I’ve been getting rather a lot done behind the scenes, as it were; some work on Ytherra, some work on The Kingdoms of Seoland, some work on Silverlands and some work on A Long-Awaited Tale, the last of which has been effectively merged into an existing project called Tales of Might & Glory, which has been cooking in the pot for many years and which is now being rebuilt through the lens of what was once a couple of other projects.
See, part of my essential problem is that I have too many freaking projects. It’s no wonder I can’t seem to get a game going for anything but Ars Magica, which has been an ongoing project in its own right for some years now, to the point where I’m so prepared that I can run a new game with relatively little effort.
Some months ago, our groups started Mythic Europe, an Ars Magica Wiki, to organize and present the material which we’ve developed over the years, which we think would be valuable to anyone who wants to run Ars Magica, and as a place to host pages for our current campaign. Much of the content has come from me, to the point that I feel very comfortable working in Wikicode. So I got to thinking about replacing or supplementing this blog with something along the lines of a Wiki.
There are a couple of advantages to this; It allows me to keep things organized and to have a clear “primary” draft going – the one that’s posted at the time. It allows me to work modularly, on whatever it is I want to do at the time, without losing track of exactly where I am on other projects. And it’ll encourage me to pick a small number of projects as “main” projects and concentrate on those.
The Wiki concept as intended works to promote collaboration, which is not really a high priority at this stage of the game, although it will be desirable in the future. And there are some technical hurdles to overcome, and I’m not exactly Mr. Tech Expert. Exactly.
At any rate, I’ve decided to push forward with this new format, and a lot of work has gotten done on that, although the new site is not yet ready to be launched. I want to say, though, that this should happen within a month or so. Meanwhile I’ve been working on it and polishing it, developing policies for it, adapting existing content to the format, and writing new material. It’s a big job, and a lot yet remains to be done before I’m ready to unveil it.
But that’s not too far off. This blog will not go away – but it’ll probably metamorphose into more of a news and general RPG commentary space, rather than as a place to post actual Ytherra et al. material.
There are three primary projects the Wiki is going to focus on: Ytherra, of course, along with Tales of Might & Glory and Silverlands. The Kingdoms of Seoland remain within the scope of the overall effort as a loose, generic setting usable with TMG or Silverlands, as an alternative to Ytherra. But all of these are really parts of the same project: TMG is designed around Ytherra’s metaphysics, and Silverlands can be viewed as an RPG in its own right or as an Adjunct to TMG. The Kingdoms of Seoland will likely see some development down the road, but for now it remains as I originally envisioned it: a loose framework much simpler than Ytherra usable as a loose setting in its own right or as a tstbed for Silverlands.
