Trouble getting started

I’ve read the FAQs and the manual, and I’ve created the ‘a Masquerade’ storylet plus two other storylets which are all playable. What I can’t do is to set up an introduction screen.

I’ve created a storylet/card/start of questicle called ‘Tell me about yourself’ to choose gender but the cards need the ‘a Stranger’ quality and I can’t test them. I can’t assign myself the ‘a Stranger’ quality because I don’t have a character name and ‘fairyhedgehog’ and ‘owner’ don’t work.

I’ve a feeling that I’m not getting how this all works, but I don’t want to give up yet. If I need to read the manual again I will but I’m not getting anywhere with it. Is there a tutorial for really slow people like me?

My world is carousel.storynexus.com and I’ve set it to ‘in progress’ in case someone wants to look at it.

Thank you in advance for any help anyone is able to give.
edited by fairyhedgehog on 1/20/2013

Hi there

I can help you get your own character set up and ready to test with. But I’m not sure what, if anything, you’ve already done. When you go to http://carousel.storynexus.com, what do you see?

If you’re asked to log in, then log in - what do you see next? If you see a button that says “Play Now”, then click that - what do you see next?

Cheers
Richard

Thanks, Richard.

When I go to that link, I get directed straight to http://carousel.storynexus.com/s and I get offered the card from my deck where you choose male or female. At the moment all that card would do is to lose your stranger quality, but for me the choices are locked. I’m not asked t o login.

OK. First of all, you’re not being asked to log in because you’ve already logged in previously. That’s nothing to worry about.

Your character’s name is “Alexis”. You can see that in the left-hand bar in the screenshot you posted. You must have typed in that name when you first visited your world, and were invited to create a character - which might have been some time ago.

Your character’s name is different from your account name (fairyhedgehog) because you might choose to role-play different characters in different worlds. For example, if you chose to play Fallen London as a man but Carousel as a woman, then you might want to choose a male-sounding name for one and a female-sounding name for another.

When you use “Godlike Powers” to give a quality to a player, it’s the character name you need to type, not the account name. So in this case, the answer to the question you asked is to give the character “Alexis” the quality “a Stranger”, with value 1.

Note that your character Alexis would have had the quality “a Stranger”, with value 1, when it was first created. At some point in the past, I’m guessing, you’ve already played a branch which removed the quality “a Stranger”, and that’s why you don’t have it any more.

A couple of additional notes…

It’s worth pointing out that I’ve just created my own character (which does indeed have “a Stranger” at 1), and I don’t see any cards at all. So there’s something that’s not quite right there. Take a look and make sure that you have at least one card available which doesn’t require any qualities except for, optionally, “a Stranger”.

Also, I can’t see exactly why the branches on the card in the screenshot are locked, but you might want to take a look at the way it’s designed. If they are locked because they all require “a Stranger 1”, then it might be a better idea to place that requirement on the card as a whole - up at the top, in the section titled “Root event” - and not on each of the individual branches. Setting it on both the root event and the branches might seem like a sensible “belt and braces” approach, but it’s not really necessary, and it’ll cause strange and confusing problems if you make a mistake doing it.

Hope that helps! Do post again if this doesn’t solve it… I’m going to be on a plane tomorrow so I might not be around myself, but I’m sure someone else would pick up.

Cheers
Richard

Thank you. It’s some time since I first started trying to sort this out and I’d totally forgotten my character’s name! How embarrassing. Thank you for working it out for me.
The reason it’s all locked may be because of the ‘Key of Dreams’ quality which I’ve now removed.
I’ll have another look at it tomorrow and see where I am now. Thank you so much for your help!

Yes, that was it. I now get the card inviting me to choose a gender.

And you’re welcome :-)

Cheers
Richard