Phoenix Roleplaying to host Fall Fest 2014!

Phoenix Roleplaying has been selected to host this year's Fall Fest, the prestigious annual simming festival. With our Squiddie earlier this year, this will make a great conclusion to 2014 for Phoenix.

More information and a schedule can be found here - please attend or even better offer to help!

Phoenix Roleplaying gets four Squiddie Nominations

Phoenix Roleplaying has been nominated four times for this year's Ongoing Worlds Medal for Superior Online Role Playing awards. Each nomination is someone from the simming community thinking the person, game or site is worthy of this award

Silent Hunter and Raven Skycatcher are both nominated in the People category, with the latter's sim The Dark Cometh one of nine eligible nominations in the Games category.

Finally, Phoenix is one of only three nominations in Clubs.

A full list of nominees can be found here. The winners will be announced in the next few days.

Phoenix Roleplaying wins four awards at Tournament of Simulations 2013

Phoenix Roleplaying has won four awards at the prestigious Tournament of Simulations, the results of which were announced today, its second year of success in the prestigious contest, which was last year called the Simulations Cup.

The first victory went to The Dark Cometh and CANIS UK, which collectively won the prize for Best Adventure/Fantasy Sim; this was not awarded last year.

Another new award was in fact tied - Best Dr. Who Sim was collectively shared between AJJE Games' Doctor Who sim and our own The Triple First.

For the second year in a row, Phoenix won Best Firefly Sim; this year's winner was The Elemental with previous winner Kvant not entered by its SL this year by personal choice.

Finally, Fighter Ops, which won the Excellence in Creativity award last year (Excellence awards were not given out this time) won its second award for Best Military Sim.

There was however disappointment in Best Star Wars Sim: this award, won last year by The West Star, went to Star Wars: Shadow Squadron at Federation Sim Fleet.

Co-chair Chas Hammer said, "It was a pleasure to review Phoenix Roleplaying for this year's ToS.  You offer a diversity of genres that I do not believe is matched anywhere else, and the quality of your games is reflected in those who won in this years ToS".

A warm congratulations to all the winning sims and players, Phoenix or otherwise.

Wing Commander CIC turns 15

Wing Commander Combat Information Center, whose support was invaluable in us getting the Wing Commander: From The Ashes sim set up, turns 15 years old today with a special event on IRC.

Please go here for info and to wish them a Happy Birthday!

Simming Wiki News

Wiki contributor and former Chief Editor Charles Star was banned from simming wiki SimEnc by their Board last Christmas when they wrongly suspected him of misconduct. Since then Charles has been working on a new wiki which was to be community-led and collaborative, but SimEnc have recently abolished several of their more restrictive key policies and resumed negotiations with Charles to restore him to SimEnc and prevent the breakaway wiki.

Personally, I'm really very encouraged to see a way forwards for the community to have just one simming wiki, rather than the community's efforts being split between two separate wikis.

Essentially, SimEnc are open to offering Charles an option that Phoenix's first members were never offered by AJJE. Whereas Alex V very 'graciously' offered to 'pardon' us for all those rules we didn't break, Chas is talking with Charles about their respective visions for the wiki and discussing how they can go forwards together.

It is, however, far from a done deal. Charles is not the kind of man to compromise his principles, which I value and respect, so if Chas fails to convince Charles that SimEnc can genuinely be an open source community wiki, Charles will set up such a resource elsewhere. Also, Charles is speaking for a broader group of stakeholders now, and not just his own interests. That complicates discussions by adding extra terms to the table which other stakeholders are bringing forwards that Charles may not have insisted on on his own.

So yeah, still quite an uncertain future. But either way, there will be an open source community-led wiki at the end of it covering the online rp community, either a reformed SimEnc, or a new wiki started by Charles Star.


For more updates, Charles Star can be contacted on star.idf@gmail.­com


~ Ash

Torment: Tides of Numenéra

Written by Mischa Brendel

Many members of the Phoenix forums will be interested to know that currently the project Torment: Tides of Numenéra (TToN) is running on Kickstarter. The game, a computer RPG is crafted in the spirit of the classic CRPG Planescape: Torment, which is still thought of by many as one of the best CRPGs based on the AD&D rules to date.

TToN managed to make the set goal of 900,000 dollars in funding within seven hours after launch, making it the most successful Kickstarter project to date. Currently the meter is almost at 2.5 million dollars, meaning that a lot of stretch goals have already been reached as well.

Planescape: Torment was very popular in large part due to its enticing storyline and InXile, the company behind the project (and currently working on Wasteland 2, also through Kickstarter) promises to deliver a story similarly enticing. TToN will however not take place in the Planescape universe, but in Numenéra, a universe created for the tabletop RPG of the same name, by Monte Cook.

The Kickstarter project will run for another 24 days. Visit the project website to find out more about the game.

 

'From the Ashes' mentioned on Wing Commander CIC

Thanks to Chris Reid for posting this.

Phoenix's 'The Triple First' mentioned in Doctor Who RPG fanzine

One of our sims, The Triple First, has gotten a small article on it in the Diary of the Doctor Who Role-Playing Games online fanzines.

It can be found on the bottom of page 128, so please take a look.

Silent Hunter's FallFest 2012 talk is covered on Ongoing Worlds

General Coordinator Silent Hunter did a talk at SciWorld's Fall Fest on Friday 21st September. On the request of Ongoing Worlds, he has written a post summarising and expanding on that talk, which can be found here:

Ongoing Worlds blog

Phoenix players on Forsaken World

Robert and Aidan are currently playing a new F2P (Free to Play) MMORPG called Forsaken World. Anybody interested in gaming and keeping in touch with their fellow Phoenixians through Forsaken World should contact Robert for an invite to his guild: DrunkDragon. They are playing on the US East Coast PVE server "Storm".

Phoenix Roleplaying reaches Number 4 on Roleplay Market

On Thursday, I added Phoenix Roleplaying to Roleplay Market's links list.

Since then, it has acquired a rating score of 177 and is currently 4th in the chart, above such giants of the RPG community as Darths & Droids and Giant in the Playground.

This score is only slightly inflated by us being new (by about 28, I believe), being mostly determined by ratings, following the link to us (I've done that, so that adds 7) and votes.

Clearly a lot of people like us!

Phoenix Roleplaying on SimEnc

We now have an entry on the Simming League encyclopedia.

Created by Alliance Building Officer Robert Longtin, a presence in the Simming League should help boost the profile of this nascent RPing site and increase our membership.

Thanks Rob!