Ok, I was brainstorming with my co-admin today and we came up with what we think is a cleaver idea. We haven't seen it on any board before and I was just curious to see what others thought and would you be interested in joining a site that did this.

We always like to keep things interesting on our board. I feel like that's how to keep people involved and wanting to come back because it makes things fun! Well, I've noticed that although there is a lot to do on the board some of the plots are so cookie cutter. And relationships seem a little too perfect with the drama and stuff of cheating and the usual. It's not realistic you know? We want to have a board that is as much like real life as we can get it without being boring. So why not do things that are uncontrollable?

Here's the idea. The world is unpredictable. You can plan for things, such as going to the prom, but you never know what's going to happen. Your dress could rip, or the limo could get a flat on the way and you could miss the whole thing. Or what about fires, you can plan to be safe and keep things safe in your house, but you never know when one night you wake up and the house is filled with smoke from a fire right? It could happen to anyone, anywhere, any time of the day or night. Someone could rob you and you can't stop that from happening. So our idea is to throw in curve balls into our players lives. Randomly. Nothing is planned, you never know when it's coming or what's going to happen. Nothing could happen, but then again it could be that it suddenly starts raining on that picnic you are having. We want to have a thing..."the creeper" that could be at any point in time a person, or weather, or that tire that pops. They pop in occasionally in a thread and post something that happens. And now your characters have to react to what's just happened. It's just a fun and random thing that happens sometimes. Like life.

Ok, so what do you all think about the idea. Would you join in, or would this turn you off completely? We don't kill characters though...that's a rule. You could get into an accident, but we don't say if you die or not. That's up to you. You decide what happens. As long as it's realistic.

I actually really like this idea! It would make things interesting :)

Sounds like you guys would have a lot of control of the role plays. Instead of having just you guys do it all the time, you could have some people also help out. Maybe you won't need a 'Member of the Month', but rather a chosen member who you think could be the 'Creeper' for the month.
^ Just something to think about.

Hopefully, you guys will do this, because I would be very interested in joining ;D

Awesome! Yeah, we want to do something where we wouldn't have a ton of control over what happens. We were thinking maybe having it to where we draw a name and/or an event out of a hat and do it that way. So that way it's fair. And the admins would do it, so that way no one was too upset with others and no one would think people were picking on them. It wouldn't be too bad. But an example would be like Character A and Character B have a thread in one of their dorms and they are hanging out watching a movie and suddenly there is a random post from the creeper that says "Smoke has suddenly started to seep under the door from the hall. The fire alarm is going off in the hall and you can hear people opening their doors." or something. And your characters now have to react tothe random thing that happened.

This kind of idea is one I really like, it tends to be in moderated RPGs, such as Pokemon, etc, or as a "dungeon master", referencing table top RPGs. My old LOST board had something like this, we would post in some threads that needed action, bringing forward NPCs, enemies, etc.--it's a good idea, I think, and it would work well in a RL situation, like you were describing.

That sounds really cool! I would definately be interested in it.

Maybe you could have funny/cute things happen also?
^I tried to think of an example, but I'm too sleepy for proper brain function.

Anyway, I would join. ^_^

I really like this idea.

It's been popping up all over the place in various different games and I really believe it could help keep boards together. Too many boards die because nothing is happening. By having a sort of Dungeon Master that can jump in places and MAKE things happen, it gives some spontaneity to the game and keeps people interested.

We did something like that with a Star Wars board my friends and I started a few years back and we had a fantasy board that sadly died a few weeks ago that did it. Seriously, it's a lot of fun and it makes you really thing and really be creative.

We are really excited about this, and we really would love new members who would be open to the idea. Most of our members were a little confused and worried that we were going to mess with them in bad ways like forcing them to be pregnant or kill them off. But we assured them that those two things were off limits. However, everything else is pretty much up for grabs.

Well, I wouldn't make it off limits, per se. I think every action has a consequence, and that's part of the reason RPing loses its realism--people don't act on it.

If a character put themselves in a dangerous situation, than obviously there should be negative consequences. Similarly, if there's a fade to black scene, then there is a chance of pregnancy. It helps with the realism, too. I understand you don't want to do things like that to a character, but if they go and do fifty pounds of painkillers, death is certainly... looming.

I totally agree with you Brandon. I would love to be able to do anything. Just pop in and be like "Oh you didn't mention protection in this soooo "Oops! you're due in 9 months!" or give them an STD or something. Or be like "You cut too deep with the razor...now what?" and stuff like that. But some of the other admins think that it's too much of control. We just want to spice it up and actually give the rp some exciting twists and fun turns. Something unexpected, so our members will be like "Gasp!The creeper just posted! what happened! what do we do now!" and it will help them be more creative with their characters and maybe even give their characters more depth. Ya know?

If you do it, you should make the events significant enough that they'd make a difference (the pregnancy thing, ect.) because that would really be where the funs at. =D I would love for a site to do that. It makes you rise to the occasion, and your characters as well. Would the girl get an abortion? Keep the baby? How would she feel? Would the guy step up to the plate?

It all opens up interesting avenues to take your character, and is good for character development.

I say it's interesting; not too controlling. However, if you made the character have sex and then get pregnant, that would be controlling. ;) Pregnancy is a natural conclusion to sex- the characters should have thought about it before they did it.

[Using pregnancy as an example. :p]

I really like this idea!! Have you already started this on an RP of yours? Or are you going to make a site using this idea?

I agree it's not too controlling, since it's not making the character do something, simply stating the consquence of the characters chosen action.

For example: You can't make a character drink, then decide to drive home, but you can say the consquence of that action was an accident resulting in major injuries. We then have the character dealing with his feelings over this mistake and the repercussions of it. Obviously, everyone knows drinking and driving is dangerous, so if they don't want the chance of their character getting a in car accident they wouldn't do it.

We want to do it on the Nagoya Academy site. We are just waiting for a larger number of our members to say what they think before we start it up. So far people seem to really like the idea, but we haven't really told them much about it so we can keep it more of a "WOW!" factor and more unexpected. We don't want people to know what's going to happen of when it's going to happen or anything. Just like you don't know what's going to happen in RL.

edit!

Yeah! That's totally what we want to do. Like we want to say stuff like "As Mark was driving a long, a truck in the lane adjacent to him had a tire blow out causing them to swirve into Marks lane. The truck driver couldn't stop in time, resulting in a head on collision. The truck was going 65 MPH." and see what "mark" comes up with. What happens to him, what does he have his character do. How does he react, does his car flip? Does he go to the hospital. Does he get trapped in the car for hours? Does he walk away without a scratch?

I like this. Frankly, I feel all RPGs should be like this because it's very interesting. It consistently keeps things interesting. Also, it teaches players to constantly adapt and broaden their general knowledge.

I myself would join a site like this. What you're proposing is the key ingredient to make just about any RPB fun.

I've been trying to do the same thing with my board "Mugen Hall." This is one of my biggest problems with XIN RPing in general. Most XIN RPers don't realize that in fiction, there are bits and pieces of reality put together. Some of examples of reality that most XIN RPers failed to put into account include: logic, rationalization, plausibility, understanding of human behavior, etc.

Unfortunately, most XIN RPers aren't receptive to it. I can feel for you that I've seen so many cookie cutter plots, histories, and so forth. I can vouch for the relationships. My former second in command did that. Two of her characters ended up getting pregnant. But, the way she role-played it was too cookie cutter and too "perfect."

The relationships were too perfect, etc. Relationships had no depth. I've been seeing that a lot back and forth on my board. Frankly, it started to irritate me.

Overall, I like your proposal. I think with unpredictability, it allows for more freedom and creativity.

I just wanted to update on this! We have just started it and the first time seems to have really made things interesting. It seems like it is working! The members seem to love it and it made things with our homecoming so much more realistic and gave it all a twist! Thank you all for your opinions! They were really wonderful! :]

Ah, I really liked the idea of this too. :) We've had something like this on my site since its conception two years ago, with official NPCs popping up in threads here and there, or weather changes, or once we had a ledge on a cliff crumble out from under someone (they were backflipping and jumping about like they were on solid ground so it served them right... but there was demigod nearby so they weren't in danger of dying. ¬_¬)

I should warn you, though, that depending on how you use it, and your members, it may not work as well as you hope. I don't want to put a downer on your idea because it's really cool but it can be a lot of hard work and in my experience, most members (including ones who've been enthusiastic about the idea) just ignore the ONPC threads. I think in two years we've had maybe three requests for ONPC threads; about 6 successful/semi-successful ONPC threads (ones where the ONPC started something for members to join, as well as ones the ONPC joined midthread) and dozens of threads that died as soon as the ONPC posted.

I dunno, maybe it's just the way we do things combined with our membership. xP And even with so few successes, I still find it's a useful tool to have and wouldn't dream of getting rid of ONPCs, so I definitely do think it's worth you trying it out, I just thought I'd let you know that, yeah, it can be harder than you think it's going to be (especially if you have multiple personal characters and then have to keep up with ONPC threads too. ¬_¬).

They do something similar on WildCard (dunno if they advertise here or not) where characters are forced to roleplay with eachother by waking up in locked rooms and whatnot.

Yeah, I totally agree with this, and we thought of that too. We've decided that this is only going to take place occasionally, and that it's in threads that are actually active. Plus, it's somewhat of a rule that if the ONPC posts in your thread you can't ignore it. We've made a pinned topic so that new members can read about it so they aren't taken by surprise.

We just did our first one in homecoming. It was an arson. It was pretty neat looking and we posted it in the main topic so that everyone has to respond to it if they are going to keep rping in that topic. Not to mention it's part of the board. So like the gossip on our site is writing about it. We have a radio show on the board that the students do and they are talking about the fire and there is a mystery behind the fire. So the actual things are pretty well thought out. We decided it wouldn't work if we just threw out small things all the time. People would be expecting it then, but just things where there is going to be some interesting turns and people will handle it right. I think our member numbers (we're at 150 now) is just high/low enough for this to really take off. :] Or at least I hope so.

It sounds like a great idea. It would be VERY interesting to Roleplay with the possibility of anything happening at any given time, and you( The RPer) with no control of it.

I love that people are liking that idea.

It's one I'm so used to in RPs that I find it strange that there are games that aren't like that!

I would definitely go for it!

I currently have username called "Fate" that I use to do exactly what you're talking about. So far the members love it! It's been a hit, so go for it.