Ponys and a City of Heroes · 5:02pm Jun 7th, 2014
I'm hardly the most punctual writer. You've probably noticed new chapters for the Wonderhawks tend to just turn up at random as I regularly leave half-finished drafts for a while as I rack my brains working out how to connect everything up. While thinking about it, I've had another idea knocking around my mind that I've been uncertain whether to publish or not.
The Paragon Force is a crossover story with the now shut down online game City of Heroes, a game that actually got me into writing in the first place. The vast, detailed yet open lore allowed for a massive variety of character concepts and the developers, originally Cryptic but later Paragon Studios, gave the players hundreds upon hundreds of options to play with. There's slightly more optimised, visually impressive and less repetitive games on the market, but I've yet to play another MMO that allowed such variety and didn't ridiculously punish strange choices of power sets. Hell, a ranged character in most MMOs feels the same every time, but I had several Blaster archetype characters with different combinations of power sets and they always felt different. I'm not the kind of player who goes gear grinding and min/maxing, I really enjoyed role playing my guys with a group of friends and constructing their stories on the fly and so I took to writing their escapades, as well as new adventures that couldn't be done in game.
I still love City of Heroes even now, over a year and a half after it's undeserved death curtsey of NCsoft and I still love the many characters I created within the game and this idea gives me an opportunity to share them with a greater audience.
I doubt many of you are very familiar with City of Heroes' lore as I've met Games Design students who've never even heard of the game, but this and a few follow up sagas I have in mind will take place after many of the major recent story lines, including the Praetorian War and the Dark Astoria story arc which concluded with the defeat of the god of death Mot. The event in the prologue chapter takes place mid way through the first Signature Story Arc 'Who Will Die?' and will factor into a few of the sagas I have in mind. With regards to FIM lore, I'm only going to acknowledge events up to the end of series 3 as I am also doing with the Wonderhawks, though this story does take place after Wonderhawks, so there may be a few references/cameos.
However, with the Wonderhawks threatening to be at the least 300,000 words long, I've been in two minds about starting what could potentially also be a hugely long story with several arcs and plenty of different characters (so many I may even do bio entries on this blog). However, as parts of the first story (including the prologue) have been sat on my hard drive for ages, I thought I'd share and see what people think. If people like it, I might just start alternating between the two and see how it goes. Seriously, I want feedback and criticism as no one can get better without it.
Hope you enjoy!
Paragon Force eh?
Looks like we're the only two writers on the site that played City of Heroes, but not the only two people on the site.
You have a couple typoes and sound-alike words replacing the proper ones in your blog post, so I'll assume that unless you have an editor your chapters are the same.
Tell you what, if you PM me a chapter before you post it, I'll read through it and send back a corrected version. I do have a full-time job, so if you could give me a day or so that'd be prefect.
I know, not the greatest title in the world but more appealing and succinct then the working title 'Beyond a City of Heroes'. Still, it's nice to see another CoH fan, especially another one writing. Dunno why, but I did think I was the only one doing a story on this site. What was your handle in game and which server did you play on? (I was @Caterham on Defiant).
I don't have an editor, but I did put more effort into proof reading my chapters, though I won't deny it's hardly a strength of mine. Have a look at the first few chapters and tell me what you think/spot.