Post by Zach on Aug 20, 2011 23:28:37 GMT -5
Well, as much as it pains me to say it, our Homestuck RP is, for all intents and purposes, dead. This was due to a number of factors, not the least of which was a total lack of structure and planning. Basically, it failed because we all tried to do our own thing, without any regards for how the story would work as a whole. Normally, we would just let the RP die off and forget about it... but not this time. It's too good of an idea to just let it die off so easily, so, after a lot of discussion, Cayley, Brittany, and I have agreed to restart it. This time, however, there are going to be some changes.
The first thing that I have to say is that, after talking it over with Cayley, it has been decided that I am going to be the one in charge of the moderation of this RP. What does that mean? It means that I am going to be the one trying to weave our individual ideas together into a coherent plot. Before I go any deeper into what that plot will actually be, however, I'm going to set some ground rules. If you want to participate in this RP, you WILL follow these.
1. ABSOLUTELY NO HIJACKING THE PLOT. We tried a chaotic, HS-style command system, and it failed epically. Why? Because we had people with their own agendas trying to steer the RP in 20 different directions at once. Everyone is allowed their own input, of course, but we'll get into that a little later. For now, know that if you attempt to take control of the story without consulting everyone else first, you will be kicked from the rp, and your character will be taken over by one of the others. It's harsh, but it's what has to be done to preserve the story.
2. THERE IS NO "MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER." We all have our own times in the spotlight. We all have Crowning Moments of Awesome. We all impact the plot. I do NOT want to see someone attempting to turn themselves into a McGuffin (sp?).
3. To be honest, there are some characters in this RP, trolls in particular, that need reworking. You can submit any character you wish for consideration, but if that character does not get a majority (3/4) votes for admission into the story, you'll have to go back and rework him/her before he/she is allowed to take part.
4. BE FLEXIBLE. This is a story written by 4 (or possibly more?) seperate people. I don't care if you have the best idea EVER, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. You are NOT to switch things around or fabricate events just to play into "your version" of events. Sorry, but RPs don't work that way. So be flexible. Be ready to ammend your ideas at a moments notice. Also, be willing to adhere to the plot skeleton that will be provided a bit later in the post.
5. NO BITCHING. I am DEAD SERIOUS. But really, if something happens that you don't like, keep it to yourself. If it's a serious plot issue, by all means, discuss it, but if you, personally, don't agree with it, don't attack it. COURTESY, people. Courtesy.
6. As for commands, here is the rule. Everyone gets ONE command per action. This is how they work. If your command is the FIRST, then you may either make a rational suggestion OR a silly command. If the first comment was a rational command, the second and subsequent commands will be different choices. If the first was silly, ALL OTHER COMMANDS MUST BE RATIONAL.
Example: Zach is in front of the Lathe.
1: Zach: Ride Lathe like a mechanical bull.
2: Zach: Put something in the Lathe.
3: Zach: Pester Brittany and ask what to do.
You wanna be silly? It's first come, first serve.
7. Speaking of silly, THIS IS NOT HOMESTUCK. Humor through shenanigans is not the overall theme of our session. When we do it, it seems awkward and stilted. Let the humor flow naturally. Also remember, we are all 18+ years old. We can be derps, but none of us are gibbering morons. RP how you would play in real life, and DON'T BE STUPID ALL THE TIME. Find a balance of silly and serious and keep it.
8. ADHERE TO THE PLOT SKELETON. 8luh.
And that's it. For now. But remember, I reserve the right to add or change any rules here, should I deem in neccecary.
Alright, now that we've got that unpleasantness out of the way, let's get on to how this RP will actually function. First of all, the style will a little more formal. It will be done in a series of well defined arcs that all tie into one another. For example, if, in my arc, Brittany stops pestering me mid conversation, in her arc, we could see that she fell unconcsious or something. Basically, everything is going to tie together. Next, I want to not that the story is divided into 3 main chapters: All: Enter, All: Play, and All: Survive. Enter will cover from the time we get the game until the time we enter the medium. Play will cover the meat of our session, and our struggles with Blight, etc. Survive will be the finale, leading up to The Scratch. Each of these chapters will be broken down into miniature story arcs, one for each of us. We will fully complete one character arc before moving on to the next one. Once all arcs have been completed for a chapter, we move on to the next one. Between each chapter is an intermission that will, primarily, deal with our Trolls. The length of these intermissions will be played by ear.
Now for the fun part. Below, you will see a plot skeleton of what is going to happen. As long as you do not violate or alter any of these basic rules, you WRITE YOUR OWN ARC. Every participant will make his or her own thread, and in it, you will describe what happens in your particular arc. That way, we can tie our stories together. Note, however, that anyone can comment and critique your plots if they could potentially cause problems. Now, the skeleton.
=============================================
SBURB: ALPHA
=============================================
Prelude/Overview- Zach's uncle is one of the programmers behind SBURB. One week before the Beta was released, he sent four copies of the Alpha version to Zach and his friends, so they could have first dibs on the experience. What he didn't know, what nobody knew, is that the game was seriously glitched. The problem manifested itself in the programming of an in game entity known as Blight. Originally a debugging tool, the Glitch caused it to go berzerk. Because the entire session is, essentially, an illegal bug, the game is put in a special Debugging medium, and is put at the mercy of the malfunctioning Blight.
All: Enter- In this chapter, we all begin playing the game. At first, things seem normal. Cayley will be the first to riddle out howthe machines work, mainly due to her theatre experience. She, for that reason, will be the first to enter. As the rest of us follow suit, we begin to recognize that SBURB is no game, and that it poses very real dangers. Earth is destroyed by meteors, and we all enter the Debugging Medium. This is the most open part of the plot, and generally, you will have free reign of how you act (within context of the commands.) An important thing to note is that this chapter will be primarily a NARRATION. We are recounting this chapter, and how things happened. Chapter 2 is when we are in the "present." Since I'm starting the RP, you'll see there how it is to be done.
All: Play- We have all entered the medium. At first, things seem relatively normal. Then things go to hell. First, our Trolls (whose backstory will be explained during the Intermission) begin to contact us. Then, as we continue playing, our session begins to unravel. As our session is slowly eaten from the ourside in by Blight's GREAT WAVE, Blight's AVATAR begins attacking us on our worlds. This AVATAR takes on our faces and abilities, and is much too powerful to defeat normally. Advised by our trolls (primarily Lubido), we attempt to grow stronger and fight back, not knowing that defeating Blight is impossible. Slowly, we each begin to discover our abilities. Cayley, having the most obvious powers over time, discovers hers first. Under the misguidance of Lubido, I hatch a plan with the rest of the group to fight off Blight utilizing the power of Arcana XX: Judgement. I do not yet know that, though granting great power, Judgement is fatal to the user. We agree on the plan, and begin making preparations to enact it, believing Judgement to be a game breaker. However, by accident, Cayley's time powers cause her to jump into the future, revealing us to be on a DOOMED TIMELINE. She watches as Blight overpowers us by turning the game itself against us, and sees us all die. Returning to our present, she completely flips out and sabotages our plan. Cayley and I (and possibly the others) get into a massive fight, and waste too much time. Without realizing it, she saves us by preventing us from enacting the doomed plan, so we are forced to regroup. It is at this time that the trolls open the source code for our game and piggyback a new session on top of our own. With all of us now together (at least, all of us that are still alive), we begin to make a desperate, last-ditch effort to save ourselves.
All: Survive- The final chapter. With all of us together, and our worlds being eaten away by Blight, we form a plan. Lubido informs us about his theories regarding what we now know to be The Scratch, and has us buy time to execute it. This is where we all part ways. Brittany will use this arc to divine a way to beat Blight. She will hear on The Breeze that Blight is invincible, so long as his AVATAR still exists, and that the MASK worn by the AVATAR is his weak point. Using this information, Cayley goes off to fight the AVATAR. It takes on her form and attempts to use her time powers against her, but Cayley, having gained God Tier (this is left open-ended), has stronger TIME powers than her copycat, and is able to freeze Blight in place for long enough to slice his mask off and destroy the AVATAR. This reveals that Blight's true form... the game itself. He begins to take the fragments of our destroyed worlds and form a new body, an amalgam of our different lands. Before he can take Cayley's world (and by extension the Beat Mesa), Murray will use his Space power to switch the locations of SKAIA and LOTAM. As the center of our session is the last place to be consumed, it buys us precious time to initiate the scratch. While all this goes on, I take JUDGEMENT back from Cayley, and use it to achieve my final form. I go off to fight the massive, planetary Blight, at the expense of my own life. Though I do not defeat him, the damage I deal will be sufficient to cripple him and prevent him from using his powers over the session to wipe us instantly from reality. I barely make it back to LOTAM to discover that, at the last moment, the trolls have worked out how to cause the scratch. As I lay dying on the Mesa, Abliss finds a card, and gives it to me. As Blight's ruined AVATAR appears to try and finish us off, The Scratch is initiated and he is destroyed, SBURB effectively debugged. As our reality fades away, I discover the card is the missing Arcana XXI, The World. With it, we achieve a happy, but bitersweet, ending.
As for the intermissions, the first will deal with how the Trolls came to be in our Debugging Medium. The second will deal with what happened once they were there, and how Domavi came to totally flip her shit.
And that is the plot skeleton. Questions? Comments? Concerns?
The first thing that I have to say is that, after talking it over with Cayley, it has been decided that I am going to be the one in charge of the moderation of this RP. What does that mean? It means that I am going to be the one trying to weave our individual ideas together into a coherent plot. Before I go any deeper into what that plot will actually be, however, I'm going to set some ground rules. If you want to participate in this RP, you WILL follow these.
1. ABSOLUTELY NO HIJACKING THE PLOT. We tried a chaotic, HS-style command system, and it failed epically. Why? Because we had people with their own agendas trying to steer the RP in 20 different directions at once. Everyone is allowed their own input, of course, but we'll get into that a little later. For now, know that if you attempt to take control of the story without consulting everyone else first, you will be kicked from the rp, and your character will be taken over by one of the others. It's harsh, but it's what has to be done to preserve the story.
2. THERE IS NO "MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER." We all have our own times in the spotlight. We all have Crowning Moments of Awesome. We all impact the plot. I do NOT want to see someone attempting to turn themselves into a McGuffin (sp?).
3. To be honest, there are some characters in this RP, trolls in particular, that need reworking. You can submit any character you wish for consideration, but if that character does not get a majority (3/4) votes for admission into the story, you'll have to go back and rework him/her before he/she is allowed to take part.
4. BE FLEXIBLE. This is a story written by 4 (or possibly more?) seperate people. I don't care if you have the best idea EVER, if it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit. You are NOT to switch things around or fabricate events just to play into "your version" of events. Sorry, but RPs don't work that way. So be flexible. Be ready to ammend your ideas at a moments notice. Also, be willing to adhere to the plot skeleton that will be provided a bit later in the post.
5. NO BITCHING. I am DEAD SERIOUS. But really, if something happens that you don't like, keep it to yourself. If it's a serious plot issue, by all means, discuss it, but if you, personally, don't agree with it, don't attack it. COURTESY, people. Courtesy.
6. As for commands, here is the rule. Everyone gets ONE command per action. This is how they work. If your command is the FIRST, then you may either make a rational suggestion OR a silly command. If the first comment was a rational command, the second and subsequent commands will be different choices. If the first was silly, ALL OTHER COMMANDS MUST BE RATIONAL.
Example: Zach is in front of the Lathe.
1: Zach: Ride Lathe like a mechanical bull.
2: Zach: Put something in the Lathe.
3: Zach: Pester Brittany and ask what to do.
You wanna be silly? It's first come, first serve.
7. Speaking of silly, THIS IS NOT HOMESTUCK. Humor through shenanigans is not the overall theme of our session. When we do it, it seems awkward and stilted. Let the humor flow naturally. Also remember, we are all 18+ years old. We can be derps, but none of us are gibbering morons. RP how you would play in real life, and DON'T BE STUPID ALL THE TIME. Find a balance of silly and serious and keep it.
8. ADHERE TO THE PLOT SKELETON. 8luh.
And that's it. For now. But remember, I reserve the right to add or change any rules here, should I deem in neccecary.
Alright, now that we've got that unpleasantness out of the way, let's get on to how this RP will actually function. First of all, the style will a little more formal. It will be done in a series of well defined arcs that all tie into one another. For example, if, in my arc, Brittany stops pestering me mid conversation, in her arc, we could see that she fell unconcsious or something. Basically, everything is going to tie together. Next, I want to not that the story is divided into 3 main chapters: All: Enter, All: Play, and All: Survive. Enter will cover from the time we get the game until the time we enter the medium. Play will cover the meat of our session, and our struggles with Blight, etc. Survive will be the finale, leading up to The Scratch. Each of these chapters will be broken down into miniature story arcs, one for each of us. We will fully complete one character arc before moving on to the next one. Once all arcs have been completed for a chapter, we move on to the next one. Between each chapter is an intermission that will, primarily, deal with our Trolls. The length of these intermissions will be played by ear.
Now for the fun part. Below, you will see a plot skeleton of what is going to happen. As long as you do not violate or alter any of these basic rules, you WRITE YOUR OWN ARC. Every participant will make his or her own thread, and in it, you will describe what happens in your particular arc. That way, we can tie our stories together. Note, however, that anyone can comment and critique your plots if they could potentially cause problems. Now, the skeleton.
=============================================
SBURB: ALPHA
=============================================
Prelude/Overview- Zach's uncle is one of the programmers behind SBURB. One week before the Beta was released, he sent four copies of the Alpha version to Zach and his friends, so they could have first dibs on the experience. What he didn't know, what nobody knew, is that the game was seriously glitched. The problem manifested itself in the programming of an in game entity known as Blight. Originally a debugging tool, the Glitch caused it to go berzerk. Because the entire session is, essentially, an illegal bug, the game is put in a special Debugging medium, and is put at the mercy of the malfunctioning Blight.
All: Enter- In this chapter, we all begin playing the game. At first, things seem normal. Cayley will be the first to riddle out howthe machines work, mainly due to her theatre experience. She, for that reason, will be the first to enter. As the rest of us follow suit, we begin to recognize that SBURB is no game, and that it poses very real dangers. Earth is destroyed by meteors, and we all enter the Debugging Medium. This is the most open part of the plot, and generally, you will have free reign of how you act (within context of the commands.) An important thing to note is that this chapter will be primarily a NARRATION. We are recounting this chapter, and how things happened. Chapter 2 is when we are in the "present." Since I'm starting the RP, you'll see there how it is to be done.
All: Play- We have all entered the medium. At first, things seem relatively normal. Then things go to hell. First, our Trolls (whose backstory will be explained during the Intermission) begin to contact us. Then, as we continue playing, our session begins to unravel. As our session is slowly eaten from the ourside in by Blight's GREAT WAVE, Blight's AVATAR begins attacking us on our worlds. This AVATAR takes on our faces and abilities, and is much too powerful to defeat normally. Advised by our trolls (primarily Lubido), we attempt to grow stronger and fight back, not knowing that defeating Blight is impossible. Slowly, we each begin to discover our abilities. Cayley, having the most obvious powers over time, discovers hers first. Under the misguidance of Lubido, I hatch a plan with the rest of the group to fight off Blight utilizing the power of Arcana XX: Judgement. I do not yet know that, though granting great power, Judgement is fatal to the user. We agree on the plan, and begin making preparations to enact it, believing Judgement to be a game breaker. However, by accident, Cayley's time powers cause her to jump into the future, revealing us to be on a DOOMED TIMELINE. She watches as Blight overpowers us by turning the game itself against us, and sees us all die. Returning to our present, she completely flips out and sabotages our plan. Cayley and I (and possibly the others) get into a massive fight, and waste too much time. Without realizing it, she saves us by preventing us from enacting the doomed plan, so we are forced to regroup. It is at this time that the trolls open the source code for our game and piggyback a new session on top of our own. With all of us now together (at least, all of us that are still alive), we begin to make a desperate, last-ditch effort to save ourselves.
All: Survive- The final chapter. With all of us together, and our worlds being eaten away by Blight, we form a plan. Lubido informs us about his theories regarding what we now know to be The Scratch, and has us buy time to execute it. This is where we all part ways. Brittany will use this arc to divine a way to beat Blight. She will hear on The Breeze that Blight is invincible, so long as his AVATAR still exists, and that the MASK worn by the AVATAR is his weak point. Using this information, Cayley goes off to fight the AVATAR. It takes on her form and attempts to use her time powers against her, but Cayley, having gained God Tier (this is left open-ended), has stronger TIME powers than her copycat, and is able to freeze Blight in place for long enough to slice his mask off and destroy the AVATAR. This reveals that Blight's true form... the game itself. He begins to take the fragments of our destroyed worlds and form a new body, an amalgam of our different lands. Before he can take Cayley's world (and by extension the Beat Mesa), Murray will use his Space power to switch the locations of SKAIA and LOTAM. As the center of our session is the last place to be consumed, it buys us precious time to initiate the scratch. While all this goes on, I take JUDGEMENT back from Cayley, and use it to achieve my final form. I go off to fight the massive, planetary Blight, at the expense of my own life. Though I do not defeat him, the damage I deal will be sufficient to cripple him and prevent him from using his powers over the session to wipe us instantly from reality. I barely make it back to LOTAM to discover that, at the last moment, the trolls have worked out how to cause the scratch. As I lay dying on the Mesa, Abliss finds a card, and gives it to me. As Blight's ruined AVATAR appears to try and finish us off, The Scratch is initiated and he is destroyed, SBURB effectively debugged. As our reality fades away, I discover the card is the missing Arcana XXI, The World. With it, we achieve a happy, but bitersweet, ending.
As for the intermissions, the first will deal with how the Trolls came to be in our Debugging Medium. The second will deal with what happened once they were there, and how Domavi came to totally flip her shit.
And that is the plot skeleton. Questions? Comments? Concerns?
