About the Forest

The Forest is, at its heart, a collection of short room descriptions connected together by exits. Anyone can add to the world by creating new rooms, view the existing rooms, or enter the world and interact with it. These three actions are represented by the three navigation icons: the hammer for building, the eye for browsing, and the hand for exploring. An account on the site (which is necessary only for building) is free with a valid email address.

This is the fourth version of this site concept. It combines ideas from Caves (online editing and exploring) with the Playground (free access for anyone to walk up and create) and Explore Drun (item manipulation and live interaction). All of those sites are now gone due to unrelated data loss accidents, and this one has sprung from their ashes using the best qualities of each.

On the website, anyone can see the existing rooms and click on the exits to move between them. Permission restrictions set by the builders are respected; someone following a direct link to a room is considered to have "teleported" there, while someone clicking on exit names is considered to be "walking." By making an account, one can create new rooms and items and have full control over who uses them.

The real innovation of this generation of the site is the IRC bot. ForestRanger accesses the world data created on the site and allows users in IRC to explore it in realtime. Wanderers can give themselves names, describe themselves, and interact with each other as if in any other online multiplayer role-playing game. They can move and wear the items created through the web interface. They bring the otherwise static world to life.

Please feel free to explore and investigate. There is plenty of help available online. To ask questions or discuss the Forest, visit #theforest on irc.foonetic.net or email relsqui@chiliahedron.com. Enjoy!