| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Expanding

Page history last edited by PBworks 18 years, 1 month ago

The Expanding Universe

 

Zamani is being designed as an ‘Expanding Universe’ setting, this means that you are being given only a specific layer of information at the start of character generation so that you have some idea about possibilities available to you and present.

 

The Zamani Wiki acts as a duplication of the startup information and a refinement of it into an easy to use form. It also is designed to allow the GM and you the player to help expand the setting's "universe" adding layers of detail as we play.

 

On the paper side of things, the concept is that after you have made choices about your character, the GM will then (depending on need) give you additional handout pages for your character book, based on what your character knows, researches, encounters and discovers. He'll also let you add linkage and ideas into the wiki (you'll be given a password) to follow your interests and to suggest things you would find nifty in becoming part of the cannon of the setting.

 

This way you are never overloaded with too much information you don’t need, and so that you can acclimate yourself to the worlds of the Zamani system and setting over time.

 

It also means that you have to accept that you as a player you don’t know everything going on, every last detail of the world and it’s past, present and potential for the future. There are mysteries, information gaps and details that are just not common knowledge for you.

 

In the real world people generally do not know everything about the world they live in. There are numerous unanswered questions, facts known only to a few, or events that lie hidden and unknown until a scientist, philosopher, or some other person finds an answer to it.

 

If the world is handed to you at the start on a silver platter, with every detail, concept, geographic oddity, magical possibility, risk, danger or unusual fact about life the universe and everything then it becomes too easy, too mundane and far more boring a world. Each character, beyond all other goals, should be on a journey of personal discovery and enlightenment in some way.

 

Even the GM doesn’t know all the details in the game - some are developed as time goes on, based upon the hypothesis of characters, some are invented on the spot and interwoven into the cannon, and other things occur based upon the choices and actions of your characters. Additionally material from the wiki that players suggest, write or add will grow into the game setting details.

 

Since there is no ‘over-arcing plot’ no ‘meta-story’ that will over rule anything and everything you do, you are a greater participant in the world setting and in many ways it’s design will expand based upon your interests, choices and activities along the way.

 

Thus you get a more complex and developed tapestry of a world to enjoy, and the GM gets to see where the possibilities will lead from the threads that are woven at the start to send you on your way.

 

This style of game needs more creativity, a certain amount of pro-activeness on your part as a player and an ability to look beyond what you have been handed to begin. If you take the challenge to be involved you may find it more rewarding than other game styles you have experienced in the past.

 

If you want, after becoming familiar with the basics, to deal with larger expansions or even delve into a co-Gmming situation and run your own storylines and campaigns out of the shared wiki database, then that to can be achieved.

 

The only rule with all of this is that the initial GM remains somewhat in control of the wiki, as a sort of master editor, to avoid duplication of effort, contradictory materials or concepts that just plain break the setting when combined with the rest of it.

 

 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.5 License.

It is copyright 2006 By Joseph Teller unquietsoul@gmail.com & Kiralee Mccauley dancingkiralee@gmail.com.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.