ways_back_room | (no subject)

As has been said in a prior post, the Dreaming’s connection to the Milliways forest is going away as of Halloween. What does this mean in practical terms?

- No Tofu Beast(s) in the woods any more.
- Nyarlathotep? Also not going to be in the forest.
- In fact, anything magical that has not been specifically put there by someone else- i.e., the demon bunnies, which were a creation of one of the Lucifers- will no longer be there.
- The phenomenon of ‘it gets WEIRDER the further I go on’ will no longer exist, either. It will simply be a very deep forest, composed primarily of the sorts of trees one gets in northern Britain (since the grounds are based on Scotland).
- Milliways’ weird geography, however, will still apply. If you go far enough into the forest that you lose sight of the lands outside, you will eventually emerge from the forest back where you started. This has always been the case with the Milliways grounds. (Belar’s mountains, for example, only actually have one side. Go over them and you find yourself back where you began.)
- Non-magical creatures may be present in the forest if they have been introduced by someone else on purpose, such as the fish and deer that Belar put on his mountains; the deer might conceivably have wandered into the forest.
- Any further exotic creatures will have to come from the worlds of pups currently in the Bar, with their full knowledge and consent and an okay from the mods.

Thought we should let you know.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It would be very helpful to have this somewhere in the user info for the game, particularly for new players. When I first started, it was close to impossible to track down information what the physical landscape of Milliways is outside the bar, and whatever I got was gleaned from players who helpfully gave me bits and pieces of information via chat. Even then, despite their best intentions, some of the information was conflicting.

I'm still not clear where exactly the lake is outside the bar, or where the mountains start.

There is a tag: Physical Alterations which has a goodly amount of information about approved changes/long-standing features, etc.

I think the tricksy thing about any kind of Milliways geography is the fact that it's... kind of different for everyone, since it is organic and ever-changing depending on play. Shati, Sweeney, Gen, and Aspen were at my house once, and we got to talking about this, and then we each drew a map that contained the same features- but they were all in different places. This never had really affected our play; we thought it was funny that we see things a little differently through our characters.

I am certainly not a mod, so this is just an observation. It would be useful to have more info like this readily available, but Milliways has always been more free-form than many RPGs and not locked down into geography and such. Which is not to say you have a perfectly valid point, but again, just an observation.

Right. As long as all the major features are known and accounted for by the mods, and anything new is kept track of along with anything destroyed, there's no particular need to nail the features down. We don't like to codify it if we don't have to, since this isn't a dice-and-difficulties RPG.

And as a new player, there's no way to know any of this. It'd be great to have something somewhere that gives a basic description of what might be seen outside Milliways for new players and players like me who still really have no idea where the malleability of the physical environment via player whim ends.

There's a rough outline of a description in the FAQ, which is linked from the Bar's main page, and, I think, in the userinfo?

It has most of the details that people use frequently. Though it probably wouldn't be difficult to edit it if there are more features that see common usage? Like the mountain?

Think the grounds of Hogwarts, if Milliways were where the Castle would be.

Also, if you ever have any questions feel free to ping me. My journal name is in the User Info on the main page of the Comm.

Oh for the love of...
Damn you LJ Login! I even refreshed the page!

*sigh*

The above is me.

Dude, I do that all the freakin' time. You have to select the button beside your name, in addition to refreshing. *kicks LJ*

I...kind of agree.

Only, perhaps a link to the "physical alterations" tag somewhere in the user info, maybe near the bottom where the room list is. That way, it'll have the most up-to-date infomation with the minimum of effort.