Sim UniWiki (Split from "Spam Killed...")

[Mike Holmes]

I'm interested in playing because I'd like to see what Universalis does with a different set of parameters.  But honestly, without story, it's hard for me to envision the point.

What's the "point" to playing, say, Myst? It's just to go around and discover the world and play through the little puzzles. My wife, for instance, really gets frustrated with the more complicated puzzles that prevent her from seeing more of the world. But otherwise she really likes playing the series of games. She likes them because she just likes moving around in the environment and seeing what's there.

I don't think that she'd do away with the puzzles entirely, but I think that she'd just prefer them to be simple so that they never really impeded the exploration going on.

What I'm proposing involves a few things:
A) Different from Myst, instead of player challenges, the secondary attraction is story creation.
B) The primary attraction of play is exploration. That is what's most important, is just the feeling of discovering the world in question.
C) "Discovery" perforce, must mean creation of the world. Instead of wandering around a premade world we have to create it. Thus that creation is a primary driver of play.

What this means, for instance, is that players will spend time detailing things that have nothing to do with the stories that are being told. They might be involved later, but unlike the normal Universalis ideal of economy of expenditure, much of the spending in such a game would be "pointless" in terms of story, and just be creation for creation's sake.

Maybe it works like this(?):  We're still building stories, but they're really small, kind of ordinary stories -- stories that don't typically span scene breaks.  And as we accumulate tons of those stories, the world emerges as a semi-coherent thing with complex topology.

That's one way of looking at it. But a better way is to think of it as though the stories and the setting are being created independently of each other. That is, one player might create a temple complex with guards and powerful relics, and another player might have somebody come along and plunder it. The point is that the setting isn't created just to support the current story being told in most cases, instead the setting is created first, and then "played in" later.

[/quote]Is that how you're seeing it?[/quote]The key to understanding how this would "look" in play is to understand that players can create locations as often as they like. Normally in Universalis, you only create a location in one of three circumstances: a. in the Tenet Phase, b. when starting a scene, c. in a scene when shifting locations, or D. when somebody refers to something not in the scene, to "cement" that thing.

In this style of play players create locations or any sort of compontent at any time. Note that this isn't a violation of the rules - the four circumstances above are just how things tend to be created in Universalis. But any component can be created at any time and not inserted into the current scene. So this is just unusual to play (although I've seen players do it before in "normal" play), and doesn't need a Gimmick to set up.

Anyhow, the point is that players can create any part of the setting at any time. What happens then, is that characters move from location to location paying the one Coin to move the scene they are in.

The one "problem" with this is actually potentially an advantage. That is, basically, since there's no story pacing to worry about, you never have to close scenes. Meaning that if you open a scene just to create a location (which I could see happening in this version), then it could remain open indefinitely. Scenes following characters would never have to end, merely following them around like a Sim RPG.

The advantage is that you can drop all of the rules about "dangling" scenes. They can dangle indefinitely without much problem. But then what about remuneration? Well, there are a few ways of looking at this. One is to ignore the problem. That is, players will close scenes whenever they want to in order to get their payment. The nice thing is that anything created is still there waiting to be used again later.

The question becomes how often will players close scenes. One worries, as we have before, that players will open a scene, create a time, location, and enter one component, and then end the scene. Gaining them a profit in Coins and some stuff created for "free". Actually this might not be problematic. That is, people creating the world would be getting paid to do so. Which might be important for players doing this a lot, because otherwise - given doing fewer or no Complications - where do they get Coins from? I'd be willing to debate this, or come up with a Gimmick to handle it. Perhaps something like the "attractiveness" bonuses that we instituted in the last game. Another way to do this, however, would be to institute the Royalties Gimmick in some way.

The other question is how often "character scenes" would close (as opposed to the above which is more of a "location scene". I think this is less problematic however. For instance, if you have a bunch of characters wandering around together, then closing a scene, and starting a new one, and then entering all of the characters, is pretty expensive as compared to just altering the location of a current scene. So scene closing would be dependent on how events are moving. If, say, I want to move a single character from this scene to the next, then I can exit him for a coin, and start a new scene with him at another location subsequently. If this leaves, say, only one character in the old scene, the starting player may shut it down to get the scene reward instead of just paying the one and moving things on to the new location in the same scene.

In fact, the potential problem lies not with players making scenes go on forever, but instead with players shutting down and starting up new scenes incessantly to get the scene rewards. As above, I think that a simple "attractiveness bonus" or somesuch might be a solution (if one is needed at all).

This does leave the "unity of time" problem, however, which I'd like to diuscuss again. That is, if only an hour has passed for character one in a scene, and character two arrives having played through three days of events, then what time is it in the scene? Again, I'll appeal to MMORPG methods to resolve this, likely.

Whether or not I pegged it, as bob suggested a wedge against plot, what starting gimicks would you be imagining for kicking this thing off?

I'm not against people making plot at all. If some players want to do nothing but wander about in the world that the others are creating, and make plot up, I have no problem with that.

What I'm concerned with is that everyone will end up going in that direction. Meaning that there would be no aesthetic to support the worldbuilding activities that I want to do. OTOH, if everyone wanted to make plot, and was happy with me playing the part of the Game Master role that's involved with making up world, essentially, then I'd have no problem at all.

That is, part of the vision is that players would be as much worldbuilding game master as they want, and as much plot building player as they want when they want. The resulting play would be much more sim, I think, because a lot of it would just be doing things like detailing travel, etc. A cool thing that I hope would happen is that locations would develop "adjacencies" meaning that you'd list one location in terms of it's proximity to others. Here's where the Wiki really comes into play, as the listed adjacencies become links to the other locations. Meaning that doing walktroughs of the world becomes a snap. The "map" develops itself in a viral fashion.

For those familiar, this would make the game somewhat like a MUD (and similar forms) where everyone was a GM for the game, and both building and resolution were handled via the Universalis engine.

The hope is that as play develops a detailed world will develop as well in which other people can play to their heart's content. The problem of "investment" dissappears, because the players can learn of the world that's been developed as the characters that they're running find out. Since the requirements are more "sim" and therefore 'in character" then you don't have to worry about not being up to date with anyone's plot.

Does this clarify the vision at all for anyone?

Mike

[Ben Lehman]

Mike--

Just so you know you aren't crazy -- I am so down with this as a game concept.  "Universalis as storygame" never really gelled for me, but "Universalis as world-creation engine" really intrigues me.  If you get an online version off the ground, please let me know.

For everyone else -- think about it as a game in which the main joy does not come from conflicts, but from jazzing off each other's setting elements.  "Ohh, there are aerial rail lines?  Okay, we'll lets have rail pirates whose trains run underneath the tracks."*

yrs--
--Ben

P.S. *Cool idea is not mine, by Ethan Gafford's.  Credit where it is due.

[Bob McNamee]

Interesting, and appealling to me right now. I'm a bit in GM mode mindset.

I like the idea of Locations etc with exit links to adjacent areas, like East, West, up, etc...

[Mike Holmes]

Cool, I think I got the idea across, at least for some.

Another advantage of this is that if somebody doesn't participate for a while, it doesn't hurt anything else. That is, since there's no "plot" particularly to be driving, there's no pace to worry about, or problems with "unplayed" characters or any of that.

So you have both ends covered - players can take breaks all they want, and still feel like they have something to do when they come back, and for the people playing it doesn't matter who's participating at the time. You just play with whatever is there at the moment.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

I think I'm fully digging the aesthetic at this point.

But let's talk about how to make it happen.  

We tried to do location linkage in TUA1.  I think it should be more explicit.  A free linkage the way we did it, requiring there be at least one, and having a line in the header for each node (location) on the map for all points of traversal.

I really like royalties.  Since this game is going to be more about locations, I'm thinking that the locations should be owned by the creator, perhaps perpetually.  And a mechanic that pays the the owner for the use of the location should be in place.  One thing that I see that requiring is the ability to reach out and deposit Coins in the banks of other players, rather than counting on them to watch their locations.  If locations are owned, what regulates the addition of new traits by other players?  I'm inclined to allow it unless the owner wants to resist via Complication.  Or maybe certain traits can be designated by the owner (only?) as immutable -- some aspects of the temple complex can be altered (e.g. the gold stolen) and others not (e.g. the architecture, itself).  

So if royalties helps to compensate the World-Builder, are the rules any different for compensating the Story-Builder?  Or do we just rely on scene closure and Complication to reward them?

Should your notion of Character Scenes and Location Scenes be formally instituted?  

And what about other kinds of world building than just locations?  When a player invents a Master Component, they too, are shaping the world.  To what should royalties apply?

When discussing unity of time, what does appealing to "MMORPG methods" mean?  I presume we won't have a huge server-farm watching our characters and tracking time spent...

What I'm concerned with is that everyone will end up going in that direction. Meaning that there would be no aesthetic to support the worldbuilding activities that I want to do. OTOH, if everyone wanted to make plot, and was happy with me playing the part of the Game Master role that's involved with making up world, essentially, then I'd have no problem at all.

Did we specifically disable that option in TUA 1 and 2?  I'm thinking maybe we did -- by forcing Refresh to be based on how many other players were engaged in the scenes.  If not, why didn't you just play such a role?  Interestingly, before quitting on TUA2, I'd decided to save up for a shard in which I was to play a traditional GM role by implementing some of the gimicks to alter Coin flow and stuff.  But I realize you're not talking about exclusive GMiness, just defacto.

Chris

[kwill]

hmmm... I envisaging a Map page with all locations listed, probably divided by headers first, then nested lists (gawd, hopefully not too listed)

each location could include a header with links to nearby locations (for those wanting to browse by meandering through the world), a description with components included in the location (by "default"), and a list of scenes occuring in the location (ordered chronologically by game-time)

TEMPLE OF BAST

Nearby: The Plaza of Broken Moons, Windy Desert

Description:

The temple has an ornately decorated interior [1], including awnings of rich fabrics [1] and painted heiroglyphs [1]. Looming in the centre is a gigantic statue of Bast [1] holding a chest of gold [1].

Component details:

Gigantic statue of Bast
- unbreakable [1]
- protected by an ancient curse [1]

Chest of gold
- crafted by Aphestofeles [1]
- fiendishly difficult lock [1]

Scenes:

- Laying the foundation stone (15 July 5th year of the Reign of Kismet)
- Blessing of the temple (14 June 50th year of the Reign of Kismet)
- The statue bleeds (15 June 50th year of the Reign of Kismet/1st year of the Reign of Cleopatra)
- The temple is descocrated (14 July 1st year of the Reign of Cleopatra) [NB chest is stolen]
- Slaying the unrighteous (23 September 11th year of Reign of Cleopatra) [NB chest is returned]
- Temple discovered (15 July 2004, modern day)

[Mike Holmes]

Goddamit! I had a huge post covering this stuff already, and now it's gone. Aargh. I'll try again.

I think I'm fully digging the aesthetic at this point.

Cool. I must be doing something right.

We tried to do location linkage in TUA1.  I think it should be more explicit.  A free linkage the way we did it, requiring there be at least one, and having a line in the header for each node (location) on the map for all points of traversal.

Like David's cool example? That would work.

I really like royalties.  Since this game is going to be more about locations, I'm thinking that the locations should be owned by the creator, perhaps perpetually.  And a mechanic that pays the the owner for the use of the location should be in place.

There are good things and bad things about royalties. Anyhow, yes, you'd have the creator's name on whatever gets them royalties. This is not the same as control, however...

One thing that I see that requiring is the ability to reach out and deposit Coins in the banks of other players, rather than counting on them to watch their locations.

Sure, you just add one to the total of the player in their account when you use something with their creator stamp on it. Pretty simple.

If locations are owned, what regulates the addition of new traits by other players?  I'm inclined to allow it unless the owner wants to resist via Complication.  Or maybe certain traits can be designated by the owner (only?) as immutable -- some aspects of the temple complex can be altered (e.g. the gold stolen) and others not (e.g. the architecture, itself).

Creating is not perpetual control. That said, we could require an investment to make something get you royalties, and another investment (or roll it into one) to make the thing impervious to changes in control. Like a wider PC Gimmick.  

Again, another way to do this, much more simply is to ignore royalties, and let players open and close scenes at will. Which means you can open one up, create a little, and then close it for a profit. Which is the payment that you get for making the things you make.

So if royalties helps to compensate the World-Builder, are the rules any different for compensating the Story-Builder?  Or do we just rely on scene closure and Complication to reward them?

Yeah, if we do Royalties, then I think that they're just there to support people who want to play the worldbuilder more. Normal play already has enough support. No?

Should your notion of Character Scenes and Location Scenes be formally instituted?  

Probably not, but see below.

And what about other kinds of world building than just locations?  When a player invents a Master Component, they too, are shaping the world.  To what should royalties apply?

Well, I don't want to overincentivize worldbuilding. The original idea about Royalties was to get a coin any time any component was invoked in any way. Much easier to limit it to, say, Locations. The player still has an incentive to build traits into locations to make them attractive to visit.

When discussing unity of time, what does appealing to "MMORPG methods" mean?  I presume we won't have a huge server-farm watching our characters and tracking time spent...

My point is that in MMORPGs, different characters have different amounts of time pass depending on how much they are played. This is usually ignored, the idea being that time passing is largely irrellevant. Others have all kinds of rationalizations like "Magic Camping" which puts the character in another dimension when he's not being played. Others have time pass at a constant rate, and characters not being played are set to do some "downtime" routine. Etc.

There are loads of options. One that's available to us, but not to MMORPGs, is time tracking. That is, we could track the time of each scene in each locaton (like David suggests). The problem is that means that you have to read all "future" posts about a scene in order not to make a paradox occur  - as opposed to only having to have the current state of the location listed.  Another idea would be to have only one or few scenes going at once to avoid such problems entirely. In this case, then, yes, you'd want to differentiate worldbuilding scenes where you'd be allowed to build but not advance time at all, as opposed to the scenes where you'd have events occuring.

There are plenty of other ways to handle this as well. I'm up for any discussion on the subject.

Did we specifically disable that option in TUA 1 and 2?  I'm thinking maybe we did -- by forcing Refresh to be based on how many other players were engaged in the scenes.

Yeah, that was pretty much the problem.  We actually made it uneconomical to do this sort of thing.

If not, why didn't you just play such a role?

Well, even if there had not been such a limitation, I don't want to be the sole guy running around creating things because I doubt that they'd get used. That is, if not everyone is in on the aesthetic, I think that they'd just make what they need, and not do any "exloration."

Interestingly, before quitting on TUA2, I'd decided to save up for a shard in which I was to play a traditional GM role by implementing some of the gimicks to alter Coin flow and stuff.  But I realize you're not talking about exclusive GMiness, just defacto.

The problem there was that I didn't want to build stuff that would just dissappear a month later. That's why I was pushing for more permenance. Having the shards remain forever, or at least having stuff in Nexus remain constant. Again, I'm looking to make something with some permenance to it. Not a story that has a start, middle and end, but a world in which lots of stories can be told going on and on and on.

Mike

[Christopher Weeks]

What are the chances that y'all would be willing to include a coordinate system of some kind to enable mapping locations in space?  The nature of such a system would depend on the setting of the game, but I'm finding myself all geeked out about trying to write an application that scrapes the wiki and presents alternate interfaces for navigating the world that we create.

Chris

[Christopher Weeks]

Fuck! OK, this is not Chris, it's Mike. I hate being a fucking moderator, because I constantly edit posts instead of quoting them (the button is in the same place as the "quote" button would otherwise be. So I accidentally messed up Chris's post. You can probably get some of it from reading my response below.

Gah.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

What you're talking about is a map, essentially. That is a two dimensional representation of the objects in space. The problem is what do you consider the co-ordinates of a location? I mean, if there's a country listed, then doesn't that cover a lot of co-ordinate space?

What I'm thinking is less co-ordinates, and more "pointers" ala records in datastructures. This includes full object orientation. That is, things can be nested inside each other. So, Ostia is East of Oestia. Big City is in Ostia. Littleton is also in Ostia, but West of Big City. Inside Big City is the Temple of Rah. It is South of the Temple of Gozer. I think it's possible to create a map from that at different levels of zoom. The nice thing is that you can get as large or small as you like as all spatial distances are relative.

Now, if we want to actually list distances, then maybe a co-ordinate system would be neccessary to prevent impossibilities from occuring. If so, however, I'd keep it as abstract as possible in order to keep it from becoming unmanageble. For example, on a "city" scale have things in terms of Days of Travel or somesuch.

Care to expound?  Are there issues of promoting the wrong kind of play?

No, the big downside is the extra bookwork. The best alterations are those that simultaneously make the game easier to play, and promote the style you want. People assume that these are mutually exclusive, but they're not. IOW, if there's a simpler way to allow for people to get along with worldbuilding, I'm all for it.

It would be easier to make line-item entries in another player's ledger if we were all using the same system.  Something that had fields, even if just simple delimited text:

2004/07/13 1306 -- +1 -- My scene, [[Renee's New Sandals]] opened in your TempleOfBast.

I'd be for that. Here's where a tool would be really cool. Something that would scrape up expenditures and list them automatically.

In any case, simpler is better. I'd skip the timestamp (hopefully the system will sorta handle that for the rare occasions where it's needed), and find a shorthand of some sort.

+1 - R [[Renee's New Sandals]]

The player can click the link to see in what location the scene is set and what they got the Royalty (R) for. A link on each accounting page to a list of shorthand would make it easy to decipher when neccessary. The thing about accounting is that it's just there in case something gets messed up. It doesn't have to be particularly legible as it doesn't get read a lot.

I think something along both of these lines is beneficial.  Should there be a simple minimum expenditure on a location before royalties are paid?  Ten Coins?

I was thinking an additional flat fee of 5. If scene rewards are set back to the standard 5, then a player can't profit from a scene where he creates something with a Royalty attached - meaning that he has to make it attractive enough to be used to make anything off of it.

What if another player adds to a location and ends up adding more?  Might the royalty recipient shift?  In D@vid's temple, there is a statue of Bast and a chest of gold.  They're listed as components, but could have been written up as traits of the location component.  Should one of those methods be encouraged?  Should it be possible to make only one of them be immune to control changes?

Hard to say. The simplest seems to me to be that a player could "buy" something that was a Royalty generator for a price that they established between them. Same with control, if that's separate. I'm starting to think that separating them might be more complexity than is neccessary. In any case, "control" for these purposes cannot mean that a location can't be introduced in a scene, or they couldn't be employed to gain Royalties. It would have to mean simply a ban against assigning new traits.

Yeah.  In some ways it seems like I should favor that because it's simple.  But it really doesn't have the verve that royalties do.  Also, I think that royalties provide incentive to make locations that are cool and useful to the fellow players.  As to whether the cost is greater than the benefit, I'm not sure.

Depends on the implementation. I'm thinking the simplest Royalty rules we can come up with might be best.

I'd like to hear opinions.  I think this is one of the stickiest problems.  And one that's likely to be greater in what I envision to be a "more locations" game, where it is harder to track the details.

I agree, but see below.


Here's what I'm thinking might work best right now, overall. Please suggest improvements, or point out problems:

A player can pay five Coins to declare themselves Owner of a Component (By making this all Components, it makes this a PC rule as well for those willing to pay). Ownership entails:

[*]Royalty of one Coin from the bank to the Owner of a Component any time that Component is Introduced into a scene (including Framing a Location).
[*]The Owner automatically has Conrol of the item immediately after it has been Introduced, no matter who Introduced it.
[*]Control of a Component with an Owner cannot change during a scene (nobody controls anything not in a scene), unless the Owner agrees - which agreement can involve payment of Coins or trade of Owner status on other Components. [/list:u]Given this, we may want to introduce Eric's Optional Trait Donation Gimmck, and/or the player Banking Gimmicks (involving allowing players to give Coins with or without enforceable contracts).

The only rule change for scenes is that there are no scene rewards. Anyone can open a scene at any time (real), and anyone can close a scene that they've opened at any time (real). Though there's no particular reason to end a scene (which I like - perpetually open locations make for neat "scenes", IMO). If there's an apparent problem with a timeline, then it's up to people to challenge as normal. Otherwise, players are exhorted to try to keep all scenes in about the same timeline to make crossing timelines as rare as possible.

What this means for worldbuilders is that they can't make money doing it, unless they make themselves Owners and then get Royalties. Nobody can make money just by opening a scene and closing it. To make money in a scene you have to have Complications. So this means that scenes only drain your Coins unless you attract people to the scene (you can't have a complication with only one player).

I think that the Royalties will make up for the loss of scene revenue. If not, then I'm thinking that a reward of one Coin per day of play might be good. But the above is very simple, I think.

Mike

[kwill]

how about just a "Royalties: Mike" trait that can be added to any Component on which you have spent more than five coins (not including the Royalty trait)?

maybe there would be limitations as to which components you could add this to (e.g. only locations)

maybe rules as to how many times royalty traits could be added (e.g. simplest: only one, more complex: once you have spent 10 coins you can amend the Royalty trait to your name (superceding the previous creator), very complex: percentage royalities by Coins spent (we'll have to each hire agents to take care of this, have your people call my people and start shouting "Show me the money!" - I don't recommend this option ;)

there should also be a timeline page for listing scenes chronologically; thus scenes would be listed by Location (on their location page) and Time, their defining Traits - cunning

I think a "zooming" map page is probably a much better idea than my gigantic list - and easy enough to implement on a wiki (you wouldn't get the overview easily, but as a "wandering" uni game, that's not the aim)

I really don't think too much accounting should be neccessary - if someone notices a paradox, they can call it, otherwise it can slide

(I am fiendishly figuring out how to create a time travelling character who's personal chronology doesn't follow the "world" chronology - e.g. listing his scenes on his defining page)

[Ben Lehman]

See, I'm not totally sold on the idea of royalties.  I mean, they're cool and all, but I think something even cooler would be *reverse* royalties -- get paid for referencing pre-existing stuff that was designed by other people.  That's a strong incentive not to just go and build your own corner of the world, but really interact with the rest of it.

Actually, with a combination of royalties and reverse royalties... well... that could be your entire coin-refresh mechanic.

yrs--
--Ben

[Christopher Weeks]

So if I'm framing a scene, I pay a Coin to set the location, I pay a Coin each to introduce three existing characters, and then I get four Coins back for using pre-existing stuff?  

What if the scene framer (or whomever, later on) pays a Coin for each component introduced, but if the Components are owned, the Coin goes to the owner.  Then, when someone pays a Coin to take control from the framer, that Coin goes to the framer.  But only for pre-existing stuff.  Or something...

The thing is, I think Universalis already strongly incentivizes the use of pre-existing stuff because you get so much more bang for your buck, er Coin.  The idea of the two royalties systems combined is really intriguing, but I don't see how to work it within the framework of the Uni rules.

Actually, having played Universalis a fair bit now, the more I think about it, the more I think royalties are a "missing" part of the core rules.  Using the existing stuff is already rewarded.  But creating the stuff is not.  A Coin competitor would never frame -- just enter scenes, take control or enter new pre-existing characters and engage in complications.  But a built-in mechanism that rewards creators emasculates that approach (at least for games with many scenes -- probably not three-hour one-shots).

I guess I'm good with ignoring paradoxes that are missed, but D@vid, when you wrote "their defining Traits - cunning," what did that mean?

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

The thing is, I think Universalis already strongly incentivizes the use of pre-existing stuff because you get so much more bang for your buck, er Coin.  The idea of the two royalties systems combined is really intriguing, but I don't see how to work it within the framework of the Uni rules.

I have to agree with Chris. The incentive to use what's out there is that when you introduce something with lots of Traits, you have the potential of getting all sorts of free Coins from it in the scene. That's central to the design. People come back to that with Traits because it's been made interesting.

Actually, having played Universalis a fair bit now, the more I think about it, the more I think royalties are a "missing" part of the core rules.  Using the existing stuff is already rewarded.  But creating the stuff is not.

Well, it is in that you yourself can use the things you make. If everyone waits for someone else to make something, then nothing happens. If you wait for someone else to take the lead, you also abdicate those early decisions about what the aciton is about. Remember that the play itself is the final reward. Collecting Coins themselves is worthless.  

That said, it's an economy, and the Royalties would be there to incentivize a certain kind of play. As it happens, Chris, at one point Royalties were a part of the core rules. We did away with them because playtesters rightly saw that they were too much bookkeeping. For FTF play. For this style of play, I think we can get away with them if they're limited.

Hence why I'm for the large additional flat fee. The incentive to build a Royalty object up with Traits already exists - it makes it that much more likely to be used. That said, five may be too many. I could definitely see four, and maybe even three or two. One is just too small a surcharge for the benefits available, and everyone would make a themselves Owners of anything larger than 5 Traits. Why not?

I'd be willing to try a compromise of 3. Again, with no minimum expenditure - it's an unneccessary rule. If someone wants to make a Royalty item out of something with no Traits, they can go ahead, and hope that people bite. By making the surcharge large enough, it means that players will only do this on the few items that they think will be attractive enough for people to play with. Thus limiting the bookkeeping involved.


Scenes already require that they have their time indicated on them as part of framing. If locations have a list of scenes that have occured in them, listed chronologically, then each location will have a ready made history. Again, it's not so much that we'll just ignore paradox, but that we'll all try to avoid it, and call it when it's problematic. I think that's doable, unless we get past a certain horizon of activity (which hasn't threatened to happen yet).

Mike

[kwill]

I guess I'm good with ignoring paradoxes that are missed, but d@vid, when you wrote "their defining Traits - cunning," what did that mean?

I was referring to Scenes: their defining (well, only) Traits are their Location and Time, so you don't need to do more than list them in those places (the relevant Location page (eg, the Temple page), and the relevant chronology page (eg, the Twenty First Century page))

then you simply list the Location and Time on the Scene page itself, linking each back to the relevant page (Temple and 21C respectively)

if this could be automated, so much the better (e.g. applying a "Scene" template to a page forces you to fill in a Location and Time field, which are automatically linked up)