OOC – Tower of Callisto

Tower of Callisto: The Book

The complete record of the game is now available as a print-on-demand book or downloadable PDF. Printing the book is a tad pricey, since it’s a full-color 340-page volume with lots of pictures, diagrams, and notes. But the PDF is free and has the exact same content.

In addition to the letters sent by the players, the book has maps of places in the game, graphs from the communication management system, and the character sheets and scenario setup information.

Also, sign-ups are now available for the next Callisto game I’m running: Revolution of Callisto!

Items of Ceremonial Purpose

Catalog Item #651: Triangular coins. The dimensions are in a strict 3:4:5 ratio. Predates the founding of Chayi, but more recent than the ruins outside the town. Inscribed with Eonic writing, referring to mystical tenets of the Symness beliefs.

Catalog Item #612: Rug and cushion, decorated. Circa 5th century. Prime example of rugs used in practices of the Kusinne Path of the Well.

Catalog Item #390: Lamp and cup. 3rd c. Markings indicate connection with the Kusinne Path of the Well.

Catalog Item #292: Dish of earth. Predates early Oasis period, likely early Kusinne and used in religious practices. Excavated at Aksu.

Symness and Kusinne

From the Annals of the Oasis Kingdoms:

The union of the common people, setting aside their differences, greatly strengthened the authority of the Queen of Kucha.

At this time the religious leaders became troubled, with some of those in the Symness hierarchy fearing that, with the widespread embrace of the Path of the Road, the people would soon cease to follow to Adjudicators altogether.

State of the Game

Here’s a fun metric: this is the matrix of the communication that has taken place in the game so far. The light grey squares mean that no letters have been sent between those two players. The darker the square, the more messages have been exchanged. Blue squares means that the player on that row has sent more messages to the player in that column, while red indicates the player has received more than was sent. Purple, of course, indicates a balance.

State of the Game: Cycle 6

The conversations over the past three weeks looked like this. This past week has been a bit quiet, though I’ve updated the state of the game page to reflect who has been sending out mail most frequently.

Administrative Note

The email addon I was using to send the contact lists out at a scheduled time at the start of the game got some wires crossed and resent the contact lists. You may have gotten a resent message or two from me.

I have disabled it now, so my apologies for the superfluous email. If you like, you can treat it was a reminder of some of the people you can talk to.

State of the Game: Cycle 3

I’ve updated the state of the game page with the situation at the end of Cycle 2. Some (slightly revealing) graphs follow, after the cut.

Continue reading State of the Game: Cycle 3

Starting Discussion Threads

If you’d like to start an OOC discussion thread or post some art, you can create a new post when you’re logged in to the site by going to “Tower of Callisto” in the upper left corner > Dashboard > Posts > Add New. It will only let you add them to the discussion categories, so don’t worry about messing up the news.

State of the Game

I’ve added a page with the current state of the game (includes spoilers for the current list of player characters), which I’ll update periodically, partially thanks to the moderator tracking suite. The game is off to an excellent start, and I’ve got a lot more of your wonderful letters to sort through.

I also added some notes to the rules regarding Conflicts and Advice, this game’s replacement for the Projects mechanic I playtested in Colony of Callisto.

Lastly, thank you for all the feedback you’ve sent me about how the game looks from your end. The questions and comments I’ve received will definitely help make this a better game.

A Note on Character Names

A number of people have asked about character names, wanting to know if they picked something appropriate and so on. So I’m going to make a slight change in procedure: Once we’re ready to hand out character sheets, I’ll note a suggested name on them. You’ll have the chance to make a change to the character name at that point. After that, I’ll hand out the contact lists, as a separate email.

(I’ve been referencing this page and this page of historical letters from the region for name ideas.)

We’ve got quite a few players signed up already. My current plan is to wait for a few more days, get the characters handed out, and then get started by next weekend.

A couple of people have said they might be less active than they’d like to be. I’m specifically playtesting a different approach to dealing with player activity, so that should hopefully work fine: instead of suggesting a minimum, the new rules encourage players to spread their letters around.

I’ll also be posting the news throughout the week, instead of all at once. If you’d like to get the news posts as an email, there’s a “subscribe to this website” option that will email all of the site posts to you. (Or you can use the RSS feed.)