Category: Other Articles

The SciWorld Online convention continued two more days with more interesting seminars and exciting chats.

The second day of SciWorld Online 2007 started with a very interesting discussion about using blogs as a way to share your posts in a game. Instead of IRC simming where you are required to show up on a set time, Email game where you receive a ton of messages or forum games that can often be complicated to follow – using a blog is a good way to keep it simple and easy to follow. A blog is also a good way to keep visitors and members up to date about what is going on. While the discussion tended to be a bit tech-heavy, it was very informative.

At the same time in another chat room, there was a seminar about running a club for long-term success. Hosted by a organization that was founded 1991 and moved to the internet in 1997, it provided a list of things that can help a group. The discussions covered: Their Academy, a place where new members learn how to play the game. The library part of their website where documents are kept, sort of an institutional memory. And finally the importance of having a community. This group had a chatroom and also held offline meetings every year.

The second day of SciWorld Online 2007 started with a very interesting discussion about using blogs as a way to share your posts in a game. Instead of IRC simming where you are required to show up on a set time, Email game where you recieve a ton of messages or forum games that can often be complicated to follow – using a blog is a good way to keep it simple and easy to follow. A blog is also a good way to keep visitors and members up to date about what is going on. While the discussion tended to be a bit tech-heavy, it was very informative.

At the same time in another chat room, there was a seminar about running a club for long term success. Hosted by a organization that was founded 1991 and moved to the internet in 1997, it provided a list of things that can help a group. The discussions covered: Their Academy, a place where new members learn how to play the game. The library part of their website where documents are kept, sort of an institutional memory. And finally the importance of having a community. This group had a chatroom and also held offline metings every year.

The third day opened with a discussion about different simming genres. Most people attending the seminars come from a Trek background, but a lot of new TV shows and even books are making it into the RPG world. It was said though, that players from different genres kept within their own community and seldom crossed over to play other genres.

There was also a discussion about alternative universes and how they can improve the creativity since the boundaries set by the original show are not as strict.

The last seminar of this year’s SciWorld online was about different types of simming. More aimed towards game hosts than the players, it covered the advantages of IRC over using IMs (such as AIM) or AOL chat rooms. It also mentioned message board games.

Overall, the convention was well visited and the quality of the seminars was very high. Some of the material was used in several seminars are they shared almost the same topic. I am already looking forward to next year, with hopes of more diverse topics

The 2007 SciWorld Online convention took place in online chat rooms April 3 to April 5. It focuses on online role playing for PBEM (Play By Email) games/Play By Message board games and online chat sims. This is what happened during the first day.

The 2007 SciWorld Online convention took place in online chat rooms April 3 to April 5. It focuses on online role playing for PBEM (Play By Email) games/Play By Message board games and online chat sims.

The convention started with a very exciting discussion about trends in simming. Hosted by Chas Hammer of Trek Online Sims & Games, it brought up some interesting points about what is hot and what is not in online role playing today. Some of the attendees mentioned how MMOs and PBEM/sims competed, but concluded that play by email games or play by message board games always attracts people interested in writing. Chat games on the other hand, is harder to recruit for.
Another interesting point brought up in the discussion was all the new games taking place in the universes of all the new popular TV shows such as Firefly. As Chas put it, “It’s safe to say that Trek is no longer the king.” The general consensus was that these types of games helps keep online role playing alive, even though the games themselves may not go on for as long as some trek games.

A bit later in the evening, CaptWarp of the Starfleet Legacy Alliance took the floor and held a seminar about “Keeping it fun”. One of the problems identified was the struggle between keeping true to the TV show the game is based on, keeping it canon, and the players that instead wants to continue to build on it in new directions. Some of the suggestions on how to handle such situations were to keep separate games for the two types of players. Another solution would be to bend the rules of the game, but still stay true to the show, allowing for some creativity but still stay within the limits of the universe.
New players in a game can feel lost if they are thrown into a storyline, especially if it is of the more creative kind. Encouraging them to work closely together with a senior player was suggested as a very effective way of keeping it fun for them.

Ending the first exciting day was FSF Starla of the Federation Sim Fleet with the topic “God Mode”. The concept of God Mode is something most games encounter eventually. It is when a player writes his or her character as something more than what it really is and by that ruins a story by solving it too fast or not leaving enough room for other to join in.
While this seminar focused on chat games, some of the conclusions can be used in PBEM games too. For example ignoring them, write their character as being hurt and send them off for treatment. Starla also suggested talking to them in private, explaining what they did wrong.

The SciWorld 2006 Online Convention was held on March 29th-31st 2006, it covered chats about a wide range of subjects relating to online roleplaying.While I did not have the opportunity to attend in person due to being in a different time zone, I have received reports from friends as well as read the logs collected during the convention.

The discussions
Most of the discussions and open games were originally about live action games, such as roleplaying in online chat rooms and virtual-reality worlds. However, the discussion topics could easily be used in PBEM games too. With one of the sponsors, the USS Wyvern game, being a PBEM game many of the visitors came from a PBEM background. This helped turn the discussions towards that side of roleplaying.

The chat discussions hold by various sponsors ranged from discussions about NPCs to how to start and run your own game and to relationships in and outside of games.

The website for SciWorld 2006 can be found at http://www.sciworldonline.com/

Day 1
Wednesday featured, along with an open chat room for general discussions and two open games, a discussion about NPCs. A lot of different opinions and ways of using NPCs came up. For example, how NPCs can be considered the property of a player. The attending guests shared stories and memories such as their all-time favorite NPCs.

Day 2
During the second day, a gaming group showed their game in the virtual-reality world Second Life. Alongside these games, trivia sessions were held in another chat room. The day’s topic of discussions concerned starting a new game and the history of simming.

One major point in the discussions was how games need to work together nowadays to attract new players. With chat rooms becoming more and more uncommon and popular recruitment websites such as pbem.com being offline, there needs to be new places to find players.

The discussion also covered the change in how gaming groups are organized. Years ago, there were massive organizations with several gaming groups under one flag, united for administration and recruitment purposes. Nowadays, they are no as common.

Day 3
The third, and last, day of SciWord 2006 featured several interesting discussions as well as the usual open chats, open games and trivia sessions. The first discussion was concerning useful resources on the Internet that can be used by games or players. It covered the use of message boards, blogs and easy ways of building and maintaining a website for your game.

The second discussion for the evening is probably the one that was geared the most towards PBEM games. It covered several topics ranging from the basics of roleplaying by email to the role of being the Game Master for such a game.

The evening ended with two discussions that turned into one long discussion about relationships and genders in roleplaying games. Stories were shared about how games have brought together several couples, but the effects of couples in games were also discussed. One interesting topic was about players playing characters of a different gender than themselves.

Conclusion
The convention was very successful; many people from different gaming backgrounds joined in to share their experience with online games. I look forward to next year’s convention!