Comments on: What I learnt about writing from MOOing

By: Catherine

Catherine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:16:25 +0000

Oh yeah – very very true, Marion. I put in every little detail of what my characters are doing, which is great for NaNoWriMo word count, but utterly unnecessary for the story and for readability.
My editing pen is wielded very firmly for this sort of thing.

By: Marion

Marion — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:17:57 +0000

Here’s another one:

* It has given me a tendency to (over)use stage direction in my writing.
I’ve done a lot of drama. I was used to thinking about “stage business” before I ever started M*ing. And it translates beautifully into roleplay, as it allows so much more show rather than tell in terms of how the character’s feeling. But unless you’re writing a screenplay, which I’m not, it gets a bit much if you’re doing it all the time in prose.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:40:36 +0000

Some of this type of game involve a measure of stats and points-scoring, but the ones I favoured didn’t. They are also predominantly fantasy- and SciFi-based, too, and one of the original games was based on the pen&paper RP game of World of Darkness (all vampires and so on). There are also MOOs out there, including the original LambdaMOO which are more for social interactions than any sort of roleplaying.
Their use seems to be generally dying out, from their heyday back in the mid to late 90s… (people want so much more SHINY stuff from the internet these days) but there are still some out there. You could probably find something to your tastes if you looked, and they can be very good fun.

By: Fiendish

Fiendish — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:59:33 +0000

I've always wanted to play a text-based RPG, but I have literally no interest in gaming (as in, collecting points or weapons or whatever) and not much in fantasy either... I suppose that pretty much rules me out, but it still seems like such an interesting idea. Fiendish´s last post: The Waiting Week