Martel's Majorly Merrily Malfunctioning Monstrous Meltdown of Madness, Mediocrity and Mortality. Leave your shoes in the hallway, and don't touch anything.

So, yes, I’m back into roleplaying. Cause for celebration for some. Although the RP section on this site is painfully dead, even with the ideas running around in it. You get one or two RPs that are moderately successful for a time, but then die off for one reason or another. There is an active minority, but that isn’t how an RP section is supposed to work. I’ve been thinking about how to tackle this little conundrum for a while now.

It hit me earlier, whilst I was lounging in the bath: we’re thinking too small. Why do RPs die? Lack of interest, and because they’re player regulated. What this place needs is a forum-wide RP: a world that is fixed and clearly defined, one that offers limitless possibilities and freedom, for EVERYONE to interact with. If you want an active RP section on a forum, then you need a forum-wide RP. An entirely original world, a story to go with it, and an infinite way to keep the players going. A lot like the forum RPG we had, but in RP format. This, I have come to think, is what the forum needs to have a properly active RP section.

To that end, I’ve been brainstorming. Thus far, this is what I’ve come up with…I’m not sure how much of this is applicable, how much the admins would agree to, or whether or not anyone would even be interested in something like this, but I think, from personal experience, it would attract more role-players to the site, and provide a more interesting experience than one-off RPs that constantly die due to lack of interest.

- I suppose what it boils down to is that I think an original world needs to be created. One with a traditional fantasy setting, with continents, politics, a history, the whole lot. Create an original world, and make a new sub-section in the forum for it, with sections for each area.
- Because this is a Final Fantasy forum, this needs to have some FF basis, so I would suggest that there are character classes – some based on actual classes from the FF series, some made up – for people to choose from; Time Mage, Red Mage, etc., when they make a character. Everyone would start on the same level. They could pick a class for some unique abilities, and a standard pack containing equipment etc.
- There would be an overarching story and main goal for characters to work towards – don’t rush me here, this one will actually take me longer than 10 minutes to come up with, and I don’t want to put my foot in it until I’ve got this down pat – but for the most part, this would be a quest based experience. So, someone (RP mods perhaps, although allow me to get back to this point) would post up quests for the areas (this would need a sub-board for each separate location, so threads were separated) and then player characters could undertake them, making them…mercenaries, of sorts, I suppose. Although there would be other organisations – military, thieves, assassins, etc – that they could join as well, which would offer their own benefits. People could also explore on their own and battle one another, naturally, and there would be some permanent fixtures (bosses of sorts) people could go off on their own to tackle…although doing this with weak equipment or spells (putting it into tiers to determine power levels would be the logical thing) would lead to disaster, naturally.
- Character development is something I’m working on…I’m thinking that implementing a currency system that goes by post count might work. The more you post, the more money you get, and the more spells and weapons and whatnot you can buy. The more quests you do, the more money you get, and the more you can buy. The more you buy, the stronger you get. They could also be given as rewards for quests and whatnot. Level-up systems are unrealistic in a free-flowing RP, and painful to sort out, but we’d need some way to moderate character abilities, so I think this would be the best way to go about it. I know there was a currency system on here in the past for the RPG, and having this re-implemented would be a good idea if this was to go forward. Maybe something like £75 per post or something. If it couldn’t be implemented directly, having players actually keep track of their own money would be fine as well.
- The idea of RP mods that regulate this by providing obstacles in the form of enemies or NPCs for players to overcome over the course of their adventures is where I stumble a bit because, bluntly put, there are only three people on this forum that I would be happy with acting as moderators for an RP thread I had, and I honestly wouldn’t want the position myself; I have long since abandoned the idea of being a moderator on here, whether I was deemed suitable or not. I don’t know if that would work, and the idea of having just anyone able to provide this NPC interaction is a tad unrealistic; it goes against the structure of the thing. So…let me get back to that. It might just be me, but then again, maybe not.

I AM STILL THINKING THIS THROUGH. So much needs to be considered for this, if it were ever to become a reality…amongst other things, it would take an immense amount of preparation, which would take me longer than 24 hours to come up with. We’re talking designing an entire world here; I’ve done this before, and it gave me a headache doing it. That was just the world. Rules would need to be written about character development, weapons, armour and spells would need to be designed, prices set, a history going back AT LEAST a century would need to be written, major NPCs of varying levels of strength, some preliminary things for players to be doing…it’s like designing both a video game and a novel setting in one. It’s not something I would undertake lightly, but if other people thought it was a good idea, and the staff OK’ed it, I’d be able to get it ready for the summer, after my exams are done and I can just sit down and hammer it all out.

So…suggestions? Questions? Comments? I think if it had enough starting interest, it could be going for a very long time, because it wouldn’t be dependent on a small minority. It would also provide those who are less experienced with an ideal way to learn how to role-play, because anyone would be able to take part in it, and take their character in whatever direction pleased them…within the limits set in the world and RP rules, of course. It sounds overly ambitious, but if people would take part in it, I’d design it~

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