MagiStream

Despite MS having a lot of onsite lore to work with, and lots of people who write journals or other stories from the POVs of their original Magi characters, I've never seen much done with the MS setting here in the Roleplay Stage. Maybe it's just because everyone has their own interpretations of how things work in the MS-verse and adding other people into the mix can make headcanons iffy. But out of curiosity, I wanted to drop a thread here and see if anyone else had any interest in starting up some MagiStream RP, as well as what kind of roleplay it ought to be. My first thought was something totally sandbox, where people can just kind of do what they want and create their own stories, but that can sometimes result in a roleplay becoming directionless and floundering (especially when it's all contained in one thread). A rough plot or other point of conflict can help move things along, but then that requires planning and discussion.

If you have any thoughts on the matter, please post! Ideas and opinions are welcome.

I voted for the 'something in the middle' option, but would enjoy an open sandbox type roleplay as well. Personally, I think having a plotline is good since it gives everyone an opportunity/reason to interact with others if they wish to, but I also like being able to just roleplay whatever comes to mind without worrying about it conflicting with the plot. So I'd join either way, if you do end up making one.
Maybe a roleplay where there's a plot, but it's not anything so major that if some people want to just roleplay existing in the Magistream world without interacting with the plot, they can? Again, I'll join regardless, just making a suggestion you can feel free to use or ignore

EDIT: ARGH I forgot Remy's drinks do....... that. And now I have to retype a whole wall of text.

I think sandbox is really the only working format for threaded games - to run a game with a plot you really ned to have either a central play leader ("Game master") OR you need players to be cowriters who are simultaneously reading and collaborating on meta-discussion about where the game is going, and neither of those things is compatible with this kind of format.

Also, people... may not actually have been reading the flavor text often enough to understand canon to any degree!

Of other pet sites where people RP, Flight Rising (where the pets are themselves characters, but players may also represent a whole group of characters from their 'lair') does a fair amount of "We will do an RP that follows site lore!" and, well, a lot of them end up collapsing pretty badly. Simply the nature of forum RP, as far as I can tell - even when you're in a platform that's ideal for realtime interactions, like IRL D&D, there's a lot of flop games. You sometimes have to try a few times before you get a premise/RP to "catch" and roll along properly, even when it's a GM-driven format

I haven't done an rp in a super long time but from personal experience, I feel like something in the middle is best. Like, for a strict plot to work, all of the players would need to be on the same page. Which would probably be hard because we all have different ideas of how things should work out. I suppose it depends on how many people you'd want to participate.

But I do think it's really cool when you give others the freedom to create their own side plots and see how they manage to weave them back into the main plot. That actually happened a lot when my cousin and I would rp together. We would keep our side plots secret from each other (for the drama, of course lol) and somehow, everything we planned would fit perfectly with the other's plans. That's probably pretty rare, though.

I kind of disagree with Bluewyrm about flop games. I think that as long as everyone is having fun, it doesn't really matter if your main plot gets ditched in favor of something else. It's all part of the creative process.

Solstice wrote:I kind of disagree with Bluewyrm about flop games. I think that as long as everyone is having fun, it doesn't really matter if your main plot gets ditched in favor of something else. It's all part of the creative process.

Haha, that's not what I meant by "flop"! I completely agree with what you're saying about plot - in fact, I think the idea a roleplay can have a predefined "main plot" (rather than whatever organically happens through play) isn't accurate, and GM who believe that run bad longform games. (It sometimes works with "oneshots", but that's not applicable for forum RP.)

- By "flop" I mean, "The game defacto is over because nobody's there to keep playing."

Bluewyrm wrote:

Solstice wrote:I kind of disagree with Bluewyrm about flop games. I think that as long as everyone is having fun, it doesn't really matter if your main plot gets ditched in favor of something else. It's all part of the creative process.

Haha, that's not what I meant by "flop"! I completely agree with what you're saying about plot - in fact, I think the idea a roleplay can have a predefined "main plot" (rather than whatever organically happens through play) isn't accurate, and GM who believe that run bad longform games. (It sometimes works with "oneshots", but that's not applicable for forum RP.)

- By "flop" I mean, "The game defacto is over because nobody's there to keep playing."

Oh, I misunderstood. My bad haha

No problem! Understandable kind of mistake.

I'm about to go somewhere with no internet for like a week and can't start anything until after that, but I wrote down some concepts for one kind of Magistream RP -

In this RP, you play the part of a character in the Magistream universe involved in keeping the creatures in your keep (the magi themself, an apprentice, a friend, a specific Magistream creature in your Keep who's sentient, etc.)
Their current goal is to expand this collection by acquiring specific creatures: whatever YOUR collection goals are. As you catch, quest, breed, trade, and sell in the game of Magistream, in the roleplay universe, your character's actions tell us how that's happening in world of Magistream - and all the other adventures they're going on.

In other words, the players are telling the story behind things they're doing on the main site (in addition to in-RP story developments!), so there's always plot-bunnies to write about if/when specific RPers aren't around to continue a character interaction.

I think the main barrier to any kind of Game With External Lore is "canon versus fanon/house rules" so, to prevent needing someone to play referee, came up with these rule concepts:

[*]Start posts with a note about where they are happening. Example:
The Keep - Flower Garden

Some butterflies fluttered through the flowers...{etc.}
[*] The first time per post you mention (including in your location note) a place in the Magistream world, a legend entry, or another piece of canon text, make a portion of that sentence a link to the relevant page. Example:
The magi said, "I heard a rumor last time I went to the Towers that the Dark Brotherhood's Myriddinis still alive.

Ideally I think a reference sheet that condenses the site lore articles down to relevant bullet points (ex. "Canon NPC: looks like X, known for X", "A city known for white marble, spoiled nobles, and places to buy rare eggs", "Has leviathans", "The library here is important", "Seers are a thing that exist") (AND notes who generally might know a thing + whether it's a myth, guess, or truth) would be better, so there's no rereading like 10 Tales playing Snopes: Magistream Universe Edition.

(I'm no canon stickler - my IRL friendgroup has a long-running RP set in Eberron that's about 79% house lore rulings by weight! - but I think "Canon is big, scary, and hard to look up" would be a mental barrier to people wanting to RP in this universe...)

(PER THREAD PURPOSE, you can steal/fold/spindle/mutilate any of these thoughts for something you're set up, as long as you understand I'm going to be using them too.) (Should you? Honestly, no idea. But you CAN, if you think it's worth a go.)

Thank you all for chiming in! It's been good to hear others' thoughts on the matter, and I'm starting to think that at least beginning an RP as sandbox might be the best way to do things. Give everyone a chance to establish their characters and get into the flow of things before I start trying to railroad people into a cohesive story

Bluewyrm, you've got some great ideas and I absolutely might nyoink some, especially the idea of linking in relevant lore pages.