Frontier: No Limitation as Limitation

[JasonPalenske]

In regards to settings your only limitation is what you impose upon yourself. I say this because I have purposefully left the Frontier settings wide open. By wide open I mean incomplete, leaving a lot of questions. I did this for alot of reasons, but not because of laziness. My main reason first and foremost was not to box anyone in with a lot of this is so and that is thus statements that might make a Director feel they could not alter the setting.

I'll use Exodus as an example.

First, Exodus is a science fiction setting with a gritty flavor to it. The game area begins with only twenty light years of space settled byman and there are no alien species known at the beginning of game play. I have left hints of possible contact but that is all. My intent is that the players answer these questions with their adventures. In time I want to expand the actual setting based on player submissions in an internet format creating an interactive map. It is my intent to do this with all of my settings.

My question is has anyone actively tried to do this, or what pitfalls can they foresee in trying to do it? One of my main goals with Frontier is to create an interactive community among settings. Does this seem like an attainable goal or am I perhaps reaching too far?

Jason

[mutex]

Well, it's certainly interesting.  I think it could be successful, especially considering The Shadows of Yesterday wiki.

If you wanted people to interact from different campaigns, you could have Transmissions from Space.  Even light and radio waves travel slowly relative to the distances between heavenly bodies.  Perhaps campaign material for a given planet is received via the wiki.  Of course, when the next group gets there, it's been years since the original frontiersman were there.

Another precedent is the exploration computer game, Noctis, where people play in randomly generated universes.  Every place they explore gets generated as they explore it.  Then, when they connect on-line, the explored areas are shared with everyone else.  So, after that their explored worlds become part of the established universe, thus pushing people out to the edge of the universe in order to "claim" a piece of their own.

So, yeah, it could work.

[JasonPalenske]

Well, it's certainly interesting.  I think it could be successful, especially considering The Shadows of Yesterday wiki.

If you wanted people to interact from different campaigns, you could have Transmissions from Space.  Even light and radio waves travel slowly relative to the distances between heavenly bodies.  Perhaps campaign material for a given planet is received via the wiki.  Of course, when the next group gets there, it's been years since the original frontiersman were there.

Another precedent is the exploration computer game, Noctis, where people play in randomly generated universes.  Every place they explore gets generated as they explore it.  Then, when they connect on-line, the explored areas are shared with everyone else.  So, after that their explored worlds become part of the established universe, thus pushing people out to the edge of the universe in order to "claim" a piece of their own.

So, yeah, it could work.

You know that is almost exactly what I'm going for ;) The trick is how to do it?

[mutex]

Well, if you set up the forum (wiki or something proprietary) for people to share their experiences, and make it as easy for them as possible (perhaps something like a Captain's Report form that might be a web form to convert Actual Play into catalogued source notes), oh and have them enjoy playing your game enough to participate in the MetaGame.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think the greatest pitfall here is that if you don't somehow guarantee that submissions connect to one another, you will not have interaction, but rather a disconnected mosaic of incompatible ideas (this is the planet of the ninja geisha tiger women! this is the planet that was colonised by a radical religious sect that confine women to the moon so that the planet will not be despoiled by their feet!).

Neel Krishnaswami's Lexicon provides a method for collaboration, in the form of the mandatory references; in your space-exploration game, I suggest that a more natural approach would be to mandate that all planets remain only partly explored on first contact, and first contact also raises a number of questions, which must be answered by subsequent explorers.

The implicit challenge in an approach like this is to make a partial exploration sufficiently interesting that it raises questions that are fun to answer, though, and this is a tall order.

[JasonPalenske]

So Shreyas would you say that probably the best method to accomplish this would be a submission guideline to help guide consistency?

[Shreyas Sampat]

Jason, you say that you want to create "an interactive community among settings".

I'm suggesting that unless you have a well-defined and mandatory way for submissions to interact, then you will not get this; rather, you'll get a collection of unconnected setting bits.

Have you had a chance to read up on Lexicon? 20x20room also has a post somewhere on it about various Lexicon games, which are pretty good examples of the way that its forced connectivity creates rich, unified results.

So, like, you might have an exploration template that works like Lexicon in reverse, like the following:

Code Select Expand


* Information about explored planet {
   * Two questions that such information raised. {
      Others may propose answers to these questions; other groups who make this discovery in reaction to the below two categories may define the correct answer.
   }
   * What other group would be likely to encounter the explorers? {
      Person who defined this group describes their interaction. {
         Original explorer describes their reaction.
      }
   }
   * What significant events occur here, in historical terms? Name two events and the groups they affect. {
      The affected groups describe their response.
   }
}

The point of this exercise is to invite other players (specifically, players that the submittor finds interesting) to interact with and add content to the submission, rather than adding items that are totally isolated. Lexicon does the opposite, predefining the linkages between items and then allowing the players to fill in items with linkages they find pleasing.

[JasonPalenske]

So in going off of Shreyas suggestion, I'm trying to develop a submission guideline so that people can add to what I'm calling the Frontier Gameverse. The first thing I have done is to set up the Frontier Wkikpedia where people can find all the current information as well as links to the different setting wiki's. This gives them access to the current rules, forums, etc.

As for the submission guidelines,

1. Should a player create a submission in regards to setting locations, such as a town or planet, they would need to introduce two points of interest.

2. The submission in regards to setting locations must be incomplete. Such as there are points of interest available for other players to fill in.

3. Submissions would be checked for consistency, such as the capital of such and such is Y, when in fact it has been established as X.

4. Organisation submissions, such as thieves guilds of a town, would not require two points of interest, but would need pertinent information such as how it is run, notable members, locations of contact. Notable members information would need to be provided in the form of character sheet with appropriate background information.

Now I'm sure if this will be enough or if it is too constrictive. Any help as always would be greatly appreciated.

Jason

[mutex]

Now, that sounds like a good plan.  Remember that constraint is necessary.  I mean, we don't even need RPG systems.  We could all just go outside and play.  But, sometimes system can make things even more interesting.

[JasonPalenske]

So far it is working really well. As I am setting up the pages I am finding lots of areas in which people can grab and go with. It's suprising how when you need to look at your work in a different way how much more of its possibilities you can see.