Rust's Random Recreational Reserves

Title sounds good

I had some interesting ideas at work today, and since I don't have to give them too much thought, I can post them =D

First off, is the Mini Roleplays

The Missions

One thing I've noticed is that we have some very complex roleplays. Whatever happened to simple stories? With this, it'll be simple. We're in some kind of clan or guild (ironically named Neo-Passe, I would guess) and we're doing just that, the missions. There would be a main thread called the Guild/Clan Hall where our characters would interact. This is also where the Guild/Clan Master would post jobs. A second thread would be posted with "[Mission]" in it's title. That's the mission. Why is that so simple, you ask? Because once the mission is over, that's the extent of the roleplay. It could last as long as two pages or as long as ten.

The clan members would sign up for the missions, some would be fine with as many members as possible, some would be for a few. If a mission only has room for a set amount of people, then there will be more than one in case more people are in the mood for a mission. Characters would be ongoing; if you want to keep a character, then simply continue to play as them. If you don't want them any more, then you can have them leave the clan and introduce a new character. The only actual responsibility to post you'll have is if you've signed up for a mission.

Simple, ja?

In the Wolves Den

Has anyone ever played the game of Checkers where there's one red piece and 5 black pieces with the objective of trapping the red piece? I can't remember what it's called but it inspired me to think of this

One person against 3-5 others. This may seem to be bad odds, but I'm sure that one person can handle it. This one person has to compete against the people against him in one thing: Survival. Hopefully people here have read "The Most Dangerous Game" because it's a lot like that. Because there are so many scenarios that go with it, I will leave you with the analogy.

The Scenario Room

This is my favorite idea I've had thus far

Everyone here has seen X-Men, I hope. Remember the Danger Room? Well, Neo-Passe has a room like that =D In this room, absolutely anything can happen. And so it does, oh yes it does. We place a character in this room, a character that's brand new or has been made at an earlier time. This one character is controlled by one of us and has to jump through several hoops.

Let's say I want Basis to be the victim character going into The Scenario Room. He would find himself waking up in an intro post and wondering what's going around. Then, Tiger posts with a challenge.

Tiger posts the challenge to open a jar of pickles and eat one. However, the fridge is on the other side of the room. How will Basis get there? Will the jar of pickles be hard for him to reach? etc etc etc.

Basis manages to make it across a very deadly room filled with booby traps and eat a pickle.

Then Smithy posts the challenge that Basis needs to solve a puzzle. Puzzle solving isn't Basis' strong suit, so I have to make sure to incorporate that into my writing. Finally, Basis solves the puzzle after struggling with it.

This carries on for four "challenges," each one making me write creatively to solve with my character. Then there's the "boss" at the end of the dungeon.

Easy. Character is made by a participant, judges throw out tasks and challenges for the participant's character to do, participant writes the best they can.-

This will actually be turned into a creativity contest. There will be a different person for all five stages, a set of rules, and a ranking system. High scores will be linked to their "Scenario Room" and hold bragging rights. There will be one "Scenario Room" going on at a time and only those with challenging rights can judge. Judging and points would be based on things such as creativity, how entertaining it is, how well they stick to their character sheet and stayed in character, etc.

More on this will come if I actually make a thread for it. I'm sure I probably screwed up on describing it, but it will be amazing if I do it right. Which I will.

So, what do you all think?

Y-ya know, feedback would be nice, Zhan D=

But <3 you anyways

First Idea = Epic Win. Even if it's neglected for the majority of the time, having something to just throw down random writing jigglies when you CBA for an actual story or are completely uninspired and the like and just feel like talking about ramming a giant sword through the skull of a dragon is pwnage. I think having a one character limit may make it a little stale after a while (you telling me you don't want to have Basis and Daku (if not Surge, Blitz and whonot as well)) but obviously limiting it to one character per person, per mission makes sense.

Second Idea = Epic... huh? So it's like a Neo-Duel but with five on one? So one person roleplays as their character surviving against the other five, who are roleplayed by others? Or are the other five merely created for the one to fight against, in a (like above) non-storylined battle for the sake of being done when having no creativity/inspiration for the RPs/stories you're in? Elaboration is king.

Third Idea = Epic... p-p-p-pickles!!!! I like this idea a lot. Having a character forced to escape an army of Trolls armed with Shotguns and Bioshock Plasmids and then forcing them to dispell an argument between two homeless guys in a Walmart parking lot is made of nothing but pure, 100%, unadulterated win.

HOLY SHIT YES YES AND YES I <3 RUST

The first idea is my personal favorite. For when you just want a quick little writing exercise without the commitment of a full RP. Second idea is cool too, that'd be awesome even if we do it just as a one-time experience, with everyone getting a chance. Third idea is amazing. That would be so much fun on both the parts of the challengers and the challengee (0.o?).

Now, speaking of variations on RPs, what do you folks think of a stat-based RP? I know at least Norad is familiar with the Land of Vivica RP that was on Neo for a long time, not sure about the rest of you. For those not familiar with Vivica, it went something like this: you would make a character by picking a class. Your character would have stats and items/weapons like any stat-based RPG, based on its class. There's a long list of missions you can pick from, and once you pick a mission, you begin writing for it. Long posts are not necessary, single paragraphs suffice. One person (Me) plays the "dungeon master" type person (D&D reference) and controls what happens in all the missions, as well as posting the results of any battles that occur. When you complete the mission, you get a prize, sometimes money or an item, like any RPG. You then pick a new mission, rinse, repeat. Everyone's characters are independent, but you can team up with someone if you want, and there is a central storyline running through the whole thing, so occasionally you'd all have to work together on a mission, then go your separate ways again. It's very similar to an RPG video game (Final Fantasy, D&D), just with writing involved. And your stats only impact the battles, they're not a driving force in the game itself. It was tons of fun, and actually how I first got involved on Neo.

EDIT: Found a link, not from Neo but from the site that was created upon the FE Forum regulars' mass exodus from Neoseeker. (Note: The site is dead). This is one of the two I ran: http://z6.invisionfree.com/The_Masqued_Requiem/index.php?showtopic=224

Any feedback on the possibility of making one here, in a similar style?

Hmmm..

As much as I hate the be the downer, I'm not nearly as excited by these as everyone else is. Sorry, Rust, I still love you ; ;

That isn't to say however that the ideas aren't cool, or worth looking into.

The first one is a nice idea to keep our creative juices flowing, but I could see it going south if they get too indepth or too long... I don't know why, but the idea of these missions being 'long lasting' irks me to no end. Its still probabily my second favorite, the idea is great if we could keep it limited. I mean really- one of our group's strongest suits as a whole is storytelling, and if we allowed it to run rampant- I can just see it now. These seemingly simple missions would unfold into something wild and spectacular!... but also wildly distracting from the things we are suposed to be making wild and spectacular. (See: Main RP board) If we could keep it as a skill building thing and keep our truely creative and inventive processes to the main roleplays, I think this would be a great additon to the boards.

For the second one, I like this one best. Its a nice idea, and I definitely like the hunter-hunted concept here. The things we'd need to watch are things like people godmoding. In the end, 3-4 against one, the one has got to die, hands down. It would be a shame to see them developing into 'EPIC BATTLE OF THE UNIVERSEEE!!!!!1111oneone'... Infact, I think the death scenes could prove extremely helpful in our main writing. I mean really- none of us gets a chance to really create a extremely well executed fight and eventual death scene in our main roleplays with our main characters, because then they'd be removed from the roleplay, and we'd feel left out. Imagine collaborating with the people hunting you to put together a truely spectacular end to the hunt. And it doesn't have to be the brutal, gory slaughter of the single fighter (Though if someone does one of those, that'd be cool) You could make the decision to have the one person to fight skillfully, and take down one or more of the others before eventually meeting their demise. They could even have a thread of story, in a way. You wouldn't want them to be nearly as ellaborate as the main roleplays, but in this (versus the above) I think a small storyline would be suitable.

The third one, unfortunately, is my least favorite. I'm not quite sure why, considering on the outside it seems like it'd be great mental and creative gymnastics to make a fantasy character try and figure out how to get two hobos to stop shooting the puppies with lazer beams.. However, while on paper it seems like an interesting and difficult concept, I can't really see how it will improve our writing in the main threads. It might end up being a interesting (or funny) read, but in the end, what have you learned? How to deal with your character being dropped into weird circumstances? Come on guys, we can handle that. All humans are given an ability to make decisions, and I'm sure if I asked you how a mouse could get from point A to point B, you could tell me. So then, you say, we'd learn how to make them get from point A to point B while still acting like your character would. But man, we can handle that too. Don't tell me that if asked how a mouse would move through a maze, you honestly wouldn't expect it to trigger a few of the painful traps before it eventually figured out the revolving door puzzle and got the cheese, and instead would expect it to react like a pterigan falcon would, and dive bomb the rest of the mice trapped in cages a few feet away. All in all, while it seems like a cool idea on the outside, I think that by looking further into it we see that it isn't as creatively valuable as we thought before. One thing that COULD make it more interesting (Though still no more skill building or creatively valuable) is having actually puzzles or riddles involved, or only a set, certain path that the person can follow, and having the actual challenge to the writer being to figure out that path without asking the solution OOC, and to execute that solution while remaining in character. That would make it intellectually exciting... but not much of a bolstering to your writing technique.

I really don't mean to sound like a bitch here or nothin', and I think they're all really nice ideas. With some work, all of them could be worthwhile for one reason or another, and Rust deserves some major props for thinking them up.

Any comments on my thoughts?

Edit: Oh, on Smithy's idea, I was just gonna say the it seems a whole lot like long distance DnD, which is totally cool with me. The only suggestion I'd make to that is that instead of it being all individual, have it be together. I mean, I don't know about anyone else, but I always had more fun with MMORPGs than the ones you play yourself, doing the monotonous quests over and over again, sitting alone in your basement. And what fun is a DnD campaign with only one player character? But hey, thats just me.

Just a copy/paste response to Kris, since I'm sure other people have similar concerns:

The fun of Vivica was in the fact that it wasn't in the style of D&D. As in, we weren't all in a party together. 'Cause when that happens, there's very little left to do except the battles. You can't have too many creative quests that cause individuals to think outside the box. On that note, however, it's not an individual RP by any means. In fact, comradery is most definitely encouraged, and you'll find certain quests HAVE to be completed by two or three people. In addition, you're never alone, even on your quest. Say someone's in a city, on a different quest. Your quest eventually leads into that city. Almost without fail, you are going to encounter that other person's quest. It's a living, breathing world it's set in, so your actions will affect present events, and therefore quests can really never be solitary.

If you want to see it in action, check the link I provided; just scroll down past all the huge intro and characters and stuff; the actual game starts after the FAQs. Note that the board pretty much died before we really got into everything I had planned for it.

I think, in regards to what Niss' said about idea three, it's not meant to be too mentally challenging or building creativity or whatever, I think it's just there to be mindless fun when you want to get away from the complexities of intricate plotlines and the like.

Sometimes you want to go paintballing and set out plans with your team and act like you're in the army fighting Nazis or whatever as your pulse pounds when you look around the corner and see a battalion of the opposition, trying to figure out the best way to sneak around them or just take out as many as you can for the sake of your team. To have difficult-to-pull-off plans in which the fat guy is used as bait and everyone else hides in trenches or trees like Native-Americans killing a group of Cowboys for desecrating their land.

But sometimes you want to just shoot the shit out of things with paintballs.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, Mr. 'ust, but I believe the Danger Room is meant to be simply no holds barred fun, the leader-boards and whatnot there to try and ensure things are entertaining to read as well as to write.

As for the stat-based RP, Smith, I'm just not really into that kind of thing, so I won't comment. I'm sure those who are would enjoy it though.

Tiger is amazing because Tiger is right

I just want to announce that a new category is in the works that will deal with these kind of fun writing exercises (we will probably use all three of Rust's ideas). Anyone with other ideas can submit them here.

Also, I would really like some more feedback on the stat-based game (and btw, when I say stat-based, trust me, it's far more of an RP than a D&D-type thing - It's basically like a pseudo-world, the only things stats affect are any battles you get into). I encourage everyone to check out the link I posted and let me know if they think they'd at least give it a shot.

Well, Shifting Sands sure does have a lot of potential. Only problem now is getting over our already low stats D=

Huzzah for the Scenario Room, but I have placed the first two ideas in the name of Amany

Or Nissa, who vowed to steal the second idea from said Amany

Yeah, I can't wait to beat shit up and get some levels rolling in.

Trust me, your stats are fine. Rust, with your 5 DEF you'll barely even feel the enemy's attacks. XD

See, the quests don't have set enemies. Whatever you encounter is scaled to provide an adequate challenge based on your level. So, if a Lv5 player took the same quest as a Lv1 player, the Lv5 player would encounter harder enemies. Simple as that.

I'mma be a tank, sir <3

I can't move an inch but no one's going to hurt me, lol

I actually did think about a 1,1,1,7 character, but I think that'd be overdoing the whole line of defense