OOC - Starting Point

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Viking-Sensei
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OOC - Starting Point

Post by Viking-Sensei »

A few points of order:

1 - SubForum: I've set this up as our very first sub-forum... normally, I'm against the sub-forum structure, however I sort of figure the RPG here is going to require multiple threads which I'd rather keep seperate from the rest of the game stuff, however at the same time I'm not sure the RPG really warrants it's own non-Games forum. This option gives us the best of both worlds. If we don't like the best of both worlds, or it's looking like it needs to fall decidedly in one world or another, it can always be changed.

2 - Name: I pulled the name "Errant's Song" entirely out of thin air and it can be changed at any time. I was originally going to dub this "Errant Side Story", but decided on this as a whim instead. If anybody has a better idea, please feel free to suggest it.

3 - Rules: There will be rules. Shortly. Assume for now that you retain no rights whatsoever, and we'll work up from there. This is not intended as a formal declaration of the rules, just something to get us moving.

4 - Structure: We'll sort of work this out as we go, but I sort of figured the way we'll play this is to establish "settings", locations based off Errant Story and referencing the Wiki whenever possible for historical accuracy. Each post should represent a location, and not just a small one either. Mindi's Tavern would not be a post itself, but the characters could visit it while in a post for Taberna. Large non-city based events, such as an abandoned temple they might find in the woods while walking from point A to point B, might warrant their own posts, depending on how much time we spend (and how likely we are to use them again at some later point).

5 - Setting: This is at least hypothetically an alternate universe of ES, so while themes and plot elements may be similar and characters that appear in one place can appear in the other, the actions in one place don't directly impact the other. Also, I was thinking this should start out a year before Errant Story did, so that we've got some time to go around and look at things before they start burning, exploding, disappearing, or otherwise meeting their doom.

6 - Characters: Please try and be at least sort of realistic. That is to say, not all of you can be the one choosen to fulfil some ancient prophecy. Now, the entire party... maybe. But you're not all "The One". Chances are, you're not even in the top ten. Mages, Assassins, Monks (Heretical or Time)... there are no class restrictions, however I would be remiss to point out that a story where we're all incredibly powerful super mage-assassin-monks is going to get explodey very quickly. A good balance would be really nice. Also, we can't all be elves or half-elves... someone would notice. If one or two people want to be elves or half elves, we'd probably be fine... especially if they can conspire on their backstory... but remember, most elves are strongly against half elves to the point of killin'... so if it does come down to that, we're going to have to handle this reallistically.

7 - IC and OOC: If you've never RPG'd on a forum before, IC (In Character) and OOC (Out of Character) are ususally used to determine if it's you saying something or your character saying something... a typical post might go:
Trogdor walked across the bar, picked up the table, and flung it with all his strength through the outer wall. The table sailed straight and true, hitting the trio of bards square on and sending them flying.

(OOC: We did this once in my AD&D campaign... except it wasn't a table, it was a dwarf.)
Inside a RPGing post, all things are normally assumed to be IC, so you don't have to specifically declare you're In Character unless it's following an OOC like this:
(OOC: Does anyone know where Forrest went? We sort of need his character to move this story along...I'll fake it for now.)

IC: Trogdor picked up Forresta, the beautiful (but unconscious) half-elf and started running for the gates...
8 - Confirmation: Ok, I know a lot of you may have skimmed over all that, and some of you have seen this (more or less) already... but taking a page from the Mafia game, everyone please respond with a "Confirmed" or something just to attest that you've read through this and agree to abide by these guidlines (which can and probably will be changed at any time) in order to participate.
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Sareth
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Sareth »

Confirmed, and a question. Do we want any sort of "This is my character and his/her background" thread, or do we just toss our characters in and let the dwar... tabl... fur fly?
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by zanntos »

confirmage, now to start tinkering a character idea :p
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by DarkIntruder »

Confirmed.
Sareth wrote:Do we want any sort of "This is my character and his/her background" thread, or do we just toss our characters in and let the dwar... tabl... fur fly?
I would vote for a separate thread. That way we won't have to wade through the first couple of pages of posts to find people's character sheets.

We could also keep this thread as a news thread, question thread, FAQ, ect.
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Tiamat »

Confinrmed, and I like the idea of seperate threads.

Personally, I think we should have a Locations thread, so everyone knows exactly where to look for the description of a location instead of searching around in the dark abyss of previous posts, as well as a character intro thread, both seperate from the main threads, and perferably stickied if we ever get that many threads going.
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Weirdonian »

Confirmed, and I quite like either name: "Errant Story" or "Errant Side Story". However...
4 - Structure: We'll sort of work this out as we go, but I sort of figured the way we'll play this is to establish "settings", locations based off Errant Story and referencing the Wiki whenever possible for historical accuracy. Each post should represent a location, and not just a small one either. Mindi's Tavern would not be a post itself, but the characters could visit it while in a post for Taberna. Large non-city based events, such as an abandoned temple they might find in the woods while walking from point A to point B, might warrant their own posts, depending on how much time we spend (and how likely we are to use them again at some later point).

5 - Setting: This is at least hypothetically an alternate universe of ES, so while themes and plot elements may be similar and characters that appear in one place can appear in the other, the actions in one place don't directly impact the other. Also, I was thinking this should start out a year before Errant Story did, so that we've got some time to go around and look at things before they start burning, exploding, disappearing, or otherwise meeting their doom.
Are you sure we should be doing this as Post=Place? As much as I like that old tradition, it could lead to a rather confusing narative, if you recall what the Multiverse could be like at it's height. While it's not much of a problem in the beginning, over time things do tend to get confusing, especially for archiving purposes. It's why I changed the Multiverse FFRPG posting structure a bit last year, which was admittedly too late to make a whole lot of difference, but it never really got much of a chance as most everyone had gone by then anyway.
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Imp-Chan »

You know, Errant Song was one of the titles we'd considered for the second sequel.

This... this is going to be complicated, isn't it?

Here's the gist of the TOS, again not the official list or anything, but at least a fair starting point. I will definitely be refining these later.

1) Everyone agrees to play by the rules forever and ever amen, even if CAS later decides to refine/change them.
2) Poe has first dibs to IP stuff, since he has a lot planned already and odds are fair that someone will step on some piece of it. A review of the board rules will reveal that we already have an unlimited license to use anything produced here, but I'm going to take it one step further and say that any characters, settings, storylines, etc. that are created for this board may not be used anywhere else, by anyone else, except by Poe or his legally authorized agents acting on his behalf. This isn't trying to be mean, this is just protecting Poe's career... as well as trying to prevent any future squabbling over creative rights, since this will be a collaborative game. Incidentally, this applies to non-participants as well.
3) Poe will never read the game, he is not allowed to do so. That way, we all KNOW any future similarities are coincidence.
4) Play nice with each other, but this doesn't have to extend to the characters.
5) Graphic violence, to some extent, is permissible in this game. Try not to go overboard. Also, please fade to black rather than incorporating graphic sex.
6) Any other rules the board mods or game players choose to add are appended to this, provided they do not contradict anything else I've already said here.

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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Imp-Chan wrote:You know, Errant Song was one of the titles we'd considered for the second sequel.
Great minds and all that. I'll change it to something less likely to cause concern... since this entire particular quest is looking like it's going to be a road movie sort of deal with as much emphasis on the journey as the destination, how about "Errant Road"? We'll take some suggestions and vote on an official name once we have a few more participants...
Imp-Chan wrote:This... this is going to be complicated, isn't it?
Your occasional capacity for understatement amazes me.
Weirdonian wrote:Are you sure we should be doing this as Post=Place? As much as I like that old tradition, it could lead to a rather confusing narative, if you recall what the Multiverse could be like at it's height. While it's not much of a problem in the beginning, over time things do tend to get confusing, especially for archiving purposes. It's why I changed the Multiverse FFRPG posting structure a bit last year, which was admittedly too late to make a whole lot of difference, but it never really got much of a chance as most everyone had gone by then anyway.
What WERE we doing in the end, anyway?

I was sort of thinking of the Post=Place format simply because if we have two or more different parties travelling seperate paths, one gestalt adventure post would be impractical, and if the parties' pathes should cross in the middle, choosing which thread could be... confusing. If we pick locations, laid out sort of like a map.... then as the party travels, they travel from post to post... I dunno.
...blah blah blah Character Thread blah blah blah...
Coming up!
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by Weirdonian »

Viking-Sensei wrote:
What WERE we doing in the end, anyway?
lol, yeah, not much, despite our efforts. Though that can hardly be blamed on the slightly revamped posting system since by then the writing was already on the wall and had been before we moved to Vikingspace, but I just wouldn't accept it. I still don't. Despite all that did or didn't happen, I still have hope for it yet. Sorry if I've been referencing it too often, but that's where my RPG experience lies.
Viking-Sensei wrote:
I was sort of thinking of the Post=Place format simply because if we have two or more different parties travelling seperate paths, one gestalt adventure post would be impractical, and if the parties' pathes should cross in the middle, choosing which thread could be... confusing. If we pick locations, laid out sort of like a map.... then as the party travels, they travel from post to post... I dunno.
OK, yeah, that sounds fine. I was kinda forgetting this RPG is on a more intimate scale, so I'm kinda just worrying over nothing. :mrgreen:
Viking-Sensei wrote:
...how about "Errant Road"?
I like that too, though I would make one teeny change: "Errant Roads", reflecting the multitude of stories and paths the RPG will likely take.

Speaking of a multitude of stories, I don't think we should worry a lot about speculation on things that may veer the RPG off from the established/actual Errant Story Universe. In fact, I think it should be mildly encouraged. Certainly not to the point that it becomes unrecognisable compared to the actual Errant Story Universe, but it would be beneficial and probably neccessary to allow some speculative variations.
DarkIntruder wrote:
The only downside would be that we don't actually know anything about Poe's Dwarves, or how they disappeared. Thus, anything we found, did, or saw would be speculation.
I don't really think this will be much of a problem. While I don't think we should encourage people to play Dwarves as characters or have characters with intimate knowlege of Dwarven technology, history, etc. I think it'd be perfectly fine to make up some Dwarf city ruins, maybe even a little bit of abandoned tech as long as it's within reason and fits. Scenes like this: "Hey, a fully-functional, incredibly ancient plasma screen TV with Tivo and Blue-Ray!" would be right-out :mrgreen: . In the end, mild variaton would push the RPG enough away from Errant Story-Actual that it should limit any future coincidences between Errant-RPG and Errant-Actual, while still maintaining the history and ambiance of Errant-Actual. We could also always say: "Well, these particular Dwarves in the Errant-RPG were some other, different sect of Dwarves, separate from those other ones in Errant-Actual", should bits of info about Dwarves come to light in Errant-Actual.
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Re: OOC - Please Read

Post by BloodHenge »

Confirmed

Although I'm not sure I'll actually be joining immediately. I haven't technically been in a freeform RP before, and I'd like to get a sense of how it works before I start mucking about in it.
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