Anyone interested in RPGing?

[Mdnight Falling]

DO IT!!!!!! I demand it!!! -snickers- joking.. but seriously.. I'm all for RPG.. Gimme setting char types and lay down the law and I'm game >^.^<

 

[myrddin173]

Yah I really like the topic, hope we can get enough people to start soon!

 

[Philip Overby]

So when is this shin-dig starting?

 

[Ravana]

I'll try to be ready to go, at least in terms of character creation, by the weekend. (One of the reasons you haven't seen much of me lately is because of the work I'm putting in to get this ready.) Play will start as soon after that as I get the first couple of characters set up. Unlike party-based RPGs, this will be something people can join at any time, so we won't need to worry about having any particular minimum number.

@Black Dragon: I'll let you know when I'm ready to set up the forum. Is there some particular time that you're normally on, in case we need to chat about anything? I don't anticipate any difficulties, but my web admin skills are a bit rusty.

 

[Artless]

This has me excited! Woo!

 

[Black Dragon]

Ravana,

I'm sending you a pm with my contact info.

 

[journeyman]

I'm interested. None of my usual gaming groups ever had the specific style or skillset to run something political. I'm heavily tied up with work right now, but if this will support drop-in-drop-out backgrounds (visiting foreign dignitary maybe?) I can come up with something. If not I'll just have to wait a few weeks for things to quiet down.

 

[Black Dragon]

An update:

Ravana is working hard behind the scenes to get everything ready. You may have noticed that a new subforum has been created beneath Games. We will be ready to start shortly.

 

[Ravana]

And we're off.…

Anyone interested go to the Games subforum MACHIAVEL: AMBITION. It will tell you what you need to get started—which, mainly, is to contact me. There are no dice to roll, no stats to worry about; all you need to do is make a few decisions about your character and we'll get started.

Hope to see you all there.

 

[Nick Jaden Williams]

I did it once wit ha Dragon Ballz Z RPG forum back in grade 7 or so. It lasted about a week but it was the closest I came to an MMORPG before Runescape....I'lll at least give it a try!

 

[Aegle]

I have mine own RPG actually. ;] I've posted a few remarks about it. It's Medieval Fantasy, with a primary focus on indepth characterization.

 

[demented-tiger]

I also think it would be cool to have an RP forum section where we can create entire worlds with thier own rules, back-stories, races, plots, and characters; or somewhere where we can insert characters from our stories into a world or setting and use said world or setting as a character development exercise. I was in one such RP a few years ago, and it lasted for 7 months before it died. It was very stimulating and exciting.

 

[Phoenix]

Yes please! I've been trying to get one set up for so long! Tell me what to do.

 

[AlexanderKira]

Would love too!

 

[Xarxium]

I also would like to. It sounds like a lot of fun as long as the story is good.

 

[Phoenix]

We have 5 people, want to make this a RP group? Do we need specific game master/story creator.

 

[Ravana]

or somewhere where we can insert characters from our stories into a world or setting and use said world or setting as a character development exercise.

You're more than welcome to use my Machiavel: Ambition setting for this if you want… I'm still going to be in control of the "world" overall, as it is an active game setting, but there's a wealth of material I haven't developed for it.

Anyone who's actually interested in playing it is welcome, too: I'm always accepting new players. I'm presently in the process of revamping and consolidating the existing material, so some of the details may get changed over the next few days; the setting and much of the core material will be changed only slightly. Pop down to the subforum under "Mythic Worlds" and check it out.

 

[The Blue Lotus]

I'd like to try one out... but I was never very good at these types of games... The rules baffeled me.

Is there room for a freshie?

 

[Phoenix]

Okay how do we start?

 

[Ravana]

Well, you don't need to worry too much about "rules"—because, on your end, there basically aren't any to worry about. There are rules—or at least game mechanics—but for the most part these are back-end things I handle myself… particularly appropriate, considering I'm still writing them. And revising them. Again. Once it starts looking like they've taken relatively stable forms, I'll probably begin releasing more specific details; in the meantime, I'm trying to keep it so that this isn't a concern for the players—or a bafflement whenever I tweak something—and so that the players can concentrate on the role-playing aspects.

As I expressed it when this thread first started: "it won't look like anything you've seen before." The one great problem I've always had with online RPGs is the time factor: with normal (tabletop) gaming, you have a bunch of people all present at the same time, several hours at a time, who can take actions as fast as they can talk. That doesn't work very well online; as a result, most staples of RPGs—such as personal combat—would require hours to run a single encounter that would take minutes in normal gaming, even if all the players were online at the same time, say in a chat room… and weeks if they weren't. I was seeking a way to avoid that; the obvious way, it seemed, was to avoid that sort of encounter.

So instead this is a mainly political game. Think of it as picking up where normal fantasy RPG characters usually end up retiring: you begin as minor nobles, in charge of your own baronies. You have a certain range of possible actions, you tell me what you want to do, I tell you what the outcome is. You have to make a certain number of decisions concerning your fief's economy, construction, and governance. So far, there hasn't been any army combat involving any of the players' troops; that will change eventually, I'm sure… and it will work much the same way: you'll have some tactical options, you'll give your troops orders, and I'll let you know how things come out. (Probably, I'll handle it in a couple of "stages," so you may have opportunities to react to what happens—though in fact being stuck relying on the first instructions you gave isn't all that far from how combat between large forces took place in pre-technological times.)

Everything else comes from communicating with other players and non-player characters, making deals, trying to build influence, and climbing the social ladder as high as you can manage. Role-playing, in other words. This has the distinct added advantage of not taking place in a set "time" scale. Each "turn" represents a game month, during which a great deal can take place; on the player/GM interaction end, each turn takes place over several days, allowing people to interact, respond to each other and to me (and vice versa). This allows several things normal RPGs don't: first of all, it doesn't take multiple turns for a single activity to be resolved; second, it means people can participate even if they aren't on daily, or can't be on at a certain time/day; and third, if you have to miss the occasional turn, it's no big deal: your people pretty much carry on as they have all their lives. (Not a whole lot changes from one month to the next when you're a peasant.)

Go down to the "Machiavel: Ambition" forum; find the thread labeled "Introduction/Character Generation." The information in it isn't going to change significantly any time soon (perhaps ever: most of it's just too generic); it will let you know what you need to get started. The rest of the material… glance through the other stickied threads if you want; just don't take any of it completely to heart, because it's in the process of revision. Or don't bother for now, and spare yourself the confusion of having something you've read vanish next week. Which is probably when I'll finish the revision and start things up again. Send me a PM with the info mentioned in the Intro thread; it will probably take me a couple days to get back with your barony, since there's no point in sending you something that's going to become irrelevant in the near future, so I won't be sending any fresh ones out until I'm done with the revision. I'm hoping to start processing turns weekly once things get going again… the slowness of the first game-year was largely a product of the fact that none of this material existed last April. At all. I think a look at what's gone on since October began indicates we've come a ways from that, at least.