We have a hiatus, and we are no closer to putting Ages into the Uru Live engine.
This does not mean we cannot Write. People are working on offline Ages, updating the Blender plugin, working on Age designs, art, music, etc. All these are forms of Writing. On the other hand, they are mostly contained within the GoW forum (and other Writers sites). I don't think we're doing anything which is aimed at the Uru player community.
I propose a Writing game, to take place on the MOUL forums. Specifically, on the Creativity forum. This could be considered fanfic. The aim, however, is to create an Age, in public, in a way which gives it weight and clarity and detail. And is interesting for everybody to follow.
--- The proposal: ---
This is a game for two people, posting on a public web forum. They will take turns, each posting once a day. (Maybe twice if someone is feeling energetic.)
The structure is an explorer's journal, as he travels through a lost Age. As he explores, he discovers pages of an older journal -- one left by an inhabitant of the Age at its height. He inserts the older pages between his own, as he finds them (or perhaps as he translates them).
Thus, the *current* entries alternate with the *historic* entries. Each player is responsible for one set of entries, and so the players alternate as well. I will refer to the players as "Present" and "Past".
The players should not plan anything out in advance. They can exchange private messages to clarify details, but the primary interaction is the alternation of public posts.
Each player starts with ten white stones and one black stone. (Virtual stones -- purely a score-keeping device. This is not a competitive game, but we keep track of certain things.)
The Present player goes first. He writes a journal entry, from the explorer's point of view, about linking into the Age and what he sees. This should, of course, include finding a mouldering old journal.
At the end of the entry, the Present player adds a special "bookkeeping" line. This notes one to three elements from the entry which will turn out to be important. The elements can be anything mentioned in that entry: images, sounds, symbols, smells, memories, events, ideas or guesses about the Age. This is *introducing an element*.
(Note that the journals themselves can't be introduced as elements. They're taken for granted.)
Introducing an element *costs a white stone*. The bookkeeping line should note the player's current score. At the end of his first turn, Present might have seven white and one black (if he introduces three elements).
The Past player then takes his first turn. He writes the first entry of the older journal. He, too, can introduce up to three elements, spending white stones to do it. His bookkeeping line will therefore list up to six elements.
Each entry should be consistent with all previous entries. Naturally, there have been changes in the Age between the two eras. But the changes should make sense. (If a change is particularly striking or inexplicable, maybe you should spend a white stone on it!)
The players continue to take turns. Each player must introduce one to three elements per turn, as long as he has white stones left.
On each turn after your first, you can do something new: *resolve elements*. This means wrapping up one to three elements in some way, in your entry. Maybe the explorer figures out what an element really means. Maybe one element is a clue to another; that resolves both of them. Maybe the explorer realizes that two elements are connected. Resolving an element does not eliminate it from the story -- it can still be mentioned in later journal entries. But the need to explain it, or tie it in, is finished.
When you resolve elements, delete them from the bookkeeping line. But resolving more than one element together gives you a reward. Tying two elements together gives you a black stone; resolving *three* together is worth *two* black stones.
What are black stones for? On your turn, you can spend a black stone to *re-introduce* a resolved element. And then it's the other player's job to resolve it again. (It doesn't matter who introduced it in the first place.) You don't have to mention the element in your entry, although you may. The black stone just ensures that something new will be discovered, eventually, about that element. The other player doesn't have to resolve it immediately, but he has to do it by the end of the game.
You can also spend *two* black stones to *contradict* something the other player has written. (Add a note to the bookkeeping line saying exactly what changed.) The other player's next entry must include the discovery that his previous entry was wrong! He is free to invent the reason for his character's mistake.
(Note that you can contradict your own previous entry for free. That's just writing about a new discovery. However, if your original idea has been picked up by the other player, such that changing your mind contradicts *his* entries, then you have to pay the two black stones.)
The game ends when each player is out of white stones, and all elements have been resolved. (Thus, each player will have introduced ten elements.) Each player then gets one more entry to wrap up his character's story. (You may not spend black stones on this last clean-up turn.)
Guild of Writers
