A New Age Begins

Okay, it's been a bit more than 11 days. I'm not as in-flow with my GTD stuff yet, but I am getting better at it.

Here's what's happened and will happen:

1. I've created The Unseen wiki.
2. Next, I'll be looking into migrating material from a Blogger account to my TikiWiki blog and then copying The Unseen material over.
3. The material here will remain as it is (no matter how hard it is to make out).
4. On The Unseen wiki, I will reorganize this material to be more readable and printable.
5. Starting now, this will be just my change log. I will consider closing this depending on what you request. (In the comments please!)

Let me detail my early thoughts on operating an LARP ARG.

First off, it won't be quite so 'the user has no ideas where the content is' like commercial ARGs. The officially supported material will be available on the operator's site (TheUnseen.ScattershotGames.com for the playtest). Members are welcome to create any kind of puzzles and leads to unofficial material; this will be subject to regular contests. Striving to win these contests will bring things closer to certain standards of 'solvability' and 'quality'.

Next, I am going to dig up all the notes I created about secret societies for The Unseen. These will appear on the site in three forms: direct, historical transcription of the notes; sections rewritten for the game (either part of the 'downloadable' source or as one of the web-supplements); and finally, as password-protected mini-forums / sites for the players to make use of.

Attendance, scheduling, networking and journals will appear in the 'general' areas of the wiki. This will help people schedule their play better and keep interested when unable to attend. This won't be like a typical LARP. Play will be 'available' at all times in one fashion or another. You can email other chara (not their players directly due to confidentiality issues), call them (only if certain permissions are given), as well as chat, forum and 'facebook' with them.

I believe that a LARP ARG will work very well with a social networking site built in. The primary one will be Out of Chara (OoC) and allow people to discuss anything relating to the game. The In Chara (IC) spaces will be tailored to fit the ambiance in terms of theme and 'technology' as well as restricted only to chara who have in-game rationale for access.

I'd also like to offer rewards for OoC bloggers who keep up a steady news flow for people to feel more involved as well as interest new members.

In form, the game will have participants using chara which live secretly under the cover of the player's real identity; this is what we used to call 'avatar play' in the old days.

I'll bring you more later! See you in 14....

Fang Langford