Ambrosia Software Web Board: A TS Idea! - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Writing a story following the adventures of nearly regular people does sound challenging but also interesting. I would be up to that challenge if we decide to do that.

Although, I'm also fond of the idea of having just low-level characters. It would be like writing characters as they are at the start of the game, some skills but still young and inexperienced, and then letting their skills develop throughout the story through your writing.

As far as the plot goes, I'm open to pretty much anything that is simple and easy to use with beginner characters.

By the way, where is Pippin? Are we gonna wait for Pippin to do this idea?

Nah, let's surprise Pippin. Let's...
No, wait... We need to decide a scenario.

Hmmm well this thread has evolved! Anyway, A have been at Canberra recently and not really accessible to the internets..
Back to topic, I am a little stumped myself on idea's. I say that the low level characters would be more easily written about then
regular people and thus more people would participate and the story would progress more easily.
So i say we should go for low level characters but... I have no idea what these low level characters would be doing, We need a quest before we can begin. Also please someone start the
Ts if the general consensus is to have a ts in the first place... my starting posts are rather bad....
Although I wouldn't mind if you didn't start it for lets say.... 5 days?(not that I am expecting it to start soon anyway ) I wont be around again. Going to the beach and there's no Internet down there either.
Sorry for the rather long time without me posting!
I shall post again tomorrow if possible

Personally, I doubt that I'll be able to start this TS (three tests coming up at the end and beginning of this next week and the one after that), unless it's early next week or in about a week and a half. In addition, a scenario still needs to be decided on from what I understand.

So, who wants to start this TS? And what scenario should we use?

Well I think it would be fitting if Pippin could start this one, but if not, then anybody can as soon as we decide on a plot.

I thought we were settling on something simple like a village being attacked or something? My main concern now is creating a new character that is fitting.

I think we all agree on something simple, we just can't decide what that "simple" thing should be.

Yeah. So true. I'll just wait patiently and (hopefully) join in.

I could sit this out for only so long. A simple idea could be cool, but if you wanted to go another way how about this:

Omen or the Arch Lich (or any REALLY powerful canon nemisis) launches an attack that's hundreds of years in the making, raising a massive army to take Cythera by surprise and plunge the world in fire and darkness. All of our really great powerful characters are defeated by the onslaught as they try and fail to defend the people. Hope seems to be lost but we find out what ancient artifact allowed all this to happen and, with the last of their strength, our best character mages send a band of regular survivors far into the past to get help. Once actually in the past these normal people (or regular adventurers of normal Cytheran power) realize that it's up to them to save the heroes and the future of their world, so they go out on a quest to stop the artifact from ever being made.

Obviously the exact details haven't been worked out, but what do you guys think of the general idea? We take a "regular" group as has been proposed in this thread, and we stack them against impossible odds where they -must- work together in order to have any hope of success. After that original premise I think the TS should be left wide open for the characters to take care of business however the writers would like them to (hence the nebulous description of what needs to be done).

In this way continuity is kept intact perfectly and we have normal characters fighting normal enemies but in a very exciting storyline. I also thought it would be cool to have a more "human" side to the adventuring, our normal characters are almost fearless in the face of danger, know how to get out of bad situations, and are quite powerful as has been said. Here we have everyday people who have just seen their world fall to ruin. Do some of them despair? Are they afraid? Is it hard for them to steel their courage and rise to this challenge?

It should be fun to write.

For Clarity: The whole thing about the big army and the fall of our heroes would all be described in the first post, perhaps by omniscient narration or through the memories of one of the low-level characters that was sent into the past. Each post after the first would already be within the realm cythera's past. I'm hazy on the in-game time line, but I will assume this should be happening before the Land King comes to power.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k: 31 March 2008 - 11:55 AM

Beats my idea, though perhaps not all of the characters have to be from the future.

True, it would make a lot of sense for the ones sent back to find allies in the past, especially since they would be regular people and probably have very little knowledge of how to get around Old Cythera. Like if you or I were dropped in the middle ages somewhere ().o

The characters from the past should be novice level like the ones sent back as well.

Sounds good to me.

Since my only character in the present isn't a mage, a new past character would be fun to do.

Great to see you around again, Ragnar0k .

Your idea sounds great to me, although I do have one or two minor concerns or notes. To be honest, I'm somewhat concerned that not enough people are around to carry a large TS to completion (I hope I'm wrong about this). I also wonder whether it fits in well with Pippin's idea of a simpler TS, but I think that you mentioned that point already.

A minor note on dates: currently TSs are set about ten or fifteen years after the game (I can't quite recall which), and ones following Pippin's suggestions are planned to be around the time of the game (I think). The dates are probably really minor, but the differentiation is to enable the functioning of two TSs at different time periods. Thus, for this story to start TSs as Pippin suggests, the attack on Cythera would have to occur before the TSs (making it harder for our current characters to be involved), or the new characters would have to return to the future at an earlier time than they had left it (unless everyone wants both TSs to be set in the same time period). This is really just a minor detail, and I probably shouldn't even be plotting things out about it; but it's the sort of detail that catches my notice.


Personally, I'd be interested in seeing Ignae as a villain. We are told (by both Magpie and Ur-Sylph) that Ignae is "sly" and a "trickster," which, considering how cunning and manipulative the Undine are supposed to be, has always interested me. It also seems that Ignae was involved with Ur-Sylph's defeat through some sort of trickery.

As for what time to set it in, perhaps around the time humans first arrive in Cythera or the exile of the Mages?


(Note: the above is probably another of my disorganized posts.)

Thanks for the welcome. To address the time issue, as a point of when the characters would return, my answer is that they would -not- return. Their mission is to stop whatever causes the cataclysm in the past, if they succeed then far into the future they would never have been sent back in the first place. So after they complete their mission they would disappear from ancient Cythera and it would be like they never left. This solution isn't up to me though, the imagination of the players can and should determine how the end plays out, I'm just making a "for instance".

There could be ripples in time from what they did as well. Let's say that some of our low-level characters were inspired to try becoming heroes because of our powerful characters, and then let's say that what the low levels do in the past becomes part of the legends of Cythera. Maybe this story of heroes who rose from nothing to defeat a great evil is something that drove many of our powerful hero characters to become heroes in the first place? It's a nice circle, the snake eating its own tail, but I personally like having fun with time paradox's so that could just be me.

As far as the multiple TSs and simplicity is concerned... why cram such an epic story into one TS? Why not have the first one about the characters getting their bearings and overcoming their first enemies in ancient Cythera? The big overarching story can be done over two or three TSs, leaving writers with the room to take their time with the story and add their own branches to it.

Again, the above is all just an assortment of ideas, you guys are free to enjoy or dismiss them as you see fit

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k: 01 April 2008 - 01:47 AM

Ragnar0k, on Apr 1 2008, 12:41 AM, said:

Or perhaps what transpires is really what happened back then (though through the years the stories got muddled slightly). Does anybody know where the big tyrants came from? That might be a bit ambitious, to try and set up major characters in history right from the get-go, but may be a possibility down the road.

Having the past be a multi-part story would also work as well, but the subparts would need some kind of small organization to keep them focused. (ie, when does the "settling in" part end? are there isolated subplots for each part, or is there an overarching theme? etc)

Hmmm, There is still s problem with the entire "go back to the past idea" Not meaning to say that its a bad idea just that with what I was
suggesting it would not work, Let me explain.
I was suggesting that we make new characters that are low level in a very Cythera based way, so no horses or magic and abilities that would be
out of the games possibilities, so you could not make a necromancer or an druid for example because in the game they don't really exist but still allowing skills that
could develop within the game. Anyway, the problem with going back in time suggests that these things will be possible in the future (which in a strict Cythera based land would never be possible)
and going back in time also shows that we are not really following a Cythera way. Although we could take characters from earth and have them brought to Cythera meaning any skills they want
to learn will have to be learnt (our characters in this instance would be very inexperianced) I hope you get what I have just said.

What about an adaption where only one person came back and is trying to convince the others he's from the future and they need to do X? I suspect most people would consider him an obnoxious raving lunatic, but he wouldn't be able to easily back down and give up with his fate on the line.

I'd be fine with an entirely different idea, but so far its the most complete plotline that has been proposed. I do know what your intent is with the story, and I think its fully feasible in a way, it just needs some kind of context to make it a story.

I actually rather like Ragnarok's idea, although I'd like to make a few suggestions regarding it.

Firstly, the plot sounds intricate enough that this idea may be better suited as a TS run in the in the current timeline of TSs. This kind of defeats the purpose though of creating a different sort of TS, so see the next suggestion.

The only other qualm I have with this idea is that it sounds as though your planning on using our current TS characters as the fallen heroes from the epic battle that would be described in the first post. This isn't a huge issue, but it seems to me that this is mixing the two timelines of TSs when I thought this new TS was to be run in a separate timeline. That's why I was thinking that this TS was better suited for one in the current timeline, but the "simpler characters" elements that it will contain are closer to Pippin's idea. The workaround I see to this is that the powerful characters who will be defeated in the first post are completely different heroes than the ones we currently use. Hopefully, this way we can avoid confusing the timelines.

Something just occurred to me that I found interesting. Both of our current TS ideas, for two totally different TSs, involve time-travel: Selax's Terminator-like suggestion for the regular TS following our current heroes and Ragnarok's idea for Pippin's TS.

I must have misunderstood before <--- This is a Sad Face, not Hector

I didn't realize this was supposed to be an alternate universe scenario, I kind of liked the idea that while we didn't use our normal characters our actions would still effect them and the world we generally RP in.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k: 02 April 2008 - 12:02 AM

Ragnar0k, on Apr 2 2008, 12:01 AM, said:

Oh, that explains it. Yes, currently we are looking at the idea of running two TSs simultaneously, but have them take place in a totally different timeline. I can see why you were thinking about using our regular TS characters in the beginning, and that's why I suggested that we run this as our regular TS, but with the simpler characters idea, I can also see how it fits Pippin's idea.

Also, that Hector picture being in place of every smilie is starting to get annoying isn't it. . . (That is a big smile.)

Yes it is.

I don't really like this time travel idea for the alternate universe, it robs the concept of all urgency and "epicness" in my eyes if it is, in effect, entirely outside of continuity for our characters. So yea, you guys can go ahead and toss the idea if you like.

Thank heaven someone else is posting! I've been so active this evening that I've been bored waiting for someone to reply to me. . .

But as for tossing the idea, I wouldn't dream of doing that. It's a very good idea. The way I see it, we can run it as the usual TS or find a different way to bring it urgency and "epicness."

Heh, sorry I kind of knocked out on you before. Anyway, what I meant about tossing the idea is that I'd intended it to run in the same continuity as our regular characters, and without that critical bit the fun factor disappears for me. lol, the idea is better than I thought if you still think it's good without my favorite part.

I have a question though: Why do alternate universe TSs at all when we can use different characters in the same timeline and still make perfect sense in canon? Since a new set of characters can all be low-level and have entirely Cythera-related skills and abilities I don't think I'm seeing the draw for this just to entirely deny the existence of player created powers in the story (ie what our normal characters have).

I really like Avatara's last two modifications by the way, with few(or one) characters coming from the future to try to save Cythera as we know it and the rest of the characters being from Old Cythera. Maybe the old heroes don't take the guy seriously and thats why only low levels help him, the first TS could be about him/her looking for help but being denied and about the party of low-power people that gather because they do believe and want to help. Also, in keeping with Avatara's earlier suggestion, some of the Old Cythera characters could be really important people from Cythera's history, just before they became skilled and powerful, so the events of the TSs shape the people they will grow to be.

Also:

Would it be cool if our characters in the past defeat some low-level evil guy (like some lackey working for the Arch Lich or whoever our main villian is) during the quest, which sets him down an even darker path for vengeance so that one day far in the future he or his descendants pose a big threat to Cythera? I ask because it might be cool to have ripple effects through time that trigger TSs with our regular characters after this story arc. Just a thought.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k: 02 April 2008 - 11:24 AM

Ragnar0k, on Apr 2 2008, 10:22 AM, said:

I don't think its required to be in an alternate timeline. I think there's a fear of acknowledging the existence of all the non-Cythera stuff that was added in if it is set in the current timeline (mostly references to outworldly characters) which may "taint" the "pure-Cythera" world a couple of people wanted to explore. Making the main characters Cythera-only is easy, the trick is making the world the characters perceive being that of the Cythera game rather than one where aliens and elves are running rampant. There are, of course, ways around this without separating the timelines - my suggestion of a single guy traveling back in time is an example. While he is from our modified "fanfic" world, nobody in the past is likely to believe any of his stories about foreign creatures and the like, they're probably just going to label him as insane, and thus continue living in their "pure" world. (except for the one person that traveled)

its almost amusing seeing a 97 reply topic about making a teamstory, but no teamstories to be seen

I take it that means you're volunteering to start the next TS ?


What about the information for the characters? Currently, the Info thread contains characters set in a different time period. Should the new characters be posted to the same thread but specify which time period they belong to? Or should a separate character info thread be created for characters set in this earlier time period?

Also, it occurs to me we could introduce some expendable characters for this first TS or two. Although we know these characters will get killed, our new, would-be adventurers would be shocked, horrified, etc. (Perhaps, not a good idea, just a random one.)


I'm thinking that I might go ahead and start a TS in the ordinary line this weekend. At the moment, it looks as if it will involve time travel. Should we try and start this one soon and attempt to run two at once?