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 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:19 pm
God knows you're a lonely soul.
What happened to our fair city?
Jesus, anyone could tell you that. We were wiped off the map. One day we were there, and the next we were forgotten. That's not to say we disappeared. No far from it. In spite of the storms we persisted, we refused to believe that the towers of glory we built right up to the sky were crumbling. Flat out ignored the facts that despite all the years we spent separating us from the dangerous world of Gaia, somehow we fell victim to it. It wasn't the metas that did it, or the villians, or the abuse of magical forces... Naw, none of that. It was God that came up and slapped us on the face.
I suppose I should start at the beginning.
Barton, Latent, Laburnum, all those famous historical locations. Targets. That's all they were. Big ol' bullseyes screaming out to some megalomaniac with a mutation or a spell book to attack. The heroes would swoop in, and amongst all the collateral damage would battle to save the day. We thought this was bullshit.
Why did we have to live in such an unsafe world? Why were we slaves to the whims of those people who were "special". God knows none of us wanted to be much more than a cog in the machine. A cog with a front lawn and a nice family. A cog with car insurance and a mortgage. But a cog none the less. Why was it so hard to be normal in this world?
That's the spark that started it. Blohmsdale was the name of the town before we got a hold of it. Nice place. Not a backwater certainly. Town hall was historic and the business district had zoned away a few nice office towers. Then we came. Bought as much as possible, abused our friends who were "special", changed Blohmsdale. Charged it more accurately. With our insane investments, and proposed defensive measures we were going to make the city of the future.
It's hard to believe it was so long ago.
A five year plan turned to a ten year plan, and Blohmsdale grew. It ate nearbytowns. Assimilated them to be out suburbs as we built towers and bunkers. We weren't isolationists like those people up in Frostschild, or racists like the NGC. At least in my opinion we weren't. We were just careful. We made sure the intent of this city was clear. This was to be a place of peace and progress. We wanted to escape the havoc that was Barton and gaia proper.
In all our hubris we called our new megacity New Utopia.
God. That's when the storms started. Hurricanes. Strings of them. Out of place too. They never should have happened in our neck of the woods. We immediately suspected magic. We had finally attracted our own supervillain. All systems were go at that point. The bunkers, the machines, we'd show them we didn't need any heroes. That we could be normal in spite of everything else.
The shields went up all over the city. Our citizens were protected, we could hunt down the b*****d thanks to the fact we knew everything that happened in New Utopia with the shields up.
The storms didn't stop. They just took on new characteristics. Vortexes can really decimate office towers, well not normally. Only after the quakes had weakened them. A crying shame.
Luckless we continued our search afraid to activate part B without part A's conclusion. One by one we came around though. There was nor rogue mage, and the storms were only intensifying by fluke. We had never paused to consider with its extreme people Gaia may at times simply have extreme weather. Maybe we had just picked a weird hotspot to place our normal city. Maybe we had just overreacted to meteorological anomaly. Maybe we flat out pissed off god.
Right. I haven't got to that part yet.
The shields... Which very well could have been egging on the storms... Were the pinnacle of our science. They enclosed our city to ensure that no additional factors got in or out until the problems were solved. They formed the network for our colossally stupid idea.
We ******** with time. That's all there is to it. We ******** with time.
Part B was to create a controlled anomaly within our shield bubble. Correct the time line, ensure that everything was perceived as normal. To this day I don't understand how we even considered this. Drunk on power I guess. Needless to say we didn't want to go into part b as part a had failed pretty miserably already. But one at a time us founders decided we had no choice.
Of course the machine couldn't work? A supercomputer it was, but I computer that could edit the recent past like a VHS was impossible. Yet we thought we built it.
We disappeared after that. The storms becoming not just meteorological but temporal, the entire ruined city existing only in a time that was never and always at the same time. Our little bubble city. It always rains here. The wind always blows. Half the buildings are shells. But at least their are perks to living in a man made temporal disturbance. You have an eternity to eek some progress out of the rock and ruined streets.
Funny.
We created this place to free us from the heroes, villains, and abnormals. Now they're the only people willing to come visit.
What happened to our fair city?
Damn. I guess the short version is we happened.
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:37 pm
Rough Premise
1. The City is a playground. It'll be set up event style, linked threads and all that.
2. The city exists in its own time frame. Any time you spend here does not have to fit in with the "real world" of Gaia. You could be here for months and sandwich it in anywhere on your convoluted plotline.
3. I will not babysit you. You make your own plot here, I simply provide the setting. Go ahead and make NPCs, strange intrigues, or just fight to your hearts content. The city, as I said, is a playground.
4. Don't make threads. I want to keep this mess coherent and semi-thematic. I'll release new threads as time goes on, and maybe even destroy old ones. We're working against the guild system here.
5. Not only will I not babysit you, I will not be your parent. Solve your own problems, or use a thread I'll provide where you can propose the supposedly insolvable problem to your peers.
5b. I will only intervene if I believe something is stupidly lopsided. Do not abuse this "power of the people" dynamic as a way to chase people out of town.
And the big ones.
6. There is no grading of profiles. Escalation is law. If you propose a fist fight and then bring a knife, expect the other player to whip out their knife too. Maybe even they'll take out their gun, if that's the case... Where's your gun?
6b. Escalation is not something to be abused. If you push every conflict to world exploding powerfests via magic or science, nobody is going to want to play with you.
7. In this guild, there is no protection against being killed. None of this mutual agreement stuff. If you should be killed, then be killed. The law of escalation can't save you every time.
Don't start salivating bloodlusters, there's a catch.
You can be killed. You can't die. When you die in the city you'll awake later somewhere else. Sore of course. But the city's temporal storm has saved you from actually biting the bullet.
You respawn. Death has little negative reproduction save the IC shock... Hell, if I introduce a metagame, then an entertaining death may even work in your favor.
RANDOM STUFF:
If I do give you starter plots you better believe they'll put my characters front and center. If you're gonna latch onto me, I'm gonna get some glory.
There is potential for some meta game system, as well as a sort of "ranking". Though I can tell you now, it won't be based on win/loss ratios. Style is valued here, as well as the will of the reader.
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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:06 am
I like this idea and would love to see more of it.
Seems like an idea that would not attract many of the CRAZED ZE COMBAT types. If only because death becomes nigh-meaningless in this contest. So it would be rather plot and development driven instead.
Which is fun.
...
So, not going to create ANY NPCs, right?
Everything be PLAYER driven instead by us all?
Cause if you were to do so, hello Echoing Machine Part Deux.
QUESTION>
Characters from general mainstream Gaia...
Or characters existing within the city?
Basically. Old or new characters for the win?
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Posted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:49 pm
I wouldn't be creating many NPCs at all. That said I do have some ideas of a meta game in the background.
However, this should take from old mainstream, where when you need a NPC you make an NPC.
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Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 6:58 pm
I like the fact that this idea will take a lot of the fear of failure out of online roleplaying--some people are perfectly fine with putting their babies characters in harm's way, but for every one of those, there's a dozen more who don't want anything bad at all to happen to them.
Hopefully, it'll encourage hardass characters to be more hardass and actually, y'know, get hit.
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:58 pm
If you're virtually hungry eat a virtual meal
If you're virtually sick do you virtually heal? I really like this idea. Figured I'd chip in. Might post something with some more thought put into it later, but for now just figured I'd add my two cents.
Although the 'no mutual agreement' bit is something I really like. I really do like my characters, and wouldn't want them to die, but at the same time I wouldn't try and argue my way out of a rocket to the face. Or at least I'd like to think I wouldn't. xD With a virtual brain invent a virtual wheel
You're a virtual slave but the kneeling is real.
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:17 pm
This Is Zen If you're virtually hungry eat a virtual meal
If you're virtually sick do you virtually heal? I really like this idea. Figured I'd chip in. Might post something with some more thought put into it later, but for now just figured I'd add my two cents.
Although the 'no mutual agreement' bit is something I really like. I really do like my characters, and wouldn't want them to die, but at the same time I wouldn't try and argue my way out of a rocket to the face. Or at least I'd like to think I wouldn't. xD With a virtual brain invent a virtual wheel
You're a virtual slave but the kneeling is real. You'd be surprised at the amount of people that do argue things like that. It's why I'm hoping between this and what I hope will be a touch of system that makes a dramatic death equal worth to a stunning victory, people will lighten up a little bit. That said, I'll likely have to remind a lot of people that that rule doesn't mean you can "declare" someone dead.
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 3:33 pm
I'm intrigued, though slightly skeptic unless we can get a large number of people going in this thing. I'd hate to see all of the action taking place in just one thread or locale just because 'that's where the other four people are'.
But yeah, I'd expect Reyin to show up.
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:42 pm
It's like Russia...
Going to crap and staying there after Stalin's rule.
I like it.
I quite enjoy the OOC rules, though I dunno if people would obey by the rules. But we'll have to see how it rolls.
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:22 pm
No one likes you. D=<
... *goes to actually read whatever the thread is about*
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Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:25 pm
I think it'd just be entertaining to see a bunch of Gaia mary-sues interacting with the locals. Given that the locals have every reason to be openly hostile. xd
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Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 5:34 am
^_^ I'd be very interested in seeing how this all works out.
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Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 10:58 am
I would be in for this 100%. Not only is the structure of this city full-proof, but it'll allow everyone who fears their character death, accept being killed and of course no story pressed into it. In otherwords this city= like you stated a playground. xd
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Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:20 pm
If there are going to be multiple threads then it is a requirement to post the number of estimated NPC's in each thread, where they are, what they might be doing, and why.
I am tired of folks assuming that there are people (or a lack of) them in whatever area they are roleplaying as it suits whatever they want. Sort of like finding a gun store in a medieval village. It only makes sense that the city have an estimated population who are relatively used to the goings on of terribad villains and heroes attempting to thwart them. Sort of like Israel. Those people undergo bombings all the time, so they just accept it and carry on. Therefore, as they also cannot be killed indefinitely, I would expect there to be a higher level of apathy amongst them. Basically the average roleplayed character on Gaia, except in NPC form.
Just one question.
If you die, do you lose everything?
Or is it a complete respawn where I could literally just make a mansion out of bodies and then pawn off everything on them?
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Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:23 pm
This city is now Sin City.
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