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Dear Group Leaders:

My name is Stacey Lucht and I am currently the President of the IntraGalactic League of Sims. What we are is an organization of simming groups that come to together in peaceful collaboration on the exchange of simming ideas and marketing. Some of the groups that currently hold membership are Charmed, Star Trek, Star Wars, ect.  We are an organization that prides itself on establishing diversity so all forms of role playing groups are welcome. If are organization is something that your group seems to be interested in please visit us at our website.  www.leagueofsims.cjb.net

Well, I can tell you one flaw of your site.

5 pages in and I still have no clue what you mean by "Simming"

Is this a fancy word for roleplaying or Larping?

Does this refer to the Sims video game?

Is it a form of hard core chat room role playing?

What exactly do your members do?

Quote from: ValamirWell, I can tell you one flaw of your site.

5 pages in and I still have no clue what you mean by "Simming"

Is this a fancy word for roleplaying or Larping?

Does this refer to the Sims video game?

Is it a form of hard core chat room role playing?

What exactly do your members do?

Simming is considered as online role playing.  The IntraGalactic League of Sims is a group of sim groups, like a modern United Nations.  The member groups sim using, chat rooms, message boards and email.

Hope this answers your questions.

From my experience of the word, "Simming" specifically refers to online roleplaying/storytelling/etc in an established universe (as mentioned in the first post, they're simming Charmed, Star Trek, etc.) and sometimes (though not always) including established characters as well.

Quote from: LxndrFrom my experience of the word, "Simming" specifically refers to online roleplaying/storytelling/etc in an established universe (as mentioned in the first post, they're simming Charmed, Star Trek, etc.) and sometimes (though not always) including established characters as well.

Interesting. I have to agree with Ralph, however, that there should be some sort of link to a FAQ explaining the term on the page somewhere, so you understand what you're looking at.

So...interactive fanfic?

You know, what really worries me is that these folks might outnumber us. :-)

Consider, guys, that we don't have a "what is roleplaying?" FAQ here. We assume that those landing on the site will know what they're talking about. I'm sure their site is no different - made for expert users.


Stacy, welcome to our planet.

How familiar are you with what we do here? I'm really interested in hearing what you know about us. Have you ever played any (tabletop) RPGs? Know people who do?

We have to have somebody here who has some idea of what Stacy's movement is all about. Anyone?

I think that we're going to have to establish a common language for people from other play traditions like this. Note how she says, "all roleplaying". To them I'm guessing that we definitely have to preface the term Roleplaying Game with Tabletop to be clear that we're not about CRPGs or LARPS or something.

(You'll note, Stacy, that we hold the potentially elitist idea that TRPGS represent the advent of all RPG play.)

Hmmm. Should there be a InterCosmos Role-Playing Council that brings together all these disparate forms? :-)

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesConsider, guys, that we don't have a "what is roleplaying?" FAQ here. We assume that those landing on the site will know what they're talking about. I'm sure their site is no different - made for expert users.

Consider, however, that I don't think any harm could be done by having a link to such a FAQ here -- in fact, it's arguably a good idea.

The other advantage of a FAQ is what they're doing is something I've seen done before, but no one called it "Simming". It often springs up spontanously where there are a lot of fans of the same thing. So having a FAQ means people can go: "Hey, we've been doing that all along!"

Basically what the IntraGalactic League of Sims is: We have observer and full members.  Some of the benefits of having membership within the league is receiving assistance with web-design from the Web Assistance Bureau, A chance to join different gaming simulations with our Open LAVA (League Administered Volunteer Activities) and a chance to get involved in the inner workings of the League government.

As far as the government goes...it is a two branch system at this point.  We have the Legislative and Judicial.  The Legislature is the Senate, which is lead by the Senate President, who is often refered to as the League President.  He/She is elected to six month terms every March 19 and September 19.  I'm working on my second election at the moment.
The Judicial area is the Supreme Court, which is staffed by a number of Court Justices, led by a Chief Justice.  Currently there are a total of three including the Chief Justice.

To clarify, when I say that the league accepts all Roleplaying as potential members, I mean those groups that meet online, play online and communicate online.  The requirements for a club to become a full member is that the club has to have at least 30 members and they have been an active group for at least 6 months and successfully pass a senate vote. Or if the club has been in existance for 1 year, they must have 20 members.  If clubs don't fall under either two, they may join as an observer club.

However, there is a bill in the senate to reduce member requirements to: Clubs must have 15 members and been active for 9 months and pass a senate vote.  Or have been active for 16 months and have 5 active members.

If anyone has questions please let me know.

I'm having trouble getting a handle on this. It is an online community where online communities can chat. And you have a senate to pass bills. I think I am missing the point here, please feel free to point it out to me!

Alright...The IntraGalactic League of Sims is an Online Community for it's members to get together and hang out, exchange roleplaying ideas, voice their concerns and participate community activities.

Communities don't participate inside the community.  people of member groups participate.

It sounds like Indie Netgaming would certainly qualify for membership...

Stacey, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like the ILS is performing a similar service to the Forge - encouraging, promoting, and assisting in a roleplaying-related activity.  In your case, it's online play.  In the Forge's case, it's publishing creator-owned tabletop RPG games.

Cool.

Stacy, again so we're clear, the sorts of games that we create and discuss here are mostly for "face to face" use. The Forge, isn't used to organize play at all - well, as a side effect of talking here play happens, but it's not the objective of the site. As Ethan points out, we're about creating and publishing games here.

Now, that doesn't mean that the games we create can't be used online; in fact this happens a lot. See my sig for a link to Indie Netgaming which Ethan mentions. There we play a lot of the games that are designed here online. But even when we play them online, the individual groups are small - 6 people is considered a large group, and some people (like myself), prefer no more than 4 in a game. So, even Indie Netgaming (see link in my sig) might not qualify in that reagard. Moreover, games tend to come and go a lot. That is, you don't set up a game and expect it to run in perpetuity, at some point these game have an end of some sort (the players "win", or there's an end to their story, or the characters end up dead, etc, etc.)

Have you been to www.rpg.net. If you've not been, beware that it's a sorta dangerous place in that it's a titanic community, extrememly active (nearing 100,000 threads with nearly 2 million posts), and has folks there who would as soon spit on someone with a different play style as talk to them. OTOH, it's the center of all tabletop activity in many ways. Again, that said however, no play occurs on that site (that I'm aware of, but who knows about Tangency). The site is about discussing play, and play doesn't occur in the fora there. And, again, what play is organized and discussed there isn't of the "multiplayer" sort that you describe, but small groups like I've described.

This is all to say that I'm not sure if anyone here meets your criteria for membership or not. We certainly have enough members (2000+) - the question is do they have to be involved in a single game? If not, does the whole site get one senator, or one from each of the maybe hundreds of games associated with this site, or the thousands associated with RPG.net? Seems unlikely. So how would our participation occur?

Forgive me if I'm telling you things that you know, I'm just trying to get a scope of your experience outside simming, so that we have a framwork for discussion. Do you know what D&D is? :-)

Mike

This conversation is intriguing in a strange way, like two ships passing each other in the dark... I went to their website, but the entire site seems to be in some in-character code or something. If the point is awakening my curiousity, I'd say it's wildly successful. I just fear that no real communication has happened yet.

So, Stacy dear, please, answer Mike's questions. And do it out of character if you please, this talk about senators and simming is confusing me :)

And while you're at it, do tell us more about simming. How you do it, what are some good sims, is there rules, how to learn more? And, even more interestingly, tell us about the demographics: What kind of people, in what countries, do it? Evidently we have here the rare kind of beast which uses web routinely but doesn't know what tabletop roleplaying is, doesn't seem to have the slightest hint about it. What other hobbies people in simming usually have, what do you chat about when not simming? Who are your idols, what kind of insider stories are told, what is the history of simming? Where does it originate? I have a feeling that we might be witnessing an indigenous form of roleplaying not having anything to do with Gary Gygax, if their president doesn't know about what it is we do.

Strange thing is, I've been marginally aware about there being a scene like this, I just haven't thought to contrast and compare to learn about the social implications of roleplaying. This might be, now that I think of it, a great way to prove/disprove Ron's theory about primacy of GN to S, for example, assuming there's no cultural connection to tabletop play like there is in virtually all other variant forms. Study of local tribes, as it were.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenThis conversation is intriguing in a strange way, like two ships passing each other in the dark... I went to their website, but the entire site seems to be in some in-character code or something. If the point is awakening my curiousity, I'd say it's wildly successful. I just fear that no real communication has happened yet.

So, Stacy dear, please, answer Mike's questions. And do it out of character if you please, this talk about senators and simming is confusing me :)

And while you're at it, do tell us more about simming. How you do it, what are some good sims, is there rules, how to learn more? And, even more interestingly, tell us about the demographics: What kind of people, in what countries, do it? Evidently we have here the rare kind of beast which uses web routinely but doesn't know what tabletop roleplaying is, doesn't seem to have the slightest hint about it. What other hobbies people in simming usually have, what do you chat about when not simming? Who are your idols, what kind of insider stories are told, what is the history of simming? Where does it originate? I have a feeling that we might be witnessing an indigenous form of roleplaying not having anything to do with Gary Gygax, if their president doesn't know about what it is we do.

Strange thing is, I've been marginally aware about there being a scene like this, I just haven't thought to contrast and compare to learn about the social implications of roleplaying. This might be, now that I think of it, a great way to prove/disprove Ron's theory about primacy of GN to S, for example, assuming there's no cultural connection to tabletop play like there is in virtually all other variant forms. Study of local tribes, as it were.

Okay it seems that there is quite a blit of confusion here.  The IntraGalactic League of Sims is not a Role Playing Organization...we are an orgnization for RP Groups.  My league is entirely an IC organization.  The Senators in the Senate and the Justices in the Court are people who hold those positions.  The ILS is classified and registered as a Non-Profit Organization.

I hope that this clarified some things.

Stacey,

What is your goal here?

It seems that people keep hitting you up for information and you choose not to provide it.  If you're too busy or something, then OK, but why post at all?  If you're being deliberately obfuscatory, why?

At appears that many of us really have no idea what you, as a human being, do when you "sim."  I think we get that you're logged into some service on the net -- even if it's as simple as exchanging emails, and that you're pretending something.  Beyond that, who knows?  What are you pretending?  Do you have rules?  Who is involved?  Do you want us to know?  If so, why won't you tell us?  If not, why are you here?

You wrote that people "get together and hang out, exchange roleplaying ideas, voice their concerns and participate in community activities."  Could you maybe present a few "roleplaying ideas," "concerns" of the nature that simmers might discuss, and the kind of "community activities" that you host?  

I think part of the confusion, is that you present kind of a bizarre face with this ultra-formal governmental policy to regulate (or something) a bunch of people getting together to make believe.  Presidents and Chief Justices and legislators and what not makes you sound really serious, but I'm not seeing what serious work you're accomplishing.  Is there a tremendous about of coordination taking place among these "simmers?"

Chris  (who asked twelve questions, not just one)