Open World Roleplay - MMO Style RP

Random - I'm not sure about steampunk, if only because the ponies already have steam engines and in general have rather 1940s-esque technology... dieselpunk, maybe?

To be fair, Dieselpunk is a sub-genre of Steampunk, just like Clockwork. The idea of that genre is high-tech applications of low-tech resources.

Clockpunk forever!

The amount and style could easily vary from one cluster of islands to another. Random idea: Sea trains?

Pretty solid ideas there I could imagine running a pirating campaign where the party ends up getting pulled into an international conflict. Also, with that much water, playing as an aquatic race would be much more effective than many campaigns I've played in.

Ramsus wrote:The amount and style could easily vary from one cluster of islands to another. Random idea: Sea trains?

I am now thinking to those crazy Trains from One Piece that are just awesome...

Not sure whether to use the comment feature of GoogleDocs or not, so I'll post my thoughts here.

I do rather like the setting being a cluster of islands... I like islands for some reason, although they do tend to be limited in terms of terrain types (baring some freaky magic).

Dunno about a war against Discord, flooding the world doesn't seem like something he'd be liable to do, unless that was the result of what was required to defeat him. Either some aquatic race decided it wanted more Lebensraum, or an outside context villain came up and... kinda melted the ice caps. Which makes me think of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which oddly fits in with the Lovecraftian creatures I'm liable to create.

(welcome to the pandemonium that is Dusk's mind)

Oh gods and now I'm thinking of Wind Waker and there's some group that's trying to complete whatever process flooded the world (assuming it wasn't the result of, say, some Heroic Sacrifice by the Mane Six and/or the princesses), because such flooding was supposed to be part of some plan to bring new magic to Equestria...

(I think at this point I should just post my ravings in the GoogleDoc. By Luna, it's fun to rave... I mean, ramble.)

And here is a quick idea of what an archipelago style world could look like, if done freehand by me on my computer.

I took a look at the map and was immediately like, "a circle of 12 islands surrounding the central island? There must be some sort of magical obelisk on each island that powers some arcane magic..."

Of course it'd work better with six since six seems to be a magic number in MLP, but still.

Ramsus wrote:@Zarhon: So you don't favor archipelagos? It's a pretty useful thing for a setup like this since it means if the GMs come up with something new they always have somewhere from it to come from that explains why nobody ever heard of it before. It also allows easy separation of the games when the GMs want.

Got nothing against archipelagos. Just assumed we were working with Equestrian Landmass, which is a continent. An archipelago does indeed sound like a good idea - it allows for ship/airship boons, as well as aquatic characters, to be an advantage and element.

Which brings about another interesting tidbit -> The Griffon, or the Dragon Kingdom, as well as some other locations can work for setting inspiration!

The griffons might be a German/Spanish/French, or similar "European" parallel to ponies (who are American Canadian).

The dragons area would be mostly volcanic and barren, full of caves and savagery that only a dragon could survive, nest and thrive in, and probably is full of valuable minerals and gems that they so crave.

And since so many suggest aquatic themes: How about Bioshock? Ponies advance, socially, to the period of the fifties (similar to Bioshock and Fallout), but thanks to power sources gained from the sea (or otherwise sea based - the technology could be super-advanced hydraulics, augmented further by magic or a special underwater-gained power source), they also have a high degree of technology, Hydro-punk)!

We could also incorporate that, similar to Bioshock, there is something that allows a rudimentary form of genetic engineering, or gaining powers and abilities they shouldn't have naturally - allowing a wide range of PC (and enemy, NPC) abilities to be justified, and for politics/economy to mess about.

As for the power sources and such, the sea can provide those in the form of submerged artifacts (which have been washed onto the mainland by flooding, or were there already, by precursors, only revealed now thanks to flooding), or special/magical aquatic animals that were too deep to reach previously, or water tech wasn't good enough to search so deep.

Also, let us never forget: Seaponies! They'd likely move into flooded areas and make contact, and provide most of the "Switzerland" qualities in regards to power sources and unique valuables (which, due to culture clash, either have no use for, or are using so much that it's near worthless to them).

While these ideas are waterfalling everywhere, I've got two things to add.

First, I don't like steampunk, or clock or diesel or whatever. The style, the theming, all of it, I plain don't like it. But if these comments are anything to go off of, I'm solidly in the minority.

Second, on the theme of Solar Empire vs Lunar Republic, a lot could be added to that in the form of the Factions RP(sort of) we had ages ago on FiD. I believe we were up to 5 or 6 different factions that could be played upon, and would allow for mixing of Pony and non-Pony theming for those that want to play one or the other. It also would allow for more varied styles and concepts (say, if someone didn't like Steampunk, for example).

I'm all for collective world-building though. New setting, or consolidation of established settings, or whatever.

I don't really care for must -punk settings either, which leads into my comment towards Zarhon: I'm under the impression that Equestria is already around the 50s tech-wise. At least in some fashion. They seem to have electricity at any rate, but don't use it for much since magic (or fireflies) can replicate a lot of the effects.

Also, I randomly got the idea for floating islands. I've always wanted a settings with continents in the sky. Granted, that'd give flying races an undue home advantage, but maybe there's just a few floating islands here and there... just to drive home the Bioshock similarities, heh.

Well, floating islands aren't really a problem if you have blimps and other flying machines.

Actually, I chose 12 islands to evoke a form of calendar theme around the central island. I figured that the 12 islands would probably feed into the local magic there and basically wax and wane as time passed, thus giving the central island dwellers a very odd way of keeping track of time and a functionally unique view on magic. What can I say, my inspiration comes in weird fits and starts that make little sense to anyone else usually.

Floating islands are always fun, especially since blimps/hot air balloons exist and some races really do just fly.

As far as the less -punk standard, we could always go the Avatar: the Last Airbender route where higher tech is something that one faction developed and are using it in their war with another group. (which makes me think of the Dark Empire having crazy tech-based monstrosities going against the Light Empire's magic and magitech arsenal...)

I do like the idea of Dragon territories and Griffon territories ect.

One thing I'd like to note is that we should try to make sure not to paint the Lunar empire as evil or at least any more so than the Solar empire. A black and white setting like that doesn't seem at all to be what we're going for here and at the very least doesn't greatly appeal to me personally.

You did notice I was effectively basing the Solar Empire off of the Empire in ff6, right?

thematthew wrote:As far as the less -punk standard, we could always go the Avatar: the Last Airbender route where higher tech is something that one faction developed and are using it in their war with another group. (which makes me think of the Dark Empire having crazy tech-based monstrosities going against the Light Empire's magic and magitech arsenal...)

Reminds me of a sort of triad of power I thought of a while ago... a system by which three factions each had a different area of mastery - technology, magic, or biology. While said triad was initially envisioned for a sci-fi setting, it could be modified for Equestria. One faction uses technology, another sorcery and magitech, and the third uses a variety of genetic engineering and monsters, some of which (like equiwolves or vamponies) may be magical in nature but it's more the innate magic which pegasi and earth ponies have, rather than the overt magic used by Unicorns, to draw a racial comparison.

Equestria being what it is, magic is everywhere, but a lot of it is subtle, which I like... simply supernatural.

I'd rather not have a nation responsible for all the vampires, lycanthropes, etc. That pretty much kills all the mystery and horror elements.

Edit: Still, we could go for like the Solar empire being more magitech and the Lunar empire being more steampunk. Then people who don't really like the steampunk style can just simply not go to the Lunar empire and not really have to deal with it as much.

Doesn't have to be a nation, merely a faction, one with elements in several political nations. Also said nothing about them being "responsible" for the superequine beings... if anything, the reverse may be true.

I think that would fall under one of the supernatural fraternities, basically a group that is trying to build a better monster.

That'd be ok. Like a faction making clockwork ponies or something. But, a nation of vampires or werewolves is either going to kill the mystery or be that horrible place nobody really goes and probably is a myth or something. Also now I'm imagining an island of vampires and just imagining them sitting around with hotels and welcome signs all set up on the beaches. Basically, if you have too many of them in one place they become less something scary and mysterious and more just another race. Possibly a somewhat creepy race but, we already have Changelings to fill that kind of space.

If you say so... of course, for me, there's nothing mysterious about vampires or werewolves in the first place. I didn't mean to suggest a nation composed entirely of supernatural beings per se (though if the bestiary was diverse enough I'd certainly like that), but more some faction with supernatural beings pulling the strings or existing "underground" so to speak, like what you have in the World of Darkness setting.

Oh, I just sorta thought we were assuming vampires would try to pull the strings from behind the curtains. So I figure it wouldn't be shocking to find some islands they basically just completely control or such.

And there's a difference for vampires and lycanthropes being mysterious IC and OOC.

Wow, this really took off. I really need to get to bed soon, but I thought I'd drop a few things here.

First, as far as settings go, how about a pre Hearthswarming Eve setting? The three pony tribes exist as separate political entities, each with a certain amount of tension with one another. There's an awful lot less canon there, but the basics are all in place, so hammering out what headcanon you're going to use should be easier. For those less interested in steampunk (which seems to be roughly the technology level in the show), this setting ought to be much more medieval fantasy.

Alternatively, a recently unified Equestria. All pony tribes have banded together, but the kingdom is still fairly young, and they're having to deal with external threats like griffons and diamond dogs. Likely a pre Celestia, Luna, and Discord setting, but you could set it later so as to be under the reign of Discord or Celly and Luna, or just Celestia.

By the way, for PbP, would we have one roleplay thread for the whole setting, or a thread for each group? If the former, how would you keep information secret from one group or another? If the latter, what happens when two groups meet and/or team up, or when a player leaves a group to go solo for a while?

The thing with Skype sessions for individual groups is, what happens when two groups cross paths in the middle of a session? I suppose this would require the DM to stay current on the doings of the other groups. Which means keeping transcripts or cliff notes. Even in PbP, this would still probably be helpful.

Also, I say ditch the "official" map of Equestria. It's good for ideas, but separate headcanon should have its own map that fits the concept of the headcanon. For example, if you want to introduce a fan made race, like sleipnir or hippogriffs, and give them their own kingdoms, then you'll have to add them somewhere anyway. If people are interested, I might draw up a few maps.

Also, for an MLP version of Vampire: The Masquerade, ...changelings. No, it's perfect. They can transform into normal looking ponies, but they have to drain ponies of their love in order to survive. They're really very similar to vampires already, except maybe that they don't seem stronger than normal ponies. But maybe you could have pony/changeling hybrids or something (which might also explain why they aren't all part of a hive, following the orders of a single queen). Turning normal ponies into changelings might be iffy, and largely up to what your headcanon on changelings is. And someone mentioned mages. Well, unicorns would be obvious, but what about unicorns practicing dark magic, a la Sombra?

Personally I'd prefer if vampires were just vampires. Yes, there are some similarities between Changelings and vampires but, that'd actually have them being potentially in conflict more interesting.