Great Houses - Interest, Sign-ups, and Planning

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

Alrighty.

This is the new RP idea that we're going to try to get off the ground.

This is the basic premise; each player, instead of controlling one (or more) character(s), will be in control of an entire Great House, a political and military body that has control over at least one entire planet in the universe, if not more than one.

This would be a nuanced sci-fi RP experience, where each player would be narrating individual characters interacting and scheming, but at the same time, be controlling vast armies capable of capturing - or destroying - worlds.

There are definitely some details that need working out. We have no worldbuilding at all, and I want a fully developed universe for our Great Houses to interact in. We'd have to come up with a system for how such a feudal system came to be, details of House cultures and histories, and a system of in-world rules that restrict the Houses from all out war (at least in most cases).

It's probably going to be difficult to get working, but we're going to start planning here.

Let me know in the thread if you'd like to participate; we'll include you in the planning process, so that you have a say in the world you'll be RPing in.

@Channelknight Fadran, do you think you could make a worldbuilding doc for us to brainstorm ideas and flesh out the ones that work? You're probably in a better position to do that than me. Technologically speaking.

Tagging others who've shown interest: @Thaidakar the Ghostblood, @dannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnex, @Veledsier, @SmilingPanda19, @TheAlpha929

Let's see if we can get this to work.

Edited August 14, 2023 by The Bookwyrm

[Channelknight Fadran]

on it, chief

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1itauB9ysgz40fMsMGapZ3QKyczTjgzVLDL3zmEFIUQU/edit?usp=sharing

[Lotus Blossom she/her]

Hey! Could I join? This sounds super cool!!

[Channelknight Fadran]

@The Bookwyrm we've already gone batschnapps insane

like

oh god

the screaming

[Mat he/him]

Sounds interesting but my life is about to get reeeeal busy again real soon 

You can put me in the PM I guess

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

btw, I want it to be clear that I'm just a spectator as of right now.

[Channelknight Fadran]

o7

[Channelknight Fadran]

kay I'm double-posting but something just occurred to me:

What timescale would we be doing this RP in? If we don't figure this out then it'll inevitably turn to either regular person-by-person RP on the scale of minutes or a FGaRS on the scale of decades, neither of which we really want to deal with here. Presumably we'd be doing things in distinct chunks of time (say a few weeks or a month or something), with someone (Bookwyrm) in charge of wrapping things up and moving to the next time frame once we've exhausted our ideas. Plans we put into action would be "announced" by us at the start(ish) of most "sessions," probably, and then the "sessions" themselves would be people putting together plans and such of their own to react to the new status quo.

To avoid turning this into a FGaRS or SE knockoff, I think we need a few guidelines that we just Honor System:TM:

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I think this might be interesting enough to drag me out of my most recent slump of inactivity.

[The Bookwyrm he/him]

Okay, I have put up a poll to try to get some basic worldbuilding ideas worked out.

I probably should have clarified that we needed to get these basics done before we went all out on ideas, but...oh well.

EDIT: Also, people, if you want to join the RP, go help us make it real! Post ideas in the doc, or in this thread!

EDIT 2: Removing the 3rd question for confusion. I will clarify once we have solid answers to questions 1 and 2.

Edited August 12, 2023 by The Bookwyrm

[Experience he/him]

Oh I am so in

[Channelknight Fadran]

For those of y'all not in the know (or who just don't know how to navigate the doc - I get it), here are the four major Proposals we have rn:

• In the 1300s a bunch of aliens came to Earth and gave us spaceships and tech and stuff. Give it a few centuries and whaddya know - we blew ourselves up. Now the survivors have fled on the spacehips that we were gifted, of whom many also died - save the ones that managed to figure out how to work their ships and start taking over planets and stuff. Nowadays every kingdom/house/etc. is heavily based on these battleships, which are as valuable as entire worlds and armie, and are therefore important to steal.
• In the distant future, it's SPACE TIME. FTL exists, but it's very costly to use (y'know - like in Dune), and we all technically have the power to just rip each others' planets into pieces (all you need is to redirect a large-ish asteroid), but the mutually-understood drive for wealth and power has brought the many worlds into an unspoken truth that no, actually, we won't just needlessly ruin planets and squander those resources. Houses are constantly vying for power and such, but have to tiptoe around the issues that might cause global destruction.
• The RP takes place in a small section of the galaxy, policed by a big-ol' super mega empire that keeps all our Houses in line. So far that's pretty much all there is to this one.
• Stark Trek, but it's Star Wars. The local area has a bunch of different alien races that have all sorts of beef with each other, so a lot of the wars and such would be justified by interracial conflict. Also there's a fancy magic giga star that showed up outta nowhere and we all want it.

[Guest Ψιτιsτηε Βεsτ]

Hey I wold join this, but I don’t have very much experience with things like this. Is that ok?

[Channelknight Fadran]

everyone starts somewhere

[Guest Ψιτιsτηε Βεsτ]

Awesome! I’ll try.

[Through the Living Elan He/Him]

Dude, this looks awesome! Count me in! (If it’s okay with you guys)

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

This sounds perfect.

*Signs up*

[Channelknight Fadran]

@The Bookwyrm we're currently 2:1 on "no Earth plz" and 5:1 on "aliens plz"

methinks we should slap down another question

[#1 Taln Fan he/him]

Sounds fun, I'm in!

[Scars of Hathsin he/him]

Would I be able to join?

[SmilingPanda19 Any!]

The amount of people we have on this now is crazy XD It’s going to be war 

[Channelknight Fadran]

What this means is that secret alliances will be EPIC

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

Oh yeah.

[Through the Living Elan He/Him]

Even alliances that aren’t secret will be secret-ish because they’ll be so hard to keep track of 

[Channelknight Fadran]

Like I said in the PM, I'm pretty sure it'll be chaotic for a few days before most people drop out. A lot of the inerest are from folks who aren't super mcduper active, so I imagine that after awhile it'll become a lot more easy to follow.