Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the thirty-fifth edition of the alcarin.com newsletter.
There is an archive of the previous newsletters in the Townhall and the columns are added to the Town Square, so you can always read it again.
A seemingly easy month on Alcarin. There is only one update this month, added at the end of the month. Most of the time I've been working on the upcoming Elfstone MUD and the Elfstone Campaign Setting. All in all, actually a lot of work has been done. I've got a new map of Northern Nen, a map of the capital city of Nen, Nenacar and maps of three other cities in the Northern Nen region: the Underdark city of Rachnor, the holy city of Thass'Rhin and the forest city of Khalimson. These last three cities will probably become the main player cities in the Elfstone MUD. The initial version of the MUD itself is developing quite rapidly as well. More of this in Coming Up.
Enjoy reading.

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Column: Men with a Mission

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WHAT'S NEW:

27/09/2003 - created Trainers section in the Barracks, new trainer in the Barracks: "Money & Level Trainer +2" for Neverwinter Nights

Visit http://www.alcarin.com/townhall/updates.htm for the latest updates.

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COMING UP:

Since I completely forgot to work on the spell submission form, this is one of the items to do the coming month. This form is the only one that's still not generalized and overly AD&D oriënted.
As was the case during the past month, most of the available time will be invested in the Elfstone MUD, Elfstone Campaign Setting and Landlord RPG. As for the last one, I hoped to write an introduction and unit type chapter during the past month, but simply didn't get to doing so. I do expect to have a little more time available during the coming month, so those chapters, especially the introduciton, should be added during this month.
The Elfstone Campaign Setting has some nice maps ready, but I haven't uploaded them yet. I do want to do that soon, although at first only the maps will be available and no descriptions or legend. Depending on how much time will be available, I will add those later.
The MUD is developing quite rapidly. The three cities that will probably become player inhabitable and more or less controlable are finished and implemented in the database and I will soon start implementing the surrounding areas. The city of Nenacar is also quite high on the priority list. For as far as game design, we are quite far in designing the skill system. We've got some basic ideas on races and the like, but a lot of work will still be needed on that subject. We've also got it running on a free mudhost and some of the alcarin.com regulars are involved in early testing and reviewing. For more info on the MUD and it's progress, see the Announcements Forum; in the topic "To come sometime in the future - the Elfstone MUD":
http://www.alcarin.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=514
J.W. vd Brink ( bulak@alcarin.com ), the author of the Agmanor's Treasure and Burglary in Dobnell missions for Dungeons & Dragons is working on a new short mission. A short summary of the mission, by the author:
"A hunter asks the PCs to rescue his wife. She has been abducted, but fortunately the man has been able to follow the abductors to their lair. This dungeon has been built by a mad gnomish inventor, who has died a long time ago. The PCs will have to face monsters, crazy gnomish inventions, and a combination of the two.
A 3.5 edition dungeon-crawl for a party of 6th-level characters."

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COLUMN: MEN WITH A MISSION
A column by Wouter vd Zandschulp; wouter@alcarin.com

"Creating your own reality" Reality.
People who are shooting each other, poverty, racism. Most fantasy-lovers almost think of reality of a bad word. People say things as: 'the awful truth' and consider 'the real life' almost a synonym of 'the hard life'. Fantasy-lovers therefore often are considered as people who flee from this hard reality.
But what is this so-called 'reality'? Is it made up to make more pulp-television, called 'reality-TV'? It seems to be something everyone considers 'the real thing'. But this is highly subjective, you would say. No one thinks the same about something. Everyone has his completely own mind, his own thoughts, ideas, and opinions. It just dazzles you. Everyone looks from his/her very own angle. Every individual is in essence alone. He can mingle, sure, but there is one person inside his body. Therefore no one can stand in the exact same place inside a room than this other person does. Then his way of thinking; it's unique too. The goals the person is after are also quite unique. Because no person can be exactly the same as another person and nothing he has gone through in live is the exact same as any other. You can make clones (perhaps in an evil plot to become all powerful or so) but you cannot make the live all through the exact same thing. They cannot even all stand in one place.
So every person has got his/her own world. This earth is a place with countless worlds. All animals and insects, they all live in their own world. So what's reality all about then? After all, you live in your private world. Hence the idea of one solid reality.
You only have to look at newspapers to find that also the assumption of reality being 'normal' is very much off. As such, the assumption that reality is 'boring' or something like that.
Then we have fantasy. A popular subject, since lots of us saw 'The Never-ending Story' when we where young. It can be seen as some sort of game, where we can relax and freely play and mix the things we see in real life, without having to worry about things being 'correct'. You can aggressively and greedy without shame take all influences live pours your way to make them your own. And you will not be arrested. Not at all. Your mind is yours. Inside yourself you can play with all that you know freely. Very relaxing.
So that makes reality what happens in relation to the others and fantasy what happens indeed to you?
A lot of questions remain about fantasy and reality though. One of the assumptions I believe in most is that fantasy is a device to help sort things out and give some sort of concrete form to something, to make it able to handle. To overcome and think about things that had happened to you, in the first place it is necessary to see it happen again. You imagine someone you have seen, but do not see at the moment. With fantasy you do the same, only you mix things you've seen to a new reality. To take a distance from what's happened, you make it easier to handle.
You make a more easy to handle reality of your own. And to accomplish your goal of handling reality's events by means of fantasy, you try and make your own fantasy world as plausible as possible. You think about a history for your fantasy characters which must be used as consequent as possible. The dream of your fantasy character being a real person must not be endangered by flaws in history. Tolkien made an entire history, maps and language for his world. So far from our own, so mystical, and yet, it does makes sense. If you see the history of Middle-Earth, it all makes sense.

So here I end with a theory. Could it be we fantasize to be able to handle the real world and make the fantasy as real as possible to be able to believe our fantasy world really does exist? Or am I making up this theory as a mind trick of my own, to make the existence of fantasy with a reason of benefit for mankind and therefore a good and logical thing to exist? By this means pulling fantasy into the reality in the fear that is does not exist?
But if this is so, doesn't that mean my theory is correct if it is correct or not?
And what if I am the only existing in the mind of... wait, that's another story. Let's not get overboard completely.
The ones who think I already have can contact me. But not between 4 and 5 AM, because then I'm subject to some more alien experiments.

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Well, that's it for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it.
Lord Gildor
"May the stars guide you on your journeys"
http://www.alcarin.com

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