I apologize for being remiss in writing about my journey but over the past several months, other non-game related concerns have been taking precedence. Nevertheless, I had left my poor tribe, members of NeoPangea at a stand-still unfortunately until recently when I had to focus on these other issues forcing my hand to drop the ball on the GMing. :( Until I get everything else squared away, we've had to stop temporarily until I could see the way again.
In the meantime, Mind Storm Labs has hired a "Moses" of their own to foster community development on their official forums as well as to develop an official managed campaign for gamers to gain experience at various community events. One of the obstacles our tribe faces is whether they can bring their own characters that are played virtually online to these events and still be eligible for the same benefits or not. The description, for lack of a better word, for this upcoming living campaign, seems very focused on face-to-face on the ground events. Hopefully, I can still work with the Community Development Director, Richard Osterhout, so that those who can at best make it one event a year but can still play online be able to receive the same amount of experience for their gameplay.
The economic reality is that the majority of gamers cannot afford to travel to events such as gaming conventions; take time off to be in an event; on top of being able to afford all the materials, eg. books to play. Timewise, gamers want the convenience to fit their hobbies around their real-life responsibilities. Finally, no offense to the table-top crowd but with technology such as forum dice rollers, virtual gaming tabletops, and multimedia telecommunications, collaboritive storytelling/RP can be just as rewarding as sitting down with others around a table. The other side of the sword however is that technology can ruin pacing and test a gaming group's patience which is supposed to be for everyone a good time not to mention it's difficult to schedule players worldwide and have the players maintain a committment because of RL responsibilities.
Hopefully, as all fans of
Alpha Omega as well as Mind Storm Labs, virtual gaming tribes don't get left behind on the journey that MSL's "Moses" will be starting next year. *crosses fingers*
Tags: Alpha_Omega NeoPangea GMing ARGs LARPs RPGs RPing Storytelling
