I had a barbecue to go to, so I never got around to finishing yesterday's post, but I'd like to pick up where I left off.

First of all, a few more words about Jobe (although nothing observant fans don't already know). My involvement with this brand new city - a sort of floating Hong Kong (before the reintegration with China), a self-governed city-state where the markets aren't regulated by Omni-Tek or the ICC - began with a concept document requested by the designer assigned to Jobe, Jarl Schjerverud, where I outlined the history of Jobe, listed the technical details of the city's inner workings (it does, after all, float), described the different neighbourhoods and identified the key locations in the city. A concept is always the best way to begin the process of designing a new area or playfield; both verbal and visual. After the completion of this document, the designers had a few meetings with the artists and world designers (the guys who are actually creating Jobe), and we came up with a set of specifications everyone's happy with. The artists started producing a number of really, really cool sketches and visual designs that I hope we'll be able to include in the expansion pack. Right now, the city is in the amazingly capable hands of said artists and world designers, and my involvement will be minimal until it's time to write new NPC dialogue.

NPC (Non-Player Characters; the server-controlled people populating the world of Rubi-Ka) dialogue is one of the areas we'd like to make huge improvements, and hopefully I'll be able to talk more about that in the weeks and months to come. Yesterday I mentioned (as I've done in the past) our desire to shift more of the story into the game, and an important part of this will be to improve the quality and quantity of the NPC dialogue. Leading up to the release of the expansion pack, characters will begin to hint at the upcoming story, and inside Jobe in particular, players should be able to piece together what amounts to a very, very large jigsaw puzzle. We're also mapping out all the existing NPCs in the game, looking at how they currently relate to each other, and how they can contribute more to the story. But I'm going to keep a lid on the details, at least for now.

One caveat: All of this currently resides in the realm of "hopefully" (well, not all of it; some of it is already in development). Time is always short, and resources are assigned to whichever task is the most important, or the most requested. But I'm convinced that NPC dialogue should be, and will be, an important tool in telling the story.

Before I sign off for now, just a few more words about the Anarchy Online "Bible". This is not a document we'll be handing out to the players, not directly. First and foremost, the Bible helps us collect and coordinate all the story-, character-, and setting-related aspects of AO. The timeline, for example, is one element that we've pulled out from the Bible and posted on the official website. Other elements are for "internal use only", while most of the contents of the Bible will be communicated through NPCs, events, expansion pack(s), static missions and dungeons, and so on. The Bible will be constantly revised and updated as AO progresses, and the world changes. Our Bible ain't sacred. But it's secret.  ¶ 18:19