rpanons | Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

Your privilege at any time is only as strong as the wifi signal

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hi again! I'm the same anon from the last post. I think I've got a bit more of a concrete idea in mind now, but I was hoping I could get some more feedback to hammer out what will and won't work for this kind of game!

Setting
A medium-to-small-sized kingdom. ICly, travel from one end of the kingdom to the other would take about a week and a half assuming characters were traveling by horse and stopped each night to rest. Most characters might not own horses, but they would be common enough to rent/borrow in the event that players needed their characters to get from point A to point B quickly.

There is a coast in the south/southeast; the border at the south/southwest is a desert which is known for its terrible sandstorms and mirages. The western border is with a neighboring kingdom, but traveling regulations are strict enough that casual travel from one kingdom to the next and back again isn't readily an option (which serves, OOCly, to keep characters contained to one kingdom to start out with - though with time the border could be opened, depending on player/character choices). There are mountains and hills in the north, and thick, dense forests and woods in the northeast. There are waterfalls in this area, and rivers flow from here into the ocean.

The capital city is in a central location near a lake. There are local lords overseeing other parts of the kingdom (player characters could fill these roles/be related to people filling these roles).

Right now, I've got first drafts for the capital city and a handful of larger and smaller towns and villages, but that's not really enough to fill the whole country, which is where worldbuilding comes in...

Wordbuilding
I'd like players to have some degree of control over their environment. I also don't want them to feel as if they're locked into having their characters hail from the pre-established towns if they don't want to. Working within the framework of what's been described, players could come up with their own towns and/or landmarks and would have a lot of freedom in describing things outside of the pre-established cities - if a player wants their character to find a system of caves in the mountains that hides a vast treasure, they can! If they want their character to be from a small village deep within the forest, they can do that too. If they want their character to be from a town near the desert, or to have grown up on the coastline, or anything that isn't already defined, they can do that sort of thing and can come up with locations within the framework of the described environments.

They'll be able to make things up on the fly if they so choose, but I'm thinking of implementing some sort of a post for them to comment to with new locations that can be added to the setting description - that way when newer players come in, everything that's been added to the setting via worldbuilding will be right there at their fingertips rather than having them have to hunt for it.

I'm worried about that kind of a system being a little too complicated/dependent on the mods to keep updated - I certainly don't mind putting in the work, but I know a lot of players do have concerns about relying too much on the mods for this sort of thing. If anyone has some suggestions as to how to streamline it and make sure things go smoothly, I would definitely welcome them!

Pantheon
As in most fantasy settings, there would be a general belief in gods (though not all characters will believe in the same gods or will necessarily believe in the gods at all!). There would be a pantheon of six "Old Gods" - the ones that were, according to legend, the first beings to exist - aligned with the Sun, the Moon, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind; aside from that, however, there will be a smattering of other gods and goddesses, and players are free to invent their own if they have ideas. Some overlap would be okay, too, because even in myths and legends the dominions of various gods and goddesses overlapped depending on the belief system.

This being a fantasy realm, the gods could vary from region to region (the mountainous region might have more gods having to do with stone, people living near the river might worship local river gods, etc), race to race (dwarf gods vs elf gods), or even person to person (character X sojourned in a foreign land and came to believe in a certain god or goddess there). Much like with the setting worldbuilding, I'm thinking of having an entry for players to submit deities to the pantheon themselves, with a description of what the deity is known for in legend and how their worship tends to be conducted, etc.

As for whether or not the gods really exist... no one knows for sure, but the general consensus is that they do. They wouldn't be putting in direct appearances most of the time - but many of the things that happen are attributed to them (an earthquake being chalked up to the earth deity being in a foul mood and so on). Player-submitted gods and goddesses could appear during player plots if you wanted them to! Mod-created gods might put in appearances during mod-run plots, but personally I prefer for the action to be centered around the characters rather than NPCs.

Again, if anyone has any suggestions for finding a balance between "mods define all the gods" and "players submit gods" please let me know!

Plot and Plot Hooks
For game opening, everyone would be starting at the same time (regardless of whether or not the game does monthly app rounds or has continually open apps). Play will begin in the capital city during a festival, which will be all fun and games until an eclipse, on what was meant to be the night of a full moon! This is obviously a sign that something has happened to the God of the Moon.

From the night of the festival on, strange things will begin happening in different parts of the kingdom; an out-of-season blizzard here, an earthquake there, et cetera. The royal family will issue a "call to arms" of sorts - basically, a proclamation will spread through the entire kingdom (and into neighboring kingdoms) that everyone with some sort of skill - whether they be a warrior, a merchant, a wizard, a scribe - is necessary to figure out what is going on and to keep people safe. Warriors? Great, go fight off some monsters swarming a town on the border. Merchants? We've got an important delivery that needs to be made to a city that's in drastic need of supplies. Historians? We sure could use some help deciphering this ancient prophecy that might tell us how to fix this...

Of course, the royal family's requests are long-term concerns, and will continue to be issued as time passes so even new arrivals can get involved there (during monthly or bi-monthly mod-run events)! Player plots will be encouraged, too; after all, the local lords and common people need help, there are all sorts of nooks and crannies in the kingdom to discover, and every player action - even in a player-run plot, especially in a player-run plot - will have a direct impact on the game and the overarching plotline.

For those who need a push or don't want to run their own plots, smaller, individual plotlines can be NPCed by the mods upon request - if you want to explore some catacombs and want a mystery about what you'll discover. But you don't need the mods' permission to play things out, and you are free to come up with the catacombs and what's within them and adventure to your heart's content!

Classes
The more I think about it, the more drawn I am to using the base classes from D&D as the classes for this game. Multiclassing would allow for a very wide and customizeable range of characters, and with some tweaking should work if people want to mirror their character's canon abilities. On the other hand, if they don't want to mimic their character's abilities exactly, that should also work fine!

The base classes in this case would be Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard.

Some of the alternative classes - Shaman, Healer, Knight, etc - could also work well.

And then, for people don't want to play adventurers, the NPC classes from the DM Guide - Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, and Warrior - are pretty good baselines.

Of course these would really be more guidelines than anything - I'd be tweaking some of them to fit the setting, and players wouldn't be stuck only ever doing things by the book - but these would also be the terms that people would be using ICly for characters who fit the descriptions, so it might be useful to have them defined.

Magic/Abilities
Magic in this universe is ambient - it's just there waiting to be called into use, though the majority of people (NPCs running shops, generic citizens) aren't in tune enough with their environment to make use of it. PCs, on the other hand, have the option of having the ability to use magic even if they weren't capable of using it in their canon, so long as the reasoning for it is explained in their application (and said reasoning can be as simple as "they're from a family of mages in this AU" - it is an AU, after all!). This is to help level the playing field between people apping from canons such as Tales of the Abyss and people apping from canons such as Free!, for example.

There are some ways for even those who aren't tuned into it to use it, however. This universe's magic is referred to its locals as either "Divine" or "Arcane" - Divine meaning "a gift from the gods," as in a naturally-occurring ability to use magic, and Arcane meaning "known or knowable," as in the study and practice of words of power and rituals to tap into the magic around them.

A character with no naturally-occurring magical ability can still use Arcane-style magic via spell books or spell scrolls, if you prefer to keep them closer to canon by not giving them the ability to use magic on a whim but want them to be able to hold their own in a fight.

(So basically it's the difference between magic used by the Sorcerer class in D&D and magic used by the Wizard class in D&D).

Wherever possible, I don't want to have to nerf character abilities - but some things, like hyperresonance from Tales of the Abyss or Meteor from Final Fantasy VII, may need to be limited. Situations like this will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

That being said, your character's abilities should be reflected in their AU backstory. Frankly, if you're playing Jade Curtiss as nobility, not as a military man, and nowhere in his AU background does it say that he trained and improved his skills, and it isn't mentioned somewhere that he's meant to be a natural prodigy, he is not going to be more powerful than, say, a version of Natalia who has been training with the bow and with healing arts since she could walk. Period. Canon gives us a general idea of what they have the potential to do, but you determine what they can do in your app - even if it's as simple as mentioning in your character's backstory that they have a natural, but as of yet untapped, talent for magic.

This also means that a character's abilities could differ from their abilities in canon, if you want to play them with a different class setup/focus on their skills based on how they were raised in the AU. All I'll ask is that any changes you do make, make sense. If suddenly Anise Tatlin is a druid who can talk to animals and makes nature do her bidding, that probably wouldn't get approved. Arietta the Wild, on the other hand, might work well as a druid-type character.

Pacing
An anon mentioned last post that a slow OOC-to-IC day ratio would help keep things from devolving into slice-of-life, and having looked at a variety of games, I agree. The question is would people prefer 3 OOC days equaling 1 IC day, or 2 OOC days equaling 1 IC day? And with a slower pace, how would people keep track of what IC day it is? I've seen some games successfully make use of write-ups detailing what's going on in the game during certain IC time periods, and others have a calendar on hand for people to compare the OOC and IC days. Which method would you guys prefer?

Applications
The general consensus seems to be that the playerbase won't be super-huge. Large or small, I'm willing to mod for as long as people are willing to play, but that brings up the matter of whether or not there would be a large enough draw to justify having application periods, or if it would be better to just leave applications open indefinitely.

App rounds: On the one hand, applications only being accepted at a certain time of the month would free the mods up to focus on other mod duties during the rest of the month. It would also allow us to schedule events such that new characters would have some time to get acclimated to the setting before something earth-shattering happened to them. On the other hand, if there aren't many people coming in, it seems sort of unfair to make just one or two people wait until the end of the app round to stop playing - and since the game would probably be small to start with, it might kill the game before it could get its feet off the ground by limiting the chances people have to join up. Introductory posts in this case would be either on an individual basis, or with a catch-all new character/old character meetup log at the conclusion of each app round.

Always open: On the one hand, this is ideal for gathering a playerbase - because if the concept catches someone's eye, they can join in immediately if they so choose and don't have to wait. It would be easy enough to make sure apps were looked over in a timely fashion, too. I can personally guarantee that I would be tracking the application page so that new apps would show up in my personal inbox, and even if whoever was helping me co-mod wasn't, I could very easily send them a message saying "Hey, we've got apps to look at!". On the other, this opens people up to having their character arrive during inconvenient times (in the middle of an event, for example) and getting either overwhelmed by the amount of action, or overlooked because the old characters are in the middle of something. Introductory posts in this case would be on an individual basis.

Does anyone have any input on how they would prefer to see apps handled for this style of game?

Activity Check
After last post, I'm leaning towards a comment AC. Does 15 comments from your character during the month sound fair? Considering that each month would only cover about 1 1/2, 2 weeks of IC time depending on the ratio, I don't want to force people into too many things.

I also want to come up with some kind of a reward system to encourage people not to drop their threads even as they tag into new things. Penalizing people on their AC for dropped threads seems a little harsh (especially since the playerbase seems like it will be relatively small), but... I'm not sure. I'm thinking maybe some kind of a "random chance" thing? People can submit their completed threads when they're completed (to encourage backtagging to completion, there wouldn't be a time limit), and at the end of the month it's submitted in, the characters involved in each completed log will have their names entered into a list randomizer once for each log they were involved in. That would be handled OOCly - ICly, whichever character(s) are chosen could have something lucky happen to them (maybe they were given a gift of some sort of artifact by an NPC, or were honored at a festival, or... something).

I'm not totally sure what to do about this part yet! I just want to do something fun and nice to reward people for finishing what they start. If I were running a jamjar it'd be easy - I could just have people regain items - but since this is an AU that makes it a little tougher... does anyone have any ideas?

Setting
Having a desert right there is maybe a little too convenient if the rest of the small kingdom is wet and wooded, but that's a minor thing.

Worldbuilding
Having some kind of post where players can add their own setting details, businesses, local legends, notable NPCs, common knowledge, etc. is a great idea. Other games have done that and it works very well without much mod oversight. Just ask that players check with you before adding major elements that might break your setting.

Pantheon
Sounds good to me. How would you handle minor supernatural beings, like demons or nature spirits or vampires or ghosts? Would those things be playable?

Plot and Plot Hooks
That's a good start. You could add in more mini plot hooks while you're setting up the worldbuilding, too - maybe elves and dwarves don't like each other, or maybe there's some political tension between two major court factions, maybe there's a new cult in town that's rejecting the old gods, maybe some townspeople trust the local thieves' guild more than they trust the king's guards, etc. You don't need a lot of detail, but it's always good to have little conflicts simmering in the background to jump start player plots (and then as the game becomes more established, players can start filling in their own subplots).

Classes
That's all good, too. Definitely include some ideas for non-adventurers.

Magic/Abilities
I'm glad you're keeping a distinction between Divine and Arcane magic, because I was going to suggest something like that. :D Even non-magical characters with minimal training could use an enchanted weapon or mix up a simple potion, so you could have a lot of minor everyday magic going on while still maintaining the idea that sorcerors with powerful innate magic and wizards with advanced magical education are relatively rare things.

How would you handle psychic abilities like telepathy, mind control, extreme good luck, or other things that could be godmode even at basic levels?

Pacing
For a game like this, I think slower is better. A 3:1 ratio is as fast as I would go. But I like games with flexible pacing - for instance, where 1 OOC month equals 7 IC days, and new threads can be set at any point during those 7 days. That works out to a roughly 4:1 day ratio, and dovetails very nicely with monthly AC, monthly plot writeups, and monthly plot brainstorming sessions. Then you don't have to worry about referring to a calendar, and you can backdate/forwarddate a little so events occur in a logical order.

Applications
Plot-heavy AU games are just almost always small. There have been a few exceptions over the years, yeah... but I don't think there's been an AU game with enough size and sustained player turnover to justify having real app periods since The Sky Tides closed, and that was several years ago. I'd leave them continuously open to start, and then temporarily close them for a few days if you get a backlog of apps. It's not like you have to deal with apps immediately... people usually start to get antsy if they haven't heard anything in two weeks, but if there's an event going on then mods aren't expected to process apps right away.

Activity Check
15 comments is probably fair, especially if this is going to be a game geared towards prose writing. I don't know what kind of rewards would actually motivate players in an AU, though... I guess you could have players pick from a list of things that might be beneficial to their character? A rare/expensive item, or recognition from a superior that increases their status in the game, or the ability to handwave their character learning a significant new skill. Or you could assign a small number of points for completing threads, and have players be able to save up points and OOCly "buy" from a list of rewards. I don't know! It's easy to reward characters in memory loss games or jamjars, but not so easy in AUs.

Setting
That's true... I'm not going to lie, I was mostly drawing from various video games I've played in to come up with this, and most of them had a desert so I thought it could be interesting to include one here! Maybe I'll alter it a little so it starts getting drier and drier but doesn't actually become desert until much further outside of the country's borders.

Worldbuilding
Okay, that seems like it would work really well! Thank you for the suggestion.

Pantheon
Those things would be playable! Some might appear more often as NPCs/player plot devices/etc than as player characters, but there's no reason why people shouldn't be able to play them if they want to.

Plots and Plot Hooks
Great idea, thank you for your input! I had some things in mind in the writeups I have for some of the cities and towns already, but they were mostly in terms of rumors of treasures being hidden out in different parts of the kingdom near the towns. I'll think a lot more about inter-race tensions too. (Is it just me or do dwarfs and elves always seem to argue?)

I definitely want to work in some plot hooks that are geared towards political intrigue and interpersonal conflicts, as well! It's equally fun to RP out those sorts of situations as it is to RP out epic quests for treasure.

Magic/Abilities
I think things like that would almost have to be handled on a case-by-case basis, but a general rule of thumb might be to have mandatory permissions posts for those types of powers. It could work on people who give the OK, and for people who don't, characters can attempt it but it could fail - we could ICly chalk it up to interference from the magic in the air, or something.

Pacing
The more I think about it, the more I really like the flexible pacing you suggested. Entries could be tagged with which day of the week it is, too, so that people could more easily find posts set on a day when their character is free to jump in. Of course that depends on having people tag them, but I think it's simple enough! And if worst came to I believe being an administrator of a comm gives me the ability to go in and tag posts myself, if people slip up once or twice.

Applications
Oh, I definitely don't want to leave people hanging for more than a few days! Ideally I'd like to see a 24-hour turnaround on applications, though that may not always be possible depending on when the application is submitted and how quickly it can be seen.

For a game of this size, would a team of two or three people including myself to look over apps be a good number, or would I need less?

Activity Check
Ooh, actually I really like the idea of points being used to buy rewards. I think I'll brainstorm a little and come up with some things for that list! Thanks for your input, anon!

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 23:21 (UTC) - Expand

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 23:50 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 00:34 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 01:10 (UTC) - Expand

I really like what you have so far! Have you thought about what races or species players would be able to choose from?

A little! I'd like to be mostly flexible on this sort of thing. Humans, dwarfs, elves, gnomes, ~~Hobbits~~ halflings, half-elfs, etc are all pretty standard, but if people want to play other things, like spirits or ghosts or centaurs or demons, I don't see why they couldn't as long as they're willing to put some thought into it. Personally I'd also love to see some half-orcs too!

Basically, anything that would work for a fantasy setting. So probably not androids or clones formed through science, but things formed by magic... why not? If people can justify it in their app and are willing to play out different characters, it just gives us more variety and is more fun.

I really like these ideas, but holy fuck info dumping. You need to exercise brevity, especially with descriptions. All the information you need to recall in am AU in addition to your canon is part of why games like these have failed in the past. My suggestion especially for locations would be to use images and do a small blurb for each.

Also, some nontraditional classes would be great. Steal some ideas from Final Fantasy sand Tales of and the like. Or at least be inspired by them.

do rpers today really hate reading so much? yeah there's a lot of info but at least it's relatively clear and easy to understand. au games need a lot more worldbuilding than most jamjars, and that means more text.

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 22:41 (UTC) - Expand

being vague works just fine for jamjars where the characters aren't already familiar with the world

but in an au the characters would have been born and raised there so you can't exactly get away with vagueness

if you want an ic excuse for you not bothering to read oocly just play a character from a different kingdom so you don't have to bother actually reading the info but don't advise someone to NOT tell us about the world just because you're lazy

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 22:43 (UTC) - Expand

OP was replying to conversations from the last post. That's why there's a lot of irrelevant rambling about random Tales of the Abyss characters. Really, anon, if you don't like reading large amounts of information, a DnD-based AU game is not going to be your kind of thing.

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 22:45 (UTC) - Expand

I'll try and make things easier to understand when I'm doing the official writeups! As it is now, I'm brainstorming and trying to get feedback, so I'd like people to seize on which parts of my ideas are weakest so they can be improved upon. If I don't give them details about how things would work, they can't really do that. :(

I do like the idea of using images and some information. My major concern with it, though, would be what it seems like some other anons have already brought up: That by virtue of being an entirely new setting, there does need to be more worldbuilding and information available for people to refer to than you would see in a standard jamjar game. If it helps at all, this being an AU, players wouldn't need to be quite as concerned with keeping their canon straight. They would need to have a good grasp of their characters' personalities (which I would hope they would have, given that they're RPing them), but the need to recall a bunch of itty-bitty details from canon simply won't come up because the characters would not be discussing the things that have happened to them in canon.

Maybe if there were some way of organizing the information to make it more readily accessible and easier to sort through, that would help alleviate some of the issues? It's okay if people don't have everything about the AU committed to memory! People very rarely have everything about their canons committed to memory, either. But I can definitely make the AU info easy to refer to when necessary.

Nontraditional classes could be very fun! The first thing that comes to mind would be to look over the dressphere list from Final Fantasy X-2, actually... while some of those wouldn't work as-is (gunner, for example, though if we have tinkerer or inventor characters there's nothing stopping them from inventing handguns during the RP...), some can work with tweaking and others would be great right away! They're specialized enough that they would probably function like prestige classes from D&D: They'd be made available at the start to characters who have enough justification in their backstory to explain why they're in that class, and can be worked up to by characters who start off in the base classes and want room to improve and grow.

Thanks a lot for your input, anon! I know this comment got a little wordy (you're right, I do need to work on being concise), but I'm hoping it's conveying what I'm trying to say clearly.

I only now read what you wrote in the previous rpanons post and I like your ideas and general take on things :).

I hesitate to comment of the setting, because I don't know how much emphasis you want to place on it or how much you want it to sound real or logical, so to speak. Anyway, a few things came to mind.

Whenever possible, capital cities tend to be on the coast. If not, there's often a river to connect them to a (large) harbour town. This is natural considering trade with other countries. Your kingdom is bordered with mountains, dense forests and a desert; it is a rare merchant who doesn't arrive aboard a ship. A coastal town would be the hub of commerce and it can even be larger than the capital city.

That said, yours is a fantasy game and you don't need to stick with what is common in our RL. I just thought you might want to think about why your capital is in the middle of the kingdom.

One reason could be that it is an important religious place. Maybe an early settler had a revelation there? Maybe there is an unusual land formation that is believed to be the home of one of the gods?

You could also have the harbour town competing for dominance with the capital city. Things like that.

Pacing
I really like what the other anon suggested: "for instance, where 1 OOC month equals 7 IC days, and new threads can be set at any point during those 7 days."

I was in a game that had a similar pacing and it worked really well. If the game is fairly small and there aren't dozens of posts a day - and if players are asked to date their posts - it's easy enough to keep track of what happens and when. One of the mods could even maintain a post where all the threads are listed in chronological order.

AC and rewarding system
I noticed some people being worried that their wish to backtag for several months would not be noted. I think that anyone who finishes a thread in some fashion (be it just an OOC note to handwave the ending) could be rewarded no matter how old the thread is. There shouldn't be a need to finish a thread in any given month as long as there's enough activity to pass AC.

AU/OCs
I really hope this game allows OCs, not just canon AUs.

Sorry, I only meant to bold the subtitles.

I'm not the OP, but I think that's a fantastic idea for the setting. Something should make the capital vitally important, whether it's a religious significance or mineral deposits or the presence of a convenient harbor/river for trade. And something should keep the kingdom limited, like a large swath of desert, or orc territory along the border, or something like that, so there aren't too many cities of significant size, because you do want to keep the playerbase all in one area most of the time. Since it's a pretty small kingdom (a 1.5 week travel radius is not that huge in a medieval world with limited roads and rough terrain) that probably has a small military, it might even be a protectorate of some larger foreign empire... that would allow people who need their characters to be from a foreign kingdom to create one that's far across an ocean and less likely to affect your setting. There are a lot of cool things that could be done if you want to get really realistic about it.

Of course, a video game-style world that includes all of the fantasy elements would be fun too. It doesn't have to be super realistic.

OP

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-01 23:42 (UTC) - Expand

Setting
I wasn't able to say it in the first comment (what a way to find out that DW has a comment character limit...) and had to cut out a lot of stuff, but I had intended for a river from the mountains to feed into a lake the city is at the edge of, and for a river to flow from the lake into the ocean. In the kingdom's past, the capital had actually been on the coast (that was actually one of the other towns I had drafts for), but a devastating naval battle on the coastline had caused them to relocate it. Now, the old capital is actually a center of trade!

I'd intended for the new capital to be where it is because it's more easily defensible (travel upriver would be difficult, and a large naval force wouldn't be able to easily get up there as they'd have to go one at a time since the river wouldn't be wide enough, and ground forces would be more easily spotted) and because the lake is convenient for trade along the river - it allows for enough room for maneuverability once boats/ferries/etc get through the checkpoint where the river and lake connect; there are docks at the city and outgoing ships can loop around the other side of the lake to give incoming ships a chance to get in. That being said, an additional element - there being some sort of historical or religious significance to the site - could definitely have lent weight to it, and I'll think about that while I'm finalizing things!

I do like the idea of the capital and the harbor city competing for dominance! Since I'd intended for the harbor city to be the old capital, maybe descendants of the nobility that used to live there are trying to reclaim their ancestors' glory by making the city prominent again... since there would be a pretty significant amount of history in that town, it could be easy enough to work something in.

Pacing
The more I think about that kind of pacing, the more I like it, to be totally honest. And I would definitely be willing to keep a running timeline of posts to help keep the chronology straight! I hadn't thought about doing that (my idea was to have people tag their posts with which day of the week they're set on, so that people could find them easily that way), but it's a great idea.

AC and Rewards
I think that's a good idea, actually. A handwaved conclusion could definitely earn them points - as long as it's posted in the thread to end it on. My concern here would be that players who do backtag would be unhappy because people are getting the same rewards for less effort; does it sound fair to have handwaved threads earn fewer reward points than fully backtagged threads, but still earn some? Or in the case that one half of a pair wants to backtag and the other is unwilling, the half that was willing to tag to completion earns full points and the one that cooperated to allow for the handwave earns half (or maybe 3/4) points?

As far as finishing a thread in a given month - I definitely didn't mean it to sound that way! The AC requirement would only be comments; completed threads could be submitted for rewards at any point once they're completed, even if it's a different AC period than the one they were started in. Finishing a thread wouldn't have any bearing on whether or not someone passed AC (though a completed thread would probably have the minimum AC requirement as far as tag count goes); they'd just be rewarded in the month that they completed it as a thank-you for doing so.

Sorry, I totally thought I'd responded to the last bit as well but I guess I hadn't! I think discussion on this happened a little bit in the last post. I would almost prefer to run it as an OC game, but since most people in DWRP are here for fandom RP, I'm allowing canon AUs. OCs are definitely going to be accepted!

Any plans for whether there would be a magical 'network' to let characters talk without meeting up? I know it doesn't fit the genre well, but I think it would help in a setting this big to have ways for characters to talk to everyone without arranging meetings. Maybe when the royals issue the "call to arms" they would distribute magic amulets/books/whatever to whoever answers the challenge?

no, no, no

op if you want your game to be different from games that already exist DO NOT add a network

it encourages lazy rping because it keeps players from having to think about where their characters would be and why

+1000

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 08:50 (UTC) - Expand

I think it would be possible to have long-distance magical communication without having a traditional rp "network" that's available by default to all characters. There could even be a variety of long-distance communication methods! People could share enchanted diaries with their friends to chat by text, or they could use magic to be virtually present in another place... there are a lot of ways to overcome problems of distance without having a typical "network comm." Open network posts are convenient as a fallback method for getting initial CR or to scrape by with some last-minute AC , I guess, but in an AU game you can manipulate the character's backstory to give them instant CR.

+1

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 21:34 (UTC) - Expand

Maybe make the network letter-based since it's a fantasy world? I mean the time period between sending and delivery can be sort of handwaved if that's what people want, but it would still be letter format and adhere more to the setting of the game.

network op

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-02 17:55 (UTC) - Expand

To expand on the warning in the subject header, the game will almost certainly end up including murder, rape and other forms of sexual assault, theft, arson, assault, abuse, torture, and a whole mess of other dark subject. Please read on with caution.

The idea is a horror game with a more psychological bent, focused on horror inflicted on the characters by the characters, rather than by the setting itself. The basic concept: characters are kidnapped, placed into an enclosed arena, and rewarded for doing terrible things to one another for the amusement of the world's natives for a sort of extreme reality TV show. Committing murder, assault, sexual assault, theft, betrayal, torture, enslavement, imprisonment and so on will all net characters redeemable points in order to encourage them to do it again and again.

First off, I am aware that Spandy's infamous rapehouse game had a very similar concept. I'm taking steps to avoid the mistakes made with that game but any advice you can give about how to not fuck up so spectacularly will be appreciated.

With that said:
+ The game is 18+ only.
+ The community will be LOCKED. Only members will be able to see the posts.
+ This is not a sex game. More on that below.
+ Communities will be plastered with disclaimers and content warnings. Each comm will likely have a sticky post with said disclaimers and warnings.
+ There will be a character suitability section in the application. Players will be required to put real thought into how their characters will adjust and adapt to the setting when they apply.
+ Maybe also a player suitability section. At the very least, something (besides some stupid password) that will let the app team know that incoming players have actually read the game information and know what they're getting in to.
+ Socks are allowed.

With that said, here are some basic ideas for the setting:

Each crime has the same reward, OR the only difference in rewards will be in whether the crime is a 'physical' crime (murder, torture, rape) or a 'property' crime (theft, arson). I haven't yet decided where things like blackmail and betrayal will fall.

Reward tiers will be very simplified and straightforward. Rather than having a complicated monetary system I'd aim for something easier and check-in based. Sort of a bonus AC like Asgard or City of Ariel. Micromanaging of in-game money is too much of a pain and has killed games in the past, so we'll sidestep it as much as possible. There will be 5-10 tiers that characters can work towards. With each new tier characters will get easier access to food, weapons, powers, amenities, and so on.

The option for IC anonymity is something I'd like to preserve while still not making it too prevalent. Maybe crimes committed without masks or the like will net double the usual points, or crimes committed with identity concealing equipment will only net half points. The episodes cut together for public consumption will not be available to the characters except maybe as a top-tier reward.

Since the various crimes will be recorded for later broadcast, events may take the form of themes or 'episodes' where extra points are rewarded for including certain elements in crimes. So rather than getting extra points to setting houses on fire, characters may get extra points for committing crimes against a stranger, including religious imagery in their crimes, committing a crime in broad daylight, or attacking two people at once.

Should the issue of heroes in the game immediately outing their villains come up, individual characters will be periodically and privately offered bonus rewards to publicly and falsely accuse another character of committing a crime against them. This will hopefully make actual accusations harder to trust.

I'm thinking there will be compensation for victims, but I do understand how this could backfire unpleasantly. ICly it would be additional incentive for the characters to not just lay down and give up in the face of their horrible circumstances, since the producers will believe that it's less fun for the viewers that way. OOCly it would be incentive for players to allow their characters to be hurt. However, this particular facet could easily become the most unpleasantly complicated mess in the entire game, so I'm definitely looking for feedback and arguments for and against this idea.

And that's what I've got so far.

This is what I get for refreshing the page before submitting my comment.

I absolutely like the idea.

Assuming that 18+ refers only to players, what will you do about underage character? If they seem suitable, would you accept them?

Underage character will be allowed, but I'll probably have a cutoff all the same. Maybe 14 or 13? Either way, characters in the 13-15 year range will get a little bit of extra scrutiny or require more for their suitability sections.

However, I won't have an aging up mechanic.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-03 14:16 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-03 16:19 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2014-01-03 17:54 (UTC) - Expand

do this please yes it seems like you've got some ideas for how to handle the kind of pitfalls this game would have. i'd have to say that quality control in app acceptances is going to be the main factor in whether or not this game works out or goes down in a blaze of edgy tryhard wanky glory.

GAME IDEAS

Fantasy AU Game

Re: Fantasy AU Game

OP

no subject

OP

Re: Fantasy AU Game

-1

-1

-1

OP

Re: Fantasy AU Game

sa

+1

OP

OP again!

no subject

-1

not OP

no subject

Re: GAME IDEAS

CW: SEXUAL ASSAULT, MURDER, ASSAULT, TORTURE, ETC.

Re: GAME IDEAS

Re: GAME IDEAS

Re: GAME IDEAS