Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hello Crystal! Welcome to our brainstorming festivities! And I agree with you! Too many broad themes and we're going to have more holes than swiss cheese, but I am not against mixing and matching a few themes as long as we can have strong interwoven-connections to them.


And I am sooooooo against the idea of a carnival on a steampunk ship. I can be overly imaginative (I read way too many books as a young child).. and when I read that it automatically took my mind to a visual that made me want to vomit. Cus the ship would be moving and the ride would be moving.. and oh my my my.. as would my stomach.

I wouldn't be against a carnival with a steampunk ride, as that my stomach could handle. lol.


When I read your ideas val, I liked them. I really liked the victorian tea party. However, what I didn't realize when I read your list is that you wanted that as each sub-sections of the ball. Its likely that in my head I am not seeing how we would be able to connect the dots on that.

I'd also go as far to say that if you wanted to scale down a carnival to one thread you might as well scrap the idea completely. There is just way too many elements to a carnival that it would be hell trying to fit it into one thread without having monstrous walls of text that would overwhelm the guests. A tea party on the other hand.. I could see fitting that easily into one thread with ease--



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Now for the points that Lady Angelishia made about the use of mules. Lady, you are soooo right. There are very few people who can share playable characters and do it well. Either they have a different word play style, different typing, or differing methods of speech, etc.

Again, I don't know the vast majority of everyone's rp backgrounds, but, I don't think your concern is that large in retrospect to how I'd recommend those mules to be used. Have any of you been to a BC shop on gaia? Many of those shops share a shop mule amongst the shop owners/leaders of said shop. Some of them even go as far as putting in their signature who is playing that account and have set up typing colors. When you typed on the mule you would always use pink and when I typed on the mule I would use default black. The signature would even read Pixilated Envy types like this (in a black) Lady Angelishia types like this (in a pink).

These mules would be dressed to set the tone of the thread, but they wouldn't be designed to have a very defined personality. They'd likely work as GM/QMs (depending on your gaming background the title might be different).. but, there prime roles would be in updates to the thread front page, and answering questions of the guests of the thread-- as well as potentially acting as a scripted narrator for plot development. A QM or a GM acts as the god of the RP-- but they're not actually "Characters"

They're the kind of people that can dictate (within reason) the rp. For instance they have the ability to cause waves of monsters to invade an area, or even drop a rock on your head. As we all know.. if a "character" does something like that it is generally god-moding-- well the Quest Master/ Game Master has the power to god-mod to provoke rp and stimulate the direction of the plot. They only act as narration. As such, any GM can use the character without worrying if they are stepping on someone else's toes. These people can also wield additional NPCs into a story. And I think many of us have differing views on what a NPC is and what a PC is. An NPC is like that of a shop keeper in gaia shops. Each of them have distinct personalities that add to the story of Gaia-- but they're never played-- (unless in like a manga or something on rare occasions).

A PC character would be like us.. like me for instance Envy is a character on gaia that is played and its doubtful that anyone could be envy like I could be envy because I have been playing envy for so long. Like noone could play Lady Angelishia quite like you do. Now most of us would have playable characters for the ball.. and woven into the plot-- however, the role of a good GM is to note.. okay, Envy is not around and envy was suppose to be slain by a monster today..They quickly adapt the story in a way where envy must have been kidnapped or instead Lady Angelishia became slain by the monster. All a QM does is create a skeleton plot and adapt to what they have to work with. About the only thing they are ever really concerned with is the opening and the closing moral of the story.

Due to the fact that they work with the elements that they have to work with at the time-- they would have to be sure to leave updates on what they did on their "shift" and make it available to the other QMs. They'd also likely have shift objectives of what needed to be done while they were on duty. Also little things like if sabs won a prize while on my shift, I'd likely make a memo that sabs won X contest and I sent her prize. And if it were a carnival and there was a plot change, I'd make a note that bears got loose from the circus and thus the merry go round is now down for construction. The next QM thus doesn't have to question if X contest was handled, and also knows they can add into the story something along the lines of they started a team to capture the bears and the merry go round got repaired and is now back up and being operational.

Sometimes things are pre-scripted as everyone on our plot team knows that at 3 O'clock the bears are going to get loose. But, what everyone might not have realized is that Val suddenly had an unexpected guest in rl (Who just happened to be running the merry go round ride), and so the QM would adapt the story in a way to cover for Val's absence. So then go in and update that thread with a sign that says 'Down For Maintenance' or something. As you could see, the QMs roles are very important. But, at the same time, the PC characters are important. Only difference is the plot would never fall apart if Val had to go mia-- and there would be enough people up to speed on the role of the QM that even if I had an emergency, there would be someone on call like Val the PC at the merry go round that could place her ride on maint to get on the the QM to progress the overall RP.



Eh.. I'm prolly making it more confusing than it is by trying to explain it. but the general gist is to have your GM/QM role set up to be played by anyone and any PC role not be of such grave importance that they couldn't be replaced at a drop of a hat by either someone else.. or by an NPC that the QM created while narrating.

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Oh, also:
I think a carnival might be doable in a thread.
-nod-
You'd just have to limit the activities a smidge...

And I know!
<3
The tea party is my favorite as well.
I'd just want to not have it on a ship.
Victorian + Tea = Two of Angel's Favorite Things
^^

The beauty of Val's idea is it leaves something for everyone.
The only downside I see is plot.
Tying them together could be hard.
But perhaps it could be a contest of celebrations?
Held by a royal or something...
Everyone is out to have the ultimate celebration, and different types of people participate?
That's why there are the different types of celebrations?
Those could be the hosts of all the threads.
Then we could actually have ball-goers vote on their favorite...
Or...
We could have it have a feel-good happy ending where the person holding the competition [maybe a royal?] says that everyone wins because they all just win that hard.
<3

I know.
>>
<<
My ideas are childish at best.
But it could work?
>w<

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lol that sounded a lot like my steampunk and gods idea, where they flew too high and crossed the borders dividing heaven and earth; then the gods entered the ship and what not lol XD




But anyways! I mentioned this waaay back, but then got carried away by the recent steampunk ideas, and Val mentioned it again now so...lets stop mentioning carnival, Myth and steampunk for awhile; how's that? We'll keep note of it of course, but lets see what other themes that we can come up with 8D

I dont really like the tea party idea though.....if we use that as the overall theme, when I think of tea parties, I always imagined little ladies sitting around and giggling into gloved hands and nibbling on cookie bits ._. dont ask why I see that lol

I think I maybe still a little confused as to where you guys are going with how we should work the hosts and stuffs, but I think that if tea parties, the people who prefer more of a less formal and more hyped environment wouldnt like the tea party <_<; so its best if we had a theme that can be both regal and yet casual.

And can someone please go over all this host talk to me? =( I'm getting lost since my last post regarding the NPC <_<; I said that people should run one NPC each, but the max they should prolly run would be 2....and that they all have a set knowledge and would shift around and help move the plot along.....but I think everyone was thinking something different from my npc idea so I'm pretty much lost here @_@

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I made a suggestion earlier on this page.
^^

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....
oh well, great ideas ppl
muhahahahah
*resumes his lurking because he just woke up and cannot think straight enuff to write a reply*
ninja

I'm of the perspective if something isn't broken, don't fix it.

Problem is - I feel the host system we used is/was broken.

I am more than certain that some of you will disagree and felt it worked fine. Or we may even have disagreements on why it was broken.

But, if we don't revamp said system than we're likely setting ourselves up for the very same problems. And truthfully, I don't want to deal with those problems again and I don't think many of you should either.

But, I'll be the first to admit someone nay saying the entire planning stage isn't going to be beneficial to the team so I think I might pause in adding my two sense for a while.