OOC The Illusion Of Knowledge

[Rextoret]

Like I said before, I'm still rather early in the worldbuilding process. I've only really begun a map and given a tad bit of thought to the actual contents of the world. But I have had some ideas.

• A cosmic horror story. (Think Lovecraft or Bloodborne.) Cosmic deities who are beyond human comprehension? Likely would be dark fantasy in style. Little to no magic, not sure about the level of tech.
• A political intrigue type of story. (Think Game of Thrones.) Probably would be straight fantasy, plenty of magic and Skyrim-level tech.

That's all I've got so far, but I haven't really sat down and thought about it too much. Thoughts?

 

[Seanu Reaves]

mmmk dope all I need

 

[Delusional]

 

[Ponder]

I'm down with either or all

 

[Rextoret]

Alright. We seem to have Op, Ponder, Delusional, Sky, Gidian, and I present for the moment. Does anyone have any ideas for an RP? Could be an overarching plotline, a character concept you've wanted to try, an idea for a country, a small concept you came up with, anything at all.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

I tried my idea twice and it failed horribly. I can only offer advice on what NOT to do :/

 

[Rextoret]

I tried my idea twice and it failed horribly. I can only offer advice on what NOT to do :/

Still counts as advice and I think I speak for everyone here when I say the best type of advice we need is on RP longevity and not letting it die. So if you know reasons that your RPs failed, I'd love to hear them.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

Reason for the first was already addressed: It was piles of textbooks, and then the intro was too long winded and the group didn't get together quickly enough, which combined with things that came up suddenly for some of the members signed its death warrant as no one was quite invested enough yet. My own writing skills also more than likely contributed quite a bit to its death.

The second one, several key members went MIA and the rest of us just weren't committed. I lost motivation because people weren't posting and I wasn't happy with my character, and it just died, although I know it was still salvageable at the time. Self consciousness about my writing also sapped my motivation enormously.

But seriously, it needs to be fun to experience and it needs to get people invested and catch them from as close to the start as we can. We also have to love our characters, and love playing our characters. And commitment on the level that, if you were to die before the RP ended, you would claw your fuggly ass from the grave and give everyone a heads up and a final IC post to remove your character. Seriously, even if you don't post IC, as long as the OOC is active and everyone is still interested in the story all is well.

And allowing people to go crazy with some idea for a sideplot or weaving in a character's personal story to make them feel like an important part of the world is probably the absolute best way to hook someone.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

Make a vague idea, and instead of developing it artificially out of the story allow it to come to life IC. Instead of building the world in the OOC, build it IC. That way you never feel like you've finished the job before the real job is done.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

I'm still super committed to The Corrupted Guardian because I've got LOTS of my favorite stories to tell and I'm dying to share them. And because I've not shared them OOC I can only share them IC. It is both amazing and frustrating.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

I also love my character in that RP so much I named my account after him

 

[Rextoret]

Yeah, what I was thinking was that everyone needs to contribute at least somewhat to the creation process. Have one of their ideas become part of the RP, that way they would feel more invested. Along with that, have their character be something that was inspired by themselves - not as a needed part of the story.

There isn't much we can do about people needing to leave the RP. As far as I can tell, I'm the biggest offender in that regard within the group.

Your argument for developing things IC is compelling. It's what I've been thinking - minimal OOC development and just let things happen naturally in the RP. There's proof for that working within the group itself, the RP where we did extensive out of character world building (Exodus) never really took off, whereas TGA and GBNF had minimal out of character world building and those were the only RPs we (arguably) finished. A problem with that evidence however is that it might be skewed due to the fact that one was in a original world, and the other was in a world where there was already significant established lore we could draw from (Elder Scrolls). We then come to the question of whether we want to create an original world (as we go) or stick with the tried-and-true method of using the Elder Scrolls universe.

P.S.- Quadruple posting is seriously a bit too much dude. Please just edit it in. Are you still only using a phone? If not, then you really need to learn to edit anything else in that comes to mind into your original post. No offense.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

I am on my phone, and sorry, it's a bad habit

 

[Delusional]

We just get too bogged down in technicalities of world building and plot devices. I've been reading old posts on this forum, for nostalgia's sake, and we really made things way more complicated and long-winded than we needed to.

 

[Rextoret]

We just get too bogged down in technicalities of world building and plot devices. I've been reading old posts on this forum, for nostalgia's sake, and we really made things way more complicated and long-winded than we needed to.

Alright, so just say fl*ff it and go at an RP? The only thing we really need to come up with is a basic plot and our characters.

 

[Seanu Reaves]

Yeah I think just get basic world set and let the pieces roam the board together.

As time goes on you can push the plot.

 

[Delusional]

Goal one is to get an RP going that locks in and has steam to continue, before we add in the crazy ideas and plot points and what have you.

 

[Rextoret]

Alright, no need to waste any time I suppose. Not rushing anyone either though. I'll go ahead and take the role of the de facto leader. I've quickly made up this little map here using an online tool. It's not perfect, but it'll be plenty.

You might notice there isn't a huge amount of information here. That's for the reasons we talked about before. I decided to focus on a (fairly) small area and leave some things ambiguous. Haven't named any of the cities or towns, just given a title for the general area. The city in the middle, between two rivers, is the capital. (Cities are the encircled dots, towns are the dots.)

I wanted to focus on a small area, for instance a single province, so we could have a "smaller" type of RP. Not a world-trekking adventure of astronomical proportions or anything like that. Plus, leaving the rest of the world as a blank slate allows you guys to create pretty much whatever backstory for your character that you want. An elf from a city in a desert nation? Go ahead and create that nation in your character's history. Whatever you want. Hopefully this way, no one will feel restricted too much in how they make their character. (And hopefully that will lead to inspired characters people will want to keep playing as.)

I don't want to create many rules for how anyone makes their character. At first I was thinking of having this be a human-only RP, but I feel like that would restrict creativity a bit. So go ahead and create whatever type of character you all wish. All I ask is the general rules of RPing - No gods, no OP-ass characters, no cookie-cutter archer-elves or axe-wielding dwarves, no Mary Sues, etc. I won't nitpick too much, for that's what killed the last RPs.

In terms of magic, I want to keep it low-to-mid level in terms of power. Of course, be creative if you're making a magic user. But I want this to be a RP where you can't simply get out of every encounter with a fiery tornado of magic.

So there's my starting platform for the RP, of course everything is up for change and I want to hear every bit of criticism and all suggestions. But as is, feel free to begin making characters?

 

[Delusional]

I feel it. Blank canvas. We should figure out what we want to focus on first before we start making characters, in terms of area, and then something to start the RP off, an initial goal or something.

 

[The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass]

Hmmm. My first thought is some sort of Assassin either kills someone close to our characters, or tries to kill us, and we end up following some sort of clue that each of characters find, and are drawn to work together for whatever beef they got, and we try to hunt this assassin. It would provide us grounds to draw our character into a larger overarching plot if we so desire as well as provide a compelling reason for most character types to work together.

Main drawback is that it forces us to make a character history decision we might not want to make.