Friday, 16 November 2012

RolePlayGateway?

Disclaimer: This is a long wall-o-text that may or may not make any sense to anyone but me. It's basically a search for two partners, one for each of the following ideas. The first story would be set in our own world only darker, and with every nightmare you've ever known running around somewhere. The second is a Neo-Victorian steampunk and airship idea, I've color coded the first few lines of each idea to make it easier to skim to whatever the readers are more interested, though I will admit I do have a strong desire to create the Steampunk story. Yeah I basically just described 2200 words in three sentences, sad right?

All right so after writing my initial partner search I noticed that I forgot to include the usual 'How I write and What kind of partner I'm looking for' stuff. So I'm just throwing it at the beginning and getting it all out of the way. Personally I tend to write an average of 500+ words per post if that's important to anyone, my posts tend to be rather long as I like to put details into it, fleshing out my characters at the same time as the setting. I don't really have a proper filter I just write what fits, which includes the usual Mature content[I], and I used italics because unless someone blatantly throws gratuitous sex into their stories I don't really see the need to call it ?mature? content. Write the story first and worry about graphic content later, what I'm envisioning here is a dark world; filled to the brim with blood, violence, and horror. I'm not interested in adding cheap thrills or ridiculous gore like some cheap horror movies, but I'm going to write the story as as it needs to be written, there'll be strong language, gore, violence, the occasional moral conundrum, and a lot of gray area. Like I said though I'm not [I]trying to make it bloody and graphic, I wont add in more than is necessary for the story, I wont add anything just for the sake of making it more "mature", I'll also respect any preferences set forth by my partners, so long as don't ask me to remove all the blood, or something like that. in other words I won't go to any extreme, I'll just write the story as it needs be written.

Moving on. Grammar, is my Achilles heel, not to say I'm bad with grammar, I run a spell check and I generally try not to suck, but I make mistakes. To be honest I spelled grammar wrong twice already, and I've probably used commas in the wrong place. This Interest check is basically my writing style, I get an idea, try to make sense of the idea, delve into more detail than I really need too, and hope it comes across as interesting outside of my head as it did inside. If you dislike it I'm probably not going to be a great partner, if you can stand my slight madness I'm great for coming up with ideas. Anyways one last thing to cover, romance. Personally I don't much care about romance side of things, but for all the role-playing sights I jump between romance often seems to be the focus of one on ones so I like to clear the air now. I do not care if romance is or is not in my stories, I don't plan it out ahead of time, and I never force it. If the characters work well together and it seems like the natural progression of things I'll write it in, but never as a primary element, or even a side story. Romance is more like And in other news....here's some romance. back to the main story kind of thing. All of this said I general prefer female partners though this isn't a requirement, just an airing of preference. My characters are always male and so I like to balance this out with the opposing mindset.

Anyways moving on, at last, to my original interest check, five bucks says most viewers have already closed this thread though, my stream of consciousness has that effect.

I find myself in a stable position and some time to kill. That said I also went back into my World of Darkness books the other day, and after reading all my notes, ideas, and general ramblings I find myself really wanting to get a story up and running. Don't know what the World of Darkness is? Not a problem, basically it's our world, only with every horrible nightmare we tell ourselves doesn't exist. Demons, werewolves, vampires, the undead, ghosts, and the list goes on. To borrow a bit from the World of darkness intro:

A parliament of monsters hides behind the curtain of human ignorance. They emerge, sometimes, past the red velvet. They move in shadows among the human herd, and they reach out and pluck the unsuspecting into their grip. Humans can be livestock to the hungry, lovers to the lustful, toys to the wicked. All the horror stories talk of it: vampires filling their mouths with our blood, lycanthropes harrying mortal prey through dark forests, demons convincing a man to hand over his soul in a gift-wrapped bundle. But they aren?t just stories, are they? The horrors are real, hiding within a labyrinth of mystery.

Basically what World of Darkness does is set the stage for horror and exploration into the darkest corners of a world not so far disconnected from our own. And that's why I love it. Through a series of source books nWoD set the stage for players to take the role of various supernatural creatures, everything from mages to werewolves, vampires, and changelings. Yet these aren't my favorite stories, it's also not what I really have a desire for at the moment. What I'm looking to create now is based off Hunter the Vigil, a setting that takes everyday people and puts them up against the nightmares.

Hunter: The Vigil is a game about those humans who have come by some means to recognize the truth, that monsters exist. These individuals cannot sit idly by. They must study their foes. They must destroy them or steal their power. They must use them as pawns against one another. It?s not an easy thing, the endless hunt, the ceaseless Vigil. It is a thing of brutality and obsession, a slope slippery with the blood of those who came and fell before, a slope that descends into nightmare. And yet they can do no differently, because the Vigil drives them. They sacrifice. They push forward. They hunt.

This is supposed to a story of horror and heroics, normal people facing things that even supposed to exist, because they have too. These aren't the kind of people who'll ever be thanked for their efforts, even if some like to think they will, these are the kind of people that get thrown into rubber rooms if they were to go around saying they slew monsters. And in many cases the people are facing more than just monsters, they still have lives to lead, families to feed, and jobs to work. It's not a story about government agencies or secret order (Though those forces exist) it's your average construction worker, you're local librarian, that quite guy at work who doesn't talk much and always seems tired. People who've looked into the heart of darkness and stand between it and the an unaware humanity. Hunter the Vigil is one of a few roleplaying games that take various mental illnesses into account because by the end most players develop paranoia and shell-shock by the end of a campaign, in fact when I'm playing tabletop I've had several characters get so broken that they went made and turned into slashers, which is what we call serial killers and other madmen parts of them just broke and they started seeing monsters in the faces of normal people.

Now I don't have an exact plot lined up yet, particularly because I like to brainstorm some ideas with my partners, but just about anything is possible within this world. Depending on the kind of story one wants you just have to shift the environment and kind of monsters that are running about. For example what I like to do, I like to create a world where the players are hunting monsters, but also have to take great care to keep it out of public view. By which I mean you put some big, powerful monster in a position of influence, a Skinwalker wearing the police chiefs face, a Ghost who's possessing a mayor, even a vampire with the right connections (Note: I generally try to avoid vampires, except for the occasional short hunt, as they're painfully overdone). In this world the players can't just go kicking in doors to every nest of monster out there, or their going to shift the status-qua and before they know it this more powerful monster has them labeled public enemy number one.

Or you could just as easy shift the setting to a small rural community, and before you know it instead of fearing monster with powerful connections your investigating old Indian burial grounds, werewolves, various spirits, heck I even took part in a campaign where we hunted a treant. Anyways in this setting the characters have to be afraid of the local police force, unless someone on that force is one of the hunters, but for the most part the horror is more rural and compact. Both setting involve equal parts violence, horror, and frayed nerves, but setting can really change the tone of the overall story. That said, I can work in either sort of setting and I've got enough ideas to meld any level of danger into either, meanwhile I've got just the sort of character that with a few tweaks can generally fit into any setting. Either way I generally aim to create a story where both characters are still recently new to the concept of hunting monsters, they've had their eyes opened, learned to cope, and are generally hanging on to their sanity, but they still don't know just how deep the shadows around them are, or even if they're the only people who realizes what's out there. In essence their just two people holding a candle in the night, it's not much but it's enough to blaze a path and maybe, just maybe, make a difference.

And that's really all I've got for this idea, like I said I'm better at grinding out the real details when I've got my partners, as it helps to know just what kind of nightmare they want to create.

Now, if you thought the above idea was vague wait to you hear this one. Essentially what I want to do is re-create One thousand and One nights in a steampunk setting, which really doesn't sound all that complicated I suppose. Essentially what I need is a ?Scheherazade? but I don't want to just translate this old story into a different setting, I'm using it more for tone and inspiration.

At it's core I was thinking to create a sort of Victorian world that was torn into squabbling city states, a place where nobility ruled as much through trade routes as military power, and into the world I had planned to put my character one bitter cold-hearted airship captain. A man would as happily carry guns to war front as he would food to a starving frontier village so long as the pay was there, the kind of man who had decided to let the world burn below him, it'd keep the balloon full of hot air and him in the sky after all. He's not interested in hurting people, not so long as they don't get in his way or threaten his ship, and he's certainly not interested in being anyone's hero.

I had thought that perhaps my partners character could be a simple kind of citizen from a border village, perhaps one that was caught between the wars of several city-states, perhaps her and her village, or a few others just happen to be giving port to my characters ship when the armies and armadas role in, and in haste the villagers or just you character offer whatever pay they can for my character to bring them aboard and get them out of the fight.

From here I would imagine the story would grow naturally, the ship would go wherever it was welcome and look for work and my partners character would take the role of ?Scheherazade? teaching my own character how to be an actual human being, Of course it won't just be a happy progression, he's a bitter broken human being after all, and it's not unlikely that my partners character will see her share of darkness. They'll both change in the end and perhaps eventually they'll get involved in the wars, fighting for the smaller villages and defending the people from the politicians. They could become a sort of robin hood in the sky, or they could just become refugee relief, though it's likely they would become a mix of all of these. Either way it would be a story of adventure, danger, and Victorian era steampunk. Also I'll admit that this story has a very likely chance for romance, but you really only have to look at where I'm getting my inspiration to see that coming, but still I don't want it to be some kind of love-at-first-sight or such romance. This story will be as brutal as it will be happy, it's still Victorian, there will be wars, blood and death. I intend to explore political atrocities, genocide between villages, and all sort of general violence just as much as I would like the character to see moments of levity and heroics, but you can't appreciate light colors until you see the dark ones as well.

Now with this idea I have thought about making it a group Rp, it's possible I suppose but I'd like to build some report between my own character and this ?Scheherazade? before that, and I'd also like to get myself back into the writing habit. Anyways this idea, like all my others is open to a bit of alteration so feel free to shoot me your ideas should anyone have them.

Anyways that's all I've got for now and hopefully I snagged someones interest for either idea, though as I said I'm really craving some Airships and general steampunk right about now, probably the fault of my music, anyways shoot me a PM if anyone is interested and as always thank for reading, should anyone have made it all the way through.

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