 Hello, my name is Jackie and welcome back to my channel and in today's video I am actually trying a new writing tool. So if you are like me doing Nanarimo, you might know that on the Nanarimo website there are a range of different offers for people who are either doing Nanarimo or people who complete the 30 days. So if you go to the Nanarimo website, there is a Writer's Resources item in the menu and an offers section and under offers. So you've got Scrivener, which I think everyone expects now, but I was going through these and saw something called For the Words, which is described as an online writing platform built like a role-playing game where quests, monster battles and levelling up keep you motivated to write, join the hunt and participate in our biggest special event yet. So I'm someone who's quite competitive, I have played RPGs in the past, I generally don't because I have a somewhat addictive personality and when I start a game, it becomes my whole life while I'm playing the game so it's not the healthiest relationship, but I thought this could be a really interesting way to keep my writing motivation up. So I'm going to sign up and see how I go and share the experience with you. So the For the Words website is for, number four, thewords.com and it says it's an online writing game built to motivate you to maintain a healthy writing habit. The built-in file and project organization system saves your work on our cloud, all while you fight over 200 monsters with different word counts and timers, playthrough recurring in unique writing challenges, special events and an entire ecosystem built for writing. So let's start my free trial. Um, a username, JP writes because we like to be consistent. Okay, start my journey. Welcome Dust Warrior, so I assume this is the level everyone starts with. As they prepare my account and put the final touches on my new warrior outfit, here are some final details to get a head start with. Guided tour of the site, initial look for my avatar, referral code and my initial equipment. Welcome to For the Words, I'm Ed, one of the creators and I'll be guiding you through this quick walkthrough today. Let's start by exploring what makes For the Words different than other writing communities and productivity apps, the game section. One of the first things you'll notice when you click on the game section is that we're in a place called Lucio La Forest. This is where the game starts and where your journey as a Dust Warrior begins. Quickly going over this sidebar, there's the wilderness, which is the section we're looking at right now, which is where you'll find the monsters that are available for each area. The town, where you can pick up quests by items, craft larger items and earn cosmetic wardrobe rewards to outfit your character with. The world map, this is the entire valley of Ogamai, and new areas will appear here as you unlock them by following the steps in the main storyline. Each new area has its own set of unique monsters, quests, NPCs to meet and rewards you can earn. This looks so cool, I can't wait to get started. So first, select an initial look for my avatar. I wonder if I can see these bigger. Hmm. Oh, I think this girl with the green hair, she looks cool. Referral code, so there is a NaNoWriMo referral code, so you'll find that on the website. Hmm. Well, that is strange. The referral code doesn't seem to be working though. Okay, so I think the referral code is something different because there's also a sign up code below, so maybe it's that. My initial equipment, I have a 30 day subscription, I have a forest caretaker, I have a map, I have 50 coins, and I have 10 crystals. So let's try the NaNoWriMo code for sign up code. Yeah, okay, so that's how it worked, which also gives me a NaNoPin. Okay, become a Dust Warrior. I really, I need some drumroll music for this. Pick a monster to battle, write your words and collect rewards. Okay, so to start I'm going to add a new file, which I will call powerless. So same as my NaNoWriMo project, add file. Okay. And that's empty. And then if I go to the left and click game, ooh, okay. So now I get to pick a monster to battle, so who do I want to find? So these all have, so along the bottom of each monster you can see there's a time limit, there's also word counts for some of them, so I'm not going to do any ones that count for zero words because I'm doing NaNoWriMo, I want to get words done. So the first one that has words associated with it is called an oxy, which is 100 words in 15 minutes. So if I click fight now, okay, so I click what now, the window pops up and I can click on my file that I want to write in. Okay, and okay, and then there's the active battle at the bottom, so oh god, the time is counting down already. Okay, I guess I better start writing. That was fast, so I guess obviously 100 words isn't that much, but I just had a little alert pop up saying I've won my battle against oxy, so I wonder what I do now. I guess I just go to, I mean I guess I could just keep writing, but I don't want my writing to count for nothing, so I need to start another battle. So if I go back to the game, okay, so I can create a list of monsters I want to battle and every time I add them to the list you can see the total word count and total time goes up, and it looks like you don't need to keep writing for the total time if you hit the, if you hit the word count beforehand. So the battle I had was supposed to be 100 words in 15 minutes, I had my 100 words in like 2 minutes and 43 seconds, so I assume that if I have a list of monsters to battle it'll just go to the next one. I'm just trying to figure out whether, do I just keep adding the same monster to the list infinitely, or is it, I wonder if there's a limited number I can add. Yeah, okay so I've now got 10 monsters on the list and I can battle list is full, so you can add up to 10 monsters at a time. So with that list I now have 10 monsters on the list, the total word count is 1,000 words in 175 minutes, so I'm going to get writing and I'll check back when I'm done. So I've been writing for 29 minutes and I've defeated my 10 monsters and I have 1,118 words, so now I'm going to go to my inventory section to see what I've gotten from those battles. So all items, I have, oh I have dust. After sticking to the surface of the creature's body for long periods of time the dust clumps and losses, loses most of its hazardous properties. If stored properly it can be transported safely into the hands of those who know what to do with it. Dinty, prismic green crystals that shine softly in the darkness but remain dim in the light. Okay and that's it, oh I can equip things. I have nothing that's equipable so I'm not sure what that means if I need to go and sell the things I've won so I can get like a better outfit, or if I need to find them. Oh I can change my look. So far I'm finding this interesting, I'm not actually sure if it's helping me write and I think the main reason for that is because I don't feel like I'm stretching or working hard to defeat the monsters, I'm just writing what I would anyway and this notification appears going you defeated this monster. I think it might be a little bit different if it was a little bit more challenging so at the moment I can write 100 words in 15 minutes or 100 words in 20 minutes and that's defeating a monster and that doesn't feel like many words for that amount of time at least maybe it does for some people but for me that feels really easy so what I'd like to see is higher word count challenges for that amount of time but if I scroll through the list of available monsters it looks like that isn't the case as soon as the word count start going up so do the time amounts so you've got 300 words in 30 minutes 400 words in 80 minutes 400 words in 45 minutes so this stage the main piece of feedback I'd have for the words is to have higher word count goals for shorter amounts of time to really challenge the people who want to be challenged. Other than that I'm going to continue playing for the rest of the day I would like to hit 3,000 words today just to get back to where I was with my nano goals a couple of days ago and yeah I'll see how I feel after that. I'll also see how I go with the inventory and the wardrobe and whether I get anything that's useful and that I can use to progress in the game. So I've now been writing for one hour and I have 3,018 words in total so that is that's exactly where I wanted to be in terms of my nano-rimo progress today. In terms of for the words I am actually really enjoying it. It's not that big an rpg at least what I can see from the moment it is really just a writing tool where you get more frequent rewards than you might with other programs like 750 words for instance so I did 750 words last or about two years ago now and I really liked that because there are different daily badges you can get you can get badges if you happen to write quickly but it really is only one or two a day and they become fewer and farther in between as you've been doing it for longer whereas this if you're fighting monsters for you know 100 words at a time then you can start getting that reward quite quickly and I was getting those notifications pinging up quite often that oh you just defeated so and so you just defeated so and so so that was fun. The other thing that I liked about this was that each monster is assigned a certain amount of time as well as the word count now I do feel like the amount of time for each word count was very generous so for 100 words you get 15 minutes for longer amounts of words like 500 words I think you get 45 minutes for 800 words I think it's like 120 minutes so it is a long time and much more than I think a lot of people would need to get those words done and the downside of that is that you're not actually working that hard for the achievement so you're not working that hard to get that notification popping up saying you just defeated this monster. Having said that it is nice to have something that's easy to achieve when you're already working hard on getting the words done at all. The other thing I liked about it is because each battle has a word count goal as well as a time goal it works similar to writing sprints where you can't really go off and do something else when you're in the middle of that battle if you only have 20 minutes to defeat this monster like you can't go off and have a meal and then come back and defeat the monster if you don't get your words in those 20 minutes then you're done. So for the last couple of battles I probably was a little bit spent I was ready to call it today but because I'd already put them in my list and I was committed to doing them I had to get that last I think 700 words out so it was good from that perspective. So if you are someone who likes writing sprints if you're someone who likes badges and gets a kick out of getting that extra recognition if you're motivated by that I definitely try out for the words because it is a lot of fun from what I've seen so far. In terms of it being an RPG obviously I have only just started today from my experience so far it does just seem to be you write and you're writing equates to battling and defeating monsters. I don't know if there's any more plot than that maybe I'll discover that there is a wider world and a bigger plot once I get more into it so if you're looking for something that is more game-like and does have a narrative that you can follow might not be for you but in any case there is a free 30 day trial so if it sounds interesting then give it a go there's nothing to lose. So if you've done for the words or if you've played similar sorts of games or used similar types of tools please let me know in the comments below because I find these tools really interesting as a way to keep your motivation up and I'd be very keen to try more of them. Until next time, bye!