Traveller's Cafe 4: Brainstorming, Discussion, Tea, Advice

[Kassaran]

I, as the OP, would pose as various NPC's and traders, from your humble water merchants to the mighty shipyard foreman and everything in-between.

This all sounds loverly - though I would caution against this part particularly. Burnout is real for OP-heavy RPGs, and many a delightful setting has foundered on the back of the OP coming under too heavy of a load.

Well, I guess that's what my conscripts conspirators co-ops would have to help me with. It'd be generally a simple run-of-the-mill RPG, but I'd be wanting to see the developments going on between the factions as they try to align with one another. The important thing to remember is that the universe is inherently working against the players and there would be NPC factions built by the OP and Co-Ops to combat the movement of players as obstacles.

[Danubian Peoples]

Been playing Imperator: Rome a bit and it has given me a bit of an ancient itch so..

RP INTEREST AND FEEDBACK REQUEST

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Please provide as much detail as possible.
RP's Overarching Concept: A roleplay of the Greek polis (city-states) in Archaic-Classical Greece.
Genre/s: Historical, Ancient
Character or Faction Based: Faction
Detailed Description: It is the Xth century BCE and the Dark Ages are coming to an end. The Mycenaen civilization's ashes have given way to a new people, and with them, new civilizations. The first polis, city-states born from the coalescence of smaller settlements are coming into being, and with them come the rise of Greek colonies in Italia, Anatolia, the Crimea, and even perhaps even more distant lands. These colonies, unlike those of later ages, are cities in their own right, and can themselves play a role in the developing world. These polis are numerous, and very diverse. They may speak a common tongue and worship the same gods, but kinship between these squabbling city-states can only be forged in war. There is talk amongst the Greeks, of new ideas. Some are of popular sovereignty, of democracy. Others are of conquest and subjigation, of superiority over the fellow city-state. Still others are of greater conquest, of bringing all of the Greeks under one banner, and there are also words of a power in a distant land that will come to invade...

Introductory flavor text over, the idea of this RP is for the participants to build a Greece, more or less. Now since these polis came in the dozen by the handful (there may as well have been over a thousand), and I'm pretty sure even the most successful of RPs have nowhere near that many participants, any participants will only be RPing as noteworthy or major polis. As for the Polis themselves, well I'm thinking that they'll be fictional creations of the player, with their own governments, cultures and histories unrelated from the historical cities, like Athens, Sparta, Thebes, etc. These governments can come in a variety of flavors, from hereditary monarchies, to classical republics, to extreme military states. Since colonies necessarily need to be derived from a mother poli/s, colony apps must be tied to an already accepted app that isn't a colony. Or something like that that requires the consent of the first app? Gonna need that worked out.

Need Help With: The exact time period. I put Xth Century BCE since I'm not sure when exactly I want to set this. There's also the colony thing I need handled. I also would like feedback on the base concept in general, and whether or not I should just abandon it in favor of another time period with lots of players (the Diadochi, any of China's numerous warlord eras, Age of Exploration, etc). There's also the general refinement (certain things in the RP that are better of in a way other than how I stated it), and perhaps even minor nitpicks. All feedback is welcome. Thanks in advance.

Please leave this hashtag in place: #Mentorhelp

[G-Tech Corporation]

Introductory flavor text over, the idea of this RP is for the participants to build a Greece, more or less. Now since these polis came in the dozen by the handful (there may as well have been over a thousand), and I'm pretty sure even the most successful of RPs have nowhere near that many participants, any participants will only be RPing as noteworthy or major polis. As for the Polis themselves, well I'm thinking that they'll be fictional creations of the player, with their own governments, cultures and histories unrelated from the historical cities, like Athens, Sparta, Thebes, etc. These governments can come in a variety of flavors, from hereditary monarchies, to classical republics, to extreme military states. Since colonies necessarily need to be derived from a mother poli/s, colony apps must be tied to an already accepted app that isn't a colony. Or something like that that requires the consent of the first app? Gonna need that worked out.

Classical antiquity RPs based around polises and the Med are usually quite popular - I'm sure your concept will be successful. Some things to consider:

1) Do you intend to allow RPers to establish NPC colonies, or must all colonies by player-led?
2) What type of geographical limitations are you going to impose on player nations? Only beginning in Greece? Can Phoenicia play, the Persians, the Italics, and so on.
3) If colonization is a large part of this RP, you'll want to establish an IC-time or play-by-post limitation on how quickly colonies can be established and improved, so everyone can compete fairly for prime locations.

Otherwise, sounds like good fun.

[Danubian Peoples]

Introductory flavor text over, the idea of this RP is for the participants to build a Greece, more or less. Now since these polis came in the dozen by the handful (there may as well have been over a thousand), and I'm pretty sure even the most successful of RPs have nowhere near that many participants, any participants will only be RPing as noteworthy or major polis. As for the Polis themselves, well I'm thinking that they'll be fictional creations of the player, with their own governments, cultures and histories unrelated from the historical cities, like Athens, Sparta, Thebes, etc. These governments can come in a variety of flavors, from hereditary monarchies, to classical republics, to extreme military states. Since colonies necessarily need to be derived from a mother poli/s, colony apps must be tied to an already accepted app that isn't a colony. Or something like that that requires the consent of the first app? Gonna need that worked out.

Classical antiquity RPs based around polises and the Med are usually quite popular - I'm sure your concept will be successful. Some things to consider:

1) Do you intend to allow RPers to establish NPC colonies, or must all colonies by player-led?
2) What type of geographical limitations are you going to impose on player nations? Only beginning in Greece? Can Phoenicia play, the Persians, the Italics, and so on.
3) If colonization is a large part of this RP, you'll want to establish an IC-time or play-by-post limitation on how quickly colonies can be established and improved, so everyone can compete fairly for prime locations.

Otherwise, sounds like good fun.

To answer no. 1: Yes. NPC colonies are allowed to be made. They will provide some benefit to the mother poli/s but they'll also do their own thing, and will coexist with PC colonies. Considering the sheer number of polis and their colonies in fact, I might be able to get away with a 'new players always welcome,' ala the Infinites. That latter bit seems a bit risky however.

To answe no. 2: I intend this RP to be about Greeks, not Greece. This means one is not necessarily limited to the Greece region. You can muck around in Anatolia, Magna Graecia, around the Crimea, North Africa, perhaps even Southern Gaul or Hispania. All of those are places that Greeks colonized. And they will necessarily interact with the locals. Greeks in Magna Graecia may for instance have to contend with the Romans, Etruscans and other Italian peoples to their north, while north African colonies will have to deal with the Phoenicians.

To answer no. 3: Some sort of play-by-play, that sounds good. If I understand that correctly you want a sort of time limit. I'm thinking a system similar to the 'Galactic Headlines' that Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States used in their Memories of a Regicide RP, with events pertaining to things that the players have done, (War between X and Y hampers trade, new colony by Z in Sicily) as well as events unrelated to them that serve as things to react to (Barbarians are migrating into some colonies, surprise Persian Empire!). Players would react to some of these things first, and then they would be hit with another set of them. Think of them like free-form turns. Your opinion on them is welcome.

[Morecroft]

This all sounds loverly - though I would caution against this part particularly. Burnout is real for OP-heavy RPGs, and many a delightful setting has foundered on the back of the OP coming under too heavy of a load.

Well, I guess that's what my conscripts conspirators co-ops would have to help me with. It'd be generally a simple run-of-the-mill RPG, but I'd be wanting to see the developments going on between the factions as they try to align with one another. The important thing to remember is that the universe is inherently working against the players and there would be NPC factions built by the OP and Co-Ops to combat the movement of players as obstacles.

yess i agree !

[Skaldia]

Idea for an rp

Set far in the future when the Andromeda and Milky Way collide, the civilizations of the Milky Way attempted to redirect the approaching galaxy with their technology. For some reason, the technomagic unleashed was enough to cause a massive temporal and physical breakdown of the very structure of both galaxies. Time lost meaning, as every conceivable metaphysical or fantastic realm ever to had existed suddenly are forced to coexist on the same "material" plane. The original civilizations of both galaxies are simultaneously destroyed or scattered through a shattered multiverse.

This would be a character rp. Each person would play an inhabitant of the multiverse, only they have been imbued with incredible power and the ability to follow the Path. Each character would be drawn to find pieces of the Nexus and work together to return balance to an infant galaxy on the verge of destruction.

[Ceystile]

Anything with magic and/or multiverse I’m totally down with, bro

[Skaldia]

Anything with magic and/or multiverse I’m totally down with, bro

Glad to have ye aboard

[Main Nation Ministry]

While I'm a bit busy on stuff, I have another idea for an RP. Usually there is sci-fi RPs, however this idea is much more complicted. The story is based around the late 90's alien sci-fi works, such as Half-Life and Animorphs. While I have several variations on where the story takes place, the setting and lore remains the same.

The plot is that in an alternate 1997, a government experiment somewhere in the United States has gone wrong. The result is a wormhole is created that leads to the arrival of two alien races in a war. The first idea for the RP is the RP takes immediately place just after the experiment has gone wrong. You play as a worker in the government facility that the experiment has occurred, where your goal is to basically escape or try to close the wormhole (sorta like Half-Life). The setting continues onwards to after the incident. What ends up happening is that both alien forces are aware of humanity, where both try to blend in out of sight. One of these alien forces wants to enslave humanity and take over earth. The second idea is that you play as either a human who is aware of this war that's happening in secret, or one of the alien races fighting the other.

Cue to years later in an event where the alien war has become public knowledge, where this led to an apocalyptic event on 2000. However, this post-apocalyptic has some interesting qualities. The villianous aliens had won the war, leading to Earth's surrender, along with the other alien race residing on the planet to try to overthrow the regime that was created, however they have retreated underground or in underwater bases. The war has led to the destruction of several cities, where it's meant to be implied that the war has nearly wiped out humanity itself. Some aliens have turned some major cities into strongholds and kingdoms, while the surviving humans are left to rebuild their own society. The ruling aliens have managed to get control of humanity's weapons of mass destruction to turn against them, along with having their own weaponry that can lead to a massive loss of life to imitate humans. Electricity still exists, however the internet is under control of the regime. Some other alien species, though mainly feral are trying to adapt to Earth's wildlife. The overall third idea is that you have to overthrow the regime to have the planet be brought back to humans.

Those are my ideas, any feedback or ideas?

[New yugoslavaia]

While I'm a bit busy on stuff, I have another idea for an RP. Usually there is sci-fi RPs, however this idea is much more complicted. The story is based around the late 90's alien sci-fi works, such as Half-Life and Animorphs. While I have several variations on where the story takes place, the setting and lore remains the same.

The plot is that in an alternate 1997, a government experiment somewhere in the United States has gone wrong. The result is a wormhole is created that leads to the arrival of two alien races in a war. The first idea for the RP is the RP takes immediately place just after the experiment has gone wrong. You play as a worker in the government facility that the experiment has occurred, where your goal is to basically escape or try to close the wormhole (sorta like Half-Life). The setting continues onwards to after the incident. What ends up happening is that both alien forces are aware of humanity, where both try to blend in out of sight. One of these alien forces wants to enslave humanity and take over earth. The second idea is that you play as either a human who is aware of this war that's happening in secret, or one of the alien races fighting the other.

Cue to years later in an event where the alien war has become public knowledge, where this led to an apocalyptic event on 2000. However, this post-apocalyptic has some interesting qualities. The villianous aliens had won the war, leading to Earth's surrender, along with the other alien race residing on the planet to try to overthrow the regime that was created, however they have retreated underground or in underwater bases. The war has led to the destruction of several cities, where it's meant to be implied that the war has nearly wiped out humanity itself. Some aliens have turned some major cities into strongholds and kingdoms, while the surviving humans are left to rebuild their own society. The ruling aliens have managed to get control of humanity's weapons of mass destruction to turn against them, along with having their own weaponry that can lead to a massive loss of life to imitate humans. Electricity still exists, however the internet is under control of the regime. Some other alien species, though mainly feral are trying to adapt to Earth's wildlife. The overall third idea is that you have to overthrow the regime to have the planet be brought back to humans.

Those are my ideas, any feedback or ideas?

Interesting.
The whole “American doing interdimensional experiments in the 70s that eventually leads to the world being fundamentally altered” concept reminds me of an RP I tried to do earlier involving Human/Pokémon hybrid soldiers.
Yeah, probably a bit too weird.

[Nuridia]

Would anybody be interested if I rebooted this...I didn't get as many apps as I would've liked to open it last time but a good old fashioned angels and demons RP is always fun: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=403936&hilit=amitiel#p31216536

[New yugoslavaia]

I've noticed that post-apocalypse RPs have been somewhat popular recently.
But I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice to do one with a little...twist.
What I'm thinking of is an RP where instead of everyone having crappy tech and crappy lives and all the other crappy post-apocalyptic things, the focus is on a military group put together by a coalition of space colonies that have thrived in the centuries since they were first forced to live on their own. This group has one goal and one goal only...
...to reclaim Earth and restore order to the blue marble.

Thoughts on the idea?

[Main Nation Ministry]

I do have another interesting take on post-apocalypse RPs, which I thought should be done after seeing a Walking Dead RP. A post-apocalyse RP should cover and immediately start before the disaster happens and take place as society somewhat collapses. It's also where a player can experience the chaos of the situation at it's most intense.

[New yugoslavaia]

I do have another interesting take on post-apocalypse RPs, which I thought should be done after seeing a Walking Dead RP. A post-apocalyse RP should cover and immediately start before the disaster happens and take place as society somewhat collapses. It's also where a player can experience the chaos of the situation at it's most intense.

That sounds like an interesting idea.

[Guuj Xaat Kil]

Been itching for a good deity RP lately, but I’m unsure on OPing it, as I’ve never been one for being the head honcho of such things.

[Main Nation Ministry]

I do have another interesting take on post-apocalypse RPs, which I thought should be done after seeing a Walking Dead RP. A post-apocalyse RP should cover and immediately start before the disaster happens and take place as society somewhat collapses. It's also where a player can experience the chaos of the situation at it's most intense.

That sounds like an interesting idea.

What kind of disaster would be suitable? I was thinking of several ideas, but I'm not focusing on doing a zombie apocalyse since...said Walking Dead RP did that already, plus it's a bit too common. There's the idea of doing a nuclear apocalyse, where people try to survive as the fallout has shaped the world around them. Another idea was doing it similar to The Stand, where a virus has wiped out nearly all of humanity with the PCs being immune. Or there is the idea that IC the world is to officially end that would cause the extinction of humanity, but the IC is set only a month away, where characters can react on how to handle their inevitable fate.

[Harbertia]

I've noticed that post-apocalypse RPs have been somewhat popular recently.
But I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice to do one with a little...twist.
What I'm thinking of is an RP where instead of everyone having crappy tech and crappy lives and all the other crappy post-apocalyptic things, the focus is on a military group put together by a coalition of space colonies that have thrived in the centuries since they were first forced to live on their own. This group has one goal and one goal only...
...to reclaim Earth and restore order to the blue marble.

Thoughts on the idea?

Given how well 'The 100', 'Lost in Space (netflix)', and 'After Earth' have done I think it's a solid idea.

[Eclius]

I've noticed that post-apocalypse RPs have been somewhat popular recently.
But I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice to do one with a little...twist.
What I'm thinking of is an RP where instead of everyone having crappy tech and crappy lives and all the other crappy post-apocalyptic things, the focus is on a military group put together by a coalition of space colonies that have thrived in the centuries since they were first forced to live on their own. This group has one goal and one goal only...
...to reclaim Earth and restore order to the blue marble.

Thoughts on the idea?

Given how well 'The 100', 'Lost in Space (netflix)', and 'After Earth' have done I think it's a solid idea.

OMG, I LOVE this idea. Please let me know if we can do an RP on this

[Plzen]

-snip-

Something like Civilisation: Beyond Earth except set on actual Earth would be everything I want in a nation-based RP. :p I might set one up, actually...

[Eclius]

-snip-

Something like Civilisation: Beyond Earth except set on actual Earth would be everything I want in a nation-based RP. I might set one up, actually...

Can you maybe elaborate a bit? Would that set in a post-apocalyptic setting like new yugoslavia said (which is what Civ:BE is about). I have played and is a huge fan of Civ:BE btw.

[Ceystile]

Just throwing out another idea...this time for a deity RP since those tend to do pretty well and we haven't really had one in a while. So basically the players and OP will work in tandem building this planet (not sure whether to just have the focus be this planet or letting the players each run one, I'm open to ideas). So the Supreme Deity (think God/Zeus/Everything-Dad/Mom) has been running shit and been the head of the pantheon for millions of years, and they are the parent of several godly children. So they're watching over this planet or universe, and they have to leave for a while to deal with some super important cosmic Armageddon shit so they decided to leave their children in charge until they get back, giving them each a section of the world/universe (I say that because I'm still unsure whether to let the siblings take charge of their own planets or just divide this one but I think I'll divide for the sake of an uncomplicated setting) and a domain to attend to. Also, this Supreme Being knows that they just might fall in battle because they are going up against some suuuuupper powerful entities, and even if they live they've been in charge for so long that they're kinda over it. Players will each take charge of one of these sibling gods and your job is to keep things running smoothly as possible on your section until Mom/Dad returns and Mom/Dad has made it a way to choose an heir: whoever keeps their fleshbag humans alive the longest, gains the most followers and fucks up the least will be the new Supreme Deity.

[Kassaran]

Ngl, been finding myself moreover hankering character RP's, but nothing is really stoking my interests outside of Elementals. I've been wanting to do an event-centric RP, where the characters are surviving the event and don't really have a lot of clues or help in doing so. Faction-centric RP's tend to greatly under-develop characters for the purposes of 'keeping' up and there can be as many individual interactions going on as there are players^(squared).

I'm still interested in bringing back SIGMA, my power-armor RP, but I keep running into an issue when working on the balancing. That makes me wonder if I should just focus on making the situations more organic which would then allow me to make more plot decisions rather than mechanical decisions. Things like setting hard rules in place about how the mechanics of the RP 'theoretically' work and then just moving to make everything else better-suited for telling the story?

It's a solution that I like the idea of more and I fear that my desire to 'balance' players ultimately would disenfranchise or disassociate creativity rather than numbers from the plot and various scenes involved. A good example of a limitation might be that characters send in their 'design' ideas and I'll just tell them what they would get out of that, then haggle with them a little and settle on something that works. Go ahead and make the RP limited, have it be like four-to-six players and then just do as RP's do when they lose players, open and close as needed.

[Guuj Xaat Kil]

Deity RP

I'd be down for this.

[Harbertia]

Just throwing out another idea...this time for a deity RP since those tend to do pretty well and we haven't really had one in a while. So basically the players and OP will work in tandem building this planet (not sure whether to just have the focus be this planet or letting the players each run one, I'm open to ideas). So the Supreme Deity (think God/Zeus/Everything-Dad/Mom) has been running shit and been the head of the pantheon for millions of years, and they are the parent of several godly children. So they're watching over this planet or universe, and they have to leave for a while to deal with some super important cosmic Armageddon shit so they decided to leave their children in charge until they get back, giving them each a section of the world/universe (I say that because I'm still unsure whether to let the siblings take charge of their own planets or just divide this one but I think I'll divide for the sake of an uncomplicated setting) and a domain to attend to. Also, this Supreme Being knows that they just might fall in battle because they are going up against some suuuuupper powerful entities, and even if they live they've been in charge for so long that they're kinda over it. Players will each take charge of one of these sibling gods and your job is to keep things running smoothly as possible on your section until Mom/Dad returns and Mom/Dad has made it a way to choose an heir: whoever keeps their fleshbag humans alive the longest, gains the most followers and fucks up the least will be the new Supreme Deity.

It does have a certain appeal and this one does seem to have some structure to it that should keep the players inline.

[Oppermenia]

Hey, so I had an idea for a fanfiction RP for Steven Universe (and that's a fandom I'm proudly part of). However, knowing the NS community, I don't know if there are any other people into that show that would like to play in an RP for it on these forums, before I consider doing my idea. So, are there any Steven Universe fans or casual watchers in these forums that would like to play in a Steven Universe RP?
Again, I'm only trying to see if there are watchers of the show (that hopefully watched the whole thing) so I don't put any unnecessary energy into an RP that no one would be interested in. I figure there aren't really any people from that fandom on these forums considering the fact that I haven't seen any SU-devoted forum stuff, but I want to make sure. So, let me know.