Reply With QuoteCan I join?
A bit like Spore, would anyone be interested in an evolutionary roleplay in which no specific characters are controlled, but species, and in the late-game, civilisations? Players start as some form of single-celled organism, and develop in any way they choose to give themselves the qualities they want. The world will not be described in detail, but players can describe parts of it on their own, to have environment as a factor in evolution. No character sheets will be necessary, presumably. As GM, I might fling some sudden Cambrian Explosion- or Great Dying-like events towards players to liven things up.
This is just a basic idea at the moment, probably to be developed. Questions? Opinions? Interest?
Can I join?
War isn't life, It only brings death.
Sig by Lillian Thorne
This sounds awesome
Wow cool
I'm in x3
i'd love to do this. i've always been into building races, and species.
I'm interested, creating all the likes of a civilization is a blast! Drop some more information as to how it would fold out in game play if you could.
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
~Edwin Schlossberg~
Originally Posted by Cara214
This sounds awesomeWell, this has proven fairly popular already
The roleplay will be an uncharacteristic (punny) one considering the style of most roleplays here. First major difference is that, due to the average life-span of an intelligent organism and the amount of time macroscopic evolution takes to happen, there will almost certainly be no actual characters in the roleplay. Nor, in fact, will there probably be any lasting civilisations (sorry...), because civilisations in general only last for a few thousand years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. The pace of the roleplay will hopefully remain the same throughout, but the actual time spans taken between 'turns' (or stages, at least) will become steadily shorter, because as Earth's history has shown, evolution tends to speed up as organisms get more complex (scientific generalisation of me, but oh well). Observe this handy Wikipedia image.
Note how the development from Prokaryotic (simple) to Eucaryotic (complex) cells alone took over a billion years, but the transformation of rat-like organisms alive at the K-T mass extinction (what killed the dinosaurs) to a sentient race (humans) took only about 65 million years. And now that humans have decoded their genome, evolution will probably accelerate even more. So time will not progress evenly.
I'm considering abandoning the evolutionary aspect to some degree and turning this into a civilisation roleplay once some or most of our species achieve sentience. We'll probably have plenty of time until we have to deal with that, though. Keep in mind that making your species into a civilisation is not at all necessary; You don't even have to leave the single-cell stage if you don't want to. However, if we do have to adopt this type of roleplaying later, only sentient species will be able to evolve much (or at all) due to how short the turns have become in years (unless you're either a really skilled roleplayer, or a rapidly evolving bacteria).
As for post style, it's going to have to be... Rather... Unorthodox. Obviously it'll have to be third-person, but it'll also have to be in a kindof narrating style, describing the movements and changes of species as time progresses. There will be 'turns' of sorts in the roleplay, not linked directly to who posts when, but for me to define the current time period, current geological events, and to do whatever I need to do as GM. I'm considering making a kind of point system for how far a species is allowed to evolve per turn, but that idea will probably be shelved in favour of me just trusting the players not to godmod.
Storyline... There probably won't be much of a storyline other than me livening things up or moving them along and your species interactions. It might still make for some interesting happenings over time though. Racial memories and such.
Like I said, character sheets or applications almost certainly won't be necessary to join, and if they are, they'll likely not be complex. However, to keep track of what a species is currently like, I'll probably have the players maintain and update a description of their species every turn. Multiple species per player will probably be allowed, so long as they aren't used in conjunction as an instrument to godmod. I will control all non-player species.
Oh, and; Please try not to make your species be a direct copy of what exists or has existed on Earth. Yes, this is going to be a very Earth-like planet and some of the species may turn out to be Earth-like, especially in the early stages, but for the love of science, I DO NOT want to see Velociraptor clones scurrying around. xD Be creative, make something new and different as you go along. You certainly may take inspiration from books/video games/movies and such, but again, try not to clone.
Anything else you guys want answered?
Last edited by Antarctic Termite; 03-02-2013 at 11:55 PM.
I had an idea for this a while back (Wrote up some of it, scratched it, though) called 'The Unbroken Link' and at first glance, not unlike your idea.
Pulled into war to serve a vision;
That's supposed to last a thousand years.
Part of a machine;
Unstoppable, as merciless as tidal waves.
Care to elaborate..? What was it like?
It was much like yours, but I think it was much more suited for advanced, and it would have been far shorter, and it would have eventually dwelt into a Nation RP.
Pulled into war to serve a vision;
That's supposed to last a thousand years.
Part of a machine;
Unstoppable, as merciless as tidal waves.
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