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October 21, 2004
The Karmic Cycle: Wiki Play
Play-by-wiki (and play-by-blog) is clearly the new hotness among, um, the tiny subset of gamers who read this blog. Still, let it never be said that we are uninterested in new experimental gaming techniques, because we aren't. In pursuit of this, I give you Dev and Dan Bayn's Jedi Cops. The system is Dan's The Karmic Cycle, which is somewhat like his Wushu but with no dice (which is key for a wiki game, IMHO). The world is Star Wars.
The basic play cycle seems to involve one scene per page, with aggregation of action on the page over time. OOC discussion is mixed into the scene, at least until the scene is completed, at which point it's stripped to leave just the narrative. It's a slick idea, sort of like play by email but with a built in archiving system, which I like. And since the wiki software they're using has RSS feeds, you can get new events pushed to you.
(Some side notes on RSS, while I'm thinking about it: if I were implementing this system, I would use a wiki that allowed me to do RSS feeds for changes of individual pages, so I could subscribe to specific scenes. And if I were addicted to email rather than to RSS, I'd use Blogstreet's RSS to email service so I could read the feed in my email client.)
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Comments
Oh no Bryant, you've never been known to hook a wiki up to both an RSS feed and email.
Posted by: Jere at Oct 21, 2004 9:48:45 PM
We've been playing Universalis by wiki over here: http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/Unigame/SceneComponent Like most games, it had to adjust a bit to work asynchronously. Fortunately, this was the third attempt to play by wiki, so most of the rules had already been worked out. (Though Trevis has invested a lot of time in making most of the functions automatic, easing the game even more). He's even got an RSS feed for it...
The first two attempts were destroyed by wikispam, which became the take home lesson-- wikis are very cool, but without password protection, they're as fleeting as chalk on a sidewalk.
Posted by: ScottM at Oct 25, 2004 12:28:57 PM
Hey Scott! I was actually wondering about that - our blog is set up that you can only edit if you login in with the password. Is that enough, or can the software be circumvented? (It's weak protection, to be sure.)
Posted by: Dev at Oct 25, 2004 2:04:02 PM
I wish I could tell you, Dev, but I don't know. We didn't have a password at all and both the current and closed games got spammed. This time we have a password (I don't think there's more than that) and we're fine so far. It could just mean that they haven't tested us yet... or that the next round of improvements for the spam isn't out yet.
Posted by: ScottM at Oct 25, 2004 2:56:24 PM
