News from Nowhere

I sat on the William Morris allusion in the header for too long, today it has a good fit and thus it finds gainful employment.

A veritable din of Domain Game activity this week, a few news briefs:

Round One Closed. I have been getting numerous inquiries about joining the game--five in the last two days alone. While I am encouraged by the level of interest, I simply can't accommodate anymore players in this round. But weep not, there will be spaces in the rounds two and three of the play-test.

Looking Forward. Round one is mostly concerned with the growing the rules of the domain game's second layer (exploration, wilderness clearing/adaption, and domain founding). Officially it will come to a close around the end of February at which time we will open up the second round to grow and play-test layer three (the more settled phase of domain-level play).

Basically what will we do with round two is keep 5-7 of the most interested players from round one and “fast forward” their realms three years based on their final positions at the end of turn four. Borders will be extended, rough-and-tumble frontier villages and market founded, larger sections of the map revealed etc. We will then add in 5-8 new players who will play trusty (and not-so trusty) lieutenants and advisors in the existing realms.

The Co-creation of Nowhere. Sharing corners of the creative process with the players has continued to be a satisfying part of the experiment. Samwise, ruler of the yak-loving Gibliki theocracy, blogged this morning about the “realm-wide” ritual magic we have been kicking back and forth as an addition to the game.

Meanwhile at the ever-stimulating Ix blog, The Drune muses on the nature of chaos and the cruel caprice of the godhead that rules Nowhere.

Finally that wolfish barbarian Shinobicow writes about his own experimental city-building game. Hopefully both experiments will find some synergy together.