Dear friends of Mitraspera e.V.,
on June 1st, 2021 we went online with big news: Our new game-world-project Athyria was presented to the public for the first time, and Mythopedia was opened to the public at wiki.mitraspera.org. Here, collected knowledge about the game world Mitraspera is made available to everyone. In addition, there is the possibility to contribute your own content on these topics to the projects.
We received a lot of encouragement and positive feedback, as well as critical voices and questions. From this we concluded that our efforts were not plausible to everyone. In some places, there were and still are very emotional discussions about the pros and cons of such an information source. In this process, certain questions and statements keep coming up, which we would like to address here in bundled form.
Statement: You have published plots for future events!
In Mythopedia, we have included backgrounds that were used to build plots in the past. Most of these backgrounds are already available ingame, known by the PCs or at least accessible to them. Unplayed plots were not and will not be published. We also do not have access to the plot planned by the Burgschneider/Live Adventure company and of course did not publish it. The plots of other organisers or authors were also not published. However, everyone mentioned is welcome to enter their content into Mythopedia.
You did not consult with Burgschneider for this project!
That is correct. From the beginning on, the purpose of Mitraspera e.V. was to collect, manage, and make the content of the game world Mitraspera available. We have now made a start by already providing the majority of our members’ content in Mythopeda. This is part of our association's purpose, which can be read here under "Openness and Collaboration": https://mitraspera.org/der-verein/.
We have openly communicated our purpose at all times as well as during discussions with Burgschneider. In addition, a complete listing of our content was requested by the Burgschneider company. In our opinion, such a listing can never be complete or static.
Therefore, we have decided to compile our content, the corresponding listing, as well as the information of authors and contributors in the form of a wiki and make it available to the public. Communication between Mitraspera e.V. and Burgschneider is currently suspended, as we have been requested, in writing, to refrain from further direct communication attempts by the lawyer representing Burgschneider.
Why not hand this over to Burgschneider and the new directors?
All content created by volunteering authors for campaign events and major LARP events in Mitraspera, that is, the content created by the writing team, was transferred to Burgschneider as part of the handover between September 2019 and January 2020. Burgschneider has access to all past plot books, manuals, several databases, and the Plotwiki created and managed by the authors. Another handover is therefore obsolete, but of course possible at any time if desired.
In addition to these contents, Mythopedia now contains works already created by organisers and gamers, which are made available according to the terms of use of our project.
For Mythopedia, only documents created by the authors involved in the project have been used. Authors or contributors who have not yet been correctly indicated can contact us at any time to undo such mistakes or request deletion. Of course, all authors are warmly invited to add their own content.
You have only published this for selfish reasons and to cause harm!
Countless honorary working hours are put into this wiki project. It is not our intention to do any harm or to polish our ego. We believe that a comprehensive and publicly accessible wiki like this was long overdue and adequate for the diversity of the game world. In our opinion, it should still be possible to access "old" content, IG texts, and backgrounds in ten years. That's why we invite all interested people to contribute to Mythopedia and fill it with their own content.
Another reason for this collection of previously unsorted information is to provide support for future plot writers as well as con organisers and of course for people who want to get back into the background after the long Corona break. If this was only about making content "unplayable" and about spoiling players, there would be much easier methods to publish large amounts of documents than creating a wiki.
You are disclosing GM and NPC information, and that ruins the game!
In our opinion, larp lives from sharing and telling stories - not from the exclusivity of information. Mythopedia is for everyone who wants to play with the content. It is not an IG knowledge source, but an OOG wiki, and therefore is not exclusively meant for PC, but also targets the needs of authors, orgas, GMs, DPC, and NPC of all factions. It primarily offers resources, and it is up to the users themselves to use the wiki responsibly.
We like the analogy with sourcebooks, as they are used for Pen&Paper games. In these, information is freely accessible and GM information is indicated by remarks only. They can be read by players and game masters alike.
With the help of openly available information, hurdles are removed and players are empowered to decide on their own level of knowledge.
To support responsible use, we are already working on a system that allows players to select content according to their own desired level of IT knowledge.
You are destroying the game surrounding knowledge seeking and scholarly game play!
All players are free to continue to collect their IG knowledge IG only. Now, however, there is the possibility to read information OOG in order to understand it better. It is up to the players to decide which style of play they prefer. In our opinion, scholarly game play is more than just gathering knowledge, namely applying and linking that knowledge. IG debates about different IG interpretations of events or philosophical IG discussions are also a big part of this kind of game play - and can benefit from a wiki, as now the barriers for new scholars are lowered.
Why is this (just) coming now and not immediately after the foundation of the association?
Building a wiki like this takes a lot of time because the amount of content has grown considerably over the years. We started shortly after the founding of the association to compile and prepare our content.
This took several months and is now in a state that we feel comfortable with to present.
We are now in our second year of Corona break, and it created creative idle time for many members of our association. Until now, many of them supported the three Mythodea mass events as team members, authors, GMs, NPCs, or they were involved in the organisation of the players’ side. In addition, many of us have organized one or two cons per year ourselves. The unused creative energy within the association led to the project Athyria, which is in the making since autumn 2020. And in the course of both projects running in parallel, we decided jointly that we want to present this new playground at the same time as the content of Mitraspera.
You only do it differently now because you are no longer in the ConQuest team!
According to the former organisers, it was originally desired that the content used at the major cons can be found out IG only and that all IG knowledge should not be gathered in OOG media such as forums, wikis, databases, books or is put into players’ hands.
Some of our members who were in responsible positions of the Mythodea or ConQuest team complied with this decision as a common commitment for a long time. At the same time, however, there was always a critical discussion within the team and successful steps were taken to establish a different way of dealing with these "secrets" step by step.
Within Mitraspera e.V,. we have now jointly agreed on a different way of dealing with contents and are now enthusiastically pursuing this new philosophy of self-responsibility and self-determination and encourage everyone interested to follow. Other philosophies and opinions on game play are of course still perfectly okay and legitimate for us. Nobody is forced to read Mythopedia.
So, no, we don't do it differently now because a few of us probably don't want to take a function in the ConQuest team anymore, but because we follow our conviction here.