Idea Oops! You and your friends just wrote a bunch of your ocs into reality! 💀 Now what?

[theoscout]

I got a brainwave about a bunch of writers collaborating with each other on a shared universe, without realising that the forum/ google docs/ website or whatever they were using to collaborate their idea was actually magical and bringing their ideas to life. I'm unsure on how to develop it. Thoughts?

 

[nerdy tangents]

A few thoughts ;

1. I would come up with a fairly basic premise for the OC’s universe. Like it’s a generic fantasy world or some kind of rom com story. So the OCs are more or less just archetypes (ex. The Princess, the Mean Girl, etc).

2. When the OC appear have them bound to their creator and play up the messiness of that dynamic. Are the OCs like the IRL characters kids? Are IRL characters like their Gods? How much control does the IRL character have over the OCs actions and autonomy.

3. As for the main focus? The OCs becoming real people not just archetypes. So them becoming more messy and independent and self aware as the story goes on.

 

[Idea]

One potential approach would be to two have a parallel plotline kind of thing. So one part of the story and pista would be the authors hanging out, making up stuff and adding to the doc. The other would be the characters, loving their lives and having to deal with what the authors implement. You could have an interesting thing where the characters don’t even realize anything changed even when major changes are made because to them things have always been like that.

The more standard but still quite viable alternative is essentially nerdy tangents ’s 2nd point, and basically just having the characters coming to life in the “real” world and confronting their makers.

 

[theoscout]

I was thinking that the way how a character behaves in regards to how their writer wrote them sort of works like an intrusive thought- they're a part of you, but you can't control them, and even though you might be able to predict them, you can't control what they do even if they hurt you.
The worldbuilding, if it exists, works the same way. You can't pull out a major inconsistency after you've established the rules, such as turning a random person such as yourself into a god, because it doesn't happen.
Characters and settings are independent of their creators, and don't die when their writer dies.

The roleplayers come up with the settings and the characters, and fill out forms for them.

That's what I've come up with so far.

 

[theoscout]

I'm thinking of a premise behind why the world was created.

Maybe there was some kind of eldritch entity that's young like the Collector from ToH, who wanted to study how people made worlds, and the consequences of those actions. Or just study humans in general. So they'd make a website on the internet that promises feedback on people's worlds, to catch amateur authors. They'd prefer going for lesser known ones because otherwise a famous one might get more attention if they suddenly went missing.

There's a plot twist that the entity isn't the one providing feedback- its kidnapped a couple of professional authors who it's forcing to write the feedback, because they're better at doing it than the entity.