Wayward Words
One of our devs, Ryan, is developing a Minecraft mod. In its current state, it allows players to send messages across game instances (called worlds) via linked books. The vibe lands somewhere between the spookiness of quantum entanglement and the adventurous quaintness of mail by carrier pigeon. Eventually, we’d like it to be a tool to add compelling narrative depth to players’ Minecraft worlds; imagine finding a record of a long-lost society, or a letter that never made it to its recipient—would you feel compelled to excavate the ruins, or to deliver the note to its intended destination?
Here’s Ryan’s intro to the mod, called Wayward Words.
Hey all! I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on recently – it’s a simple way to share stories across Minecraft worlds; a way to add a pinch of community-driven story to your adventures in Minecraft.
With this mod, you can take written books, hide them in a noteworthy place in your world, and allow other players running the mod to find them in their own worlds! You don’t need to be on the same server, map, seed, or anything.
In this trio of images, I’m hiding a book I wrote under the belltower in this village; using a feather to search for hidden books under a belltower (it’s not the same one, I swear!); then using a feather to uncover a book that has been hidden here.
How does it work?
The mod takes a virtual “fingerprint” of the context where you hide the book – it summarizes the type and number of unique blocks close by, and it stores a copy of your book with that fingerprint, so that other players who are searching for books in areas that give roughly the same fingerprint can find your book too!
Hopefully that conveys the general idea. I was inspired by asynchronous messaging systems in Death Stranding and Dark Souls/Elden Ring and thought that more games could benefit from a fun way to share messages with other players beyond just your local server.
I really like exploring Minecraft worlds and looking for new villages, treasures, and the like, and I think with some help from the Minecraft community and this mod, we could add a lot of exciting and interesting depth to the pre-generated structures/villages/etc that you find in your Minecraft world!
If you watched till the end of the first video, you’ll have seen a hint about a treasure hidden in the blast furnace of this village – I took the liberty of investigating, and have shared my findings here:
This is one example of the kind of engaging gameplay that I think we could make by sharing stories like this for players across all servers.
What do y’all think? I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for things/features you’d like to see! Since starting this post, I’ve been thinking about allowing users to hide treasure/items, too.)
You can find Ryan on Twitter at @r_darge!
Wayward Words is a work in progress, with just the basic code in place at time of writing, and the mod may change significantly between now and its 1.0 release.
Some goals for future versions of Wayward Words:
Enable users to curate and share collections of magic books
Shared storytelling across different games (e.g. Roblox, Terraria, and Minecraft)
For more news on the mod, and to tell us what sorts of magical treasure you’d like to discover in Minecraft, check out our Discord server.
High fives,
Kaimerra.