Lexicon Update

[active_apathy]

As a follow-up to the previous posts, we've been working on sorting out some more details for the game.

For those who missed it, or who'd like a summary here: Lexicon is a game where players take on the role of revisionist scholars writing an encyclopaedia about some fictional setting, or event, or place. Each turn, players write encyclopaedia entries with topics that start with a particular letter; these entries must link to a previous entry (where such entries exist) and link to two as-yet unwritten entries. Entries may (and should!) disagree wildly on interpretations, but any fact given in an entry is true within the game world; your colleagues are misguided idiots, but are honest in their work.

Most people who answered the first poll seem to be happiest with using a wiki for the entries, and an LJ comm to sort out administrative and metagame stuff. To this end, we're currently planning to use Wikidot.com to host the wiki, and to clean up and recycle apathy_games for the rest of it. (Don't join the comm just yet, though; we'll be clearing out the members list at the same time as the old entries.)

At the moment, we're mostly settled on the idea of players writing two entries each week - A and B, C and D, and so forth, which would make a game last about 13 weeks. The "rule of X" would also be used - on the W-X turn, the X article can instead begin with any letter at all.

For those who can't write their entries by the due dates (for whatever reason), stubs are perfectly acceptable, provided they meet the linking requirements. These stubs could then be filled in at a later time, but would have to agree with any facts posted in later entries.

Theme and genre are yet to be decided; what we'd like to do at the moment is see what you think of what we've got so far, find out who's probably going to play, and start trying to sort out a game topic that works for everyone.

To that end, if you're still interested in playing, please answer the poll below and post any other ideas or comments you have in the comments here. Thanks!



[Poll #1109658]

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Depends on how much the theme/setting/etc grabs my attention. Which I can't comment seriously on until I see it.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. At the moment, it seems like it may lean toward a kind of Olde Worlde Fantasie kind of wizardly bestiary or field guide or such. Which, I imagine, may interest a medievalist with a taste for weird fiction. :)

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Especially one who wrote an essay on bestiaries. So, awesome.

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Also, my comment should have read "Mievillian fantasy." Me spell gud.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

That's kind of what I guessed, and New Weird is compatible with most of the other suggestions so far.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

The problem with a bestiary is that it's really just a list of creatures... and it can quickly become hard to link every creature to three others in a coherent manner.

Personages and events are much easier to crosslink.

Now, if we were doing, say, a travellers guide to a fictitious nation, we could include places, people, things, events AND creatures.

And there's nothing saying a certain scholar, in character, may only write bestiary entries for instance :)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

And even other things - a [[thing]] may be made out of [[refined handwavium]], mined in the foothills of the [[somethingian ranges]] and processed by way of [[discombobulation]]; it's perfectly possible to add links to articles for other sources added later.

There's a problem if only one player writes creatures, though, because one of their creatures can't really be linked to another of their own entries. Food chains and academic sins don't quite mix.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

I didn't say only one person writes creatures, merely that one person always does articles on creatures rather than events and such. Other people can also do creatures, naturally, allowing crossbreeding of articles.

But aside from shared habitat and basic food chains, an all-bestiary game would be very hard to link up.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that it'd have to be only one person writing creatures; just that someone who prefers to write creatures depends on other players writing things to link in.

And, yes. Also, kind of dull for some players.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

...and the bit I forgot: so, yes, I'm liking the idea of something like the Upper Squibulon Council of Wizards guide to the Realm of Transalpine Thadeen, or such.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

It is a good idea. It allows all types of articles to be written :)

This also leaves open the Sequel Door.

Game 2 could be the Upper Squibulon Council of Wizards guide to the Fandethulathau Reaches... and so on.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Or Upper Squibulon: a History, or something. :D

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Squibulon Academy: a History ;)