What is London By Night (LBN)?
Simply put, LBN is an MU* game based in modern-day London, but in World of Darkness setting created by White Wolf. Or to look at it another way, LBN is an interactive text-based game where you play a character within an on-going, and ever developing storyline. Your actions, words, (or even the lack of either), will influence events that will happen around you, and may decide the success, or failure of the people around you, and even society as a whole.
Moving within this world are a number of characters, corporations, creatures, special interest groups, etc which are controlled by staff members of the site. These are mostly here to help develop atmosphere, create plots, counter-plots, and even introduce storylines, and theme changes.
There are rules that should be obeyed, just as with any game, and the word of staff on is final, in the event of disagreements on rules.
What Similarities & Differences Should You Expect?
The city of London used in the LBN game is based on the real city to a very large extent. However, what you have to consider is that not every citizen, building, business or entity in the London area can be modeled into the game. For the most part this means that only the major landmarks, roads, companies, and people will be created within the game world. Others can always be added as needed. It would be totally unrealistic, for example, to include every street, office, shop, alley-way or site along the entire length of Oxford Street. This would be a huge waste of database space, and leave a huge number of locations & information unused.
You can expect to see the Lord Mayor of London the Prime Minster, and a whole slew of other well-known figures of London carrying out their usual range of schemes, plots, and policy meetings, just don't expect to see them on the streets too often, if at all. Unless a player manages to find a way to get themselves elected into such a position of power, there is little chance these people will be involved in anything other than news events. What about the royalty? Well, we're not going to give everything away on the very first page… Check out Historic London and London Today in the Theme section
So, while you might find the Battersea Power Station, and gas works, (plus Battersea Park) in the south-west of the city, it is unlikely that you will see any other power stations, or gas works (unless they are introduced for a storyline). Also, for similar reasons, you will find that only a small number of housing options exist, often apartment complexes, or hotels.
What other things should I expect? Well, as you will notice from reading the Theme pages, a lot of the cities history remains very much the same, with a few alterations, most noticeably in the recent history. There will be many pieces of information in there that could be true, some that are potentially misleading, and others that could very well give insights into aspects of the city you might not otherwise see. More importantly, those differences are part of the game world, not the real one, and who knows what might lead you into a storyline that could shape the future of the city?
Further Information
The site is run by Mapper, and runs on the TinyMUX code-base, but is not yet accepting players, since it is in development stages. The over-all theme of the game is being developed as we speak, along with commands, character creation, and other systems that will be unique to this game.
