Wizard Wednesday Transcription, 2021-08-04

Wizard Wednesdays Ep. 2

Elf: [00:00:00] Okay. Bam. Tweeted it out. Great. Um, okay, let's, uh, let's just go ahead and get started. Um, let me look at my notes. All right. Welcome. Did you dotta.

Dotta: Yep. Did you at mention in the secret tower? I did. Okay. Sorry. Go ahead.

Elf: Yep. Okay. Uh, welcome to the second Wizard Wizard. Wednesdays, uh, Ethereum is pumping one day ahead of the highly anticipated London hard fork.

And here we are, Elf and Dotta channeling in from the quantum downs. Okay, so I just wanna say, I love saying that in the most cheesy radio voice I can muster. Um, what I wanna do in the future is get some really dorky sound effects to go along with that. Perfect. Okay. Um, and so the first thing I want to do is give some cult member shout outs.

I've seen a lot of you guys making some beautiful [00:01:00] wizard artwork and so I want to give some credit, uh, first to maggot of the Mount. Uh, he put my, uh, forgotten rudins rant to music and so I've been sharing that. That's a lot of fun. If you guys haven't heard it, give it a listen. Um, super cool. Uh, I also wanna give a shout out to, uh, I believe he goes by the name of Wise Sam, the Viper on Twitter, and he has been doing some amazing animations.

Um, so I'm gonna start sharing more of those. Keep it up. My favorite. Yeah, he.

Dotta: He does commissions too, so, uh, yeah, I know. He's one of one of a few members that do commissions. So we'll get a list up on the website too, of, of, of folks if you want to give animation.

Elf: Love it. Yeah. The last one he did was of a wizard eating a green mushroom and vomiting a rainbow.

It's gorgeous. Uh, so yeah, it is on our Forgotten Room's Twitter account. Check that out. [00:02:00] Um, another highlight, which I'm sure you all saw was En Chanter, Orbis of the Road, did a little collab with a Twitter user named John Bivins Is amazing, amazing freaking, I love it so much. Blowing. Um, you know, what I love about it is, number one, his wizard is super cool.

It's one of the, the Orbis wizards, it's just got a big eyeball as a head. But what was really cool in John Bivins drawing was the, the, the snail familiar. Um, yeah, in the background, it, it just like gave a whole new significance to like what it means to have a snail as a familiar, it's so cool. Um, I really hope to see more of John Bevin's work.

Um, maybe will even hire him to do something.

Dotta: Is that Alpha? Yeah. Alpha drop.

Elf: Yeah. So good. Um, elsewhere, uh, discord member y m just DMed me with [00:03:00] this beautiful, uh, pixel forest scene that he built for his wizard. I'm gonna share that on Twitter very soon.

Dotta: Is that a Magus Ronald of the sun? Yes, it is. Oh, so good.

I couldn't believe it. I was like, yeah, this background

Elf: is so good. It's incredible. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, yeah. Uh, and of course our barred Margaret has been writing more poems for more wizards. Uh, those are always great. And I believe she is still taking commissions. And then other art and animations I've seen randomly are by Twitter users.

Tad Major Julian Let Low Zach Jamo and Alchemist lumos of the capital. I want to give you all the big thanks for the work you've done. Yeah. And if I've missed anybody, um, please just tag at forgotten rooms and we will certainly share it. Um,

Dotta: yeah, I've had Tad in the dms and one of the things TA Tad asked is he was like, [00:04:00] oh, can I, you know, my friend, I made a wizard for him.

Can I mint that wizard GIF as an N F T? And the answer is yes. Yeah, please. You know, if you make a derivative work of the pixel art, um, and you wanna mint that, that GIF as an N F T and you sort of, you have permission from the wizard holder. Of course you certainly can. Um, and you asked, oh, but I know you're doing the book of lore.

Is there any special. Uh, is there any special format I need to follow to get it to work in the book of lore? And the answer is no. Um, as long as it's an n f t minted in sort of any sort of, kind of like regular way, like if you use, you know, uh, opens, see, or r or any of these, uh, wearable you can use, um, uh, you'll be able to fit it in the book of lore.

Elf: Yep. Yep. Um, okay. And, uh, speaking of artwork, um, here in the Quantum Downs, Dota and I are super busy with all sorts of bonus content. Uh, I myself have nearly finished drawing all the angles of [00:05:00] the heads. And so just to recap what that is, um, currently wizard holders have a three quarter view of a head on their wizard, three quarter view of the entire body really.

Um, and so I am in the process of drawing the side view and the front view and the back view. And you will all, at some point in the near future, get a full turnaround of your wizard character in pixel art. Of course. And why are we doing this? Number one, it's just cool. Number two, um, the grand plan is that you will be able to use your wizard in Metaverses.

Um, we are, we have every intention to make our own metaverse, but also we want you to bring your wizards in other metaverses from other

Dotta: creators. And so these turnarounds are the very first step

Elf: into allowing you to walk in 360 degree directions.

Dotta: Um, it's gonna be great. I, I'm really looking forward to it.

I like wanna walk around with, uh, my wizards and I'm [00:06:00] super looking forward to it when we can share some

Elf: of these artworks. Yes. So much fun. And yeah. And I'll, and I'll be, I'll be sharing work soon. Um, the, uh, progress of that, um,

Dotta: you won't have to wait until it's fully

Elf: finished to see the progress. We'll, we'll slowly share progress as it, as it comes along.

Dotta: Uh, can I talk about the book of,

Elf: uh, Let there, there, I'll have a good segue for that here in a second. Okay, great. Yep. Yep. Uh, so, but yeah, in fact, let me just, hold on. Let me check

Dotta: my, um,

Elf: okay. Yeah, let me just touch on forgotten souls really quick and then we'll segue to the book of Lore. Um, so we are making progress on that as well.

Um, we have fully designed out the numerology involved. We have designed out the risk reward system. Um, now I know that many of you are excited to burn your wizards and you should be. However, I will warn you one should not be too eager to [00:07:00] deal out death and judgment for even the wise cannot see all ins.

Uh, so keep that in mind when the great burning happens. Uh, now as far as lore and mear meta-narrative, I will. Let Dota speak here in just a second, but I just wanna say, um, a lot of you have been DMing me and asking, uh, about lore and meta narrative for the Forgotten Ruins world. Um, I am making a ton of progress on filling it all out, but one thing I wanna say is, I will not be putting this out in some grand blog post or some post on our website.

Um, I have no intention of just publishing a Silver Meridian type of compendium that covers all of these details. And why am I saying that? Uh, several reasons. One, being we are neck deep in discussions with other partners [00:08:00] in releasing forgotten ruins, animated shorts, comics, and a game. Um, all of these different mediums have strengths and weaknesses in how they deliver lore and meta-narrative.

Okay? Okay. And so, clearly forgotten Ruins has never been about just delivering the information in a boring, straightforward way. Um, we want to leverage the strengths of all of these mediums in telling it in the most engaging and mysterious, and, uh, Mysterious way that has, uh, the most entertainment value.

Um, but I can tell you this for sure. Um, all of the story is already in the collection, okay? When we do it animated short or something, we will not be just creating a, creating new wizards out of whole cloth. We will always respect the collection 100%. And so that [00:09:00] means you will always see a wizard from the collection.

In these other, other mediums, you will see yourself represented. Um, and so if everything goes to plan, the kinds of questions that you will see answered are like, why is it that the skeletons in the collection are the only ones with technology? Why are there six hat colors? Why does the word quantum keep showing up?

Who is the key master? Uh, is the goat? My avatar actually evil or is he just a scapegoat? These and many other questions will be answered in due time in these other media expressions. Now, that said, I have also tried to, um, maintain this idea of decentralized law building. And, um, so many of you are writing stories and doing art about your wizards, and it has been so inspiring and so amazing thus far.

You've only been able to tweet it on [00:10:00] Twitter or put it in discord. The book of lore, which I'm gonna let Dota talk about, is a way for us to collect all of these things in a more, in official way, um, so that they can bleed into all of these other media expressions. And I believe Doda is making tons of progress on that book of lore.

So take it away, Doda.

Dotta: Yeah, so I mean, I, I can talk about what the book of law is. Um, you know, I see a lot of Wizard profile pics in this chat, so I wonder if, um, ho hopefully folks maybe know most of the details. But the idea is that, uh, there will be a section of our website where you can go and navigate, uh, the book of lore, which will allow you to attach artifact, NFTs to a particular wizard.

Um, and to be able to kind of tell the story. And we've got a set of permissions, um, where the owner of the Wizards will be able to have, uh, control over being able to add new bits of lore. Um, and then there's even a mechanism by [00:11:00] which, uh, you can, it doesn't necessarily have to be linear. You might be able to do some, a bit of ordering to that lore within the story.

So, uh, yeah, we've been building that out. We deployed. Um, the alpha version of the contract to Rinka Bee this morning. Um, and then we are writing out the, uh, like design documents for, um, the ui, uh, right now. So, um, I'll probably be getting some help from, uh, Niki who's in our chat, who might help with some of the development there.

But I'm writing out specific documentation. If you, for example, are a React developer, uh, JavaScript dev and you want to help out with some of the UI there, um, you can reach out to me and we'll be working on that this week. We've just about got the like front end design docs done that. I'm so excited to get this out.

Um, I think there's like, uh, you know, there are gonna be many. Points in a wizard's life that will be documented, um, in this book of lore. [00:12:00] You know, the Great Burning, for example. We wanna do the book of lore before, um, because it should be built into kind of that process that that event is written into the history of the wizards and, um, yep.

So yeah. So we're working on this and that's

Elf: where we are. Yep, yep. The book of Laura is probably the, one of the most exciting things about this project. It's kind of the whole point of this project and, you know, I I, I, we've had a lot of users express concern about like, well, I'm not really a writer, or I'm not really an artist.

I don't, I don't know how to write. That is totally fine. Number one, you do not have to write, you do not have to make art. Um, we have, if we've done our jobs right, we have hopefully empowered hundreds of other creators to do that, to lift up the entire collection. Um, but I would also say, Even if you don't consider yourself a writer or an artist, um, you might surprise yourself.

Take a stab at it, at the [00:13:00] book Allure. I mean, number one, you're gonna be anonymous, so who cares if it, if you think it's dumb, nobody's gonna know it's you. And number two, again, you're, you're gonna surprise yourself. Like even if you write something really dumb and funny, that's perfect. That's who your wizard is.

Um, so yeah, I would just encourage you to take a stab at it

Dotta: and Yeah, exactly. Even if you're not an artist or, uh, a poet or a musician or any of these things, um, there are still ways in which you can kind of like replicate your wizard in a particular way. So, um, I have, um, you know, I. Like my kids, for example, even have started building out like little sculptures or paintings of their wizards.

And, um, there's, there's, you know, or maybe you po paint it on a mural or, or maybe you don't do any of that. And we still will help either fund community grants [00:14:00] or you'll just appear in a show regardless. Um, and so there's a lot of ways for these other bits to be created. Yep,

Elf: yep. Um, and then just two more things and then we'll go to the ama.

Um, we also have some interesting, um, merch projects going behind the scenes. Um, nothing too specific right now to, uh, tell you about, but we just, we have a lot of options on the table, some very basic ones, and then some very involved elaborate ones. Um, so hopefully I can tell you more about that next week.

And then one other thing, we've got bubbling, go ahead. Briefs. Oh, do you wanna say something about that Doto.

Dotta: I just said we're, we'll make some goat head briefs from like MeUndies.

Elf: Yes. Hot pink goat head briefs. That's what I want. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah. And then, um, and then in person gatherings, um, hopefully this is the sort of thing where I would actually wear my hot pink briefs and nothing more.[00:15:00]

Um, oh boy. Okay. And so, no, we, uh, we're actually talking to a gallery in Venice Beach in Los Angeles about potentially doing a little, uh, wizard art show. So for anyone who lives in Los Angeles, uh, hopefully you can attend that. And if you don't live in la, um, if this one goes well, then hopefully, we'll, we will be coming to your city thereafter.

Um,

Dotta: yeah, I, I'd like to go out if it's there. And, you know, I think Coronavirus is maybe a big question mark as the delta variant surges. It's like, what can we do? Sure. But I'm super excited about the meeting. Other wizards in person. We, we sent out a survey. Um, uh, last week or the week before and, um, asking folks where they live.

We'll, we'll bump that again. Um, but if you haven't filled that out, we'd love to know like what the nearest metro area is to you, cuz that affects like where we do Yeah. Art gallery, night game night, beers, d and d murals, all these things. Like, if we know where you are, then we [00:16:00] can do a better job about organizing real world events.

Yep.

Elf: Yep. And uh, you might have to wear hot pink underwear to get it. That's all I'm saying. Ah, that'd be amazing. Okay. Um, and I, okay, so I think that's all the updates I have. Uh, Let's turn it over to the ama. Um, if you'd like to come up and speak. Yeah.

Dotta: Just raise your hand. Well, I have one thing. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to Matsui and Brad.

Um, if you haven't checked it out, they have a new project. I don't think this is private, so, you know, mat Suzuki tell me if I need to be quiet, but, uh, they're working on a new project, it's called ame. And I think it's really interesting, um, I'm not maybe butchering the idea, but it's somewhat like, um, this idea around like paper dolls where you're able to have, um, when you mint, you actually get a set of, uh, you get a set of, uh, attributes and then you can trade those attributes until you fuse and finalize, uh, your N F T.

And so [00:17:00] I'm pretty excited about it. I've been like chatting with them in the dms and I, I think it's like, Really creative and really well done. And of course, you know, Brett is the artist and she's just magical and everything she touches. So if you haven't checked it out, I think they posted the link to the Slack somewhere in Wizard Channel, but it's called, uh, ame.

And yeah, I don't mind, uh, Zuki or Brett, if you wanna post that in the chat. I think anyone who's a wizard should for sure

Elf: check it out. Yep, yep. It's gonna be an awesome, oh, there's, I just said it's gonna be an awesome project.

Dotta: Um, there's one other thing on that regard before we get to the ama, which is around, um, I've been talking to, um, pixel Boy who's in charge of the Pixel glyphs project.

He's working on something that is also really cool where, I don't know if you're familiar with this idea of Gravita, um, soar is like, you know, like old from WordPress days, right? You attach a. Um, uh, uh, like an avatar to your email address. And then any website that [00:18:00] supports avatar, which is like pretty much all of 'em would fe would pull from the, um, it would pull from the, uh, avatar database and show your image.

So what Pixel Gloves is doing is they're using e n s names. So e n s is like the Ethereum name service. You know, people can have like whatever, Dota dot Ether or whatever your handle is. That's why you can see an Ether Scan, for example. Uh, you know, some people when they buy NFTs, they, you can see their name.

Um, and what he's building is a system, uh, that uses, well, I actually have to ch double check the, the specific technology. I don't know if he's using, um, e n s specifically or if it's e n s. Like, I'd have to double check. It's not finished yet. But basically Wizards is gonna be one of those sort of like whitelisted early, um, N F T projects that you can use as your, uh, decentralized, uh, avatar.

Profile. So you, this is really cool to imagine like, just like how ethers scan, for example, supports your handle that attaches a name to your Ethereum address. You could also [00:19:00] attach a profile picture of which one could be Wizard uh, to that. So yeah, keep an eye Pixel Cliffs is a cool project and um, wizards is gonna be kind of a early supporter there.

Yep.

Elf: Uh, maggots, did you, uh, have a question?

Dotta: Oh, oh, sorry. Hi. Um, yeah, uh, I just wanted to say hi, guys. Uh, this is Zla Soul from Discord. Oh. I'm just, I'm just operating on JI'S profile and then I'm recording from Lumo, so I, I'm in charge of those two wizards at the moment. Cool. Um, cool. Let me see. Yeah. Oh, I wanted to do maybe a little bit of like getting to know the devs a little bit.

So I wanted to start with Doda. Um, I wanted to know what's the deal with this, this Muppet character. I mean, I'm a big like Jim Henson fan. I was just curious about that.[00:20:00]

I love. The Muppets so much, but there's something deeper about it that I love that it represents. Um, so I mean part of it is just like whatever my age, like I'm a millennial and grew up watching the Muppets and I just always have loved it. Um, one of the things that I'll do in my spare time is like I actually create like, uh, like Jim Henson style, like puppets, um, out of like foam and of like taking courses and I dunno, I think they're decent actually.

Um, I'm not really a puppeteer so much in that. Like, I sometimes I feel like adult men who do puppets kind of seems like mentally unstable, but I just like to build them. But I think the deeper, the deeper like love there is this idea that you kind of take these materials that are just nothing, right?

You're like a stack of foam, you pick up a hobby lobby or like some felt or something and you sit and you work it and then you create life out of it. Um, one of [00:21:00] my favorite, for example, hobbies, Um, to do is like needle felting. I swear. Like if I get rich on NFTs, my hobbies are gonna be like a 70 year old grandmother.

But like, so like needle felting you, you take, you literally just take like fluff, right? It's these little fluff balls of like, um, like, uh, wool. Um, you just get like these little balls of wool and you get a needle and you just push that wool in the needle. And, um, and what hap and over time this barbed needle, um, causes all the fibers of the wool to tangle with one another.

If you just look Google on Pinterest, like needle felting animals or something? No, I, I watched them. Would you see is like, sorry. I watched a, um, a documentary, it was like the Elmo documentary where the puppeteer really went into like, detail about like the felt and everything. So I'm kind of following along.

It's really interesting. Yeah, even for the Muppets too, um, they basically used this type of felt that's called, um, [00:22:00] Oh, I forget the, I forget the type of it, but basically when you look at sort of the synthetic fibers that you might find at a craft store versus the fiber fibers on a Muppet, you can tell there's a little bit more like sparkle, a little bit more depth to it.

And there's really only one manufacturer remaining that do this sort of felt. Um, now this kind of pel that, and they're ba located in Pennsylvania. There's only one factory left in the world that can create that like m Muppet style felt. And so it, it's just this really special fabric, like Kermit's fabric is so specific.

Anyway, with needle felting, what you basically are doing is you're just taking literally like fur that you got from a sheep and you stab it with a needle and you kind of like shape it and you can create like life and characters and like, you can cr just like from nothing. Like you could just sit from like $5 of materials and now you've created this character that you can like walk around and play with and as a toy.

And so I think that like kind of process of creating life from. Like almost nothing, like a bit of fluff that turns into life is sort of the magic of wizardry. Of, of artistry. And, [00:23:00] um, I think like Jim Henson of course did such a good job on that, and I've always like, loved, um, you know, the Moham Naski for example.

And so, no, no, I, I think, I think it's something about like information coming through, like the Muppets and things like this, that it bypasses our, like, logistics side of thinking and we're better able to absorb it because it's coming from such a playful place. So I really like, yeah, I resonate with that.

Elf: Yeah. Duda, I got, I gotta second your, um, passion for needle felting. I think needle felting projects are often, I've awesome. I've never made any myself, but I, I get it. It's super cool.

Dotta: I've got a box of Woo. So when you come over next, you can

Elf: build something. You, you know what old lady craft I also think is super awesome and underrated.

Um, CRO, I think it's called crocheting. Where you like Yeah, like just sew, like a design on like a white piece of fabric. Is is that called, is that [00:24:00] crocheting?

Dotta: Crocheting is when you just have the yarn and you, um, oh, like you use the, the sticks. Okay. To, to st to like make like a scarf. Yes. Maybe what you're talking about is like stitch a

Elf: crus stitch.

Yes. Cross stitch. That's what I meant. Yes. Yes. In fact, let me just,

Dotta: oh, I have one more question and then maybe I can pass it over to the next person. Sure. Sorry, we're talking about cross sticks now. Okay.

Elf: Sorry. No more. Oh, I was just, I'm not just

Dotta: joking.

Elf: I'm totally joking. Go ahead. Hold on. I just wanna say one thing.

I just wanna say one thing. If anybody out there can cross stitch my wizard, I will buy that from you. That's all I wanna say.

Dotta: Okay. Oh, there's non fungible rugs and she does like physical rug versions of NFTs and I've been talking to her since before we launched, and I love, I really want, okay. Also was that ze soul that I interrupted.

I was like completely joking. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, yeah.

Elf: Please, please. No, go ahead.

Dotta: Um, now this question was for El um, I was wondering where you got the name EL from [00:25:00] and what's the deal with the Tiger girl on

Elf: your profile? Um, elf is an anagram of my real name and, uh, tiger Girl. Yeah. So that was, that was the, um, the artwork I was making prior to Wizards.

Um, I was, uh, I mean a lot of my, my work before wizards just deals with like animals and people's relationship to animals. Um, Yeah,

Dotta: so, so you should know that Elf in real life is, um, Like a huge animal lover. Um, you know, I think for years his profile picture was him holding like a baby faw and like, where do you get a faw?

Like, we have Fs in our neighborhood and they won't give me, let me get anywhere near it. But he sort of has that kind of, um, like care and gentleness and I don't know, maybe it was someone's pet fn, but they still wouldn't surprise me if you, you were just like, no, that was a wild f that I just [00:26:00] found. And like, if you flip through his Facebook, which I won't tell you cuz he is an A whatever, but elf has pictures of him with like lizards and like fur babies and like, you know, baths and they're like, so animals appear in his art cuz like animals are a part of his life.

And,

Elf: um, yeah, I, uh, I lived in Costa Rica at one point and all I did all day, every day was hike around in the jungle trying to catch poisonous and deadly animals.

Dotta: Uh, Yeah. Like real life Pokemon. Yeah.

Elf: Um, yeah. Thank you.

Dotta: Yeah. Um, oh, oh,

Elf: oh,

Dotta: oh. What's up buddy? Hey, everybody. How you doing? Hey, uh, I'm good. I don't think I've ever heard your voice before.

Hello. I know it's,

I hope it's not disappointing you. Um, no. Yeah, you can call me. O o works, I think the best. Okay. Tea. Easy. Uh, okay, great. [00:27:00] Yeah. Trying to work out whatever. I'm

Elf: done. I just want, since, since

Dotta: we've got you, since we've got you on here, I just want to give like a public thank you to all of your help moderating the channel.

I feel like you've done just such a good job over the last few, like, whatever it's been month and, um, yeah. Thank like, uh,

Elf: just so glad you talked. Yeah. You were with us from the very beginning, so, Very beginning. Yeah.

Dotta: Thank you. No, yeah. Um, I appreciate you guys too. I think, uh, this project's really cool. I like the vibe you're kind of delivering through the art and also, um, in what you're kind of doing in terms of, you know, maintaining this hair of mystery in their own.

The project at the same time I think is actually quite powerful and creates a bit of space for, um, the community to kind of fill in the gaps, which is really nice. Thank you. Um, I was gonna ask a question about the, the Sprite sheets. So, um, you might have read it in the sea guitar today, but I was wondering, um, I [00:28:00] know we're getting the turnarounds first, but then after that, so I imagine this is some way down the line.

Um, would the spreadsheets be kind of, uh, like sort of strife moving left and right or are you looking to get us moving in different ways too? Have you thought that far ahead

Elf: yet? Yes, definitely. Yeah, you'll be able to walk in all directions. Um, so yeah, let, let me just say a few things about that. So number one, the reason that this, uh, spreadsheet project is not going as fast as I would like it to is that I've got a day job.

However, I have just given my, uh, notice to my employers that I am going to exit and work on forgotten rooms full-time. Um, super exciting. Yeah. I'm Congratulations. So, I'm so excited about it. Yeah. So once I finally exit, uh, forgotten rooms, we'll have rocket fuel behind it. Um, and hopefully a lot more content will be, be coming out more regularly now towards the, uh, spreadsheets.

Yes. Um, your wizard will be able to walk [00:29:00] in all directions. Um, one thing we learned, so we actually, hi, hired a pixel artist a few weeks ago to just start doing walk cycles and though she was very talented, um, I wasn't a hundred percent happy with the work she turned in. And the reason being is because sh like she came in totally fresh and new to these wizards.

Like she has not like digested and internalized them like I have. I've been working on them for months prior to our launch. And so what I've realized is what I need to do is I need to draw these turnarounds first, and then once I have those, I can hand them off to other artists we hire to put them in other poses, walking, dying, fighting, whatever kind of pose we need.

Um, but the first step is doing a full turnaround of these wizards. So that's, that's why we're doing it in this way.

Dotta: Great. That makes a lot of sense to me. Um, yep. You've, yeah. [00:30:00] So all the fundamentals and then the rest kind of, you can build off of that. Exactly. Um, and I was wondering, so I, I kind of think long term about these things that I can't, so I'm thinking now, Um, far, far ahead in terms of like, imagine now there's like multiple metaverses in which, um, and everybody's now kind of got a pseudonym, N F t, that that is theirs or maybe they have a fee on rotation.

Yep. I'm imagining that, um, given we've got these spreadsheets they can use across multiple metaverses will be something of a first mover, but I don't think that, um, I'm not sure that, uh, it's well known what's going on, like with the forgotten ruined and the kind of the, the distance in the future that you are thinking, because obviously you think about these things in some depth.

We've heard you speak before El about, um, kind of turning the Hollywood model on its head [00:31:00] and from the. Threads that data posts as well, we can see that, you know, there's, there's more than what's appears on the surface and the surface looks good anyway. Yes. So I was wondering how you were thinking in terms of, um, longer term, like getting people to understand what's, what is happening at forgotten rooms?

Cuz we're moving in so many different directions and I feel like that can be a bit of overwhelming or it could be a bit dense to try and get into if you're just looking at the wizards, what's happening. Yep. We talk like every day about how the shortcomings of the website and how we need to make the website better.

Um, I think that like, yeah, we wanted for, at the very least, we wanna build out more documentation on the website that talks about the mission, the projects we have in progress. What it means to own a wizard, what the technicalities are behind it, what it means to be a wizard, how to get help in the [00:32:00] community.

It's just like every day we're talking about these ideas and we still haven't put them on paper for, you know, you have to be a super fan to kind of show up or like, there's only what there, you know, there's maybe 30 people here, there's a lot of other people outside. We wanna be able,

Eric,

Elf: you're breaking really badly.

You, you might need to reconnect. Um, But if I, yeah, I'll just try to pick up on what he was saying, if he reconnects, um, yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. O uh, we need to be way better about, um, publishing more updates and, and telling a non wizard what Forgotten Rooms is all about. And we will certainly do that.

Um, we've, yeah, we've just got like a million pieces floating around in the air right now, [00:33:00] and we need to, um, organize it better and put it more, put it all on our website. Um, so you're absolutely right and we're, we're working on it.

Dotta: I, I, I wanna say like, um, you know, part of the, part of the fun of this has been kind of working out for myself as well anyway, so I kind of, um, appreciate that.

You don't want to tell people exactly what it means to be a wizard. Mm-hmm. And there's that kind of like, free space to kind of make it what you want it to be. But I think there's, um, there's certainly space for. Um, you know, kind of setting up a framework or, um, kind of like scaffolding even if, even if it doesn't tell 'em this is what you need to fill the scaffolding with, this is what furniture you need in your, your apartment.

Just tell them like, this is the space that you could have and this is what the space will be used for. Like Yeah. In the future, like we're all the wizards are gonna be doing this, that and the other. [00:34:00] Everybody will be in a metaverse, will be go seeing the people's art blocks in like the metaverse galleries.

Yeah. There'll be large events and things like, I can imagine that happening. I don't think that, um, it'll be the whole world. It won't be like, I don't, I don't, not imagining a ready player once an hour, but I imagine it becomes a larger and large space that more and more people will get involved in.

Elf: You're you're absolutely right. So like I, yeah, I think like there's, there's two types of information. The secretive, uh, bucket of information and then the information we should be totally more, um, open with in as far as like publishing it on our website. I think like, yeah, we should be, we should do blog posts about, we're doing a walk cycle and we're making this book of lore and we've got the, the, um, the, uh, forgotten souls great burning coming up, and we've got, um, murals and, and potential gallery openings that all that stuff should be clearly available on the website.

Um, but as far as like [00:35:00] lore and uh, backs stories, that's the sort of thing that I want to deliver in a more interesting way and not just spell it out in a superficial face value way.

Dotta: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. But yeah, we need to get better at, yeah, but we need to get better at like, you know, we talked about, for example, the roadmap. If you, you know, when I look at, for example, the roadmap that we have, It does, it's woefully incomplete relative to the amount of like irons we have in the fire.

Yep.

Elf: Yep. And we'll update that for sure. In fact, speaking of the roadmap, uh, the next thing on it is a, um, granting commercial rights, uh, Doda, do you wanna talk about that?

Dotta: Yeah, I wish I had more progress than yesterday, other than just, um, but it, what, sorry? When I say yesterday, I mean last week. So one of the things that we have kind of [00:36:00] adjusted in even talking to our lawyer, um, I think that what we're gonna do is previously we'd said something like, oh, we're gonna copy Larva Labs and do like a hundred thousand dollars like commercial rights cap or something.

Part of the problem that I think with that is the cap is relatively low, and then two, they don't really provide a good upgrade path. Um, so I wanna kind of address that because I feel that if you don't provide a good way for people to know that, like, if I'm gonna be successful, I wanna make sure that there, that I don't get into trouble if I'm like, too successful, right?

Is you, you wanna be able to make a big bet if you're gonna try to go for commercial rights with your wizards. Um, so we still haven't finalized anything, but let me just talk about this idea and maybe we can get some feedback from folks on if they like it, dislike it. But I think what we're basically thinking is, um, to do that you have like commercial [00:37:00] rights to all the wizards that you hold up to a million dollar cap.

And then after that million dollar cap, there's royalties that come back to us, um, half of which go to, uh, Half of which go to like the creators and half of which go to the community. And so let's say for example, that number is 30 or 20% of gross. I, we haven't pinned on the exact number. We need to figure out what's reasonable.

But you could imagine this case that says, all right, look, you've got like 10 wizards, or you know, you've got 50 wizards and 52 wizards, and you wanna make the wizard's deck of cards. And you wanna do a commercial project with it, like go for it. Great. You know, if you make like $900,000, you can keep all that money.

Um, but then if you sort of make over this million dollar cap, then what's over the million dollars is there's, uh, like say, let's say 20% of gross you need, need to give back to the wizards community, which goes like half to us, half to a, a Dow essentially. [00:38:00] Um, and then I think that's not saying that that's the royalty structure for everything, but that's providing like a blanket, right?

That's the blanket, right? And if you feel like, oh, 20% is too much, um, then you can come to us and we can kind of negotiate like a better rate. Like maybe someone's saying like, oh, I'm doing these like derivative works. Like, you know, wizards are existing in like pop wonders and my pop wonders do like millions of dollars.

And like we would love that because now we're a cultural artifact and so maybe we're like, oh, pop wonder. You're cool. Like you're doing everything in good faith and like it's derivative work. Like you don't have to pass royalties cuz it's a new thing and it's within fair use or something. But, so I think that's the direction that we're thinking is like, I basically want it to be so generous that anybody who wants to do a commercial work with their wizards as like an individual community member.

Um, that they, that they can do that and then like, make money on that. But then I also wanna make sure that we don't get, like, I don't know, some studio obviously sees how great wizards are and they buy up a whole [00:39:00] cast of wizards and then they make a show or like a AAA video game. And with the commercial rights of those wizards, they don't necessarily give anything back to us or the community.

Um, like I basically just want like some sort of, some sort of way to bring massive players to a negotiating table, but while still letting everyone who kind of owns an individual wizard feel like they have like, ownership of their character and ownership to do what they want, to make derivative works that they want.

Like if you wanna make a stuffed animal of your wizard, you should be able to do that. But more than that, you should own like the character, not just the pixels in the N F T. And so I was just trying to like balance those, like, uh, those two concerns. Could I ask a question on that? Um, with the people that you've already spoke to so far, so people who might be interested in something like a, uh, a TV show for example, um, have you found that they are more, um, they'd be more willing to make a show [00:40:00] with say, characters that Forgottens Room Wizards called actually Owens versus the rest of the Wizards collection?

Is that something that, um, they've thought about? Like, that's just a cynical part of me thinking that it might be easier for them to just deal with the wizards that you own rather than the wizards that are spread throughout the collection. The, there it's not a big problem because like at the moment on paper, Like, we haven't actually granted like a legal structure of rights to anyone.

Um, like if for someone to, for example, do a commercial, right? We've told people like, yeah, go ahead. Like, we're going to hash this out. But that's part of the reason why like, it's a responsibility for us as the creators to publish like an actual legal document with our lawyers so that like someone who wants to do a real business based on this IP feels that they kind of have their bases covered.

So when we've gone to studios to talk about doing a show, they're not even thinking [00:41:00] that far along because it's so opposite of the way that they do ip. Like they wouldn't even think twice that we wouldn't own the IP or that we would give royalties to someone else because it's just not how Hollywood works like at all.

If that makes sense. Like they're not thinking like, oh, do you have to ask permission from the N F T owners? Because they don't, they think like, we own completely all of the IP for anything we touch in most cases. Does that make sense? Yeah, I understand. So you are, it's as if you are. Um, it's as if Got ruins was a cult Gold distribute anyway, and they're dealing with Red Got Ruins was a cult rather than the individual owners of every N ffc.

Exactly. And we wanna keep the ability to like to, to, to do, to negotiate on your behalf because we can negotiate a better deal than any individual wizard and like we can protect the community as a whole. Yeah.

Elf: It, it, it, it would also just be way faster if we could just negotiate on the behalf of the entire collection instead of dealing with everyone individually, we can get a better [00:42:00] deal.

Right. And I assure you, like our whole point is to like return as much value back to you. If you see your wizard on screen, I want you to benefit from that. Um, right. So Yeah, I mean, and, and, and, and just like, again, if it wasn't clear, like every person we've talked to about this, I would say. Most all of them are super interested in that idea.

There was one guy who was like, who gave like the standard, I don't understand crypto, I think it's a scam. I don't get it at all. Um, sure. But like even he wasn't necessarily against the idea of returning royalties. He just basically didn't under crypto. Um, so yeah, yeah,

Dotta: yeah. He wasn't even into like Bitcoin overall. So there, there was a lot of steps there. Yeah. To get him into N F T

Elf: royalties. Yeah. But like, you know, just some [00:43:00] inside baseball, you know, on the other end of that, one person was like, he was like, I love this project. Super interested. He's like, for the past few months I've had so many people come to me with.

Uh, wanting to do an N F T project, but then they also have no idea what NFTs are. And so like this is happening all over Hollywood. Like all Hollywood is seeing is dollar signs and they're still thinking about it in a centralized way. And so this particular person, he was like, you are the first people who've come along who actually know what the hell you're talking about, who actually have a real N F T project.

And therefore, that's one reason I'm interested in working

Dotta: with you. Yeah. Well, and to, to clarify that, it wasn't even just that we knew what we were talking about. He was like, I'm meeting about N F T projects every single day, and we tell most of them, no, but this is the one that might actually work.

Because it wasn't just that we know what we're talking about, but it was just like, The idea of [00:44:00] wizards and the characters Oh yeah. In the world. And just like everything all kind of fit together in a way that could actually Yeah. And

Elf: that, that is the first and foremost Yeah. Selling point is they've gotta like the art, the content, the characters.

That's the most important thing. Yeah. The nft angle was just icing on the top. Yep.

Um, okay. Is anyone else trying to request to speak? Um, we have maybe 10 ish more minutes to go. Um,

everybody's too shy to come up.

Dotta: Yeah. I'm Matsui. Thanks for sharing that artwork. Oh yeah. There's also a link in the, in the pin tweets to Alva May. Should totally check it out. Yeah. Thanks for giving us a, a shout out there. I was in a middle of a work meeting, so I couldn't quite come up and talk until it just finished the first of many.[00:45:00]

Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, I think, uh, there's been obviously I, I pinned, uh, the Orbis artwork. That was really great. If any of you haven't seen that, that was amazing. Or, um, he, uh, shark got somebody, he, um, commissioned a professional comic book artist to, to do an illustration of his Orbis character and just looks absolutely phenomenal.

It's just got oozing with that, um, nineties comic book art style. It's very greedy and it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's really great. Definitely

Elf: check it out. Yep. So good.

Dotta: Mm-hmm. And then if you guys haven't seen the, the 3D models either for the, the Wizards, um, we had, uh, Trevor Jones that did that, that contest for the, for three Special Wizards.

Um, he did really great job of doing those models.

Elf: Yeah, I, I've gotta say, and I, I tweeted this hands down stone cold fact. Our community has the best art. It's just like the variety. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I just love it. You guys are all just [00:46:00] killing it. I love it. Um, okay. Tom and Raw dog just came up. What? What's up guys?

Dotta: What's up everybody? What's up? Hello. Okay, man. How you guys doing? No. Yeah, I just came up cause I didn't know if, uh, if Matsui was gonna be able to speak or not. When you mentioned Avenue. So I had missed the first part of the call and, uh, nothing. Good. Cool. I am, uh, loving everything that's going on and what you guys are talking about.

It's been a. Great. It's been great to be part of it from the beginning. Yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to comment earlier too about the whole, uh, commercial rights thing. Cause um, I think, uh, I understand exactly what you guys are going for. You want us to like, you know, own our characters and just, you know, if, like you, it's mostly to try what you're trying to do for the, the commercial rights thing is just to try to punish kind of any big dog who wants to try to come in and try to take advantage of the structure that we [00:47:00] have.

But you don't want any of the community members particularly to be damaged by it. Cause, you know, you want kind of people inside of the community who actually support it and actually are part of it to be able to use their characters as freely as possible within, within, within reason. Um, I think like, part of that is, um, for, for my, uh, project, um, I am planning, actually having for, for, um, my, my particular a is like a staff 11 kind of, I do wanna have major Devin as my, as my avatar made in, um, bread's pickle style, and um, Of course.

Yeah, definitely. So I understand that's right from the realm of what you guys want us to be able to do about characters. Like if I own Doug and, you know, I should be able to, to use her character and the project's. Not like, you know, something like, like, just like that. Especially with just for more of a personal representation of myself.

Exactly. That's like exactly what we want to make sure. Yep, absolutely. So we don't develop some sort of like limited rights that prevent that. Mm-hmm. And I think that, um, I [00:48:00] think that, and even on the bigger players, it's not even so much the, I I wouldn't necessarily use the word punish so much as just like bring them to the negotiating table to make sure like community integrity is kept and then like, if you're making a lot of money on our community, some of that money should come back.

Right. Yeah, I definitely see what you guys mean. That's, that's, that's perfect. Have there been any, uh, hurdles you guys have come across when talking to these people about, or like, or when, or how much you want to give as far as commercial rights to the, uh,

community

Elf: members? Uh, Tom, you

Dotta: um, oh yeah. I just wanted to ask, uh, cuz Dota tweeted about the space and said music question mark and I, I don't remember.

Was there some announcement about music or maybe I missed it.

Elf: Okay. Hold on. We, we've got two different things. I'm

Dotta: a delay, I'm on a delay [00:49:00] or El is on a delay and I'm not sure who it is. I think

Elf: it's you. Okay. There was two different questions at the same time. Um, Rodda, I'm sorry, I forgot what you asked, but Tom just asked something about music. Um, And it's funny you say that because that's, yeah, that was on my checklist and it's one other thing that I was supposed to mention.

Um, yeah, we are actually talking to a super professional musician about adding a musical element to the collection. Um, um, I don't know if I wanna say much more than that at this point, but you maybe think of it as maybe every wizard has their own theme song, something like that. Um, theme songs that would be, uh, generated as well.

Um, yeah, that's all I'll say about that. Some, something along those lines. [00:50:00] Um, Doda, are you, are you back?

Dotta: I think, tell me if I'm slow or not. Nope, that was right on cue. You're good. Okay. Um, yep. I think one of the things we haven't had too much trouble with regards to commercial rights. I think it's mostly, I don't know if you're asking about commercial rights or shows.

I think just the idea on shows is like, it's just hard to sell a show in the first place. So we haven't had any more difficulty then I think anyone else in that regard. Um, but um, and then commercial rights, it's mostly just like working out with our lawyers. I just wanna make, like we have a few people in the background who have been asking like, Hey, we wanna do this like big commercial thing.

What's your actual, like, legal document? What are you granting? And I have to sheepishly be like, oh well we wanna do this, we wanna do that, but we don't actually have the language. And they're like, okay cool. Tell me when your lawyer like gives you the documents because we need like something in black and white.

Um, and so I'm just working with our lawyer to get that done. You know? I [00:51:00] know I've been saying this for weeks. I'll probably be staying it for a couple more weeks just cuz it's not fast. Um, yeah. But we're working on it.

Elf: Yep. Cool. Cool. Um, we've got five minutes left. Anyone else?

Dotta: Um, maybe we can like, touch back on this like hierarchy of NFTs, uh, Dota, is that like some original thing you came up with?

Elf: Super interesting. Yeah, go for it. NoDa. Yeah. Uh, well,

Dotta: yeah, I mean, I didn't like, I, I don't, I don't, yes, I was, could I say Sonia? I was, I was, I was thinking about this today because I think, um, an interesting part of these NFTs is that, um, you like build a story about them and then if we're connecting the fact that these are kind of pseudonym identities at the same time to that story [00:52:00] I was wondering about, um, what, like the community feels about, um, uh, kind of having.

Stories be commissioned because where you have stories that are commissioned, then you kind of have, um, I guess for me, when I write a story, I'm thinking, um, on ways of like developing a character in the longer term. Um, but if you are like outsourcing this for your own wizard, does that kind of take away from the connection that you have that wizard if we're taking on the model that do shared earlier this week?

Um, but I was just wondering about that. I don't have really any thoughts, but I thought it was very interesting thread.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel that like I feel about stories, like I feel about artwork, for example, which is to say neither are my strong suit. So for example, [00:53:00] if I asked like Margaret to do a poem for me, Um, and she came back with something I would say in like 99% of cases. I'm gonna feel like, yeah. What she describes to me is the truth cuz she's able to kind of like build this mental picture of the world and how the characters operate within it.

You know, maybe there's 1% chance where I'd say, oh, that wouldn't happen and ask her to change it or something. But I feel that it's the same way of like filling in kind of a bit of artwork in that, like, you, you, you lean on someone else who has a strength in a different way and I don't know, for me it wouldn't take away for a story to come back.

To me, it almost like a dream, right? Like, I feel sometimes when I have a dream it doesn't necessarily feel like consent in the same way. Like, I didn't want that to happen. Like I had a dream last night that like, you know, this creature came and I could tell feel the creature was coming and then like I. I was like, oh no, this is gonna be scary.

And then it was this giant beast and it woke me up and it was annoying cuz I lost sleep over it. [00:54:00] And like, I didn't want the beast to appear in my dream, but it did. And it sort of like became a part of my life. And I think that maybe that happens with stories sometimes too. You can still be part of your identity even though you didn't necessarily write every line of the story.

That makes a lot sense to me. Um, yeah, I feel that. So I was, it was, I was projected in my own, um, way of relating to that law building side of things to be fair. But I didn't, I didn't, um, I didn't ask for this. Forgotten I'm Ruined was a cult to come into my life. But here we are.

Elf: We're happy to have you. Yeah. Uh, Magus, to answer your question, yes. Doda created that whole n f t hierarchy by himself as far as

Dotta: I know. Y yeah, I mean, the idea of idea, I think there's no original ideas that came out of conversations even from this group. I think of thinking around, uh, the, the idea of like belonging, for example, was something that I'd kind of skirted around until I think it was even like Shark Child or something who mentioned it.

So I think it's people from [00:55:00] this group that kind of helped bring those ideas together. But I would, I would guess like the, at the very end kind of writing down here, the five things and how I think about them, you know, I've been talking about NFTs of course, a lot with people in my life, um, in general, and there's still a lot of people who don't necessarily get it.

I would even say e as much as I like whatever, wrote an e r c 7 21 NFT contract in like 2018, it wasn't an art N F T. So, and it, it really took me probably not even until we'd created Wizards to really. To really understand the deeper psychology, that it's not just that layer of like flipping in profit.

It's not just that layer of like fundraising, but there's, there's a sense of like community and belonging and status and storytelling and, and identity that, that, that really drive the value. And so there's a sense in which like NFTs, you know, if you invest in sort of some defi coin and then like the founder leaves or the contract gets hacked, you don't really have [00:56:00] anything kind of left or the value

that are fundamental value than a lot of mead coins. So it's just something you've been thinking a lot about. And I think that

Elf: like, yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's totally something that's sort of evolving in the whole NFT space. And even with this project, it's, it's something that I've tried to do from the very beginning is, is like, just sort of lay out what exactly is an NFT and why is it different from a Dogecoin or a Sheba coin or even a Bitcoin.

It's, it's, it's the aesthetic Mona Lisa. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the aesthetic. It's, it's the, the narrative, it's the identity. Um, if, I don't know if you guys know who Raul Powell is, um, but he's a super interesting, um, he's a macro investor, but he also comments a lot on cryptocurrency. Um, he made this, he in an, in an interview [00:57:00] recently speculated that, um, social tokens will be bigger than Defi and NFTs are included in this category of social tokens.

Um, yeah, you know, I, I have realized over the last few weeks that. The, the demographic for NFTs is not necessarily your traditional crypto investor. I think the demographic for NFTs is, um, basically the generation who's grown up on social media and video games. Um, I just saw TikTok the other day of this like hilarious Gen Z type of girl who she, you know, if you looked at her, you would not think that she knows anything, a bi about Bitcoin or crypto.

And maybe she doesn't. But she was talking all about NFTs, and I think that's the demographic. I think, I think more than Bitcoin, more than Dogecoin, more than Ethereum, it's [00:58:00] NFTs that are gonna bring in. The so-called normies, um, the no pointers, if you will.

Dotta: Um, yeah, and I think like any person who plays Fortnite or who like has spent money on Fortnite, like gets the idea of NFTs.

And I think more than, here's the thing, more than like, there's a, there's a, there's a way that people say this, which is like, oh, we're still early. We're all gonna make so much money. We're gonna dump on all these people that are coming after. Like, okay, that's probably true. Like, we probably are gonna make money when they join.

But that's not like the main thing. Like one of the main things is that you can, like, people can, you don't have to like sign up for a bank account, right? Like, I'll sit down with my nieces and nephews over my kids and I'm like, okay, we're gonna set up your meta mask and I'm gonna send you a hundred dollars.

And like that. Like, we've, now they have a bank account. We're like, we didn't have to like drive to the bank and put on a tie and like ask them to like, you know, write a check or whatever. You just like, now we're sending like value to one another and I can send them a wizard and like, That feeling when you first get your own N F T [00:59:00] and you like have ownership of these digital goods is so special.

And yeah, nf like NFTs as flat images are really just the beginning. Yep. Can I ask, um, elf and over, you've both changed your profile pictures over the past month, um Yep. Have you noticed any, what was that experience like? Cause I know do you had your previous perfect pitch for a number of years, and I'm not sure about you El but is that an experience you have any thoughts on?

Elf: You

Dotta: should. I mean, I think that it helps people recognize you over time to have the same branding and profile picture, but ultimately Twitter is a place where your ideas rain. And so it's hard for me to like dig to dissect it too closely because like, I ha I've done like at least like two tweet storms since I changed it.

And so I've had, I don't know, good engagement [01:00:00] and, and good response on those. Um, I don't, I don't mind, I don't mind. I'm, I probably won't change it for another five years and so people will just get used to the new one. I'm a wizard now.

Elf: You've always been a wizard Doda.

Dotta: Yeah. I think, um, I think I mentioned before like, uh, even previous avatars I've used have kind of been like within the same vein, like I've played Maple Story like long ago, and like my characters, my wizard that I made in that game was pretty similar to how major Devin ends up looking.

So I think in general, because these are very like identifying pieces, I think there are parts of ourselves that we do kind of tie into them. So like, I think if you, if aspecific, if a particular like wizard or something like kind of sticks out to you about to use your avatar, um, chances are it's probably followed.

Like if somebody were to follow along the lines of for an avatars that you use, it'd probably able to find like an underlying thematic behind what. Brings what, what draws you to that kind of character or that kind of imagery that you're using it as? So I think in a sense, even if you're kind of switching your avatars, [01:01:00] um, it's still part of you.

It's just maybe different ways of expressing you and how you want to express yourself in that time. So I think, I think, I think you can still build that identity even if you, even if you're going around like kind of swapping around. Cause it's still parts of you that you're showing,

Elf: you summoned a wizard and now the wizard has summoned you.

Yep. Um, okay guys, I think we have Okay. I think we're outta time. Yeah. Um, thank you so much. This was the second Wizard Wednesday. Come back next Wednesday for the third Wizard Wednesday. This has Ben Elfin Dota channeling out from the quantum downs. Thank you.