Devokan Storytellers Gathering - 10 August 2014

[Danko Whitfield]

The monthly gathering of the Devokan Storytellers group takes place Sunday, 10 August 2014 at 15:00 UTC in the world of Devokan on Kitely grid …4p UK…11a US ET…8a US PT

http://www.kitely.com/virtual-world/Pai ... le/Devokan

HG address:
grid.kitely.com:8002:Devokan

The purpose of the gathering is to give RP storytellers, storybuilders and writers inspired by the Myst/Uru genre a place to share ideas, news, information, gossip, tea, biscuits, thoughts on issues of interest or concern and possibly even to inspire collaboration. We gather on the second Sunday of each month.

New and potential members and the simply curious are most welcome. Attendance is free, thanks to our gracious host, Paislee Myrtle.

See you there!

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For more information about the Devokan Trust:
http://forum.devokan.org/

[Danko Whitfield]

Notes from Devokan Storytellers Gathering of 10 August 2014

Location: Devokan, Kitely

In attendance: Dot Matrix, Paislee Myrtle, Danko Whitfield, Ruby ODegee, Ghaelen DLareh

Paislee took us to her "Relto" on Devokan and told us "Any Devokan person is welcome to have their own sky Relto if they desire. Yet (the world is) open to all who enjoy this sort of place."

Dot told the gathering she is working on a 3x3 called Evensong, comprising reworkings of well known Devokan. There are regions of open sea in between and a system of sailboats to traverse the waters.

Dot also announced that the old Devokan Tao, a hub world, will return to OSgrid, taking advantage of the new low priced region from Zetamex.

Dot proposed writing a case study of Kitely and its value as a venue for storybuilding for both individuals and groups.

Ghaelen told of learning and using Blender for her current project involving inworld visits by history students to two representations of the same place, several centuries apart.

Danko told of a new writing project and of his storybuilding experience with the Dankoville grid.

Ruby said she is "working exclusively" on her Oakes Valley world, creating an inworld mystery story for visitors to solve.

[Dot Matrix]

Dot also announced that the old Devokan Tao, a hub world, will return to OSgrid...

To expand on this: When the Devokan group was on OSgrid, using a mixture of home-hosted regions and sharing a largish Kimsufi server, we built a library hub, Devokan Tao, with "linking books" (teleportals) to all the regions. This hub featured in a number of blogs and lists, including Pathfinder's Hypergrid Landmarks and Oliveira's Most Popular Regions on OSgrid.

When the group moved to Kitely, these links became dead.

Now that Kitely is connected to the Hypergrid, it is possible to have a hub portal in other grids to take visitors directly to the Devokan worlds ("Ages") on Kitely. So, as an experiment, I resurrected the old Devokan Tao hub OAR and set it up in its old position on OSgrid. Here's the info from the Hypergrid Landmarks page:

Hypergrid Address: hg.osgrid.org:80:Devokan Tao
Landing Region: Devokan Tao
Hypergrid Coordinates: (10627, 10625)
Grid/Owner Website: http://forum.devokan.org/
Notes: Devokan Tao is the central hub of a stunning collection of regions inspired by Myst/Uru. ...

The combined system works pretty well. You teleport to the hub, choose a linking book, click on the picture of the world it links to so that the viewer map pops up, then click "Teleport".

A vaguely IC explanation of what will subsequently happen is given via a notecard received by new visitors:

12 August 2014 -- the hub is newly returned to OSgrid, but needs work to restore the linking books. Repaired books are those with the Age name shown in holographic type above the linking image. The other books will not work.

Devokan Trust Ages are now located on Kitely.

Devokan Trust Ages tend to be the fruit of fairly complex descriptive books that take time for substantiating mechanisms to read; therefore, for explorers' safety, teleporting to them may involve a short wait (no more than a few seconds) in a Transfer Station.

The Transfer Station was designed by one of the Devokan Trustees, so it is hoped that hypergrid explorers will be reassured that all is well in spite of the delay.

To give an idea of how well Kitely suits Devokan storybuilders, when we were on OSgrid the region numbers peaked at 38. Here on Kitely there are 70+ Devokan-related regions -- and still the number grows.

PS: I know that OSgrid is down at the moment. It's happened in the past (very rarely), and we've survived it, even weaving such events in some of the storylines. The grid will be back online as soon as the developers can sort out the problem. OSgrid is the ideal place for the hub, so it won't be moving.