Hello, all

How are you, Avarians? I'm relatively new to MUDs, having just dabbled briefly in one a few years ago, but have been excitedly watching the developments here for the last couple months after finding the series of introductory reddit posts. I've been playing TTRPGs for most of my life (as the perpetual GM, of course), and in the last couple of years have really started to refine my craft, and realize the depth of possible experiences inherent in these games. I'm extremely curious to explore telling stories in this new, but intimately related medium, and I hope you'll all bear with me through my growing pains!

My all-time game award goes to Luke Crane's Burning Wheel, and I've learned a tremendous amount about what makes RPGs tick from that timeless tome. To give you a sense of how I tend to approach RP, here are some lessons I'll be considering bringing forward to SoA (if they continue to seem relevant):

• be extremely clear about what motivates your character, and make those motivations *strong*
• skip to the good parts. strive to think in terms of scenes with *stakes*
• fail forward; interpret failures as twists in the story, rather than roadblocks

Really looking forward to playing with you guys! My experiences even in this pre-alpha have just been so encouraging.

I've been really impressed by how quickly and deftly you've acclimated already to the medium of a MUD.

These are great points about roleplay, and one thing I like about even the slow sorts of character development scenes are the inherent stakes in those... the often-unstated goals of every character there and how they're going to emerge from the encounter, never entirely the same person as they went in. Considering those risks and rewards can sometimes even turn a boring chat with some random stranger into a new developmental lynchpin of a story arc.