Sudanna

Xekhemthys [turn 1]

Summary

Power Available: 7

Actions taken:

• Ethereality - [Purify Area, 4 cost]
  
• Life - [shape Climate, 2 cost]
  

Power Remaining: 1

Running Bonus: +1

Actions

Ethereality

Xekhemthys, born of the void, is the first god to touch the world of Czeda. Weary from her travels, she rests in a great inland sea, and washes herself of the astral remnants of creation. The sea is changed by this, becoming tranquil and otherworldly, perhaps a small window into the realms of gods.

Life

Xekhemthys turns her gaze from her bath, and is greeted by emptiness. This world is a blank canvas, untouched by any hand. This does not please Xekhemthys - she has traveled long enough through the emptiness of space. Now is the time for vibrance. The land rises up to please this desire, growing a riotous jungle.

Rules.

OOC and rule changes

The furnaces of creation have just now gone dark: the birth of the universe is finished. Cast into the void are endless possibilities. Creators and creations to be, sculptors and their clay. Gods and worlds.

This is the story of one of those worlds, and four of those gods. It is the Age of the Painter on Czeda, and its masters have come from the stars, bearing creation.

Players: Excalibur, Sylae, Tridash, Nalyd.

Power

Excalibur: 4 + 4 = 8

Sylae: 5 + 2 = 7

Tridash: 6 + 5 = 11

Nalyd: 5 + 2 = 7

Turn Format

[size=5]Title [turn ##][/size]
[u]Summary[/u]
[b]Power Available[/b]: [##]
[b]Actions taken[/b]:[list]
[Action name] - [type, ##cost]
[Action name] - [type, ##cost]
[/list]
[b]Power Remaining[/b]: [##]
[b]Running Bonus[/b]: [##]
[u]Actions[/u]
[b][Action name][/b]
[Description of above action]
[Roleplaying/flavour notes, if required]
[b][Action name][/b]
[Description of above action]
[Roleplaying/flavour notes, if required]

So, 4-5 people(including me) is pretty good. SoT, the rules above say that everyone has two days to make a post after the beginning of a new turn. If that's doable for you, please do stay and participate, but it's fine if you'd rather not too. If anyone else wants to join, there's still time, but I'll start the game probably tomorrow, so speak up quick.

Porty Jynt for sure.

This kind of replayability does not interest me in the slightest. I don't really care all the much what order I find what items in - certainly not enough to replay a game. And I actively loathe grinding. Borderlands, Diablo, any MMO, any JRPG, whatever, the random items and grinding are absolutely the least interesting parts to me, and any game that doesn't let me ignore that aspect is a game I just cannot ever enjoy. Random loot generation + grinding is a Skinner box and it grosses me out.

More total randomness can be fun, though. I like a ton of classic and modern roguelikes that use this as their driving feature, and I get a lot out of that. Dwarf Fortress, like Sylae mentioned, had extensive simulationist random generation that would have been a great feature if the rest of the game weren't so clumsy. I love the places that a CK2 game can end up (Irish Caliphate! Israel in Iceland!). Even a rogueish game like Risk of Rain, which has almost static level sequences with randomish generation of a wide array of really interesting and game-changing items is a good game for me, because it actively discourages grinding and it's not about minor stat variation - items have far more interesting and varied effects.

But I'll replay nonrandom or insignificantly random games too. I'm in the middle of replaying Transistor. I've replayed Dragon Age: Origins five or six times(and that is not a short game). I've gone through the entire Mass Effect trilogy at least three times. I've replayed Half-Life 2 a lot. Replayed KotOR 2 a lot. Fallout: New Vegas. Skyrim. And for many different reasons, too - Mass Effect and my terrible love/hate relationship with it, Half-Life 2 because I just love the gameplay that much, Skyrim because its endless failures are mesmerizing, and the others because I really just love them enough to want to play more game than is there.

What's really interesting to me is games with highly variable or randomized stories. Something like The Yawhg will fascinate me forever. The mere concept of Unrest has me incredibly excited. Fallout: New Vegas is in the previous paragraph for largely this reason.

Also a maybe, though it seems like too much for a forum game.

In a completely pedantic sense, yes, games have to allow for multiple potential plot sequences, if you include things like "the player took a path through this level that was three degrees off from their previous path through the level" as a plot sequence. In many games - overwhelmingly, most games - the events of the narrative are completely linear and removed from the player's ability to effect them. I can play Half Life 2 a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways, mechanically, but all the characters are still going to do and say the exact same things almost without exception. And that's okay; impacting the plot is not why I would want to play Half Life 2. I do things in HL2 that are essentially segregated from the plot, and those are enough reason for me to want to play the game. This is the setup that, again, overwhelmingly most games make use of.

Some games do offer me the ability to impact the story in a meaningful way, and I enjoy and appreciate that. Some games use token player choices as so much marketing fluff, and that can be interesting, inconsequential, or extremely frustrating. All of these approaches are equally games and equally stories. There are also games that eschew story entirely - Minecraft is storyless, not to mention something like Tetris or Pong. This game/story dualistic universe you're putting forth is just not making any sense. What games do you play, SoT?

Remember this? Let's try that again.

Dawn of Worlds is a system that turns worldbuilding into roleplaying. Starting with a blank map, players create a world filled with interesting terrain, races, civilizations, and history. Players take on the role of gods shaping a new world through various stages of development. I'm aiming for about six players, but if more people than that want to play, I'll draw straws. Express your interest in this topic, and after a few days to let anyone interested apply, we'll start. This is a forum-based play-by-post game, not an IM one.

Before you join - this is both roleplaying and a game. Other players will not necessarily have the same idea in mind for the shape this world is supposed to take. Don't expect to be able to act on all of your ideas, don't get too attached to anything, and don't be surprised if someone kicks over your sandcastle. That said, this is primarily a collaborative game, not a competitive one. The goal is to make an interesting world, not to beat everyone else. Roleplay your gods in interesting ways, make both friends and enemies, but don't be a dick. If someone saves up 22 points to create a race in the first age, don't throw a meteor at them (at least not right away). If someone has stated an idea they're aiming for in OOC, don't ruin it for no reason. Be fun to play with.

In addition to the normal rules in the PDF linked above, there a few rules to make online play work a little better and a few houserules.

-There's no turn order. Reserve a post when you start working on your turn and edit your actions into it. First come, first served, but don't reserve a post if you're not ready to finish it in a timely fashion.

-Players will not be rolling their own points. As GM, I'll roll points for everyone simultaneously at the beginning of each turn. That doesn't mean I'll necessarily be going first every turn, mind.

-If a player hasn't taken their turn two days after it begins, they're skipped, barring planned excuses. They can continue on the next turn, but if they continue to be absent they may be removed or replaced.

-Creating biomes like desert, forest, savannah, etc. will be done using the Shape Climate power, not Shape Land. Shape Land is for geological formations like mountains, rivers, craters, lakes, etc.

-There's no increased cost for created nonstandard races, except at GM discretion. Don't be OP. If you think your race might be OP, ask.

-The rules mention purifying or corrupting areas, but give no corresponding powers. We will be using Purify/Corrupt Area powers, at the same cost as Purify/Corrupt City.

Rules for editing the map:

-Please don't do anything that would make it difficult for other players to edit the map, or anything that would be difficult to erase. Gradients, especially, are a pain. When in doubt, don't do it if it can't be done in Paint.

-Please do not change the file format of the map. Leave it as a .png.

-When editing the map, please upload new maps to imgur.com - this avoids file compression and resizing, which make editing the map a pain.

-Please be consistent when editing the map. Use the same colors for the same things that other players are. Once someone makes an image for, say, a mountain or a mesa or whatever, use that same one. Use the Legend.

If you want to see an example of this system in action on a forum, check out the old topic or my first game. If you have any questions about the rules, let me know!

Map:

The black square is the stand-in for the 1" area specified in the rules. It's 100x100 pixels.

Turn Format

[size=5]Title [turn ##][/size]
[u]Summary[/u]
[b]Power Available[/b]: [##]
[b]Actions taken[/b]:[list]
[Action name] - [type, ##cost]
[Action name] - [type, ##cost]
[/list]
[b]Power Remaining[/b]: [##]
[b]Running Bonus[/b]: [##]
[u]Actions[/u]
[b][Action name][/b]
[Description of above action]
[Roleplaying/flavour notes, if required]
[b][Action name][/b]
[Description of above action]
[Roleplaying/flavour notes, if required]

Yeah, games allow for player-directed variability, but that's not all there is for them. And considering how consistently games made specifically with that goal in mind get it completely wrong, "allow for" may be just a hypothetical.

You've got it right. It doesn't matter where the levels come from, those two level 12 fyoras will be exactly the same.

To actually use the skill points from leveling up creations, you have to invest just as much essence as it would take to give them that skill point during creation, so they don't really count for much.

Going back to Port Jynt and finding where Lentoir is sounds good, unless they tell us something else there.

That Pool of Radiance book was my very first ever fantasy novel back when I was about eight or nine, and set me on the dark road I now tread.

Yeah, what Kelandon said.

I dunno about compressible stories being just plain categorically preferable to uncompressible ones. Plenty of the stories I like take me a long time to explain to my satisfaction, and the finicky little details are what I like about them anyways. Shortening a story can cut out what makes it special. Shortcuts in game mechanics are called "exploits", and much frowned upon. There's something to be said for mechanical or narrative elegance, but big, messy systems have their own appeal as well. Less is only sometimes more, and only to some people.

It's sounding like what you really want is to find ways to tell a story or make a point or just inspire an emotion purely with the language of game mechanics. You are, luckily, not the first: there are a ton of games and gamemakers trying to do exactly that thing in interesting ways, and the best thing would be to try and play some. Check out the indiest of the indie scene - there's a lot of raw ideas and strong personalities there, and a lot of that stuff is free. Some higher-profile, retail-level games try and stick to that design philosophy as well, at least to some degree. There are as many mechanics as there are sentences, and as many ways to put them together as there are to make a paragraph. If you want somewhere to start, I could give you a few names or resources for both games and critical dissection of them.

But really, the best place to start is to really think, really hard and really critically, about how the games you already know work - there's at least a grain of mechanics-as-language in every one, and some attempt to translate a game into a human reaction from the player.

Also, games are multimedia things. Don't get hung up on mechanics just because they're the unique part of the medium - films need good writing and good visuals, for the most part. Take things in context - an archer leaving a tank could be a story about heartless abandonment or a story about escape from abuse or a story about hard choices or a dozen other things, depending on how it's framed. And of course most of the time nothing really means anything more than what you're willing to read into it.

I dunno why you're talking about the difference between stories and games as if the two were entirely different or something. Games contain and deliver stories, at least some of them. Games and writing are both mediums for the delivery of stories, among other things.

What it takes for something to seem real is very different from game to game. I'll accept shooting fireballs and changing size in Super Mario Bros., because Mario is a surrealist fever dream far removed from how I'd expect my world to work. That easy acceptance does not transfer to games with more sensible rules or more cohesive worlds - if someone in Skyrim gives me something it doesn't make sense for their character to give me, however much I need it as a player, that's going to stand out as a flaw in this world.

Making one ending or another inevitable doesn't make that ending satisfying - it removes tension. Maybe you cannot easily have the same kind of uncertainty that exists in a game like Geneforge, where the main character can be completely different from player to player, but removing all uncertainty makes things boring. By filling the blank slate of the player character in with an actual character, much of the question over what's going to happen might be removed - or preserved, which I would find much more interesting.

Never mind that most games don't offer any variability in narrative beyond finishing the game or not. Call of Duty delivers a story, and that's the only story in it. The Walking Dead delivers a story too, and while there's much more room for player input on that story, it will still go to all the same places and hit most of the same beats, and the differences between what one player or another does is limited. Super Hexagon has no story at all. And then Fallout: New Vegas occupies a similar place as Geneforge. Games are very different from one another, even just in how they treat their stories, and the problems with adapting one or another would be very different.

I vote we worship the concept of nothing. That's the real nihilism.

Really neat, Duck. I loved the final walk to the study, and all of the paintings were really nice.

I think it goes without saying that any absolutely direct translation of most video games into any other medium is ludicrous.

That said, I don't know that the difference between what does happen and what could happen is all that relevant to most games or how people think about them. Very rarely is anything of great consequence all that subject to change, unless it's within very tightly-prescribed confines. With most games, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'd rather be doing in this world/as this character instead of what a game is making me do. The difference between what does happen and what could happen is more a feature of thinking critically about a story.

I don't think that you need to change a story from game form to novel form to make it good, unless your standard of "good" requires the conventions of novels. Geneforge and Nethergate are plenty good stories as they are. So are a bunch of non-Spiderweb games. You could probably make good novels using those ideas, but they're already good games using those ideas.

Alorael, who believes the true hardcore answer is gaming with a peripheral not intended for that use. Like by singing exactly the right tones into a microphone.

(Anyone have any good links specifically on pre-Industrial environmental disasters? Dikiyoba knows there are lots of them, but Dikiyoba's Googling powers are weak.)

I have a fantastic description of ancient Roman mining practices I find terribly compelling:

As her grip tightened' date=' so the very appearance of her provinces began to alter, as though giant fingers were gouging deep into the landscape. In the east great cities were ransacked for treasure - but in the west it was the earth. The result was mining on a scale not to be witnessed again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowhere was the devastation more spectacular than in Spain. Observer after observer bore stunned witness to what they saw. Even in far off Judaea, people 'had heard what the Romans had done in the country of Spain, for the winning of the silver and the gold which is there.'

 

The mines that Rome had annexed from Carthage more than a century previously had been handed over to the publicani, who had proceeded to exploit them with their customary gusto. A single network of tunnels might spread for more than a hundred square miles and provide upwards of forty thousand slaves with a living death. Over the pockmarked landscape there would invariably hang a pall of smog, belched out from the smelting furnaces through giant chimneys, and so heavy with chemicals that it burned the naked skin and turned it white. Birds would die if they flew through the fumes. As Roman power spread the gas clouds were never far behind.[/quote']

Tool use is a skill.

No problem at all, Lilith. Get well soon.

I don't think anyone reading either sentence is in any danger of personifying the spectrophotometer.

I use language casually in formal writing too.