YTP-Style rp?

[WanderingDragon]

I'm looking more to discuss this idea, as opposed to look for players, since I want to work out some kinks. In the meantime:

I'm part of a rping community of a few friends that... Has been dead for a good number of years. The idea was that we played as OCs in a world mixing canon and original elements. For example, our characters would be shipped with a canon character (say someone from Dead Or Alive, etc), and battled an original villain.

Having seen a lot of YTP (youtube poop), especially the story-driven ones by MosBros, I've been wanting to set up a rp that worked with that premise: A mash-up of various canons, original ideas, etc, to create a fun sandbox for players to play with their imagination.

For example: Always wanted to make a self-insert super saiyan with a hot anime harem? Go for it? Wanna be a squishy little ant that surfs sewers for a living? JUST. DO IT!

I'm here to ask if anyone's ever tried writing something like this. How did things go? Is this a feasible idea? Any tips about running such a rp? What are your general thoughts?

[BrokenPromise]

Alright, I am one hell of a wet towel, and probably not the type of person this thread is suppose to attract. But let me just explain why this idea sounds like so much fun but tends to turn into cancer really quickly.

I think we all know why this idea sounds great already. Because due to the magic of the internet, it is the one place where you could be literally anything and interact with anyone. Like you mentioned already, you could be a super sayan and surround yourself with waifus, or something too strange for most other RPs. In an idealistic world, everyone would get to do what they wanted in the same RP. And that's magical. But when people try to execute ideas like this, it quickly becomes a mess.

The first problem you have is the power scale. You have a lot of different worlds with different levels of power. The entire cast of dead or alive couldn't hope to stand a chance against a sayan, let alone a super sayan. If said super sayan happens to also be a dick, he could easily blow up earth after taking his harem safely to another planet. Sewer surfing ant can't do jack all about it. Even if you put a "no douche bags aloud." rule in effect, you're still going to need to think of challenges that are worthy of a super sayan, but still able to be completed by a sewer surfing ant, slime girl maido, or whoever else joins this RP. What happens sadly is that your RP groups develop into cliques, and they never really interact with each other if they can help it. But you'll have a lot of in fighting before that, and some people will just outright leave the RP. It can also be hard to decide which rules from which world to enforce.

Closest thing I got to playing a youtube poop RP was a crazy feudal japan era RP. I had a fire sword that when swung into an icy tundra, it turned it into a beach, complete with sunbathing supermodels, surf shops, etc. What I've found is that in a place like that where there is so little reason, it can be difficult to tell a story that players can take seriously. Also, it at times turned into a war to see who could be more silly and "funny" and it just sort of evolved into some nonsensical nightmare.

I think trying to do something so open ended is a very bad idea. Something like this might work if you can get everyone on the same page. Limit the randoms, find some reason for super sayans to not be able to wipe out planets if you plan on allowing them, and find a reasonable level for the silliness where things can be funny, but not so absurd that they break the world.

[WanderingDragon]

@BrokenPromise

Yeah, I get what you mean. The rp community I was part of had similar problems in the past: One of the players decided to act like a d-bag, caused a schism in the community which led to its falling out. Beyond that, things like power-scaling was never really a problem, since everyone just respected each other's abilities in that regard, and made sure the characters had something sufficient to challenge them.

I think a good way to deal with things getting out of hand, is to keep the group small, initially. Like, have a group of 4-5 players and run through a few scenarios/plots that wouldn't take too long to complete. I think something like the characters moving in, or just roaming around the setting for a while during some event, or even an Avengers-styled assembling against a common enemy.

After that, we can gradually include more people. I think I'll make that bit more invitation-based. Like say one of us playing could invite someone we know to join us, and go from there?

[WanderingDragon]

Anyone else wanna weigh in?

[ArenaSnow]

My thoughts are quite similar to those posted already. I've had too many poor experiences with an idea at this degree of freedom, even at the level of basic coherency not even getting into the abuse factor, that I could not do it again.

[Dinh AaronMk]

Why don't you post in spam instead?