http://chromebits.net documenting the future Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:11:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When a player starts a new character, the creative process sits somewhere on a spectrum between designing a fleshed-out background and creating a skeleton to 'discover' the character over time. As an example, I preferred the latter for Joron, a character in Star Wars Galaxies. When I originally created him as ... http://chromebits.net/2008/11/13/creative-process-character-design-or-discovery/ NB: As I was thinking about the upcoming Walking in Stations in EVE Online and what it can mean for roleplay, this story nearly wrote itself. I don't believe that we can reflect this directly in the game, but this does represent the flavor I hope to see. Story continues ... http://chromebits.net/2008/11/12/casiella-running-the-threads/ Forums essentially descend directly from the "ancient" bulletin board systems, in many ways the original social networking applications (other than email). But most of them don't take full advantage of everything we've learned or implement common features from other social applications. I spend a lot of time on a specific community ... http://chromebits.net/2008/11/12/4-ways-to-bring-forums-into-web-20/ The stuff I already have at home and still pending. Coyote by Allen Steele The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl Anathem by Neal Stephenson http://chromebits.net/2008/11/12/current-fiction-reading-list/ I recently started playing a new MMOG on a trial basis because I have family members who play it. The game itself doesn't seem to be holding me for any number of reasons, but two things stood out to me as the trial has progressed: First, as noted, what pulled me ... http://chromebits.net/2008/11/12/socially-networked-mmog/ A friend at work sent me this list of The 8 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Which Most Desperately Need Movies (sic). I've never read several of these, principally those that fall into the "fantasy" side more than the "sci-fi" side. But The Man in the High Castle seems like a natural for ... http://chromebits.net/2008/11/11/sf-books-needing-movie-adaptations/ EVE Online players frequently cite the skill training system as one of their favorite aspects of the game. No grinding for experience points; rather, a player sets a skill to train, then waits for skill points to accumulate as a function of his character's existing stats. You can do a ... http://chromebits.net/2008/09/19/eve-online-skill-training-update-1/ Getting in the head of a character represents one of the most fascinating bits of roleplaying for me. This particularly occurs in my case when my character feels frustrated. Maybe he can't accomplish some goal, like finding the object of a quest, or maybe he feels the dull ache of ... http://chromebits.net/2008/09/16/disillusionment/ Can somebody tell me what role-playing games have to do with the US presidential election? Apparently some Obama supporters have raised an issue about an event McCain claims occurred during his time in a Vietnamese prisoner camp, and the campaign responded: It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons ... http://chromebits.net/2008/08/19/roleplayers-clearly-hate-former-pows/ Given their focus on near-future technology and networking, and the pervasiveness with which the future is infiltrating our lives, cyberpunk-themed MMOGs should in reality rank among the most popular. But they don't. Neocron and Matrix Online have both managed to stay online for now, but they never achieved much popularity and ... http://chromebits.net/2008/08/01/cyberpunk-mmogs/