Living Game FAQ Yes, we know that FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions, and we know that we haven't said much about the living game yet, or released any details about it, so not many people have asked questions about it, much less asked them frequently. Nevertheless, in time honoured tradition we've taken the few questions that have been asked and made up some questions of our own that we think people will be asking frequently once more of them hear about the game. What is this Living Game thing all about anyway? We've been calling it a Living Game, and comparing it to MUDs and MMORPGs and such, but these are only analogies. This game will have some similarities to all these things, but at the same time be different. Like a tabletop living game, it will have lots of groups of players and GMs who effect the history of the world. Playing the game will involve dice and tables and miniatures and maps. Unlike a living game, almost all play will occur online, in real time, and groups of players and GMs will often interact directly with one another while playing. Unlike tabletop living games, there will be no pre planned scenarios or adventures that people will go through, and unlike a living game, the effects that players will have on the world will be immediate, direct, and permanent. Like a MUD or MMORPG, lots of players will be online at once and interacting with one another. Unlike either, the server will only be used to keep track of where certain items and characters are. Everything else - events, adventures, monsters, NPCs, etc. will be controlled by humans in the form of GMs and admins. Unlike an MMORPG, you won't control a walking, talking 3D avatar, rather you will control your own imagination, along with a miniature or token, while your GM describes the situation and determines what happened to you, just like in a tabletop game. Unlike an MMORPG, you won't be going on the same "quests" that everyone else goes on - instead you will spend your time engaged in various unique missions on behalf of yourself and others for your character's benefit and theirs. Unlike an MMORPG or MUD, everything you do in the world will immediately and permanently change the world, even if only in a small way. When you kill an assassin, that assassin's plot is foiled. When you take an item from dungeon room that item is gone, and no one else will find it there. Unlike an MMOPRG or MUD, most events in the world at large will be determined by player's and GM's actions, and therefore your actions will effect its history. What prompted you to try this? Back in 1990s many of us old time pen and paper role players met the dawn of MMO gaming with imagination-fueled anticipation. Now at last we could enter computer generated virtual worlds where we could play the roles of heroic characters in a fantasy setting like the ones in our favorite novels…or our best tabletop games …. slaying monsters, toppling kingdoms, discovering arcane magic, mastering the arts of court intrigue…. Alas it was not to be. Instead of running heroic characters, we got to run through a bunch of pre programmed quests that were identical to the quests that everyone else went through, except when we were on pure leveling grinds. Instead of roleplaying we got a bunch of avatars walking around and saying things like "DOOD! Did ya hear the new Flaming Retards CD they RAWK!" or some strange combination of letters and numbers that represent those words and can't be deciphered by anyone over 40. I think most of us old time tabletop gamers are totally dissatisfied with MMORPGs. They just aren't what we want in terms of online role playing. But that isn't surprising really, given that they grew from different roots. Traditional pen and paper roleplaying was originally inspired by pure combat games based on miniatures, and later by the modern fantasy novel. Its originators started with the concept of PCs on dungeon crawls, the early players soon used the rules to reproduce, in their collective imaginations, the types of adventures that the characters in novels like The Lord of the Rings went on. Computer based MUDs, single player RPGs, and later, MMORPGs, were all heirs to the tabletop game, but the latter two were heavily influenced from the beginning by PC based first person shooters. Due to various factors, including economic/technical constraints imposed by an online world controlled by computers and, IMHO, the larger population of first person shooter fans in both the gaming and developer population, the combat and leveling aspect of fantasy MMORPGs came to predominate. Lacking the equivalent of a GM who could make up complex adventures and flesh out NPC personalities on short order for thousands of PCs, and relying on computer AI that was at most capable of running NPCs and monsters within pre-programmed "quests," online games became mostly hack ‘em up, grab the treasure and level up games writ large. They have not yet attained the ability to simulate the complex political and social situations and the sheer high adventure that mark the best tabletop games and fantasy novels, and probably won't for a long time. In the meantime many of us longed for some sort of online multiplayer game that could reproduce the sense of epic adventure and high intrigue that is found in fantasy novels and in the best tabletop roleplaying sessions. So we hit on this (still very experimental) concept of expanding traditional miniatures based tabletop roleplaying to the scale of a small MMORPG. The game will have some similarities to these things, but a lot of differences. Will I have to fight lots of [insert name of small animal here] to level up? Only if you want to, and only if you can persuade a GM to handle such a boring activity. What kind of quests will I be able to go on? There will be no programmed quests or Adventure modules in this game. You won't find yourself waiting in line outside a dungeon to be the 20th person to kill the Troll Lord within. If there are no quests, what will I do in the game? The same things that you do when you play in your weekly home session, except that there will be more of it, with more people involved, and there will be a greater variety of things to do and things going on at any given time. There will be dungeons to explore, there will be NPCs seeking aid, there will be troublesome monsters, there will be rumours of treasures and dangers, there will be plots and counterplots by the mighty, and there will be great events in the world at large. What you will do is what you usually do in a tabletop game, such as performing some service for some NPC controlled by a GM, or exploring some interesting and potentially treasure and danger laden locale. Due to the way the game is structured, GMs themselves are a new type of player, and will have a definite motivation to have their NPCs hire PCs to do things for them. Furthermore these things to be done will usually involve plots and counterplots among various factions in the world. GMs will also have a definite motivation to plot out dungeons and then keep the treasures in their dungeons out of PCs hands. GMs as well as players will also have motivation to investigate ancient legends and mysteries and the only way either will be able to do so is through through roleplaying sessions involving GMs and players. Can I be a Crafter? No. The activities of an MMO crafter just don't fit this type of game. The closest you can get is a planned feature that lets your character obtain employment that they are assumed to be working at and making money from when they are not adventuring. What determines the Big Historical Events that are going on in the world at large? First, a bit of explanation. The Living Game is designed to give players the feel of being in the middle of a big fantasy novel. As in such novels, the characters and their world are destined to be affected by vast historical, geopolitical, natural, and even divine forces. And as in such novels, the players will find themselves positioned to effect the course of events. Obviously, you can't all be bearers of ancient powerful artifacts that are destined to destroy the Big Bad Evil Guy, but all players happen to be starting out in a locale that will play a major role in the fate of the world, and thus small actions there can effect big events. The major historical events outside the town of Mormont will at first proceed in a planned fashion, like in a module, but many will have "tripwires" within them - some obvious and some not - that will cause player's and GM's actions to produce effects that will alter the plans of the mighty. Our goal is eventually to have everything from the Kings in their castles to the Big Baddies in their dark towers controlled by GMs and admins, all playing games of their own. How will I be able to affect the world and its history? In the tradition of tabletop games, this one will start small, in a limited geographical area surrounding the town of Mormont, a frontier trading center at the edge of Barbarian, Elvish, and Dwarven lands. Fate and the gods have decreed that it become a key center in epic events amongst forces and powers are beginning to gather to alter the history of the world. Therefore those who live there can find themselves involved in some surprisingly high level plots and intrigues, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, and sometimes unbeknownst to themselves and others. As low level characters your affect will be mostly small at first. Don't expect to launch a campaign against some Powerful Evil Person living in a tower next to a volcano just yet. Nevertheless, this is a world that is effected permanently and primarily by the actions of whoever plays in it. If you slay a monster, that monster won't be attacking villagers anymore, and the villagers will be grateful to you for a long time to come. If you slay an evil assassin (another PC) hired by a local lord (run by a GM) to kill the Mayor (run by another GM), then the Mayor will not be killed (at least not then), and will continue his behind the scenes plot (unbeknownst to most others) to aid a local Duke in usurping the King. If you steal the map of an ancient ruin from the town hall archives to use on your next adventure, the local evil mage won't find when he comes to grab it, and won't be able to locate the evil artifact he is after, and will no doubt have his minions start searching for whoever stole it. How Big is the World? It is a planet the size of Earth. A rough planet wide map exists, but even the Kingdom's scholars will only know a small part of it. Currently all the detailed world building has concentrated in the Kingdom, and in particular the area around the town of Mormont. At first the game will be concerned with events in the area around this town. Just like a tabletop game, we are starting small, in a limited area, and will build and expand the adventuring territory as it becomes necessary. We will eventually open up other locations in other remote parts of the world for play. A unique planned aspect of the game will be the fact that the time zones on this fantasy world will correspond to time zones in the real world. Players in, say, Japan, Australia, India, Europe, and Russia will be able to find locales where play occurs at times that are convenient to them, many hours removed from what is going on in Mormont. However, that is a long way off. Can I be a Lone Wolf? Yes, but the game is designed around the classic GM and 3 - 8 person party type of play. You may have to temporarily join up with various parties to get most things done, unless you can find a GM who is willing to take you though a solo mission of some sort. But there is nothing stopping you from hitting the local Inn (run by a GM), entering a tournament at a Fair, or poking around the town hall map room on your own. Can our local gaming group join and stick together as a party? Sure. That will probably be the easiest way to play. Like in a tabletop game, the basic adventuring group will consist of a small number of PCs with mutually supporting talents.. If you already have a group of buddies with various characters who are used to playing together, so much the better. However, due to the way the game is structured, a group of players will wind up operating under several different GMs in different sessions, so if your GM joins up too, they may only occasionally be running their normal players as a group. Can my guild from game X join, or can I form a new guild here? Yes and yes, but the size of a typical MMO guild is more than most GMs can handle in a single session. You will find yourselves split up into smaller parties playing under different GMs most of the time. Nevertheless, a large guild may be able to coordinate the activities of its members to achieve desired goals to a greater degree than smaller parties. Can I kill other PCs? Yes, but Mormont is a civilized area with keepers of the peace who's job it is to find out who did the killing, and who have certain magical investigation aids, spies, and witnesses to interview, and the advantage of living in a town where everyone knows everybody and everybody talks to everybody. On the other hand, they use things like combat and ordeals to determine guilt when in doubt, so you could get lucky. And remember that the local soldiers don't hang out in dungeons or in the woods. Also, we are thinking about, but haven't decided on, letting new players run monsters if they just want to try the game out. Is the emphasis on roleplaying, just hack and slash? Definitely on roleplaying. In fact, the main inspiration for the game was dissatisfaction by some people with the lack of role playing atmosphere on typical MMORPGs So what are the game mechanics here, how is thing going to work? We can't reveal that yet, the system is still evolving, and we intend to keep it secret until we are ready to unveil everything. Suffice it to say that usual PC and NPC activities like combat, magic, movement, occupations, etc. etc. will be conducted according to an existing game system. However, there will be an additional series of (surprisingly simple) rules that govern how GMs play, how they interact with players and PCs, and how they and their characters advance while they go about doing what GMs normally do, while giving them some definite in game motivation to run players through adventures. Play will center around what we call "missions" which are adventures in which in which the PCs attempt to achieve some defined goal (steal a treasure, assassinate an official, whatever), usually but not always at the behest of someone else. Speaking of GMs, how much prep work will be involved for them? There will be only a small fraction of that involved in a normal tabletop session. After all, the setting will already exist, and the adventures will flow naturally from the interaction of GMs with each other and with PCs as they all try to advance themselves. How often will the game be played? The game will initially be played on one night per week, similar to a tabletop game, with the option of groups of gamers and GMs to occasionally go off on their own and run face to face or online adventures on their own time. We will attempt to have a broad enough time window so that everyone in North and South America, at least, can get a chance to play. After the game gets going and if it is successful, we plan to expand it in time, in the sense that more evenings will be opened up for play, and more timeslots will be opened up to accommodate players in Europe, Australia, Japan, etc. One thing we hope to eventually do is open new geographical areas, similar to Mormont, in far areas of the planet whose time zones more or less correspond to those of Europe, Russia, Australia, etc. to allow their residents some separate, initially isolated areas of play that nevertheless will affect and be effected by the same world spanning forces. In time communication and travel could be established between these areas. Such new areas will not be opened up for some time, however. What game system will you use? That is yet to be determined. Readers are welcome to lobby for their favorite systems. Use of WOTC's 3e and upcoming 4e system are problematic for various reasons, despite the OGL for 3e. 3e is being used for playtesting, but only because the majority of gamers are familiar with it. In general, we seek to avoid licenses, lawyers, and royalty payments. Will this game cost anything? GMs will play for free. Others will pay a small monthly fee that has not yet been determined. It will be much smaller than the fees typically associated with MMOs. Will you have paid admins, GMs, whatever? There will be a very small number of paid admins and GMs. The latter can be thought of as "GMs of GMs," we'll reveal more about that later.