Soulriders 5.0: Legend of the Unending Games

I'd like to run a Fate/Stay Night RP, and am throwing this post out to gauge interest. Ideally, I'd like to have six or seven players. I'm still not decided on details, but it would probably be an alternate Grail War set in the modern era, about the same time as the 4th Grail War. The characters don't have to be the same, and indeed I'd like them to be different, particularly the servants; however, it would be possible to have the three main families (Matou, Einzbern, Tohsaka) as Masters. On the other hand, it could be something totally unrelated to the canonical setting. Post here if you'd be interested and have some ideas.

six or seven is a lot of players. :P  You running this forum?  Chat?  What your schedule looking like.

First, speak English ;p
Second, it doesn't have to be six or seven players. I can NPC some, or just reduce the number necessary in the setting. It would probably be a forum game.

Quote from: Dracos on July 10, 2010, 07:39:49 PM
You running this forum?

I thought YOU were running this forum, actually, but if you're offering, OK :D

I'm kind of interested.

Would we be playing the masters or the servants or both?

I am kinda interested, but yes, I would like to know what we're playing, exactly?

Quote
I am kinda interested, but yes, I would like to know what we're playing, exactly?

~

Quote from: Ragnar on July 11, 2010, 01:20:42 AM
First, speak English ;p
Second, it doesn't have to be six or seven players. I can NPC some, or just reduce the number necessary in the setting. It would probably be a forum game.

Quote from: Dracos on July 10, 2010, 07:39:49 PM
You running this forum?

I thought YOU were running this forum, actually, but if you're offering, OK :D

I think you have to work on your revolution speeches first. :)

I'm interested, and I'm going to repeat the question about who we'd play.

This would be a freeform system. You would be playing the Masters, and therefore the Servants by extension, in a Grail War taking place in Fuyuki City. You will be able to summon servants of your choosing, provided that they can fit into one of the classes. You may choose previously existing Servants, but I encourage you to make up your own.

At first I debated between doing a completely new war or a more canonical one, but I think I'd like something in between. The canon should be treated as fully moldable to a fairly liberal extent. You can either choose to go with an already established character, or make a new one. For instance, a player could say "I want to play as Rin!" and that would be fine. He could also prefer to make up a new character from the Tohsaka household and play as that Master. Needless to say, the dynamics will change depending on the players' choices, so don't expect that all the canon masters will be chosen as masters in this scenario. You should, however, have a reasonable excuse for tying your Servant and Master together. I'd like to run this based roughly on the Fate route, just because I think straying into Heaven's Feel territory is too much for me to handle. To a certain extent, then, the type of game it is will be decided by your choices. In all honesty, I don't care too much if the masters are already established, but after thinking about it, I'm going to instate the rule that you must make up new servants, just because I think that's half the fun.

If you think you are interested, I am taking Master and/or Servant Class reservations first-come-first-served. PM me with your choices, and I'll update the thread with which classes are taken accordingly. Depending on what you feel you'd like to reserve, you can either message me with "I want XXXX as a master", "I want YYYY as a servant of class ZZZZ", or both.

Let me know if there's anything you're unclear on.

Sooo

We're picking our own master and our own servant, and playing them both directly?

"I want to play as Rin!"

Quote from: Carthrat on July 12, 2010, 12:34:21 AM
Sooo

We're picking our own master and our own servant, and playing them both directly?

Playing both master and servant directly doesn't sound like it would be as fun as playing the master and having the servant somewhat out of your control, which is what I was expecting.

Yeah, I mean, I don't really want to pick a servant if I'm not playing it directly.

Well, those are two rather contradictory replies.
I was planning on the player controlling the master and the servant, but I might be tempted to take away some control. If you said something like "Saber (Arturia) decides to massacre everyone in the daycare messily" I'd have to shut you down anyway, because she probably wouldn't do it. I'll add a poll, though.

If you want me to randomly make a servant for you, that's fine too, but let me know.

I think we're getting back to the sort of game you want to run here. Would you mind if I tried to put it differently?

It's a forum game, so would each player have a thread for himself? Would there be thread crossover, if so? Would it take place according solely to player wishes or as mandated by plot/you?

The overall goal is presumably to win the war, but what intermediate goals exist? Eliminate the others? Via cultural victory? Diplomatic victory? Space race victory? Any/all of the above? Yeah, borrowing from Civ, but you know.

In any game people do stuff, so who are the players interacting with primarily? Each other? NPCs? If there's little PC-PC contact due to conditions (ie not knowing who the other masters are), are there actually other people to confide in or work with aside from the Servants?

Considering how this goes, I think it'd be pretty clear who should control what.

It might be fine to go with a mix of sorts, where the servants are handled by the PCs when more than one PC is present, whilst in other scenes the servant is handled by the GM. I think it's key, btw, for the servants to be GM'd early on, since presumably our interactions with them when we get them will set the one for the relationship as a whole. If we're talking to ourselves then, as it were, it's a bit off. >.>

Carth, that idea sounds pretty good.
I think I had an idea of the Grail War in my head that I assumed everyone was already thinking of, so I didn't clarify. Part of it is also that I'm asking for suggestions, because I'm not sure what the best system or set-up for this would be.

Quote from: Corwin on July 15, 2010, 03:47:36 AM
It's a forum game, so would each player have a thread for himself? Would there be thread crossover, if so? Would it take place according solely to player wishes or as mandated by plot/you?

The overall goal is presumably to win the war, but what intermediate goals exist? Eliminate the others? Via cultural victory? Diplomatic victory? Space race victory? Any/all of the above? Yeah, borrowing from Civ, but you know.

In any game people do stuff, so who are the players interacting with primarily? Each other? NPCs? If there's little PC-PC contact due to conditions (ie not knowing who the other masters are), are there actually other people to confide in or work with aside from the Servants?

Considering how this goes, I think it'd be pretty clear who should control what.

This is a simulation of a Grail War. Each player would have a thread to himself, except when encounters required crossover, I think; what do you think would work well? I haven't really thought of a plot other than the Masters starting off in their respective places. Unless there is a reason for something to be changed, assume that things are roughly the same from Fate/Stay Night. It will be mainly shaped by the players trying to win the war. You can do this however you want, but magi are expected to conform to the rules of a Grail War; e.g., you fight each other unless you work out some kind of alliance. You will not know the identities of the other masters at first, but you can probably hazard some guesses if you know the history (unless you're like Shirou and clueless); for instance, you probably know the three main families are in it.
At first, then, you will be interacting either with NPCs or people you see on a regular basis, for instance at school. I really am not sure how to handle that, but maybe a thread for common places such as the school would work.
The basic assumption of the Grail War is that you will be fighting each other until only one Master/Servant pair remains. While you are not locked into this, keep in mind that this is how a character such as Rin will see the situation.

Freeform's fine with me. I assume the masters who don't get players will be NPCd, so I'm fine with just a few players stumbling through the city and making things happen themselves.

It's not like the grail war ever went to plan in any of the routes anyway, I'm sure there'll be plenty of wrenches, from both ourselves and the NPCs. <_<

Anyhow, any idea on when this'll get started?

It just didn't make much sense to me, so I decided to just ask. On the one hand, the best approach for me seemed solo threads + crossover when necessary. On the other, you seemed to be suggesting the servants would be run by us, alongside the masters. That didn't really seem to work, since in those solo threads the bulk of the interaction was surely going to be from servant-master relationships.

In any case, a mix is fine too, etc. A method I like is control in combat, but not in social situations, for example. Lessens the burden on the GM, while not truly controlling more than one character or dictating their personality. There are surely other ways to mix things up, too.

A couple threads for the common areas would probably work great, and it's easy enough to post hyperlinks in the solo threads and back to keep track of things.

That sounds like a good idea, Corwin. I think we'll go with GM control when not in combat.
As for when it will start, I assume I've got Carth and Corwin on board, but I'd like to know who if anyone else is up for the game. Then I'd start getting info on your characters, followed by gameplay.

*bump*

I'm thinking of getting one or two folks from another board to join in. Would that be OK?

You should!  Recruit! *Cheers Ragnar on in bringing new folks in*

I support this bold venture!

Total strangers? I have no objection.

So now that I am taking a break from jobbiness, I'm working towards trying to get this off the ground again.