Joining the Worldwalker Game
The following info is for those who might want to play Worldwalker.
I promise to try to reply once per day, M-F; only infrequently I don't make that schedule. Often I post more than that (like recently when I get new players, or when the game is really going good). I don't have any problem with your real life interrupting the game. You can post when you get back from your most recent crisis, adventure, planting the garden, overtime, what-have-you. After all, although we love to game, our families (my lovely ladywife and two wondrous tykes for me) and careers come before gaming.
Sometimes, especially when I get new players, I post more often. I've been doing that recently, but I'm going to have to slow it down a bit now.
I prefer you post in the first person, as that is easier to read, and allows a better understanding of the internal debate, but it is not necessary. I don't like profanity, and I am not fond of vulgarity. I also don't like pointless "I kill it characters", not that I've had a problem with that with any of my players on this forum or my other forum at GamingOutpost.com. I prefer thoughtful, introspective, and bold characters.
My gaming style tends heavily toward the improvisational. It helps to have self-directed characters.
If you have any questions about the system, ask, and I will try to help, or send you over to Gaming Outpost to talk to the designer, MJ Young.
I'm not going to go into sexual details preferring a nice fade to black, and in fact, I'm not all that proficient at writing romance into games although I'm learning with this forum. But I plan to keep it G at least in print. The implicatons I leave to you.
If you have objections to something in your game, want to speed things in the game up, slow them down, create new goals, have useful knowledge to offer, etc, etc. please feel free to let me know.
My assistant gamemaster is Malachai Vanek. He is doing an excellent job with McCallister Moves On.
The system is a lot of freeform with an additional backbone of the rules and background of Multiverser: The Game by Valdron Press written by M.J. Young and E.R. Jones. Multiverser is in my opinion, one of the most innovative, and fascinating games I've ever seen.
They've written one rule book (being of the opposite philosophy from White Wolf--they believe in a single rule book, not tens of thousands), and two supplements...The First and Second Book of Worlds. The Third Book is on its way, and I've rough-drafted the Fourth Book. But the game is explicitly designed so that you don't need to buy the worldbooks, as making such necessary is against the designers' philosophy.
I've also written a small book entitled Placeholder Worlds for Desperate GM's (available at Lulu.com just use their search engine, and you'll be able to find the other stuff I've done too under Eric R. Ashley) which helps the GM who has a player suddenly killed, or versed out, as Multiverser players say. As much as it pains my commercial soul, you'd probably be better off purchasing the main rules, and a worldbook before Placeholders which is meant as a filler-in rather than a main structure.
The game is a campaign game of extradimensional travel. You are a verser, "infected" by scriff, which means that when you die, your body is reincorporated in another material universe, and does not go to a Final Judgment. You are also immortal, and cannot have children. While it is possible to permanently kill another verser, it is very difficult, and in most universes it is impossible. Most versers eventually tire of the material universe, and voluntarily after perhaps thousands of years, enter Deep Eternity from which there is no return. The amount of time you spend in a universe is up to you, and to the banana peels, and the possibly ferocious inhabitants. Some versers spend centuries in each world, and others barely survive a year before versing onward.
The closest comparison is the TV series "Sliders" although not so limited to mundane universes. For in the Multiverse "There is no fiction" and "Every story is true somewhere".
You can learn your skills by trying in the heat of battle, or by long study, or by clever experiment.
However, you start out ignorant of these data points, and indeed of the existence of the Multiverse.
I prefer that you play a doppleganger of yourself, or a normal human. That is, no SEAL team/quantum physicists, please. The game allows for such, and indeed allows for you to play any type of character you want, but for this campaign, I don't. I'm also more likely to accept extraordinary skills from a person playing themselves.
True story: One convention I sat at the Multiverser table with an MBA and Lawyer; a graduate nuclear physicist, and a rocket scientist. Which made me, the GM, a SF/F writer, the dumbest guy at the table. I enjoy this btw, and indeed part of the fun of the game is finding out what types of interesting skills people have. I have found that many "ordinary" people have what I would consider "extraordinary" skills.
For chargen, character generation, simply describe yourself in basic form. Name, gender, any outstanding negative or positive abilities (such as for myself..tall {plus six foot} and big [240 pounds or possibly north of that, its been a while since I've dared a scale] and err, clumsy.).
Also add in skills. Skills in Multiverser are anything that you can do. This ranges from prayer for forgiveness to hitting a baseball to driving a car to typing on a computer to doing aerobics, and everything in between, and beyond. However, I don't want you to write down every skill. Just a few representative, and you can add more later (although trying to sell me on the notion that you're an expert locksmith right as the Demon Prince locks you into his lowest dungeon is going to be iffy.). These skills are rated low, medium, high in the amateur, professional (people would pay you if its that type of job), and expert (a guy pro's consult on difficult issues).
Also add in a list of items that you own, or could borrow without creating a felony, that total less than two hundred pounds, and that you want to take with you. No more rhyme or reason than that, although there is some suggestion of the items being essential to your self-image, but thats just a theory.
Now I add (its not in the rules) a request that you list say five books and five movies that are favorites to give me an idea of what you like, and that you list anything you absolutely can't stand so as to avoid having a spiderphobic get dropped into the Alien Planet of the Spiders.
Now I call myself Playtester because that is what I am doing here. We are mostly playtesting gameworlds for possible publication. If I do send one such your way, and you like, and it gets published we can put your name on the document under playtesters.
I hope thats covered everything, but doubtless not. Please make any comments or questions here or in a PM as you like. And thanks for bearing with such a long document.
Playtester from stately Playtester Manor signs off...
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 00:25, Sat 25 Feb 2006.
