You live as you choose



The goal of Expanding Horizons is to create, and maintain, a persistent world in which people can come and enjoy themselves. Regardless of what you like to play, be it a super powerful wizard or a guy with an improbability cannon for an arm, you’re welcome to come and coexist inside of our world. Ideally, we want to make this as open and as appealing as possible to every member of the community, regardless of experience and inherent skill level. We want to help you, and your friends, grow into better writers and storytellers through practice and collaborative efforts.

That being said, we also have several storyline goals we intend to reach throughout each cycle of our game. And we want your help in reaching them. So, how can you help? Easy! Just play the game with us, and we’ll build a persistent, ever-expanding world that will evolve and grow with each new person bringing something different to the table. So, when we say your live as you choose, we mean it.

If you’re a war-mongering character bent on taking over everything, then you’re free to do as much of that as the community is willing to do before they stop you. If you want to live peacefully on a far-off planet to yourself, using your magic and your friends to build a utopian society, then you’re welcome to do that. The possibilities are endless. The only thing we ask is that you make your game as inclusive to other, like-minded, people as possible.

And of course, we’ll do the same. The GM staff will be running the main story arc in the beginning, and it will be on us to pull everything together into a cohesive story. Any additional help in that endeavor will be appreciated, but not required for play. However, we will not allow other people to be ignored. If a group of people show up and begin attacking you, we expect you to respond properly to them. With few exceptions, all of the threads will be open - and that means anyone can show up at any time! So, always be prepared to work together to defend what is yours, or to build a peaceful story with another group of wanderers within the galaxy.

Ultimately, how you play is how you play. We’re not going to impost heavy restrictions on magic or science. There are limitations - but even those can be broken when you bring in enough story justification to make it reasonable. So, how do you get involved in this persistent community where everything you do affects everything else? It’s simple!


Character Creation


First, you’ll have to build your characters. Every character will be submitted in a character specific thread designed expressly for the GMs to review and either approve or deny your character. Outside of a few game-breaking mechanics, we’re not foreseeing any denials coming through. The thread will be stickied to the top, so it will always be easy to find - and we welcome you to create your own character database systems to help better keep track of the characters you have currently inside our universe.

The basic template for characters is probably one everyone has used before, and isn’t necessarily anything new or foreboding, I hope. All you have to do is give us the basic, need-to-know information required to interact (and combat) with each other.

Name: Your name here
Title: Do you have any titles?
Height : How tall?
Weight: How much do you weigh?
Age: How old are you?
Race/Species: Are you human or alien?

Tier: What level is your character? Human, Light Power, Mid Power, or High?

Personality: How does your character act?

Appearance: How do they look?

Abilities, Traits, Powers, Etc. : What can they do?

Equipment/Weapons: What do they carry?

History: A brief overview is fine!



Groups


Groups of individual people working together to a common goal aren’t only allowed, but encouraged. We would love to see players working together to build something amazing. The whole goal, after all, is to be collaborative and inclusive! So, with that in mind, the creation of groups consisting of more than five individual members, with a write-up in the group sticky thread and and approved by a member of staff, will net you some bonuses. What are these bonuses, you ask? Well, they’re pretty nifty.

First of all, you can come up with up to three group specific powers that - while other people might be able to use from time to time - your group are masters of. Those powers don’t have to be magic, either. Maybe you’re a group bent on technological domination, a true Technocracy if you will, and you have a piece of proprietary tech. Then that belongs to your group, and your group alone. Someone can steal it, of course, from you in a story or a fight - but it belongs to you.

Or maybe you’re a special group of wizards with your own particular set of magical talents, that nobody has been able to replicate or come up with before. Each member of your group, just by being in your group, is allowed to partake in that power! The possibilities are nigh endless, and are only limited by your imagination. So, create whatever you can and come up with whatever your beautiful little minds can compute!

That being said, Group write-ups should somewhat follow a set of guidelines before being posted. Each group is required to have at least five(5) individual players playing a unique character. Granted, each person in the group is allowed as many characters as they wish to play, and can keep up with playing, but there must be five players involved OOCly before a group becomes official.

Official groups will be granted territory, which will be in the shape of a planet, ship, asteroid belt, etc., that belongs only to them. They will have complete say and dominion over their territory, and will be able to use it as they see fit. The guidelines for writing up the group page, and the territory (which should be included in the approval request) are:

Group Name: Are you the Dominion of Solitude? The Destroyers of Hope? Give yourselves a nifty name.
Group Graphic: A logo or picture of some kind that fits your group.
Group Motto: Do you guys have words you live by?
Group Leader: Who runs this? Is it a council? A single person? A priest or some form of God?

Group Description: What does your group want? What is their goals, their drives and desires.

Group Territory: Is it a planet? A ship? What does it look like, what would a person feel when there?
Critical Point A: The most important, possibly capital city of the group.
Critical Point B: A secondary place where things of important nature might exist
Critical Point C: And a tertiary.

Group Members: Here you’ll want to give a list of every person’s account, as well as what their characters in the group are. So, say I’m a group with John. We both play two characters. The list should look something like:

Zyamasiel: Character A, B.
John: Character A, B.

Critical points are points inside of the group’s territory that are valuable and important for whatever reason. A group cannot exist if it does not own a piece of territory with at least three critical points. The only way to have more than three, however, is by taking them from another group in a fight, or through diplomatic relations. Capturing a critical point gives you that critical point to add to your group, and of course you can completely change the lay of the land when you take it. Subjugate its people into slavery, allow them to be free, full members of your society. Whatever you wish.

However, when a group loses all three critical points it has lost its territory and can no longer be considered a true group. Critical points will be the main threads in which battles take place between existing groups, and as such the write-up for the territory, as well as its critical points, should be as detailed and graphic as possible. For the sake of everyone involved.

Thank you for joining, and we hope you enjoy your stay. Tell your friends, your family. Bring everyone who enjoys this kind of thing, and come build a better tomorrow with us!

Thank you,
Zyamasiel
Circ
Rilla
Ruby
The Harbinger of Ferocity
Yoshua