Community Effort Idea

[Iscarioto]

I, or someone else, may have posted something along these lines already, not sure, but i was thinking of putting HM and our community of badasses to go use to try and construct our on Comic.

Or at least our own canonical universe. Couple of ways of doing this, where we all pool ideas and help design the setting, the story and the lead character and so forth, using HM to illustrate it all.

Alternatively, we could approach it like an illustrated RPG, where everyone involved brings a character into it and is responsible for their reactions and so forth, aside from a game master, and we animate it as it comes, if you get my drift. Rules will apply, you’ll recieved a randomised power/limitation etc, so nobody goes too crazy.

Yeah, in a rush to catch a bus so this isn’t as fleshed out as I’d like, but hey, the point here is for a communal attempt at designing something, so the ensuing discussion is, well, the point.

Thoughts?

[djuby]

Sounds very cool. Would love to contribute a character or whatever

[Vampyrist]

I’d say go the RPG route, and I’m in.

[Luc]

The original UGO forums used to have a Roleplaying section that used to be pretty popular, and the RPG idea sounds quite a bit like the way things used to work there. Could possibly see about getting a similar section added to these forums, maybe as a sub-section of the writing forum?

[prswirve]

Yes i’m in too… i opened up a thread called the snow flake method with the intention to initiate a story… It would be better if Iscarioto would start a summary of the plot and then later on we add on the characters each of which is unique to us… so how do we start?

[JR19759]

Yeah, I’ll play along.

[Iscarioto]

Guess I ought to start writing.

As a starting idea, I’m thinking a modern day setting, somewhere other than the United States, somewhere exotic, but not so exotic that we’d need to come up with an outlandish reason for everyone to be there, thinking like, an airport stopover hub destination like Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong?

In the mean time, if we’re thinking of a modern setting, how about everyone start working on an image for their own character in every day style, nothing costumey, but maybe distinct enough that when the costume comes about (if that’s the way the story goes) then you can see the links?

In fact, try come up with your power too, while baring in mind we don’t want to go overboard here, no Peters’ or Sylars’ from Heroes, or Rogues or Supermen, something a bit more grounded. Can have TK, but it gives chronic nosebleeds, or somthing. Limitations, at the very least for your characters to overcome later in the story. You guys are all pretty on to it anyway, so this goes without saying!

[JR19759]

Quick question, do we have to create a new character for this or can we use one of our pre-existing characters?

[Vampyrist]

So is civilian spandex alright? Also Hong Kong sound like it could be fun.

[Iscarioto]

Civi Spandex is fine! Um, whichever suits JR! I’ll go with Hong Kong, spent a couple months there in 2008 so will make it a bit easier to come up with the setting too. Mint.

[prswirve]

Hongkong is fine. So definitely chinese triads will be involved with this, ayt?

[livewyre1014]

so…how exactly is this going to work?

[Iscarioto]

Good question livewyre, I haven’t really done this before. I suppose myself, or someone else can put up ideas for the setting, we vote on it and then write and design our own characters on it, and then come up with plot points. I’m keen to try and make this almost a community interactive comic, rather than a text based RPG type, so say, your young Lawyer on an Internship in HK realizes he’s developed TK in the middle of a court hearing in Kowloon, you would illustrate that happening in HeroMachine, and we’d use that as an introductory page for that character. Then the game master decides that this could be an interesting plot point, so tells you that a group or mercs (perhaps controlled by another forum member) break into the court room to silence a witness, so you must put up a page or two dealing with the crooks using your newly discovered TK ability. But then OtherForumMemberX is passing by and see’s that sh!ts going down, so jumps in to provide help. Build from there.

I image it will be a bit more lengthy than a normal RPG, as we could have little tie-in competitions to design the villains and the settings and to whip it into a comic like shape.

On that note, I may try myself, but who is keen to whip up a couple of generic comic frames as templates to use?

On the note of setting itself, I’m toying with an over all idea.

So we have Hong Kong. Each player can come up with a reason for why they are there. But the overarching story I’m thinking will be along the lines of advances in military tech see augmented super-soldiers becoming more prevalent. But the price to mass produce them under the global financial crisis is astronomical and beyond the means of most governments to justify. Capitalizing on this, the producers of the technology and various multinational corporations form a conglomerate to fund and produce a dutiful cyborg army. Seeing China as a threat, with the worlds largest standing army, they strike quickly, using Hong Kong at the hub of the production rich Pearl River Delta as the staging ground for their much larger planned attack on the Mainland. Political anarchy, vote-buying and the like insures that the US, the EU, NATO and the UN, etc, are limited to intervene, so stuck under lockdown beneath the secret invasion, a band of misfits must form together to prevent eventual global domination and enslavement.

The enemies will initially be willing soldiers of fortune who submitted themselves to the augmentation in hunger for power. As the story progresses, some of these soldiers start developing a soul, and as such, the corporation initiates the next phase of their technology, a form of nano-tech which attaches itself to unwilling hosts, using the parts of their body which are needed for mobility, while stripping away their personality, leaving only a loyal hive mind.

That blurb was longer than I expected.

Thoughts? Feel free to add ideas and so forth and then we can turn this into a proper write up and go from there?

[JR19759]

I can provide some villains if you would like. I have a few numerous tech villains, Mindmaster or Negadroid may be good for this.

As for why my character is in Hong Kong, holiday sounds good. I’m going to be using a character that I’ve been hoping to develop a bit further. I also have a feeling that there may be a deficit of female characters included so I’ll go down that route as well.

[Iscarioto]

Looking good JR

Yeah, so I mean this will basically be an interactive story, rather than a game-oriented RPG. And everyone can contribute and we can design the overall look. Might involve a bit of sharing and allowing artistic liberty with your characters etc, we’ll see.

I imagine people should be able to bring in and have majority control over several characters, to pad it out, particularly in the case of characters which or of a more NPC role, background characters, one off interactions etc.

On that note, I’m thinking as a supplement for the powers, perhaps there is a scientist from mainland China who has developed a serum which produces randomized (to an extent) superpowers. So either willingly or covertly characters come into contact with this serum and receive base level traits such as enhanced strength and speed, reaction time and the like, but also a random one off such as flight, TK, the ability to summon items they’ve touched in the past etc. And this serum is part of the reason the Corporation chose to strike.

[Author]

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