OOC The Void

Greetings, friends. I'd like to start this thread off by briefly saying that the main intent of this group roleplay is for everyone involved to enjoy themselves at a casual and relaxed pace. That in mind, I think we should discuss a few mechanics before we get started on plotting and brainstorming.

Cast as of now:
Rauk
Kuro_Bara
IllusionFish
Demie

I think keeping a steady, small team like this of writers who are committed, and will not vanish without warning is key to staying organized. When things get disorganized and no one knows what the hell is going on, it's hard to get back on track. I want everyone involved to have fun and to look forward to progressing the story. ^_^

Post Length: What do you feel is a comfortable and efficient post length for casual-paced small group roleplay? Personally, I think there must be some significance to each reply, and it must sufficiently add enough atmosphere and content to make the next person's life less stressful. Basically, I think a couple strong paragraphs at least can do the job. Getting into the range of 1000+ word posts however, I think can either be a really fun thing, or a really boring thing. Thoughts?

Reply Order: How do you feel about reply orders? I think it depends on the group. So, we should find out what our collective opinion on this is. I believe that with 4 people, a reply-wheel or post order is efficient, due to the linear organization it brings. It also allows everyone their fair share of the spotlight. However, if we feel that a more casual... 'Post as you feel like it' setting is best for us, I would love to hear opinions!

Time between Replies: If we decide to go the post order route, what happens if somebody gets really busy, or (heaven forbid) vanishes? Well, we're all adults here, and should be understanding when someone needs some time. This goes back to the relaxed atmosphere... I want you guys to never feel like you're being pressured. If something comes up where someone isn't able to make a post for a length of time disruptive to the RP, we can discuss what to do in the OCC thread of course to agree on skipping that person for this round or not. Of course, if we go the 'post as you feel like it' route, this wouldn't really apply as much. Ideas?


Settings?:
Post Apocalyptic, or even pre-apocalyptic would be fun for almost any era. Perhaps there are undead, or demons, or whatever ravaging the world. Maybe we're living in a world where we're trying to stop the apocalypse from happening? Will we stop it?

High School (no underage characters of course) can also be fun in a group. It could be a more light-hearted setting filled with more teenage angst. Typically, I see a lot of anime-style themes involved in highschool oriented RP's. But maybe we could put a more sinister twist on it?

Sword and Sorcery! Of course, there are always fun things we can do with a medieval fantasy setting. Slashing some orcs/goblins/demons/vampires, saving the world, good times had by all. Or of course, if you're feeling more villainous, imagine the terrifying sinister things you can do.

Perhaps, it's thousands of years in the future, and our small group has crash landed on a planet filled with all sorts of fantasy-like creatures. and we are forced to survive and make do with what we can salvage from the crashed spacecraft, and hope that one day we'll be rescued. I would consider this more of a modern fantasy setting, and less sci-fi since almost all electrical equipment and technology would be lost in the crash. What would be some of the native races we come across? Are some intelligent? Friendly? Or worse?

I can't wait to start brainstorming with everyone, and see what we come up with! Feel free to ignore any and all of those random idea seeds and come up with your own. Or take something you find interesting and build on it perhaps. I am open to any and all ideas, as long as all of us enjoy the story.

Well greetings to you too!

I'm sure that by the time I've replied to this someone will have beaten me to it, but I'll go ahead and try to answer the things you put down here in order, hopefully that way it'll all make sense!

Post length - I think 1000 words might be a touch excessive for a group RP, after all, that would mean that you're having to reply to 3000 words of other people's writing, which is going to take up a huge chunk of time for each reply. Like you said, a a couple or a few decent sized paragraphs would be ideal for getting the point across without having the overkill potential.

Time between replies - Again that goes back to how relaxed we want to be, but it depends on what we decide about a post order. I think a fair rule might be that if someone hasn't replied after 48 hours then maybe we can skip a turn in the post order.

Reply order - this depends. I'm from the UK myself and I have a full time day job, so in the evenings (which will be afternoons for most of you I guess) so if we go for a rigid turn order that might put a delay on things. So maybe if we stick to something like an order, but for example if you're all still around and raring to go but I'm logging off for the night, I can send a PM to whoever is after me in the order to say that they can go before me, until we get back around to what would have been my turn again? Then again, if we're going to be more relaxed time between posts expectation, we could stick to it more rigidly.


Now for settings... personally out of those I think either the high school or sword and sorcery options sound great. I know Kuro mentioned wanting to play a villain of sorts, so maybe we could have two cliques (or factions, depending on the setting) both going after the same goal for different reasons... that could be anywhere from some holy grail-like object in the fantasy based setting, or something like the title of prom king/queen in the highschool. It could be quite interesting to see how the two groups try to mess with each other's plans and chances of success, or maybe even having to work together at times?

Alright my thoughts, I feel like posting order is definitely a thing we should do, I think as far as length goes there really shouldn't be a committed length. Different scenes require different responses, a lot of dialog would be shorter posts etc. As for time requirement I think we can all commit to at least a post a week. We want this to be a relaxed no pressure kinda rp, that said we should all try our best to post as often as we can based on our order.

On to plot ideas!

I am pretty flexible as far as plot goes. Post apocalyptic is particularly appealing, but I really am up for anything. I wouldnt mind doing something a bit more serious, with some darker points (not to say we can't have our light hearted moments). I should add, I am particularly fond of supernatural stories, demons, angels, monsters etc. (currently been watching Supernatural so totally craving something related).

Whatever we decide on for setting and plot I think we should agree on a start and semi end point to keep things on track and keep the plot moving forward.

I don't mind a school plot, but I am not overly fond of the highschool theme because of the age. I prefer to play characters that are over 20 so if we did a school theme and placed at like a college level or a private school of some kind for an older group I would be okay with that.

So I think post order is pretty much the way we are going, so I don't need to say anything about that. I can live with writing a few paragraphs, so I think that's reasonable, but I for one am going nowhere near a 1000 word minimum. I had enough of that in high school. As for time between replies, I would want this to keep moving at a decent pace, but being in different timezones puts a barrier on that. How about we go with Demie's suggestion of 48 hours before skipping that person? Seems fair to me.

Onto brighter things. I'm all good with the suggested plots, and it seems we are all pretty flexible in that regard, so kudos to you Rauk. Big question is, how do we choose?

Also, another big question, how would we do this RP? Thread, PM, another medium?

I think easiest way to write this is in a thread.

Great to see so much feed back and discussion! I am with Kuro on the highschool idea. Personally, I would prefer my particular (main) character to be of age 20+.

Illusionfish said:

I can live with writing a few paragraphs, so I think that's reasonable, but I for one am going nowhere near a 1000 word minimum. I had enough of that in high school.

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I agree with this. While sometimes some of us can get carried away and never stop typing, I think it will be much smoother using just a couple, or a few paragraphs. Whatever is most comfortable for you!

So it seems the most agreeable interest in a setting so far lies in the medieval fantasy themed world. I think if we do something along these lines, we would also be able to incorporate something apocalyptic (or at least the threat of apocalypse) as Kuro mentioned she was interested in. I also really liked Demi's idea about the 'holy grail' object. Maybe there is a threat of some terrible ancient god/goddess being resurrected, and the last piece of the puzzle is this artifact. One 'faction' of characters is set out to destroy it, and prevent the terror from being unleashed; the other one hellbent on the destruction of the living. I have no problem with supernatural creatures. I think if we include them, it opens up character creation, so people are able to play what they want. Any thoughts?

This is going to be fun!

I am perfectly happy with the fantasy setting, I was thinking based on the fact the Demie and Illusion are in pretty different timezones, if we paired up like Rauk and Demie and me and Fish, (or vice versa) and agree on a sort of story for our two characters then potentially the other person can continue the story when one isn't present?

My other thought, is the object idea is great. It gives a solid goal to work towards. In this case either finding and destroying it or finding it and protecting it. It would be sort of neat if both sides thought they had the right idea, neither really being evil just having differing points of view on things.

Perhaps one view is that only the human race shall flourish, and the object COULD wipe out any supernatural threat (whether evil or not) while the opposite view from the supernatural camp is that the object needs to be destroyed to save dozens of races across the world. Puts a different spin on things, making the humans potentially 'the bad guys'

What do you guys think?

What you've all mentioned there sounded pretty good to me, though I do have one minor concern in the division between the human / supernatural sides. Wouldn't that mean that one half of us are going to play fantastical races...while the others are stuck with fairly rigid human ones?

I think a way to solve this, if we want to use the two faction set up, is to simply be associated with them. For example, think two seperate alliances. A pocket full of races that share the same views makes up one alliance, and a few other races/supernatural critters associate with another alliance. Also, we can have neutral ones that swing either way. Therefore, it doesn't limit us to two small parties with strict guidelines for character creation.

This doesn't mean to say that vampires for example are restricted to only one 'allianced faction.' Want to play a good/evil/neutral vampire? Just write it into your character's story. ^_^

If we have these larger factions, I think it'll create more opportunity for epic conflict as well.

Yes exactly, certain humans could totally support the supernatural races while on the opposite alliance perhaps there are supernaturals that sell there services are mercenaries or maybe they are captured and used as soldiers etc. It could be done in any way really, there are supernatural creatures with human appearances that could be acting as agents on the human side or vice versa. Its our world we can make it work how we want. I think what we should do is each come up with a character that makes us happy and see what we get from that.

That would be a good solution from my point of view, though we should probably see if illusion agrees with what we've discussed before pushing this onto the next stage - which to me would be deciding what this object is / does and some of the finer details in this world of ours before getting around to the characters.

Sounds good to me. I like the idea of the weapon being less of a concrete object and more of an insubstantial thing. Like I said, this thing could have the potential to basically grant the wish of whoever controls it. Hell it could be a person, could bring in a fifth to play it or have one of us do it. Perhaps whatever this thing is takes the form of whatever its holder wishes, and throughout history has made appearance as various famous items in our world. (A great sword that won a thousand battles, the crown of a queen who ruled without opposition for over 50 years junk like that)

Ok, I like where all this is going. It seems pretty solid. I also wholeheartedly agree to this insubstantial object thing, because that just seems cool. So I think that means we move on, and I'm inclined to agree with Demie on this one. World before characters seems a valid course of action. What are the landmasses like? What sort of people occupy them? Are these 'other' beings widely accepted? Maybe it's humans that are the minority. Maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong, but this seems like a futuristic fantasy Earth. What are everyone's thoughts about this?

Hmm, for world building I actually have a world map for a D&D campaign I created I could share. If you all want, we could get ideas from it, and possibly even create our own map using the same software, which I happen to be a beta tester in.

And I was getting more of a medieval vibe of a fantasy world for this RP from the way the discussion has been going so far. Though, I'm happy/indifferent either way.

I think it could work either way, with futuristic fantasy earth or medieval.

If we go the futuristic route, we could still have a semi high fantasy setting. Think something like the Last of Us but with elements of magic and the various beings added in. A world come to ruin after x event or perhaps not an event but because of the last owner of the 'grail' essentially ended the world. This new world still has remnants of the past, crumbling skyscrapers and cityscapes that nature has entirely over run.

Different provinces/kingdoms/regions whatever have risen up in different parts of the world that can still sustain populations. For simplicity sake say anything that isnt a human is a Daemon, they came about when the last user of the 'grail' pretty much wrecked the world and really are the descendants of humans that were changed by that distant event (similar to shadow run). Human could be divided into 2 or 3 factions. Purists, who obviously hate the Daemons for even existing, they refuse to believe the creatures descended from humans at all. Supporters, who work side by side with Daemons. They live in the same towns, cities etc, they are all one community. And then there could be a third faction that remain relatively neutral not really choosing to support or oppose either faction. Trading with whoever has what they need, I picture them kind of like scavengers. As for the Daemons, there could be a small group of them that like hate their human counterparts but are shunned by most of their kind for being to overzealous in their hatred. This gives plenty of options for characters, interactions and plots.

As for the world if we go with the above scenario, basically take a map of the earth (or a specific continent, country what have you) and mess it up. Tada! World created.

Hey guys. Sad to say I can no longer be a part of this. Hope everything works out for you guys

~Illusionfish

Well then...any thoughts for a fourth?

Erm, I don't really know anybody that I could rope in to be honest.

-sadface- I can't think of anyone at the moment either

What's going on here?

We want to do a group rp with a set group of people. We lost one though.

Sad times. What is it?

The previous messages in this OOC thread are pretty much the only details we have on this so far. We had intended on forming the group first, and then collectively figuring out what we wanted to do. The reason we wanted to form the group first, is for a higher chance at player commitment.

Maybe we can find someone else to show interest in the next couple days.

Nihil, did you have an interest in rolling with us?

If the rest of the groups interest align with my own close enough, sure.