Manual
The rules page is what you must and mustn't do, in Aurora. The setting page is background. How to play this game is another matter.
What are we?
Aurora, as are the other ImagiNations worlds, is an interactive geofiction community. The basic player persona is a nation of one's own devising. The setting was at first only sketchily defined. As time goes on (we've been at this for several earth-years) the process of play has built a body of interactions among nations. That was all erased in 2007 as we restarted from a clean slate. This is not a massively multiplayer roleplaying game, nor is it a world-sized version of the popular Maxis Sim games.
The nations and their interactions inhabit a collection of websites, a discussion board, a wiki, and a bunch of fertile imaginations. That body of work defines a richly developed set of cultures, politics, and people. What you come up with inside your own nations' borders is your own, but if we stopped there Aurora would just be a bunch of desciptions of synthetic places. Instead, we use those nations as the basis for all the interactions that constitute international relations. Treaties, commerce, state visits, propaganda, rivalries, foreign aid, sports, international agencies -- all these are brought to life in the stories we tell.
What do we do?
We're telling stories. Aurora isn't a competition to be won, unless you think in terms of "who can tell the most engaging tale". No scores are kept, no points awarded. For that matter, there's no set goals, except enjoying trading story lines, devising interesting international relations, and displaying your concept of a nation in web pages, discussion board posts, graphics. Some players are into constructed languages, some are flag enthusiasts. Some develop elaborate military organizations, some produce journalistic reports. Some invite tourists to visit, some create companies with which to trade. Rummage through the nations on the visit page, and through the posts on the discussion board, and you'll get an idea what this cooperative creation is. The Aurora wiki is our encyclopedia - its loose hierarchy is a rich source of encouragement for what to think up next.
Lots of folks create their own imaginary countries. An entire world or universe is a vastly larger undertaking. Aurora's pooled imaginations create orders of magnitude more interconnections and "plot turns" than any one of us would develop on our own. If you think of the game as a writing tool, it's a magnificent solution to writers' block. No sooner do we come up against a drought of ideas, than a neighboring nation proposes a dynastic marriage, or a world championship is proposed in some Aurora-popular sport, or a sporty new line of race cars is introduced... and you suddenly can't bear to let your heir apparent compete in rallyes in a generic car or one of those Odessan designs. You have to write up your own national favorite vehicles. And so it goes. Racecars may not be your forte... but someone else has a variety to incorporate in your writing. They might not care one whit about bloodines and dynasties, where you could easily imagine your part, theirs, and ten others', in royalty, kingmakers, and revolutionaries. Another will gladly make maps for others, or currency designs, or advertisements.
The friendships formed among other players who share a delight in imagining are as much a part of our game as is the shared geofiction. Players log on from around the globe (earth's globe). Our backgrounds and viewpoints are as different as can be -- and the world we're building shows that. The variety makes for the kind of texture a real world seems to have ... based on our single example of Earth :-).
We communicate in English, but fluency isn't absolutely required. I'm convinced one player I knew in another ImagiNation world was using AltaVista's BabelFish machine translation to communicate... rough, but a valued participant. Please do not be shy - we value your imaginative content far more than any polished grammar. Many of us like to write, but megabytes of text isn't a requirement -- some contribute quite well with brief posts and sketchy looks at their culture and politics. Aurora is web-based, but you don't need to be an ace with html or php. I started my first ImagiNation participation knowing very little about web pages... and now I do web services for a living. Others have made out quite well by dropping info into canned templates in our wiki. Above all, if you feel you lack some skill in order to present your nation as you would like, just ask. We're a helpful bunch, and somebody not only knows an answer, but may be delighted to provide material to your specifications.
We'll do more of a manual in the wiki.