punkLECH
11-18-2003, 05:57 PM
Welcome. Where to begin? For some time the "Chill-Out Village" has existed as an erstwhile entity, part roleplaying forum, part storytelling forum, part spam factory, and ever since I've been its moderator I've attempted to take it in various directions, grant it a vision, so to speak, and tried to make that vision a reality.
But after some time I began to realize that with the demographic we have here on the forums (both age-wise and interest-related) it was just not possible to keep the forum themed and regulated in the way I would have liked it to have been. And I also began to realize that this was fine. See, there's a difference between being a moderator and being a pushy visionary, and I don't feel like being the latter any longer--thus, this subforum was born.
Welcome to AvrilStar Chronicles. ASC (<--- woo! shiny new acronym!) is to Chill-Out as, say, and edited transcript would be to a chat room. Ok, bad analogy. Essentially, I've decided to more or less leave Chill-Out as it is: a series of threads in which people can "chill out", I guess would be the best way of putting it. ASC, on the other hand, is here for the serious roleplayers, those who want to work together to create something larger, possibly more epic and more literary, and really concentrate on weaving a tale or a series of tales over an extended period of time.
Kind of think of it as a cross between the Creative Writing Forum and Chill-Out. Essentially, it's what's called Free Form Roleplaying. There is no single writer, there is no single script, no predetermined characters or plots, no pre-existing world. It will be up to the players to cooperate to make this come about, through planning, communication, but mostly through roleplaying.
FFRP comes in a few different forms. Here, it will probably be a bit more restricted, in that if we want to do live roleplay, we'll have to find a place to set up chat rooms (say on IRC, or something). For the most part, it will involve cooperative thread writing. Basically, someone (or someones) set up the inital story (after the genre is chosen--I've mostly participated and facilitated fantasy/sci-fi based FRP, but really it can be any genre) and it goes from there. Players generally have one central character, though they are not and should not be restricted to this, and usually write from this character's perspective within the story/world (although voice is left up to the player, be it first, second, third person, or even a combination thereof). As the story develops, players interact with each other more and more in order to iron out details and make sure they aren't stepping on each other's toes, etc.
Put simply, what FFRP really is is interactive storytelling. It's like a melting pot, with everyone's ideas mingling together, feeding off one another's creativity, until something larger is created. And what's even cooler is that once the first story is underway, it usually leaves room for expansion into a larger story.
So, with that said, a few things need to happen first.
1) We need players. If you're interested in becoming involved with this, you'll need to voice it. But you can't do it here. See, the thing about this forum is that it's going to be restricted to only those members who are serious about this. In order to keep this forum spam-free, unfortunately, it means that only those members included in the ASC member group will be allowed to post. I'm sorry if this sounds horribly fascist, and really, I'm not trying to exclude anyone, but this forum is meant to be restricted for a reason, and I think it should be obvious why. So, if you are interested in becoming a part of this, PM me. We'll get you authorized to post here and then you can join the rest of us in the planning.
2) We need a genre. Perhaps initially, we'll just stick to one genre. There's no way of knowing how many of you will be interested in this, so I don't want to get too big with it too quickly. In most FFRP's I've been involved with, one genre doesn't usually suit the players for too long, so a kind of multiverse gets created in which the world grows to accomodate all sorts of characters, from crusading knights, to elfs and pixies, to cyberpunk deckheads--you name it. But there will be some order to things. So I suppose what I really mean is that we'll have to decide what we want the world to accomodate initally, and expand from that point at a later time.
3) We need help. Eventually, I'm probably not going to be able to handle everything on my own, but I expect that those who are initially involved in this project will become sort of the co-founders of the forum and can hopefully help with whatever it becomes. But this is all very abstract right now since we haven't even gotten started. So let's not dwell.
Hopefully, this all doesn't sound too intimidating. And I know that it might seem confusing, at first. Go out and pick up a copy of "Thieve's World", which is a shared worlds anthology, and you might have a better idea of what I'm aiming at. And don't worry if you're not all that great a writer, either. I am looking for people who are a bit more competent at forming sentences than some of our members (not pointing fingers here), but those members involved in this forum should be able to write comprehensible English free of the taint of internet-speak (l337). And even if you don't feel like you've got what it takes, drop me a line anyway. I'd like for this forum to also serve as a sort of writer's workshop, where those of us with the writing 'skillz' can help others to improve their writing as we go along.
So I guess that's about it. Welcome to AvrilStar Chronicles, again. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling soon.
But after some time I began to realize that with the demographic we have here on the forums (both age-wise and interest-related) it was just not possible to keep the forum themed and regulated in the way I would have liked it to have been. And I also began to realize that this was fine. See, there's a difference between being a moderator and being a pushy visionary, and I don't feel like being the latter any longer--thus, this subforum was born.
Welcome to AvrilStar Chronicles. ASC (<--- woo! shiny new acronym!) is to Chill-Out as, say, and edited transcript would be to a chat room. Ok, bad analogy. Essentially, I've decided to more or less leave Chill-Out as it is: a series of threads in which people can "chill out", I guess would be the best way of putting it. ASC, on the other hand, is here for the serious roleplayers, those who want to work together to create something larger, possibly more epic and more literary, and really concentrate on weaving a tale or a series of tales over an extended period of time.
Kind of think of it as a cross between the Creative Writing Forum and Chill-Out. Essentially, it's what's called Free Form Roleplaying. There is no single writer, there is no single script, no predetermined characters or plots, no pre-existing world. It will be up to the players to cooperate to make this come about, through planning, communication, but mostly through roleplaying.
FFRP comes in a few different forms. Here, it will probably be a bit more restricted, in that if we want to do live roleplay, we'll have to find a place to set up chat rooms (say on IRC, or something). For the most part, it will involve cooperative thread writing. Basically, someone (or someones) set up the inital story (after the genre is chosen--I've mostly participated and facilitated fantasy/sci-fi based FRP, but really it can be any genre) and it goes from there. Players generally have one central character, though they are not and should not be restricted to this, and usually write from this character's perspective within the story/world (although voice is left up to the player, be it first, second, third person, or even a combination thereof). As the story develops, players interact with each other more and more in order to iron out details and make sure they aren't stepping on each other's toes, etc.
Put simply, what FFRP really is is interactive storytelling. It's like a melting pot, with everyone's ideas mingling together, feeding off one another's creativity, until something larger is created. And what's even cooler is that once the first story is underway, it usually leaves room for expansion into a larger story.
So, with that said, a few things need to happen first.
1) We need players. If you're interested in becoming involved with this, you'll need to voice it. But you can't do it here. See, the thing about this forum is that it's going to be restricted to only those members who are serious about this. In order to keep this forum spam-free, unfortunately, it means that only those members included in the ASC member group will be allowed to post. I'm sorry if this sounds horribly fascist, and really, I'm not trying to exclude anyone, but this forum is meant to be restricted for a reason, and I think it should be obvious why. So, if you are interested in becoming a part of this, PM me. We'll get you authorized to post here and then you can join the rest of us in the planning.
2) We need a genre. Perhaps initially, we'll just stick to one genre. There's no way of knowing how many of you will be interested in this, so I don't want to get too big with it too quickly. In most FFRP's I've been involved with, one genre doesn't usually suit the players for too long, so a kind of multiverse gets created in which the world grows to accomodate all sorts of characters, from crusading knights, to elfs and pixies, to cyberpunk deckheads--you name it. But there will be some order to things. So I suppose what I really mean is that we'll have to decide what we want the world to accomodate initally, and expand from that point at a later time.
3) We need help. Eventually, I'm probably not going to be able to handle everything on my own, but I expect that those who are initially involved in this project will become sort of the co-founders of the forum and can hopefully help with whatever it becomes. But this is all very abstract right now since we haven't even gotten started. So let's not dwell.
Hopefully, this all doesn't sound too intimidating. And I know that it might seem confusing, at first. Go out and pick up a copy of "Thieve's World", which is a shared worlds anthology, and you might have a better idea of what I'm aiming at. And don't worry if you're not all that great a writer, either. I am looking for people who are a bit more competent at forming sentences than some of our members (not pointing fingers here), but those members involved in this forum should be able to write comprehensible English free of the taint of internet-speak (l337). And even if you don't feel like you've got what it takes, drop me a line anyway. I'd like for this forum to also serve as a sort of writer's workshop, where those of us with the writing 'skillz' can help others to improve their writing as we go along.
So I guess that's about it. Welcome to AvrilStar Chronicles, again. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling soon.