New Addition to the ROC?

[Shor]

I've been around the ROC (Redwall Online Community) for two years now, not a long time, I know, but I feel that its population has decreased severely since the year 2000. LoRA the biggest role-play website of the ROC next to Otter's Fort, which I left soon after joining. Redwall Legacies was a growing force in the ROC until the Admin up and left for no apparent reason. We tried to piece it back together with Martin's Legacy, but I'm afraid it's going to pull a Humpty Dumpty on me now. ToRA seems to be doing pretty well, though. So, that leaves only three fairly active Redwall role-play sites. Now, from what I've learned from my sources, there used to be large quantities of members in places like Dark Mouse's Cove, and DAB, the concept of which actually made it into Jacques' novels!

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that seeing as how there are several active members here, we might try to collectively form another addition to the ROC -- possibly one as big as this one. All it would take is a good idea, a few staff members, and a ton of advertising. (There aren't many active Redwallers anymore, so most of the advertising would take place outside the ROC.)

In my experience, threads such as these have been a big waste of time, as it is rarely replied to, but I'm taking a long shot here. Anyone interested? Anyone? . . . Anyone? . . . Bueller?

(I'm not trying to steal members from LoRA. I'm trying to get some help to jump start a new site for the purpose of increasing the ROC's population, which should, in turn, actually get more members for LoRA. See? Loop-holes aren't that bad. ;D)

[Grath]

-raises hand- Way interested. I'd love to help you with your new project, and I feel the downward slide is disturbing... so count me in!!

[[Short, I know, but to the point, yes?]]

[Elicia]

-Raises hand very, very high- I would LOVE TO! I could add another site to my RP resume, and I love RPing!
I am a member of TONS of sites, so that I can advertise like crazy! I am extremely active, and-I hope- that I am a good RPer too! I will keep up with all three Redwall sites....bringing my account # up to....10. AND I'M STILL SO ACTIVE! So wonderful, aren't I? Heh, now Tir can't tell me to stop heckling.....

I've been mods or admins on 5 of my sites, and play over 30 different charries when all accounted for! Haha, I'd LOVE to join....
although...never trust me with skins. I am know to have horrible color choices. I think I'm almost color-blind like you can be tone-deaf. It's...embarrassing...and I'm a GIRL. I'm supposed to be good at those things!

Ah. I digress. I try to put at least five words into OOC posts, and at least four-six sentences in all of my IC posts. I often do more, however!

If you've got room on this site....then I might just try for a staff posi...not that I'm trying to suck up to you or anything! -hands Shor a donut- Our secret!

[Ashstripe]

I've been with the ROC for about...Five or so years now. I think I joined back in 2003/2004. But yeah, I joined at the decline of the Golden Age, we still had a large amount of members, but the decline was starting.

By the time we moved over to LoRA 1.0 we already lost a huge chunk of our members. That was roughly about 1-2 years ago I think.

Now, allow me to be the cynical man that I am. Way back in the day, in 2003, when The Legend of Redwall Abbey was out and about and kids respected their elders - there were a ton of Redwall sites. A ton.

And you know what? The majority of those only had one or two members, the creator and their co-admin whom had made it with them, occasionally they'd get another member or two and stick it out for a month. But eventually, their sites would fail.

Guess why.

They were all the same basic premise, we're following the canon of Redwall, we need positions, yadda yadda - been there done that. LoRA and every other site out there has done that.

My point? You better have an original concept if you want to strengthen the ROC; a hundred copy and paste sites with the same premise never did anyone any good. I've been in Redwall RPs where magic was spliced into the mix, ToRA has the Abbey over-run by vermin, another RP focused exclusively on Salamandastron.

Without an original concept, your weakening the community, not strengthening it.

Now personally, I'm not too particularly concerned if you sap members from LoRA, that's their call. If we're not good enough for them, we're not good enough for them. But making more sites still has the potential to divide the ROC. The last thing I want to see happen is that the ROC divides into a bunch of tiny sites with nothing going for them.

But yeah, that's my devil's advocate and jaded cynicism at work. On the flip-side, I can do Graphics, I can do Web-design. I've been paid to do it before, so apparently I'm doing something right.

[Shor]

Thanks for the advice, Ash. It's good to have the wisdom of the elderly.

Right, so, basically, the goal is a new and unique Redwall Role-Play website that attracts new members to the ROC, doesn't divide up the ROC, and has many doughnuts. Sounds difficult enough. I suppose it would be best to start with the unique theme. Any ideas in particular? I've yet to smooth the edges of a few of my own ideas currently -- I'll post them as soon as I've finished.

[Grath]

Hmmm... -places head on hand in thoughtfull pose-

A plot wherein the villian wins?

And then(not right away) is defeated again?

A plot centered on noonvale?

A plot centered on Sali?

A plot centered on the southern kingdom?

[Elicia]

I could do a plot on Sali -grins obesessively over picture- My FAVORITE!

Do you know what might make a good story/plot line? Choose any creature, then have a secret society, hiding in Mossflower near the Highlands. They could be like....like a Sali for ALL charries. So instead of being gently Abbeybeasts (etc), these would be trained to fight-although only in wars. It might make a good story...I'd join, but then again, I'd join any of these! And everyone trains with everyone else, and cross-species friendships (Mouse+vole=bffl). However, they compete against each other, and hold contests of strength, swordplay, etc. They can be best buds with anyone, but they work for their species as sort of...sort of....-tell me if no one gets this analogy- Like the Clans. They can be friends with others from other Clans, but they have to be able to duel against each other. Like a training camp. Anyone can post anywhere, unless it's a private thread, but there could be a special board for the seasonal competitions.

Sports that might be in a competition=Swimming, swordplay, marksmanship (sling, knives, arrows), duels (javelin, pike, axe, etc), weight-lifting, racing, digging...

and then the Recreationals could be= painting, cook-off, vegetable contest, singing, acting, poetry, eating contest....

Then, maybe like in Harry Potter, they could win points for themselves, and at the end the species with the most points will hold a feast for everyone!
...
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..
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Don't use it if you don't want to. It just popped into my head.

[Tirael]

None of the sites have ever focused on Green Isle, the Ruddaring, or any of those places outside Mossflower/ Salamandastron, etc. Something in the oceans could attract those who wanted to do corsairs, but can't because then they'd only be the ones on the ocean, wait around, and then leave the site after a week or so. So far as I know, no site has ever been ocean-oriented. Then we can link to the golden three (LoRa, ToRA, and ML) from that site.

And if you want any help there, I'm open. I have no social life, so I'd probably be able to put quite a bit of work into it.

[Grath]

Dude! I like Tir's idea!

[Shor]

Oh, seabound! I love your idea, Tir! (I'm rather obsessed with the sea -- it's sad, really. *nods to express said sadness*) In Barr's history, I did mention Ruddaring, Terramort, and Sampetra, which, I guess, to my benefit, would allow me to use my current characters the way the are (except for location). Yay for me.

I very, very much like the idea (I've not heard of a Redwall Role Play like it, either.). What it made me think was something to the effect of: warriors at sea who never settle, constantly patrolling the waters -- "good guys," of course. Naturally, there'd be some kind of opposition to them, and therein lies the fun, er, conflict. There would be beasts who settled, of course, the inhabitants of the isles, and they could be protected, in a way, by the seabound. Ah, I babble. You get the idea. . . You do get the idea, right?

(If I'm getting ahead of myself, just ignore the below, and tell me, please.)

Right, then. Let's see if we can expand on the details. I don't think the word "fort" should come up. There have been far too many "forts" in RRP sites. Why don't we try to get a little more developed than that? Should there be an equivalent to Redwall somewhere? Or should there be a bunch of small isles with their own governments (throw in some culture)? Or perhaps we should tone things down, and take out such politics altogether? I personally favor the prior (opposite of latter, right?), so we can create some non-canonical positions that would attract people.

Also, I've noticed that there seem to be so many positions to fill on most RRPs that few ever get filled. I think we should keep the positions down to just a few, maybe several.

All right, I'll just leave it at that. Discuss away!

[Grath]

[[Former is opposite latter. ;D]]

As opposed to fort:
Castle, keep, manor

I love the idea of a seabound RP. I love the sea, I grew up by it, and its why I love otters so much. In fact, Tampa was originally from a burned out settlement on Green Isle, as leader of a band of refugees out for revenge against the vermin who burned their town. They roamed the seas on the Sea Dog until they came to Mossflower.

A suggestion, when[if] we do this, put Redwall and Sali at the bottom of the page, and the sea places up top. This implies that those places are more important.

[Elicia]

Oh. Um. Ok....

I guess you can try citadel. It's a synonym for 'fort', and sounds cool.
I'd be willing to do omens/prophecies/names/whatever for the site...but now I don't know. I like RPing, well, Land creatures, not ones that would be out on the sea. But I'll totally help you guys get the site up! I don't want to be the downer...

[Ashstripe]

Alright, I really don't want to burst your collective bubble here. But the concept, to an extent, has been done.

Redwall Corsairs; I don't have a link but I'm sure they advertised in our board somewhere. They take the whole sea-faring concept and execute it quite well.

Personally, I'd try thinking outside the box a little more. Try making the Redwall world more dystopian, kind of like the basis of ToRA. But really dystopian. There's an omnipresent dictatorship dominating the land/city/whatever and Redwall is the underground movement and haven for the freedom fighters; i.e "Redwall CornerClub" a quaint little bar that serves as the gathering point.

Shift the setting a little more and we have gun-powder and secret societies. 'Vermin' is now no longer a racial term, but an occupational term.

My point is we shouldn't directly transfer the world of Redwall to another setting. Slapping on a sea-faring skin to Redwall isn't ground breaking stuff. Redwall Abbey isn't necessarily a Fortress - think of what the place symbolises; a haven, a safe-place. Holy ground.

I dunno, just my mind at work.

[Elicia]

Um...did anyone even read my post? I'm guessing that no one liked it/wanted to use it as no one replied to it at all...only Tir's post. D-do you want me to scrap it, and start again....or just keep modifying it?

[Tirael]

@ Elicia: The main problem with your idea is that it's not really a whole site, so much as a plot. If you could develop it into something more...comprehensive, then yes, we could work with it. But for now, it needs expansion.

@ Ashstripe: I'd never heard of Redwall Corsairs, so I guess I didn't realize the idea was old. Oh well. *shrug*

It's definitely a cool idea, I've always wondered what Mossflower would look like in the future. But I think if we do thrust it further through time, we should really go with it and even make it 1800's/ early 1900's style. That way, we can really do something out of the ordinary. Redwall could even be at the center of a city. The only problem is that there's a lot more complicated society in that civilization, so we'd have a lot to figure out. But it'd be cool, so long as we can attract people who want unconventional Redwall.

And since most people seem to prefer playing 'good' species, maybe we can say something like 'over history, many 'vermin' have been wiped out, and those remaining are the persecuted group' or something. Making vermin the underdogs would probably make more people want to be them. Then they can carry that over to the aforementioned golden three.

Maybe it's just Lackadaisy whispering in the back of my head, but I like this. We should go for it.

[Grath]

As pertaining to Tir's idea of th "Seabound" and Eli's secret society...

Ashstripe's right, it would have to be very original. So why not combine the two? A site focused on the sea, but including the rest of the Redwall world, and the Seabound are a group of highly trained warriors like the Long Patrol is on land.

[Shor]

Normally, I would offer more of an explanation, but my computer seems to be very uncooperative in this, freezing every time I write a paragraph or two, so this won't be as much of an explanation as I'd like, but it'll do for now. I call this, "super-paraphrasing."

---

Ah! Rocky told me about Corsairs before, but I couldn't join because of some glitch that prevented me from submitting anything.

Dystopia. Fun, but hasn't ToRA all ready done that? Yes, there are ways to make it work, but this is the same reason we question the sea theme.

Futuristic Redwall? Tastes awful, initially, but it could work. Just no guns. They lack art.

Back to Seabound. I may just be clinging too tightly to empty sentiment, but I'm with Grath on the sea theme. Yes, Corsairs has done it before, but they were about pirates. Why not something different?
Possible compromise: Exploration. Remember the discovery of the New World? Sending beasts out to sea, searching for new land, would create opportunities for different kinds of characters, and even species (As we all know, species vary by location on Earth, so it would make sense that non-Redwall species could be found on a different continent/faraway isles.)
And sure, like Grath said, we could include Mossflower (which is how I will hereafter refer to the only known continent in Redwall), which, assuming we time skip far enough, could be much more complex, id est, it could actually have real governments here and there.
I may be mistaken, but this sounds original to me, even in comparison to RC.

Oh, and I'm not saying Redwall's a fort. I'm just saying that every other RRP includes one, proclaiming it the center of Mossflower. -- Black Arch Fort is one example. Otter's Fort (shouldn't the apostrophe be on the other side of the "s"?). And let's not forget the only one, I believe, that pulled it off well: ToRA's Fort N'Tashi. -- To name a few. See where I'm coming from?

Anyway, I'm not opposed to the whole slightly futuristic Redwall. Government will need to exist (probably), and that can sometimes repel the members who don't want to spend the time reading a full-blown analysis on individual governments and economics and so on and so forth that litter the map. I'm just trying to keep things reasonably simple.

As for other miscellaneous ideas, mostly dealing with the dystopian, hopeless feel to them:
Apocalypse. How fun is that?!
Wanna know something interesting? Never once were tornados mentioned in the Redwall novels (that I'm aware of) -- it's a fun idea to play with.
D'you think Loamhedge could ever come back?
What if a sort of gradual rapture occured? Beasts start disappearing randomly, leaving our characters wondering why. I call it "The Great Plucking."
If you want to talk serious "Seabound": Unknown somethings haunt a particular group of seafarers, forcing them to choose between staying at sea, or dying on land.

Anyway, there's my babbling for today. Go crazy.

---

Yes, I had a lot to write. Believe it or not, this is only a fourth of the size it could've been.

[Elicia]

Well...Shor, if some people really don't want to figure out status and ranks for each species, I can. I'm good with that.

I think a disease that forces the creatures to leave is a good idea. Then, there will only be so many survivors, and "The Great Plucking" and natural disasters will become of an even greater importance, which would be good for plotlines.

I like dystopian. I want to do something with the dystopian FULL BLOWN! End of the world things are very, very nice in my opinion, and I've done some short stories on diseases that...um...kill the entire population of the world. And some very nice details, too! Not saying that we should go THAT far unless everyone agrees to it, but I do like the idea!

Eh. My secret society. Eh. Well, it seems to be forgotten, but can we put them on an island, perhaps? A little island that the Seabound use as their home base/something? It'd be a cool thing to use as a mini-plot, you know! The Seabound arrive at the Citadel (That's what I'm calling it), and are welcomed and invited into their seasonal games. Squirrels against moles against hares against mice (etc.) Just as a thought, just putting it out there!

Futuristic Redwall? Ew. Just saying.

[Ashstripe]

ToRA is dystopian - to an extent. But I'm talking REALLY dystopian. Warhammer 40K dystopian(For a start, they have the Inquisition; not unlike the Spanish Inquisition.) . A world where countless lives can be extinguished and no one will care. Where preachers of free-speech mysteriously disappear the next day.

What you lot have in ToRA is different, there is no Government or real order as far as I can tell. The Vermin barged in and claimed Redwall and told everyone else tough toe-nails.

My idea of dystopian where theoretically, everyone is a free-beast, the streets/city/world is yours. But the way everyone shuffles along, avoiding eye-contact and with their hands stuck in their pockets, begs to differ. Ever seen the movie Bladerunner? Notice how it's constantly dark and raining and feels so oppressive? That's the kind of world I'm talking about.

And there is no such thing as 'vermin', we aren't racist in Ash's world.

You don't need technology for that. Redwall can transfer to the setting rather well. Though what would be interesting is a Steam-punk kind of Redwall world.

Then again, I don't applaud the idea of an Anthro-RP in futuristic settings.


As for the ideas of Governments, well you could easily transfer the Badger Lords into that. So the Government becomes a genuine monarchy with a parliament or something like that - similar to Stuart England.


Apocalypse? That's been done so many times in so many settings that it's just not as awesome any-more. Fallout's done it to death. S.T.A.L.K.E.R took a fresh spin on it but it's still the same idea. Terminator did it. 2012 is going to do it(The Movie, not that superstition). And some other movies that I'm sure have done it at one point or another.

And again, scale size into all this. Including Mossflower country with a bunch of islands is going to spread the boards too thinly - look at LoRA, our boards aren't exactly bursting at the seams.

So I say, either meld Mossflower into one board or a few major cities/whatever. Not the whole country.

What will really reel in the older members(Let's face it, most of us here are over 15 now.) would be a more mature world(Might have to transfer to Zetaboards or something more tolerant than Proboards).

You know why the ROC is in decline? Because most of the members have simply gotten too old and moved on. Hence why I suggested dystopian, I doubt I could read through another Redwall book at my age, their simply too childish and predictable.

[Elicia]

WHAT??? -cries in corner- I'm almost as old as you guys are, and I still read Redwall a lot! In truth, it looks weird next to the other 700 page books I read, but still! That's just silly! You can read whatever you want, no matter how old you are!