unforum

[Flynn]

[jamesi]

If time and family allows, I'll be there.

[dmax]

[krystyn]

All that stuff about posting constantly? So true.

Also, it's a tricky balance divesting yourself of your ego well enough to receive criticism, and yet still put your heart into what you're doing. Give yourself credit if you can stay in the building stage for more than three weeks without screaming and ripping out all your hair. You're learning.

Learning how to communicate is essential, too. This Is The Internet. Text-based, for the most part, and so things can often be misread and misunderstood. Broaden your vocabulary, and become abstract at the same time - practicing encapsulating your ideas makes it so much easier to 'sell' an idea/plot/puzzle to your fellow PMs.

Not so good:
"So there's this guy, and so we need him to have a conflict, so let's have him just go to this place where everyone is all evil, and oh yeah, he used to crawl in subway tunnels, and there's this girl who might be his girlfriend, and so they play cards or something, because there's this thing with the conspiracy and so they have to be secret and stuff so he can tell her why they're evil."

Better:
"The crawler dude unknowingly takes a job working for the Bad Guys. He finds out why they're bad, and how far they're willing to go to make sure no one tells their secrets. SO he plays euchre with his best friend online, relaying information to her through card puzzle clues. He can't escape this town, and he can't just call her, or type it out plainly. They just might kill him if he does."

If it doesn't sell, it doesn't sell. But you gotta sell it and make it sound good, because if it don't sound good, why the heck will the players want to touch it?

[PaleFigure]

[Simulacra]

[Diandra]

Where?

[vpisteve]

Ugh, I won't be able to make it. I just discovered I have a lunch meeting I didn't know about.



I'll try to get in as quick as I can, maybe folks will still be there. Where is it, btw?

[jamesi]

for no rhyme nor reason, #tba @ irc.chatsolutions.org

[Sunny du Pree]

And if you cant get in that way...
go to www.aintitcool.com and then log on to livechat then click on the security warning to accept then type in your name and then type in #tba
good luck will see ya there

[Guest]

MEta

[Wolf]

Various thoughts and ramblings inspired by Sunday's PM chat:

Stagnation in a dev group isn't always fatal. As far as LJ goes, we went through a long period in the late summer/early fall with NO dev activity AT ALL. What kickstarted us (Clay, Brooke, Andy, Derek, Krystyn and I) was hearing that a major magazine wanted to include a clue to our rabbit hole (which never materialized). I think the six of us who finished LJ were the six for whom not finishing it was never an option. More than technical skill, hard-headedness is a plus.

We lost one PM in Mu due to real life interfering (Derek, aka I_monk) and added Steve, Ozy and Space, who were all huge assets with a large variety of skills. Brooke sells herself short too…she and Clay wrote some pretty compelling material. Clay's letter from Nadine to Vern in LJ still makes me all misty-eyed (the "my poor drowned garden" letter from a dying Nadine, quoted below). And I have a printout of Krystyn's "Tearing it all down" Iudicium puzzle reward taped to my office wall.

But yeah, we all came to the party with very specific—but limited--skills. For my part, I write dry medical literature 40 hours a week, so doing something like writing the Reverend or Serpent (LJ) was a lot of fun for me. It let me break out of my little space and do something creative for a change. Plus, it got me to learn more web coding than I had known before.

I think we've succeeded like we have just because nobody told us we couldn't. Naivete is your friend.

I (speaking just for myself) have to assume the W Brothers have at least seen Mu, even though we haven't gotten any comments directly from them on it, because Warner Brothers told the UK Guardian that they were perfectly OK with us setting our story in their world.

And Brooke speaks the truth…for an ARG, quickplace isn't good.

[krystyn]