Seltani: An Introduction

This is an introduction to Seltani, a text-based multiplayer worldbuilding platform that emerged from the intersection of interactive fiction traditions and the Myst universe. What follows is a comprehensive exploration of the system, its design philosophy, and its capabilities, drawn from a presentation given at Mysterium in August 2013.

The Historical Context

The creator's journey begins with a deep background in interactive fiction. As an "old-school interactive fiction guy," they spent considerable time creating text adventures in the Zork tradition, including works like Heliopause. These parser-based games dominated the early 1980s landscape, where players typed commands and received textual responses. However, the rise of computer graphics gradually pushed these games into niche status.

Simultaneously, another text game format emerged: the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series. This model presented chunks of text followed by menu choices, each leading to new text segments. While the creator personally preferred parser-based adventures for their depth and puzzle-solving potential, they recognized that choice-based games offered accessibility advantages, particularly for new players who might find parser games intimidating.

This tension between depth and accessibility became central to Seltani's design philosophy. The creator experimented with hybrid approaches, developing games that combined hyperlinks with command prompts, designed primarily for mouse interaction. They acknowledged that while parser games offered richer exploration possibilities, choice-based systems were easier to construct and learn.

The Myst Online Connection

The project's genesis lies in Myst Online, an MMO exploration/puzzle game set in the Myst universe. Despite years of development and eventual launch in 2007, the game struggled with player acquisition and content updates, leading to its cancellation after just one year. However, the servers remained operational, allowing fans to continue playing and even attempting to add player-built content.

This fan activity revealed an interesting pattern. While building detailed 3D worlds proved technically challenging due to finicky tools and unsupported engines, players enthusiastically discussed their world-building ideas in forum posts. These discussions often contained rich, descriptive prose about locations and puzzles.

The creator's insight was simple yet profound: what if there were an all-text Myst MMO? In such a system, players could write descriptions directly into the game, eliminating the technical barriers of 3D modeling while preserving the narrative richness that made Myst compelling.

Design Goals and Compromises

Several core principles guided Seltani's development:

• Ease of learning and building: The system should be accessible to newcomers while remaining powerful for experienced creators.
• Multiplayer capability: Unlike traditional text adventures, Seltani would support multiple players exploring together.
• Web-based accessibility: The platform would run in standard web browsers without requiring special software.
• Wiki-like construction: Rather than starting with a programming language and adding text features, the system would begin with wiki-style editing and add programming capabilities.

Every design decision involved compromise. By choosing an all-text approach, Seltani sacrificed the beautiful 3D graphics of Myst Online. The hypertext model ruled out Zork-style parser interactions. A simple display style precluded the elaborate JavaScript effects common in contemporary Twine games.

Despite these limitations, the creator believed the system embodied the virtues they sought: accessibility, multiplayer capability, and narrative richness.

The Tour: Experiencing Seltani

Initial Access

The Seltani experience begins at http://seltani.net/, featuring deliberately minimalist design. New users register accounts and begin their journey in an information booth within a nameless shopping mall. This mundane starting point serves as a neutral ground before entering the more fantastical Myst-inspired environments.

Upon taking a "blue booklet" (the linking book), users access the Seltani District, the core Myst Online setting. The interface features two main panes: a focus pane for close-up descriptions and a broader view for the surrounding environment. Movement between locations occurs through clicking links, with some links providing close-up descriptions and others enabling physical movement.

Multiplayer Features

Nearly every location in Seltani supports multiplayer interaction. When multiple users occupy the same space, they appear to each other, enabling real-time conversation and shared exploration. The system tracks individual player states, allowing actions like sitting down to affect only the acting player while remaining visible to others.

World Building Interface

The world-building interface opens in a separate window or tab, presenting a wiki-like editing environment. Users begin by creating a new world, then add locations with descriptions and properties. The system supports various property types:

• Description properties: Text that appears as room descriptions
• Movement properties: Exits connecting different locations
• Code properties: Python-like scripts for interactive elements
• Value properties: Simple variables (booleans, numbers, strings) that track state

Properties can be conditional, using tags like [$if ...] and [$else] to display different text based on variable values. This enables dynamic environments that respond to player actions.

Technical Architecture

The system employs a sophisticated approach to world instances. While the world definition remains immutable and controlled by the creator, player actions affect only instances of that world. These instances can be personal (solo exploration) or shared (multiplayer), depending on the world's configuration.

This architecture enables both collaborative exploration and private narrative experiences. Solo worlds allow authors to employ narrative techniques that might break immersion in shared spaces, while shared worlds foster social interaction and collective discovery.

Philosophical Considerations

A significant portion of the discussion addresses the nature of "location" in text-based multiplayer environments. Traditional text adventures treat locations as physical spaces, but choice-based systems like Twine often use "locations" to represent narrative moments, actions, or time periods.

The creator examines how this distinction becomes problematic in shared environments. When multiple players inhabit a space, the physicality becomes grounded in reality. Time becomes real time because players are chatting with real people. Space is limited to what everyone can comfortably see and speak.

This analysis leads to the concept of instancing models. Most Seltani worlds support both shared and private exploration, but authors can designate worlds as "solo," ensuring each player experiences the narrative independently. This preserves narrative flexibility while maintaining the integrity of shared spaces.

Current Status and Future Directions

As of August 2013, Seltani represents an ongoing experiment approximately one year in development. The creator began planning in March 2012, started coding in May, and opened the first playable test in June. By August, roughly 150 accounts had been created, with the creator releasing a dozen Ages and visitors contributing thirty more.

The project's future remains open-ended. The creator hopes to attract more Myst fans and see an ongoing stream of original creations. They envision Seltani becoming a social hub with constant player activity, potentially expanding beyond the Myst mythos to support other fictional universes.

Technically, the system uses generic terminology ("worlds" instead of "Ages," "portals" instead of "linking books"), making it adaptable to different themes. The source code is available on GitHub, suggesting potential for community-driven development and customization.

Conclusion

Seltani represents a thoughtful synthesis of interactive fiction traditions, multiplayer gaming, and collaborative worldbuilding. By choosing text over graphics, accessibility over complexity, and community over solitary authorship, it creates a unique space for narrative exploration.

The system demonstrates how technical constraints can foster creative solutions. Rather than attempting to replicate the visual splendor of Myst Online, Seltani embraces its textual nature to create something distinctively different yet equally compelling.

Whether Seltani achieves its ambitious goals remains to be seen, but as an experiment in multiplayer text-based worldbuilding, it offers valuable insights into the possibilities and challenges of collaborative narrative environments. The project stands as a testament to the enduring appeal of text-based gaming and the potential for innovative approaches to shared storytelling in digital spaces.