The Site-Wide Plot & You

As many of you already know, Ribitta has just recently left the site. However, if you don't keep up with the site-wide plot, or talk to him directly, some of you may not know that he was almost solely responsible for the current plot occurring on HC. That said, I've been left with the responsibility of continuing and finishing what he started. I will be working with his notes, but I may not use the entirety of them.

That said, I believe an explanation is due. While I fully support what his ideas for the plot were/are, and I personally enjoyed what he had planned, it never seemed as if the members of this community were very involved in it, not necessarily because the plot was disliked, but because it was not very high on the list of priorities. It always seemed to be more of a cool side-story for player characters who had their own more important stories, as if people looked at the plot and said "Oh, hey, that's pretty cool. But I'm already pretty busy doing this over here." or similar statements.

I don't want to be the guy that quotes himself, but if you've taken a look at my Roleplay Ramblings thread and read my post, it should be fairly apparent that I hold the belief that some of the best roleplaying comes out of being in a community setting. Reflecting that, I also believe that the plot should be the same way: flexible enough to incorporate the desires of those characters involved, yet rigid enough to keep those same characters together.

Which brings me to the purpose of this thread: What would you like to see happen in the Site-Wide plot?

While I cannot promise that I can incorporate the ideas of everyone that posts in this thread, or that every idea will be accepted, I want to try my best to keep in mind the wishes of everyone involved, as we press forward. That said, it should go without saying that some ideas will not be accepted because of their basic premise, i.e. "X character should kill Ganon.". If you're unsure about the idea(s) you want to post, post them anyways, as it will still still be valuable information for me.

I don't necessarily have any ideas; primarily because, as the plot is in its current stages, it seemed very well planned and organized, to the point where each event would seamlessly flow into the next like a river. This doesn't leave very much room for suggestions on something like this, in my opinion, so I can't really suggest anything other than perhaps increased activity with the Gorons and other racial groups. Perhaps some activity in Woodfall with the Deku?

The HC plot and setting are quite unique, they take aspects from throughout Zelda lore and at the same time it creates an entire story in and of itself. I think they have a certain value to the site that can't simply be replaced. For even those who don't participate in quests directly driving the plot, they can use the material to build their characters' backgrounds and even drive whatever they might be doing.

Now, I usually had to turn to the old Setting sheets to build my characters off of. With the plot, I have a whole extra layer I can use to weave my story. What I would like to see, is maybe some more colorful looks into who characters like Mahirid are, and what the politics of each mini-nation like the Deku Palace or the Gerudo Fortress consist of at this place in the history. Do the Gerudo leaders condone the use of sorcery? Do the Gorons have trouble finding rock supplies with monsters strewn about? These little things could all even fit into questlines, if given enough thought.

Now, I keep losing the links to the old setting threads, and I guess that's because of all the site layout changes. But I think with some expansion of the plot threads, players can be inspired to do more than just find a task to do at any given season.

I suggest that while plots should remain hyrule-wide events, they should focus on expanding the materials that players can draw from, rather than something like a new plan to tie Ganon to a rocket and send him into the moon. Maybe it can focus on a skirmish to reclaim a Goron mine, and while some players might have a LotR style battle royale on the mountains, others will be doing old fashioned dungeon crawling and puzzle solving to remove an ancient evil from the depths. Focused, but open-ended. This is the sort of thing I think people will want to play. I really think dungeons and temples shouldn't be reserved to side-stories outside of the HC canon.

I guess this is somewhat of an add-on to Geebo's post, since it's related to what he said and it's part of what I would've said initially anyway.

I don't think you should make a massive storyline. My reasoning is, these are fun to make and can be really interesting and fun to read. . . But we're a roleplay site, not a fanfiction site. Most of the time, it is very hard for members to participate in them, at least not without shafting a majority of the memberbase from most of the fun for a select few. They may have details or changes members can incorporate into their roleplays, definitely, but overall they're not able to do anything except read. In some cases, that's fine if there's just pure story that the members can't really play with, but it should be avoided. I think that's a big reason there was a lack of interest in the plot for so long, aside from it being a lot to read.

Ribs is a great writer and storyteller, don't get be wrong, but there wasn't really much the members could do with it, and by the time they could do something with it no one really cared. This brings me to my next point though, using the current event with Mr. Gerudo King as an example. The Mahirid event is very. . . selective. I don't mean that as in you're just kicking people out, but more in the sense that only certain kinds of characters could participate or even be effected by it. Which in some cases is absolutely fine, not every character should be able to do every story related thing, it would be way too difficult to do properly if that were the case.

However, I feel like, especially for it being one of the first big parts of the plot, it was kind of hard for a lot of characters to get into. Of course, I can't blame Ribs for it, it's not really his fault, it's simply because of how far south it was and the fact that most characters are situated in Northern Hyrule. As such, travel to the south is difficult unless you join the militia(If they didn't, would most people even have a reason to go to the south? I can't say much on this since it's a character by character basis, but I think in general not many people would have reason to go south other than pure wanderlust, which isn't really a very good reason), and knowledge of anything even happening would be even more difficult to learn. I'm not saying don't do anything in the south, though, quite the opposite actually.

Back to the initial point I made, about not having a massive plot. I think overall, you should try to go for something similar to what Geebo said. Events that flesh out the lore and give greater detail and interest to the site and areas. Something members can interact and have fun with on a more direct scale, even if it's not as big as being the hero in the war or whatever. As Clooby said, the current event is very well made, allowing members to participate a fair amount while still displaying the story, but I already talked about the current event above.

Also, just as a side note, don't make it a ton of battles and fights. Those things will and should happen, but there's so much more you could do, even on a smaller scale, like Geebo was saying. Even if it's not a massive event, a small story post that gives greater insight or depth to an area or race could give a really great roleplay opportunity. Maybe make a post giving more information on the thieves' guild. Does it have a leader, is it a coordinated guild or is it just a band of thieves, some of which come together for thefts only to steal from the one to the left of them seconds later? It's just an example obviously, but I think things like that would be great.

Well that's about it, I mostly repeated stuff me and Ribs talked about or that he decided so some of it may already be in place. I'm kind of exhausted so sorry if the wording is a little awkward in some places.

Uhh, it's just a tiny thing, but personally, I'd like it if maybe the Sage Academy could be somehow included in a part of the plot?

It doesn't have to be anything big, but it might help in attracting more people to it, as right now it's kind of really small and empty. ._.

Thank you for this term BP, I'm going to be using it from now on. I do agree that story events shouldn't require a massive backlog of reading. You should be able to read the relevant thread, maybe another if it's a continuation, and be able to go, you shouldn't have to read a bunch of gigantic story posts. However, I think both story posts and story quests have their place. We can still have an awesome badass overarching storyline about punching Ganon in the face, while still having a bunch of smaller story quests that members can participate in, similar to the winter event(Although I guess it wasn't exactly "smaller" considering it almost did more damage to Hyrule than Ganon. . . )

I think what would be great is posting story hooks like that, then letting members take the hook and catch whatever fish they want, if that analogy makes any sense. If it doesn't, start up an event and let members go wild. There wouldn't be anything planned after, either that would be the end of it, or maybe what whoeverisvoting decides is the most interesting or creative thread gets to be picked as the "canon" continuation to that event, or maybe there could just be no continuation like I said. It would vary on the story quest and I think both have their place.

I don't know about you guys but something like that seems like a lot of fun to me.