Greetings traveler,

Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of the alcarin.com newsletter. Indeed, it's the letter's third birthday! :-)
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.
The past month has seen a decent amount of updates on alcarin.com. The Landlord Mass Combat RPG project is now well underway. An overview page and the first two chapters of the Player Manual have been uploaded and can be visited at http://www.alcarin.com/landlord . I've also uploaded five new maps for the Elfstone Campaign Setting. These concern the area where teh Elfstone MUD will play: the northern parts of the island country of Nen. Uploaded maps are an overview map of the area, a city map of the capital city, Nenacar, and maps of the three player cities in the MUD. The MUD itself has been worked on intensively as well and the modification of all of the submission forms is finished. Again no Close-Up this month, but a very well written anniversary column by Wouter is of course present.
Enjoy reading.

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

-------
WHAT'S NEW:

25/10/2003 - added Landlord RPG Chapter 2: "Resources" 23/10/2003 - added 3 new maps to Elfstone Campaign Setting (School): "Thass'Rhin", "Khalimson", "Rachnor"

17/10/2003 - added 2 new maps to Elfstone Campaign Setting (School): "North Nen", "Nenacar"

16/10/2003 - added Landlord RPG overview/index page, new spell submission form in School

15/10/2003 - added Landlord RPG Chapter 1: "Introduction"

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

-------
COMING UP:

With all minor projects finished, most work in the coming month will be done on the two large projects that are currently running: the Landlord Mass Combat RPG and the Elfstone MUD.
The first two chapters of the Landlord RPG, "Introduction" and "Resources", are online. I expect to write one or two chapters this month. These will probably be the next ones in line: "Contacts & Diplomacy" and "Units". Especially the second one will be a lot of work, having to write descriptions of several dozens of classes, siege engines, etcetera. We'll see how far we'll get.
In the meanwhile, J.W. vd Broek (forums' Great Cthulhu; gorath99@alcarin.com ) and I will work on the Elfstone Multi-User Dungeon as well. The game's skill system and class system are finished and we are working on the races right now. The beta version of the MUD is up and running and the area covered in the game is expanding rapidly. Three cities, two towns, a cave system leading from one of the cities, the one that's in the Underdark, to the surface, five nice tropical islands, a large jungle area and an even larger mountainous area are present.
Furthermore, J.W. vd Brink ( bulak@alcarin.com ), the author of the Agmanor's Treasure and Burglary in Dobnell missions for Dungeons & Dragons is still working on a new short mission, which I've mentionned in last month's newsletter as well. The mission will be for Dungeons & Dragons, edition 3.5, for a level 6 party. I have no idea when he'll have it finished. Having seen an example room and it's level of detail, I think it might take a few months.
For up to date news on these major projects and other major developments on alcarin.com, see the Announcements forum at http://www.alcarin.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

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

"About the party"

With this column I conclude three years of column-writing for this mailing-list. After a time as that, you sort of get the hang of it. A column is changing from something you fear to something that is just part of live. The confidence about being able to complete it also gets better. Off course, friends of mine will state that talking loads of rubbish about a subject and being confident about it's worth has always been well-trusted trades of mine.

I have already told you about myself two years ago and about the columns last year, this year I will tell you what connects me and column-writing to fantasy and role-playing, to complete this puzzle.
It all started with me getting drawn into role-playing by friends (who sometimes claim to regret inviting me for the rest of their lives). So they have gotten me into the Dungeons and Dragons world. They have filled my head with the knowledge of D&D, or, at least, tried to do so, as some of them would state (I am especially thinking of one hairy person among them who makes most of the cynical remarks about me. As someone with the knowledge of both ordinary rpgs and rpgs played on gameboards, he seems to think my knowledge of D&D is far beneath him).

This is a jolly group of people, who are just about my best friends in the world. We fight, we bite, we talk and insult. And we role-play a bit along the way.
This game of escaping and showing ourselves through others gives us something 'real' to do. It multiplies the possibilities to bother each other tremendously. Even killing each other's characters is not out of the question.

And then, after being at this some time, patterns of playing arise. People tend to play some kind of character the most, some characteristics keep popping up in every character a player has. And then, if you think about it while playing home, you can realize how this characteristic has always been a characteristic of this person you know. You know that the character is and always will be just some form of the player.

And then you can realize even more. You can realize that the way your character walks along with the stupid, irritating and chaotic gnome and the ruthless, mannerless and stinking half-orc, on adventure after adventure. And if something goes wrong, if some struggle between those specific characters arises or some change of opinion, you will still try to get through it together and to get in yet another adventure.
And then the parallels are not hard to find. This is just like how it is in real life. You walk along with the stupid, irritating and chaotic player and the ruthless, mannerless and stinking other player on all adventures life has to offer in a way very similar to that of your players. The friendship in the game, I believe, is sort of similar to the friendship in real life.

And I guess that is what we role-players seek, to live a real life with a structure and real happenings with people around us, even if we have to toy with reality a bit to get to this. That's why we've got rules to give it form, just as we have done in reality.

But I'm getting off track once again. The point was that we seek our friends because there is something we seem to like about each other, making us to want to go through life's adventures together. And that's why parties often are surprisingly easy to form with fantasy-characters and get on so well.

And I guess that's the case with my party. I must conclude there must be something we like about each other. Probably to make fun of each other, some would insert here. But hey, they are too late, now I already did! Wrahahaha!

Greetings,
Wouter

-------
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

Back to the Notice Board

Home | Submit content | Contact | Legal info | Top of page

This website © Copyright 1999-2011, Arjan Wardekker.
All rights reserved.
All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.