from: Trent
to: Terrence, Simon, Rick, Erik, Ellen, Juan, Jules
cc: Bryce
date: Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 11:40 AM
subject: Calypsis!

Ahoy gamers!

First off, let me thank you again for taking part in this experiment. When you add up the stories, wiki entries, chat logs, and all the rest we've generated about two novels' worth of material.

Bryce and I have been hard at work shaping your characters' stories into some semblance of a coherent narrative and tying them to the wiki and game world. We think you'll find it interesting to see what the other players were doing during the same sessions, and how those game sessions were turned into their own stories. Not all your wiki entries made it into the stories but a lot of them did. We hope we can do this again and explore Rivertown even more to see some of the other sights and meet other characters. In truth, we hardly scratched the surface of the world you created.

Each page has five tabs. One is the story you wrote (sometimes edited by us--hope you don't mind!); the second is either the online chat or emails we traded or both; the third is a set of links to wiki items mentioned in your story; the fourth is where the story happened in the larger narrative; and the last one features a map of the location where that portion of the story happened. We also have been digging up pictures from Creative Commons-licensed sites to accompany each vignette and wiki entry. We hope they meet your ideas of what your characters looked like!

Finally, Bryce and I did a lot of back-and-forth as we worked out how we were going to handle some of the plot twists and turns and, for kicks, we wrote these up as fictional episodes too. Mine are from the POV of Frederika Reichman, the grand matron of the MPD, and Betsy Hermann, one of her highest ranking advisors. We hope these vignettes give you some sense of how we, as game masters, approach the narrative and the game.

Did this all come together into a seamless, flawless story? The answer is probably no, but I think we all learned a lot about world building and character development; your short reflective essays on this experience (linked at the end of your characters' individual narratives) show that. Hopefully visitors to this site will be able to enjoy delving into this world too.

Thanks again for a fantastic experience and Bryce or I will be in touch about possibly doing this again.

--t