51 replies to this topic

[Penblade the Bard]

Thanks Red. I think I'll pitch a completely original idea next, something with no pre-existing rules and laws of the universe to put me in a bind. I was thinking a cross between the good old fantasy quest plotline and a science fiction revenge story. Details pending. Might even make it into an RP .

[Redcoat]

May I suggest abandoning "rules", per se? None of my RPs had "rules" in mind before I wrote them. The story is more important than the technology. It doesn't have to be believable, least of all under analysis. It has to feel believable as people play, and you should expect (perhaps even demand) that your players to participate in your delusion hallucination. But maybe I'm an extremist.

[Penblade the Bard]

Thanks Red but, isn't that what I said? I won't do a fanfiction because everything is already pre-existing in them, I'd just be twisting events around the bloody rules to make a new story. In an original story (or RP) anything can happen and be incorporated in, as I would prefer.

[Redcoat]

Oh my God, I'm an idiot. I didn't read the "no". >_>

Disregard me. XD

[Lyon]

I would like to point out that eventually, there will have to be rules in whatever 'verse you create. Let's take Star Wars as an example that most people know. In the Star Wars universe, we are told that faster-than-light travel is possible and is pretty much the only form of transport around the galaxy. However, the rules of the universe say that you need to have a functional hyperdrive in order to do this.

This is an example of a rule that they just created. If they break that rule (say, by having someone's hyperdrive spontaneously explode, and having the same ship continue zipping around single-biome planets regardless of this), the story loses narrative credibility, willing suspension of disbelief is stomped on, yadda yadda yadda. You just need to make sure that once you lay down the rules of your universe, you don't break them, or people are going to throw the book across the room in disgust.*

*See my much-dented and slightly singed copy of Eragon as an example.

[Redcoat]

Oh, for sure. But you shouldn't be anal about them. The rules should exist because they make your story better.

[Shokushuko]

To be honest, I don't think Cupcakes is too out of character. It's not even a "Pinkamena" thing. The normal Pinkie Pie could easily be like that. See it only played with the idea of "What if Pinkie Pie was secretly a serial killer".

I kind of hate people who suggest that Cupcakes is a "Pinkamena" thing. When Pinkie went crazy with loneliness and rejection, she was broken. It's like when Sims start talking to the "Social Bunny". It left her alone and socially withdrawn and in a world of escapism. A serial killer in the style of Cupcakes is a sadist. They know what they're doing and have no regard for life.

[Durandal]

I see. Still, I despise Cupcakes. Not exactly because it's ruining the fandom or gruesome, just the fact that if you really read it, you'll realize that the only reason it gained popularity is because it was so gruesome. Otherwise, it's agonizing to read. I groaned reading it, and my mind hurt from the idiocy.

[Shokushuko]

I didn't actually find that at all. It was definitely written well enough. I don't think it's about being gruesome. It was just that it was a dark story that horrified people. And made for a great meme. If you were talking about Sweet Apple Massacre I'd agree, that story was poorly written and was only trying to be more gruesome than Cupcakes. Sweet Apple Massacre sounds like someone's crappy rushed personal clopfic...

[Chef]

This is why all my stories are modern tales. I already know all the rules here.

But yeah, can't wait to see what idea you show us, Penblade. This time I'll be able to help!

[Nowe]

But I'll do what I can to help.

[Penblade the Bard]

All right boys and girls and androdynous whatevers, here's my next story idea for you all to tear apart like ravenous dogs that feed off my pain and tears. This one is a heavily science fiction story, with a few mystic bits here and there. First some setting, then the basis of the story...

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The year is somewhere around 10,000 A.D. and humanity has expanded geometrically out from Earth. The United Protectorates of Humanity, otherwise called the Great and Terrible Human Empire, now extends fifty seven light-years out into the galaxy in any given direction. Humanity has met several different alien races as they expanded out among the stars, the majority of which have been peaceful, and eager to join the UPH. A few of them, however, have been hostile, or have just refused to join the Protectorates. You’ll never hear about these alien races though, because whenever such aliens are encountered they are annihilated by a secret branch of the military before any citizen of the Protectorates even catches a glimpse of them. Entire civilizations have been wiped out with no survivors, and no evidence, just because they wouldn’t surrender their planets to the human government. The planets the aliens once inhabited are slagged from orbit by massive warships that “don’t exist” until there’s nothing but sand and rock left, then the terraforming teams are called in, unaware of the slaughter and thinking it’s just another barren planet in a convenient spot.

All the genocides are coordinated and kept under cover by a cooperative agreement between the Galactic Exploratory Company, the largest corporate entity in human space, and the reigning UPH government, both of which have their seats in the Sol system, specifically, on what’s left of Earth. By about the year 9000 A.D. every land mass on Earth had been effectively covered by industrial machinery, along with a high-rise here and there, pushing forward the beast of galactic expansion. The innards of the planet had been stripped bare in the search for oil, coal, iron, copper, any raw resource that a use could be found for, leaving the surface severely unstable. Fortunately for anyone still living on the homeworld, seeing as by this time the rest of the solar system had been colonized, tectonic instability was no longer a problem, because, you see, the planet’s core had stopped spinning and thus moving the continents ages ago. The humans, in their almost Godlike mastery of machinery, had managed to keep the sun’s radiation from causing any problems for the now defenseless planet by, literally, caging the sun.

By putting plates the size of entire planets in a grid around the sun, and generating an energy absorbing field between the plates, they rendered the sun, harmless. The energy collected from the star is funneled via wormhole technology to all nine of the system’s worlds and used for everything from keeping the planet lit and warm, to running cars. All natural fusion energy, at the cost of enslaving a solar system. By this time the human race justifiably felt they were gods, and began their expansion.



The main character of our story will be Kolba, the only survivor of the ice planet Sateo. He was taking a small, one man spacecraft through the asteroid belt encircling his planet as a rite of passage when he is abducted by a cloaked human warship. They try to perform a vivisection on him but he escapes and stows away after watching his planet get pulverized by the hidden warship fleet. The humans try to send in a terraforming team, but then something very strange happens. The planet seems to pulse with some sort of energy, then the tectonic plates shatter into a thousand smaller plates, turning the planet’s surface into a molten jigsaw puzzle. Finding the planet wholly uninhabitable now the fleet leaves and pretends the planet never existed, unwittingly carrying Kolba with them, whose very existence threatens the Empire’s secret.

Twenty years of later, with Kolba fleeing across the stars from his human hunters while at the same time trying to find a way to avenge his homeworld, he  arrives on a planet that, like his own, was hidden because it couldn’t be conquered. It is a desert world with no name and seems to be completely uninhabited until he discovers a temple in the middle of the middle of nowhere. Inside he meets an entity encased in a giant stone called the One Mind. The entity was the one that caused the post-cataclysm tectonic disaster on Sateo with the explanation “I couldn’t save the Sateons, but I could save Sateo from infection.” After that the One Mind tells Kolba the humans have to be stopped before they irreversibly unbalance the galaxy. At this point the One Mind gives Kolba a glimpse of what it sees in its mind, which turns out to be the entire universe, past as well as possible futures. The glimpse nearly kills Kolba, but also reveals to him what he needs to do to begin taking his revenge. And so, now with knowledge no one else in the galaxy could possess, Kolba takes his ship and heads back into human space to make war on the beast.

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One last thing, I was wondering if this could make a good premise for a roleplay, because I think that would be cool but I wanted some feedback on the idea. Thanks for the help guys.