New Staff
Happenings in Egypt
eGenesis Player Meet
Tale Thus Far
Alvin Maker Update #1

Well, I'm writing the final newsletter of A Tale in the Desert II, and what a great Tale it's been. New players first think that A Tale in the Desert is about building "stuff" - that they have stumbled upon the ultimate crafting game. And I always suggest that yes - there's a ton of
stuff to build, but what the game is really about is building a society.
And not just building a society, but doing so in the face of really hard
challenges set forth by The Stranger. Tests designed in many cases to make
building that society as hard as possible.

Look at what we've accomplished in our second Tale: As I write this,
monuments to The Human Body, to Architecture, and to Worship have been
completed. In creating these monuments, we have created challenges for our
descendants.

Future Disciples of The Human Body will adorn their bodies with the
fruits of the Test of the Oyster Catcher.

Future Priests will celebrate with each other over the Test of Leavened
Bread.

Future Architects will have to secure their place in the afterlife with
the Test of Ka.

Look at how this society has has built itself in other ways -
Organizations like The Goods arose to promote trade in Egypt, the Safari
Hunting Association helped track Egypt's wildlife, and The Village show
countless new arrivals our way of life. (And I realize that I'm leaving out dozens or organizations that are just as much the heart and soul of Egypt.)

We've elected Demi-Pharaohs, and seen the position grow from one of mere
theoretical power, to one of action. (Some would say that previous to a few months ago, the Demi-Pharaoh's power had never really been used.)

And all this will soon be a history book. Gharib, The Stranger, will die
on:

Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 2:00PM EDT (GMT-0400)

And with him, the chance to build monuments will end. The inscriptions on
those monuments built and consecrated at the time of his death will
challenge our descendants in A Tale in the Desert III, launching:

Saturday, May 27, 2006 at 12:00 Noon EDT (GMT-0400)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There is one tradition that has been a
part of A Tale in the Desert since before our first Telling: "Amnesty."

Amnesty is when it's ok to tell any secret. And I have some secrets of my
own to tell, including a Tale 1 secret that just didn't seem right to
reveal as Tale 2 started. You'll SEE why. Amnesty begins the moment of
Gharib's death, and to attend, I ask everyone to informally agree to one
thing: If you want to attend, promise that you will not take what was done
as gameplay, personally. You might find out that a friend had a 2nd
character that griefed your camp. You may find out that who you thought was a friend was actually an Agent of The Stranger, instructed by me. We've had hurt feelings at previous amnestys. You've been warned.

Amnesty may last well into the night - I'll stick around and chat for
many hours. The server will be up for a couple more days to give everyone a chance to drink their finest wines, smoke their rarest herbs, launch that secret cache of fireworks, and say their goodbyes. We'll shut down
Wednesday at Noon EDT (GMT-0400), and then bring the Tale 3 servers up
three days later. Paid accounts will transfer from ATITD 2 to ATITD 3,
reserving your character name, and preserving your Legacy Title. I'll
credit everyone for the intervening downtime.

I raise a glass of Followers of Anubis '04 to everyone, this generation
and next.

Forever on the Nile,
Pharaoh (Teppy)

Standard Stuff:

Thanks to all those that participated in the first Beta of A Tale in the
Desert III. I'd like to give my thoughts and observations on the beta, and
then announce our final, 3-week Beta. BTW, I want to get into some detailed
ATITD 3 game design stuff with this newsletter, so if you just want to find
out when Beta 2 starts, skip down to the bottom.
Technically this first Beta went very well. There were no server crashes.
Some of the new content had bugs, but I was able to fix all the significant
ones within minutes-to-hours of their being reported.
Progress in the beta was not as fast as I had estimated. The server was
open for almost 6 days exactly, and in that time, the highest level
attained was level 6. If I had been asked beforehand how far I thought we
would progress in 6 days, I'd have figured the top players would have hit
Level 10. Here are the first 15 ways to gain levels, as configured for Beta
1:

Level 0: Citizenship
Level 1: Principles of Architecture, Principles of the Human Body
Principles of Leadership
Level 2: Principles of Worship, Principles of Art and Music,
Principles of Thought
Level 3: Principles of the Obelisk, Principles of the Demi-Pharaoh
Level 4: Principles of Harmony, Principles of the Acrobat,
Level 5: Principles of the Vigil, Principles of the Prophet
Level 6: Principles of Khefrey's Children, Principles of the Pathmaker

The column at the left is the level required to attempt each Principle.
Passing any Principle increases your level by one. Principles are always
fixed-goals, and are intended to be something that a veteran ATITD player
would find pretty easy.
So if my math is right, the players that did reach Level 6 had 9 choices
on how to reach Level 7. That seems like about the right "bushiness", so
why the (from my perspective at least) slow progress? I think the answer
lies in the Level 2 Principles: Worship requires several kinds of items
that Egypt can not create right away, including Camel Milk and Grilled
Fish, and Thought does also. So even though you've gained a post-Citizen
level, you don't *really* have a lot more choices of what to do next at
Level 2. Perhaps compacting the above schedule just slightly around Level 2
would relieve this bottleneck, which would have the side effect of making a
number of early skills much faster to get. I'm going to try this for Beta 2.
The final item from the Beta that I want to discuss is the Events system.
We ran two events, both of which I was able to code during the beta. The
first was a "dig" event with some interesting scoring features. The second
was a Tug tournament in the Wepwawet Spirit Arena. Technically both worked
well, but I thought that each needed to provide more information after the
event on how Egypt did, as a whole. For instance, as a player I would have
liked to know who won the Tug tournament, what rank they reached, how many
participated in total, that sort of thing. As developer I could retrieve
that information, but really it needs to be accessible to the Events team
that will run many such things during live. So, that's something I'll work
on in Beta 2.
Which brings me to the announcement. A Tale in the Desert III, Beta 2
will begin:

Friday, May 5, at 12:00 Noon EST (GMT-0500)

I expect the Beta to last for about 3 weeks, and I'm going to set a goal.
Let's see how many of us can reach Level 7. It's an individual goal, but
it's also an Egypt-wide goal because the Principles and Technologies needed
to *easily* let others reach Level 7 must be unlocked as a community. Keep
in mind that nobody in Beta 1 would have attained this. Does anyone have a
prediction for Beta 2 on how many will?