Ghyll:Main Page

Welcome to Ghyll

This is the Gamegrene wiki, which is hosting a game based on Neel Krishnaswami in "Lexicon: an RPG". The goal: create a world (hereafter named Ghyll) by taking on the role of scholars and defining new terms alphabetically. Whatever one scholar reports as fact must be accepted as such. The rules are defined below and vary slightly from the original manifesto:

1. On the first turn, each player writes an entry for the letter 'A'. You come up with the name of the entry, and you write 100-200 words on the subject. At the end of the article, you sign your name, and make two or more citations to other entries in the encyclopedia (these citations may also be made within the body of your subject). These citations will be phantoms -- their names exist, but their content will get filled in only on the appropriate turn. No letter can have more entries than the number of players so all citations made on the first turn have to start with non-A letters.
2. On the second and subsequent turns, each player continue to write entries for B, C, D and so on. However, you need to make three citations. One must be a reference to an already-written entry, and two must be to unwritten entries. (On the 25th and 26th turns, you only need to cite one and zero phantom entries, respectively, because there won't be enough phantom entries, otherwise.) It's an academic sin to cite yourself, you can never cite an entry you've written. (OOC, this forces the players to intertwingle their entries, so that everybody depends on everyone else's facts.) Incidentally, once you run out of empty slots, obviously you can only cite the phantom slots.
3. Despite the fact that your peers are self-important, narrow-minded dunderheads, they are honest scholars. No matter how strained their interpretations are, their facts are accurate as historical research can make them. So if you cite an entry, you have to treat its factual content as true! (Though you can argue vociferously with the interpretation and introduce new facts that shade the interpretation.)
4. This little game will probably play best on a wiki, and it should take a month or so to play to completion. At the end of it, you'll have a highly-hyperlinked document that details a nice little piece of collaborative world-building.