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MAGISTER-L is named in honor of Herman Hesse's Nobel Prizewinning novel Magister Ludi, in which an elaborate game known as the Glass Bead Game serves as the vehicle for the spiritual and intellectual aspirations of an entire culture.
MAGISTER-L is a mailing list for the discussion of games as vehicles for spiritual expression. The question that interests our subscribers is:
How can we most effectively bring insights and wisdoms from the spiritual traditions of the world into the realm of games and gaming...
The games discussed on MAGISTER-L can be anything from childrens' games like Scissors Paper Stone to full-blown strategic games like Chess or Go, or from Fantasy Role Playing games such as Mage: the Ascension to variants on the Glass Bead Game itself. They can be played in MUDs, on-line, in arcades, on CD-ROMs, with pencil and paper -- or in your head. What is important about them is first that they are games of some sort, and second that there is some connection -- this is central to all discussions appropriate to this list -- with some aspect of what can fairly loosely be called the spiritual realm.
By the spiritual realm, we understand a hard-to-define but easy-to-recognize area that specifically includes things mythical, magical and mystical. For instance, the mythic and archetypal story-telling aspects of role playing games would be a suitable topic for threads on this list (Joseph Campbell in RPG land), as would the role of gods in RPGs, or the ways in which the "laws of magic" in fantasy games can reflect the "laws of magic" in shamanic and tribal cultures -- or the ways in which a variant on the Glass Bead Game can be used to explore Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences. But the words "mythical, magical and mystical" should not be taken as limiting: in a discussion of Glass Bead Games, for instance, the spiritual realm should be taken to include the totality of human knowledge and culture -- Bach and bebop included.
The tone of MAGISTER-L, in other words, is serious, studious, scholarly and philosophical -- and with room for playfulness and wit.
Finally, the list wishes to be of service to game designers, and will -- within reason -- attempt to provide a forum for game design discussions that fall within the parameters described above, and for the play testing of games where appropriate.
Subscription is private, by invitation of the List-Owners, whose intention it is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio and reasonable adherence to the List's topic areas -- with as unobtrusive a hand as possible.
To subscribe to Magister-L, click on the address below or send mail to:
magister-request@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
subscribe Magister-L
In your message, tell us something about yourself and why you'd be interested in subscribing.
Well, first of all, there's the list address itself, which is:
magister-l@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
which is the address to which you should post discussion related to the list. Only subscribers may post to the list.
To cancel your subscription to Magister-L, click on the address below or send mail to:
mailserv@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
(no subject needed)
unsubscribe Magister-L
If you're having problems sending or receiving mail or you just have questions not answered here, write to the list administration address: magister-request@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu to reach a real person.
Please note that Magister-L is a "closed" list. If you're not subscribed to the list you can't post to it. If you're receiving mail from the list but not seeing your own mail there's probably a difference between your subscription address and the address your system puts in the "From:" field. Write to the list administration address for help.
Magister-L does not have a NOMAIL or DIGEST. We are, alas, on a mailserver, not a LISTSERV.
Messages from Magister-L are archived in .zip files at Magister-L Site.
All works stored at the site are the intellectual property of the authors, and you should get their permission before posting or publishing them elsewhere.
Please follow these to enhance the experience for everyone. And if you don't, at least one of the listowners (Jae) is likely to get very cranky with you.
Magister-L has very few rules, but those we do have we enforce. The most important rule is the golden rule ("Treat others as you wish to be treated.") and is simply a matter of courtesy. Flames are not permitted, and will not be tolerated. When posting to the list, try to use netiquette.
Subscription is private, by invitation of the List-Owners, whose intention it is to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio and reasonable adherence to the List's topic areas -- with as unobtrusive a hand as possible.
Where posts deal with specific subsets of the games universe such as Role Playing Games or Scissors Paper Stone or Glass Bead Games, subscribers are asked to use a subject heading for their posts that begins with an abbreviation for the game or type of game in question: RPG, ArM, V:tM, IC (for "in character"), M:tG, SPS, GBG, etc. This will make it easier for subscribers to delete messages that are of minimal interest to them...
A high level of courtesy is particularly important in discussing what may be the religious and philosophical beliefs of some of our members in a forum that also addresses the fictive world of games, and the List Owners ask that all posts should be courteously phrased.
In order to protect those subscribers of this List whose spiritual beliefs or practices might make them the target of people with very different religious persuasions, materials from this list should in no case be forwarded or reposted on any other list or in private correspondence without the explicit permission of the original poster.
To conserve the intellectual property rights of those who post on this list, all posts will be archived with their date and time of arrival. Subscribers should assume that the copyright in posts to this list belongs to the signatories of individual posts unless otherwise stated.
Netiquette Guidelines for Magister-L
Netiquette is network short hand for "network etiquette" and refers to the posting style. It's meant to help keep your posts as interesting and readable as possible. Some suggested guidelines (by no means exhaustive) for netiquette are:
Never post all in capitals. Capitals are used for emphasis on the net, and a post entirely in caps comes across as SHOUTING.
Keep your right margin set at 70 characters or less, or the equivalent if you have a variable space typeface (eg: 4.5" mark if you are using Times Roman 12pt) This is very important, since not all systems can display a full 80 character line. Those that can't usually wrap the last word or so of a too-long line to a separate line -- which makes it very difficult for some of your intended readers to read the paragraph.
Don't use tabs -- different systems treat tabs differently --and some systems ignore them completely. Use repeated space-bars if you want to indent a portion of your text... Otherwise, that beautifully lined up ascii art you just built is going to look like gobbledy-gook to someone else, you can be guaranteed -- or your paragraph is going to be pushed past the right edge of the screen.
Don't use keys that aren't on a regular typewriter... newcomers to the net sometimes send word-processed messages on e-mail that include command strokes that don't translate to ASCII, and their readers have to put up with meaningless and confusing paragraph marks, equals signs, numbers etc scattered through the text...
When quoting from another message, please quote only the relevant portions. There are few things more annoying than having to read through 100 lines that you've read once already -- just to get to "Me too" and a .sig. And it's particularly infuriating for those of your readers who have to pay for the privilege...
Please use one of the conventions for e-mail quotations. One commonly used convention is to name the person you're quoting, and then preface each line of the quote with > and a space, as in the following example
The Netiquette Guidelines said:
> Please use one of the conventions for e-mail quotations. One
> commonly used convention is to name the person you're ...
Since some people pay by the message, one-liners are best avoided under most circumstances.
Take some care over your spelling, grammar and punctuation, please. Bright ideas deserve careful phrasing...
Keep your .sig (signature artwork) to no more than six lines, and your posts to under 300 lines. Many list members either pay for their storage space, have restricted storage space, or have mailers that can't handle long files. If your message is longer than 300 lines, break it up into smaller chunks for purposes of posting it to the list -- and if it's 125 lines or longer, include the indication "(long post)" in your subject heading. Do not post files, binaries, sound files, graphics or HTML to the list. Again, not everyone can receive them and they take up a large amount of space.
Break your post up into paragraphs, separated by blank lines. It's very difficult to read a sixty-line post that has no breaks -- it's the visual equivalent of babbling on and on without a pause for breath.
And let's end this section with a generalization -- if it makes your post easier to read, it's a good idea. After all, the whole purpose of mailing lists is communication.
Your Listowners,
Charles Cameron - hipbone@earthlink.net Jae Walker - jae@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
 Back to Jae's Home Page |
 Comments or ProblemsEmail me at jae@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu This page (http://drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu/~jae/magister.html) was last updated 06/25/99 |