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.
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on my iphone. waiting for a friend. you have been warned.
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alea jacta est, rebound by Betatester.
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System agnostic: players have to trust the Game Master on results, emphasis in storytelling. A forum, with cool features.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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To Think: how to prevent the reputation system to turn into competition (explode in diff categories and let each member judge by itself?)
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To Think: Character Ownership: each character belongs to a specific user, tho it would be nice if they could be given away.
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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.
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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.
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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.