Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Adventure Begins Tomorrow!

June is Worldwide Adventure Writing Month, where participants are challenged to write a 32-page adventure module to share with the rest of the internet community of RPG fans. We invite you to join in the project! All are welcome! This is your chance to flex your writing chops, promote a favorite game system, and help out other GMs worldwide.

If you need assistance of any sort, please feel free to leave a comment here, or to participate in our official WoAdWriMo Forum, hosted by Treasure Tables. Once your adventure is complete, Treasure Tables will be happy to host the file so that you may share your work with the rest of the world. Or host it yourself and we will gladly link to your accomplishment!

Have you decided to take the challenge, but are still having trouble picking a system or a scenario? Feel free to pitch ideas here or at the forum! Need some adventure writing help? Try the articles linked in this thread or check out these two WoAdWriMo blog entries.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Guest post: A Play-By-Post Opportunity

As mentioned yesterday, here's our guest post by WeaveWarden of MythWeaver outlining a great opportunity to make your WoAdWriMo project accessible to the world of play-by-post!

The folks at Myth-Weavers are volunteering to help out with supporting WoAdWriMo by offering an extra way to spread the word and make your WoAdWriMo adventure accessible a wide audience of gaming groups. Myth-Weavers is a roleplay-by-post site that will be hosting your finished WoAdWriMo adventures as special "ready-to-play-by-post" game forums.

Wait, What's RolePlay-By-Post?
RolePlay-by-Post (or just play-by-post) is when gamers run their roleplaying adventures using the medium of online message-boards, often with the help of a variety of gaming-enabling features, like online character sheets, dice-rollers, out-of-character text, and so on.

So, what's a "Ready-to-Play-by-Post" game forum?
A ready-to-play-by-post game forum is the interactive online equivalent of a pre-made adventure (like the one you'll be writing for WoAdWriMo). The general idea is to take an adventure and make it supremely easy to play online.

The adventure information will be formatted for the message board and split into private (GM-only) threads so that it's easy for GMs to copy story descriptions, NPC quotes, and so forth directly into open-to-player game threads. The adventures' maps and images will be uploaded and hosted next to their part in the story, ready to be revealed at the right moment. Important NPCs will be given their own online character sheets for easy customization, and these sheets will be integrated into the Myth-Weavers dice-roller system so that GMs might not even have to look up stats to make critical rolls. The little perks roll on ad infinitum.

Plus, the ready-to-play-by-post adventures will be instantly copy-able for any group that wants to play them, so many different online gaming groups will get a chance to play your adventure!

What do I have to do?
Sit back, relax, and focus on writing your adventure! The WoAdWriMo team members at Myth-Weavers will take care of the conversion of the final adventures to ready-to-play-by-post for you! If you don't particularly care about online play, it's no sweat off your back, since this new way of sharing your adventure will be in addition to hosting your efforts in pdf format at TreasureTables.

If you have any questions or ideas about the ready-to-play-by-post games, go ahead and direct them to the official WoAdWriMo forums.
Thanks for this generous offer, WeaveWarden. I'm unfamiliar with the world of play-by-post, but anything that gets more people playing games they enjoy is okay by me!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

...and we're back!

Worldwide Adventure Writing Month is only a few weeks away! Look for more tips and words of encouragement as we dust off this blog and get ready to ramp up towards WoAdWriMo. Have you resolved to take the challenge? Need help picking a system? If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave comments here or at our official forum.

Tomorrow we'll feature a guest post by WeaveWarden of play-by-post site MythWeavers. In the meantime, do you need help building plots for your adventures? Doctor Rotwang's Adventure Funnel might be just the tool to help!