Eidolon is a game about a game, a game about what people know and remember and how they build their world around their beliefs and memories.

Summary: The story is about an online game called "The Lands of Neverwere" (TLoN), a Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game like EverQuest, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot and Asheron's Call. The game is a worldwide hit that pushed the frontiers of computing and entertainment way forward, and it starts intruding on reality, and the main characters are the only ones noticing it. TLoN has its origins in a 19th Century conspiracy to remake the world, and the online game is the latest, most effective step towards that goal.

Players will create two characters using the Big Eyes, Small Mouth fast play rules (or full rules if available): the RL characters and their online personas, and the story will switch back and forth between the two reality layers.

HOW TO JOIN

Easy; I invited you, you accepted and so you are reading this :) I'm not opening this game to the public. New players will be considered and accepted by recommendation of existing players.

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GAME MECHANICS

THe game will use the BESM 2nd Ed game to create and define characters. The game will consist of an exchange of posts via email, resembling interactive fiction. Task resolution will not involve dice, but it will use the system in Nobilis for resolving tasks:

If the task's difficulty is equal or less than the character's combined stat + attribute or stat + skill (or in some difficult cases, to the stat alone), the character can perform the task automatically. If the task difficulty exceeds it, the character can spend his Energy Points to match the difficulty in order to perform the task. For every 2 Energy Points, the character can add +1 to his stat combination to match the difficulty.

Each player will be responsible to keep the tally of his character's energy points.

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LEXICON

Some terms we should use to know what we are talking about. Since we are talking about a game that is about a game, things could get confusing :)

• Eidolon: The game we are all playing/writing together.
• Game Master (GM): Me, who runs the game.
• Player Character (PC): The character you guys create and control, including his or her online Persona (see below).
• Non-Player Character (NPC): Characters that I (the GM) control, whether they are RL people or online Personas).
• RL: Real Life. What Eidolon's characters refer to their normal, everyday lives.
• TLoN: The Lands of Neverwere, the online game the PCs play.
• Persona: In The Lands of Neverwere, a character created and controlled by a PC (a Player Persona), by the game's operating system (a Control Persona) or by a Play Master (a Story Control Persona).
• Play Masters (PMs): People who is paying an extra fee in TLoN to have special priviledges to create plots and to create and control Story Control Personas. They have their own Player Persona too.
• BB: Bulleting boards. TLoN has its own discussion forums like Usenet or EZBoard.
• IM: Instant Message. Think ICQ, <Any> Messenger, etc.
• IC: In Character. Actions and discussions within TLoN that RLs perform as their Personas.
• OOC: Out Of Character. Interaction within TLoN between PCs as their own personality and identity, not as their Persona.
• In-Story or In-Game: Things and discussions within Eidolon. What -we- use to referer to IC interaction.
• Out-of-Story or Out-of-Game: Things and discussions outside of Eidolon. What -we- use to referer to OOC interaction.
• E-mail: If you don't know what this is, I wonder how you got here ;)
• Skin: A Persona's appearance. Also the texture and surface appearance of objects in the TLoN game.
• Model: The "body" or "skeleton" of any object, creature or Persona in TLoN.
• U-B: A drug that accelerates nerve impulses; more powerful than amphetamines.
• Ubik: A very strong, very dangerous version of U-B that enhances the TLoN experience.
• VR: Virtual Reality.
• VR-rig, "The Rig": The hardware to play TLoN
• RV: A rave that happens online, thanks to VR technology (and often to U-B usage). Play Masters often host RVs in the TLoN area they control. Some RVs are hosted in both cyberspace and in "realspace" with a salon full of VR-rigs that party-goers can jack in and out any time they please.
• Log-in/out: To connect/disconnect to a network through a computer, wearable app or smart accessory.
• Jack in/out: To connect/disconnect to a VR environment like TLoN through a Rig.

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INSPIRATION AND RESOURCES

*Things you should watch:

Serial Experiments Lain
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Gulf/9755/
http://www.cjas.org/~leng/lain.htm (beware spoilers!)

.hack//SIGN
http://blackwings.net/hack/index.php

Boogiepop Phantom (beware spoilers on all three of these)
http://www.animeondvd.com/specials/articles/rsd001.php
http://mostlycloudy.net/~ballzapalooza/boogiepop/index.htm
http://boogiepop.home.att.net/

Avalon
http://www.ninesisters.org/
http://www.avalon-lejeu.com/ (in French)

The Animatrix - Program
http://www.intothematrix.com/rl_cmp/animatrix_site_program.html (stream or download)

*Things you should read:

"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Jorge Luis Borges
http://www.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/~sixto/borges/ficciones/jardin/tlon.htm (spanish)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boozer/etexts/tlon.html (english)

"Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse
Amazon.com Link
http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/imagine/carse.html
http://www.worldtrans.org/pos/infinitegames.html

Big Eyes, Small Mouth Resources
http://www.guardiansorder.com/besm/
http://www.silveragesentinels.com/pdfs/fastplay.pdf (1.1MB, if you don't have the main book or any other Tri-Stat game you can use this for reference)
http://www.otherwhere.org/besm/index.htm
http://www.bears-cave.com/besm/outcasts/fantasy-races.html

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Anime names are property of their respective companies, site and organization, Al-X Melchor