From alt.pub.dragons-inn Mon Mar 20 09:08:20 1995 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:8202 alt.dragons-inn:4320 Path: netcom.com!ix.netcom.com!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!chnews!ornews.intel.com!news.jf.intel.com!ibeam!hutch From: hutch@ibeam.jf.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn,alt.dragons-inn Subject: [ADMIN] Re: [INN]-Tarelle-New Character Date: 13 Mar 95 22:22:07 GMT Organization: Intel Corporation Lines: 80 Message-ID: References: <3jrf22$k9j@nic.smsu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ibeam.jf.intel.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #13 (NOV) Sorry about the non-story post. This question is coming up again: rak321s@nic.smsu.edu (Koch Ronald Andrew) writes: > [...] > this realization was taken in, only seconds after the doors had swung > wide, the stranger fell forward onto the hard wooden floor, and lay > there, unmoving. > [Yes, sorry..this _is_ a repost...but the way I left it, I really can't do > anything else until someone takes notice of it...I'm not complaining, just > a fact. To do it anyway else would seem silly after such a build-up... vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv > P.S. could someone please tell me what the difference between this and > alt.dragons-inn is?...they seem to be the same newsgroup...thanx!] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ They're not the same newsgroup. They used to be the same newsgroup, but that was years ago during the Great Conflict between the Empire and ... Oops, sorry, wrong story. See, when the group was proposed, some dickweed or other jumped the gun and created alt.dragons-inn before the discussion was done. Some people started their stories up, but then another dickweed deleted the group, and of course the "auto-alt-group-restarter" that's run by a third dickweed re-issued the group. Anyway, when the dust cleared, alt.pub.dragons-inn was created, and a FAQ and an shared world were created. The folks who were still posting to alt.dragons-inn got kind of bent out of shape when their group was suddenly aliased to alt.pub.dragons-inn by a well-meaning dickweed, and they ended up creating alt.pub.cloven-shield for their group, which already HAD a shared world in place. Then alt.dragons-inn was RE-aliased to cloven-shield, and all was happy for about six months, when the alias expired or was removed. All clear as mud? Well, then Dave Womack and some other folks found that an empty alt.dragons-inn was still there, despite its having been removed officially, and they started up a more brief, thready, interactive sort of writing style, in their yet-another-different-shared-world. Recently Dave learned that alt.dragons-in had been "removed" some time back, and re-propagated the "create group" so it's much easier to find. So, right now, alt.dragons-inn has a fairly large population of people who like to do brief, highly interactive, stories, generally less than a page or two in length. I have never seen a "long" story there, but that doesn't mean they don't happen, just that they're not the main thrust of the group. Alt.pub.cloven-shield has been empty for a long time because there were never a lot of writers there and attrition has had its effect. Alt.pub.havens-rest, which is a SF group similar to alt.pub.dragons-inn, has been slowly suffering the same kind of attrition as its more prolific writers have been graduating or otherwise losing the ability to post frequently. Alt.pub.dragons-inn is home of generally more lengthy, worked out stories (lots of behind-the-scenes email) and has also had some attrition, but it's still quite alive, just that the stories are slower to come out. Speaking as an alt.pub.dragons-inn "greeter" I'd like to point out that we have no problem whatsoever with the shorter, more interactive story format, as such, but that people don't tend to do that here as much as they used to do. I think there are really only three active major threads, but there are a lot of minor threads which start and then peter out as people get busy and stop posting. As with alt.dragons-inn we have a FAQ and a lot of background info, but you have to request it because the mailings were getting to be too painful for the folks who get their newsgroups by email (and pay for them). Anyway. It probably won't work well to have your character come into the Dragon's Inn in Generica and fall to the floor nearly dead -- not because nobody cares, but because most of the writers who would respond, are a bit busy with their behind-the-scenes work, or their characters are elsewhere. So, if you need to do that kind of an entrance, then please make sure you have already got a second writer recruited, or write how the staff of the place helps you out (and they will; it's bad for business to leave people leaking all over the floor :-) ...