Small Poll · 9:38am Oct 7th, 2013
Okay, faithful readers. For starters, Unity is going to be taking a hiatus until I figure out exactly what I'm going to do with it. I've lost my drive, lost my vision for it, and now its a giant nightmare-ish mess that I don't even know how to begin to unravel and fix. Part of me is leaning towards a rewrite. The other part of me is wanting it scrapped. Gone. Out of my hair. I honestly just don't know yet.
Now on to the actual poll, if you could call it that. Since Unity is now on hold, I have a free slot open for a fiction of some sort. Working on three at once is my limit, and I think I've gotten a lot better at getting chapters out there. So, before I ask the million dollar question, let me go on a random tangent. I've noticed, with increasing frequency, that authors are going the whole "ponies and role-playing game" genre. For the most part, I've stayed away from that genre. Authors always use the same thing, ya know? World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons, Diablo, whatever... its been done so many times it is all but impossible to actually create anything new that no reader has really seen done before. But then, I had a brilliant idea (Yea, run for the hills, I know). Anyway. What if I were to cross ponies with a role-playing game... but not a role playing game that has already been created and around for a while. What if I created my own personal RPG world specifically for the purpose of writing a new fiction? I mean, some things will be similar or even the same as Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever. The stat system, for starters. But the races, the half races, the classes... it would be all my idea. My creation. Like I did with Valkyrie and to a lesser extent Peacekeepers, I would create my own little personal world just for that story. But, there are also quite a few problems there too. Seeing as I'm trying to create an RPG almost completely from scratch, some of it may be confusing to the readers. They won't know what a certain class is, or what it does. They wont know what attributes that class uses. They wont really know what to expect, because its almost a completely brand new world.
So my question is, to the readers that have me followed... Do you think it would work? Do you think I could get a story like that to actually mesh together well, and have it make sense? I know, I know, I'm Flicka and I'm renowned for my world building, but still. I feel this is a big step out side of what I normally do when creating worlds for my fictions. I'm kind of at a loss. I don't want to start the story and then have it fail, nor do I want to start a story, have it do well, and then have readers start anticipating stuff I can't deliver upon. What do you all think? Here's a little taste of what I have so far, just a bit of basic information.
Anyway, let me know. Just tell me if you think its a good idea, or a bad!
Shit, I really like that story, but I'd say the logical thing to do is stop if you don't want to do it anymore. Simple as that.
As for your next idea, it sounds pretty awesome, although I'm not sure if I'd read it. If you wanna do it, do it, if you don't, don't, yanno? Sounds pretty simple to me, some experiments fail, and others don't. So I suppose my question is, what are you afraid to lose if you go through with it and it flops?
I think you could do it. Its really not much different than just taking the MLP world and shifting it to follow a bit more of a, I'm assuming, darker fantasy angle. Even if it was scifi, like say Shadowrun, I think you would still have a bit of a following to it.
Admittedly I think you could leave out some of the more technical info as some might not follow it and personally, from my recent playing of D&D, I think it breaks up the flow of the story when you have to stop for the dice rolls and calculations and such (such as mentioning their attributes). While I think keeping that stuff in mind for yourself as the writer could help you make more informed decisions about what you are writing I'm just unsure if anyone will want to read the technical parts of how things are working out.
Re-write it. The story still has some solid ground and it's just some minor changes here and there.
And I'm with the second guy about the second idea.
apart from the fact that I feel like the Pegasi get a little too much bonus (2 x +3 instead of +3 & +2) I think it's a good idea. You've proven yourself more than capable when it comes to world building, and I think you'd be able to do it fairly easily.
Also 1402113 Listen to this guy.
I really need to point out the fact that every piece of original fiction with any kind of setting other than modern day has to overcome the barriers you mentioned, and it never causes problems so long as the author takes the time to think about it and explain what is going on.
That said, I think the RPG stuff is totally unnecessary. That is really just a framework for letting people play a good game, and most RPGs explicitly allow the person running the game to break the rules if they want to because it is about the story, not the rules. Just use the universe you created to tell the story you want to and do not waste time on any of the RPG stuff because that has no place in a written story.
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GO ON!!!!!!
It looks great so far, but for a true feedback we need chapters.
I like the idea, but like what has already been mentioned, the rpg bits like stats and save bonuses would just make it harder to follow. That being said, making your own D&D style world could be interesting. I know a lot about ancient mythology and creatures if you'd like some help.
Speaking as someone who has run many, many, many games in multiple systems (including 2ed, 3ed D'n'D, Pathfinder, Palladium, White Wolf, D20 Modern, Spycraft, and many others), while it might make it easier for you to create consistency within your story, and make for a nice bit of crunch for gamers, most of the people who read the stories here aren't gamers. I would recommend that if you want to include hard rules, put them either in the author's notes, or better yet, include a link in the author's notes that takes readers to a blog post that has the crunch.
Also, it's best to use an already existing system, rather than to make one up yourself, because many systems are tried and true, playtested for a long time before ever seeing print. Making up a new system whole cloth is a truly Sysiphian task. What system were you planning to use?
1402113 1402177 1402203 1402316 1402361>>1402454 I probably should have clarified just a bit more. The only thing a reader would need to even partially be concerned about would be the stats of their favorite characters, whether they be Mane 6 ponies or background ponies. Have any of you yet read pchn00's Dungeons and Ponies yet? It was up there in the featured box a bit, and it was from him I got the idea of actually publishing the stats from. That's all he does, and all I'd do, to an extent. Just publish the final simplistic stat sheets of the characters, and nothing overly more technical. This way, a reader will be able to expect what a character might do in combat. If the author suddenly decides that a mage with 10 dexterity nimbly avoided an attack, the reader would know that's not entirely right and it shouldn't be there. But aside from just a little flavor to the story, I'm not going to have the stats calculate things like dice rolls or any other overly complicated thing. If anything like that actually does take place, it'll be within my own mind. The only thing the reader will see is the stats and the character's prowess in combat. If a rogue type character has really crummy dexterity and agility for some reason, then readers are going to expect that rogue class to do less-than-stellar in actual combat.
And in response to your question, Wrabbit... This is kind of like Dungeons and Dragons... but with my own classes, basically. Uses same principal... but readers may not understand that. Hmm. Might have to give this one a bit more thought.
Please Don't Completely Abandon Unity! Also, Your Other Idea Sounds Absolutely Feztastic!
1406351 I'm not completely giving up on it. Just taking a hiatus, and eventually going to do a rewrite of some of it.
1407263 Awesome Sauce!~