New Site

[darnhippies86 Profile]

I'm currently pulling together my own Macross RPG over on the wonderfully simple EZboard, and I had a few questions.
First of all I'd like to ask permission to use some info from here and the MRC wiki. I have two of the palladium books, Robotech and Macross II (getting The Zentraedi soon), and will be pulling most of the governing rules from them. However there have been some expansions and improvments from the MRC that I would love to include (credit given), and didn't want to just steal the work.
Second, since I plan on having members post avatars as their character skins instead of using the yuku or ezboard system, I need to find lots of diverse but mostly humanistic avatars. So if anyone knows a good site that would be helpful.
Lastly, I'd also like to ask permission to basically recruit members of the MRC and see if they'd be interested in joining as well. I'll refrain from posting a link to the site until then.

Thanks to anyone willing to help.

[Xuric]

I have notified those most able to handle your request for permission (licensing?). Though, I'm curious. why EZboard, and not... say.... here?

[darnhippies86 Profile]

For one i have a lot of ideas that I'm working on for a completely different campaign, so asking to start a side game here just wouldn't work. Also I'm pretty html illiterate, so EZboard's pretty easy to manage for me.

[Sabre Profile]

Most of the campaigns here on MRC are 'independent", each individual GM is is charge of their own storyline or campaign. In some instances, GM's will from time to time choose to cooperate. Again, the choice is theirs (and yours0.

[Xuric]

Sabre's right.

If you have a story you wish to tell that's not-compatable with the others, then we can cordon off a section just for you and your game.

[Skadi Profile]

Dunno if I have any right to post here, but they're right. I remember playing on CR's Project Ganyemede. It was completely independent from anything else on the boards. He eve allowed me to play on it before I finished Beginhill. After all it was completely his game and up to him who he wanted to play.

[Kai Profile WebsiteICQ]

There is a certain shared element though, if he wants to say completely go a different direction on the timeline post Mac 7 than people here have it might be difficullt

[Thorn Profile]

Galaxy's a big place, though, and there've been a minimum of 50 long-range colony missions launched. Given how missions 1 and 37 turned out, it's quite possible to have a human enclave somewhere in the middle of nowhere that nobody knows about right now.

[Kai Profile WebsiteICQ]

Point

[Sabre Profile]

Yeah, run your game here. It comes with a built in membership list and all of the technical support that you can ask for by merely asking. There are a number of talented individuals here as staff and players and all of which will feel more comfortable if you advertising for their players will ultimately be of benefit to the MRC's players and staff.

[Thorn Profile]

AND it comes with a free, built-in Benevolent Dictator For Life (tm, pat. pend.)!

[darnhippies86 Profile]

You want I should link it so you guys can see what I have in mind so far?

[darnhippies86 Profile]

So was playing it here the final verdict or does everyone want to look at what I've got so far. The layout and time setting I'm using requires (so far) over 40 forums, and will definitely be more. Again I'm still not advertising or even posting the link untill I have permission.

[Xuric]

40 forums?! Oh, we gotta hear this. Please PM Sabre, Araruin and/or Myself with your layout.

[Skadi Profile]

Woah! 40 forums! I gotta see this! Could you PM me the URL or is it posted up somewhere?

[darnhippies86 Profile]

Sent around the address. I have an idea for an all inclusive system that is basically real time, with full fleet story updates, in which at the end of each period the whole fleet's story will be moved along and time and date will be standard. I have a lot of story ideas, and a lot of them are secret, so much of the info is hidden for now.

[Thorn Profile]

I think Kai, LokeiSHP, Ogawa (if he ever sticks his head in here...) and I might have some thoughts on the setup you have. I know I do, but they'll have to wait until I'm better-suited to writing them down.

[Kai Profile WebsiteICQ]

Other than the feeling that 90% of those forums would see no use due to lack of players I don't really have any comments actually.

[Skadi Profile]

Ya know I was thinking the same thing, Kai. I mean it's very cool that you have all this planned out and if it turns out you can fill all the slots with players. However, if you look at most of the macross RPG sites out there, you might wanna rethink setting all of that out at one time. The more empty/unused forums you have the deader the place looks. And of course the deader ther place looks the less likely people will wanna play. Just my two cents, feel free to disreguard or whatever.

[darnhippies86 Profile]

I honestly hadn't even thought of that. I mean I know I wouldn't have enough players to fill everything up at first, which wasn't going to be nessicary(I do not know why I cannot spell this word right now but I just woke up so...meh) at first since the first entire part of the game would be centered on the Beginhill and then once players had built up I would release them into the other parts of the fleet. I hadn't really thought of that as a deterant though.

I suppose what I could do is keep one forum dedicated to information about the different ships of the fleet, and then another for the Beginhill. Then as the different ships come into play I could drop them into place on the board. Any takers on that idea?

[Azazel Profile YIM]

Here's my thoughts on the matter.

If you're planning on having say... fifteen players with one character each, all of them leading their lives in different ships of your fleet, all on your own (as in without any other GMs to help you out), I'd think that that's a very quick path to burning out.

While I don't intend to rain on your parade, as the saying goes, by any means, I've been there.

If you still intend to carry on with your original idea, I'd recommend starting out with a small group of players, then recruiting the best posters with some writing abilities as A-GMs or Q-GMs or any classification system you fell comfortable with, to help you carry the boards, and only THEN begin to expand. Which is, basically, what Skadi said. Only better. (j/k)

Then again, this is only my humble opinion.

- A.

[Thorn Profile]

Looks like my ideas have already been preempted. Basically, running the Big Idea game is a great thing, but running it on a shoestring by yourself is difficult at best. My recommendation, wherever you run the game (and no, none of us are going to FORCE you to run your game anywhere) is to start small and let it grow.

[Sabre Profile]

If I may add my two cents worth. I had a look at your site and it's cool, however it does contain a number of forums that don't look like they'll be used. Some of us can attest to the fact that if you have too many open forums with no activity, your board or network will start looking like a ghost town and people may avoid it becuase they don't see a lot of activity or may incorrectly (or correctly) assume the place is dying and on its last breath.

Suggestion? Start small, keep it managable and keep it active. Add your forums as needed or when you acquire the required 'staff' you need to run it.

Best of luck.

[araruin Profile WebsiteICQ]

As an alternative to scrapping all the work you've put into the board, you could hide the unused boards from public view and then make them visable as needed. That way you could continue working on the threads as needed and not have to throw things together quickly when necessary.

[darnhippies86 Profile]

I really didn't expect all this great input. It's really...well, great. I can see know and do remember seeing boards with only one or two truely active game threads peppered across a board with 0 reply forums and ones over a year old in activity. It wasn't something that made my interest rise.

I was expecting to start small, so that part I was ready for. The first stage(out of 4 in the stary arc I have) takes place exclusively on the Beginhill, much more time and interactivity will be spent during training than some of the threads I've seen here. I really like the acadamy aspect and felt it could be one of the best parts of the entire experience, so it wouldn't be just a testing period but an actual play period.

The next three stages would all expand widely, and be concerning each different major enemy the fleet is going to encounter throughout the story. I wanted to make it so that characters could play within the opposing forces and even engage in combat against player characters, as well as opportunities for players to take the parts of starship Captains and engage in the many ship to ship battles that are going to occur in the next stage.

As I write this I know I've lined up a crap load for myself to deal with, and was planning on if I did this on my own to promote GMs from the bestest and brightest...est. But I suppose I've put much more thought into writing a story than I have in actually an interactive experience. So I'm wondering though if possibly making the Finite Wars story a sister site campaign of the MRC, so that the two kinda coexist, seeing if there are already versed RPGers here and those who might be interested in my story. Would be a little weird controling a site with players that are more experienced than I am(which actually isn't saying much), but I suppose that I'd be more of the director than really the head master of everything...which is kinda more of what I wanted to do anyway...since the story was more important to me than how exactly I was gonna tell it.