes Tries a "Good Morning" Raid

The Forgotten Runes team and community targeted Ian McKellen; so far no response, but it’s a matter of time. Next, they targeted Gary Vee, and accidentally offered him someone else’s Wizard! Luckily he didn’t reply (although he did follow the FRWC Twitter account!). The FRWC team contacted the Wizard owner and apologized.

Forgotten Runes invites Gary Vee to join the Cult, using a holder-owned wizard (they later apologized to the holder). August 2021.

Elf: We received DMs from people who loved this campaign, while others were not really enthused about it. Some had concerns that it’s clout-chasing and might bring in people who are not really into the Cult. As far as clout-chasing, yes we are pursuing this. So far, FRWC has mostly grown organically. We had early influencer wizards, but also gave to those with an early passion in the project. But to grow further, we need to invest in the network effect. We need to connect with people who have a lot of connections in the space. But at the end of the day, passion is way more important - more than raw numbers, the passion of the members is the most important, and they are what keep new people involved in the cult. So these campaigns have their purpose, but ultimately we do want to preserve the character of the cult.

Dotta: We currently have 2K holders, and we’re happy about that, but we want 5K holders. So there will be outreach connected to that. Elf: But we would never create a special wizard for Ian McKellen. But we could give him an existing wizard to play with.

Book of Lore Updates

Screenshots of the Book of Lore interface are upcoming. Niski, TV, and aranair have all been active coding guild members. The contract work is relatively simple, but the UI needed more work. Just as a reminder, the Book of Lore will be an online compendium where you can contribute any sort of NFT artifact to your Wizard. You are writing the lore around your Wizard. Eventually, the team hopes to have a tome to chronicle the whole history of forgotten runes.

An early example of the Wizard turnaround animations created by Elf. August 2021.

Elf: Regarding continued questions about the meta-narrative - it’s more or less written. But I don’t know that I will release all of it soon. We’ve been talking with some of the writers within the FRWC, and I’ve dispensed the metanarrative to them. But I don’t want to spell it all out in a blog post. We want to drip it out slowly. Dotta: We do want to lay out some guidelines to help a bit. Elf: Right, maybe an infographic to lay out some of the meta-narrative. Maybe in a week or so.

The Great Gallery Debacle

Elf left Wizard Wednesday early to talk to a gallery owner. The gallery is in Venice Beach, at a prime location, right at the center. He shows up, and there are a bunch of stressed out people standing outside. He asked for the gallery owner, and they looked at him like he was an alien. They told him to sit down and look at their website. Then the owner comes over, says that they just got robbed of $5 million of NFTs and tokens. This gallery has their own token, has their own DAO. One of the DAO members went rogue and robbed their digital assets. So they weren’t really in the mood to talk to him.

Elf: We did go inside, it was small, one of the walls was covered in BAYC stuff. Eventually, we just had to walk out since they weren’t in the right space to work with us. But there are thousands of galleries in the LA area, we will keep looking.

Forgotten Runes Early Thoughts on IP Rights

An excerpt from a Magus Tumbaj FRWC promotional video created by ZayLaSoul in August 2021.

Dotta: We are still working with the lawyers. To refresh, the IP rights will allow community members to commercialize their characters. We want bigger players to have to come to the table and talk to us. A little different from Apes. Their rights are derivative rights, but what’s important to us is to give you commercial rights to the character beyond the actual pixel images. Like if you want to create merch of your character and sell it, you can. Regardless of how many Wizards you have, it’s a $1 million cap without any royalties, above that there is some sharing.

Dotta: We might not ask the wizard owner before using them in a show, since we have certain stories we want to tell. Elf: We definitely want you guys to have as many IP rights as possible, but we also need the rights to use the wizards in bigger media expressions. For example, we have a storyboard artist working with us. I pulled two wizards I don’t own and put them in the storyboard. One of the characters might be interpreted as a bad guy, and I hope the wizard-holder doesn’t interpret this in a bad way. There will be some challenges with this. If you don’t agree with how the wizard was depicted, think of how the wizard might have been before and after this scenario. But I’m open to all your input on this topic, if you feel differently, by all means, speak up.

Dotta: If we had published the wizard images and didn’t do anything else, we feel we wouldn’t have provided enough structure. Elf: This is also the point of the Book of Lore. As that gets filled out, when we create new stories, I can reference the Book of Lore and do my best to incorporate that into the comic book or animated show.

O: How do you consider IP in terms of wizard holders building off your mainstream stories? dotta: We for sure want that to happen, lore-wise. In terms of royalties, if there is an animator that puts a short on Youtube and it gets big, you’re fine up to $1 million. The cap is not intended as a discouragement, it’s just to make sure the big players come to the table with us. Elf: And if a wizard is included in a Hollywood production, we want all the wizard-holders to benefit from that. dotta: But remember, your wizard does not constitute a financial investment. Keep in mind that we cannot pay out individual royalties without KYC. However, we could also contribute royalties to a DAO, and then the DAO could decide that something extra goes to the wizard holder. Some of these details are undetermined to date.

A pixel art illustration of Sorcerer Qaid of the Sun, by Ozzz. This is one of Ozzz's earliest FRWC works, circa August 2021.

First Details Emerge on a "Metaverse Game"

Dotta: We are in frequent talks with game developer. A deal is almost signed officially. We have been going over a lot of ideas, including around a land sale. So we want to provide some form of a demo first. You can own private property on the map. You could walk around the FRWC map, have your houses, craft items, have guild houses, etc. We are building this with a partner, and it will take a little bit of time before it’s ready. But they will be able to deliver so much more than Elf and I could on our own. But probably about 3 weeks before it’s officially greenlit.

Elf: I’m interested in giving wizard-holders free land. Other fun things we’re considering - each wizard with spells could have special abilities. For example, wizards with torches could see in a dark cave or other location. So you may have to team up. Socialization, cooperation, is one of the bigger focuses of this metaverse we’re developing behind the scenes. Dotta: We haven’t decided how many plots of land there are. We want to be careful about making the commitment to free land. We do have drops planned for the wizards, but we have to consider our partner’s investment.

Animation Update

EIf: Talks around the animation are proceeding nicely. What you can expect for first animated content - a 60 second trailer. It will be a story-telling vehicle in itself. We are defining what that story is, and figure out the best way to tell it. And even to tell this 60 second story, you need to have a narrative under it. We’ll definitely get it made, as long as we can get the money, which we are on the way to doing.

A pixelart, isometric rendition of Magus Devon of the Quantum Downs. Art by Bread (sweetbread) circa August 2021.

Elf: Unlike the typical Hollywood strategy, we will release the whole process of what it takes to create a 60-second animation. Storyboards, voice actor takes, etc.

Additional FRWC Team Updates

• Dotta now has the @dotta handle on Twitter, and has adjusted his Discord handle as well. So don’t worry, that’s really him! Dotta: I offered 1 ETH to the owner in February, when the owner got back to me, he wasn’t into crypto, so we settled on a USD price and it finally happened after a long time.
• Spritesheets: Elf released some spinning pixelated heads. He has been busy drawing every angle of every Wizard. If you are a wizard holder, you will eventually receive sprite sheets with these angles. Elf is over half-way done with all the heads. Then come the bodies and the familiars. Then Dotta will reassemble them in the exact combinations of the 10K wizards. These will be used for everyone who wants to do derivative artwork and metaverses, both our own and other peoples’.
• On Wizard Whales: Dotta said that some people are interested in a mass OTC purchase of Wizards, and have approached him about such a purchase. Don’t have anything around this yet, but will look into it. Elf: We have had interesting meetings with prominent crypto people. People are interested in the project, and it keeps happening every week that these people contact us.
• Website: Dotta is working on an enhanced FAQ page. Will drop links in Discord for a repo where markdown files can be contributed.

Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Elf and Dotta

Diabolist Ghorhoth tweets about the cuteness of their hummingbird familiar. August 2021.

zaylasoul: There has been some talk about a wizards DAO. Brought up by Red, looking at fractionalizing or having the dotta wizard being the first purchase of a DAO. Also talked about a wizard’s mining club.

dotta: We’ve talked about starting some sort of wizard DAO to possibly control funds. Like for putting wizard stats on chain. You could roll 5 times (pay) and put the funds into a DAO. As far as acquiring the Dotta wizard, I am fine with that. I’m not necessarily the one to do that though, I want it to be in the community. As far as a mining campaign, I’d love to see that happen, but our emphasis right now is more about storytelling, with the Book of Lore, tv show, etc. As far as financialization, we don’t see the wizards for that in particular. That being said, they are ERC-721, so technically you can do things with that, in terms of all the DeFi stuff. But personally, Elf and I will be focusing on developing the stories of the wizards in a crypto-centric way.

zaylasoul: Introduced his wizards. Chose his wizards based on aesthetics, rather than affinity. This aesthetic approach comes from being in the lore guild, but also being in the rabbithole in terms of taking notes of some of his favorite authors. Very interesting take on the lore of FRWC and his wizards - check recording for full info. You can check out Alchemist Lumos’ backstory and adventures you can see it on his Twitter page (@oftheCapital), or listen to the Spaces recording.

Elf: This is awesome, love the Nicholas Flamel reference. Our collection has several cultural references as well, and there is a reason for that which I will reveal in due time.

mindio: I love the idea about the generative music, any updates?

Elf: We are talking to a professional musician who has scored for films. We are playing with the idea of giving a unique theme song to every wizard. That negotiation is still ongoing, figuring out how to pay the guy, it’s pretty expensive. Not really any update, but it’s something we’re interested in.

Cult Content Shout-outs

• Muffinman for some awesome animation, making his wizards dance, in some cases to music created by Dr. Slurp.
• ozzz: Amazing pixelated desert with his wiz Quaid of the Sun.
• Madotsuki has contributed (with help from wife bread) with a version of this wizard in isometric format. [Note: This was done for an art competition at N0xscape]
• Illusionist Colorman - Animation eating an apple, and the world goes physchadelic
• hunnakid: Illustration of Magus Salvadore
• Tad: Another animation
• xxTheviper with an animation
• Diabolist Ghorhoth of the Astral Plane: Named their hummingbird doom wing. No one would imagine a chthulu wizard with a hummingbird, but with the name it works.