First Communications

Recently, having completed 99% of the Elthos Prime VB Program (the Edit Actions Screen still needs work, but other than that she's ready to demo), I decided to begin the process of communicating with the outside world. Oh yeah. Thus I got on Yahoo Groups and groused around for promising clusters of RPG creators and found, lo and behold, RPG-Create. I began communicating with them and have been a pretty active poster. I also created the Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester on February 24, 2006. That group has been quite fun. We meet at the Cobblestone Restaurant every other Wednsday or so, and talk about RPG World Weaving over dinner and drinks. It's been really great. Jarod, who was kind of the backbone of the group, however, has left to go to school in Los Angeles, and so the group has not been the same without him. Alas. But we will keep posting and trying to get the meetings going again. The idea of the LRPGSW is to have an Inklings type group that meets physically to discuss RPG world creation and Gamesmastering Techniques. It really has been fun. But things are rocky and with all that is going on in the world these days it is kind of hard to get people to focus on something so 'other worldly' as how to build, er, other worlds. Hehe. Oh well. But we keep trying. :)So these have been my primary vehicles for communication. The LRPGSW has been particularly interesting as the ideas that percolate around there are all about the creative aspects of World Weaving (a term we invented to describe the activity of creating the background, sociology, history, mythology, economics, main characters, and story elements of an RPG). I am the principal poster there, but that's ok - it is my group. However, it would be nice to see more people posting, and sometimes I'm not quite sure if what I've posted is making that much sense to people. I kind of throw out ideas and hope they will catch people's attention and fire their imaginations and get them thinking about World Weaving. However, when enough time goes by and I am the only poster I begin to think... "time to get new recruits". Perhaps I should ask the group if there's anything I can do to improve the participation, but that is a dead end question. No point in it. People participate if they feel inspired to do so, and that's that. Maybe they're busy with other things, or maybe I've written one character too many and overwhelmed the channel, or, or, or... heaven knows. But this entire experience is learning exercise for me so I'm sure to have lots of hits and misses. But the goal here is to keep going. Just like in war. Keeeeeep goooooiiiiinnnnnng. :)Anyway, after the first two meeting of the LRPGSW (you can read the meeting notes on the site in the Files section under Meeting Notes) I decided we could use a light-wieght RPG System to use for exploration of ideas in the Cobblestone Pub. Seeing as how we obviously would not want to drag out the big old books and charts and maps and have dozens of dice on the table and all that I decided to distill the Elthos Prime System down into a really really mini-system. Its called the Elthos "One Die System" (ODS) and it uses, yup, ONE six sided die to run the entire RPG. How's that for mini? :) Well, that actually came out pretty great and I created a booklet for it and printed it out in a spiral bound binder with heavy paper and threw in a few images. It really is a sweet little thing. Now I'm onto figuring out all the ins and outs of posting it online through an organization like RPGNow or Indi Press Revolution. But the rules at least are pretty much finished and the product looks good. At least I think so, but of course, well, I'm a little biased and so I can't be trusted. But I still think so anyway. :) I guess time will tell if the Market agrees. Ok time for work. Tah.