Avatar of JohnSolaris
  • Last Seen: 8 mos ago
  • Joined: 10 yrs ago
  • Posts: 274 (0.08 / day)
  • VMs: 1
  • Username history
    1. JohnSolaris 10 yrs ago

Status

User has no status, yet

Bio

Copied here for convenience:
ಠ_ಠ
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
¯\(°_o)/¯
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ノಥ益ಥ)ノ ┻━┻
乇乂ㄒ尺卂 ㄒ卄丨匚匚

Most Recent Posts

Hi, everyone. I'm new to this forum, but I'm not new to roleplaying. I've already hosted several RPs on Kongregate Forum Games Forum that could be considered "advanced" (I migrated here because I thought Kongregate FGF didn't have enough dedicated roleplayers), so I have a fair amount of experience in writing, worldbuilding, and roleplaying. This will be the first game that I host here, and I'll try to do it the same way I hosted games on Kongregate FGF and see if that works out. I apologize in advance if I inadvertently get anything wrong.

If I understand correctly, before making any game, I'm supposed to make an interest check thread in this section of the forum to see if people like the idea. So I'm going to put some information regarding the setting, gameplay, and character creation below. This information is going to be available in the game thread's OOC tab if enough people are interested to get the game going.

This game was hosted once in Kongregate FGF three years ago, by my friend @BCTheEntity, though it failed due to inactivity and BC’s lack of hosting experience back then. However, the idea was mine to begin with; I let BC host it because I was already hosting another game at the time. You can ask BC for confirmation if you want. Of course, this game won’t be exactly the same as the version BC hosted, since I’m changing many things to fix some of the problems that I believe BC’s version had that caused the game to fail.



Introduction


In a corner of the universe, far away from most other forms of intelligent life, was a blue planet that its inhabitants called Earth. In the wake of battles between eldritch beings of unspeakable power long since gone, billions of years ago, the first lifeforms arose from the turbulent magical energies raging across planet's surface. From magic they were born, and so they could command such energies of the world, through naught but the raw instincts of their nascent minds. Over the eons the planet's environments stabilized, and its inhabitants grew ever more complex, until there emerged the first species possessing true sapience - humanity.

Humans' intelligence came at the cost of raw physical power, compared to the ferocious predators roaming the wilderness. To ensure the survival of their species, the strongest of human mages tore rifts into the Sea of Chaos, a universe parallel to their own and the source of all magical energies, and created a vast structure that would eventually come to be called the Dweomerheart. The structure became the cornerstone of human societies of yore, for it channeled the Sea of Chaos's energies and systematically distributed them among human settlements, saturating the environment, such that virtually every human was born with or developed powers of magic. With such powers, the humans became the planet's dominant species, constructing expansive cities and spreading to every nook and cranny of Earth. But also with such powers, the humans often waged war among one another, for individuality inevitably led to conflict.

All changed when there came a powerful sorcerer-king who sought to unify the world. Whether he was sick of humans' constant warfare and suffering, or simply driven by pride and greed, no one knew. But everyone knew that he was mad, mad enough to use a forbidden ritual to become one with the Dweomerheart itself. With the incalculable powers he gained from the nexus of magic, the sorcerer-king brutally crushed any who stood in his way, and enslaved the planet to rule it with an adamantine fist, bringing with him unprecedented peace but oppression for centuries. Unwilling to live under the sorcerer-king's reign of terror, groups eventually rose to challenge him, many of them united against their common enemy. After nigh-unimaginable amounts of bloodshed and death, the sorcerer-king was slain, in a battle that devastated the entire planet. In the battle died all magic users of notable power, and with the sorcerer-king died the Dweomerheart. Humanity survived the cataclysm, but magic was lost.

Humans slowly began to rebuild their societies from the smouldering ruins. Without magic, they came to rely on technology, creating tools that could be used by anyone of sufficient skill. Over the next centuries, magic was forgotten altogether as technology developed, until the world resembled modern Earth in our real life.

But humans did not remember their lesson from the sorcerer-king. They once again waged war with one another. Weapons capable of ending all life were unleashed, reducing the planet to a wasteland a second time. Technologies, however, were not lost this time. The most elite of humanity poured all of their remaining resources to construct massive spaceships and leave Earth, while the other survivors were left to die.

And that was the branching point of the sides of Tech and Magi. Through some miracle of improbable chance, the ancient power of magic stirred to life again just as all hope seemed to be lost for those who remained on Earth, allowing them to rebuild a second time. The humans that escaped the planet ruthlessly perfected their technologies, aided by alien substances they found during their interstellar travels, developing cybernetics, mutations, and psionics that could rival true magic. The two sides would have forever gone their separate ways, until two centuries after the initial split, out of nostalgia the Tech side decided to reclaim the planet that they abandoned so long ago and thought to be barren still.

Suffice to say, neither of the two sides expected, or were pleased by, the other side's existence. And neither were willing to relinquish the planet that they felt was rightfully theirs.

That is the current state of the world. Though not at outright war yet, the sides of Tech and Magi have reached an impasse with their negotiations, several months after their initial meeting. A multitude of factions exist within each side, all of them having conflicting motives and goals. Skirmishes between various groups are fought almost daily. The world is in a state of cold war, and the future is more uncertain than ever before.

You live in this uncertain world. But you have the potential to shape the future, for you are powerful, more powerful than many of those around you. But with this power, what future will you bring?



Game Overview


This game is intended to be a mostly freeform RP, where the plot is determined by the players’ collaborative effort. As the GM, I will play the game using my own characters, but I will not be directly responsible for the main storyline. Both the Tech and Magi sides have multiple smaller factions within them, as previously mentioned, and it will be up to the players to create these factions and construct a plot from their interactions and conflicts. For this reason, each player is allowed to create as many characters and factions as he wants, within reason, though each still must be approved by me. Since this is a serious, “advanced” RP, please don’t create more characters or factions than you can handle.

The special features of the Magi and Tech sides are listed below.



For all characters, Magi and Tech, a character’s raw power level is independent of the versatility of his abilities. Raw power is slowly increased through training and experience, while versatility depends on the character’s skill. There exists training that can increase both raw power and skill, but that doesn’t mean the two are directly correlated.

To prevent any ability from being overpowered, all abilities are subject to limitations described in section 2.2 of the document describing magic.

No character can start with both Magi and Tech abilities. Theoretically, there’s nothing preventing a character from having abilities from both sides, but the two sides simply haven’t been in contact with each other for long enough for anyone to have gained any meaningful abilities from the other side. During the game, a character may obtain abilities from the other side; it’s just that no character can start with abilities from both sides.



Signup Sheets


In this game, each player can create an unlimited number of characters and factions. The character and faction signup sheets will be included below.





So that's my game idea. What do you guys think? I hope it's not too long of a read, given the standards of advanced RPs here.
Hi, everyone. I'm not new to roleplaying, but I'm new to this site, so I want to ask a few question to see if this site is the kind of place I'm looking for.

Before asking the questions, I think I should tell you a bit about myself. I'm a Chinese Canadian computer science major in university, and a rather huge nerd and anime weeaboo. My sense of humor is probably rather strange, because of the aforementioned two things. I like writing and worldbuilding a lot, especially in the fantasy genre. Because of my background as a science major, I tend to value strict internal consistency in my settings and stories, and thus rigidly enforce a set of rules that the fantasy elements go by (and yes, I browse TVTropes too). And I'm not all that good at socializing, so I apologize if I act a bit too stiff before I get to know you more. I'd like to believe that I'm a pretty nice and open-minded guy, so I won't act aggressive toward anyone unless the person acts aggressive to me first without provocation; I hope conflicts like these won't happen during my stay here.

Now, for the aforementioned questions. I've been hosting roleplays on Kongregate Forum Games Forum for the past couple of years. I hope this doesn't sound too much like obnoxious bragging, but I was consistently praised as one of the best RP hosts on Kongregate FGF, and I was notorious for writing extremely long posts (as in, frequently OVER NINE THOUSAND over 2000 words), so I think I have a reasonable amount of experience in hosting "advanced" RPs, as you guys seem to call them here. Unfortunately, RPs have been in decline in Kongregate FGF for at least a year, and the forum just doesn't have enough dedicated roleplayers to keep a detailed RP going for long. That's why I'm considering migrating to this forum, and host an RP here. But I'm new, and don't know how things work in this forum, so I have a few questions.

1. What's the actual process of creating an "advanced" RP here? In Kongregate FGF, we first create a signup/discussions thread with OOC details about the game, and wait for people to sign up. Once the host has personally decided that there are enough players to begin, he'll make a second thread for the game itself, where all the InC posts go. Each game is thus allowed to have up to two threads. How does it work here? I see an "interest check" subsection, which seems to be for pitching RP ideas to potential players. Do I use that as the OOC/signup thread, or do I make a separate thread once there are enough interested people? If the latter, do I make the thread in the RP section itself?

2. How active do "advanced" RPs tend to be around here? How many players do they have on average, and how many posts per day? I'm not looking for any exact numbers, just rough guesstimates.

3. How many "advanced" RPs successfully reach their conclusions? This was my main problem with Kongregate FGF. People almost always lost interest after a few weeks or months, and the game would slowly die. Very few RPs in Kongregate FGF actually reached anything that could be called a conclusion.

4. In an "advanced" RP, how active does the GM have to be? I'm in university, and I don't have an unlimited amount of free time. And another problem I had on Kongregate FGF was that the players simply wouldn't do anything unless I constantly poke and prod them every single step along the way; it eventually got too tiring for me. In this forum, can I give the players opportunities to create their own factions and plotlines, and expect the game to mostly sustain itself? Of course, I'm not saying that my own participation as the GM will be completely nonexistent. I will be playing as characters in the game too; I just want to be able to let the players collectively create their own plot, rather than having to create my plot and drag the players along.

5. How well do roleplayers take to GMPCs in this site? I have a tendency to make GMPCs that are explicitly more powerful than any of the players' characters (I have specific reasons for doing this, but I don't want to get into that right now). I take extreme care in making sure my GMPCs are flawed, realistic (at least given the context of the RP) characters, rather than Mary Sues. And I take equal care in making sure that my GMPCs will not ruin the conflict of the game, or dominate the plot; their roles in the game should be comparable to the roles of other PCs. My exact ways of doing this vary, but they often involve psychological issues and circumstances that make my GMPCs unwilling or unable to easily solve any of the other player characters' problems. My GMPCs are not invincible, and can actually be defeated by the PCs if I deem it appropriate in the plot; I just want to be able to have my characters lose only when I want them to. Yes, I know that I can do this as the GM even if I don't make my characters more powerful than all the other characters, but this again ties into the aforementioned specific reasons that I don't want to discuss right now. And of course, I will not use my GMPCs' power to humiliate other PCs, not without a justifiable in-universe reason (and no, my GMPCs are not the kind of characters who go around humiliating people weaker than them for kicks). When I was in Kongregate FGF, no one really complained about my GMPCs, and no significant problems occurred. Can I expect the same thing here? If my GMPCs are more powerful than the player characters, but otherwise won't ruin the conflict or hog the spotlight of the plot, will the players generally tolerate them?

6. As I already said before, I value internal consistency a lot. I'm also more than a little paranoid about supernatural abilities that I consider "overpowered"; these won't be allowed in my games even if the character who has them won't use them in any game-breaking manner. In fact, I have a whole thread back in Kongregate FGF that discusses overpowered abilities and how to nerf them. As a result, if I make an RP here, some players may be asked to edit their character sheets multiple times, to get rid of everything I consider unacceptable, before they're allowed to join the game. Is this kind of behavior tolerated in this forum?

7. Usually I try to be reasonable as the GM, but I tend to not like it if a player thinks he can push me around. I moderate my RPs very strictly to make sure no rules are broken, since I value internal consistency. Most of the time I'm willing to negotiate if a player accidentally does something that's not allowed in the game. But if a player refuses to make the changes that I ask him to make, does things that I've disallowed him from doing, or generally try to challenge my GM authority in any way, that'd lead to warnings and then a swift ban from my game. This kind of behavior is reasonable and expected here, right? As the GM, I'm allowed to be less than perfectly polite with players whose actions are disruptive to the game, right?

I think these are all the questions I have for now. Thanks in advance for your help.

Also, in case anyone is interested, here are the three most recent RPs that I've run in Kongregate FGF:
Emblems of Fate
Seraphic Legacy
Realms Adrift
© 2007-2024
BBCode Cheatsheet