Rubber-oriented role playing game ("RPG")

I would be interested in supporting the development of some sort of rubber-oriented role playing game ("RPG") here in the IAR Forums.

I think the Forums might work well for a variation of the well-established email-based RPGemail based RPG^{G M Y} methodologies. The technical platform is already in place and most people already know how to use it. The literary aspects of designing each story environment is where the real challenge would lie.

I have also wondered if this is something that could be done well in a wiki^Forums wiki^{G M Y} wiki^Wped.

I am NOT a gamer myself and don't know much about this nor do I have the right mindset to develop it. Someone else would need to step forward to take a leadersip role in designing the RPG literary environment and manage it. This person should have some real editorial skill in creating and managing interactive stories.

I invite you to post your thoughts on this here.

This is a very good idea, I think, however we need to do some serious thinking about setting and rules and such... Maybe a separate sub-forum under Computers & technology called "Online Rubberist RPG" or something like that would be good? :) I could see the thread become very, very big otherwise...

Quote:

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Originally spoken by leinir

*giggles* I did notice your Y! screen name :) I guess the last message hit the button for you to make the connection ;) The suggestion still stands, and I didn't describe it in too much further details because I knew you would get where I was going ;) Making a generic model that would work for anyone who would like to have a rubber model, tail or no tail, would definitely be well recieved by many, many people :)

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Then its settled! All I need to do then is check to see how it is done and then I will take that information and rubberize a skin! ___

Here are some PbEM (Play by Email) RPG's that might serve as models for something we could do here with a rubbery theme:

http://www.phoenyx.net/pbemlist.html
http://www.2d10.com/introduction.html

Some stray thoughts:

• I suspect it might be useful to have two levels of game rules and settings.
  • The "META RULES" would be universal to all games and all environments such as "thou shalt not kill another player", no explicit sex scenes (very critical), etc. These would deal mostly with acceptable player conduct, I think.
  • The second level or "RPG RULES" would be those which apply to a specifc game and could focus more on defining its world such as "the year is 2040","Black rubber is more expensive than green rubber", etc.
• Each RPG should have a clearly defined beginning and end/win as well as an objective. For good literary tension, there should also be a number of impediments to meeting the objective that players must overcome. This need not be competitive in nature.
• We could probably find an aspiring PHP programmer to build an "all-purpose" multiple-sided dice roll script to provide a random element to certain kinds of choices. I might even be able to build this myself (gives me an excuse to learn a bit of PHP).
• I think I can set things up so that everyone can read a given RPG but only persons specifically designated as the "official" players can actually post in it. I also think I can assign moderator permissions to the creator of each game.
• While it is obviously important that players enjoy their gaming, the most important thing is that the RPG's should exist for all to enjoy even tho' the number of actual players must, ncessarily, be limited. Players should think of themselves as "actors on a stage"; as performers. Consequently, one of the criteria that should be specified when inventing an RPG is a "literary quality standard" for the players to meet in their performance. Nothing will turn the "audience" off faster than bad acting or bad writing. What are your ideas for assuring a reasonable level of literary quality?
• Perhaps we need to think about some sort of "players school" to help novice players get started?

What are your ideas?

(Leinir--this thread will do for a while. If this really does take off I can always move it to an upper level forum setting. Let's see how it evolves. )

Ataraxia, that sounds like a wonderful idea to do! Having actual role playing experience myself, I would surely love to be a player. I never was good at making my own adventures and then being DM :o But yeah, if we could set up a PbEM, I would surely join up :D

recently i saw an interesting online rpg www.sociolotron.com perhaps something like this could be adapted? or at least used as a basis? never played the thing, so i'm not sure what it's like, but if it had some rubber skins, i'd be all over it http://rubberist.net/forums/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Encased-

Sociolotron.com looks extremely interesting!

This appears to have many elements that we Rubberists could have some fun with. However, this is far more technologically ambitious than anything I could offer here.

However, I sense a possible opportunity for us here....

It appears that the game is very much in the development stages and they are actively seeking beta testers. Suppose a whole bunch of IAR members were to become testers? (They charge a "symbolic" fee of $3 for that. It's probably a way to weed out the "curiosity seekers".) In theory, we might be able to add some rubbery influences to the overall design of the game. For example, perhaps "Rubberist" should be added to their "skills" section, etc. Also think about all of the rubbery artwork....

Spend some "quality" time looking over the http://www.sociolotron.com site. Then let me know what you think I could do as the director of the IAR to approach them and offer some sort of "joint venture" with them.

I do see some potential issues with this, however. Given the scale of the technical infrastructure it requires, it is very likely that it will eventaully become commercial. Another aspect is that it appears to be based soley in real-time which creates time-zone issues. Also, if it becomes very popular, the rubberist elements may be eventually drowned out by the vanilllas, etc.

If nothing else, they have some interesting game design philosophies that we might adapt to a forums-based RPG as I origiinally proposed.

What are your ideas?