The content of your Mote stories is now saved between sessions, allowing you to create longer stories that you can continue to develop in Mote over days, weeks, months, or years.

Recently we added the ability for you to scroll up and read the parts of your Mote story that have moved past the “horizon” of the top of your web browser. With saved story content, this means scrolling back to re-read parts of the story created across multiple sessions.

Saving your story content is easily the biggest change we have ever made to Mote, but it’s still just the beginning of what we have in store.

How it works

Starting today, when you open a story in Mote, a file is created on our servers containing a copy of all the characters you create, and everything you write. As you write, this file is kept up-to-date automatically, and the next time you open your story, there it will be. (And yes, when you delete a story, we delete this file, too.)

Your story content is stored in the same AWS data center in Oregon, US where Mote’s servers operate, and is encrypted in transit and at rest. Story files use the ubiquitous, public domain SQLite file format, so even if you wanted to take your story content out of Mote, it would be easily readable and editable using standard tools.

Stay tuned for the ability to export your stories’ files directly from the Mote UI, as well as additional data export and transfer options, including taking stories authored in Mote into Google Docs and Scrivener!

Note that the contents of previous writing sessions will not miraculously appear in your existing stories today. We weren’t secretly saving all of that behind your back!

What’s next

Persisting story content opens a lot of possibilities, and is the cornerstone of what we’ve been calling Mote 1.0. Expect a lot of incremental enhancements coming soon, including an editable table of contents, a dedicated reading mode, and live editing and tweaking. Our goal is for Mote to be the most-fun way to fill a blank page, whether you write fiction alone or with friends.

Moods are near and dear to my heart. Well, the idea of moods is. I don’t use them, myself. Like, ever. And the data shows I’m in good company.

There are only about 20 players who have any player-created moods in their libraries at all, and the vast majority of them have only created a single mood. The players with the most moods in their libraries are myself, John, and our friend Jeff, who created a bunch of moods for a Twitch stream we did together back when moods first launched.

So we have a visionary, aspirational feature that’s always been, let’s admit it, a little half-baked, and has seen essentially zero adoption. At the same time, we’re at work on major renovations that will touch every line of code, and every feature we include makes that project more complex. Quite simply, Mote will be leaving beta soon, and the time for beta features is over.

Given this state of affairs, we’ve chosen to remove moods from Mote. Here’s what that will look like:

• The “Moods” library category has already been removed from the UI for players with no player-created moods in their library.
• Over the next two weeks, the ability to transcribe new moods and the ability to play back existing moods will be removed.
• On March 5, all player-created moods will be deleted. An email will go out by February 19 to all players with data that will be deleted notifying them of the deletion and providing instructions on how to export their data.

I realize we’re talking about a very small amount of data that is almost certainly unimportant to the people who created it, but I want to set the tone of treating players’ data with care, especially as our upcoming plans involve becoming the custodians of much more of it.

A little over a year ago, in November of 2021, John and I had the opportunity to bring Mote to Orycon in Portland, Oregon, our hometown literary SF convention. It was the realization of a dream two years in the making, made briefly possible in a pre-Omicron world.

At Orycon, we met all different kinds of people who stopped at our booth, took flyers, sat down to play Mote with us and each other on our laptops, even got to know us. We met authors and publishers, dreamers who could talk our ear off telling us about the worlds and stories they and their friends had created together over years, teens with very specific questions, old-timers who regarded us with suspicion (and some who signed up!).

What all these people had in common was that they were very different from the people we’d been able to reach online. While the community we’d been building online skewed heavily toward indie digital and tabletop gaming, the people we met at Orycon were readers and writers, LARPers and SCAdians.

John and I recognized that the core of our product — real-time, collaborative fiction — was compelling to this audience, and a real solution to the challenges they faced building story universes over years with friends across the country. We also realized that many of the features we had built and were building were completely secondary to this core use-case, and because of that, the perfect audience for the core of Mote stories wasn’t able to connect with it.

We realized then we needed to cut the distractions and focus on finishing the foundation of Mote stories. One year later, that vision has finally coalesced into what we think of as Mote 1.0, representing a major shift in how Mote works that we think takes us on a path toward leaving beta.

Collaborative fiction

What does the ideal tool for collaborative fiction creation look well? Well, to start with, the stories you create have to be something you can return to and continue to develop over time. We need to start storing the content of players’ stories, retaining the ability to re-render them as needed, with subsequent play sessions adding to the story over time, and a dedicated reading mode.

Before we can do that, we needed to do away with personas and pets in favor of the more flexible (and persistent) characters, which we added to Mote last summer. The way we render stories needs a rethink, too. We still believe second-person present tense is great for real time play, but most players want to read their stories in less exotic first- or third-person past.

If players are going to be spending time going back and reading their stories, though, they’ll need a way to fix typos, and continuity errors, and even tweak the inferences being made by the narration engine. So ultimately we need collaborative editing, both offline editing, and touch-ups that can be made during play (think rewind on steroids).

Finally, we need a way for players to share what they create on Mote with their friends, whether by allowing stories to be made public, to be able to embed stories in other sites or applications, or by sending stories to Google Docs for further editing and export.

Watch for these changes coming out over the course of 2023.

And more…

There’s a lot more that goes into a non-beta Mote than just a new storytelling experience.

• A redesigned login and signup flow will make it easier than ever for new players to get into Mote and start telling stories. Redesigned player settings UI that’s better organized with room to grow.
• A redesigned library that players can customize to organize and curate stories that are important to them.
• Essential tools for players to control their data, including data deletion and story ownership transfer. Operator tools that enable us to provide player support and mitigate problem behavior.
• A revised privacy policy and terms.

These changes will begin appearing in Mote incrementally, as they’re ready. At some point, John and I will make the call to peel the “beta” label off and kick off a marketing campaign.

By the way, the Mote Discord server is the best way to stay up to date on Mote development, and also a great venue to give us feedback on these changes.

We’ve been playing Lovecraftesque on Mote lately, and the results have been fantastic. I wanted to share some advice on how to play this prep-less, dice-less story game on Mote, and how it got my gears turning.

Lovecraftesque is a GM-less storytelling game for 2-5 players by Black Armada Games. As you play, you and your friends will co-create a chilling short story in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.

Mote is a great match for Lovecraftesque first and foremost because these kinds of stories originate and thrive in the written medium. So much of the horror of a Lovecraft story is in the way you use your imagination to interpret the words on the page – in both what’s said, and what’s left unsaid – and the way that written words can suggest or give the impression of a thing while stopping short of fully realizing it. The interplay between text and imagination is an ever-present part of playing Mote, and it really adds to the experience of telling this kind of story.

Mote also naturally provides a really clear separation between table talk and the story you’re telling, which helps a lot to keep everyone in the mood while you play.

Since the conversation you’re having about the game you’re playing is happening through another medium entirely (we use Discord or, even better, Zoom), the story itself is able to really take center stage. If the story gets too intense, you can take a break and crack a few jokes, then pick up right where you left off.

We also really enjoyed being able to produce an artifact of play from our story using Mote’s Save as HTML feature. Each player can download their own unique edition of the story as it appeared on their screen and re-read it later.

You can even split your Lovecraftesque game into two Mote sessions on separate days and re-read the transcript of the first session ahead of time so you can pick up where you left off.

Preparing to play

One of the first things you’ll need to decide is how to handle the Witness in Mote. In Lovecraftesque, the Witness is the central character of the story, and every player takes turns playing them.

In Mote, the most straightforward way to create a character that you play is to make it your Persona. Your Mote Persona is who’s story you tell with your emotes and chats (when you aren’t using a Pet), and they appear as “you” in the text that you read. (Everyone else’s Personas appear in the third person.) But how to handle a shared main character?

• Witness as Pet One option is for everyone to create their own Pet to represent the Witness, and not using their Persona at all during play (the default Persona is “someone”). This can contribute to narrative distance, but may also reduce your identification with the character when you are playing the Witness.
• Witness as Persona Another option, and this is the one we’ve used, is for everyone to make the Witness character their persona. This means that in scenes when you are not playing the Witness, you’ll read about them in the third person, and in scenes when you are, you’ll read about them in first person. This may sound exotic to those not as familiar with Mote, but it feels like a truer translation of the game to Mote and our group had a lot of fun with it. I’m looking forward to future development making Personas and Pets more flexible that may present even more options for how to play this game.
• Special Cards We used the cardless rules for our game. I’m looking forward to trying this one day using the cards, but they were pretty awkward playing remotely with the PDF. If you have any advice for playing with special cards remotely, I’d love to hear it.

Investigation scenes

Most of your time playing Lovecraftesque will be taken up by Investigation Scenes, during which all the players will take turns filling one of three roles: the Narrator, who directs the scene and reveals a clue, the Witness, who portrays the story’s protagonist, or the Watchers, who add color and help fill out the scene.

Playing the Narrator

When it’s your turn to be the Narrator, you’ll be charged with setting up when and where the scene takes place and what’s going on. This may sound daunting, but remember this is a collaborative game. When you’re the Narrator, everyone you’re playing with is trying to help you bring your ideas to life! Here are some tips to get you through your first scene as Narrator:

• Start your scene with a chapter heading. This is a great way to set up what’s going on quickly without painting an entire picture with emotes and Pets. It’s also a great way to telegraph to the other players what you have in mind for the scene.
• Use parentheticals to establish time and place. Parentheticals are a new (and experimental) parser feature that let you add short phrases before your emotes. Parenthesize a phrase inside your emote, and it will be set off from the rest of the sentence with a comma. This is a great way to establish when and where things are happening. (See examples below.)
• Read in the other players when appropriate. Don’t hesitate to enlist your fellow-players’ help to get all the pieces in place, especially at the beginning of the scene. Tell Watchers which characters you want them to take on. Tell the Witness when you want them to enter the scene, and what you want them to be doing. If you need help establishing the mood, or bringing a big twist to life, ask the other players to help you.
• Keep it short. This one requires the most discipline. When you’re telling a story on Mote, and everyone is vibing, it can be easy to just keep riffing, especially when the story is as atmospheric and thrilling as the ones you will tell with Lovecraftesque. Remember that the whole point of an investigation scene is the one clue that you’re going to reveal. Once you reveal the clue, let the Witness spend some time reacting and rationalizing, and then end the scene.
• End your scene with a scene break. Use the Scene Break Tool to add a divider to the page to signal to all the other players that the scene is done. Decisively ending the scene, maybe even a little early, is a great way to keep momentum and avoid losing steam. When the next scene starts, the player who is the Narrator for that scene will be able to replace the scene break ornament with a heading using the Chapter Tool.

/(back onboard the ship)… 
/(the next morning)… 
/(after several hours)… 
/(in the room at the end of the hall)… 

Playing the Witness

Mote puts you in the driver’s seat of your persona. For many types of stories, this is great – it keeps you present and active, focusing on what your character does, and driving the story forward through strong, active characters.

But as the Witness in Lovecraftesque, this is the opposite of what you want! The most important thing you can do when playing the Witness is to pay attention to the Narrator – watch where they are leading the scene, and follow them there.

• Show what you’re thinking and feeling. One of the best ways to keep yourself from derailing the Narrator’s scene is to focus on the Witness’s thoughts and feelings. Read the scene the Narrator and Watchers are creating and use emotes to show what the Witness is thinking and feeling. (See examples below.)
• Find a way to show their strength and one of their traits in each scene. Every Witness starts the story with something that gives them strength, and over the course of the story they’ve acquired traits. Remember to call on these while you are playing the Witness. If you’re not sure how the Witness would react to something that’s happened, return to these for inspiration.

/realize that… 
/wonder why… 
/shudder at the thought of… 
/try not to recall how… 
/can’t believe that… 
/wish I hadn’t seen… 

Playing a Watcher

The Watcher can be the toughest role to get the hang of. You aren’t in charge, and you aren’t the main character, so what exactly should you be doing? And, just as importantly, what shouldn’t you be doing?

• Put the Narrator’s emotes on loop. I think of this like vamping or comping in music. The Narrator may introduce details and scenery, but their focus is on the plot. Pick up on the details the Narrator introduces, and continue to breath life into them and expand on them to enrich the scene.
• Use custom subjects to show scenery, details, and ideas. Custom subjects are another new (and experimental) parser feature that make it easy to create rich and varied scenes without stopping to make lots and lots of pets. (In fact, we now recommend you only make pets to represent actual characters!) To use a custom subject, just type the name of the subject, followed by a colon, followed by the rest of your emote. (See examples below.)
• Only play a side character at the Narrator’s request. Characters are major forces in stories, so only introduce one into the scene when the Narrator asks you to!
• It’s okay to just watch. You are a Watcher after all! The story you create with Lovecraftesque and your friends is going to be totally gripping, so it’s okay to take a break and just soak it all in.

/bitter leaves: whirl across the ground
/the pungent odor: hits @alice's nostrils
/the crowd: presses in
/darkness: descends
/shadows: creep across the lawn

The Ending

The final act of your Lovecraftesque story is a bit more freeform than the rest, an optional force majeur, followed by a real or metaphysical journey to a final climactic reveal.

My best advice for this section is to keep your turn-taking strict (our group limited ourselves to just three emotes per turn), and to use scene breaks liberally to add structure and pacing.

The Epilogue

The player who takes on the epilogue needs to have a solid plan (probably punctuated by some kind of twist) and strong facility with emotes. This part is like an epic solo, where you’ll quickly spin a scene that puts a cap on everything. Custom subjects and parentheticals are your friend here!

Once you stick the landing, signal to everyone that the story is done – if you happen to be the host, you can end the story from Verso; otherwise use the Scene Break Tool to mark the spot.

Future work

Every time I try something new on Mote, it feels like I dream up new features to go with it. This is good and bad (but mostly good!) Here are a few I’ve been thinking about that would really enhance Lovecraftesque:

• Being able to share and swap Pets and even Personas
• Being able to use a different perspective (third-person, first-person) and verb tense (past, future)
• Being able to add epistolary content to the flow of the narration, like letters, notes, signs, and poems

How to buy Lovecraftesque

You can buy Lovecraftesque directly from Black Armada Games in both digital and print editions through their website. An incredible amount of thought and care went into this game, which in addition to the rules includes several essays on grappling with Lovecraft’s life and work, and a broad collection of scenarios from a diverse group of writers.

I hope you love playing this game on Mote as much as we did! If you try it, I’d love to hear about it!

About Mote

Mote is a text-centered online space for collaborative storytelling and gaming I’m creating with my partner John Zajac. Mote’s narration engine weaves your chats and emotes into a story that reads like a book, whether you’re freeform roleplaying with friends, or playing a story game like Lovecraftesque. Sign up for our open beta to start exploring.