after twittering with @opiumseed on the existence of a website that allows us to play role playing games with all its web 2.0 goodness, me - being the uber dork I am - wrote my take on how a cool system should be.
.
on my iphone. waiting for a friend. you have been warned.
.

.
alea jacta est, rebound by Betatester.
.
System agnostic: players have to trust the Game Master on results, emphasis in storytelling. A forum, with cool features.
.
Killer app: Hidden Paragraphs: for each paragraph the writer can leave it open (default) or close it for some, all, or one character. Perfect for intrigue, psychic powers (the Game Master tells aura, voices, in separate), it adds many layers.
.
If you read the adventure without login, all is open, detailing which paragraph is hidden for whom, so you understand each character motivation better. In fact this social networking shows less features if you’re logged in, to prevent spoilers.
.
Killer app: Email Participation: player receives Game Master page narrative and the it can reply to it, and the system posts on the respective page.
.
Story: the adventure, the entire arc.
Cast: characters on the story. The Game Master can hide future characters to players.
Chapter: pieces of the arc. Title and description are sent in advance, to lure players to the adventure. Once played, the pages appear. Stories can be reused, with many different players (parallel universes?)
Page: an action turn: Game Master initial narrative + each player action. Can be pretty tight or loose.
Pace: the intended pace of the story, so would-be players know if they can commit to before joining (discuss).
.
Killer app: Reputation System: even if players don’t know who’s playing what, they can asign experience points at the end of each chapter. The points go to the player, not character, so when it joins another story, its reputation can be used to gain access. To prevent pat-in-the-back situations, the points are limited, to be distributed among players. Chores for the group earn more points.
.
To Think: how to prevent the reputation system to turn into competition (explode in diff categories and let each member judge by itself?)
.
To Think: Character Ownership: each character belongs to a specific user, tho it would be nice if they could be given away.
.
To Think: when writing each character profiles, the Game Master can have a preset questionaire to be filled. This way it can adapt to the system of its liking. Hidden paragraphs apply here too. Also, a moodboard where the user can collect the inspirations for the character creation.
.
To Think: Match-Making System: The system is not only a place to register ongoing adventures, but also to offer a match-making feature, sorting and matching open stories, characters & willing players. That would be a meta, limbo area, helping users to connect to each other.
.
this idea is for the taking… I certainly have no time to develop it, so if you have any input on it, feel free to email me or comment below.

…and I’m just waiting for it to appear to openmoko to get rid of my iphone. it will take a while, I know.

• ad-hoc communications the gadgets communicate with one another without a central connection
• voip carriers will NEVER allow a corporate phone to have it. it spells death to them.
• cryptography with USA government into this spying frenzy, no carrier would offer this option

.
frankly, i’m waiting for an openmoko + flex app because the adobe thermo presentation really inspired me. assuming adobe is as pissed off at apple as we consumers are, I assume adobe + open source can tap into all this innovation that apple arrogantly snubbed.

I’ve been looking to my stats, and the music category is the most visited. it was time to automate some functions, so I was searching for how this podcast thing works, and now I got it.
.
podcast is a way to automatically download and listen to audio files from the web. yeah, the name says podcast just because ipod brought the technology into light, but you don’t have to own one to use it. any regular connection works (you are online, aren’t you?)
.
so, to automatically download and listen to the songs I offer here (and even sync to your ipod, if, if), just follow these steps:
.

1. download and install ipodder. it’s free + open source, and works on mac, pc, linux and even pocket pc!
   

2. open ipodder, open the subscriptions tab, and click on the green plus sign.
   
   it will open the add a feed prompt.

3. on the URL field, type http://blog.nonlinearmatters.com/cat/music/feed/ (better yet, copy it and paste there). save.
4. click on the blue button, the check selected feed one.
   
   it’ll download any song I link from the music category, and export it to your itunes.

5. from there, you can either listen it right away or sync the mp3s to your ipod (if, if).
6. and yeah, the ipodder does more than download the songs I show you, but a lot of other nice podcasts out there! II’m still new with this podcast stuff, but two feeds that got me are 2600 [ http://www.2600.com/rss.xml ] and comic geek [ http://www.bryandeemer.com/cgs/rss.xml ].

getting organized
.
in this week alone, i started three new projects. all easy and fun, but I can be overwelmed by small details (i’m an ADHD-type person, and i’m more confortable with abstract concepts than with this cold hash reality, sniff!).
.
so i built this calendar, to be printed (and cut in half, and glued together) and shown poster-like, so you can write down every new appointment or timeframe and consult it to get organized.
.

.
BTW, this flashpaper was made on a mac, thanks to contribute 3.
.
I don’t give a flying fuck for contribute features - to depend your project updates on a corporate communications system is simply insanity for my open source tastes - but flashpaper (macromedia’s solution for adobe acrobat, give or take) is da bomb!

livro novo de douglas rushkoff, open source democracy. e numas de put his money where his mouth is, o livro está disponível em pdf pra quem quiser!