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xenoglossy) wrote2009-11-17 12:25 am
xenoglossy) wrote2009-11-17 12:25 am
Entry tags:
I have priorities, I swear
... so my thesis is due tomorrow, and this is what I spent my evening doing. To be fair, I did have a good portion of my thesis edited already, I'm working on it now, and I should be able to finish it tonight (though this may mean forgoing sleep). And I really wanted to write this down before I started forgetting stuff.
The cryptic "this" to which I refer is my plans for a fandom RP based on Fate/Stay Night, which brilliant idea sprang fully-formed (well, sort of) into my mind at about 2 AM yesterday. I know most of you (all of you?) aren't familiar with F/SN at all, but if any of the RPer-types out there could take a look at this and tell me what they think of it as a game concept, that would be really great. (I'm changing a bunch of things anyway, so...)
... I could kind of also use a co-mod — again, no knowledge of F/SN necessary, I just want someone who can keep up with lists and give me a second opinion on apps (because if I'm solely responsible for approving/denying apps, I'll just be the worst elitist bitch mod ever) and stuff like that. But... probably none of you want to do that. I just don't really want to go asking random people I don't know first, in case it turns out I can't stand them or something.
ANYWAY I have tl;dr'd enough, it's time to move on to... uh, the tl;dr.
ETA: whoops, sorry for the HTML failure there
The Grail War
Every certain number of years (actual number TBD), a battle takes place amongst the magic users known as Masters; summoning heroic spirits known as Servants, they fight each other to gain possession of the Holy Grail, which will grant the winner one wish — any wish they please. Of course, the only way to obtain the Grail is to kill or incapacitate every other Master...
Masters
Human magic users, known as magi. Their magic is of the sort of "academic" variety; they have to know spells, perform rituals, use focus objects, take into account the time of day and phase of the moon and so on and so forth. However, they do still have innate magical energy; these trappings are just required for them to be able to channel it. They can be considered to have an "MP gauge" which can be used up if they try to do too much in a given period of time — and for some weaker magi, large spells will always take more energy than they have. There are workarounds for this, though — for example, magical energy can be stored in outside objects, such as gems, for later use. These can be used by anyone, not just the person who originally put their magic into the object.
Most magi specialize in a particular kind of magic, such as offensive magic, healing, fixing objects, or creating illusions — though anyone from a magical family who's gotten a proper education will probably be able to do a little bit of a bunch of different things besides their specialty.
There are a handful of people who don't need to bother with spells, diagrams, or focus objects; they can just do what they do sort of instinctively. However, they tend to be really good at one specific thing and have no ability to do anything else (whereas normal magi could do pretty much anything if they took the time to learn how — just no one has enough time to become an expert on everything).
It is also possible for a person to know about magic and know all about how to do magic without actually being capable of doing it themselves, but people like this can't become Masters (this is where I put my fingers in my ears and ignore actual Fate/Stay Night canon to make things less complicated... actually, that's what this whole section is, because Nasu's magic system is horrendously overcomplicated and explained in walls upon walls of tl;dr. More tl;dr than this, I mean). They could be involved in other ways, though; see the Random Normal People section below.
Masters would either be OCs or AU fandom characters whose background has been changed to fit the world of the game. Thus it's entirely possible for fandom characters with no magical powers to be apped as Masters — or for people who do have powers to be given completely different powers instead. Nonhuman characters apped as Masters would have to be turned human for the game.
Servants
"Heroic Spirits" summoned from alternate realities to fight for the Masters in the Grail War. All Servants are summoned into one of seven classes: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, or Assassin. Which class a particular character can be summoned into depends on what their powers are in canon, but what their powers are in the game also depends on what class they're summoned into. If a character who fights using both magic and a sword is summoned into the Saber class, their sword skills will be enhanced, but their magical powers will be nerfed. If their sword skills were pretty lousy to begin with and their magic skills were super hax, they might still be a better magic-user than a swordfighter, and would consequently be a pretty average Saber. If that same character was summoned as Caster, though, they would be ultra super hax. So a given character might potentially fit into a lot of classes, but some will be better fits than others.
Each Servant needs to have three things:
Noble Phantasm: Some kind of signature item, usually a weapon, that's the best thing possible for them to use to fight. So if King Arthur were summoned as Saber, he'd be able to use any sword to fight and do a reasonably good job, but his Noble Phantasm would be Excalibur and using it would take his attacks from "awesome" to "super special awesome." It doesn't need to be a weapon, though, or even a thing separate from the Servant him- or herself — in Fate/Stay Night canon, Hercules is summoned as Berserker, and his Noble Phantasm is basically his godly physique. A Servant's Noble Phantasm is related to their class; if someone's summoned as Lancer their Noble Phantasm isn't going to be a bow, even if they can use both weapons.
Special Ability: What it says on the tin. Some kind of special, unique ability related to both the character's class and their canon abilites.
Weakness: Also what it says on the tin. Something that can be exploited to take them down. Also should be somehow related to who the character is, rather than just some random thing. It is in a Servant's best interest to hide this from as many people as possible; in F/SN canon this usually means hiding their identity, but since we'll be dealing with fandom characters rather than legendary figures here (in most cases), that probably won't be as big a deal.
Servants would be fandom characters apped directly from their canons; the only thing that would change would be their powers. However, their powers (and what class they're summoned as) should be based on what they can do in canon. Normal people can be apped as Servants — if someone wants to app Joe Average who's in his school's fencing club as a Saber, that's okay; he'll get a boost to his power/abilities as a Servant, though he'll still be relatively weak. On the other hand, if the character you're apping has absolutely no skills or abilities that are relevant to any class, you're probably better off apping them as a Master or a Random Normal Person.
Random Normal People
The people involved in the Grail War don't exist in a vacuum; they have family, friends, love interests, neighbors, teachers, and so on and so forth. These people can be apped too (though obviously if you're apping someone who's supposed to be close to another character, you'd have to get permission from the person who plays that character). Additionally, there are people (generally, though not necessarily, magi) who know about the Grail War but aren't participating. They can contribute in other capacities, like providing safe houses for Masters who lose their Servants or explaining the particulars of the War to confused Masters who didn't quite know what they were letting themselves in for, and generally being a (relatively) neutral source of help for Masters.
The Master-Servant Relationship (as it were)
Servants are much, much stronger than Masters. No Master can take on a Servant one-on-one. If they specialize in attack spells they may be able to aid their Servant in a fight that way, but they're not exactly going to be doing craploads of damage.
Servants depend on magical energy from their Masters in order to remain corporeal. This is why no Master can have more than one Servant: it would require a ridiculous amount of magical energy to sustain two, let alone more than that.
When a Master summons a Servant, the Master gains three Command Spells. When a Master uses a Command Spell on their Servant, the Servant absolutely must obey; it is physically painful for them to do otherwise. Still, for some orders, loopholes can be found, and general orders are considered "weak" and easier to disobey. For example, commanding your Servant to be nice to people is a weak use of a Command Spell. Commanding your Servant to go make you a peanut-butter sandwich is a strong use. Not that you should be wasting Command Spells on either of those things — you only get three for the whole Grail War, and they can't be renewed or regained.
Command Spells can also be used to temporarily enhance a Servant's abilities, since if one uses a Command Spell to tell a Servant to do something impossible (for them), they still have to do it. This is limited to the "going beyond the particular Servant's capabilities" sort of impossibility (e.g. dodging a shot they wouldn't normally be able to dodge) rather than the "warping reality" sort.
Obviously, someone playing a Master would have to run Command Spell use past the player of the Servant first to make sure they were cool with it. Command Spells are pretty much IC godmoding, but that doesn't mean OOC godmoding is okay.
When a Master dies
Masters die if they are killed. Which is to say, if they die, that's it, they're not coming back.
Their Servant will then be required to find a new Master within a certain amount of time if they wish to continue their involvement in the Grail War. Otherwise they will become incorporeal and can no longer directly affect the proceedings.
When a Servant dies
Servants cannot be permanently killed in the world in which the Grail War takes place, but they will be rendered incorporeal for the remainder of the cycle. If necessary, they may be resummoned later, but with penalties to their powers (and possibly reclassed).
Their Master will then be out of the running for the Grail War and have to sit the rest of it out. Of course, other Masters may still consider them a threat, and since they have no Servant to protect them now, well...
However, there will be some kind of option(s) for protection in place for Masters who lose their Servants, so it doesn't have to mean death for them unless the player wants it to.
When the Grail War ends
I do plan on having the War end at some point; the winning team will get to make their wish. Depending on the size of the wish, it has the potential to affect the game setting in the future (maybe? Do people feel comfortable letting one player have that much control? The wish would have to be run past the mods, of course, but still...)
After this, the setting will skip ahead a few years, apps will reopen, and another Grail War will begin. This can continue for as long as there is interest (i.e. most likely not past the first cycle, but potentially forever).
Any Master who wins a Grail War cannot participate in any subsequent Grail War. Masters who lose but survive may be given another chance. Servants can theoretically, within the setting, participate in as many Grail Wars as they damn well want to, but OOCly I think I'll make it so that the Servant who won the previous Grail War has to take at least one cycle off before returning to the game.
Miscellany
Two versions of any given fandom character can be in the game at a time, one as a Master and one as a Servant (because lol F/SN canon precedent). However, there can't be multiple Masters or multiple Servants who are versions of the same character (unless they're really really different).
The winner of the War will be determined in advance, possibly by vote — certainly the players will have input; it won't be a unilateral mod decision.
Master-Servant pairs would be assigned by the mods based on time zone/availability and any stated OOC preference for a certain character type; however, if two people wanted to app together as a Master-Servant pair, it would be possible for them to indicate that too.
Apps will open for a few months prior to/shortly after the start of the game and then be closed for the rest of the cycle, unless there's a mass player exodus and new blood is needed to keep the game going.
In the original game, there are seven Masters and seven Servants per Grail War; in this game, I'd be removing that limitation, though I'd still like to keep the numbers fairly small so that cycles don't last forever. Making the app window short-ish will help with this; I'm considering also limiting the number of Masters and/or Servants any given player can app.
If anyone took the time to read through all of that, thank you so much.
The cryptic "this" to which I refer is my plans for a fandom RP based on Fate/Stay Night, which brilliant idea sprang fully-formed (well, sort of) into my mind at about 2 AM yesterday. I know most of you (all of you?) aren't familiar with F/SN at all, but if any of the RPer-types out there could take a look at this and tell me what they think of it as a game concept, that would be really great. (I'm changing a bunch of things anyway, so...)
... I could kind of also use a co-mod — again, no knowledge of F/SN necessary, I just want someone who can keep up with lists and give me a second opinion on apps (because if I'm solely responsible for approving/denying apps, I'll just be the worst elitist bitch mod ever) and stuff like that. But... probably none of you want to do that. I just don't really want to go asking random people I don't know first, in case it turns out I can't stand them or something.
ANYWAY I have tl;dr'd enough, it's time to move on to... uh, the tl;dr.
ETA: whoops, sorry for the HTML failure there
The Grail War
Every certain number of years (actual number TBD), a battle takes place amongst the magic users known as Masters; summoning heroic spirits known as Servants, they fight each other to gain possession of the Holy Grail, which will grant the winner one wish — any wish they please. Of course, the only way to obtain the Grail is to kill or incapacitate every other Master...
Masters
Human magic users, known as magi. Their magic is of the sort of "academic" variety; they have to know spells, perform rituals, use focus objects, take into account the time of day and phase of the moon and so on and so forth. However, they do still have innate magical energy; these trappings are just required for them to be able to channel it. They can be considered to have an "MP gauge" which can be used up if they try to do too much in a given period of time — and for some weaker magi, large spells will always take more energy than they have. There are workarounds for this, though — for example, magical energy can be stored in outside objects, such as gems, for later use. These can be used by anyone, not just the person who originally put their magic into the object.
Most magi specialize in a particular kind of magic, such as offensive magic, healing, fixing objects, or creating illusions — though anyone from a magical family who's gotten a proper education will probably be able to do a little bit of a bunch of different things besides their specialty.
There are a handful of people who don't need to bother with spells, diagrams, or focus objects; they can just do what they do sort of instinctively. However, they tend to be really good at one specific thing and have no ability to do anything else (whereas normal magi could do pretty much anything if they took the time to learn how — just no one has enough time to become an expert on everything).
It is also possible for a person to know about magic and know all about how to do magic without actually being capable of doing it themselves, but people like this can't become Masters (this is where I put my fingers in my ears and ignore actual Fate/Stay Night canon to make things less complicated... actually, that's what this whole section is, because Nasu's magic system is horrendously overcomplicated and explained in walls upon walls of tl;dr. More tl;dr than this, I mean). They could be involved in other ways, though; see the Random Normal People section below.
Masters would either be OCs or AU fandom characters whose background has been changed to fit the world of the game. Thus it's entirely possible for fandom characters with no magical powers to be apped as Masters — or for people who do have powers to be given completely different powers instead. Nonhuman characters apped as Masters would have to be turned human for the game.
Servants
"Heroic Spirits" summoned from alternate realities to fight for the Masters in the Grail War. All Servants are summoned into one of seven classes: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, or Assassin. Which class a particular character can be summoned into depends on what their powers are in canon, but what their powers are in the game also depends on what class they're summoned into. If a character who fights using both magic and a sword is summoned into the Saber class, their sword skills will be enhanced, but their magical powers will be nerfed. If their sword skills were pretty lousy to begin with and their magic skills were super hax, they might still be a better magic-user than a swordfighter, and would consequently be a pretty average Saber. If that same character was summoned as Caster, though, they would be ultra super hax. So a given character might potentially fit into a lot of classes, but some will be better fits than others.
Each Servant needs to have three things:
Noble Phantasm: Some kind of signature item, usually a weapon, that's the best thing possible for them to use to fight. So if King Arthur were summoned as Saber, he'd be able to use any sword to fight and do a reasonably good job, but his Noble Phantasm would be Excalibur and using it would take his attacks from "awesome" to "super special awesome." It doesn't need to be a weapon, though, or even a thing separate from the Servant him- or herself — in Fate/Stay Night canon, Hercules is summoned as Berserker, and his Noble Phantasm is basically his godly physique. A Servant's Noble Phantasm is related to their class; if someone's summoned as Lancer their Noble Phantasm isn't going to be a bow, even if they can use both weapons.
Special Ability: What it says on the tin. Some kind of special, unique ability related to both the character's class and their canon abilites.
Weakness: Also what it says on the tin. Something that can be exploited to take them down. Also should be somehow related to who the character is, rather than just some random thing. It is in a Servant's best interest to hide this from as many people as possible; in F/SN canon this usually means hiding their identity, but since we'll be dealing with fandom characters rather than legendary figures here (in most cases), that probably won't be as big a deal.
Servants would be fandom characters apped directly from their canons; the only thing that would change would be their powers. However, their powers (and what class they're summoned as) should be based on what they can do in canon. Normal people can be apped as Servants — if someone wants to app Joe Average who's in his school's fencing club as a Saber, that's okay; he'll get a boost to his power/abilities as a Servant, though he'll still be relatively weak. On the other hand, if the character you're apping has absolutely no skills or abilities that are relevant to any class, you're probably better off apping them as a Master or a Random Normal Person.
Random Normal People
The people involved in the Grail War don't exist in a vacuum; they have family, friends, love interests, neighbors, teachers, and so on and so forth. These people can be apped too (though obviously if you're apping someone who's supposed to be close to another character, you'd have to get permission from the person who plays that character). Additionally, there are people (generally, though not necessarily, magi) who know about the Grail War but aren't participating. They can contribute in other capacities, like providing safe houses for Masters who lose their Servants or explaining the particulars of the War to confused Masters who didn't quite know what they were letting themselves in for, and generally being a (relatively) neutral source of help for Masters.
The Master-Servant Relationship (as it were)
Servants are much, much stronger than Masters. No Master can take on a Servant one-on-one. If they specialize in attack spells they may be able to aid their Servant in a fight that way, but they're not exactly going to be doing craploads of damage.
Servants depend on magical energy from their Masters in order to remain corporeal. This is why no Master can have more than one Servant: it would require a ridiculous amount of magical energy to sustain two, let alone more than that.
When a Master summons a Servant, the Master gains three Command Spells. When a Master uses a Command Spell on their Servant, the Servant absolutely must obey; it is physically painful for them to do otherwise. Still, for some orders, loopholes can be found, and general orders are considered "weak" and easier to disobey. For example, commanding your Servant to be nice to people is a weak use of a Command Spell. Commanding your Servant to go make you a peanut-butter sandwich is a strong use. Not that you should be wasting Command Spells on either of those things — you only get three for the whole Grail War, and they can't be renewed or regained.
Command Spells can also be used to temporarily enhance a Servant's abilities, since if one uses a Command Spell to tell a Servant to do something impossible (for them), they still have to do it. This is limited to the "going beyond the particular Servant's capabilities" sort of impossibility (e.g. dodging a shot they wouldn't normally be able to dodge) rather than the "warping reality" sort.
Obviously, someone playing a Master would have to run Command Spell use past the player of the Servant first to make sure they were cool with it. Command Spells are pretty much IC godmoding, but that doesn't mean OOC godmoding is okay.
When a Master dies
Masters die if they are killed. Which is to say, if they die, that's it, they're not coming back.
Their Servant will then be required to find a new Master within a certain amount of time if they wish to continue their involvement in the Grail War. Otherwise they will become incorporeal and can no longer directly affect the proceedings.
When a Servant dies
Servants cannot be permanently killed in the world in which the Grail War takes place, but they will be rendered incorporeal for the remainder of the cycle. If necessary, they may be resummoned later, but with penalties to their powers (and possibly reclassed).
Their Master will then be out of the running for the Grail War and have to sit the rest of it out. Of course, other Masters may still consider them a threat, and since they have no Servant to protect them now, well...
However, there will be some kind of option(s) for protection in place for Masters who lose their Servants, so it doesn't have to mean death for them unless the player wants it to.
When the Grail War ends
I do plan on having the War end at some point; the winning team will get to make their wish. Depending on the size of the wish, it has the potential to affect the game setting in the future (maybe? Do people feel comfortable letting one player have that much control? The wish would have to be run past the mods, of course, but still...)
After this, the setting will skip ahead a few years, apps will reopen, and another Grail War will begin. This can continue for as long as there is interest (i.e. most likely not past the first cycle, but potentially forever).
Any Master who wins a Grail War cannot participate in any subsequent Grail War. Masters who lose but survive may be given another chance. Servants can theoretically, within the setting, participate in as many Grail Wars as they damn well want to, but OOCly I think I'll make it so that the Servant who won the previous Grail War has to take at least one cycle off before returning to the game.
Miscellany
Two versions of any given fandom character can be in the game at a time, one as a Master and one as a Servant (because lol F/SN canon precedent). However, there can't be multiple Masters or multiple Servants who are versions of the same character (unless they're really really different).
The winner of the War will be determined in advance, possibly by vote — certainly the players will have input; it won't be a unilateral mod decision.
Master-Servant pairs would be assigned by the mods based on time zone/availability and any stated OOC preference for a certain character type; however, if two people wanted to app together as a Master-Servant pair, it would be possible for them to indicate that too.
Apps will open for a few months prior to/shortly after the start of the game and then be closed for the rest of the cycle, unless there's a mass player exodus and new blood is needed to keep the game going.
In the original game, there are seven Masters and seven Servants per Grail War; in this game, I'd be removing that limitation, though I'd still like to keep the numbers fairly small so that cycles don't last forever. Making the app window short-ish will help with this; I'm considering also limiting the number of Masters and/or Servants any given player can app.
If anyone took the time to read through all of that, thank you so much.