Premise
The idea behind the roleplay is that each player takes upon the role of a historian contemporary to the events and documents the exploits of one ruler's reign. The style of the roleplay is that of a historical anthology chronicling the life and events of the various realms over several generations. Given that players take upon the role of a single historian, biases are intentionally prevalent. Contradictions are part of the premise itself; no document is a perfect truth. The voice of the historian is the primary agent of expression in the roleplay. A style guide will be included to lend credibility to the idea of a historical anthology of collected and translated contemporary pieces.
Rather than have players decide what reality is, a separate simulation will exist to supply writing material. The role of the historian is to interpret the simulation and provide details as they see fit. The simulation will contain great deals of depth, but will left intentionally abstract as to create varying interpretations and historical vagaries. The simulation itself will be controlled almost entirely by RNG, and a new generation will be iterated every so often to provide new depth. A Co-GM (should one apply) will be appointed to help with running the simulation. Thus, the roleplay will be split into two parts: the simulation, and the chronicles.
The beauty of this model is that players are invited to stop in, write one chronicle, and back out if they get bored. Or you could write nothing and hang around in the OOC talking about the world and interesting things about it. You could also be active for a month before school/work/whatever starts again and hibernate for months, then come back into your groove afterwords. Any number of possibilities are fine. The roleplay will intentionally always be tagged 'Open' to signify that anybody can post whenever they feel like posting. Players have no responsibilities to any particular in-character entity to uphold. Thus the 'Non-Committal' tag.
Setting
The setting is similar to our own world circa 800 CE. That is, fuedalism is in full swing, chronicles are almost entirely about the church and various high nobles, most of society is agrarian, and sexism and xenophobia are rampant (see the rules regarding both of these). Some pockets of light exist, but they are hidden away by mystery and dense woodland.
Magic does exist in the setting, with a good many limitations. To begin, magic is (generally) only capable of creating circumstances which could have happened without it. Praying over an illness may perform a miracle, but it is also technically possible that the bacteria just packed up and left (sorta). Magic will intentionally be left abstract and mostly to the interpretation of the chronicler. In addition, almost all magic is performed by Holy Men. These may be saints, particularly faithful peasants, archbishops, or whomever a deity chooses to be righteous enough the perform miracles. They may also be a part of counter-religions such as Satanic cults that invest power into the thaumaturges. In the case of incredibly righteous or powerful individuals, magic may occasionally have more flashy effects such as flaming swords, glowing eyes, or similar phenomena. Approximately one in one hundred has the potential to be a miracle-worker of some kind, about one in two hundred actually is a holy man of this type, about one in one thousand has the ability to live twice the normal lifespan, and about one in one hundred thousand has the ability to produce aforementioned greater spectacles. Due to the relatively large amount of miracle workers, most towns have at least one with the ability to prolong lifespans and bless enough women that birth and child mortality rates are considerably lower than our world and the average lifespan is around sixty to seventy, or eighty if you make it to forty first. Most towns of considerable size have at least one elder who has lived a century. Oracles, more powerful magicians, also tend to have increased longevity.
As far as magical creatures are concerned, the only remotely common race is human. Some derivative creatures such as centaurs, giants, nymphs, and other fantastical beings may be found, but nine hundred and ninety nine out of one thousand will never lay eyes on one. About twenty exist in all of the world, and their whereabouts are rarely known. They do enjoy meddling in mortal affairs, and usually they have enough magical ability to do so, but rarely will they appear in their true form inside courts. More information on these creatures will be given in the OOC. It is conceivable that a history would include tales of a King collaborating with demons or vampires, but these tales would be almost entirely speculation. The power level of these creatures is comparable to a mythical demigod.
The extent to which magic is involved in your histories will likely be much greater than the role it plays in reality. Indeed, most of the above would be based on hearsay and almost no legitimate scientific accounts or records of any magic exist, although blessings of health and growth as well as blessings affecting the hardness of weapons and focus of warriors are common and certainly tend to create results.
Technology will roughly progress throughout the simulation in a manner very similar to our own. Should the roleplay reach a colonial era and/or a renaissance, these effects will be elaborated on.
Stylistics
In the interest of maintaining the style of a historical anthology translated from many tongues into the most accessible format possible, the followed stylistic rules will be in play:
- All measurements must be in the metric system, as the curator is presumed to have converted many differing unit systems into one standard. I chose metric over imperial due to the fact that one is objectively more standard than the other. I also live in America, and realize that many people don't know the metric system. If you have problems with unit conversions and don't want to google it, myself or a Co-GM will convert units upon request for you. Amounts of currency should be reported using the actual term for the particular currency of a nation.
- Only English language words should ever be used, and all proper nouns that cannot be translated into English should be spelled phonetically. It is presumed that the system of writing in all of the chronicles varies wildly. In general, try to preserve the integrity of the voice and culture without ever requiring a reader to put something into a translator to grasp all the meaning. Compound words like 'Whitehill' or 'Wisehorserider' used as transliterations from a fictional language used by the culture you are chronicling. What I mean by this will become more obvious as cases arise. As an example, using a German name for a character such as Hans Muller or Friedrich Fischer that translated to an English word like Miller or Fisherman would not be allowed. Instead, the chronicler should write Hans Miller and Friedrich Fisherman. Note that Hans and Friedrich are fine since they don't have translations to English that aren't proper nouns themselves. This is certainly one of the more confusing and obscure (not to mention occasionally subjectivity) directives but it's unlikely to come up terribly often.
- Chronicles are considered to be excerpts of much longer works. See the template below for how posts should be formatted.
Your chronicles don't necessarily need multiple excerpts, but be aware that you aren't expected to write the full body of an actual complete history. As far as length requirements go, there are technically none. That said, posts MUST BE HIGH EFFORT regardless of length. It should be clear that time was spent making the post into a valuable contribution.
Note that chronicles may be any of the following: poetic epics about the individual, genealogies of dynasties, law codes and edicts of a ruler, historical opinions about the individual, a documentation of their exploits, or a good deal more. The only rule regarding what a chronicle may be is that it may not have a date of publication more than ten years after the current year of the simulation. Chronicles may be written during the individual's life, shortly after their death, or after centuries of simulation years. All chronicles, however, should be about an individual generated by the simulation.
- Wordplay, rhyming, or otherwise relying on the English language itself to give a certain effect to a writing is heavily discouraged. The reasoning behind this is that these are translated documents, and any such wordplay, rhyming, or puns would be, as a result of them being based on the language they were written in, lost in translation. There are many good real world examples of this phenomenon, such as the Qur'an sounding considerably better in Arabic than English, the Odyssey having much better cadence in ancient Greek, and 'The Internationale' rhyming in French but not in the literal English translation. Think about what effect translation has on your document in general.
- A few general notes, remember to write out whole numbers between one and ten (weird rule but it exists), not to use contractions (this is considered bad form in longer writing), and use the Oxford comma (for the sake of authorial consistency). As well, using any kind of slang is heavily discouraged, and all prose should present dialogue in nonfiction format, not script or novel dialogue. Poetry obviously has a lot more freedom here, and the extent to which the 'curator' attempted to give cadence and rhythm to the poem versus using a literal translation can be played around with. Including graphics in your post may be helpful, but it's a good idea to PM a GM ahead of time if you plan to. Generally, graphics are likely more the role of the GMs since I have access to generation tools that allow me to produce a more uniform style. This isn't always the best case for things like portraits though, so if you have a strong interest feel free to PM. See the rule on the style guide for why this matters.
Rules
I. Be mature. There are themes in this roleplay that are, frankly, vile. The historians you are playing as don't usually think that. That is acceptable, but these themes should be handled with sensitivity. There is no reason to be more graphic than the extent you need to convey emotional detail.
II. Follow the style guide. Consistency in style is very important to his roleplay; the IC should seem like one volume translated by the same person, like one massive digital library formatted uniformly. This isn't because that is more loyal how history works, but rather because makes the IC look nicer and maintain consistency.
III. Go with the flow. Work within the simulation. You have wide latitude to outright lie and at times this is appropriate, but try to base your lies on things that happen in the simulation. As well, the more you reference (even if you don't corroborate) the chronicles of other authors, the more the world feels fleshed out and real. Most characters provided by the simulation will intentionally be tied to other characters to prompt you, but you need to do the heavy lifting. Remember, nobody 'owns' a character, a nation, or a culture.
IV. Try to stay active in the OOC even if you aren't writing. I know I said this wasn't mandatory, and it isn't, but it helps keep things alive through low activity-periods.
V. Don't be a dingus. Pretty self-explanatory.
If you're interested...
Well, thanks for the interest! Just leave a reply expressing such so I can ping you all when I'm done. Telling me a bit about the sorts of real world political scenarios you think would be cool to roleplay in would also be helpful for fleshing out the setting, as I am going to develop further mostly based on feedback. The time period bit is certainly rough, so don't feel constrained. I'm limited by the breadth of what myself and my Co-GM are proficient enough in to make a convincing simulation, but don't let that stop you from generating ideas. If you like an idea, then saying so by actually liking it and/or echoing it in your own comment will help elevate it on my radar.
Thanks for reading!
