AxeEcliptica said
Kaga, you misunderstand me. By that I meant all I can find are fandom-based and cliche roleplays. I don't think I'm better than anyone else or too good for any kind of roleplay, I just know what I like, know what I don't like, know what I won't put up with, and know what to avoid. And I really don't mean to offend anyone. More than anything else I wanted other people's opinions, and that's what I got. I also gave mine, and if they offended you I'm sorry, but I didn't mean to upset anyone - even those who enjoy the series-based roleplays.

It's not so much that your opinion is different, it's kind of how a lot of what you're saying and showing interest in is kind of hypocritical. People here don't mind helping people, but I'm not sure if it's just that you aren't phrasing things in a good light, but labeling stuff as cliche is kind of a offensive to people who put a lot of work into their RPs. Read over your post and responses and try to see where people might be offended/ irritated/ annoyed. It's enough to say, "I am not interested in fandom RPs and am interested in games with unique themes."

Case in point, looking at your game, it's pretty much like most other original setting fantasy games, right down to different races (yours is basically an elf with neko-like ears), and the plot isn't exactly something that hasn't been done before (find the artifact!). You have common magic tropes, including magic draining a person's vitality the more it's used (which is almost exactly like The Alchemist series of novels, for instance).

I take no issue in the game you're running, and I sincerely hope it has a long and happy life on the guild, but a lot of what will make it succeed is the fact that it's using ideas that people are familiar with. It's things like that that make me question if you really get what cliche means, because you seem to be going for things that can be considered cliche. Let's put it this way, there's approximately 6 billion people on Earth, and something like 20 billion people have ever existed. Just about every one of those people have had a creative thought, and a large handful of those people managed to get their ideas published as means of entertainment. Now, human civilization's been around for a few thousand years, with people constantly coming up with ideas. We're now in the 21st century since we started keeping track of time in a conventional, standardized manner, and live in an age where information is transferred instantly between endless people. With that in mind, do you think it's really possible to come up with a truly original idea that doesn't hit any tropes or cliches in this day and age? I don't think there's a role play on this site, and probably on 99% of the others, that don't tread familiar ground in some capacity.

Look, I get you want to see ideas that aren't dime a dozen. A lot of people don't either, me included. Instead of worrying about finding the albino crow in the flock, why not focus on the ones that are putting forth good effort to do something interesting? Just because it's an idea that's not exactly a revelation doesn't mean it's not going to be a fun game that gives you endless room for creativity. If you want something unique, be that change you want to see. Show people something they may have never seen before, but overall, just try to make a compelling character and story that people gravitate towards. That's really the end goal of roleplaying.

I've used original ideas for RPs before. I'm always a little nervous when I do it, so I don't do it as much as I used to.

But, you know, what if someone takes my idea and writes a book with it? Especially if maybe that's what I might do?

Sorry if someone before me brought this point up. I know it seems a distant possibility to some, but in an age of e-publishing and the ability to get recognized in more ways like any other art form with the internet it is a possibility.

One of the big reasons I'm so comfortable with 'fandoms'. =)

Ah, that's understandable, but at the same time if that's your problem, simply don't use the book idea for a roleplay~ heck I'm writing a book, but I wouldn't dare use the plot for a roleplay

Dervish and the rest have already put it quite nicely, but I'm gonna throw a few wordy words down on all this.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with fandom RPs, and I myself participate in fandom and "original" RPs in about equal measure. Cliches (and tropes and whatever else) aren't necessarily bad,and it's much easier to understand something that's based on something else.

So I have what I think is a really cool idea for an original story that I've called //godEngine.INITIALIZE, but unfortunately I've found it very hard to explain in a way that makes sense because it doesn't borrow heavily from any sources (at least consciously) so it's very hard to make the player understand without making them read walls of text that will make little sense to them. On the old guild I ran two fairly successful original RPs (one might be the one that LoneSilverWolf mentioned?), but that also depends on what your definition of original is. To be original does it have to not draw from any sources at all and only come from your head? Because I think that's nigh impossible in this day and age for many of the reasons Dervish stated above. I've found that original RPs work best by mixing things that are familiar to players and throwing in your own twists and original stuff.

So one of these RPs was called "Iveron, of Gunpowder and Steel", it was a fairly original (in my opinion, though the plot wasn't all the original I felt like the world was). It took place in a fantasy world recovering from the aftermath of a large war against the Fae (which were less "Oh, faeries and elves and gnomes, yay!" and more uncanny valley and Lovecraftian horror along with old fairy tale stuff like kidnapping children). A long time ago, humanity (in it's purest form) died out, but before they died they created a sort of immortality drug that had some pretty bad side-effects, including going blind, albinism, and other mutations that made them rather unnerving to most other races. There were Satyrs who lived in nomadic clans, and the (admittedly horribly named) Masque... Who wore masks for unknown reasons (we decided because anybody that saw their faces tended to go insane), we had bird-people with a chess based caste system, we had animal shifters from an island nation off the coast, we had people made of fire/water/stone/whatever-other-element. A mysterious Council that acted as a sort of universal law that governed the use of magic. A lot of that was pretty familiar to fantasy fans, some of it not so much, but we made our own world from it, and it worked (though real life did get in the way)! For pretty much all the original worlds I create, I borrow from other sources and twist things around and add in my own stuff.

As for fandom RPs (even though plenty of other people have said it), I think it's quite possible to do an original RP even if it's set in another world that's already been made. You can build onto the world, have an alternate series of events happening in the world, and plenty of other things.

Uh... I'm not sure what else to say so... Uh... Carry on, I guess. Hopefully that contributed to the discussion.

AxeEcliptica said
Ah, that's understandable, but at the same time if that's your problem, simply don't use the book idea for a roleplay~ heck I'm writing a book, but I wouldn't dare use the plot for a roleplay

Why limit my options?

Everyone's different, but not every idea I have comes to my mind with a tagline saying: "Hi! I'm a book idea."

If only. lol

Been thinking about masking original ideas as fandoms. Just take whatever known fiction that is vaguely similar and slap that brand on your original roleplay. Problem solved.

Moved to thread

Sezir said
I did not read all the post cuz I feel like I get the jest of things. My question is how to generate people to an rpg? What makes a successful RGP besides it being set in a world someone understands? (I did not feel this need to be a thread, if I am of topic sorry. Just let me know)

Issue is though that there are lots of ways to attract attention to an RP and even more factors that can lead to it being successful.

There's no way to answer your question, really, without completely de-railing this thread. It really should've been its own topic.

Was not sure. Will do!

Wizard said
Been thinking about masking original ideas as fandoms. Just take whatever known fiction that is vaguely similar and slap that brand on your original roleplay. Problem solved.

Sneaky, sneaky~

[[Nevermind]]

I love how this thread continues going despite already finished for all intents and purposes

Though I would like to say I know there's forums where fandom RPs actually do become really, really cancerous. Like, i'd say 4 out of 5 RPs were fandom RPs and the fandom RPs were mostly pokemon RPs on a forum for minecraft.

At least here the fandom RPs have some level of diversity in of themselves.