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WorldBuildingGames

The first game, Lexicon, isn't my idea. It comes from here...
http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html
Briefly, the players are encyclopedia authors of their story universe and each player writes an entry that begins with "A" and cites two not-yet-existant "phantom" entries. On the second round, everyone writes a "B" article and cites two phantom entries plus one entry by someone other than themselves. This continues all the way down the alphabet. You end up with a richly interlinked source text about your world, probably quite funny in places, and with all sorts of tantalizing phantom links begging to be filled in.


By the way, I found out about yet another cool game. It's called Matrix. Quite a bit of explaining on the page I just linked, but the skinny is this-- players suggest what they do and/or what happens next. The referee decides what the odds on each thing happening are and then tells them what number they have to beat when rolling for what they said to actually happen. If several players make mutually contradictory assertions, there is some kind of rule where they roll against each other until one of them gets their way. I was too lazy to read it all the way through, but that's the heart of the system, these two basic rules. People have adapted it to miniatures games, all kinds of pen-and-pencil RPG genres, and god knows what else. Whats cool about it is that it has elements of nomic-- the assertion you make can have a persistant effect on the rest of the game becoming, in effect, an extension of the rule-set.

So, how can this be adapted to wiki? Well, here are two web based dice servers that keep logs. A player rolls, then posts a link to the log.
http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/dice.pl
http://cgi.kenware.com/DiceServer.pl

--f1r3br4nd


So here's my idea. It's best played before the above game. I'll call it TimeLine. For simplicity, we'll start it in the year 2006, though it could be any time in the past, future, or alternate present.

A list is made of news categories, and a player is assigned to be a correspondent for one of the categories.

WorldEventsBob
NationalAndLocal|Enid
BusinessJoe
ScienceAndTech|Chevon
SportsSteve
Entertainment|Aimee
HealthBill
NewsOfTheWierd|Elecktra
As I said, on the first round we're assuming the year is 2006. Each of the players writes two short articles in their category. Anything they want, as long as it's plausible and on topic to their category. The players cast votes for the most and least plausible story (this can be easily done using the Tiki Survey feature... the Poll feature is more awkward to use and is not recommended for this game). The winner gains a point and the loser loses a point and their article is 'retracted'. We now move on to the next round, and the year becomes 2007. The news categories shift downward by one and the bottom one goes to the top, so now it looks like this...
NewsOfTheWierd|Bob
WorldEventsEnid
NationalAndLocal|Joe
BusinessChevon
ScienceAndTech|Steve
SportsAimee
Entertainment|Bill
HealthElecktra


Each player now writes three short articles and at least one of them has to be in some way related to an earlier non-retracted article by any player. By related, we mean that it either directly features a person/place/thing from a previous article or that the significance of one article is altered when read in the context of the other.

An example of the first case would be...

Dateline 2007
Biff Biffington, who retired from professional boxing in 2006 has been arrested by Florida State Troopers in connection with a kidnapping attempt earlier this week. The would-be victim, the daughter of his estranged wife was saved by her pet... a 250 lb tiger. Forensic experts matched the blood of the escaping suspect to Biffington's DNA.


An example of the second case would be...

Dateline 2006
Scientists at the NIA have found that tunafish consumption is linked to impotence later in life.


Dateline 2007
The situation remains tense in Bethesda, MD as the standoff continues between police and a man who has barricaded himself in the home of Dr. Richard Lazar, a prominent nutritionist and expert in reproductive health. The hostage taker, believed to be a former employee of a recently closed tunafish packing plant, has yet to issue any demands and police are at a loss for a motive.


...okay, that's actually kind of direct, and that's the point. It's hard to make indirect links.

As before, the players vote on the most and least plausible articles (and their overall consistancy with earlier articles should be taking into account from now on) and assign points.

If on a given turn there is one player whose articles have more links to earlier articles than anybody else's (i.e. no ties) and none of his or her articles get retracted for losing the plausibility vote that player gets a bonus point. Each player can get the linkage bonus only once per game.

There is another type of bonus, which is subtlety bonus. If, during a given round, the other players unanimously agree that a particular news item was a masterpiece of wit and subtletly, it's author gets a bonus point. That article cannot have any direct connections to other articles. There is no limit to the number of subtlety points a player can get.

The game continues for a pre-determined number of turns.


So, who's up for it? Put your name in a comment on this page. The year 2006 awaits...


Sounds like fun to me. Steve; We've had trouble not noticing comments so it seems to work better just to add comments to the bottom of the page.
Seems like you've got some experience with Wiki's glad to have you participating.

Glad to be here. I'm not an archeologist, but I am a physiologist. Is that close enough?
Yeah I've played around with TikiWiki before, and figured out a few tricks. If there is anything I can help with, just holler.

Once we have at least three or four people, we can start this game.

Way close enough I'm the software guy; Kris is the main archeologist here and she ought to show up this weekend.

I'm the complicated person, and I like this idea a lot — sort of a wikipedia of the future, a speculative wiki. Is 2006 far enough out? I say this thinking of Just Imagine which Steve & I saw last weekend — a movie made in 1930 in which a guy from 1930 is revived in the far, far future of 1980. And what a future. Hey! Where's my aircar?? — Kristin (not Kris)


I'm in! Kris (not Kristin)



Hi, Steve, Kristin, and Kris. Looks like we have enough people. Or should we wait for even more?
Lots of sci-fi puts a lot of focus on hard-science plausibility and then goes right ahead and postulates utterly absurd social/economic/cultural developments. A reason for starting in 2006 is that it encourages us to come up with a plausible pathway from here to whatever far-out scenario we end up with. If we want to take this into the far future, we can maybe have 5 or 10 year turns. What does everyone think?


If we're starting and not waiting, everyone pick the news desk they want to start. Since there are so few of us, I propose we ditch sports, and health(since health can fold into science and technology while sports is... well, sports). That leaves five news desks, and that's fine-- one can be a rotating empty slot...

No, wait. I have a better idea...

...the empty slot is filled by the whizkid reporter Irma Ching. The paragraph corresponding to whatever day of the week it happens to be is her story for this round, and is to be interpreted by the rest of us in the context of whatever news desk she happens to be occupying. If she goes more than once in a single day, we report the next paragraph, and so on, wrapping around to the first if necessary. If she goes more than seven times in one day... um... we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I don't think we're going to get through anywhere near that many turns in a single day.

Let's start. Right now we (Steve & Kristin) are meeting friends to go see Christo's Gates in Central Park, so we may not be able to contribute much for a few days. Good point on setting things relatively soon to keep them plausible; thus we will avoid the aircars and food pills and such.


You are a "hoot", FP. I had a brainflash and have cobbed the Entertainment slot to get it out of my system. Kris;
I'll take World Events and think of something add today. Steve

So far we have...

EntertainmentKris
WorldEvents|Steve
BusinessI.Ching
ScienceAndTech|Kristin
NewsofTheWierdF1r3br4nd


W00t. We're ready to go. Oh, wait... I need to sleep so much it almost hurts. BRB.
--f1r3br4nd


Hey, does anybody have any objections to announcing the game here...
http://www.rpgregistry.com/schedulersearch.php

I don't want to draw unwanted traffic, so I won't announce it unless someone says it's okay.


I'll try Science & Tech — Kristin.
Announcing on rpgregistry is ok by me.

Aaaand ... we got stories starting at 2006
Created by f1r3br4nd. Last Modification: Monday 21 of February, 2005 19:22:29 EST by kristin.