Dark Jack

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

So long after the premature end of its previous iteration, The Prophecy with the unofficial subtitle of Power demands sacrifice... after a major overhaul and rework of large parts of the world, its species, its mechanics and more... here we are. It is my pleasure to present:

This is your story. Within the stage of the universe called the Realms, the player characters have the freedom to go where they want, do what they want and be who they want. As the GM and narrator of this tale, I will be controlling and keeping track of the world while simultaneously ensuring that there is always something interesting for the characters to do, be it through an epic main plot-line or numerous secondary plot-lines I tailor to the interests of the player characters.
The world is huge and deep, with plenty to explore. This will be a long one.

An important note: Unlike the last iteration of The Prophecy, which was always recruiting players and open to new applications were always welcome, this one is not. I have learned the hard way that too many players will just stop posting without warning or explanation, and having an actor in the story just suddenly go missing like that invariably puts a wrench in the gears of the story.
For this reason, for this roleplay applications will be by invitation only. I want players I can trust and rely on to keep the story going.

For information about the world, please consult our new and updated Compendium. Though still a work in progress and incomplete it is already quite extensive, and I will continue to expand it as the story progresses.

Now, for the cast of our story:
Jaelnec, Page of the Will – played by Dark Jack
Freagon, Knight of the Will – played by Dark Jack
Yanin Glade, Knight of the Glades and Fadewatcher – played by Shienvien
Jordan Forthey, Squire of the Glades and Fadewatcher – played by Shienvien
Madara, Seamstress and surgeon – played by Shienvien
Lhirinthyl, Exiled vagabond – played by yoshua171
Nabisisstra Rhe'anyl Qelarn, Expeditionary trooper – played by Howe
Deo'irah, Iterant alchemist, scholar and priestess of Avalz'lihn – played by Tuujaimaa

The Prophecy

Okay first of all, props, that's a really cool graphic. Simple, but elegant even if I don't remember some of the terms lol. These changes sound fascinating and have further piqued my curiosity.

@yoshua171

Thanks. One very likely reason that you don't remember some of these terms is that they're new. Reniam was always just Reniam, but in theme with giving the planes "-realm" names I gave it its secondary name of the Corerealm. The Ether/Dreamrealm is essentially what was called the Spirit Realm in the previous iteration, and Stupor is still pretty much what Stupor always was: the space between realms. The Divide is also pretty much the same thing, with the main difference being that it is no longer between Reniam and Hell, but rather between Reniam and all other realms and keeping out all gods rather than just the "bad" ones.

Tidall and Drigall are both "new" in a sense, though there is somewhat of a relation between them and the old Hell and Heaven. Essentially in the new version, the creator spirits divided the gods and angels between those two realms rather than the "upper" and "lower" planes. The gods who vied for dominion over the other gods, Reniam and the "mundane" (the class previously labelled "mortals") became the Everbound and sent to Tidall the Everrealm, and the gods that fought to preserve peace and freedom became the Neverbound and sent to Drigall the Neverrealm.

The sun and moon are probably self-explanatory, but the Voidband is probably the most significant new addition aside from just the complete change of structure. You see, Tidall and Drigall are actually semispheres encompassing Reniam, as depicted, and can be seen in the sky. Not in the sense of "there is the crust of another planet outside the planet", since those realms are semi-metaphysical, but in the world the "stars" are powerful magical presences in Tidall and Drigall, meaning that in the space that separates the two realms there is a completely vacant stretch of sky at night that is just uniform black (clouds notwithstanding). I have a lot of little interactions in mind with this new mechanic, but among other things this new sky-structure has an easily observable effect on how Reniam sees the moon. When the moon shines through the Voidband it is white; when it shines through Tidall it is orange; and when it shines through Drigall it is green. The sun also takes on different hues depending on what it shines through, but its more intense light makes it somewhat less noticeable than with the moon.

There is one thing that still really fascinates me in particular about your world, and it's the idea of making bargains with Demons, for power and whatnot. Just the idea of having to go through a contract like a lawyer, and the margin for error (and the cost of such errors) being so high is absolutely intriguing to me. I remember I was going to do something with that in regards to Ilitas, but I'm thinking I'd design a different character, but keep that throughline since it intrigues me so much.

@yoshua171

Heh, that one is hardly unique to The Prophecy, it's just an existing concept I adapted because it suited the Grand Master.

So that's where my brain's at. I'd love to hear some of the changes for various things. Like the Laws of Magic in particular :3

@yoshua171

I actually don't think I've changed the Laws of Magic specifically, though I would have to check my notes to be sure. It's more that I've pondered the origin of magic quite a bit - where do spells come from? Why can spoken words invoke specific effects? That kind of thing - and addressing those unanswered questions made me reconsider some of the mechanical aspects of spellcraft. The short version is that internal magic (elemental, arcane, black (no longer called that) and summoning magic, as well as necromancy and the Art of the Warden) has become much more closely tied to the Dreamrealm.

The Prophecy

I'm already curious what a rewrite would end up making this already deep and fascinating world look like and I'm sure you've improved (somehow) with the passage of time. I know I have, that's for sure haha.

@yoshua171

Oh, so many small and big things, including some that I wanted to do even while this iteration of the RP was still running, like fixing a bunch of the confusing and misleading labels I had on things. For instance, "demon lords" are no longer a thing, nor is clearly defined good and evil; all deities save the creator spirits are "gods", and pretty much all of the beings that were previously labelled "demons" are now just variations of "angels". The class of beings previously confusingly labelled "immortals" - which would now be gods, angels and demons - are now "divines", and "demons" are "lesser" divines that, unlike angels, do not have a patron god and thus require alternative sources of power.
I've changed rune swords, a lot of the rules of magic (especially favored power)... so many different things. I even changed the fundamental structure of the world:

I'm around, safe to say. Will probably be around for more than half a century, with some luck. Actually had a direct relative hit 106, and a couple more over 100, not adjusting for scientific advancements since, so there's that.

But yeah ... the current state of the RP is a bit of a mess. Two branches of my characters are essentially deadlocked due to the other characters, so the only one who actually can do something without commandeering others (and while I know where to find Legion, Nessa hasn't be around for a while). Might keep Yanin for a reboot and leave Aemoten and Dom to their own devices for a while, if we go that route (unless we go with the modern version of Reniam that was briefly mentioned years ago, which would make reusing Aemoten more interesting)... Otherwise we're in the same place before 2021 happened. (I don't appreciate 2021 happening.)

As for the Compendium - I noticed that the Compendium had become detached from the DNS again, in addition it being rather hit or miss whether or not the automatic payment for the server worked that month and them rising the price yet again, so I figured I should maybe update it a little and move it to a Pi on a private public address. So running on this decade's software and all under my control. Maybe on Monday if nothing intervenes.

Also, can I invite Yoshua to the slumbering Prophecy discord?

@Shienvien

Oh shit, hi Shien. I honestly haven't even installed Discord on my new PC yet, but of course you can send yoshua an invite. Also, maybe hold off on restoring the Compendium? As nice as it is to have it's not as though we need it with the RP in its current state, and I would hate for you to waste money on it.

The Prophecy

Heh, hey yoshua. I know the feeling... I also keep wanting to continue this RP or - more likely since I have to accept that it is well and truly dead by now - reboot it. If I ever did so, however, the setting would be somewhat different from what it was originally. In the years since I created the RP-world I have begun rewriting the story it is based on, you see, and I have made changes to a lot of various things about the world in a way I think works much better and makes a lot more sense.
I've also learned a lot about being better GM in the meantime, so that would probably be rather different in a new iteration, too.

The main thing stopping me is the fact that I honestly struggle to have faith in my hypothetical players anymore. The primary reason I prefer to GM in the first place is to avoid the potential issue of the GM abandoning the RP and leaving the players hanging dry... but knowing that I will always be around as GM doesn't help much when the players abandon it instead.
Obviously I don't mean to blame anyone for leaving; no one should feel forced to participate in an RP if they no longer feel like it, and as I have always said real life comes first. But twice now on just this site I have put in huge amounts of work to make RPs (The Prophecy and Night of the Hunt) only for them to peter out and die because the players just stop posting. Stuff like this really kills my motivation for this kind of thing... so unless I someday come upon a group of thoroughly dedicated players that assure me that they'll stick around for the long haul, I don't know if I'll want to put in the work all over again.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Oh my! Well this is quite the surprise. After the last player stopped posting in this RP nearly a year ago, I admit that I have been checking in with RPGuild more out of habit than anything else. I put a huge amount of work into my RPs, and it was so demoralizing to see it abandoned by its players that I decided to take a break from RP'ing in general, just because I'm so incredibly tired of my work going to waste.

But I am here, I still have the mountain of notes I took on this RP back when it was active, still even have my little program to handle one of the quirks of false Paleblood Hunters. It might take me a moment to get back into the headspace of some of the characters, and it will certainly take me going through some of my old notes, but if there are players interested in the RP, I'm willing to give it a go.

After all, it has always been my policy to never give up on an RP as long as even a single player remains.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Taking a moment to shamelessly ignore how quiet it has been here for a while now, I just discovered that the musical score played during the boss fight against Ludwig the Accursed actually have lyrics in Latin. I've found some different claims, but the wiki page I just linked to seems to have a fairly decent translation of what the lyrics would be:

Lyrics from Ludwig's theme

Oh, hunter.

Blessed saint.

An honest death is like a blessing.

Let death come once and for all.

Plenteous blood is lost

Mutated into an unsightly beast

Mutated a long, long time ago

Still, as a mentor, I always were at your side

Even when you had turned into a beast

The master of the hunters, who stood guard in the night with his moonlight

The first hunter who organised the folks to hunt

The first hunter of blood

And one of the first who mutated into vile beasts by the blood

You turned into a beast.

Oh, hunter.

That Saint.

The Divine Partner of your fate

May it come by mean of the Death, the Departed(or Missing) Blame (or Pain)

The Blood will flow in abundant

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Ah, hello! That's great news! Be sure to let me know if I can help with your character.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

All right, I bumped the recruitment thread, come what may.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP Recruitment Thread

Just posting to bump this thread a good long while later, and letting people know that the RP is not only still recruiting, but could really do with a bigger cast of players.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

sigh I know... I'm very sorry, it wasn't exactly my intention for it to end up like this either, though it seems as though it's almost an inevitability on this site, or at least in the Advanced-section; would have to check and see if the same phenomenon is occurring in the Free- and Casual-sections. It's one of the big reasons I stopped trying to join RPs altogether and decided to focus on GM'ing, since then I could at least rest assured that the GM - which, and this is not intended as a boast, is arguably the most important role in RP to have filled by someone reliable - would not just abandon it.
I've thought about posting in the Discussion-section about this observation and what could be done to counter it, but then I spot the status bar, and almost every day I see someone posting about going on hiatus, coming back from an extended hiatus, or talking about how hard and terrible life is in some way or another and how the state of life as a whole is going to prevent them from posting for varying, often indeterminate amounts of time... and I wonder if there even is anything to be done?

I don't mean this as an insult or chastisement of the people on the site, or the people who have dropped by this RP and left (though the ones that have just vanished without a word do irk me), but it seems as though trying to hold people's attention for an extended period of time is nigh impossible. Between people coming upon hard times that prevent them from RP'ing, people losing their interest and enthusiasm, and people that just move on or disappear without a word as to why...
And I've asked, again and again, if there is something I need to do differently. Do things need to be moving faster? Do I need to facilitate more action in the story? Do I need to shorten my posts? Do I need to be more open about what I'm planning? Do I need to be more in control rather than giving you players as much free reign as I can? I'm willing to reconsider the way I GM if it keeps my RPs alive, but there doesn't seem to be any answers forthcoming.

Eh... yeah, needless to say this is something that is on my mind as well. I'm wondering whether I should bump the recruitment thread for this RP, but then I think about it and wonder how demoralizing it would be if no one responded to it.
What do you think? Any ideas?