Grand Unified Theory of OtherSpace

''In June 2004, OS Creator Brody wrote a Grand Unified Theory of Jointhesaga giving the lowdown on the development of the JTS games. This document includes the information relevent to the thought and inspiration behind OtherSpace. It's a long document, but it gives an insight into the background of the game, the mindset of it's creator and the sort of enviroment we play in.''

Discovery
MUDs, or Multi-User Dimensions, really weren’t anything new when I wandered onto the scene in 1994. These text-based multiplayer online games had been around for two decades before I played my first modern MUD, Infinity.

I had played British Isles and Island of Kesmai - both charged hourly play rates, as I recall - back in the days of CompuServe. But with the explosion of the Internet, free MUDs cropped up all over the place, with just about every theme imaginable.

At the time, I worked as a professional journalist with the St. Petersburg Times. While I had a journalistic curiosity about these games, I didn’t really think of running my own. I’m not much of a coder and, honestly, seeing so many games already online would probably discourage most people from trying their own hand at it. It’s hard to stand out, after all.

One afternoon, I was checking out The MUD Connector. The MUDs I’d played so far were, like Infinity, focused on solving puzzles and quests. But I’d seen some discussion in the forums about actual roleplaying games, and I was intrigued by the idea of real-time interactive storytelling. As a kid, I’d participated in tabletop roleplaying. That was fun, but it wasn’t really about getting into a character and bringing it to life. It was more about building up a character’s skills and then pitting those skills against increasingly difficult monsters and ambitious campaigns.

That afternoon, I ran a MUD Connector search for Star Trek roleplaying games. I’d been a longtime fan of the original Trek television series. I thought it’d be fun to hurl myself into a virtual world where I could mingle with Klingons and Romulans who acted like real Klingons and Romulans. When I found TOS TrekMUSE, I found a home away from home.

Set in the Star Trek universe just after the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, TOS TrekMUSE boasted a fairly decent and active playerbase when I joined. People played from around the world: I knew Swedish Romulans, British Vulcans and all-American Klingons. The game developer invested a lot of time and energy into space and combat-oriented code - not always to my tastes - but it was their playground, and I just played in it.

Much of my experience on TOS TrekMUSE was enjoyable. But one of the first things I discovered that sets roleplaying games apart from your standard quest-and-kill MUDs: You really become emotionally invested in a game where you bring a character to life. Suddenly, you’ve got a greater vested interest and a sense of self-preservation, particularly when the game institutes permadeath. On Infinity, you could die, and this would cost some gold, experience points and equipment, but you’d still have your character. You could rebuild. On TOS TrekMUSE, death meant death. Death meant an end to your character; an end to your character’s story.

Three key incidents stand out for me in my memories of growing frustration with TOS TrekMUSE.

The first was when I lagged out, and a twink - a troublemaking player who sets out to cause grief for other players, usually out of boredom but occasionally out of pure maliciousness - shot and killed my character while in a main corridor on Starbase One. Enough people made enough noise about that injustice that the admins resurrected my character.

The second was when the USS Yorktown crashed into the sun due to an oversight by a player at the controls of the starship. More than a dozen characters got wiped out in an instant. Starfleet suffered embarrassment, both in-character and out-of-character. No amount of grumbling could get this reversed. Either you knew how to fly a ship properly with the coded space system or you took your chances with the lives of your fellow characters.

The third and final incident: A group of Klingon characters infiltrated Starbase One and, using macros to make command shortcuts, ran around shooting Starfleet characters. They just ran from room to room, shooting. They didn’t pose. They didn’t give anyone a chance to shoot back. It wasn’t about roleplaying, it was about killing. Two characters from the crew of the USS Excelsior, which my character commanded, died that day. One was a doctor, and I’m sure she wasn’t even armed. The staffers refused to overturn this outcome, no matter how loudly we complained. If the code allowed it, they reasoned, then it was fair.

It was about this time, in 1997, that I started pondering the possibility of running my own game. I’m of the general opinion that if you don’t like how someone runs their game, and they clearly don’t want your advice on how to do it better, then you’ll be much better off in the long run to either play somewhere else that more closely suits your tastes or really put your money where your mouth is and run your own game.

So, I started poking around. First, I’d need a theme. Then, I’d need to pick a codebase. And, finally, I’d need to put together a team of people to help me run it, because these games don’t work well at all as one-man operations.

Initially, I considered a TOS-era Star Trek game to directly compete with TOS TrekMUSE. But another game, Strange New Worlds, had already gone head-to-head with TOS TrekMUSE - and had done all right for itself. Throwing yet another Trek game into the mix seemed like waste of time and creativity.

I considered The Next Generation, Babylon 5, Star Wars, the Belgariad, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Lord of the Rings, Xanth. All of these themes intrigued me, but it felt to me that I’d be following too much in someone else’s footsteps. I concluded that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right, in a universe of my own creation.

I didn’t realize at the time that original themes are often doomed to fail.

Space Menagerie
The more MUD research I did, the more I learned about the folly of my plans.

The MUD Connector is clogged with hundreds and hundreds of games set in established-theme universes, from Star Trek to Star Wars to Tolkien to Harry Potter to Stargate to The Matrix. The themes are popular because they come with a built-in fanbase and lots of easy-to-get canon information all over the Internet.

Established themes are easy to play, easy to implement, and relatively easy to enforce if you’ve got encyclopedic knowledge of the theme. But established themes also bring with them people who will nitpick your handling of canon.

Original themes are tough. They add a significant learning curve for players and they require more groundwork by the developer and staff. But the upside of an original theme is that no one can really nitpick you about canon if it’s your creation. The major downside is that unless your game gets good word of mouth or you’ve got a decent advertising budget, few people are likely to hear of it.

I’m stubborn, almost to a fault. Tenacious. So, I decided to keep going with the idea of an original theme. You know when Han Solo is flying into the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back, knowing full well he’s got a very good chance of getting himself and the Millennium Falcon pulverized, and he tells C-3P0, “Never tell me the odds!” That pretty much summed up my attitude in late 1997 when I began working with my wife, Joy, on the intricacies of the original-theme universe that would become OtherSpace.

The key to the success of an original-theme game, I decided early on, would be a sense of familiar elements in spite of being original. Look at Star Wars, a movie that borrows heavily from cowboy movies, Japanese samurai cinema and ancient mythology. Being original doesn’t necessarily mean being totally strange and unusual. Being original and successful often means taking old ideas and re-envisioning them in a new way, like George Lucas did with Star Wars.

So, OtherSpace owes a significant creative debt to many sources of inspiration that allowed us to present familiar elements in a new way. The idea of an Earth-centered universe inhabited by humans and aliens alike has been seen many times before, from Flash Gordon to Buck Rogers to Star Trek to Babylon 5. Our faster-than-light OtherSpace Drives would require a Hiver tendril entity to function, much like the FTL drives in Dune required a Navigator.

Several of our humanoid and alien races found inspiration in established themes.

The reptiloid Nall, for example, are a philosophical cross between the ferocious velociraptors of Jurassic Park and the sentient evolved dinosaurs of Harry Harrison’s West of Eden novels. The human clone Specialists, with their five-year lifespans, are similar to the Nexus replicants of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The felinoid Demarians, with their gaudy fashion sense and haughty attitude, are a sort of furrified Centauri crossed with the eloquence of a Narn from Babylon 5. The bear-like Castori are physically similar to the Ewoks of Star Wars, but they’re psychic, great with technology and require three months of hibernation each year.

But we didn’t just absorb ideas from existing science fiction works.

The rogue empire of Fagin’s Riches - and Lord Fagin the Pirate King himself - got its inspiration from the gang of thieves in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. The Mystics are rather like Tolkien-esque elves, without the pointy ears. The idea for the crystalline jellyfish Centaurans and their symbiotic nutrient-giving organisms came from an Earthbound jellyfish species. The Timonae, with their freewheeling lifestyle and shady reputation, were inspired by the gypsies of eastern Europe. The Sivadians are modeled in many ways after Victorian Era British.

The Nall-dominated Parallax and the Clawed Fist Fleet offered shades of Soviet Russia and Red China. The Stellar Consortium, with its diverse council, felt a little like the United Nations.

As we developed the concepts behind the races, worlds and political boundaries of the universe, it became clear that we’d end up with a veritable menagerie of alien races to attract people who enjoy roles that let them anthropomorphize, as well as a diverse collection of human-like races to provide different viewpoints and mindsets to explore. That gave me quite a bit of confidence in the theme. It would be a sort of roleplaying paradise: One day, a player could be roaming the galaxy in the role of a snobbish Demarian and the next that same player might be playing the role of a submissive Specialist servant who obsessively sweeps trash off the floor in Sivad’s Independence Dome. Players could get involved in politics, they could join military organizations, or they could strike out on their own.

That variety of opportunities, along with the familiar elements of the theme, would provide the fertile ground and seeds for the game’s growth.

Now we needed rain.

The Perfect Storm
I didn’t really start enjoying Babylon 5 thoroughly until the second season.

Sure, Commander Jeffrey Sinclair had admirable qualities, but the actor, Michael O’Hare, just seemed so wooden and unconvincing to me. But once Bruce Boxleitner joined as John Sheridan, I became hooked.

I admired J. Michael Strazcynski’s five-year-plan. Basically, he intended to tell a story over the course of five television seasons, setting up a series of conflicts to be resolved during that time. So, we watched as Earth’s government became a puppet of the Shadows, the Centauri warred with the Narn, the Mimbari struggled amongst themselves, Sheridan led a battle to kick the Shadows and the Vorlons out of the galaxy, and then turned his attention toward toppling a corrupt Alliance government in a civil war. Always, I found myself wondering "What’s going to happen next?"

So, as I moved past the thematic foundations of OtherSpace and began to focus on what to do with those foundations, I concluded that I wanted players of the game to feel like I did about Babylon 5. I wanted them to wonder "What’s going to happen next?"

It’s always later that I seem to learn I’m apparently doing something stupid.

But, as evidenced before, I’m stubborn, and even if an idea seems crazy, I am likely to try it anyway because I must see for myself if it’s really futile or if it just needs me doing it to work. (Yes, some measure of megalomania is required for this job, I’m afraid.)

Early in the development of OtherSpace, even before we opened the doors for players on June 28, 1998, I had a basic storyline in mind for five full-blown story arcs, each building on the one that went before it. The simple premise for each story arc went something like this:

- Reveal the Hivers for the evil xenocidal creatures they are and defeat them. - Scandalize the utopian Stellar Consortium government and take it to the brink of destruction, and topple Lord Fagin’s grip on Tomin Kora. - Introduce the Kamir, creators of the Hivers, and embroil the Parallax in a civil war that ends with the liberation of some of their worlds. - Embark on a deep space mission, find a new world or two, and reveal in X-Files fashion that the Kamir and the Hivers have been involved in manipulating human history for centuries. - Bring in a warmongering alien race to conquer the known worlds, forcing the entire playerbase onto one refugee ship that wanders the galaxy for a year.

With each arc, I wanted to keep shaking up the status quo. But while this would keep a sense of vibrance and vitality as the game’s borders and political alliances took on new shapes, sizes and colors, it would play havoc in other ways.

Help files and web-based canon sources quickly became outdated and almost pointless to update, given how quickly things could change. A player might not log on for a week, and when they returned, they’d find the storyline suddenly shift in a new and unexpected direction - possibly not for the benefit of their character. And as the story evolved and became more complex, it became harder for a total newbie to log on and immerse themselves without feeling like they needed to complete a graduate course in OtherSpace lore to get in.

A common misconception about story arcs when we first introduced them to the text-based gaming world - and one perpetuated by even esteemed experts in the field like Richard Barthle - was that such storylines are fixed, rigid and immutable (and therefore not a terribly good idea) just because you’ve got a premise in mind for a beginning, middle and end to the storyline. Sounds boring and futile if you want to be someone who makes a difference in the universe, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth. If this were true, then changing news files and web-based canon sources wouldn’t be so difficult - we could just plan ahead, write the lore and wait for the proper time to post it.

On OtherSpace, story arcs aren’t absolute blueprints for what will happen. They provide a framework for what can happen, but how they actually evolve and take shape depends entirely on the people who get involved. Yes, we may find a way to ensure a major story element goes into play (such as forcing the entire playerbase aboard Sanctuary to escape the Kretonians), but far more often some other elements are determined by the players.

During the first story arc, The Price of Expedience, we got players so attached to an admin-played boy named Kip Caspar - a testament to my wife Joy’s acting and storytelling prowess - that they nearly went into an out-of-character revolt when he became possessed by the Hivers. Once it was apparent that he would die - or they might have to kill him - the players went ballistic, both in and out of character. So, I tweaked the plan so that they could find a way to save him.

During the second story arc, Walls Fall Down, I wanted the corrupt General Dimitri Volstov to get arrested and stand trial, a la Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. I’d even been planning my big Jack Nicholson-esque "You can’t handle the truth!" rant. But a player shot and killed Volstov.

No story arc in this environment ever quite works out exactly as originally planned. Some ideas work; some don’t. What might work great as a television show episode may not play out quite as successfully in a real-time gaming environment.

For example, Deep Space Nine had a good episode with some characters stuck in a prison work camp. That’s great television, because they have some dramatic moments but escape within an hour. It didn’t work so well in our twelfth story arc, The Moebius Shift, when players visited an alternate planet Earth run by xenophobes and got themselves stuck in the Area 16 work camp. This wasn’t Deep Space Nine. Players had trouble separating themselves and their inconvenience from the interesting potential for character growth and drama that could be drawn from being trapped together in a place like that. Rather than explore the dramatic opportunities, players simply logged off. That storyline went nowhere. Frustrated, I had little choice but to craft a new storyline to make possible their escape. That worked far better. The lesson learned: Captivity is a roleplay killer, while a good liberation with lots of explosions will make you super popular.

I don’t mind saying we’ve taken some daring and controversial turns with the storyline over the years. I’m proud of it, even when it doesn’t work as well as we might have hoped or proved aggravating to players sometimes. If we don’t try, then we can only wonder what might have been. And we don’t learn, either, if we don’t try.

Some things you might expect to be an utter disaster - like conquering the known worlds and forcing everyone to play together on one colony vessel for a while - turn out to be fantastic, while others - like a non-fatal flu-like plague spreading across the cosmos - just make everybody grump and grumble.

But, sometimes, storylines take a turn nobody could have expected.

During our eleventh story arc, The Rage of the Furies, we returned to somewhat familiar ground by allowing an alien race known as the Lem’ing to start attacking the spaceports and starship production facilities around the galaxy.

This arc, in the summer of 2001, would be marred by our darkest hour.

Killing Time
Ironically, it’s all my fault.

Every bit of it.

First, I built a planet called KR-117, gave it a terrestrial climate and landscape, and riddled it with veins of volatile (and highly valuable) polydenum.

Second, I let a character named Bartholomew Ritter settle the world, which he dubbed La Terre.

Third, I ran a plot on La Terre in which a madman put a bomb in one of the polydenum mines and threatened to blow up the planet.

Fourth, I gave a staffer permission to have the Lem’ing fleet go after La Terre during the eleventh story arc.

Ritter had often been a problematic player, one of those who is paranoid to the point where he thinks the staff does nothing else except plot the next wicked thing we hope to do to him, despite the favoritism we’d shown to him by giving him control of a world on OtherSpace. He was the sort who liked to delude himself into thinking, and telling others, that staffers wanted to force players down specific paths with our story arcs.

During Rage of the Furies, Ritter decided to play chicken with me.

He ordered another player to plant explosives in the polydenum mines beneath the planet’s surface as the Lem’ing fleet approached, creating a doomsday device. His character reasoned that he would sooner die and take his citizens with him than allow the Lem’ing a chance to take over his planet. He didn’t even warn the populace to evacuate. The player figured that I’d prove his point for him and prevent him from blowing up the planet, thus forcing the story to work out the way I’d intended rather than allowing a player to make a dent in it.

Well, I didn’t blink. I didn’t swerve.

When Ritter gave the order and the button was pushed, La Terre exploded.

Dozens of characters died at that moment.

It was like the USS Yorktown blowing up on TOS TrekMUSE, except this wasn’t an accident caused by someone not knowing how to fly a ship properly. This was the purposeful Jonestown-esque destruction of a world, properly roleplayed and totally possible within the parameters of our story.

It was like my friends getting wiped out by Klingons on Starbase One, except this didn’t involve the fastest macro and the highest weapon skill.

It was like everything I got frustrated with on TOS TrekMUSE - the senseless, morale-blasting tragedy, except I had the power to change the outcome this time.

And I didn’t.

Because code didn’t drive it. Because a macro didn’t make it happen.

Because a player made a choice, within the parameters of our world, and that player had the power to make the choice.

Because I wanted to prove my own point: That Ritter was a paranoid nutjob who was wrong when he claimed staffers would force players down a certain path in the story arc.

I think he was surprised.

So were all his victims. Surprised, and angry.

Within minutes after the destruction of La Terre, I banned Ritter from the game. While I might let his choice and its consequences stand, I wouldn’t tolerate another second of his existence on OtherSpace.

In retrospect, this probably was a mistake. Had I allowed him to stay, then he could have been the real focus of the rage of upset players. It was his choice, after all. But banning him didn’t make that rage go away. It just got redirected - to me.

Suddenly, I was an ogre for letting all those characters die.

I should have stepped in. I should have stopped Ritter. I should have saved La Terre. Or, at the very least, they reasoned, I should give them the opportunity to use luckrolls to see if they managed to escape in time.

But I said no. Ritter never warned his people. Had he given an evacuation order, then I’d have allowed luckrolls. But Ritter was so focused on giving me the virtual finger that he didn’t think about anyone else.

Without an evacuation order, no one would be the wiser before Ritter set off the bombs.

So it would stand.

I’d proved my point. I’d gotten rid of Ritter. And three dozen characters got wiped out in the process.

Not my best day, admittedly. But for all the ugliness it spawned, the La Terre incident provided stark evidence of just how much impact a single player could have on our game.

Your Song
Sometimes, I like to think about our storylines as symphonic compositions put into words, and the melody comes from the cause-and-effect interactions of players and plots.

Each character’s introduction, evolution and, ultimately, demise provide vibrancy and color to the tone and tempo.

Without players, the stories could exist in a more static form, such as a book.

But with players, the stories become more dynamic, more fluid, more alive.

Players are actors and storytellers. They’re musicians bringing our collaborative symphony to life. Each character is a song performed through the player’s instrument.

It’s my job to wave the baton, but more often than not I’m just dancing it through the air to my own private tune while the players are making their own crazy music and I bounce along trying to keep up, providing counterpoint and consequence to their intonations.

Some songs are upbeat and happy; others are exciting, but fraught with dangerous undertones. Some songs are gritty and dark; others are campy and over the top. Some songs last for arc after arc, a long-burning, well-tended fire; others end quickly, snuffed out like brief candles in a high wind.

All songs end, eventually.

How you present your character and the choices you make through your character determine the tempo, tone and duration of that character’s song. But short or long, you must prepare yourself for the very real possibility that, at some point, that song will end. And it probably won’t be your choice when it happens.

Permanent Vacation
Death comes to all, ultimately, but on OtherSpace we’ve had our share of particularly strange character deaths.

A Timonae drug dealer on Tomin Kora crossed Boss Cabrerra once too often, got tied to a chair and fitted with an explosive collar. Colin Neidermeyer then ordered the chair shoved out the penthouse meeting room window. Once the chair had plunged one hundred feet, the collar exploded, beheading the drug dealer before he struck the concrete below.

A Demarian spy tracking his quarry in one of the tree cities of Castor tripped on spilled balls of yarn and fell from a high platform to his doom.

A Zangali sitting in a passenger shuttle became the victim of a freak accident when a form-fitting seat malfunctioned.

A human would-be hero facing an omnipotent alien aboard Sanctuary raises his Bible, proclaims “My God will save me,” and then is reduced to a pile of ash upon which the tumbling Bible thumps.

A Demarian involved in the assault on Nocturn ignored orders not to go scouting ahead of the troops and died when a hallucinatory sand eel chomped on him.

A human astronaut from the 20th Century got his head squeezed into paste by a lumbering, steel-skinned reptiloid Legion warrior.

An Ungstiri troublemaker disguised himself as a clown – full makeup, red wig, floppy shoes – and tried scaling the Dealbreaker Gorge on Odari. He fell to his death.

A human investigator with Sanctuary Security went to Tomin Kora, wearing his uniform, and tried to pass himself off as an agent of Boss Cabrerra. His headless corpse turned up in a crate on Sivad.

Death happens.

But it’s not as easy to die now as it used to be.

The games of jointhesaga.com provide two barriers to death, if players choose to take advantage of them.

If a staffer thinks you’re making a particularly dumb choice, one that is likely to get yourself or others badly injured or killed, the staffer may ask you to +cricketfactor. This command rolls your intelligence stat. If you get at least a Fair on the roll, the staffer will tell you why what you’re doing is such a patently terrible idea. If you fail the roll, well, you at least get a nagging feeling that what you’re doing needs rethinking. Once you’ve heard the advice, you can either follow it or ignore it. You’d be surprised how many people ignore it.

The other barrier to death, which can’t be used if you’ve been given a +cricketfactor roll and ignored it, is the luck card. This card can be redeemed so that a staffer can invent a sort of deus ex machina explanation for a character’s survival despite a certain death situation.

We don’t like killing off characters.

Okay, that’s a lie. Sort of. We very much like killing off particularly foolhardy and stupid characters, because they create useful object lessons for the rest of the players.

But we don’t like killing off characters without a good reason.

And, yes, stupidity is a good reason. Irretrievably dumb characters deserve to die.

A Brief History of OtherSpace
No, you don’t have to memorize all the intricacies of the logs, chronologies and other resources on our website to get a grasp of what’s been happening on OtherSpace during the past six years. Just review the following planet-by-planet caffeinated recap and you’ll be set.

Antimone: Settled by expatriated Mystics about 10,000 years ago. Stellar Consortium member before conquest by the Kretonians in 2652. Liberated by the Nall in 2806. Still freewheeling and loose living.

Castor: Mostly harmless homeworld of the bear-like Castori. Target for occasional terrorist attacks. Formerly a Stellar Consortium member, Castor fell under the control of the Kretonians for more than a century. Talented Castori engineers on this planet invented such controversial devices as the personality reprogrammer, virtual prison and OtherSpace transit rings.

Centauri: Icy home of the crystalline jellyfish Centaurans. Back when this world was part of the Stellar Consortium, its inhabitants preached peace and avoided violent conflict. But after the Kretonians invaded, many of these long-lived psionic creatures served the invaders in their hunt for Mystics of Val Shohob. Now, the Centaurans are a more aggressive and suspicious of outsiders, and many outsiders are less trusting of them.

Demaria: Altheor, the revered hero of ancient Demarians, is spinning in his tomb. Once a lush, wealthy world of nobility served by underclassers, this former Stellar Consortium world came under the control of the Kretonians in 2652. Now, in the year 3004, the Demarian population is concentrated in New Alhira, a town built by Sanctuary refugees who turned their backs on the posh lifestyles and politically incorrect practices of their ancestors. Disaster struck New Alhira a few years ago when a Timonae hacker triggered a self-destruct device aboard a ship at the spaceport.

Earth: At one time, mankind’s homeworld served as the center of the Stellar Consortium. Then, in 2651, the Kretonians came and conquered. After liberation, humans on Earth feared aliens. Leaders bombarded the population with xenophobic propaganda. In the year 3000, after Sanctuary’s return from a voyage in an alien universe where time moved at an accelerate rate, President Lazarus Blades tried to open Earth to aliens in the interest of trade. This led to a terrorist group known as Keep Earth Pure setting off more than a dozen plasma bombs on Earth, decimating the planet. The world seemed dead for two years, and then outsiders learned about undersea colonies in which survivors dwelled. Then the Moebius Shift kicked in, and an alternate Earth materialized, with Colin Neidermeyer as president. The Nall attacked. Alternate-universe Kretonians attacked. Neidermeyer set off plasma bombs, destroying Earth again. Eventually, a strike team reversed the Moebius Shift, replacing the new dead Earth with the old not-so-dead-but-still-pretty-nasty Earth. It’s now considered part of the Solar Republic, led by Mars.

G’ahnlo: Money-grubbing fish-like inhabitants didn’t let massive wars or Moebius Shifts get in the way of making profitable deals. This former Stellar Consortium world remains focused on commerce and tourism.

Ganymede: Once part of the Stellar Consortium, this Jovian moon became settled by the Maltarians after they arrived in Sol System in the early 31st Century. Not long after that, the Maltarians set off a bomb on Jupiter that turned the gas giant into a second star in the solar system. During the recent war between the forces of the Sivad-led Orion Arm Treaty Organization, the Maltarians blew up Ganymede in order to deprive the xenophobic humans the chance to conquer it. The debris flinging out from the destroyed moon killed King Colin Neidermeyer and badly damaged several Sivadian fleet vessels. The Maltarians departed Sol System in the wake of this conflict.

Grimlahd: The reptiloid Grimlahdi and Zangali are back to sharing this planet, which is once again under the effective rule of the Nall-dominated Parallax. This world won its independence back in 2651. It got conquered flat-out – and then liberated - by the Nall in 3003. And in early 3004, Grimlahd joined the Parallax so it could have unfettered access to the multiverse nexus near Nocturn, which is controlled by the Nall. Ancient enmity between the Grimlahdi and Zangali still remains. Many centuries ago, Grimlahdi helped the Nall hunt down rebellious Zangali.

Ist’Thol’Mek: Dead, icy world that once was home to the now extinct Mekke, a psionic insectoid race that served the Nall of the Parallax until their liberation in 2651. Wiped out by the Kretonians.

Jupiter: Turned into a star by the Maltarians, thus giving more justification to the xenophobic humans of Sol System when they launched an attack to drive the Maltarians away.

La Terre: Discovered and settled in the year 3000 by Bartholomew Ritter, this planet held rich deposits of volatile and valuable polydenum. A lunatic named Gustav Eiger, who detonated plasma bombs on Earth, brought one of those bombs to La Terre in 3001. Several people working together managed to kill Eiger and disarm the bomb. Ironically, Ritter and some of the same people involved in stopping Eiger’s bomb would set off a bunch of bombs within the polydenum veins of La Terre as the Lem’ing fleet attacked in the summer of 3001. Everyone on the exploding planet died. In early 3002, the Il’Ri’Kamm Hive Mind resurrected La Terre and its inhabitants as a show of good faith that they wanted to help corporeal life forms defeat the treacherous Kamir. The Nall, however, condemned La Terre as a ghost world, and refuse to recognize its inhabitants as living beings.

Luna: Formerly a Stellar Consortium world, this is the adopted home of the Lunites, descendants of cloned Specialists – tube-bred servants with five-year-lifespans who fought wars, dug ditches and did other menial labor for normal humans. Now part of the Solar Republic, led by Mars.

Mars: The Red Planet once was shared by the humans and the Zangali. Shared is probably really not the right term. They went to war over it centuries ago, after a human terraforming team set off an explosion that triggered the collapse of an underground Zangali city. The Zangali left Mars during the Kretonian Invasion of 2651. After the Kretonians were wiped out by the Nall in 2806, new terraforming teams went to work. Mars prospered. In the year 3000, Mars broke away from Earth, sparking a brief civil war. Winning its independence, Mars formed the Martian Republic in 3001. Established a new military, called the Martian Legions. And then came the Moebius Shift, which switched an alternate Mars that hadn’t been fully terraformed and had been inhabited primarily by scattered tribes of Outbackers. In 3003, King Colin Neidermeyer approached the Martians with a proposal: He could help reverse the Moebius Shift and bring back Mars if they accepted him as king. They agreed, and the pre-Moebius Mars, Earth and Luna were restored. Neidermeyer then died in battle against the Maltarians during a war with OATO forces. Mars is now the seat of the Solar Republics.

Nalhom: Tropical homeworld of the reptiloid Nall and seat of military power for the Parallax. Conquered by the Kretonians in 2651. This was the first world liberated by the Nall in 2806, when they wiped out the Kretonians. Easily angered, with a hair-trigger sense of honor and a need to save face, the Nall recently vowed to go after the human gangsters known as Yakuza, who hijacked a couple of Nall vessels and coreseeker missiles.

Odari: A former Stellar Consortium world, this planet is home to the mercantile-minded insectoids known as Odarites. The major employer is the Odarite Merchants Guild, which has a sort of Mafia-like approach to competence and loyalty. Each hive city is ruled by a Hive Queen. All guilders are male Odarites trained in the art of commerce. From 2651-2806, Odarites were enslaved by the Kretonians. Now, they’re an independent world.

Phyrria: The sentient mechanoids known as Phyrrians dwell on this bleak, acid rain-splattered planet that once was home to an extremely advanced race. All Phyrrians serve to gather information for the Overmind – the master computer entity in the city of Task Matrix Central. This former Stellar Consortium world has remained untouched by invaders over the centuries.

Quaquan: Descendants of native American Indians, known as the Qua, dwell on this former Stellar Consortium world. In the wake of the Kretonian Invasion of 2651, the Qua gave shelter to the unhomed Mystics of Val Shohob. They helped defend the Mystic colony against attacks by the Centauran search hounds enlisted by the Kretonians. Some Mystics still remain among the peace-loving Qua.

Sagittarius: Former homeworld of the Il’Ri’Kamm Hive Mind, also known as Ri’Kammi or Hivers. These aliens provided OtherSpace faster-than-light drives to the known worlds in 2590. In 2650, the Hivers kidnapped three starships from the Stellar Consortium, Fringe and Parallax to fight the last battle in their xenocidal war against the B’hiri. The janissaries allied themselves with the B’hiri, however, and defeated the Hivers. The Hive Core on Sagittarius was wiped out with a psionic bomb. During Sanctuary’s voyage, after the Kretonian Invasion of 2651, a trapped Hiver tendril managed to replicate itself and escape back to Sagittarius, where it restored the Hive Core. The Hivers ultimately died in a final conflict with their creators, the Kamir, on Nocturn in 3003.

Sivad: This tropical paradise planet was a member of the Stellar Consortium when it came under the control of a madman named Laurence Montevedo in 2651. The Consortium’s Vanguard military forces invaded, liberating Sivad and killing Montevedo. The use of Specialists, once prohibited on Sivad by the Consortium charter, came back into vogue after the Kretonian Invasion created a need for quickly produced soldiers. Now, in the 31st Century, Sivad is ruled by a monarch and the Council of Equals. The government, which is increasingly known as the Sivadian Empire, also controls Waldheim and the former Solar Republic world of Deserata.

Tomin Kora: A desolate world in the midst of the violet and blue Tomin Nebula, which has been home to two major criminal empires in the past four hundred years: Fagin’s Riches, led by Lord Fagin until his fall in 2651, and Boss Cabrerra’s Shadowheart, after Sanctuary’s return, from 3000-3003. After Cabrerra’s fall, presumably when the Royal Naval Service and a coalition fighter squadron brought down Boss Cabrerra’s headquarters building, the domed city fell into chaos. In 3004, Shadowheart is now a bombed-out shell of its former self, with different factions vying for power.

Ungstir: Settled by eastern European and Asian colonists centuries ago, this once was a beautiful terrestrial planet called Youngster. When the Nall tried to conquer the planet, the inhabitants resisted. The Nall fired a coreseeker missile at the planet, shattering it. The survivors colonized the remaining chunks, making do with what they had. The Kretonians invaded in 2651 and turned Ungstir Prime into their primary base of operations. The Nall returned in 2806, destroying Ungstir Prime as part of their campaign to eradicate the Kretonians. The Nall came back in 3001, invading Ungstir after the world’s leader, Lord Boromov, detonated nuclear weapons on Castor (a Nall-allied world) and attacked a Nall ship. Once Boromov was captured and executed, the Nall liberated Ungstir.

Val Shohob: The homeworld of the Shohobian Mystics, who once communed with the Voice, a source of prophecy. In 2651, a Vanguard ship entering OtherSpace near the star Volshovir triggered a supernova that seemed to destroy Val Shohob, leaving thousands of Mystics homeless. That’s also the year it was first learned that the Kamir, creators of the Il’Ri’Kamm Hive Mind, acted as the Voice. In 3001, the resurrected Hivers restored Val Shohob near Vollista. Eye Balthazar turned his back on the Kamir, and those transdimensional aliens began their war against corporeal life. Once their “Voice” was destroyed and exposed as a manipulative, evil entity, the Mystics largely lost their sense of purpose. Under the leadership of Eye Mordecai, most of the remaining Mystics left Val Shohob in 3004, bound for the multiverse nexus to explore and learn more about their heritage, which is linked to both the Timonae and the Vollistan Light Singers. The world is now under the authority of the Parallax.

Vollista: The aura-generating, tall humanoids known as Vollistan Light Singers dwell on this heavily forested and mountainous world, which is a solar neighbor to Val Shohob. Centuries ago, Vollistans served as brutal psionic interrogators for the Nall. After the Kretonian Invasion of 2651, a freak wormhole accident created an energy field around Vollista that rendered all electronics non-functional. The denizens of Vollista became far less reliant on technology and got back to nature. They left behind their dark service to the Nall and tended to their arts and poetry. Now, the energy field has faded. Few Vollistans choose to leave the planet, which is now under the authority of the Parallax. Those who do leave often come back to Vollista on a regular basis.

Ydahr: A swampy world that was enslaved by the Parallax centuries ago, Ydahr is home to the newt-like Ydahri, who are cousins of the G’ahnli. If G’ahnli come across as smarmy used car salesmen sometimes, the Ydahri often come across as affable and more than a little bit naïve in their business dealings. They’re very community minded and quite intent on making sure that their customers get the best deals possible. The planet is now a willing protectorate of the Parallax.

Waldheim: Settled centuries ago by German and Austrian colonists, civilization prospered on this world without the knowledge of other worlds and thus the Kretonians didn’t realize this enclave of humanity existed when they invaded. So, Waldheim grew and evolved without interference from the Kretonians. It wasn’t discovered until the 31st Century – the year 3003, to be precise – when a Sivadian vessel happened upon it while exploring. The planet is now a protectorate of what has become known as the Sivadian Empire.

That’s the overall story in a … well, that’s not really a nutshell, is it?

Might as well try a nutshell version too.

Here goes:

Kamir made the Hivers. Hivers revolted, wiping out many Kamir and attacking Kamir allies, such as the B’hiri. Hivers got wiped out. Val Shohob exploded. Fagin fell from power. Parallax civil war. Kretonians invaded. Sanctuary escaped. Sanctuary came home, finding Hivers existed again. Hivers brought back Val Shohob and La Terre. Kamir brought back Grim. Sanctuary traveled to the multiverse nexus near Nocturn. Nall captured and later destroyed Sanctuary. Kamir and Hivers wiped each other out on Nocturn. OATO and Sol System fought a brief war, which Sivad won. Grim, who would have become even more powerful than the Kamir had he succeeded at acquiring the power of the Tower of the Hand, was beaten. Now, everyone stands at a crossroads where they’re no longer manipulated by omnipotent aliens. The future remains unwritten.

THAT’s the overall story in a nutshell.

Open Book
If I’ve got a doctrine, a code I live by, it’s probably best summed up in the Newtonian laws of motion.

Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, while objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless they encounter an unbalanced force.

Acceleration depends upon net force or the mass of the object being accelerated.

And, finally, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, it’s my opinion that it doesn’t matter whether it makes a sound. Populate the damned forest with squirrels and bears and bugs and rabbits and deer and snakes, and when a tree falls, not only will it be heard, but also it might actually make an impact on the lives of the creatures dwelling around it.

I believe that a quiet online roleplaying environment is a dead – or at least comatose – roleplaying environment. The more that happens, the more lively that environment becomes.

OtherSpace got started with a fairly simple original story arc that only truly affected a handful of players. But with each subsequent arc, more and more people stood to be affected by the cause-and-effect chain reactions as we introduced new situations, shocks and surprises.

And the more complicated it got, the more confusing and byzantine it became for new players trying to drop into the mix. Ironically, what put our object in motion and kept it accelerating also began to strangle it within its own mass. New blood, which used to infuse the game on a regular basis in our early days because of word of mouth about the exciting stories, slowed to a trickle precisely because so much had happened.

Stagnation set in. Staffers got cranky. Players got cranky. People started beating up on each other for lack of anything else to do.

We stood at the brink of becoming just another defunct online roleplaying game in the vast text-based graveyard.

After the seventeenth story arc, Contagion, I’ll be honest: I’d gotten totally fed up with whiny players, primadonnas who complained about absolutely anything if it didn’t make their character look good or if their twink-tacular +sheet couldn’t be used to save the day all the time. I needed a break. I took one. I declared an end to story arcs. I stepped back from regular day-to-day involvement in running OtherSpace so I could focus on Chiaroscuro.

And OtherSpace plugged along, even if in diminished form. Aeolus and other staffers persisted with their own mini-arcs to keep the stories flowing, but the noise level clearly dropped.

In late spring 2004, after a few months of distancing myself from the clamor of problematic players and nurturing Chiaroscuro along, I reviewed what had become of OtherSpace and faced a decision from three choices:

1) Let the game keep limping along, relying on the staff to stay engaged and motivated to drive the stories on their own;

2) Close the game, putting it out of its misery before it became one of those countless empty roleplaying games that clutter the Internet.

3) Renew my own commitment to the game and return to the lively phenomenon of story arcs.

The first option really didn’t work for me, although it would be the path of least resistance. It’s no real secret that I’m a bit of an egotist. One must be an egotist to succeed at this. (And, I’d note, there’s nothing wrong with being egotistical as long as you’re hard working. Nothing’s more worthless than a lazy egotist.) Few things are better on my ego than seeing one of my games packed with players. But nothing’s worse than seeing one of my formerly well-populated games in decline, with fewer and fewer players logging on and staying engaged in the world we’ve created over the past six years. And, despite the confidence I have in the people who work on the staff at OtherSpace, it wouldn’t be fair to leave on the shoulders the responsibility for the game’s ultimate survival.

So, I couldn’t leave the game on life support. That left pulling the plug or throwing myself back into the mix again.

I came ever so close to ending the game.

We’d come to the end of seventeen story arcs. We’d wrapped up elements of a far-reaching storyline that had spread across six years. From a story standpoint, I had that feeling in my gut that we were done. We’d lasted longer than many text-based online roleplaying games, but I had other projects to which I could devote my energies.

This would have been relatively easy for me to do, except for one thing: The devoted staffers who stuck with me through good and bad over the past six years had invested at least as much creative energy as I had in OtherSpace. Throwing that out the window just to spare my ego the pain of watching the game’s decline didn’t seem fair.

So, I thought about it, long and hard, and decided that the best choice for my ego, the interests of the staff and the survival of the game would be the third choice.

But I refused to come back just to pick up the old story threads and move forward. For my own sanity, I wanted a fresh start. Thus did I come to the decision of changing the name of the game to OtherSpace: New Journeys and embarking on a new over-arching storyline beginning with Arc I: The Ruled Sun.

All that went before in the past six years would become the thematic foundation of what would be a new epic storyline. Hopefully, this would make it easier for new players to initiate themselves into our universe.

Yes, this would mean more work for me. Yes, it probably wasn’t terribly smart, all things considered, because it just set me up to deal once more with players I’d grown increasingly frustrated with. However, it might also mean I’d get a renewed enthusiasm for the environment. In the early days of OtherSpace, the more excited I became in the story, the more energy I invested in it and, truth to tell, that enthusiasm proved contagious. The more I drew back, the more I let the plots happen to everyone else all the time rather than getting involved more intimately, the more distant and unenthused I became.

We’ll see what happens, but I suffer no illusions: I’ve been at this place before, preparing to kick off a fresh storyline and hoping to welcome new people into the mix. Still, I know that somewhere down the line, the tales we begin weaving now will become so complicated, the universe will become so different from what it is today, that the process of entropy and decay will begin anew.

But maybe I’ll be better prepared for it next time. And maybe I can find ways to keep sane while still dealing with the occasional primadonna. Time to turn the page and find out what happens next.

Get Back in Your Trailer and Shut Up
Over the years, I’ve developed a couple of out-of-character modes when dealing with people online, it seems.

First, there’s the Soft Case: Empathic, friendly, good-natured.

Second, there’s the Hard Case.

I’ve been told, even by people who work as full-blown directors on my games, that the Hard Case is a terrifying piece of work.

The Hard Case is a figure growing in legend. He’s ten-feet-tall, with a thousand-mile stare and teeth of sharp-filed steel. He takes no guff. He brooks no nonsense. He will sear your flesh with the flames that shoot from his propane eyes. He’s a sarcastic sonuvabitch who takes rather perverse pleasure in chewing on the skulls of twinkish players and overwrought primadonnas.

The Hard Case eats glass shards and spits acid.

The Hard Case is a cold splash of salt water on an open wound.

The Hard Case is the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.

No one likes to face the Hard Case.

The Hard Case doesn’t care if you’re only making trouble because you had a bad day at school and kicking the dog didn’t help.

The Hard Case doesn’t care if you took offense at something out of context and went off on him because you had an unhappy childhood.

The Hard Case will kick your ass from here to next Tuesday.

The Hard Case keeps me sane.

See, the Soft Case, he tends to think along the philosophical lines of a retailer who believes the customer is always right.

Not the Hard Case. The Hard Case thinks the griping customer’s a whiny grubber looking to get more than everyone else.

The Soft Case stays on the clock about as long as my patience for primadonnas, twinks and idiots can hold out. But once I’ve tapped those reserves, the Hard Case clocks in, shows the Soft Case to the door, and stomps out into the middle of Main Street, his shadow falling over the tumbleweeds as the clock strikes high noon.

The Soft Case is a pushover. He’s your pal.

The Hard Case is a stone wall. Push at your own risk.

The Soft Case will pat you on the hand, tell you everything’s okay, it’ll all work out.

But the Hard Case will just hold up a hand and say like a director to the petulant starlet, “Get back in your trailer and shut up.”

The Hard Case is my best friend. He keeps conversations blunt, succinct, to the point, with no hemming, hawing or bush-beating. When someone needs a good verbal lashing, the Hard Case is ready and waiting.

You don’t want to meet the Hard Case.

It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep him at bay.

Keep the Soft Case feeling comfortable.

Here are a few handy things to remember. Follow the wisdom offered. Take the tidbits for the garlic, crucifix and holy water that they are. Keep them close, follow them, and perhaps you’ll never have to face the dark menace of the Hard Case:

You’re not the center of my universe. I am. Egotist, remember? So, the moment you start acting like it’s all about you, the Hard Case’s eyes flash open and he starts moving forward from the shadows.

You’re not the only player in the game. Get all mouthy like you have run of the place, and the Hard Case will hunt you down and speak your name. That mere utterance will turn you to a pillar of salt, which will blow away in the next stiff breeze.

You don’t know every damned thing. The Hard Case knows I don’t know every damned thing, so if you start spouting off about what a genius you are and what would work better than X or Y, the Hard Case will show you what he knows about the repercussions of wrapping a flapping tongue around a rolling Winnebago’s trailer hitch.

I don’t care how they did it where you came from. This happens a lot. People show up from Game X and complain that my game should have this, that or the other thing. Worse, they suggest that somehow my game is inferior for lacking what they want (no matter how long we’ve been online and thrived without it). The Hard Case will tell you to go back to Game X and shut up.

Don’t poke my cage. If you don’t see me on the list of online players, that means I’m dark. That means I don’t want to be bothered. Repeatedly paging with questions like “You there?” will not inspire me to answer. It will inspire one of two things. Either I will set myself haven and therefore unpageable or, if I feel particularly cranky, the Hard Case will put on his steel-toed boots and dance the Macarena on your head.

It’s not exactly a complete suit of armor to cover yourself or a wooden stake to drive through the heart of the Hard Case, which is good because he doesn’t have a heart. But it should be enough to remind you from time to time the dangers of tempting fate.

Getting to Know You
I’m a snob.

That’s never an easy thing to admit unless you’re okay with it.

Mostly, I’m fine with it. Yes, there’s a tiny percentage of the High School version of me who longs to be liked by everyone, but the rest of me keeps that guy locked in the boiler room under the gym, where it smells like sweat, socks, armpits and Ben-Gay.

So, I’m a snob. I own that. I accept it.

Some people aren’t good enough for my games. That’s right. You may be read this, then try to get a character on one of my games, and I might laugh maniacally as I reject your application. This will depend largely on whether the Soft Case or the Hard Case reads your character submission, but that only determines the tone of the rejection.

I’ll reject if you pick a dumb name for your character. I’ll reject if you’ve got a poorly spelled, badly written, incomprehensible description. I’ll reject if I’m just feeling moody. Oh, all right, the moody thing is a lie, although reading applications for dumbly named characters with poorly spelled, badly written, incomprehensible descriptions does make me moody.

It’s a lot of work being a snob, but it’s not as much work as it used to be.

Some time ago, OtherSpace required a web-based character application. A new player would visit the website, peruse the game information, then go to a section of the site for filling out a form about their new character. They’d have to submit a description, a rundown of the character’s values, what their childhood was like, what they’ve been doing as adults, and what significant event most stood out in their lives so far.

Then we switched to an in-game version of that.

Both versions of the character questionnaire approach to character creation yielded all kinds of awful submissions, from Godfather the Pimp to Zizu the ASCII artist to Planetman – a superhero composed of, yes, planets.

But as time passed, a few things happened. First, the story generated by the evolving arcs on OtherSpace became so convoluted that it became virtually impossible for a player to get approved on the first try. We’d always find some detail that wouldn’t work because Event X happened during Arc Y.

Second, newcomers complained that they didn’t like waiting to see what the grid – the in-game world – was like before jumping into the mix and “wasting their time” on a character application. Sure, we told them they could check out the log archives. But they just didn’t like the snobby attitude this “barrier to entry” exemplified.

Third, I came to realize that even the best, most well-research character application can have a real pain-in-the-ass twink player behind it.

So, I developed the Turbo Chargen System.

This baby’s great, because it starts with The Wall. The Wall is a permanent representation of the Hard Case in neutral mode. The Wall consists of twenty questions, none of them dealing with the IC world; all of them dealing with some basic concepts. For example, it asks if you accept that in-character actions have in-character consequences. And it asks if you accept that things happen that are beyond your control. It seeks a sample pose. It asks for your date of birth. It asks about your roleplaying experience. Basically, The Wall puts you on the record for a few things. It’s the speed bump on the way to character creation. The Wall claims many victims. The Wall stumps lots of would-be problem players. Most goofballs are too lazy to waste their time on the twenty questions.

But those who do pass The Wall next find themselves in an area where they can pick from our large variety of races, and within those races they can choose a career, and when they choose a career, it sets up their basic +sheet with a collection of stats and skills (thus eliminating the requirement for the player to learn the skills system interface right up front). And once they’ve picked a race and a career, they fill out a brief sketch explaining how they wound up on Sol Station – a neutral base owned by the Sivadians where all players start.

Once you’ve filled out your sketch, you can enter Sol Station. Now you’ve made it to the in-game grid. But you can’t leave Sol Station until a staffer reviews your application. So, what The Wall doesn’t stop, the Customs Officers can.

And, of course, it’s possible to personalize your character a little more once you’ve completed the Turbo Chargen process. But, remember, I’m a snob. I’ll make you work for it. Players who want to get a modified +sheet must write a biography about their character and send it to wes@jointhesaga.com.

This procedure makes it much easier for new people to dip their toe into the water, as it were. It does a better job of screening players for the things I’m really snobby about, while allowing them relatively quick access to the game itself if they’ve got a little patience.

It’s the closest thing I’ve got to trying to be all things to all people. Even the ones I don’t like.

Thieving Capitalist Pig!
Some people don’t like me very much.

I don’t just mean the ones who’ve embarked on campaigns of truth because I didn’t let them get away with murder on my games. I don’t just mean the ones I’ve rejected before they could get in the door. I don’t just mean the ones who don’t like that I let their characters die.

Granted, that bunch of folks is pretty large, but there’s another crowd that wants my head because of some books.

See, a few years ago, I published some books that chronicled our activities on OtherSpace. The first book, OtherSpace: Revolutions, covered the first three story arcs. The second book, OtherSpace: End of the World, covered the fourth and fifth arcs. The third book, OtherSpace: The Marionette’s Last Dance, covered the twelfth story arc.

Basically, I picked key logs from those arcs, edited them, wove them together, tried to spellcheck them as well as possible, and then I wrote introductions and informative blurbs about the logs. The idea behind the books was to create a hardcopy documentary of what we’d done, presented as such, and sold to bring in what money they might bring.

It’s the “sold” thing that freaked some people out.

Well, first, let me just say, those people who get freaked out by what I did are idiots. Yes, that’s the Hard Case talking, but it’s true.

The big complaint they make is an allegation that I’m somehow trying to pass off all the work in these books as mine. I’m not. I make it quite clear which characters I play. Now, they also say I should have put every other contributor’s name in the book as an author credit. Look, I can’t count on people trusting me with their real names to get into the game, let alone for something like this.

But it’s more than that. These are novelty books, and although they’re sold on Amazon.com, it’s not like they’ve ever really broken into the top million bestsellers. Because of the odd nature of the format, the venue in which these chronicles were produced, it would be a really hard sell to a normal publisher.

I had done some research and found iUniverse.com, a print-on-demand publisher. For $100 (back then), I could submit a manuscript and a cover, get it produced and marketed on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

I figured being sold through Amazon.com and B&N would be a convenience for players who wanted to have a record of their OtherSpace experience, captured in book form.

The books run anywhere from $20 to $30. Of that, I get less than 10 percent of every sale. During the past three years, I’ve made maybe $100 off the books myself. That paid for the publication cost of the first book. It doesn’t even come close to paying off the other two.

But I don’t care about the money. For me, making the books was never about the money, because I never expected them to sell huge quantities.

Remember, I’m the kind of person who tries things. And those books are the first ever published based on the activities of a text-based online game. No one else had done it before.

But I’m not likely to do it again.

Not because of the controversy, though.

It’s the damned expense. iUniverse now charges something like $500 to publish a book now.

No thanks!

Space Out
One of the most contentious, incendiary and otherwise problematic elements of OtherSpace has been the coded space system.

When the game opened in 1998, we didn’t have a space system. Yes, I know, ironic: The game’s called OtherSpace, but no actual space for exploring. We did it all via roleplaying.

Our original hardcoder, known as Jamie, had a plan for a coded space system, but another coder, Hikaru, sold me on HSpace.

I’d been familiar with HSpace from my brief time spent playing Hemlock a few years earlier. It’s not the most RP-friendly code in the world, and combat in the system was designed to be rapid-fire and automated, but it has lots of features that the gadget freaks enjoy. Several other games used it. Gepht, the designer of the system, had an excellent reputation. And, most importantly, Hikaru could work with HSpace and help some of the other staffers get up to speed on installing ships and setting them up.

Disappointed by my decision to go with HSpace, Jamie departed OtherSpace.

Truth be told, I never really felt overly keen about HSpace. But I considered it important that we have some kind of system to simulate spaceflight, and it made sense that we use something that would be familiar to new players visiting from other games that used HSpace.

And HSpace had its problems. The primary problem: Because it’s hardcode, if something went wrong and crashed the spaceflight system, the entire game fell offline. We managed to shut the game down many times just by fouling the setup of a gunnery console.

Over time, Hikaru began developing his own derivative code, called RSpace (Real Space). We switched to it. Glitches continued to crash the game. Costs of a hardcoded system were, in my opinion, starting to outweigh the benefits.

So, I talked to Marson, our chief softcoder at the time, about developing a coded system called OSpace. In this system, which would be designed so as never to cause the game to crash, ships would have +sheets like players, they’d be able to pose and interact with other starships, combat would be refereed, and the entire experience would have a more cinematic, RP-friendly feel to it.

Well, between my movement toward a softcoded system and continued conflicts with other staffers about how RSpace should work if we stuck with it, Hikaru became increasingly frustrated. He washed his hands of the entire situation, saying he wouldn’t provide support for the new project. I understood his frustration, but I had a vision that I wanted to pursue – and that vision didn’t include being at the mercy of perpetually touchy hardcode that kept threatening the stability of the game.

Marson developed a white paper on the OSpace project. It looked great. But, as sometimes happens even with the most industrious of coders, Marson got sidetracked by real-life responsibilities. It didn’t look like the cinematic space system would be coming any time soon. Yet the game was still suffering occasional crashes and I’d already alienated Hikaru.

It was about this time that another of our coders, Titan, became the caretaker of Gepht’s new HSpace Trueline spaceflight engine. So, I opted to go with the new HSpace for the time being.

Well, then Titan disappeared as Titan is wont to do. And then Marson couldn’t spend as much time working on OtherSpace code because I’d snatched him away to work on Chiaroscuro projects. But Russkaya, Aeolus and others stepped in to work on HSpace.

But by early 2004, we’d all come to the conclusion that it might be time to revisit the idea of a softcoded space system. Russkaya, Aeolus and Chalice – among others – worked together to develop (finally!) our definitive space system: OSpace. It’s cinematic and RP-friendly, with opportunities for starship customization and other features that may keep the gadget freaks happy.

It’s got plenty of bells and whistles, but you don’t need to know advanced calculus to make sense of it.

I’m quite proud of how the project turned out. You can check it out for yourself by typing +space/help at OtherSpace.

Method and Madness
I don’t get to roleplay on my games nearly as much as I used to.

That sucks.

Oh, I definitely get to play characters from time to time, but it’s not like the old days, when I could throw myself into a character for days at a time. These days, though, with three games to run and a real life to live on occasion, I’m usually limited to cameo appearances and plot-specific characters.

It’s unfortunate for two reasons.

The first is simply that I love roleplaying far more than managing people behind the scenes, but it’s the nature of the beast when you choose to expand as the games have at jointhesaga.com.

The second is that I’m really quite good at it, and I’m great at teaching by example.

One day, I might not be able to do any roleplaying at all. That would severely suck. But, if we take it as a given that it’s a sure thing, then I can take some steps to preserve for the record an analysis of some of my efforts for posterity.

I’ve picked six characters from a repertoire of dozens of alter egos I’ve assumed during the first six years of OtherSpace. For each, I’ll post a sample of their performances and then I’ll discuss some of the theories and approaches I’ve taken for each persona.

Sharptongue Sandwalker
''Sharptongue rrrrrs growlingly at Snowmist Shadowstalker, perhaps clearing his throat as his eyes narrow and his ears flatten atop his head. "What the deuce? I have stated my demand for your surrender, vile female! Your stranglehold of lace doilies and white picket fences on this world shall be loosened by the mighty armies of Sharptongue Sandwalker if you do not treat with me on terms of surrender! You shall be a conquered people! I wish to resolve this conflict with minimal bloodshed." At this point, he eyes Silvereye. "Except *his*. I demand his blood be shed! At once! Kill him! Kill him and prove your fealty to your new Imperator!"'' Sharptongue started as a joke. I’d been watching a lot of Family Guy episodes, and one of my favorite characters is Stewie, the sinister toddler who constantly plots to kill his mother or to gain control over others. So, I got on the Director channel at OtherSpace and started pondering a way to play a Stewie-like character who would become an arch-nemesis for some poor, unwitting player’s character.

He’s even got a Stewie-like description: Pale beige with blurry black stripes, this Demarian male appears to be in his adolescence - about five and a half feet tall, his mouth holding a mix of adult canine teeth and juvenile fangs. The lower canines are particularly pronounced and jut out to the sides of his snout when his mouth is closed. His head is rather oblong in shape and his bright amber eyes are set beneath down-angled brows that seem locked in a perpetual scowl.

I created the character and decided he would be a pretender to the throne of Demaria who would become a foil for another Demarian, Silvereye. Dropped him on the desert world and spun him like a top into the mix.

He’s the sort of character who takes himself entirely too seriously, like Charles Emerson Winchester on M*A*S*H or Niles Crane on Frasier. Characters like this swell up nice and fat and round, ego-wise, with nothing but a thin membrane around all that hot air to back it up. So, players get a kick out of popping the balloon.

In other words, I designed him to look like an ass most of the time. A pathetic, overcompensating, donkey-braying ass. But, you know, a funny pathetic, overcompensating, donkey-braying ass.

And then I got attached to him. Started working around in my brain who this person really was and what might drive him to act so clownish and over the top. I couldn’t really explore that or develop it without breaking him out of the one-trick-pony mold where he just showed up once in a while to harass Silvereye.

The UKT Athena began hiring crew and Sharptongue applied for a job. The cover story, of course, was that he’s just trying to raise money to build his army to conquer Demaria. So, he joined the crew as the quartermaster. In this capacity, I discovered Sharptongue was both a neat freak and a frustrated fashion designer. He immediately ran into conflicts with other crew members. And those conflicts escalated when he proposed a purple velvet uniform with epaulets for the crew.

Before long, though, another of my bevy of characters, Stumppaw Sandwalker, showed up and revealed to the Athena crew that Sharptongue had assumed a false identity and stolen the old one-handed Demarian’s memoirs. The young felinoid’s real name is Muddysnout, turns out, and he worked as an underclasser scribe for Stumppaw.

Suddenly, my joke character gets some real depth and dimension, and earns some actual sympathy – the crew refuses to just turn him over to the grizzled old noble Demarian.

It’s a twist like that, and the opportunities to see what might become of the now disgraced Muddysnout/Sharptongue, that make him the most regularly played character I’ve got on OtherSpace these days. I want to see what happens next.

Few characters are as interesting as the imperfect ones, those who strive to be more than they are and might never be. And even when they get a comeuppance, it sparks a remarkable opportunity for a character to take new directions. Too many players lose sight of the fact that it makes for boring storytelling if your character is always right, always heroic, and always inflappable and ready with a snarky one-liner to make the gals giggle.

Vampire

''Vampire tosses the chardonet bottle over his shoulder - it goes CLUNK! in the shadows - and then he whirs out into the glow of the spotlight, perched atop his hoverchair. He makes his eyes unnecessarily large and surprised-looking as he faces the judges, and plasters on his most artificial beauty pageant smile. He looks not unlike a death's head skull. "Hi!" he exuberates. "My name is Vampire." He bobs his bald head back and forth, as if he has long blond hair in a ponytail or something. "I'm a graduate student at the University of Enaj. My turn ons: Long walks on the beach, cheap liquor and no memory of last night. My turn offs: Hairy backs and short men with nasal voices." He pinches his nose for effect, grimacing. Then, he smiles again: "For my talent, I'm going to hack into Yblurborb's Savings and Loan computer system and crash it!" He puts a pinky to his cheek, then uses his other hand to pop open the hood of his hoverchair and withdraw from it a hologramatic data terminal.'' His real name was Ferdinand Glengarry Magellan Cottonswill and, for the record, he wasn’t my idea.

During the second story arc, Khatri N’Sha-El asked if I’d consent to play a hacker friend of her character’s from time to time. I recall she told me that Vampire was bisexual and flamboyant, but I’m fuzzy on how much we talked about the extent of his wackiness or the details of his character, such as the missing leg and the hoverchair with the compartment for storing bottles of booze along with his computer deck.

Regardless, I assumed the role and just ran with it, creating one of the most popular characters in early OtherSpace history.

What I enjoyed most with Vampire, I think, were the opportunities to just come totally unhinged and say the most outrageous things. Jumping into that character allowed me to switch off some internal inhibitor nodes. And it also let me find new and unusual ways to embarrass some of the excessively macho characters who sometimes roam the universe of OtherSpace. More than once, Vampire would be in a crowded tavern, publicly accusing some man of fathering their love child, John Henry.

Eventually, though, the act grew old and I simply got tired of the character. He’d never really changed – or had a motivation to do so – between the second and eighth story arcs. But then came Lord Boromov’s attack on the Nall, and the subsequent invasion of Ungstir by the Nall Clawed Fist Fleet. Once Lord Boromov had been executed and Ungstir was liberated, I made Vampire disappear. I created a story thread in which Vechkov Prague, a private investigator and old friend of Vampire’s, went searching for him. One night, Vampire showed up in MacBeth’s, a bar on Sanctuary, and it was there, with a crowd present, that his hoverchair exploded. Vechkov didn’t make it in time, but he did learn that Vampire was killed by Boromov’s relatives out of revenge, because the hacker had leaked information to the Nall about the Ungstiri crimelord’s ties to a ship that had attacked a Nall vessel.

Yes, sometimes I miss the crazy bastard. But, at his heart, Vampire was a glam-rock star, and it’s better for that sort to burn out rather than to fade away.

David Ransom Porter

''Porter shrugs. "Maybe. But we're standing against people like you. Some of us - me included - want to make it better. We want to redeem ourselves. But paranoid maniacs like you seem bent on stopping that." Porter jabs a finger at the Lem'ing. "If we fail, I want it to be on *our* terms. Not *yours*." He looks up. "And we'll blow up in eight minutes. So," he looks back at the alien, "you might want to back your people off."'' David Ransom Porter was my incarnation of a fairly typical John Sheridan-like commander: Noble, tough, clever and resourceful.

For three arcs, he commanded the VES Minerva, and during that time his crew went nose-to-nose against the Lem’ing and the Kamir, and then embarked on a mission of exploration beyond the multiverse nexus near the planet Nocturn.

Porter felt very protective of his crew, and he was never afraid to do the one thing that many players who truly consider their characters to be heroes simply aren’t willing to do: Die for others.

It’s one thing to be a guy who always gets off lucky, who never sticks his neck out when it really counts, who’s only interested in making himself look good. It’s another to be someone who’ll mouth off to a bad guy and willingly accept the consequences, good or bad.

I liked Porter because sometimes he was wrong. Sometimes he was angry. Sometimes he was irrational. But when it really mattered, he could pull himself together and thus try to be the glue for everyone else around him.

Perfect people are boring. Make that your mantra.

Buteo Calabratrarios

''Something flaps around the interior of the hoverlimo, squawking angrily and batting at the head of the driver. "Oh why must you disgrace loving Buteo so? Do I not care for you? Keep you fed? Change the papers in your cage? No! No! Not on the back seat...oh, Hero, most terrible!"'' Another joke character, one only a few perceptive and insightful people really got.

See, we had a character on the game named GoldenHawk, a Qua with this really over-the-top delivery, funky punctuation, and a bit of that rather contagious Raging Hero Complex. He worked for Concordance Station Internal Security.

So, I invented a hovercab driver on Concordance Station, named Buteo Calabratrarios. Buteo is part of the scientific name for a hawk. I dressed him in a garish yellow suit. And I gave him a grouchy osprey named Hero as a pet and constant companion, which helped make him a menace to anyone traveling within Concordance Station.

He’s never really grown beyond just being an occasional comic relief character, although I based one of our 24-hour roleplaying marathons around his space cab, which was a lot of fun. But a little of Buteo’s antics go a long way.

Jacob Gettleman

''Jacob waves a hand weakly at Red Wolf through the roiling smoke in the cavern. "No, no," he coughs. "Go on without me." Before anyone might suspect he has a martyr complex, he opens his briefcase, takes out his datapad, and begins tapping into it, speaking as he does so: "Add," *cough*, "heroic fire crawl scene," *cough*, "save a bunch of," *cough*, "kids."''

When people started getting into legal trouble during the early story arcs, it became necessary for me to create a defense attorney.

So, I developed the officious but damned competent lawyer, Jacob Gettleman, known among his detractors as “Weasel.” Slick, well-dressed, polished and eloquent, Gettleman was the proverbial silver-tongued devil.

During his time aboard Sanctuary, we also discovered he could fence, but he proved no match for the Nall Be of Hatch Toth – no matter how much Gettleman argued that Betoth violated official fencing etiquette.

After Sanctuary’s return to normalspace in the year 3000, Gettleman sold the rights to his dramatically embellished story of the voyage aboard the colony vessel. When Cabrerra Information Network cancelled the miniseries due to the deaths of one of the stars and a producer, Gettleman threatened to sue. That got him killed by Cabrerra’s top dog … Colin Neidermeyer.

Neidermeyer

''"It was foolish of you to shoot up my bar, you fucking slug," Neidermeyer growls. "So you pay the price. Pick two fingers and live, or stay intact and take a dive out my window. It's up to you."

The fucking slug refused to pick two fingers. Colin Neidermeyer shot him to pieces with a flechette pistol.''

Bar none, this character is the most vile, ruthless, venomous, profane, and wickedly evil individual I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

Inspired by Douglas C. Neidermeyer in Animal House, this guy started in Arc VIII as a general in the xenophobic Solar Consortium’s Guardian Fleet, helped spark the civil war between Mars and Earth, and then moved on to a job as top lieutenant to Boss Cabrerra on Tomin Kora.

He really started to shine on Tomin Kora. It’s here that he became a menace to all the would-be heroes from Concordance Station Internal Security who kept poking around where they didn’t belong. It’s here that his proclivity for boiling tiny Nemoni and then skewering them with toothpicks before munching on them emerged. It’s here that he really picked up the pace on hurling foolhardy journalists from high windows overlooking the city of Shadowheart.

Colin Neidermeyer became my evil id. The Hard Case given form in a character.

The man was a walking, talking, killing consequence, waiting to happen to some hapless bozo’s action.

He was the “I” in “I told you so.”

He was the “rights” in “Dead to rights.”

Some villains are smooth and subtle. Not this guy. He had all the subtlety of Liberace at a half-naked cabana boy convention. He was all Las Vegas glitz and show. He pulled out all the stops, but he didn’t pull any punches.

Eventually, he got blown up by Nemoni nuclear missiles and fell out a window, plunging hundreds of feet to his death.

Then we brought him back, thanks to the Moebius Effect, and made him king of the Earth.

And then we decapitated him in the war with the OATO forces near Ganymede.

Why?

Because if he lived, Neidermeyer wouldn’t settle for losing and I just don’t have enough hours in a day to devote to the crusade the crazy bastard would embark upon to conquer the universe and rid it of alien scum.

But, I can dream. Can’t I?