Hi all,

I've been toying with the idea of setting up some kind of RPG based around the traditional blog framework. Initially, I want to do it as an experiment - and because things like Blogger.com blogs are free and easy to edit - they seem like the ideal platform.

It's still an entirely abstract concept to me, which is why I'm pitching it here, to get the some creative dialogue.

I imagine the game to be something where people log in, the game content, as per a normal blog, is periodically updated and added by me in the form of, perhaps, a narrative post here, a scenario there etc... In essence, I would take on the role of a Dungeons & Dragons style dungeonmaster.

The resources and devices at my disposal for this are things that can be integrated into the blog and easily maintained, like polls (perhaps useful as a means of offering players a series of actions, or allowing them to affect changes to the game world), comments sections could be used as a way of letting multiple players publicly inter-communicate. So on and so forth,

Can anyone innovate further? Have any ideas? Any experience of this having been done previously?

How could this framework be applied to make the game an MMORPG?

Any ideas on how to give multiple players an individual experience within a universal game world?

Let me know what you think.

See here.

In early 2011, Gaiden tried to run something in the Lounge what sounds like you're thinking about. If I got the search link thing right try here. I thought it was fun and looked forward to each new turn but it seems to be a very challenging thing to run.

(if the link doesn't have results for Text RPG Turn (whatever number) try to keep going to the next page)

PBF (Play By Forum). There are probably more of these than the total number of computer games

This is interesting.

One of the options I was considering was pretty much a simplified version of what Gaiden seems to have done. I would periodically post a new poll on the blog featuring a number of options open to the player - these options would be part of a scenario dictated by the choices of the previous polls. For instance; in the last choice poll, you opted to get in the car, so the next poll will feature options relative to the previous:

> Search glove box?
> Turn ignition?
> Hide in the back seat?

...and so on.

The community of players would vote on the next action, and essentially play as a group controlling one protagonist.

The flaws in this are numerous.

Firstly, this offers no individual character building - all play as a democratic conscience (intriguing in its own right).

The system is vulnerable to spam voting on one of the options, meaning that trolls could intentionally steer the player down an unwise path of selections.

Has anyone got any ideas for giving players the experience of having their own character, capable of interacting with other characters?

How could you fashion an MORPG from these elements?

This is interesting.

One of the options I was considering was pretty much a simplified version of what Gaiden seems to have done. I would periodically post a new poll on the blog featuring a number of options open to the player - these options would be part of a scenario dictated by the choices of the previous polls. For instance; in the last choice poll, you opted to get in the car, so the next poll will feature options relative to the previous:

> Search glove box?
> Turn ignition?
> Hide in the back seat?

...and so on.

The community of players would vote on the next action, and essentially play as a group controlling one protagonist.

The flaws in this are numerous.

Firstly, this offers no individual character building - all play as a democratic conscience (intriguing in its own right).

The system is vulnerable to spam voting on one of the options, meaning that trolls could intentionally steer the player down an unwise path of selections.

Has anyone got any ideas for giving players the experience of having their own character, capable of interacting with other characters?

How could you fashion an MORPG from these elements?

Hi TexasJack,

I'm a big fan of Text-based gaming, especially web-based collaborative games. I tried running a PbP RPG Forum using phpBB, but, accidentally deleted the app from my host server I enjoy text-based games so much that I'm integrating multiple text game engines (MUD, Interactive Fiction,Grid-Game and Action-Text) into my Super 3D Game Platform's IRC-powered CLI.

I like the idea of using a Blog, a Role Playing Blog, or RPlog (pronounced "ar-plog") for PnP, especially the comments section. Comments can be a source of ideas and content for the next RPLog Entry. In my opinion this has a greater advantage than Polls alone, allowing the readers to take part in a collaborative story building process. All you need is a Reliable Web Hosting and a really Nice Blog App like Wordpress (FREE) to get this going.

One of the options I was considering was pretty much a simplified version of what Gaiden seems to have done. I would periodically post a new poll on the blog featuring a number of options open to the player - these options would be part of a scenario dictated by the choices of the previous polls. For instance; in the last choice poll, you opted to get in the car, so the next poll will feature options relative to the previous:

> Search glove box?
> Turn ignition?
> Hide in the back seat?

There were interactive cinema movies like that. The audience had a controller with 2 buttons and when the movie stopped they had a few seconds to click one which affected the storyline. Not sure why but after a while it became quiet about this and this idea got abandoned.

As far as multiple choice films go, to me, it seems like it would be expensive to produce and direct all of the potential outcomes for each decision juncture. If there is a multiple choice stop quarter of the way through the film with two possible decisions - then there needs to be 175% of a normal movie's content. If each of those junctures has a half-way-point then it becomes 275% of the original movie and so on...

More than a few choice breaks in the film, and the budget and production time would be astronomical. That's just a guess though, there may well have been other reasons for their decline in popularity.

With my idea, the content would probably be added ad-hoc - as and when needed.

For those who are unfamiliar, Blogger allows you to add sections (refered to by them as "Gadgets") to your blog. These gadgets include polls, comments sections, videos, images, text boxes and so on. These are what I was referring to in my original post when I mentioned potential resources and devices that I could use to build the architecture of the game.

One that interests me is an "HTML/JavaScript" gadget, the description reads "Add third-party functionality or other code to your blog".

Bearing in mind that I know nothing about scripting (or much about HTML for that matter) - could someone explain to me, what the potential uses of this could be?

Since these blogs are free, why would I need to think about hosting?

As far as multiple choice films go, to me, it seems like it would be expensive to produce and direct all of the potential outcomes for each decision juncture. If there is a multiple choice stop quarter of the way through the film with two possible decisions - then there needs to be 175% of a normal movie's content. If each of those junctures has a half-way-point then it becomes 275% of the original movie and so on...

More than a few choice breaks in the film, and the budget and production time would be astronomical. That's just a guess though, there may well have been other reasons for their decline in popularity.

With my idea, the content would probably be added ad-hoc - as and when needed.

For those who are unfamiliar, Blogger allows you to add sections (refered to by them as "Gadgets") to your blog. These gadgets include polls, comments sections, videos, images, text boxes and so on. These are what I was referring to in my original post when I mentioned potential resources and devices that I could use to build the architecture of the game.

One that interests me is an "HTML/JavaScript" gadget, the description reads "Add third-party functionality or other code to your blog".

Bearing in mind that I know nothing about scripting (or much about HTML for that matter) - could someone explain to me, what the potential uses of this could be?

Since these blogs are free, why would I need to think about hosting?

Hosting your own Blog gives you more `power`. I host my blog (wordpress), its database, and PHP. I can use existing apps or develop new ones to interface to the RPlog database and utilize its data. For example: I've been researching into the development of a data-driven engine (Imaginarrator) similar to Scribblenaut's "Objectnaut" to procedurally arrange 3D Scenes and produce 2D Visual Stills based on the object descriptions within the RPLog Narrative.