Human Roleplay Switches

[nefarius]

[align=center][div style=" background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid black; width: 550px; min-height: 9px; font-family:; line-height: 110%; text-align: justify; color:; padding: 20px"]The problem with not including lore in our human roleplays is that, as roleplayers, we often look for reasons to include our characters in said world to see how they fit - having something like, "something something war, humans have powers, uuuuh, then groups." will not inspire muse or creativity in people looking to join. It will pull them away. Lore also provides answers people might have for questions, so you can see why having simplistic, straight-to-the-point backstories can be a major turn off to many people. What we want is to draw people in by the creativity and the uniqueness of our human roleplay, not make them turn away from the site because it's essentially like every other semi-fantasy roleplay out there.

We also need a slightly plausible reason for humans gaining powers out of nowhere. Not, "the radiation made them do it". Radiation causes more deformities and deaths than it causes fire elementals and shape-shifting. If we're making this somewhat realistic, look at Chernobyl, as I pointed out before. Also just saying that one day they got them out of nowhere is very dull.

With Lumi's idea, we get a healthy mix of what everyone essentially wants. While it needs more fleshing out, it allows for more creative freedom while still giving a somewhat sensible reason for why things came to be. We also wouldn't really be able to use modern transportation or machinery, which I understand is what a lot of people prefer not to be there when we start roleplaying again.

If enough people complain about too many words, there's always a tl;dr, an faq, and shorter summaries that we can include. You're not required to read every paragraph we dish out.

Again, I understand some of you might display hesitance in creating an in-depth lore to base our world off of, but the point of this is to draw more people into our site by how unique and different our roleplay is. We won't do that by creating a random world where suddenly powers exist. It creates too many questions unable to be answered, such as - "if I do want to make my character a former war vet, that means that there was a war?? But it isn't explained in the backstory of the universe, so I'm confused? Plus, it's not really acknowledged by anyone else in the roleplay, so..."

[vellichor]

It's not that there shouldn't be any lore but it should be easy to understand. I have never seen complex lore work on an rp site and I've been on quite a few haha. I'm not saying there aren't ways to make it work but it usually doesn't. the only site I've ever seen it remotely wok on was when staff was moderating all bios and there was an entire acceptance system for new characters. The truth is that the vast majority of bob members came from more open rp sites rather than ones that were heavy with complex lore. Generally speaking, having a complicated lore pushes people away because it's far too intimidating to try and find the spot to fit in that you're talking about. I actually have had several people say to me they strongly disliked the idea of having factions or groups already set into the world (outside of just the rp groups) and having pre-destined plots due to the restrictive nature of that sort of thing. I've also seen several people mention on discord that they were already intimidated by the lore that was being created on this discussion, before it's even a full idea.

Creating complex lore is great for small sites but BoB is fairly large and it's still growing. We don't know where the rp might take future members and we don't want to restrict them to a small world or ideaology because that isn't fair to them. I agree we need a reason and we need rules but an entire made-up history will a.) take TONS of time to actually set in place and b.) make it far more confusing for newcomers. If it creates questions, the rpers step in to fill in the blanks.

I also personally disagree that rpers want someone to give them a place to be. The cool thing about being on an open site is that you make your own spot and your own history. You want an ageless being from another dimension? You can and the world is open enough to let you. You want a person that claims to be a god? You can. You want someone who used to be a goat? You can do that too. I'm not saying we don't need any answers. I'm saying that sometimes questions are good. We need the basics, like why the world is the way it is, a map, and a few groups, but I don't think custom lore and history is a good idea because it makes things very confusing very quickly. If you're world building for a large work, obviously that isn't the case. Every answer should be fleshed out and answered in detail, but that isn't what this is. We're on an rp site and large lores, generally speaking, do not work. It's essentially like telling 100+ people to all tell the same story at the same time; it's far too difficult to moderate and control.

There are sites where this works but it's because they are extremely heavily moderated and they aren't particularly friendly to newer members (at least in my personal experience). That's why I left sites of those nature and came back to sites like BoB because I got sick of constantly being told I couldn't fit in a place for some convoluted plot reason I never really understood. Even if someone comes in and reads pages and pages of information, it's possible they won't totally understand and then the continuity of the world is still broken.

If we just say human history was the same up until the events of the rp, people can use real-life wars. They can say there were wars between their person's group and another.  Because humanity is all split up and because they have very limited technology and transportation, it's unlikely there's been any large world wars but I'm sure there've been skirmishes between groups, but a place just miles away may have no clue due to environment barriers and the fact there is no longer open communication between every human via internet or media.

I apologize if any of this sounds aggressive or demeaning but I've genuinely never seen a large lore work out on a site like BoB because it gets very confusing for newcomers very quickly. Even if all of us understand it, that doesn't guarantee someone else a year from now will also understand. I strongly believe rp lore should be set by the rpers as time passes, not by some sort of pre-determined plot or lore. No one will read through the full history and those that do still might not understand it depending on how detailed and specific it is. I genuinely think the more open we can keep this, the better off we'll be.

[ace]

I agree entirely with [member=111]apricity[/member] and everything they've said.

Complicated lore breeds questions and uncertainty, and will turn people away from jumping in. We want to make human roleplay attractive, not something difficult to understand. No one wants to read paragraphs of lore, and a tl;dr wouldn't work either because you can't just summarize an entire new world within a couple of sentences.

A blank-slate universe will allow for more creativity, and also let roleplayers create their own history and lore, which is ultimately more attractive than getting told that this is what they have to do, in this specific way, and suddenly their character can't fit in because of some convoluted plot or rule.

Here is my suggestion:

A post-apocalyptic universe where an unnamed disaster has wiped out most of the human race, those who remain have developed abilities and mutations to help them survive in this unfamiliar universe. Modern technology has been wiped out as a result of the disaster, and humans have been reduced to stone-age weapons and what they can scavenge from the wreckage.

It's not very eloquently written, but that's all the information I think we should give roleplayers, in order to keep the world open and allow for creative freedom, but also include some soft limits so characters don't get too powerful.

A map can be made but not until we decide our boarded groups because we don't want people to have to change their territories too drastically in order to join the universe.

[Orion]

slides this in here
https://beastsofbeyond.com/index.php?topic=3527.0