Game Skyrim Forum

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 10:24 am**

So I liked the idea of Brave New World but it seemed to have started up at the worst possible time. Perhaps we can do something similar to kick off the first Commonwealth RP here.

We can discuss what ending seems to be canon for the Capital Wasteland and figure out how we want to go about doing an RP set in the Commonwealth.

I personally favor giving control of the faction heads (don't know their names yet) to a couple of GMs, two or three, and having people RP as survivors of the Sole Survivors vault. Obviously he wouldn't be a sole survivor anymore.

Having an RP this early on could be fun and allow us to play around with options that aren't currently in the game. Perhaps one or more RPers decide they want to join up with Raiders. Maybe someone wants revenge on Vault-Tech. Maybe someone decides they don't want a certain reporter getting into a certain city.

Let's be careful to avoid spoilers though. Use Spoiler Tags and label them (if possible) with the area or faction the spoiler affects and how big of a spoiler it is.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 7:15 am**

I'd be tempted to give a character based F4 RP a go.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:16 am**

I wouldn't mind a go at a Faction leader. Though I only know the Minutemen and the BoS. Though there's also more minor factions in Goodneighbor.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:14 am**

I'd prefer if we did a Columbia style RP personally.

Or at least allow people to make characters in whatever factions they choose. Having everyone be "sole survivors" limits RP opporunities considerably. I mean, we've played the game (at least part of the way). We've already RPed the Sole Survivor. I don't know about anyone else but I'd like to RP other people in the Commonwealth.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 10:19 am**

Sounds cool, but I still haven't finished the story, or even gotten much beyond the land area of the map that has diamond city and good neighbor. I still need to build provide food to sanctuary, and I have 20 hours into it. I think if we started an RP we would need to avoid the story.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:28 am**

I'm in the same boat wampower. Less time than I'd like to play, probably not going to advance too quickly. I figured if we all start coming out of the Vault we can keep things kinda slow for awhile. Have GMs keep the progress slow so everyone has time to play through. Perhaps try to make the progression more organic.

I imagine a slow approach, something like...

Leave the Vault
Search the Town
Have some in character chat for a bit
Figure out who is leaving and who is staying
Then for a while at least it can sort of be a settlement RP

Either by random chance, or too much growth, or getting the wrong persons attention, or the betrayal of someone who heads out we could start getting attacked by Raiders which could prompt some progression.

That way we could start RPing relatively quickly, I don't want to start this immediately we should give it time to come together so it doesn't rot in the vine like so many RPs lately, without immediately exploring some of the spoiler-ific areas or encountering the big factions and Power Armor and all that.

We can stick with creating, defending, and expanding Sanctuary and the Red Rocket place for a bit to allow people to progress through the game and to allow new users to join up.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:50 pm**

If there's the potential to expand the RP later to allow for new characters in other factions and a larger scale faction/character RP I'd be up for it.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:36 am**

Big wall of text inbound, jump to the last paragraph if you don't want to read my ramble.

I figure eventually everyone would want to either join or form a group, I just want to avoid having everyone RPing the head of something. I imagine at some point, either as groups or individually, people would want to join factions and at that point it would make sense to allow them to RP other members of factions.

I just don't want to have the issues inherent when too many posters are RPing as the heads of large factions. You get into the grouping up, the meta-posting, the storyline invulnerability, the uber characters, Mary Sues, the sixth sense stuff. All manner of nonsense.

Ideally I'd like to see something approaching organic growth. Start as characters with nothing, tackle the immediate issues of security and sustenance, then form a community. Community gets larger, grow closer together or further apart, but either way that can create a need to expand or at least network.

So we could go from a Character Based RP to a Character Based Settlement RP back to a Character Based RP (or perhaps small group RP) before starting to develop our own factions or join existing ones.

I think if done right serious character arches would be almost unavoidable and it would really be fun to see some serious character development, but that requires us taking our time and occassionaly facing a loss.

One idea I think would be good is to sort of follow the Fallout 4 approach in character creation of less is more. Rather than submitting big character bios for everyone to read we send full bios only to the GM(s). Everyone else just gets a brief physical description so we have to figure out who is smart, intelligent, charismatic, etc etc from the posts. Also helps avoid the whole "Darren Darkstone has a mysterious past he doesn't like to talk about but will keep dropping little hints about" effect.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:53 am**

I really like that idea about starting small and then expanding as we go. I'm 2 days into playing FO 4 and I really don't want to see any reveals about the main story. So, I would love to play a new settler in Sanctuary and maybe help to improve the settlement. (I'm currently building a community building with a pool table, jukebox etc. lol - love to build stuff and decorate.)

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:07 am**

What if we did a character type RP and we all lived in sanctuary or some other settlement while the sole survivor did his thing. One thing that F4 didn't do was help tell a story of the settlements when you're not there.

It could start off with all of us getting a distress signal or something from sanctuary which brings us all there, and we basically do our best to keep the town alive.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 12:49 am**

Or we all hear the Recruitment beacon and decide to settle down, say a fresh start or for ghoul or synth characters a place free from prejudice.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 7:40 am**

Yeah that's what i was going with. We come from different area's, factions, beliefs, lifestyles, etc but we all settle down in one town

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 8:27 am**

The only issue I have with that is that id really like to see a bit of danger, a bit of lethality, and that sense of learning.

When we all come from different areas, and have all lead lives out in the wastes, there's a tendency for everyone to want to be a hardened world wise badass or at least already know where a big settlement or gear warehouse is.

It might just be because I've made a point of not going straight for the main quest...but my experience in Fallout 4 thus far has been a lot more dangerous than Fallout 3 ever was and its been great. I'd like to carry that over into an RP but it seems difficult if everyone's character comes from one settlement or another.

I have two ideas to alleviate that.

A: Everyone has two characters. One from the Vault and one outside of it. That way we can maintain a sense of danger, we can have characters die without posters having to come up with entirely new characters.

B: We could start as refugees of very nearby settlements that happen upon Sanctuary. So no big settlements, no one knows where the big settlements are, and no one is a member of one of the big factions. Preferably, my preference, not even an ex-Minuteman.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:31 am**

I like that second half, So maybe we all stumble upon Sanctuary with nothing and then we all pull our strengths together and rebuild/ defend the town. Has anyone ever seen the show The Colony on Discovery. We could do it kind of like that

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 11:34 am**

I like the idea of some people being from vault 111 too, maybe some of us emerge around the same time some groups of settlers get there. Also submitting sheets to the gm and we have find stuff about eachother on our own sounds great. That way we could have things in our past we hide, or just have something more to talk about.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:32 pm**

so your saying we dont post our Character sheets, we send them privately to to the GM

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 10:15 am**

I proposed that in an edit

"One idea I think would be good is to sort of follow the Fallout 4 approach in character creation of less is more. Rather than submitting big character bios for everyone to read we send full bios only to the GM(s). Everyone else just gets a brief physical description so we have to figure out who is smart, intelligent, charismatic, etc etc from the posts. Also helps avoid the whole "Darren Darkstone has a mysterious past he doesn't like to talk about but will keep dropping little hints about" effect. "

Not having anyone involved in any of the major factions, or from the major settlements, in the beginning helps put us all on equal standing and not knowing who one another are or what our back stories are is sort of similar.

We start out, given all that stuff from the previous paragraph, with no real reason not to trust one another and no real motive to hurt one another, save for simple greed or fear. I think it would be jolly good fun to have animosities develop, or just to have interests eventually run counter and see characters that struggled together to survive the first days of the settlement now acting at cross purposes and potentially killing one another.

Sort of trying to ape the grander scheme of the timeline threads in the ES FF forum that inspired BNW. A more dangerous world, not everyone can get what they want, not everyone lives to see the end. Added lethality was why I thought it a good idea to have two characters rather than one, but to not have them necessarily acting together.

That way if one of your characters kills one of my characters my other character doesnt immediately have any way of knowing what has happened and might not particularly give a toss. Leave avenging someone's death to the other characters who have been interacting with him...maybe postpone vengeance in the interest of the greater good. Maybe not everyone is happy with the idea of postponed justice. Etc. etc.

And how cool would it be to have Bojack Stevenson, suave ladies man and all around hep cat, murdered by the head of some faction during some battle. Calls for vengeance but cooler heads prevail. Peace talks, alliances, singing koombayah whilst cooking smores. Then Bojacks buddies learn enough about the faction, kill them all, take over their property, and erect a statue in loving memory of Bojack Stevenson: All Around A Pretty Cool Dude.

More interesting to me then my character surviving something through storyline immunity, or me rejoining the RP with Bojack Stevensons brother Billyjack Stevenson who has very similar character traits and abilities and, for some reason, knowledge of who killed his poor brother Bojack.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:52 am**

I like that idea, but I don't really like the idea of having both, or one of my characters being from a Vault. If we can be from the wasteland, just not a major faction or all around badass, I'd be up for an RP

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 3:22 pm**

Yeah I think if some people from the wastes and some from vaults it would help get diversity in there, I do agree that we shouldn't be part of a major faction and I love the idea of keeping the basics on our character sheet because that will really help drive the RP and building relationships

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:25 am**

I'm with Andro, I'd personally be up for a Columbia-style RP. Like others, I'm not terribly far into the story yet, so I'd like to avoid any spoilers if possible.

I'm thinking a synth-infiltrator could be a fun character. By that, I mean RPing as a person in society who's been replaced by a synth.

Posted: **Wed Dec 02, 2015 11:55 pm**

....But a Columbia style RP would necessitate immediate spoilers...

My approach we may not meet any of the big groups for pages, even threads. A Columbia approach immediately at the very least identifies the major players and is quite subject to the acceleration of tech and/or knowledge of the wasteland. Even if everyone were to pick smaller settlements to Columbiaize, you'd still have to twist yourself up to avoid dealing with or at least referencing spoilers.

I'd give examples....but spoilers.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:53 am**

Honestly, I'd love a new roleplay, but the only ones I usually enjoy are columbia style roleplays, so I'd join up if it were one. But I can understand why people may be hesitant if they arent far in the story.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 3:58 pm**

It will certainly be interesting when a faction/nation RP comes out. 4 brings a new (old) approach to a familiar group and introduces several interesting new groups. Given certain aspects of the story we'll have to be careful to separate writer knowledge from character knowledge.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 11:13 am**

I think I'd prefer to wait until a reasonable number of people are past the main "spoilery" part of the story. And then start up Columbia for the Commonwealth.

Really though, you could avoid major spoilers by just not including any part of the SS or his family in the RP. Then the only thing that could be spoiled would be the settings.

Posted: **Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:16 pm**

We could always just RP as Settlement leaders. Places like Starlight Drive In, Sanctuary or Red Rocket Truck stop. And limit RPers to these locations, which would limit story related spoilers and we could mention more of the SS as He or She progresses the story according to our current playthroughs. If say I haven't made it to Diamond City then neither has the SS so the story remains on hiatus. There's plenty of things the SS could be doing all little places to explore so there's no reason why that couldn't be plausible.

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