The Official RPG Planning Topic

[Toa Levacius Zehvor]

Echoing the opposite sentiment of ToD (sorry ), simplicity is usually the best answer.

 

"The Asylum" works the best, IMO. Hooks the reader in; makes them want to read the topic. Simple.

 

-Toa Levacius Zehvor

[Nato G]

Yeah. It does fit with the whole insanity theme. And if it's in Ga, why not call the whole place "Karz Cove" or something?

Edited December 29, 2014 by Roman Torchwick

[25K Now!]

If I could get an RPG named Ultimate City of Ultimate Destiny through the contests, you can probably get a good RPG with a weird name.

[IcarusBen]

The actual asylum, in game, is called the Metru Nui Sanitarium, so something that names the asylum something else probably wouldn't be such a good name.

[Nato G]

If I could get an RPG named Ultimate City of Ultimate Destiny through the contests, you can probably get a good RPG with a weird name.

 

Wait... what? Really? That was thing? Awesome. 

[Timageness]

I think it was still going when I joined up back at the tail end of August.

I was going to suggest that the full name of the building could be the Karzahni Heights Memorial Hospital for the Clinically Insane, but if you guys already have a name that you like, that's cool too.

[Nato G]

The KHMHCI? Nah, if you're going to have a wordy name like that, it needs to have an acronym that means something. 

 

Like... the Certified Rehabilitation Area for Zany Yobbos - or CRAZY, for short. I admit I kind of lost my train of thought there...

[Timageness]

I could actually see a secretary saying KHMHCI while welcoming visitors, though.

[Nato G]

True...

[Toa Levacius Zehvor]

If I could get an RPG named Ultimate City of Ultimate Destiny through the contests, you can probably get a good RPG with a weird name.

 

Different principle. "Ultimate City of Ultimate Destiny" avoids proper nouns, and is off the wall.

 

-Toa Levacius Zehvor

[Akavakaku]

Wait a second... There was a line in Dark Mirror about a Reeducation Facility run by Karzahni and Gali. Why not just combine these concepts into the Metru Nui Reeducation Facility and Sanitarium? That way you can have its halls stocked with dissidents of the Empire as well as the genuinely mentally ill, and you already have two staff characters pre-made.

[IcarusBen]

Actually, the premise behind this AU (as I understand it) is that the Great Cataclysm happened because of a glitch, the BoM didn't do it. Thousands of years later and the Metru Nui Sanitarium has opened, but unbeknownst to even Turaga Dume, the Sanitarium is actually less of a rehabilitation center and more of a laboratory, where perfectly fine Toa are shipped to and experimented upon both physically and psychologically. We decided that ghidora would play the warden and my character, the Ga-Toa Nyhe, would be the chief of medicine. In concept, our universe is less of a dark mirror and more of a What If?

 

Meaning, essentially, Gali wouldn't be running the facility, she'd be the one inside the facility.

[Akavakaku]

I understand, just saying the two concepts could be merged into something that already is very nearly canon. That, I think, is part of the appeal of Corpus Rahkshi; it doesn't require the Bionicle world to be vastly different.

[Nato G]

Exactly. It's just smarter-than-usual Rahkshi on a random island. Simple, yet effective. 

[Not Quite Dead]

Yeah, sticking to canon can help make things easier. I always vastly diuverge from it and its difficult to make things flow.

[Nato G]

*cough* TANKS *cough*

[silo]

But...tanks 

[Timageness]

Armoring up some Manas and slapping on some weapons would achieve the same effect, allow you to have your treads, replace the need for engines, and give you melee "tank" combat as a bonus. Also, it's based off of a canon Rahi, so it practically oozes simplicity.

[Nato G]

There's a thought for Tiragath: make the tanks look like giant Manas so you can have melee battles. 

[Shadowhawk]

Armoring up some Manas and slapping on some weapons would achieve the same effect, allow you to have your treads, replace the need for engines, and give you melee "tank" combat as a bonus. Also, it's based off of a canon Rahi, so it practically oozes simplicity.

No no no no.

 

You have to have armored hatches. And internal gears and machinery and cramped places for the crew to sit. Plus, what's un-simple about an armored vehicle in the BIONICLE universe? Just say they run on whatever mysterious energy the Boxor ran on, and have done with it.

 

Tanks are tanks, my friend. Learn this lesson. Learn it well, and accept no substitutes.

[Toa of Dancing]

And then the problem of Toa (specifically of iron/magnetism) comes right back around. Unless we just decided to disregard Toa and go for non-elemental species.

[Timageness]

Exactly. Due to game rules, Toa of those types could remain playable since they couldn't just auto-hit the Manas-tanks if they were treated somewhere along the lines of the standard BZPRPG Rahi.

As for those vehicles being unsimple to build, let me just say that the Boxor were created from Bohrok parts, which would require Bohrok to exist (or Rahkshi, if we're going the Ussanui route) to obtain said power source.

Edited January 1, 2015 by timageness411

[Not Quite Dead]

Toa don't exist in the tank RPG because destiny and its controlling fa tors are going.

[Silvan Haven]

To get around the "Toa make the RPG die" problem all you have to do is change what the tanks are made out of. Using some ceramic-metal fusion would help. That or using something like diamond nanotubes (yes, those are a thing.)

 

As for the Boxor power source. I think it is safe to say that they would have found out what said source was before everything went kaput.

[25K Now!]

Use graphene.

[silo]

Make them out of...DIAMONDS    

[Nato G]

Or, like Tiragath has said several times now, we can just not have Toa. 
 

[Some Random Phrase]

I had an idea for an RPG. Basically, dystopia where MUans are rare, and there is a massive predjuidice towards them on the part of the Bara Magnans. Not sure what the conflict would be, but maybe some kind of massive threat.

[IcarusBen]

Ooo, an allegory for racism. Interesting.

[Toa Levacius Zehvor]

Ooo, an allegory for racism. Interesting.

 

Only problem is, players don't like to role-play so much as fantasize. Make racism the issue, and most of your characters are "unlike the rest of evil society" or "radical extremist who eats enemy babies". Romeo and Juliet type story, almost guaranteed.

 

It's interesting to see actual commentary in RPGs, but it can be derailed very easily.

 

I had an idea for an RPG. Basically, dystopia where MUans are rare, and there is a massive predjuidice towards them on the part of the Bara Magnans. Not sure what the conflict would be, but maybe some kind of massive threat.

 

Toa. Go. Nova. Kill everything.

 

All I want is an RPG where Nova Blasts obliterate society. Is that so hard to ask?

 

-Toa Levacius Zehvor

[Not Quite Dead]

All I want is an RPG where Nova Blasts obliterate society. Is that so hard to ask?

 

-Toa Levacius Zehvor

 

 

Eh, not all of society. But aboveground Onu-Wahi is a haunted nuclear (read : nova blast) wasteland in TANKS.

 

Wherever in development karzahni it's stuck...

[Silvan Haven]

Or, like Tiragath has said several times now, we can just not have Toa. 

 

 

Or have very limited elemental nullification fields. Seriously, its not like these ideas are all that complicated, you would only need a single line of text to explain why tanks still work in the RPG.

[IcarusBen]

Or just not have Fa- or Fe-Toa. There. Fixed.

 

Plus, tanks move faster, are better armored and can be augmented by a Toa's power.

[Some Random Phrase]

Ooo, an allegory for racism. Interesting.

I didn't quite realize that, but yeah.

[Wyrd Bid Ful Araed]

Not having Toa around adds much more to the 'rustpunk' theme Tira is going for. Some kind of nullification field makes it seem like we've still got high tech, and to spare if we can stick it round tanks. The vanishing of Toa is much simpler and makes it feel like the world is decaying around us

[Silvan Haven]

On the other hand having something like nullification fields be fairly common knowledge means that something as glorious as a Toa suddenly becomes just another soldier on the battlefield. A "How the Mighty Have Fallen" sort of thing.

 

It would be really simple to just not make the tanks out of stuff a Toa could easily destroy though.

[Nato G]

I think what Tiragath said earlier is that the Toa all died in this apocalyptic war that laid waste to the world, and in the aftermath, destiny is no longer a thing, so new Toa couldn't come into existence. 

[Silvan Haven]

That was one of the ideas brought up. I was unable to suggest other ideas at the time due to a lack of internet.

[Not Quite Dead]

Not having Toa around adds much more to the 'rustpunk' theme Tira is going for. Some kind of nullification field makes it seem like we've still got high tech, and to spare if we can stick it round tanks. The vanishing of Toa is much simpler and makes it feel like the world is decaying around us

 

Rustpunk is a little lower than I'm aiming for. I went through a couple rough drafts and found it hard to reconcile some of the tech I wanted with a rusty world. It's more of a cold war situation where the main technological advancements are in weaponry and logistics kind of things. Other things are left to rust, metaphorically speaking. So the further you go from the social/military centers, the more rusty things are.

[Ghidora131]

Thanks for the name guys, we'll have a full set out in a sec!(five hours later)