I have to take a look at an apartment on Sunday, about an hour from our usual start time.  So if we play on this Sunday, I'll be about 1:30 late.

So, about this week's Sunday...  It's the day before Christmas eve, and I'll be at my parents' again.  I'll likely be tied up in preparations, although there is a chance that I could play for some hours.  Probably better to not count on me being present.

I'm fine with the break.

Christmas itself is unlikely to affect my ability to play, since none of the important days fal on Sunday.  I'll probably be at my parents' for an advent or two during December, but that shouldn't prevent me from playing altogether.  Eating lunch could cause me to be an hour or possibly even two late in such cases.

Current latest version is 0.9.20.  Files:

http://tdb.fi/~tdb/rpgchat/rpgchat.zip
http://tdb.fi/~tdb/rpgchat/rpgchat_update20.zip

Uhm, I'm not so sure a table-based iteration works so well on forums...  Maybe better that we each tell our own and then you collect them to a table?

As said on IRC, I can only play at about 16-22 CEST on weekdays.  In addition, on Tuesday and Friday I have sauna, which will cause a break in playing.  On weekends I'm free.  In table row format:

mon     tue    wed     thu      fri     sat       sun
16-22  bad   16-22  16-22  bad  10-23  10-23

(Edit: Changed times to CEST)

I guess I can try.  I'm trying to keep an earlier sleep cycle now so I'll have about 3 hours time to play if we start at 19:00 CEST.

There's a diving trip on this Sunday (2007-08-26) at 16:00 EEST that I'd like to attend.  I generally prioritize one-shot events over recurring ones with a regular schedule, and since I chose StSC the last time, I think it's fair that I get to go diving this time.  I will naturally start the server for you before I go.  In case you want to reschedule, I have a diving trip on Saturday as well (same time), but otherwise I don't have anything scheduled.

Considering that we skip days of time, transparecy to some extent would be good.  In those days our characters are sure to meet and exchange news.  This would be rather tedious and maybe even boresome to play out - having the not-so-secret scenes transparent allows this news-spreading to happen for free.  It might even outweight the fact that you get to know some things your character wouldn't.  I don't think blocking out OOC-knowledge would be a problem for me anyway.

As for how to implement transparency, I could add an extra flag for that to scenes.  If set on scene creation, it would take all players in as watchers.  They couldn't say anything on the scene until the GM /enters them, preventing interruptions from non-present characters.

Even a simple weather system with few effects will make the world feel more real and give role players something to talk about in a tavern.

There would of course be random bandit attacks and such.  By "meaningful" I meant something that actually ties into the story of the game, and that's something that can't really be done randomly.  I plan on making GM tools that can be used to pre-script events that will be triggered by certain player actions, such as traveling on some road.

This is especially hard since some forms of disconnection are not possible to detect instantly.  If a router in between dies, it can take 10 minutes before the TCP session timeouts and the server sees a disconnection.  Active pinging of clients will help this somewhat, but due to possible lag the disconnect timeout still has to be on the order of a minute.

This question clearly calls for some more thought and possibly testing.

What if the degradation effect wouldn't even start until you haven't used the skill for a week?

My plan is to drop the concept of abstract experience points completely.  If you want to learn fighting, you'll have to fight.  There will be mentors who allow you to do this safely, however to be the champion you'll have to do some real fighting too.  You also can't reach grandmaster level by only fighting goblins, since once you learn all their tricks, there's nothing more to learn.  I don't know how well this works out since I haven't really played a game with such a system (I should try though), but we'll see.

There can be in-game sources of such knowledge, such as libraries or mercenary veterans.

And then some comments to what others have said:

The day cycle has to be considerably shorter than 24 hours in order for players being able to fully experience the game with the character class they have chosen.  We can't restrict playing a thief to those that can stay awake through the night.  If we consider that an average working person has maybe 6 to 8 hours to play per day if he's dedicated, a day cycle of 2 to 4 hours becomes very reasonable.

As for the target group, it has to be something I belong in.  I'm not a hardcore role player, but I dislike the repetitiveness and implausibility of standard MMORPGs.  I want to create something that feels like it's alive and where your actions have a meaning.  There probably will be some randomly-generated reptitive content where it fits (playing a smith's apprentice and he gives you tasks to do).  I try to avoid exploitable mechanics and any undisputable best items that you get by killing the same dragon 10 times in a row.  I also try to avoid a situation where there'll be absolutely nothing to do because all GMs are sleeping.  So the game will be geared towards role playing, but not at the far end of the axis.

Tantavalist's idea of a skill system sounds interesting.  I'll see if I can utilize that somehow.  I still don't like abstract XP though.  Maybe you could train to high levels all by yourself, but doing it that way would be slow (since you'll make much more mistakes).  Utilizing the help of a master and, with some skills, also a library, you could considerable speed up your training.

I'll be leaving to a diving camp early tomorrow, so I won't be able to respond for a few days.

I'd like to note that the current list of possible rules is more or less a list of (somewhat processed) thoughts I've had.  Not all may be implemented to begin with and some may be dropped or significantly altered during testing.  It's still more like a notepad than the beginning of an actual rulebook.

I've been thinking of adjectives so far.  I might go for not showing any indication of skill at all.  Time will tell.

It would also be relevant to metallic armor and weapons rusting in rain if not cared for properly.  Also getting frostbite / sunburn if not dressed properly.  (Finally an RPG where you can't go around all year in your chainmail bikini!)  Naturally there will be combat effects as well, from various kinds of weather.

In most games the cycle is purely visual.  I intend to have it affect your ability to see and the activity of animals and NPCs.

Talking with your group will definitely be possible.  Meaningful random encounters will need some GM power to at least set them up, but they would be nice too.

Ruling out unnecessary frustration of players when a local thieves' guild decides to plunder everyones' prized possessions during night just for the fun of it.  If I could control the type of players that get in the game, I'd leave PvP thievery an open option as well.  But in an open-for-everyone MMORPG there just has to be some limitations on PvP actions.

I might add an option to make your apartment vulnerable if you're ready to deal with the consequences.  Maybe roleplayer cities where this will be mandatory.

On link death there would be some rudimentary logic on what to do - if near enough to an apartment or a paid-for inn room, the character would automatically go there.  If in the wilderness, he would camp.  Uncampable places could exist if they logically fit there, haunted ruins or some such.

It basically means that there's no need to try and force different actions under the same skill.  Some skills are also quite closely related - for example, there would be separate skills for forging swords, hammers, axes and so on.  Since they don't differ by much, they get significant bonuses for each other.  If you know how to make a sword, there's a good chance you can make an axe too, even if you've never made an axe before (assuming you know what an axe is like).  When a new skill is added to the "weaponsmithing" group, it would get an automatic base value according to the other skills in the same group.

Possibly both.  Since this is not a sci-fi environment, it doesn't make sense to learn about building houses while you cook.  So to learn from a master cook, you would need to stay in the same room as the master and observe and listen to him cooking.  If both master and student(s) are players, they are free to talk and possibly do a limited number of other things (depending on skill being trained).  Or log off and let the characters train for the day (in a safe place).  The balance in training speed needs to be found through trial and error.

As for the most efficient way, this is a learn-by-doing system.  I'll try to make sure you can't get to be a master cook by baking bread for three months - you'll have to make a wide variety of different recipes.

Degradation would be sufficiently slow that you would not notice it for the skills that you use at least semi-regularly.  It's intended to encourage skill specialization and discourage every player trying to do everything by himself.

See comment at top of this post.

The amount of required sleep will be sufficiently small that it's bearable.  Besides, it's healthy for the player to take a break too.  There could be an audible alarm on a random attack (possibly a short while before it) so the player can go to read a book / surf the web and still get back to the game in time to react.

Skipping the actual sleeping would lead to major temporal inconsistencies in a MMO environment.  To a bystander, it would still seem that the character went into his room weary and came back two minutes later well-rested.

By saying "always avoid death 100%" I assume you mean the game (or rather GMs) should give give choices in the plot that allow players to choose an easier path, and not that players should always be able to get alive from every situation they got themselves into.

Getting forward in life means different risks for different people.  I might have a one in ten thousand chance of getting into a car accident during my daily trip to work - a fireman might have a one in then chance of getting injured during a difficult rescue mission.  In a "free" MMO world, what actually is getting forward?  A mercenary's life has considerably more risks than a cook's.

I agree though, that too easy permadeath (or too easy death at all, for that matter) is going to cause frustration.  Whatever I finally decide on this though, I want to discourage players from just trying things to see if they're too strong, or engaging some boss a dozen times until the dice finally roll in their favor.

That has the problem of players using it for actual IC communication.  Of course, so does IRC.  This again is an issue of not being able to control the players' actions.  I will think about whether or not to include an OOC channel.

Either is fine for me, although friday is perhaps a little bit mre sure to be free.