(no subject)

[active_apathy]

A secret project is afoot! Well... partly secret. Now, for this Secret Project to work, I'm going to need a little bit of information from you, the people who read my entries. So, go and Google for a reading speed test, take it, and tell me:

[Poll #552089]

The sooner I get this information, the sooner I can start posting bits of the Secret Project, making it rather less secret and rather more fun. liadlaith, lesslikeyou and daphyn, I have electronic evidence of your excitement over the Secret Project. If you don't answer, I'm going to tickle you mercilessly.

And now that we've gotten past that bit, I have some non-sneaky research. Everyone who was interested in <lj-rp> seems to rather like sci-fi, and FATE came out rather a bit ahead of everything else. Now comes the time to find out just what kind of sci-fi you'd like, and what other genres you might be interested in throwing in with it. There's no poll for that bit, just a bit of a conversation in comments.

Comments

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Yeah, powers are cool. Aliens are one of the things which have been over-done, which is why I suggested global warming - SF short stories and novels went through a global warming phase, but RP never really did, unless you count Fnal Fantasy, which was just weird. And working out which countries would be totally immersed and where the islands would be is really fun if you have a map of the world with contour lines.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Powers are indeed cool, and its hard to unbalance them in FATE; there's some new rules bits and pieces that I'll introduce everyone to a bit later on that are really very pretty.

I've never played any Final Fantasy, but Waterworld (the novel) was far, far too much global warming for my tastes. That said, Port Wednesday in Garth Nix's Drowned Wednesday makes for a lovely submerged city effect (despite that one being from displacement).

Aliens are indeed overdone; that's another bit of why I like Firefly so much. There's only so many variations on the theme before it gets really, really stale. I'm not much of a random monster person in fantasy roleplay, either.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Never heard of Waterworld, must look it up, and my library hasn't got Drowned wednesday in yet. I haven't actually played Final Fantasy either, but my friend is a fan, and there's this bit with thise huuuge wave, and then there's this kind of semi-submerged world of the future, whatever.

Anyway, yeah. If your main focus is powers you'll want to go all X-Men-only-not, or then again you might not. I prefer the government-secret-genetic-experiment style mutant to the completely random ones, but it's a theme that's only been explored in one or two directions, really, so you never know. There's a freeform RP like that called Eternus Infinuum, with the mutants and all, but as a result of chemical things rather than X's random "omg humanity is mutating it is teh future of the human race omg". I guess chemical, nuclear, random and omg!Secrit Govt Cloning Shit are the only mutation causes I can think of, or maybe solar flares.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Waterworld? Don't bother. The book is as bad as the film. Drowned Wednesday is quite a lovely read; if the library doesn't have it, then I've seen copies in Target for about $10.

I used to play in a near-future supers freeform on Shards, riiiight back in its early days. Thing is, in SF, I don't generally feel the need to worry about causes for things too much. It's enough to know if things work, if they break, and what they do - after all, there's countless things in the real world that I don't understand at all. Powers wouldn't have to be a major focus, either; they could be anywhere from major plot point to sometimes resource.

Again, with FATE, exact causes are pretty irrelevant. Players can make up details - it's somewhat encouraged that they do - and the dice do more pacing than simulating.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I guess I'm just a Sciffy freak then :P I really love working out why things are happening and what all the butterfly effects of one little change in the fabric of the universe are. You don't really need to tell it all in the RP, but it's nice to have it there as background and you know, just in case. You never know what situation will come up in an RP, and it's easier to make up a backstory first than to have to create one later when there's all sorts of story developements that it has to fit.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and nnow I remember what I forgot on my list. Plague! Someone's released a freaky mutated virus, or it's mutated itself, or whatever - society ridden with creepy new disease always makes for an excellent sciffy world, if only because plagues require a completely different style of society from the one we have in the real world, and if the world doesn't organiseitself into uber-quarantine then you can have sooo much fun with the panic that plague induces.