I rp to create new concepts and contribute to building new worlds. Yeah, Star Wars is known setting but this entire pw is practically filler like rouge one.

Not sure what this has to do with the thread or how this even makes sense. The entire plot is set in an undefined stretch of old republic, making its events setting changing and all-relevant in the span of few thousand years that it can affect without even touching canon, as compared to Rogue 1 attempting to slide into the first couple lines of A New Hope intro and being essentially landlocked from there. Not counting the divergence from ANH near its ending.

(I know I haven't really been around for like, ages but I remember this)

I agree a lot with the directionless aspects. I can't say I didn't contribute to that sense because I was told I had a vast sum of space and places when it started and so decided that meant I could use a vast sum of space for some fictional faction. I thought initially there would have been more cooperation in the story telling aspects in the sense that the GMs would build some story arc with the factions. What I didn't take into account was that when you have many factions constantly added such planning is very hard. Which is a bit inexcusable on my part as someone who dwelled normally in the depths of the NRP forum.

Another thing was that the IC got ridiculously chaotic, making it pretty much useless to get any story arcs going like I tried doing. Random characters bursting it made it hard to really structure things and shifting attention story-wise made it exhausting to deal with.

I also found the focus on character powers over making unique characters with unique perspectives a bit irritating as the app sheets facilitated that with the tier system and how the sheets emphasized abilities and gear as much as it did.

Than you have the more internal issues I have, but these are issues with the general culture of the site and more my own scruples. I am no fan of the genres that other players on this site embrace. I didn't feel like a lot of people were being creative enough with the canvas given to them and instead stuck to anime stuff. It seemed like the overwhelming majority of people was some anime character. However I find that anime is ubiquitous with RPs in general, especially on forums dedicated to them like this one. I wouldn't have been so bothered by it if there was more diversity of media inspiration going in. I tried to facilitate that with that new space opera based faction I hosted to little success as people would still draw from anime instead of any other medium. And what was I to do, tell people they couldn't make anime based characters within the faction when the overwhelming majority of players do that?

Like, you are given the whole universe and all you do is populate it with anime characters. Don't get me wrong, I know there's lots of anime stuff that makes use of such large scale spaces with weird alien creatures, but like if you are going for some multiverse RP setting wouldn't drawing from everywhere make more sense than drawing only from anime? I know there's a minority of players who did that, but the majority didn't.

That being said while I don't have interest (I like star wars, but don't have interest in participating in fandom stuff), I can see why the next PW is a star wars one. Much less need to worry about the technology-magic balance when every character isn't having their own magic system or tech paradigm and instead drawing from star wars lore.

The Expanse (and maybe Stellaris) are excellent sources for alien (and some human) imagery to draw from that are not anime.

I rp to create new concepts and contribute to building new worlds. Yeah, Star Wars is known setting but this entire pw is practically filler like rouge one.

No.

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My mistake I misread the OP when he said new SW PW.

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I've seen a few that were better than Last Jedi, if that's what you mean.

Problem is everyone wants to put thier own brand on everything, and you can't put any brand on SW except Lucas. It's too iconic and established.

So when a few people are trying to do decent grass roots Jedi, Sith, Empire, or Republic characters, looking for a meaningful Star Wars experience, that one kyber-katana wielding ex-Sith Jedi Academy drop-out turned bounty hunter just destroys it all by proxy. And some broken, self-centered, unicorn character build emerges in every RP known to man.

So other than your pet peeves how was the play?

Lucas was one of several young film auteurs (another was a big influence on SW: Spielberg) that represented a changing of the guard in Hollywood as the main studios struggled to adjust to changing demographics (almost like this shit repeats itself in history) and stories/settings a younger audience might care about. So young guns were given chances.

All he did was tell old stories in new settings. None of his themes or storytelling was that revolutionary, and in fact much of it owes directly to some of the oldest hero traditions. Keep it simple and direct the hell out of the film was his gameplan.

So sure if we're making a SW movie I might worry about "brand", but we're not and we're nerds pretty familiar with storytelling and SW lore so really not that serious, just enjoy the game or don't for whatever reason and enjoy all the OTHER games on the Guild.

ezpz

So other than your pet peeves how was the play?

I didn't read your RP, I was making a joke at the expense of Last Jedi. Figured should get something for my ticket and the 2 and a half hours spent in the theater that day.

All he did was tell old stories in new settings. None of his themes or storytelling was that revolutionary, and in fact much of it owes directly to some of the oldest hero traditions. Keep it simple and direct the hell out of the film was his gameplan.

Nothing about anything these days is revolutionary, but Star Wars revolutionized sci fi pop culture. It became bigger than its predecessors like Battle Star, virtually burying them for a decade in the 90s.

As someone who knows the lore, I'm surprised you don't know that the simplicity we got was a result of actually making a 2 hour, stand alone film.

Prior to completing a final script, George had a plethora of lore that, sadly, would have unnecessarily convoluted a 2 hour film plot. This lore included things like the Whills, which the Star Wars Story Group is now trying to weave back into the canon over time.

Sadly under Disney's prying gaze, we'll only ever get candy coated fluff along with any semblance of the old verse which may be offered.

I'm not quite sure why we're talking about star wars in a thread about expanding horizons, as there are plenty of better places to do that.

However...

The primary reason why Disney star wars/Disney Marvel/etc is doing poorly is because of the movement to make politically correct media. It's fine to have minority/female characters, but they work too hard at trying to make them perfect and flawless (AKA, the biggest writing sin ever). Rey is a hard core mary sue. Anikin had to actually learn how to use the force, and Rey just beats someone who was personally taught by luke with zero training. She also just "finds" Luke's lightsaber in a random pub. Not "A" lightsaber, LUKES lightsaber! Anyway, I could rant about this for hours, but other people have done this for me, in less time.

EH failed because when you abort a baby, it tends to die.

RPG staff literally abandoned it as soon as they put it out there. Then they fed into whiny hate threads created by people who were just jealous it had a prominent place on the site. Instead of making that place less prominent, RPG staff threatened the dozen+ people still RPing in EH with the deletion of all their content. Nobody is going to RP under those conditions. So yeah, of course everyone who was there and putting in an effort to make it work just gave up.

So you want some advice on how to make your SW PW work? Don't engage in petty politics and actually take the time to nurture the damn thing.

I'm not quite sure why we're talking about star wars in a thread about expanding horizons, as there are plenty of better places to do that.

However...

The primary reason why Disney star wars/Disney Marvel/etc is doing poorly is because of the movement to make politically correct media. It's fine to have minority/female characters, but they work too hard at trying to make them perfect and flawless (AKA, the biggest writing sin ever). Rey is a hard core mary sue. Anikin had to actually learn how to use the force, and Rey just beats someone who was personally taught by luke with zero training. She also just "finds" Luke's lightsaber in a random pub. Not "A" lightsaber, LUKES lightsaber! Anyway, I could rant about this for hours, but other people have done this for me, in less time.

Disney Marvel is not doing poorly by any means.

@Liaison The movies? probably not. But Disney owns marvel now, and their comics just don't sell like they use to.

@Liaison The movies? probably not. But Disney owns marvel now, and their comics just don't sell like they use to.

Comics, in general, do not sell "like they use to." Any attempt at correlating sales and Disney's "agenda" since ownership is unreliable. Especially since every comic was failing in the 90s for marvel besides Spiderman and the X-Men.

I'd love to just point at indie sales figures, but this is getting really, really off topic.

I like how Expanding Horizons was so bad we went to a completely different subject

I'm not quite sure why we're talking about star wars in a thread about expanding horizons, as there are plenty of better places to do that.

However...

The primary reason why Disney star wars/Disney Marvel/etc is doing poorly is because of the movement to make politically correct media. It's fine to have minority/female characters, but they work too hard at trying to make them perfect and flawless (AKA, the biggest writing sin ever). Rey is a hard core mary sue. Anikin had to actually learn how to use the force, and Rey just beats someone who was personally taught by luke with zero training. She also just "finds" Luke's lightsaber in a random pub. Not "A" lightsaber, LUKES lightsaber! Anyway, I could rant about this for hours, but other people have done this for me, in less time.

It happened to come up, and I think if you really want to crack this nut open, the focus should be the new verse, not the old dead one.

Disney is killing it, with the exception of the failed Solo film. They're learning slowly that you can Make new films and you can get by, but if you want to dig up beloved canon and characters, doing irrelevant cash-cow titles, they will fail. This is the most iconic science fiction material in the world. You don't toss its trophy characters around in cheap.

It's actually becoming an issue, because Disney now knows they can pump out any type of generic, watered down, family-friendly, conceptually safe crap, and it will turn out millions in profits.

You need look no further than the MCU for all the proof you need. I don't think the MCU has let it's audience truly feel an emotional or dark moment, until 'The Snap'. There's always a joke wedged in, to make sure you're smiling and laughing from open to close. They meticulously attack every angle of these films to ensure mass appeal.

Man of Steel had more character development than all of the MCU combined, I.W. notwithstanding. Yet people go into MCU films primed to adore it, and go into DC movies primed to hate everything about them.

Disney is breast feeding the industry powdered milk right now. They meticulously craft universally lovable films that anyone from a 7 year old rookie, to the 56 year old grandpa can fully digest in a single sitting, without thinking, or feeling too much, because in today's hyper-sensitive society, feelings carry risk.

In terms of your PW specifically, Expanding Horizons. I don't know what happened to it, but in twelve years of RP, on many, many different sites, I can you tell what happens to a lot of PWs, and it's far less specific than you might be thinking. These things die on a regular basis and have been since the dawn of play-by-post.

First of all you have to understand that a lot of people on average get excited by the romantic notions of PW, sign up, then given the proper time, realize it's probably too much work and effort. We see this just in RPs, let alone something o the scale of a PW.

Most PWs die due to lack of actual direction and organization. You can take all the time and care in the world to design the settings, the lore, create all the factions and primary locations, work out the running plots and sub-plots, etc. But if there is no PW team to manage and guide those plots, and keep the player base organized, informed, and 'in the loop' so to speak, it will lose any and all individual interest. PWs are great, but there has to be a real point... Sandboxes are doomed to fail, because it's essentially chaos: A petri dish for characters.

I had seen someone else say that staff created it and then more or less abandoned it. To me this is hearsay because I don't know, but if there's even a grain of truth to that, you needn't look any further for answers. PWs don't look after themselves. Stories need a certain level of structure to be good, and therefore rewarding for serious players.

It's fine to have minority/female characters, but they work too hard at trying to make them perfect and flawless (AKA, the biggest writing sin ever). Rey is a hard core mary sue. Anikin had to actually learn how to use the force, and Rey just beats someone who was personally taught by luke with zero training. She also just "finds" Luke's lightsaber in a random pub. Not "A" lightsaber, LUKES lightsaber! Anyway, I could rant about this for hours, but other people have done this for me, in less time.

Now that I have more time, I want to talk a bit about Disney's Star Wars.

It's my opinion that this was mishandled straight out of the gate. They seem to operate fast and loose with the plot holes. Even released a novel to run damage control on a shitty villain - only to kill him off in the 2nd film before doing virtually ANYTHING with his character. This isn't an isolated incident. Evidently Disney's people don't see a problem with this, because they did it to T'Challa in MCU as well.

They did a poor job of introducing Rey. I don't care that she's a tiny bit of a Mary Sue, because she does it in a vulnerable kind of way that still provides a journey. But when they spend an entire film doing everything they possibly can to make you believe without a shadow of a doubt that she has to be a Skywalker, only to flush it all down the toilet, offering literally nothing in its place, you have to give your head a firm shake, and take a moment of silence for the murdered potential this film had.

We have a scrapper with no parents living on a desert planet.
We have an unlikely encounter with danger and adventure sweeping this mysterious orphan out of orbit to explore the galaxy.
We have a naturally gifted force user who possesses an uncanny ability to connect with it.
We have Anakin's lightsaber literally beckoning to her... Yoda's voice speaking to her before the saber gives her visions of Luke when she touches it..

I mean seriously. This is the type of modern day, dumb as fucking shit writing that insults the viewers intelligence. They really don't care at the end of the day, it's about getting their money back from an investment.

I still think she's somehow a Skywalker, or related to Anankin via the whole Force-birth thing, as the most common theory is that she is a reincarnation of one of the original force users. George's OG force users, who knew no light nor dark. They practiced BALANCE. (YES. The Jedi were polarized fools, and Yoda knew it. They need to evovle, or die.)

Episode 9 they have to do something with somebody, because so far it's literally filler.

In terms of lil Bennie being defeated so easily by Rey. Well, he sucks. He may be decent with the force, but his saber skills are for the birds; Trash.

I like how Expanding Horizons was so bad we went to a completely different subject

If it's run its course then we can close it down and focus on new RPs rather than old ones.