Welcome
Then there are some things you need to know:
Also see email from Diarmuid here.
The Game
The game, created by Neel Krishnaswami, is called "Lexicon: an RPG".
You can find out more:
- http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicon_(game)
- http://www.gamegrene.com/wiki/Lexicon_games
The Rules
The basic idea is that each player takes on the role of a scholar, from before scholarly pursuits became professionalized (or possibly after they ceased to be). You are cranky, opinionated, prejudiced and eccentric. You are also collaborating with a number of your peers — the other players — on the construction of an encyclopedia describing some historical period (possibly of a fantastic world).
The game is played in 26 turns, one for each letter of the alphabet.
1. On the first turn, each player writes an entry for the letter 'A'. You come up with the name of the entry, and you write 100-200 words on the subject. At the end of the article, you sign your name, and make two citations to other entries in the encyclopedia. These citations will be phantoms — their names exist, but their content will get filled in only on the appropriate turn. No letter can have more entries than the number of players, either, so all citations made on the first turn have to start with non-A letters.
2. On the second and subsequent turns, you continue to write entries for B, C, D and so on. However, you need to make three citations. One must be a reference to an already-written entry, and two must be to unwritten entries. (On the 25th and 26th turns, you only need to cite one and zero phantom entries, respectively, because there won't be enough phantom entries, otherwise.)
It's an academic sin to cite yourself, you can never cite an entry you've written. (OOC, this forces the players to intertwingle their entries, so that everybody depends on everyone else's facts.) Incidentally, once you run out of empty slots, obviously you can only cite the phantom slots.
3. Despite the fact that your peers are self-important, narrow-minded dunderheads, they are honest scholars. No matter how strained their interpretations are, their facts are accurate as historical research can make them. So if you cite an entry, you have to treat its factual content as true! (Though you can argue vociferously with the interpretation and introduce new facts that shade the interpretation.)
4. This little game will probably play best on a wiki, and it should take a month or so to play to completion. At the end of it, you'll have a highly-hyperlinked document that details a nice little piece of collaborative world-building.
Getting Started
To aid and assist you at the beginning of the game and to provide some initial flavour, see these two sample articles:
Aether
The Argent Wars (Casus Belli)
Feel free to use keywords in these articles as starting points for your own. You are, of course, equally encouraged to start articles afresh. Feel free to take the Encyclopaedia and the World in whatever direction you wish.
Creating an Article
Creating an article is very simple. On the left sidebar you will see an "Add a new page" section. Just enter the title of your page and hit the "New Page" button.
Creating Links
In order to create a new citation, or to reference an existing citation, you will need to use wiki links. When editing your page, enclose the relevant keyword in your article in triple square brackets. For example:
The cow jumped over the [[[Moon]]]
When this is rendered by the wiki, the word "Moon" will appear as a link. If the article already exists, clicking the link will take you to that page. If the article doesn't exist, clicking the link will give you the opportunity to create the page.
Inviting Others
Users are encouraged to invite others to join. You can do that here.
You can see invitation chains here.
