synopsis


What happens when you...?

 

 

... you get the Shashnia project!

 

The project has two major goals:

 

 

Play is structured around exploring how your desires and needs fit with those of others and the environment. Gameplay is made to be modular; to focus on player-driven content for items, areas, social structures and stories.  Players can set goals and achieve them, receiving points for advancement.

 

Where are all the Dwarfs, Elves and Dragons?

Thorough Synopsis

What you are reading now is part of an expanding creative project for community.  It is primarily a fictional encyclopedia of the Shashnimyn containing natural history, legends, heroes, inventions, and undergoing story creations.  These resources are designed with the intention of being used as role-play gaming source material.  A structure is being explored by which adventures can be written collaboratively, and explored through a simple web experience.  This allows the story content to come first before the mechanics of gameplay are sorted out.  The goal is to eventually turn this into publishable RPG source material, or potentially a collaborative CRPG.

 

The role-playing side of this project is meant to be closer to the free-form fiction interactions that is perceived in traditional pen and paper RPGs. However, it will also allow for straight-up dungeon crawling for those with that preference.  The adventures are written in such a manner that they persist as stories that can be replayed by others even if they are not actively writing new tableaus (tableaus referring to a unique page name and usually a single scene).  Some are legends of specific characters to follow through, others are templates to which other characters can move through.

 

This world will be community created by you and others, allowing every player to find the style of game they wish to participate in.  "Make your world".  If you want to play a gritty cyberpunk type game, become rebels or criminals in a massive city, trying to overthrow power from the concealment of shadows and intrigue.  If you want to fight wars, make your way North to the Demon Walls and join the armies of the Elemental Towers.  Travel around the country side, engaging in quests and campaigns.  Build a market or workshop and develop a trade.  Help to establish settlements through the farming simulation and use community-building strategy.  Be social or artistic and contribute through forums and messages, even these paths will gain you points to better your character and advance in the world.

 

Mission Statement

 

To create a vibrant fictional world in which many styles of stories and ideas can be harboured. To not only be creative and fantastic, but to encourage exploration of ideas that will lead to a positive development in our world.

 

 

Theme of world

 

The Shashnimyn are a generally peaceful race who try to live in harmony with the world around them. The main three types of civilization are in the jungles, deserts and sharp mountain ranges. These take the form of disperse but prevalent adventurers in the jungles, nomads and massive greenhouse arcologies in the deserts and strongholds in the mountains and the rare guru/wizard that goes out to challenge the elements (or is crazy enough to build a castle). The skies and the temperate areas are ruled by small farming communities. The algae cloud farmers travel the world taking slow passengers and selling their stocks. The outcast nation has bandit camps all over the continents and the Gumar keep quietly to their own island, their factories belching steam.

 

The Shashnimyn are not the strongest myn on Shashnia. The Termita are but one tribe of many animals. Tribes of all myn regularly challenge each other (either with intent to devour or compete, depending on their nature). There is ample playgrounds to adventure in but the real threat of the world comes from a weakening in the universe made by the devastating spell that ended the Magic war and brought apocalypse to the planet. The North pole is surrounded by layers of walls and towers, protected by the strongest of warriors. Those venturing past are confronted by the Demon Horde which it contains. What's actually at the pole is unknown, for any groups that try to reach it reach either a giant volcano, or ever-descending pit... and no one has made it all the way. Not even the leader of the Pantheon dares to seek out the centre.

 

Occasionally a demon escapes into the world and wreaks havoc. Dungeons and intrigue are constantly started by meddlesome evil. Naturally, the politics in big cities are another source of more criminal gaming...

 

A near utopian world is being beseiged by a Demon infiltration at the pole.  The world has comparable technology to our own, but is quite different in society and government.  They live more in harmony with nature and each other.  They are capable of conquering and routing other animal nations, or the large predators which chase them, but instead live in balance and tolerance (unless they raid your village, then the Shashnimyn fight back strongly).  They make us of domestic animals, magically-powered technology, steam and clockwork mechanics, and magically-shaped plant & insect constructs which act as living machines.  Almost every Shashnimyn is capable of using some magic, from simple heating and movement spells to spectacular performances of power.  They are primarily a peaceful race, but have a fierce sense of competition and respect for strength of all sorts.  The world is divided into three major countries: Red, White and Outcast.  The latter is unable to rise up against the dominant two.  Within the countries, local areas are divided into Nations, and these often compete against each other in ritualized combat (deathmatch or objective based combat) or other skilled competition (strategic games (including board games) or spell-casting duels)

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Goto a guided tour of the Grand Library - introduction to how to use this wiki

World Design - more about the fictional setting development/encyclopedia

Game Design - more about the development of mechanics and RPG aspect

 

How does one play?

 

Playing takes a similar form to play-by-post gaming, where individuals write new parts of the story connected to their characters to add to previous sections of the story.  This is distinct from that style of play in that through the wiki/web format, options can be created to allow the story to split into multiple possibilities.  Using hyper-linking and some record keeping, players can follow through stories and options written by others.

 

The historical goal of the Shashnimyn is to eradicate the demons from the pole, to prevent them from invading their society any more.  However, this war has been going on for hundreds of years and that will not change until the humans arrive.  The diverse nature of the world allows for endless possibilities of adventures.  The technology level varies drastically between urban areas and remote wilderness settlements.

 

The open-ended structure, allows for contingency and is offered so that co-operative narrative can be used to structure the developing story at the exlcusion of a complicated ruleset.  The goal is not to be rid of all rules, but to be rules-light; jumping over sections that would be governed by rules if all players involved agree on the outcome.

 

Goals

Reasons for this: education, conscious community, fostering positive change in the youth, encourage active citizenship, make something productive in a social context through gaming, encourage creativity, allow linkages to all the inspirations and projects each does on the web

Scope

starting wiki sized, focus on youth and gaming, forums and chat to encourage socialization, set up micro-economic structures to encourage feedback, publication of sourcebook material for pen and paper role play gaming, advertising and marketing to online similar markets, conscious community

The Big Three

of rpg design, paste here.

Future functionality dreams {move}

Proposed options for community favors (by payment?)

Hosting of personal domains. Everyone is entitled to their own dream domain, which can be upgraded through accrual of points.  Players host it as a server when they are online, otherwise when they are offline, their character can be interacted with like an NPC and some scripted responses.  Probably custom chatbots would be nice.

Starts at the level of the internals of their house, and can be expanded with server load up to a city or whatever.

Customization of rule sets within those domains; explore and debate societal constructs/models of management, etc

 

Internet/computer based in order to make use of complex algorithms/functions.

All math and mechanics must be openly viewed.

This is an effort in Computer assisted gaming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_gaming

 

Goto

 

'What's with the name?  It sounds like a kebab?'

     This is the best feedback I've ever gotten, hah!  Brutally honest and totally true, the name is not marketable in any sense.  If you have better ideas I'd love to hear about them!  As this website might eventually migrate for technological support reasons, that would be the best time for an epic find and replace quest to happen to make the name something that resonates more with the public.

     Remember, although this is something I've invested a lot of myself in, I'd rather see it grow within the dreams of others than be coddled in unhealthy ways.