Krill
Lurker in Darkness
If traditional RP is a novel, this is a short story. A scene, maybe two, that capture a narrative through context and implication. Just one chance to build out an entire character, a history and a future, all their goals and fears.
Our Goals:
As for how to build one of these RPs, I see the following as good guidelines:
I hope I can find some cool stories to build with all of you! Please respond with your ideas, and maybe even if they won't work for me right now, someone else in the thread might find an idea they want to explore with you!
Some of my own ideas:
Our Goals:
- To complete our project. One of the 'traditions' of our hobby is that for every thousand roleplays you start, you finish one, if you're lucky. So first and foremost, with this project we want to finish the manageable endeavours we've set out for ourselves - and make them worth our while.
- To develop our skills as writers. New partners, new topics, new characters - all of these force us to try out new techniques, to adapt to new expectations, to inhabit new ways of thinking. Diversifying our writing more frequently will make us more well-rounded as writers.
- To explore new ideas. The brevity of this format lets us take risks more easily, because we're committing to less. Want to expand your horizons, try something weird? This makes exploration safer, more accessible, and ultimately more rewarding.
- To sate our cravings. We always have a new fixation we're dying to indulge - a character, a pairing, a setting, an aesthetic. With these short RPs, we can flit between our whims like moths to fairy lanterns, never withholding ourselves from what we want.
As for how to build one of these RPs, I see the following as good guidelines:
- Limit the characters. Longer roleplays have room for supporting characters and side-plots. Here, there should rarely be more than two characters ever in focus, and the interplay between the two and their environment should be the whole meat of the story.
- Know the environment. This is always essential for an RP, but here especially, where much of the world will be built out from just a few posts, you don't want any confusion that could derail the narrative. You don't need to know everything, but know what's important for what you have planned.
- Define the scope. Limiting the roleplay to one scene isn't explicitly necessary, but you should know going in roughly how many 'scenes' there will be, and what purpose they will serve. This protects you from sprawl that can de-focus the narrative, and from losing momentum as you try to figure out how to shift between scenes.
- Establish a goal. An exciting concept can spark momentum, but a target to aim for maintains it, and with such a short RP duration it'll be easy to stay laser-focused so long as you know where you're going. This can take many forms, both as a goal for your character(s) and as a goal for the writer(s).
- Maybe the characters are waiting for something (a train, the eclipse, the arrival of a friend). What do you need to achieve, before the wait is over?
- The exchange of information. One character might have a secret - a crush, a confession, a piece of wisdom - and somewhere in this scene, they'll have to choose whether to share it.
- Fundamentally, a decision. Our characters will be faced with some sort of dilemma, some challenge to their status quo, and the RP is all about setting up that status quo and then explaining why it's broken or preserved. Two rivals come to blows, a villain chooses redemption, the teens decide to ignore the strange whisperings in the forest.
- A sensation. What's it like to wake up on a dawn-soaked moor? To lie under the stars in the back of a pickup with your best friend? To wonder from space at the barren carcass of your old home, Earth? To fall in love, and never learn to say it?
- Identify the relationship. The roleplay format relies on the relationship between characters, and this shorter version of it boils away nearly everything else. So it's essential that you know, going into the roleplay, how the two characters will interact. Friends? Lovers? Enemies? Strangers? Why does what happens between them matter?
I hope I can find some cool stories to build with all of you! Please respond with your ideas, and maybe even if they won't work for me right now, someone else in the thread might find an idea they want to explore with you!
Some of my own ideas:
- BARGAIN
- FROM THE DEPTHS
- THAT SUMMER FEELING
- ONLY TONIGHT
- BETWEEN THE RINGS
- WE FALL TOGETHER
- ON THE RAILS
- CRISIS POINT
An individual with great power has summoned a devil. Now, they must find an agreement that is... mutually beneficial.
An interplay of power and estimation thereof. Someone might be way in over their head...
GENRE: fantasy (with the powerful mortal being a sorcerer/ess, royalty, royal adviser) or modern (corporate executive, rising politician) or cyberpunk (the devil is drawn out of the Net - the new hell)
