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ArdenOctober 19th, 2006 |
Ted Castronova is interviewed by Daniel Terdiman (yet another example of how we’re all a clique who talks to each other and get press thereby! But it’s all for good causes, honest!) about his Shakespeare-themed virtual world “Arden,” which Ted is using Multiverse for, I believe.
I loved this little design tidbit:
We’re going to make some texts of Shakespeare available as the most treasured items. So that incents people to collect bits of Shakespeare. You might get an ordinary broad sword, but if you collect the “To be or not to be” speech and then take it to a lore master or to a skilled bard, he can then apply the magic to your broad sword or utilize the magic in a battle situation to give you this massive (advantage).
So there will be this intensive competition to get the best speeches of Shakespeare in your playbook. You’ve got to know your Shakespeare, but if you do collect these texts you can just playfully kick butt the way wizards do.
Way back in the day on Worlds of Carnage, there was a Romeo and Juliet themed zone, where the characters wandered around spouting the speeches. It’s been a long time, and I don’t remember what the quests were. Legend at one point was going to have a Shakespeare play staged in the Old Globe in its Elizabethan London area. I don’t know if it was ever finished.
There’s lots of potential for Shakespeare and virtual worlds. Hopefully, Arden won’t be solely focused on combat. The first play they plan to tackle is Richard III, though, so it’ll probably be RvR.
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are pretty shallow. Mostly, we get to watch them get sucked into the evil vortex that is Richard and see how much they struggle against it. They each get their turn, but it is all about Richard. Update: A few hours after I posted this, I read about a Shakespeare-themed virtual world. The first play they’ll tackle is Richard III.
Raph Koster’s blog (Link)
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More About Ted Castronova’s Arden MMO
The Shakespearean virtual world being built by Ted Castronova at Indiana University will run on the Multiverse platform, or so hears gamedev Raph Koster. Koster also links to a CNet story by Daniel Terdiman that sheds more light on MMO, which is to be …
[...] Raph suggests that it’ll be using the Multiverse toolset, using it to experiment in ways I’d always hoped (the petri dish) and challenging some of the fantasy MMO staples that I’ve wanted to see challenged. [...]
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