The little subplot we had with the guy who was using Juliana’s private simulation. We dig up who did it, but she got interrupted before she had a good conversation with him.
All four are already decided NPCs. You just haven’t met them all yet.
Oh right.
oh so we need to beat one…I mean Spirit might be able to…if she got a minicon for sure…
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Alright. Sounds like a plan then.
Name: Wildhunt
Faction: Predacon
Appearance: Dark grey, medium frame, skinny build. His armor looks beat up and has a lot of angles. He looks kind of like a combination between Steeljaw and Hardshell.
Alt-mode: Large wolf
Weapons: Razor claws
Abilities: Sensory enhancements. His abilities to detect heat and smell energon from a mile away make him an apex predator. He also possesses great speed and agility.
Personality: Wildhunt is, at best, a rebel and, at worst, a feral madman who lives for the thrill of battle. He has a short and violent temper, and hates to take orders. He’ll often put himself in danger, just to avoid a menial chore. Not that he cares. To him it’s good sport.
Bio: Wildhunt was placed on a predacon mining vessel in the hope that it would curb his violent personality. This didn’t quite go as planned, and he jumped ship twice, only to be returned both times. The third time he made a point to kill his captain, making him a fugitive among the predacons. His third escape was almost successful, but unfortunately, flying was not one of his skills. He crashed on the tournament’s planet of origin and was discovered by the vex.
Whilst definitely an interesting character, we’re just about at the tail end of the story. So you won’t have much time to establish yourself before its all wrapped up.
That’s unfortunate l. Thank you for taking the time to read it and I’m glad you thought he was interesting.
You could of course join in the sequel, which should hopefully start soon-ish.
I might do that.
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I’d be happy to give a synopsis if you’re interested.
Please do.
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Deep within the bowls of Cybertron, a cult of Decepticon loyalist predacons work to revive the ancient warlord Megatron. Now living once more, the tyrant takes over an unprepared Cybertron in a matter of days. With Iacon under his control, he sends out a message into the universe, announcing his return and conquest of Cybertron. Decepticons scattered among the stars come flocking from all corners of the galaxy, and make Cybertron their home once more.
13 years later, the message finally hits the refuge colony that Maximus and the former colosseum prisoners have made for themselves. Without hesitation the young predacon begins to organize a rebellion effort, and plans to retake Cybertron. With the help of his friends, and anyone else crazy enough to come along (that’ll be you guys) this rebellion will fight back against the Decepticon grip on Cybertron, and free the planet!
I might try to hop in the sequel. I don’t rp here at all becuase I’ve seen do many rps that either start unplanned or it keeps going so long even if you can follow along it’s absolute nonsense.
@Chromeharpoon @ajtazt @keiththelegokid @ProfSrlojohn
There’s been something that’s been weighing on my mind as of late. I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative and priorities.
New Horizons is a series. One told mainly through fics that I plan to write. Tournament of Terror, and it’s sequel Rebirth of The Tyrant, are merely parts of this series. The biggest reason I’m running these stories as RPs, is because that’s where my interest as an author began, so its where my mind defaulted. It’s what I knew, so it’s what I planned for first when I started developing this story series of mine.
The issue I’ve been contemplating here is about characters, and the role they play. Maximus, Axis, and the two friends you haven’t really met yet, are the main characters of this series. They have a past and a future all lined out. At the end of the day it’s their narrative. That was something I leaned into way too hard at the beginning of this, and will focus on decidedly less in the sequel.
But at the end of the day, they’re still main characters. For the story I have planned they’re still going to take the leading role more than once. But I’ve recently began to question how that impacts an RP as an experience for the player.
Compare this mentality to Twilight of The Golden Age, and Salvation. Both run by Chromeharpoon. As the gm, his characters never take the spotlight. All the characters he plays are treated as NPCs. All secondary characters that support the player cast on their journey. Never lead it.
I’ve been thinking about these two mentalities a lot and my role as the GM. How much my characters should do even if it’s their narrative. What role they should play. Secondary to the player cast, or equal to them.
I’m very confident in my ability to tell a story, but not in my ability to run an RP. With every attempt I’ve improved, but I’m still doubtful. So what I want is your thoughts. How you feel about gm characters taking a leading/primary role compared to the player cast. I’d like to get as much feedback as possible here, so please tell me what you think.
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You’ve spelled out my philosophy pretty well already. I personally believe that the player characters should be the ones to take the lead and be the main characters of the story; any NPCs you have to tag along with them would be supporting characters, quest-givers, crew to man their ship, etc… The PCs should be the ones driving the story, and one of the GM’s roles is to play around their actions.
Of course, that’s just how I feel. I know other players don’t mind playing second fiddle to a GMPC, and I’ve been told that my approach to gamemastering doesn’t give enough direction sometimes, and players don’t know what to do in some situations. So there might be something to having an NPC that guides the player characters through the game’s world and provides a little more structure to the story, so long as the PCs still get the chance to make meaningful decisions that impact the narrative.
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Anyone remember mctorans rps? I get having a plot but this is yet another example of planning way too much on your own. Rp isn’t like regular writing so you can’t plan all the way to the ending and expect it’ll happen that way
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Well, with my roleplaying background I have a different mindset from most RPG convention. At least those that tend to mimic their tabletop counterparts. I’m used to forum/message boards RPs where there are no GMs, where the staff of the site are completely uninvolved, and there is no central power; no one person(s) controlling the story - assuming there is even an endgame. The only people with any sort of say or control were those who led the playable factions, which generally was limited to approving/denying player characters attempting to join.
There was a general world layout, list of factions, statements of who’s friends with who, and then you’d join one and have at it. If the faction leader had a storyline, it might be joined and played. If a random player had one, others might join in and pay attention. The only main characters and plots where whichever ones fought their way to the top. Whoever’s characters were interesting, well-written, combatively fun, or just been around so long that they’ve just become part and partial to the game world, etc.
As such, my default thinking is that no-one’s characters matter until they show themselves as being worth the attention. If they’re the ones driving this thing, then they’ve got to be doing it and not expecting the reigns to just be handed over. Now I don’t always play by this, I know it’s a mindset that does not, and will not, work for a lot of games. So I do not mind if my characters are the supporting cast, I expected as much. It was one of the leading reasons why I went with Mini-Cons, aside from my bias towards small bots. However, I was expecting more from Maximus. If they (GM PCs) are the main cast, then it really needs to be the driving force and show why they’re the driving force.
If you go by the philosophy that any character can be, or is, the protagonist of their own story, then Maximus and Axis have a lot of competition. Even if we’re aware we’re secondary, we still want our own characters and their narrative tidbits to be compelling. It’s Superman’s story, but Jimmy still gets arcs and can even affect the story in big ways. But if the narrative of your main cast isn’t proving to be compelling, neither player nor character is going to be all that willing to follow.
And I will say that while you may have given a lot more focus to Maximus and Axis at the start, they weren’t leading the narrative. Sure, he fought Grimlock and shouted at the others they needed to breakout. But then at the first roadblock, at the signs of disagreement or lack of willingness from the others, he started to take more of a backseat. That isn’t something people would want to follow, he didn’t know how to drive them. The narrative may still have been giving him the focus, but he wasn’t trying to lead it. At best, he was giving more suggestive guidelines while others tried pushing him into leading or helping him to lead. I do believe you recognized this to an extent, given Nebula’s dialogue, but it doesn’t help when she proves to be a more compelling and leading character. At least to me anyways. I can even say that about Gronius while he was played by Toa_Vladin. May not have liked his player’s writing and play style, but his character was a driving force (or very much tried to be).
Let me put it this way. If PCs are typically the ones driving the story, then GM PCs must not only drive the story but the other PCs as well. Rather than the GM PCs floating along the lazy river of plot, dragging the other PCs along with them as they desperately try to swim somewhere more interesting.
One does not go on a roller coaster and complain about not being able to control the direction of the ride. But they most certainly do if its a ride that includes a shooting gallery and are unable to move it to hit all the targets. As then the failure seems to be on the restriction of the ride and their lack of agency. Or to put it another way, since I’ve never personally been on a train, hayrides and boating can be (and are often) fun, even if we’re on a predetermined course, because the experience of the journey. They are only bad if the things we’re being toured around are boring or passengers were expecting more.
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That’s something I’ve accounted for. The way I have RoTT planned, is a set string of events spread between areas of exploration. It’s like a video game. Once you hit a certain moment or get so far, a trigger happens and an event starts. But I’m also willing to be flexible, and play along with whatever direction the player cast decides to go. Especially considering how this sequel is gonna be a lot more open world in terms of setting.
Right. Again, something I intend to fix in the sequel. The limited location of this rp has really hampered it’s potential in a lot of ways.
A lot of really good points in all of this, and a lot for me to consider. Thank you.
Your critique of Maximus as a driving character is pretty eye opening, and something I’ll absolutely work on moving forward here, and especially in the sequel.
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A ride known for being on rails?
Is no one being notified to the RP? Its been two days since the last post, and I’m a little concerned. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but still.
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