Planning a Guided Tour of Planet (Slots Filled)

[Raf_Cian]

As some people know, my player has been planning a small (epic) to serve as an original origin story for myself and his other main character, Ryan Galen. He managed to do a lot of planning over the course of last year, and even wrote a small little character piece for me and Ryan... but scripting out the actual stories hit a snag and he started working on other things.

Delays aren't really that big a deal, he's in this story for the long haul, but he'd like to get his creative juices flowing again in that direction, so he'd like to request some volunteers for a bit of a guided tour. He wants me to take a small group, two to five, through a portal to explore a few of the lands of Planet, the not so creatively named setting of the little adventure.

What we need from you up front if your volunteering...
One, we need to discuss species. Planet is mostly populated by seven species derived from the Carnivora Order. I don't want to deny anyone access, but people who don't fit into that model will have to undergo some... species TFs to not cause a mass riot. Also many normal furs might be gaining some minor super powers as part of the transition but we cover that after you volenteer.

Two, we need to know what you expect from me. Yes, my player is organizing this for HIS befit, but it's still a form of roleplay. We need to know what our players expect just like a proper Gamemaster. Do you just want a social romp as you explore the world and maybe your new powers? Or do you want action and drama as well? We make no promises for a masterpiece, but we shall strive to provide.

After that... we need to organize chat times as my player takes what was requested and craft enough of a frame work to game master a scenario.

Also, since some people around here might be driven off by certain climates, we do warn you that destination one will be at the nation that occupies the north pole of Planet... so bring your winter coat. Any further venues are yet to be determined. If people want to treat each venue as a separate signs up so you can go to the place that most interests you, we can work around that.

So... line starts here. Any volunteers?

[Shifting Sands]

Well I don't see why not to do this, so I'll "play"

I like action and drama! And I would probably rightfully assume that this isn't a very toony type thing, so if I need to change things up just a tiny bit (as in, not being a very tiny jackal who is made of ink ((probably))) just tell me and I'll come up with something!

[Digital Vulpine]

Eh, guess it might be fun.  I suppose I'll just try to play along with whatever comes up, but a general summary of what to expect will be nice for character-building purposes.

Also, can we get a list regarding species?  Seven out of two hundred and eighty is a lot of guesswork. 

[Raf_Cian]

@Medik
You are correct in assuming this will not be very "toony", but I would also like to keep people as close to their "normal" character as possible.

You would need to wear pants and many people may look at your strangely if you're not wearing a shirt unless you're at the beach. You can retain your normal childlike persona and have an equivalent height but you'd have to expect the NonPlayer characters to treat you like a child. You are of course allowed to adjust your height in age if that is just not the type of roleplay you'd be looking for in this instance.

Jackals would translate to Lucavune on Planet, a species consisting of members of the canidea finally: wolves, dogs, foxes, and many other creatures including jackals. Lucavune have the innate species power of Pact Thought. Essentially your psychic, with the default ability to have touch telepathy with other people who have Pact Thought, and one other ability that tends to favor telepathy or telekinesis. Exceptions abound, though. Ryan himself has what would be defined as "far sight", a very present oriented form of clairvoyance.

Remember when making these design decisions your not creating a character for a world, but deciding how your character would be changed to fit the world so as not to spook the locals when your visiting. As a character you're supposed to know that your not from around town, essentially.

@Digital Vulpine
What I just said to Medik says it best. Raf himself is taking his friends to visit "his world". So even if you aren't your default self, which just as Medik can choose to alter his child like age you are free to choose, you are still designing a tourist who is visiting foreign world and has taken on features native to that world to avoid rising questions from the locals.

I guess a species list would be appropriate. I was just hoping to have part of the tour being explaining things in person as much as possible.

Lucavune: Structured after the canidae family Lucavune resemble wolves, foxes, and all subspecies derived from the two. Lucavune as a species possess a form of psychic ability known as Pact Thought; Pact Thought touch telepathy with other Pact Thought gifted, and one other power which tends to favor telepathy or telekinetic.

Fenine: Structured after the felidae family Fenine resemble cats, domestic and greater. Fenine posses a form of magic known as Bio-Runics. Bio-Runics allows one to both inscribe and activate runes; it comes in several forms of elemental specifications.

Tucotter: Structured after the musteloidea super family Tucotter resemble not only ferrets, otters, and badgers but also raccoons, skunks, and red pandas. Tucotters possess a subtle form of innate cybernetics known as Bio-Cybernetics. Bio-Cybernetics allows one to interface with properly equipped technology like a form of blue tooth, and carry several software applications within their own minds.

Brendar: Structured after the ursidae family Brendar resemble bears. Brendar possess a form of psychic ability known as Bio-Ecto. Bio-Ecto grants enhanced sixth sense, and one other power favoring clairvoyance or psiometabolism.

Siles: Structured after the pinnipedia super family Pinnipedia resemble seals and walruses. As a species, Siles have Sea Breath which very simply means they can breath underwater.

Hyetuar: Structured after the hyaenida family Hyaenida resemble hyenas. All Hyetuar are Tuars, which is to say they have a normal male athro torso growing out of a female feral body... yes, you did read the gender right, but given the nature of the forum we're not going to be getting into the social ramifications of that issue in this roleplay.

Monga: Structured after the herpestidae family Meegoo resemble mongoose and meerkats. All Monga are a special form of Naga, possessing a snake like lower body with a soft scaled belly but otherwise furred coat.

Hybrids do exist as well, though in appearance they look like only one parent species and tend to be mules, meaning they can't be parents themselves. They do possess the powers of both parent species, though.

[Selden]

Sure, I'll sign up.  I'd be alright with just a social romp or something with more action, though my vote goes toward social - expect some trouble commanding any powers I'm supposed to have for combat if it does occur.    I think I can assume a Tucotter with some general utility programs loaded, but I'll let you decide specifics.  As for time, I'll just try to show up when it works for others - I have a relatively flexible work schedule.

[William Swiftfoot]

Im interested in this, and really, Im flexible. A plotted story is cool, but I can also work with a social game. Just depends on what people want to do.

As for open times. Most nights during the week after 6-7 Eastern is best. Sunday is supremely flexible also.

[Snow]

I'm interested. If you're trying to use our standard forum characters as closely as possible, you might need to shunt me over to the otter/skunk race. Doesn't greatly matter to me.

I'd like to know what you intend in terms of campaign length. The ideal for me would be something I can try for 3-4 sessions, say. My main interest is in character and setting, as opposed to detailed tactical combat, but that doesn't mean ruling out combat/action in general.

What system, if any, did you have in mind?

I'm most available weeknights after 7 Eastern or weekends, anytime.

[Raf_Cian]

@Snow
For the sake of my mental image of you, I'd prefer skunk. The DoW campaign was very impressionable on me.

As for systems, we don't have any stats planned. My player's first experience in chat role playing was a rather free form super hero MUCK, were people established their characters and were then honored to developed from what was established. There was of course a moderator system to keep people honest, but otherwise it was basically a fully IC version of the chat RPs we have here in the Crimson Flag Chat.

In this case my player is the moderator. People are choosing their races, and with a strong suggestion but not a requirement to keep as true to their normal Crimson Flag persona as possible but not a requirement since... well let's just say there are squirrels in this world, but they are a little non-sentient. From there my player plans to negotiate powers by suggesting something he thinks fits the person from observation, and then allowing room for criticism. After that, assuming my player has finished writing out his little amateur campaign model, we can begin.

Otherwise we aren't projecting any sort of length. My player wants to let people into this world to explore both to show it off and to get his creative juices flowing again. You read the word "amateur campaign model" in the previous paragraph, and that is what he's talking about. He has to come up with names for not only people met, but actually do the nitty gritty things like name cities and think of the practical economic impacts of the little blurb Bressia was in his head before approaching to start this campaign. The "adventure" in Bressia may be about amount of sessions you mentioned, but afterwords my player has hopes to move the tour onwards to all seven nations of Planet, allowing people to bow out or join up as they feel motivated.

@Snow and Selden
I owe Selden a detailed description of what BioCybernetics entails, and since it looks like Snow is going to be a Tucotter as well, that means he needs to same lecture as well. Knock on wood, I'll try to get that too you guys tomorrow.

@Kenku
While it will hopefully be very social, looking at things my player has realized there does need to be SOME plot if only to establish an endpoint objective. Otherwise things just linger on until people get bored and drop out. Don't worry, plot won't necessarily mean violence.

Otherwise you would be a very easy conversion into a red fox Lucavune. I'll work on getting a proper write up for your need to know knowledge about Pact Thought after I'm done writing up BioCybernetics for S&S.

@Medik and DV
I've responded to both your original posts, but so far you haven't responded back. Both Kenku and Snow are directing the time to be around 7pm, so unless either of you voice a problem that will most likely be the time. I also need confirmation on your races before we can start talking about powers.

@EVERYONE
We'll try to be in chat more often so people can bug more about this, and encourage you all to do so. Mind you, for my player to be working on this AND be in chat, that means he won't be paying much attention to the chat window. So either make sure to use my full name to ping me, or just outright private message me.

[William Swiftfoot]

Aww...they don't have red's shorter tree dwelling cousins in this world?

[Selden]

7 Eastern works for me.  If I am a little late then I apologize - sometimes I have to work later than usual.

[Digital Vulpine]

7 is fine for me as well, my schedule's fairly open right now. 

[Raf_Cian]

*The rat behind the curtain locks the ferret in a closet so he can have a word with his players.*

Right, it's been two months. I should probably speak up and say why nothing has happened with this... which is exactly what I said one month ago, and look where I am now.

I went into this thinking there wasn't going to be much too it. Strap some pants onto the furs who were pantless, jump into one of the more tourist friendly continents on Planet, and just walk everyone about. Then there came the idea of plot, and then notion that it shouldn't drag on forever so you better preplan some stuff rather than pulling it out of your tail, and that started the snowball effect.

Basically, there are three things that plague my creativity. One, distractions. Two, anxiety. Three, idea creep. This "project" has suffered from all three.

First there were some plain old distractions. Yes, in the first two weeks I managed to get a lot of work done on just this some days, but other times... things creep up. I don't think I need to go into detail about the kind of things that distract a geek, but needless to say the OCD way I play Pokemon doesn't help... I'm still not past the second gym.

Next comes the anxiety, and while distractions is a constant rain, anxiety is a snowball on the kill. It starts out small, but day by day it builds bigger and bigger. For me in particular, the sense that he's failed in an obligation or perceived expectation is a big issue I still don't know how to properly manage after three decades of life. It literally gets to the point where I may as well really be rat in the corner of the room, not escaping into any distractions but instead shaking like a leaf from everything I'm not doing. I've just drifted away from communities due to anxiety like this, as I start avoiding the place associated with the perceived obligation. It's happened before, and I really don't want it to happen again...

Finally, there are ideas... so many ideas. I want to get to them all, and I accept that I won't be able to, but even the ones I push aside still sit there developing and demanding my attention. It only gets worse when you realize that anxiety over uncompleted ideas can actually compete with each other... simultaneously demanding attention yet deterring it at the same time. My mind might be a rich tapestry of ideas, but it's a terrible work environment...

So yeah, that's what happening here. I'm finally being what counts as productive for me again, but I'm still have this hanging over my neck like an albatross... that's why I'm posting this instead of just letting people assume it's dead, which I guess you all are based on how it hasn't been badgered at me in the chat recently... despite the fact that I haven't been in the chat that often, which is once again one of the anxiety symptoms...

...and that's about it. I don't need pitty. I don't need hugs... in fact, NO HUGS. Hugging me because you think I'm sad REALLY sets off my anxiety even more for some reason. I just needed to get this off my chest. I still have all the notes for this, and I might build up the drive to work on it again as I work on and maybe complete other things... goodness knows what I have gotten done is some nice world building for Planet. But I won't be holding any of the existing players to some mythical obligation to play once I'm done. You guys have better things to do than wait around on my sorry tail.

...and now if you excuse me, I need to let the ferret out of the closet before he finds the cordite.

[Stormkit]

I'm not one of the party tour members, but I've had experience with this kind of issue before. Idea creep especially, but also the need to work things out perfectly before even starting and then you just never get started. I suggest not letting yourself think about it. Just one day when you're on, poke a few people who are interested and ask if it's a good time for them. You should know enough about your world that you can handle whatever they end up doing, and when you can't, you learn something about your world which is the whole reason you're doing this.

Plan out maybe three to five vague (don't think about them too much!) plot hooks or ideas and then just let the players loose. Force yourself to deal with things as they happen instead of planning it out ahead of time and don't be afraid to cut an adventure short if no one's having fun with it. This helps a lot with the anxiety and removes the issue of idea creep. Afterwards you may feel like it went terribly and suddenly have all kinds of ideas you didn't think of that would have been so great in retrospect, but that's part of learning. Now you have new ideas for next time and even if you feel like you did a bad job you will have learned something from it. Best of all, since it's mostly spontaneous, distractions aren't too much of an issue. I hope you find this advice helpful.