Hello all,
I've wanted to tell you guys about a particularly wonderful game called Storium for a long time now but kept putting off signing up for audiogames.net. There is a game I found 3 years ago that I've played daily ever since but never saw brought up here.
The game is similar to the play-by-post forum games of the past and present, except it has a minor card game element to it. Each player in the default setting, minus the narrator picks a set of cards when they create their character and they play that character in a story a narrator user sets up. You start with strength cards, weak cards, and a sub-plot, which is sort of your character's personal motivation. The narrator will set up challenges where they will set up a character or obstacle card and the players play their cards and write how those aspects to their characters affect how they are going to solve the challenge, with weak cards bringing the challenge closer to a weak outcome (worse consequences) while the strong cards make the outcome a stronger (better) outcome, and sub-plots and other sorts of cards push it closer to being completed but don't push things towards strong or weak at all.
If the challenge says 3 points, then when 3 cards are played in total, the challenge is over and the outcome you get is based on whether more strong or weak cards were played. If they are the same in number, the narrator (a sort of game master) ejudicates.
for a more concrete example, if you are playing a game where the characters are fighting a dragon (to use a tired example) and you play a weakness card called "Cowardice" you push the players to where the weak outcome is more likely to happen so you have to then write how your actions as a character are cowardly and how they mess things up.
It's a very free-form system and beyond the cards and a few minor things on how certain types of cards work, there aren't a lot of rules. You don't have to worry about leveling up, health points, energy, or anything like that.
Though I used a fantasy example, there are pre-made settings to play in of every conceivable genre, as well as having the option to create your own.
There is a free membership but you can only play a total of three games. You also only get access to 9 of the currently 61 pre-made worlds, though those 9 are very broad and customizable. a full membership is usually supposed to be 40 dollars but you can pay as little as 25 if you do it all at once or you can pay as little as $3 a month instead of a 12-month sign-on and any way gets you all the bells and whistles, opening every option in the game to you and removing the number of games cap.
Most of this is in the tutorial and the introductory video which you don't need to see to understand and follow as all of the important information is spoken aloud.
The game only has two staff members but they are quick to solve any problems and the community is super-friendly and accommodating. It is hard for visually-impaired users to put art with their stories, but if you make that clear, nobody of value in the game will care. and the staff that run the game are super-focused on accessibility.
I found that the game works best with ie for some reason but when I tried to get it working on Firefox, the staff was unable to replicate the problem I had where there were nonresponsive buttons.
Check out the game on www.storium.com
also, I'm a member of Storiumarc, a podcast that gives advice, reviews new content, and celebrates the game. I'm Zachary on that one and I use my common username of Rattannah on Storium itself.
If you have any questions, ask me or check out the site.