Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)
B
Broomhandle45
Guest
So way back when, (Like way back when) there was a mercenary idea that I was invested in, turned into sex, lost all interest, went the way of the dead and I tried to fiddle with it to my own needs and it just kind of fizzled myself. So, I thought I'd try again and this time do it at a spot that people feel more complacent in, which is fantasy.
So before I get into the meat and taters of the ins and outs of how it's going to work, the idea:
This is going to be a group roleplay about a professional mercenary force in a fantasy setting. The atmosphere is probably more closely aligned with Dragon Quest/Early Final Fantasy than any honest basis in Western Fantasy or something like Dark Souls. Don't be real worried if you're not familiar with them, they're not a hard style to emulate in terms of overall looks. But right now I've not really solidified that particular deal. By professional, I mean that characters are, or have been involved with mercenary work that is and not limited to: Fighting, Political and social interactions, maintaining a consistent, steady sense of professionalism in what they're doing, actually knowing how to do their jobs and so forth.
One thing I'd like to state that it is important that characters (for the sake of keeping them consistently relevant) should know some method of combat, it can be anything from knife work, magic, swordplay or whatever to supplement whatever is they do if it isn't combat. Mercenaries are varied people, but mercenaries should also know how to fight.
So, with that basic concept out of the way, what is it that I'd like? Well, probably a lot, but I'll try to condense it a little with the help of everyone's friend, Walls of Text! I'm looking for about...4-5 people, I think.
The plot here is going to be point A to point B, these will not be immensely complex, overarching plot-lines (initially, anyway). These will be pretty basic concepts dealing with interaction of people over war, fighting wars, killing monsters and fighting the token bad guy on occasion, that is not to say that these plots cannot have interesting depth or characters or what have you, but the basic concept is we're mercenaries that get paid to do a job. The gray area is perhaps what is being hired to be done. Point A to Point B means to me, so long as we end up at Point B, what we do in the interim is a lesser issue, my idea is mostly that the things we do in the interim will eventually lead to Point B so we can continue onward, but think of it as a slow burn sort of thing. I'm sure this will change depending, but that's my initial plan.
Mercenaries are by nature, slightly morally gray people. That is not to say that benevolent actions are out of the question, but mercenaries are paid to be loyal to the people who hire them, and it's bad business to turncoat on that, mercenaries live on their reputation after all. What I'm saying is that if you can't handle playing to actual moral complexities of doing mercenary work, please don't bother. I'm not asking everyone to play grim faced people who just think 'I'm a mercenary, we do EVERY JOB, no matter what”, and I'm not asking for people who think that because the mercenaries we play are an effective military power that we should be the heroes who scatter bubblegum farts and unicorns because we can. Yes, someone should probably despoil the tyrant who keeps killing farmers because he likes making human scarecrows. No, that's not something we're going to do just because, that sort of thing takes time, money, loss of life...not our problem. Now, if we were hired by said tyrant, that's a slightly more complex issue. Be loyal to the dickhead, or show your principles by fixing the problem since we're more directly involved? Don't extreme your character to a particular personality type, it's okay to think one thing is just a job and another is something you have principles on. People are weird in what they accept and what they don't, don't one-dimension yourself.
Because I know how people are, if there is going to be any 'power creep', it will be a slow crawl into a dark hole. Yes, I realize that as the roleplay will progress, people will hopefully be naturally more talented at what they're doing. This is not a race to see who is going to be the most awesomenest character ever, there will be no golden stars handed out because you pulled out a technique from the crack of your ass and thought it'd fix everything. These sort of things will be discussed, as will character limits and everything else.
Prefacing from above, I am of the mindset that some characters will just naturally be better, but not impossible to defeat or outplay. You can hem and haw about it all you like about how you want your character to be stronger or strongest or whatever, but the amount of fucks I give about your power fantasy are negative zero. This is a cooperative experience, not a personal masturbation. The power scale I generally use is inches better, not miles. Context will be needed for every single situation, but keep that in mind if you get interested and want to make a character. Just because you can spit fire on your sword and someone else can't doesn't mean they're worse than you, it just means you have an option they don't.
Romance is fine, sex is not. I am not budging on this, you can make it sound as crude and filthy as you want for all I give a damn, take it somewhere else, PMs or whatever and just drop a line about how it happened so everyone else is in the loop or just let people infer from posts. This is an adventure, not a sex adventure.
Are you familiar with Rule Zero? Rule Zero is basically the tabletop equivalent of if the DM says no, it doesn't happen. Same rule applies here. If I say no, it's no. I will generally give justification for no, but I don't have to. That being said, do not be afraid to just throw out something that can be worked on. I'm about making sure everyone is inches apart, that doesn't mean your concept is unworkable, it just means you might have to scale down way more than you expect. If you don't like that, too bad for you. I'm not going to bend because you're sad, but I am more than happy to work with people.
Be...semi-regular in posting. Daily barrages aren't needed, but I'd like some regularity with how things are going. This is going to be kind of an invested project for all parties, with discussions probably happening semi-regularly OOC depending on how things go. This is going to be a single thread, coherent, moving forward story. Novel posts are...okay, I suppose, but I'm not expecting them. Don't feel like you need to do giant gaping literary wonders, check my other roleplay threads for my posting length and sizes that I can do, stuff like that will suit me fine. I'm fine with taking things a point at a time, bigger posts should be to expand details, not add needless ones.
That being said, that's the basic idea of what I expect and the concept therein, worldbuilding is something of a personal exercise for me, so if enough people are interested I'll get the world concept settled into something before moving forward.
So before I get into the meat and taters of the ins and outs of how it's going to work, the idea:
This is going to be a group roleplay about a professional mercenary force in a fantasy setting. The atmosphere is probably more closely aligned with Dragon Quest/Early Final Fantasy than any honest basis in Western Fantasy or something like Dark Souls. Don't be real worried if you're not familiar with them, they're not a hard style to emulate in terms of overall looks. But right now I've not really solidified that particular deal. By professional, I mean that characters are, or have been involved with mercenary work that is and not limited to: Fighting, Political and social interactions, maintaining a consistent, steady sense of professionalism in what they're doing, actually knowing how to do their jobs and so forth.
One thing I'd like to state that it is important that characters (for the sake of keeping them consistently relevant) should know some method of combat, it can be anything from knife work, magic, swordplay or whatever to supplement whatever is they do if it isn't combat. Mercenaries are varied people, but mercenaries should also know how to fight.
So, with that basic concept out of the way, what is it that I'd like? Well, probably a lot, but I'll try to condense it a little with the help of everyone's friend, Walls of Text! I'm looking for about...4-5 people, I think.
The plot here is going to be point A to point B, these will not be immensely complex, overarching plot-lines (initially, anyway). These will be pretty basic concepts dealing with interaction of people over war, fighting wars, killing monsters and fighting the token bad guy on occasion, that is not to say that these plots cannot have interesting depth or characters or what have you, but the basic concept is we're mercenaries that get paid to do a job. The gray area is perhaps what is being hired to be done. Point A to Point B means to me, so long as we end up at Point B, what we do in the interim is a lesser issue, my idea is mostly that the things we do in the interim will eventually lead to Point B so we can continue onward, but think of it as a slow burn sort of thing. I'm sure this will change depending, but that's my initial plan.
Mercenaries are by nature, slightly morally gray people. That is not to say that benevolent actions are out of the question, but mercenaries are paid to be loyal to the people who hire them, and it's bad business to turncoat on that, mercenaries live on their reputation after all. What I'm saying is that if you can't handle playing to actual moral complexities of doing mercenary work, please don't bother. I'm not asking everyone to play grim faced people who just think 'I'm a mercenary, we do EVERY JOB, no matter what”, and I'm not asking for people who think that because the mercenaries we play are an effective military power that we should be the heroes who scatter bubblegum farts and unicorns because we can. Yes, someone should probably despoil the tyrant who keeps killing farmers because he likes making human scarecrows. No, that's not something we're going to do just because, that sort of thing takes time, money, loss of life...not our problem. Now, if we were hired by said tyrant, that's a slightly more complex issue. Be loyal to the dickhead, or show your principles by fixing the problem since we're more directly involved? Don't extreme your character to a particular personality type, it's okay to think one thing is just a job and another is something you have principles on. People are weird in what they accept and what they don't, don't one-dimension yourself.
Because I know how people are, if there is going to be any 'power creep', it will be a slow crawl into a dark hole. Yes, I realize that as the roleplay will progress, people will hopefully be naturally more talented at what they're doing. This is not a race to see who is going to be the most awesomenest character ever, there will be no golden stars handed out because you pulled out a technique from the crack of your ass and thought it'd fix everything. These sort of things will be discussed, as will character limits and everything else.
Prefacing from above, I am of the mindset that some characters will just naturally be better, but not impossible to defeat or outplay. You can hem and haw about it all you like about how you want your character to be stronger or strongest or whatever, but the amount of fucks I give about your power fantasy are negative zero. This is a cooperative experience, not a personal masturbation. The power scale I generally use is inches better, not miles. Context will be needed for every single situation, but keep that in mind if you get interested and want to make a character. Just because you can spit fire on your sword and someone else can't doesn't mean they're worse than you, it just means you have an option they don't.
Romance is fine, sex is not. I am not budging on this, you can make it sound as crude and filthy as you want for all I give a damn, take it somewhere else, PMs or whatever and just drop a line about how it happened so everyone else is in the loop or just let people infer from posts. This is an adventure, not a sex adventure.
Are you familiar with Rule Zero? Rule Zero is basically the tabletop equivalent of if the DM says no, it doesn't happen. Same rule applies here. If I say no, it's no. I will generally give justification for no, but I don't have to. That being said, do not be afraid to just throw out something that can be worked on. I'm about making sure everyone is inches apart, that doesn't mean your concept is unworkable, it just means you might have to scale down way more than you expect. If you don't like that, too bad for you. I'm not going to bend because you're sad, but I am more than happy to work with people.
Be...semi-regular in posting. Daily barrages aren't needed, but I'd like some regularity with how things are going. This is going to be kind of an invested project for all parties, with discussions probably happening semi-regularly OOC depending on how things go. This is going to be a single thread, coherent, moving forward story. Novel posts are...okay, I suppose, but I'm not expecting them. Don't feel like you need to do giant gaping literary wonders, check my other roleplay threads for my posting length and sizes that I can do, stuff like that will suit me fine. I'm fine with taking things a point at a time, bigger posts should be to expand details, not add needless ones.
That being said, that's the basic idea of what I expect and the concept therein, worldbuilding is something of a personal exercise for me, so if enough people are interested I'll get the world concept settled into something before moving forward.
