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.

cherished dead trees
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i’m slowly growing my book collection here in NYC…
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roll the mouse over the books to read about each one (or two :)… incomplete yet…
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donnie darko
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jeff was listening gaydar radio, and a song from the movie made me remember to ask thabata to rent it.
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me, thabata, jeff and roger watched the movie (it’s jeff’s day off, so we had a lot of free time).
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the movie talks about time travel. schizophrenia. a tangent universe that can’t stand by itself and colapses. fourth dimension and vectors as goo oozing from your chest. and commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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and some nerds even printscreened parts of the movie to peek some quotes from the book “philosophy of time travel” (i’ve already tried to search on amazon - hey, what if? - but it’s just a prop from the movie).

white wolf (a editora dos rpgs famooouzos como Vampire, Mage e Werewolf) processa na cara dura a sony, pelo filme underworld (um filminho furreca que mistura matrix e vampiros).
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rola na web até o pdf do processo, fiz o highlight das partes mais interessantes… ;-)
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na real, a mesma empresa que faz de tudo para defender seus copyrights, acha que fica assim, impune na boa? o pablo (duh, amigo meu, nunca falei dele) me passou o trailler há um tempo, total rip-off…

ah, e a imagem original é essa ao lado, pra quem quer saber…
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saí pra dançar. me senti muito inteligente hoje. pensei numa teoria que eu já tinha mastigado há um tempo, enquanto conversava com o criminal e agora com o rodrigo boecker (que é o tal amigo que reencontrei, jogador de rpg…). depois falo sobre isso.
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aliás, quando eu conheci o boecker eu tinha 17 e ele 13. isso é era paleozóica pra mim, nossa memória precisa mesmo ser ho-lo-grá-fi-ca para eu conseguir remontar essa época…
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tamos eu e ele no trackback, lembrando de como éramos (mas eu tinha auto-estima muito baixa - subterrânea, eu diria - e não sei se esse recollection me é saudável).
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anyway, tá maneiro até então. if i burst into tears at any rate, i’ll let you know. ;-)

acabei de chegar de um show do groove armada no roxy club… crowded, popeira, mas com vibe boa.
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acontece que a aline, brasileira amiga da galera aqui tem um namorado que trabalha na giant step, daí ele colocou a gente pra dentro…
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e eis que quando chego em casa, checo os e-mails, recebo um de um amigo que não vejo há muito… do meu primeiro grupo de rpg… primeiro, primeiro mesmo… em que a gente jogava gurps space e cyberpunk. e envisionávamos vários cenários de futuro, com gadgets e tudo…
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cara, que bizarro isso, eu comecei a notar que tenho layers de história, e de quando em quando dou um reset pra poder acumular coisa nova… quando os ventos mudam… mas tipo, eu tinha me esquecido deste layer. no passado mais futuro que esse eu já era velho, nosssa, nooosssa, eu tenho história… e believe me ainda tem mais pra acontecer…
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things change. a lot!

do centro, bate-perna cultural. desci na carioca, e fui direto para a gibiteria. A maioria das lojas mudaram, e eu com spatial sense nível 0 entrei pelo lado oposto e me apavorei ao conceber que a loja não estava mais lá. oh, god, isso é parte da minha história aqui!

mas nada, a loja tava lá firme e forte, com os nerds e otakus discutindo apaixonadamente sobre os assuntos mais obscuros. o preço pos livros está um assalto: 60 reais por um traditionbook, com uma qualidade literária bastante irregular. acabou que comecei a conversar com um moleque (vc sabe, rpg é futebol!), que me deu várias dicas valiosas (de que evangelion deu uma parada na distribuição pq ficou pau a pau com a edição japonesa, entre outras), essas coisas, cool. trocamos icq.

depois, mate com leite no rei do mate, uma passadinha na livraria da travessa (que tá muito hip, perdeu o charme) e ccbb. o que volta ao post anterior.