A Thread of Non-Sci-Fi NRP Ideas

[Queen Raidne]

Y'all have too many sci-fi NRP's, and I'm terrible at being a reliable RP'er, so feel free to steal these ideas. Or tell me that they're terrible. Or modify them. Or whatever.

Hell, go ahead and contribute your own.

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1. Everyone roleplays a school trying to compete for government grants.
2. Alternate history RP's. What if the cold war went hot? What if Genghis Khan conquered Europe? What if the Song Dynasty never fell? What if Australia never existed?
3. Everyone roleplays a colonial settlement in the New World.
4. It is an unprecedented economic meltdown. Nations are scrambling to secure their future. Civil unrest is high. People are desperate for answers, any answers.
5. I dunno, somehow people RP organs in a body or something; I keep wanting to develop this idea but never do.
6. The next space race - to Mars - is finally happening. Nobody cares, because somebody just detonated a nuclear device in Seoul. Naturally, people point fingers at North Korea, but the regime (for once) denies it.
7. It is the crusades, or a crusade-like alternate world equivalent.
8. Literally the world right now. Just RP the world, right now.
9. Competing news agencies in a large city.
10. Competing television networks.
11. Everyone controls a section of RPGuild in a weird, meta RP
12. Packs of animals? I dunno.
13. Competing magic schools.
14. Factions get pulled from fandoms onto Earth. Or some other world.
15. Marvel Comics NRP.
16. Spy agencies. Encourage flavors, like: James Bond, Get Smart, Acme, etc.
17. Military units in a war?
18. Bars/Restaurants strugling to survive a suddenly-oppressive government post-revolution.
19. "Okay, everyone plays a forest, right, and it's all fine, but, like, these forests are being threatened by... loggers. Yeah. And the loggers are normal dudes, but, like, they've got. Um. To outrun these guerrillas, so they're cutting down a lot of trees." -courtesy of my friend Paul
20. Everyone plays a drug cartel.
21. Cops & Criminal Gangs

[Panorama]

3 and 8 sound pretty cool. I'm not amazing at organizing rp's if you (or anyone else) comes up with something about them, let me know?

[Dinh AaronMk]

1. Everyone roleplays a school trying to compete for government grants.

@Queen Raidne

Hider

Had to be done.

2. Alternate history RP's. What if the cold war went hot? What if Genghis Khan conquered Europe? What if the Song Dynasty never fell? What if Australia never existed?

My general advice on alt-history is that you better be damn good to represent it. And I don't mean a good writer, but you know the history, the characters, events, cultures, and so on. And to not just simply blandly say, "And then X-happened" since for a good alt-history we should know where the point of deviance is. And to know that one should really know what was the major driving factor that makes that point of deviance so special.

For the Mongols for instance: there's a lot more to them than they just thrashed so-and-so's army in battle and had a clear shot to Rome.

However on the Cold War there's easily a lot of places it can go hot. But the Cold War being the Cold War any instance of it getting hot would most certainly mean nuclear apocalypse. So then we'd be playing non Sci-Fi Fallout.

3. Everyone roleplays a colonial settlement in the New World.

I actually tried this once: it didn't turn out.

But a colonial RP has a lot of promise of being a great local-area politics RP. There's a lot more in the topic than trading or fighting duh dayumn heathun injuns. Actual raids by colonies against colonies was a regular occurrence, load up all the good old boys into a small boat, scoot over to the Dutch colony down the coast, hit it and take its rum and women, and head back home.

Major European wars turned into excuses to just conduct more insane raids than the usual. And the homeland in Europe would consider this sort of shit too trivial to really do much about it.

4. It is an unprecedented economic meltdown. Nations are scrambling to secure their future. Civil unrest is high. People are desperate for answers, any answers.

I dunno how this'd fit in NRP so much as anywhere else.

5. I dunno, somehow people RP organs in a body or something; I keep wanting to develop this idea but never do.

Same as above.

6. The next space race - to Mars - is finally happening. Nobody cares, because somebody just detonated a nuclear device in Seoul. Naturally, people point fingers at North Korea, but the regime (for once) denies it.

Meh

7. It is the crusades, or a crusade-like alternate world equivalent.

See the point about alt history.

If fantasy, then you can get away with some leeway. But I feel this'd just be a rather cut and dry medieval soft-fantasy RP.

8. Literally the world right now. Just RP the world, right now.

And don't forget racist Hungary.

9. Competing news agencies in a large city.

I dunno, sounds like another for anywhere but NRP.

10. Competing television networks.

11. Everyone controls a section of RPGuild in a weird, meta RP

12. Packs of animals? I dunno.

I dunno, sounds like another for anywhere but NRP.

13. Competing magic schools.

Hider

I had to do it again.

14. Factions get pulled from fandoms onto Earth. Or some other world.

I swear I literally played something like this several times when I decided to do casual shit so I could not think hard for a few days.

15. Marvel Comics NRP.
16. Spy agencies. Encourage flavors, like: James Bond, Get Smart, Acme, etc.
17. Military units in a war?
18. Bars/Restaurants strugling to survive a suddenly-oppressive government post-revolution.
19. "Okay, everyone plays a forest, right, and it's all fine, but, like, these forests are being threatened by... loggers. Yeah. And the loggers are normal dudes, but, like, they've got. Um. To outrun these guerrillas, so they're cutting down a lot of trees." -courtesy of my friend Paul
20. Everyone plays a drug cartel.
21. Cops & Criminal Gangs

>>Casual
>>Advanced

And there's my thoughts, some with more sarcasm than others.

[Pepperm1nts]

5. I dunno, somehow people RP organs in a body or something; I keep wanting to develop this idea but never do.

How would this even work?

[Dinh AaronMk]

<Snipped quote>

How would this even work?

@Pepperm1nts

"I am the colon, I take a shit.

"But oh no! Now I got cancer!"

[Willy Vereb]

14. Factions get pulled from fandoms onto Earth. Or some other world.

@Queen Raidne

Tried that, save for 2-3 people it didn't caught on with the regulars, albeit new players were more eager and made up the other half of the playerbase... until I had to cancel it due to me being busy.
I may return to it, though. Because I just got a neat idea using this map:

My Hider

[Queen Raidne]

@Dinh AaronMk
4. (economic meltdown): Yes, but you're RP'ing the nations involved in this meltdown.

I suppose it all depends on your definition of what an NRP is. If you're strict about it, then, no, a lot of these aren't NRP's. On the other hand, according to the tag's definition (from when you make a new RP), "Players control nations, tribes, factions...". While extending it to, say, TV networks is a bit of a stretch, I would certainly consider spy agencies to be factions. But then, I always love to push boundaries and try crazy things to see what works.* Point being, we need people who support a strict definition of NRP's and people who support a loose definition NRP's for healthy genre growth.

It was also surprisingly difficult to avoid sci-fi ideas when compiling this list. Some of that may be due to the vagueness of what exactly sci-fi is, and my interests are definitely biased toward sci-fi. At the same time, I wonder if NRP's naturally lend themselves toward the fantastic.

^{*On the other hand, my love of innovation results in me overlooking simple, obvious solutions to things like player retention. There's a reason that we have tried-and-true tropes - it's because they work.}

@Pepperm1nts
(RE: organs)
Yes, my problem with it exactly. :(

@Willy Vereb
I, too, have tried it before. Mine died off because of a lack of interaction. And, you know, goals for the players to do.

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Moar ideas!

^{You guys can totally add to this list, BTW
Quite a few of these can be generalized to not-necessarily-Earth}

22. Horror nations - ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and the like. Fantasy, so not sci-fi.
23. Dystopias - something like 1984 except with less sci-fi.
24. Shadow governments and conspiracy theories - hard to do while also remaining in the land of realism.
25. Struggle for control of Shogunate Japan
26. Corporations battling for global market share
27. (in a slight twist of #3) Everyone RP's colonial powers trying to exploit Africa or the New World.
28. Post-dissolution of a USSR-like nation, players control the leftover states
29. RP'ers play insignificant nations vying for the attentions of one of the "Great Powers", much like the game Victoria II
30. The world of any fandom: Elder Scrolls, Avatar the Last Airbender, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, DC comics, Things Neil Gaiman Wrote, lots and lots more.

[Willy Vereb]

@Queen RaidneWell, if I end up making this would you mind being one of the co-GMs?

[Murtox]

25. Struggle for control of Shogunate Japan

Sounds like a good idea , there was one before but it never got up because the GM went off for months

[ClocktowerEchos]

25. Struggle for control of Shogunate Japan

Always wanted to do this since I was into Shogun 2 but never really got around to it.

29. RP'ers play insignificant nations vying for the attentions of one of the "Great Powers", much like the game Victoria II

Definately interesting, not sure how it'd really work tho

30. The world of any fandom

Do you mean we play as a faction of the fandom (ie Stormcloaks and Imperial for Skyrim) or as in every fandom is a faction (ie Skyrim vs LOTR vs Warhammer, etc)

[Comrade Doge]

It would be interesting if it sets after nuclear war.

Or zombie apocalypse?

[Chapatrap]

Unless an RP is specifically 'non sci-fi', it'll inevitably start to drift into science fiction territory. You can't give a group of people control of powerful, contemporary nations without one of them experimenting with rail guns.

Anyways, idea 31:

A group of city states have been founded along the coast of an in-land sea in a fantasy world and we play them fighting Ottoman Elves and each other or sommink like that.

[Comrade Doge]

32. A world that sets in a post-nuclear war after Russia and NATO launch their nuclear warheads and destroyed the world. It's twenty years later, much of civilizations are gone and most of the surface are inhabitable as mutant creatures rule the surface. You, as a leader, will led a faction and make your faction to turn into a nation, conquer other nation, conquer the surface, and conquer the world, nations will be start at subways.

33. A world that sets in a zombie apocalypse. The more deadlier threat is the humans rather than the undead. Nations rose, others change.

[Queen Raidne]

@Willy Vereb Sure, although expect me to randomly disappear about a month after it starts, since that's my (unfortunate) habit.
@Comrade Doge I have to question how non-sci-fi those are, considering how, beyond the post-apocalyptic nature, there's also mutants. Are zombies sci-fi? I don't know.

[ClocktowerEchos]

@Queen RaidneDepending on the zombie, it can vary from low scifi to high scifi to realistic scif or even fantasy (if you favor the rising dead from the grave stuff). But the way I see it, zombies are inherently by nature some level of scifi since more often then not it is fictionalizing the biological ability to reanimate the dead

[Dinh AaronMk]

34: The United Kingdom of Isreal - in the 13th century BCE the twelve tribes of the Isrealites share the kingom of Isreal. The great conflicts of the tribes and the personal policies of its kings make up the course of tribal discourse, with many of the monotheistic tribes seeking out and conquering the tribes who do not share the faith so strictly, and so destroy them. On the borders, Babylon waits.

[ArenaSnow]

11 would be... interesting indeed.