Penny

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

I think, ultimately, for some people it is easier to create a world within a pre-established one than to create something from scratch.

Honestly, I have a distaste for all the anime roleplays but really, there's nothing one can do except not participate in them.

@Starboard Watch

I find the opposite is true because I just dont have the mastery over many fandoms to be able to be faithful to them. In an original world nothing that I come up with is going to be wrong.

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

<Snipped quote by Penny>

does that imply that there is a harem of harry potter androids or is it a VR harem of various harry potter ladies

@DruSM157

See? You almost have to take a look!

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

<Snipped quote by Penny>

There aren't. But people have a tendency to post about lewd interest checks in the status bar which is like advertising for your competitor and not even getting paid.

@Fabricant451

To be honest I'm more likely to click on a 1x1 labeled 'Cybernetic Harry Potter Harem' than I am to click on 'RP ideas', that is just marketing!

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

Maybe it has but when I open 1x1 it's like Isekai Kink RP or Mommy enslavement Harem that mostly dominates the section itself. Some people have LEWD original ideas, but not the OG SFW ideas us normal folk enjoy

@DeadDrop

I don't think there are as many Lewds as people make out. I have 9 1x1s on the go, none of which feature anything more dramatic than a kiss and a fade to black.

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

Possibly others like myself who moved exclusively to the 1x1 section? Most of the writers I come across there are advertising original stuff, so I didn't even know there was a deficit of original content in the other sections. I personally refuse to write fandoms (have even turned down requests), and I know a few other 1x1ers who are the same way, so it's a good spot to look for partners if you've got an idea you want to write about but you can't find a group of people who are interested in trying it. Of course, this is only if you're fine with writing with only one person instead of a whole group, so I'm sure it isn't a solution for everyone.

@Summer

I couldn't agree more and 99 percent of my RP is done 1x1. Its faster, its cleaner and as a general rule the writing is better. I also dislike fandoms and certainly would never want to right as a cannon character.

Where have Original RPs gone!? [Death of Originality]

Status bar forever!

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug slapped another clip into her submachine gun, ignoring the heat that radiated from the barrel shroud from the continuous firing. She dropped the weapon and let her patrol sling take the weight then unslung the disruptor rifle. It was increasingly clear to her that the information they had been given was wrong, and maybe not accidentally so. In mercenary service there was always the possibility your employer was keeping you in the dark for their own reasons. Things like that tended to get people killed and were rarely appreciated.

"Junebug?" her comm sounded in her ear and she realized it wasn't the first time Taya had tried to get her attention. She stood up from behind her cover and fired six rounds into the wall, in paired shouts. The first round punched a whole in the wall allowing the second to pass through and she was rewarded with the scream and thump of a fallen man.

"Go ahead Taya," she replied, ducking back into cover as bullets spewed from the freshly punched holes, a predictable if futile reaction.

"I think I have a fix on the target, he is heading for a panic room two flights below you," she said, a map overlay appearing in a 25 percent transparency in the lower right quadrant of Junebug's visor.

"Roger. Break. Neil we..."

"I got it," Neil replied guesturing with his weapon to a small elevator at the rear of the room. Junebug ran to it and pulled open the control panel as Neil joined her. Saxon howled in rage and lifted one of the heavy metal supply crates and hurled it at a door that sprung open. There was a rending crash of metal and a crunch of bone and the the lizard was in the elevator and Junebug slammed the simple gearbox into drive, lobbing a grenade underhand into the room they had just vacated. The elevator dropped them fast. They sank two levels as their evidently wasn't a stop on the intervening floor. The cage sank into a large open area perhaps thirty meters square. The roof was festooned with banks of glow lights and the floor was covered with vegetation similar to the jungle outside. A vast beast, fully ten meters long rounded on the elevator.

"Well," Junebug said a little abashedly.

"I guess that explains the rations." The creature let out a terrifying roar, so loud that the sound filters in Junebug's helmet notched it out to save her hearing. Then it lowered its head and charged towards the descending elevator cage.

The Sinful Stars

Annika sat down on the carpeted floor and crossed her legs her pose one of meditation. Ragnar gave her and odd look but she ignored the pagan for the moment. Something was wrong with Engel but something was very wrong in this whole city. The Duke seemed mad and unless the did something very soon there was a very real chance a major Hawkwood city would fall to the Vuldrock, a disaster as humiliating as it was likely to be bloody.

"Engel clearly expects us to do something," she mused, trying to center her mind on the facts she knew. By giving them the map it seemed he wanted them to do something military in nature. Engel might or might not be guilty of what she had seen in Ragnar's mind but the fact she couldn't read him seemed to sophisticated a ruse to have been set up to frame the man.

"The Duke hasn't deployed his soliders," she said at last, "we can start there, at least have armsmen in place when the Vuldrock come."

"The thane said the soldiers couldn't be moved without the Lords permission," Ragnar rumbled.

"All the more reason," Annika retorted.

"Whatever happens after that will give us more information, but at least the city wont be defenseless."

The Sinful Stars

Engel. Engel had been the name the Vuldrock chieftain had used when he told his thanes about his plan to raid the Hawkwood domains. Annika cast a side long glance at Ragnar but the barbarian did not appear to have made the same connection. Of course anyone could use the name, it would be an elegant set up to lure the Vuldrock here and then produce evidence that 'Engel' had provided the information. Certainly in al-Malik courts such subtly would be appreciated and celebrated, but was it too sophisticated for Hawkwoods? There was one way to find out. As Orion pressed Engel regarding what the Duke planned to do about the the impending attack she closed her eyes and opened her mind and sensed... nothing. Orion's mind was clear and bright, as was Ragnar's in its own way but from Engel it was as though she were touching a panel of stone rather than clear glass. She withdrew her psychic inquiry immediately. Engel didn't appear to have noticed the intrusion, which meant he was not, himself, psychic but how else could he be keeping her out. There were certain thuergies that could be used, Annika knew several herself, but at best that should have made his thoughts garbled nonsense, not a blank nothingness.

"You said we should take the map with us?" Annika asked suddenly, breaking into the conversation unexpectedly. Both Orion and Engel paused to glance at her.

"Take it where exactly?" she clarified. Engel ran a hand through his hair and smiled apologetically.

"I'm afraid the Duke has ordered me to do nothing without his express consent," the chamberlain explained. He laid a slight emphasis on 'me' but to an ear used to deciphering every nuance in the Graceful Tongue it was as obvious as a slap in the face.

"You mean he hasn't even gathered warriors?" Ragnar asked incredulously. Orion shot the pagan a warning look that quelled him only somewhat.

"I fear I have said to much already," Engel said, finishing his own drinks.

"If you make yourself comfortable, I am sure the Duke will send for you within the hour, I take my leave," the Chamberlain concluded already heading for the door with a backward gait, pausing to bow before slipping through the door and locking it. Annika narrowed her eyes.

"Something is very wrong here," she commented, glancing at the map as Orion swept it up off the table.

"Truly," he replied dryly, "such wisdom can only come from God."

Damned to the Depths

“I… don’t really remember,” Calliope replied as she settled the diadem onto her head. It held some kind of arcane power, that was for certain, but the patterns it showed in her mage sight gave no hint as to what they might be. For a moment she tried to focus on exactly what had happened to her in the darkened chamber beneath the colosseum but her mind seemed to skitter away from specifics. Dimly she recalled a voice, and she was suddenly ravenous with hunger.

“It was something from the spell book, but what exactly I can’t seem to dredge up,” she explained, shrugging her shoulders. Arcane shock was not unknown and wizards sometimes forgot entire spells when they unleashed too much power too quickly.

“As for the map…” she unrolled the map and peered at the strange designs tracing them with the tip of her finger. It seemed to her to be gibberish then she reached for her empty wine glass and held it between her and the parchment. The runes changed into a swirl of different but equally incomprehensible garbage.

“I thought so,” she said with a hint of satisfaction in her tone.

“You need a seeing stone to read it,” she explained. Seeing stones were clear quartz crystals inscribed with magical glyphs that allowed them to penetrate arcane codes that were otherwise unreadable. Such stones were rare and valuable, taking years of work by the most skilled enchanters to create. She leaned back on her chair considering and then a slow smile spread across her face.

“The sultan’s vizier had one,” she recalled. He had worn it on a chain around his neck, mostly concealed by his robes, but she had seen it when he bowed to the Sultan.

“Which might solve our other problem too,” she mused. The Bloodaxes were cowed for the moment but they would find their spines eventually, the more so once they were back on their ships. They had no mages and so would struggle to fight the Weather Witch and her crew, but there would be little they could do to stop them from fleeing to the high seas. They needed something to help forge the pirates into a group. The Bloodaxes were not patriots or men of principle, they might object to following a foreigner but provided it led them to loot and pillage they would probably swallow their pride and fall in line.

“Dalib Sahara is maybe two days sail from here?” Calliope speculated. It had taken closer to day and a half to reach the Bloodaxe’s cove but the prevailing winds made the return journey a longer and more arduous proposition.

“We can keep out to see, keep their ships between the coast and our guns, and we can give them a taste of battle and victory.” That presumed they would win of course, but Calliope always presumed she would win. Some of them would die of course, and some would probably run off to escape service with Markus, but those weren’t the type of men they needed anyway. The survivors would follow Markus after he led them to victory, and they would get a chance to avenge the viziers betrayal.