Borkus Lazorus
Senior Member
“ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay - “
“ - Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.”
“ The lone and level sands stretch away.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s a roleplayer’s curse.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word of warning. This is far by the longest post that I have done on this site. Now, this goes against my ethos of brevity and how brevity is of the utmost importance in expressing your thoughts. However, I am going for a more nuanced approach compared to your more bog-standard normal by-the-lines interest check which consists of abbreviated character pairings, stratified charts of rules and a smattering of plots. However, I will not be so dismissive. I am basically doing the same thing, only in a more latinate and complicated manner that hopefully doesn’t reek of arrogance.
Salutations. Good morning, afternoon or evening, depending on which time-zone you are in right now, on your device, looking on an online site that only seeks to promote escapism from the surreality of reality itself. Before we truly begin, I am sorry for the melodramatic title and I apologise if you were confused by the title of this post. This is going to be an awfully long tirade and pompous monologue about role-playing in general amongst other digressions that I may discuss in this post from time to time which may range from political dross to mundane everyday activities. All I ask that whoever is reading right now, she, he, they if you find offense with me assuming your gender, please be patient throughout my random mess of drabbles and you will be rewarded.
I am not looking for role-players who are looking to satisfy a muse of their own. I’m looking for role-players who are willing to craft something that arises from both of our efforts and something that can be enjoyed for years to come. I’m not looking for role-players who want to post something just for the sake for posting but I want role-players who post something with the intent of remembering it a few years later. I want to create memories. I want to find individuals who can become more than just role-players and hopefully, online companions to lay a shoulder on from time to time.
Anyway, please find time to peruse the contents of this interest check. I recommend that you read the interest check thoroughly and take into account every detail that I’m about to say.
Soliloquy of Self
“It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
All good stories start with a name. Not my family name, though. You’ll have to earn that. My internet psuedonym is Bork Laser. As you can see, I have an amazing amount of creativity by changing this name ever so slightly into other nyms such as Borkus Lazorus, the Bork Lazer, Lork Bazer and so forth. I am a 16 year old Malaysian teenager who is currently studying in an international diploma programme. I’ve lived in both China and Malaysia, my stay in each country taking up half a portion of my years. I have no dreams or ambitions, only inklings of what I want to accomplish in the future. Most would call it a sedentary approach to life and I totally agree. Besides, it’s better to keep your options open than closed.
I have had an avid fascination with literature and poetry since I was 3 years old but it was only until 8 years old when I really began delving deep past trivial nonsensical children stories and bedtime snoozers. Unfortunately, most of the literature that I explored consisted of young adult dreck and I dreadfully regret not having the chance to explore classics such as Of Mice and Men, 1984, the Canterbury Tales and vice versa at a junior age. My penchant for writing was fostered by my English Teacher at the age of 12 and soon, that evolved into an insatiable appetite for fiction which I sought to cure by devouring the contents of my library and the online web. Reading books were far more easier than conversing or socialising with other people which is perhaps the reason why I became such a bibliophile at a young age. It was my only escape that seemed rational in an irrational world where everyone seems infatuated with sport performance or attention in social media. Then again, anyone who needs to call themselves rational isn’t probably rational.
So, what are my core ethos in life? What drives me to do what I do everyday? Well, it consists of three things.
I eat. I sleep. I conquer. Repeat.
I eat. I eat life’s joys with gusto. I consume and taste all manners of entertainment like a connoisseur. I am open-minded to eating anything as long as it satisfies my pallete. I am willing to explore my pallete if it means so.
I sleep. I know when to rest on my laurels and know when I have rested for too long. I know when to nap and when to drowse off. When I sleep, I understand the need for a balanced life, where work and pleasure must be placed in equal fare.
I conquer. I crush my challenges underneath my feet, both personal and external. I make other people’s challenges my own and strive to conquer it along with them.
Repeat. To repeat is to integrate something in yourself as an instinctual habit. To make something that seems unnatural in your daily life natural. With a modicum of effort, anyone can do something new but do to do it the second time and beyond, that is the test of a true individual.
Why Do I Roleplay?
“money money says bill what the hell
is money what i want is to be
a poet not a business man
these damned cheap shows
i turn out to keep the
theatre running break my heart
slap stick comedies and
blood and thunder tragedies
and melodramas say i wonder”
Let’s admit it. We all began role-playing, not out of an urge to improve our creative writing or as a mere hobby, but as a peverse incentive to fufill some sort of escapist urge in our minds. We are dreary of reality and all of its faults. Role-playing provides us a way to escape and project and channel our life’s miseries into characters. Maybe, we started on some sort of online messaging log such as Shamchat or Omegle to fufill those perverse escapist fantasies. Perhaps, some of us started role-playing in a forum that catered to one specific fandom. Perhaps, some of us started playing table-top RPG’s and moved towards play-by-post roleplaying. Regardless of what your origins are, role-playing is meant to be an escapist fantasy.
So, what’s the difference between a literary work and a role-play? A story is a story written by one person with one goal in mind. Role-plays are stories that are being pulled apart in different directions. The higher the amount of people, the more likely that the story will be torn apart in the process. Role-plays are seemingly paradoxical in how they function and the concept is akin to the old adage “ A thousand monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.”
You are asking a group of strangers, who have never even met each other face to face, to devote their time with no obligation whatsoever to a pursuit which ultimately only benefits them in terms of entertainment.
You are asking them to craft fully-fleshed out characters who they have never experienced and be expected to play from the perspective of one or more characters for the purpose of an entire story.
You are asking them to post segments of a story instead of an entire story in turns, hoping that their vastly different writing styles will be cohesive together.
And you know what?
It works. Somehow, it strangely works.
We’ve all rarely had the one roleplay that we manage to complete. A complete role-play is an oxymoron. It seems like a permanent design flaw in reality. Writer’s block is a disease that is more infectious and virulent than most modern-day plagues. Its symptoms are seemingly nigh-impossible to cure and yet, sickeningly tempting. What’s worse? Not finishing out what you set out to start or being unsatisfied with the finished product?
This is the first hurdle for most role-players to pass and something that I have yet to pass as well.
So, why do I still role-play? Because I have nothing else better to do? Because I am seeking to satisfy those escapist urges within me that scream to be rid of reality and all of its mundanity? Why do I persist in this Sisyphean endeavour?
Because I can.
Role-playing, for me, serves both objective and practical purposes. Firstly, role-playing helps to improve your writing, whether you believe it or not. It helps you expose yourself to a number of genres, helps you understand the rudiments of basic story-telling techniques such as characterisation and worldbuilding, practice grammar and punctuation and , most of all, learn from another person’s style, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Secondly, role-playing is a way of forming connections and making friends in unexpected places. While role-playing has the potential for perverse incentives given the age range of this site and the issues of internet anonymity, you shouldn’t believe what your parents say. Believe or not, role-playing is good for socialisation. Humans are naturally social animals. Talking with someone in an OOC channel can help you shed that introvert shell. No matter the way or method, forming personal connections is necessary for the human experience.
Thirdly, role-playing is a educational experience. You may learn about certain tropes of a genre that you may have never learnt before and I dare say, information through researching a topic that you might have never bothered to do so in your spare time. Yet, all of those benefits only come about if someone puts in the effort.
If one seeks to improve themselves in role-playing and push their boundaries, role-playing doesn’t become a toxic habit. Pushing your boundaries, seeking to expand your breadth and depth of writing and genres that you are willing to explore with someone else; that is the mark of a good role-player. Someone who is adaptable to change and is willing to test their own boundaries. Being uncomfortable, though not the point of being violatory and to a certain reasonable extent, is good for the creative process of a role-player.
Great Expectations
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
What exactly do I want from my partner?
- PM me with the following:
1. A Writing Sample
2. Courage
3. And Anything Else You think is necessary.
The Shopping List
“Come one, come all! Welcome to the world's greatest entertainment since the fall of Rome. Life, death, victims, voyeurs. The best of society, the lowest of plebians. And to keep it all extremely interesting, today's patrons could very easily be tomorrow's entertainment. All compliments of the ultimate showman - Fate. All that's missing is the coliseum.”
This is a menagerie of interests that I would be interested in role-playing. My level of interest is indicated by the number of * next to these things, 4 being the max and 1 being the least interested. Note that I am interested in other fandoms than the one’s listed down below but you’ll have to convince me to do other fandoms that you may be interested in.
Fandoms
Fallout ****
Fallout is an awesome setting, rife with potential for awesome role-plays set in a pulp post-apocalyptic setting with moral ambiguity and cheesiness. There are plenty of ideas for playing in this setting and I would be willing to worldbuild an entire setting from scratch if you are so patient yourself. Here are my ideas so far……
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is the acronym for Stalker.Tracker.Adventurer.Killer.Explorers.Robbers and is a sci-fi post apocalyptic setting inspired by Roadside Picnic, a Russian sci-fi original written by the Sturgatsky brothers. There are mutliple ideas that I would like to play with this setting if anyone’s interested.
Aw yeah, baby. Pokemon, you know where it’s at. Do I really need to explain it? Anyway, here are my ideas for Pokemon settings that I want to play.
Writing Sample
Stillness. Silence. Then, for the first time in 30 years, the wormwood door whined open with the tune of a jingling bell. Motes of dust hovered around in the room, swirling clouds in the limelight of the sun as I move through the abandoned corridors of the supermarket. No one comes to greet me. I like to think that the odd spirit or soul is still left in here, wandering around, haunting the damn place. Everywhere I looked, burnt shadows are blasted on the walls and floors, still and unmoving, as if they would leap upon me any second. I try not to notice the shifting in the corner of my eyes.
Grandpa used to bring me to stores like this. It’s once filled shelves were now empty, sawdust and cobwebs lining the interiors. I remember him. My old gramps, two stumps for an arm and a leg, a thousand-yard stare that was feeble but hard like bent iron. I remember he said something. Before he gave off his only last retching chortle of his life. I never thought my gramps would have a taste for puns. War does not determine who is right. Only who is left. An old proverb that bitterly stings. A small announcement comes from the speakers, a high pitched tone full of energy and patriotism. “Invest in the victory of the American People by buying war bonds today!”
How did it come to this?
I shoulder on past another dingy shelving unit full of jerry cans, prices reading “REGULAR: $ 80,000 per litre. PREMIUM: $ 200,000 per litre.” Puddles of oil and streams of gasoline radiating out of it like spilt blood. Out of the corner of my eye, a sign with a cheery little tortoise wearing a soldier’s helm, sugar wrapped in bright, endearing colours, with cartoonish proportions, underneath the background of a mushroom cloud stating “REMEMBER. DUCK AND COVER.” Another poster amuses me. The oppressive image of a red sky, filled with giant monstrous, stereotypical images of gorillas with Asian features. Dressed in soldier garb. Sickle, hammer, all in putrid yellow. The propagandist phrase of the day on the bottom. “FEAR THE RED MENACE.”
We were blind to the real fear: ourselves.
I look outside for a moment, at the spiderweb of canyons and trenches that line the once pristine landscape. It’s now that I wonder if opening Pandora’s Box was worth it in those days. Stealing fire from the gods and suffering the consequences. Ending up with a great, dead corpse in the desert, only small tufts of grass growing out of the remains. No great bird would wish to rise from these bittersweet ashes. Then, a howling wind comes through the building, forcing me to freeze still in anxiety for a moment, heart racing, mind pumping adrenaline and then, something papery smacks me in the face. I cough for a second before looking at it.
A large piece of slightly torn green paper. A face emblazoned on the front side. A ridiculous figure of 3 million on the right hand corner. Musty, with the faint smell of blood and fresh-mint paper pressing. I almost threw it away, out of disgust at the embodiment of human sin but then, out of the cockles of my heart, the underwater crevasses of my subconscious, I felt something…intrinsic about it. Something that needed to be done. I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.
Ah. I finally arrived at my haven. A ivory man sitting on the weathered chair still, rictus grin struck on its ashen white face, a flat cap laid lopsided on his smooth, curved head. A jar labelled “TIPS” with a bony hand gripped around it. I scoured through the comics, the tabloid rags, the gossipy magazines before I found it. The Public Gazette. 3rd Edition. Ads, stories of the past, something to keep myself sane before I even considered taking that journey off the cliff. There’s barely a few left. I almost made my way out, stuffing a rolled up book in my moleskin bag, when the glint of the glass jar blinded me for a second. Glinting as if asking me for something. The dollar in my pocket buzzing. In another time, another place, I would have ransacked the whole place without any notion or care in the world, without any inhibitions. But this time, I had cash. I took the green wad of paper gingerly out of my pocket before levelling them towards the counter as it was an ancient ritual. The empty, blank eye sockets stared at me intensely, asking me to get it done and over with. I awkwardly dropped it inside the jar before going out of the store with a crinkled smile, newspaper carried in my lanky arm. The last image I remember, I can’t tell if it was real or not, was the odd tilting of the skeleton’s head, a stiff nod as it were. Approving. Of what exactly? I would never know.
A phrase sprung out of the backward depths of my skull at that moment. One from my gramps.
It’s the little things that matter most in life.
Original Plots
Original Plot 1 - Pyrhhic
1. A metrical foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables
2. achieved at excessive cost
There are no heroes or villains in the same way there are no such things such as truths or lies, my child. Lies are truths that we chose not to believe whilst truths are lies that we choose to devoutly believe. Which is more comfortable? The lie or the truth?
Do you really think that you’re the hero of this story?
Ever since the shift happened after 1945, a new paradigm emerged in the recovering world. Aberrants. People, things or monsters with fantastical abilities which could revolutionize the world. After five world wars, four nuclear holocausts and three tastes of Armageddon that shattered an entire continent, the UN was disbanded in favor of a world where only Aberrance begets power. The world was divided and segregated with no future of inter-cooperative efforts or any international peace whatsoever. Peace was dictated by threats and alliances were formed in mutual defiance of common enemies.
It is now the year, 1999, the dawn of a new century which lies upon us. The sixth World War is almost approaching, a new abberant arms race surging about in every country and alliances being broken and hastily formed at a rate that has never been seen on the scale of human history. In the middle of all this, a father protects their child, a newly born abberant whose power has the likes of capsizing the world and breaking the status quo apart, in hopes of escorting her to a safe haven outside from the purview of the war. When unknown forces begin targeting the pair, the father must break, borrow and deal with the devil in the hopes of saving their child.
“ - Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.”
“ The lone and level sands stretch away.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s a roleplayer’s curse.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word of warning. This is far by the longest post that I have done on this site. Now, this goes against my ethos of brevity and how brevity is of the utmost importance in expressing your thoughts. However, I am going for a more nuanced approach compared to your more bog-standard normal by-the-lines interest check which consists of abbreviated character pairings, stratified charts of rules and a smattering of plots. However, I will not be so dismissive. I am basically doing the same thing, only in a more latinate and complicated manner that hopefully doesn’t reek of arrogance.
Salutations. Good morning, afternoon or evening, depending on which time-zone you are in right now, on your device, looking on an online site that only seeks to promote escapism from the surreality of reality itself. Before we truly begin, I am sorry for the melodramatic title and I apologise if you were confused by the title of this post. This is going to be an awfully long tirade and pompous monologue about role-playing in general amongst other digressions that I may discuss in this post from time to time which may range from political dross to mundane everyday activities. All I ask that whoever is reading right now, she, he, they if you find offense with me assuming your gender, please be patient throughout my random mess of drabbles and you will be rewarded.
I am not looking for role-players who are looking to satisfy a muse of their own. I’m looking for role-players who are willing to craft something that arises from both of our efforts and something that can be enjoyed for years to come. I’m not looking for role-players who want to post something just for the sake for posting but I want role-players who post something with the intent of remembering it a few years later. I want to create memories. I want to find individuals who can become more than just role-players and hopefully, online companions to lay a shoulder on from time to time.
Anyway, please find time to peruse the contents of this interest check. I recommend that you read the interest check thoroughly and take into account every detail that I’m about to say.
Soliloquy of Self
“It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
All good stories start with a name. Not my family name, though. You’ll have to earn that. My internet psuedonym is Bork Laser. As you can see, I have an amazing amount of creativity by changing this name ever so slightly into other nyms such as Borkus Lazorus, the Bork Lazer, Lork Bazer and so forth. I am a 16 year old Malaysian teenager who is currently studying in an international diploma programme. I’ve lived in both China and Malaysia, my stay in each country taking up half a portion of my years. I have no dreams or ambitions, only inklings of what I want to accomplish in the future. Most would call it a sedentary approach to life and I totally agree. Besides, it’s better to keep your options open than closed.
I have had an avid fascination with literature and poetry since I was 3 years old but it was only until 8 years old when I really began delving deep past trivial nonsensical children stories and bedtime snoozers. Unfortunately, most of the literature that I explored consisted of young adult dreck and I dreadfully regret not having the chance to explore classics such as Of Mice and Men, 1984, the Canterbury Tales and vice versa at a junior age. My penchant for writing was fostered by my English Teacher at the age of 12 and soon, that evolved into an insatiable appetite for fiction which I sought to cure by devouring the contents of my library and the online web. Reading books were far more easier than conversing or socialising with other people which is perhaps the reason why I became such a bibliophile at a young age. It was my only escape that seemed rational in an irrational world where everyone seems infatuated with sport performance or attention in social media. Then again, anyone who needs to call themselves rational isn’t probably rational.
So, what are my core ethos in life? What drives me to do what I do everyday? Well, it consists of three things.
I eat. I sleep. I conquer. Repeat.
I eat. I eat life’s joys with gusto. I consume and taste all manners of entertainment like a connoisseur. I am open-minded to eating anything as long as it satisfies my pallete. I am willing to explore my pallete if it means so.
I sleep. I know when to rest on my laurels and know when I have rested for too long. I know when to nap and when to drowse off. When I sleep, I understand the need for a balanced life, where work and pleasure must be placed in equal fare.
I conquer. I crush my challenges underneath my feet, both personal and external. I make other people’s challenges my own and strive to conquer it along with them.
Repeat. To repeat is to integrate something in yourself as an instinctual habit. To make something that seems unnatural in your daily life natural. With a modicum of effort, anyone can do something new but do to do it the second time and beyond, that is the test of a true individual.
Why Do I Roleplay?
“money money says bill what the hell
is money what i want is to be
a poet not a business man
these damned cheap shows
i turn out to keep the
theatre running break my heart
slap stick comedies and
blood and thunder tragedies
and melodramas say i wonder”
Let’s admit it. We all began role-playing, not out of an urge to improve our creative writing or as a mere hobby, but as a peverse incentive to fufill some sort of escapist urge in our minds. We are dreary of reality and all of its faults. Role-playing provides us a way to escape and project and channel our life’s miseries into characters. Maybe, we started on some sort of online messaging log such as Shamchat or Omegle to fufill those perverse escapist fantasies. Perhaps, some of us started role-playing in a forum that catered to one specific fandom. Perhaps, some of us started playing table-top RPG’s and moved towards play-by-post roleplaying. Regardless of what your origins are, role-playing is meant to be an escapist fantasy.
So, what’s the difference between a literary work and a role-play? A story is a story written by one person with one goal in mind. Role-plays are stories that are being pulled apart in different directions. The higher the amount of people, the more likely that the story will be torn apart in the process. Role-plays are seemingly paradoxical in how they function and the concept is akin to the old adage “ A thousand monkeys will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.”
You are asking a group of strangers, who have never even met each other face to face, to devote their time with no obligation whatsoever to a pursuit which ultimately only benefits them in terms of entertainment.
You are asking them to craft fully-fleshed out characters who they have never experienced and be expected to play from the perspective of one or more characters for the purpose of an entire story.
You are asking them to post segments of a story instead of an entire story in turns, hoping that their vastly different writing styles will be cohesive together.
And you know what?
It works. Somehow, it strangely works.
We’ve all rarely had the one roleplay that we manage to complete. A complete role-play is an oxymoron. It seems like a permanent design flaw in reality. Writer’s block is a disease that is more infectious and virulent than most modern-day plagues. Its symptoms are seemingly nigh-impossible to cure and yet, sickeningly tempting. What’s worse? Not finishing out what you set out to start or being unsatisfied with the finished product?
This is the first hurdle for most role-players to pass and something that I have yet to pass as well.
So, why do I still role-play? Because I have nothing else better to do? Because I am seeking to satisfy those escapist urges within me that scream to be rid of reality and all of its mundanity? Why do I persist in this Sisyphean endeavour?
Because I can.
Role-playing, for me, serves both objective and practical purposes. Firstly, role-playing helps to improve your writing, whether you believe it or not. It helps you expose yourself to a number of genres, helps you understand the rudiments of basic story-telling techniques such as characterisation and worldbuilding, practice grammar and punctuation and , most of all, learn from another person’s style, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Secondly, role-playing is a way of forming connections and making friends in unexpected places. While role-playing has the potential for perverse incentives given the age range of this site and the issues of internet anonymity, you shouldn’t believe what your parents say. Believe or not, role-playing is good for socialisation. Humans are naturally social animals. Talking with someone in an OOC channel can help you shed that introvert shell. No matter the way or method, forming personal connections is necessary for the human experience.
Thirdly, role-playing is a educational experience. You may learn about certain tropes of a genre that you may have never learnt before and I dare say, information through researching a topic that you might have never bothered to do so in your spare time. Yet, all of those benefits only come about if someone puts in the effort.
If one seeks to improve themselves in role-playing and push their boundaries, role-playing doesn’t become a toxic habit. Pushing your boundaries, seeking to expand your breadth and depth of writing and genres that you are willing to explore with someone else; that is the mark of a good role-player. Someone who is adaptable to change and is willing to test their own boundaries. Being uncomfortable, though not the point of being violatory and to a certain reasonable extent, is good for the creative process of a role-player.
Great Expectations
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
What exactly do I want from my partner?
- Know your limits. I don’t want you to skip sleep or waste time procrastinating on role-playing instead of focusing on important IRL matters. Role-playing is not the center of your life nor should it ever absolutely become the center of your entire world, lest you become a scum-sucking basement dweller forever. Learn to go out with your family or your friends. Nevertheless, this is only a warning and I can’t stop you from posting 5 posts a day (which seems inhumanely impossible). Do know that your personal and physical health comes before your obligation towards role-playing.
- Communication is essential. It’s important. It’s necessary. Whether through Discord, E-mail or through the forum system, there must exist some form of communication between the both of us so we can handle any unforeseen incidents that may happen in the future along with being able to discuss the future of the roleplay overall.
- Be open to discussion. I advise ample amounts of pre-plotting and discussion before we begin posting. It gives us ample ground for which to start the RP without getting lost and remove the trouble of having to discuss every time we do a new event. However, discussion must not take precedence over the quality of IC posts.
- Be open to criticising me and be open to criticism yourself. I need criticism. I demand that you shred me to bits and spuriously nitpick every part of my most pedanticly as possible for me to improve. However, there is a difference between constructive criticism and just personal criticism as a whole. The former is overall more appealing than the latter.
- Be aware that you must possess some semblance of grammatical rudiments. This means correct use of tenses, punctuation, spelling and so forth to remove any smidges or grimes in your posts. Don’t confuse grammar for quality, though. Even the best authors have terrible language grammar or else, they wouldn’t have the need for editors or publishers.
- Quality over quantity, but when they go hand in hand, it’s all the better. I am able to go above 1000 words comfortably and my best personal record is 3000 words. However, I vary the length of my posts depending on when it’s necessary to the overall tone of the roleplay. The bridge only needs to be as long as it needs to be. However, I am not looking for one-liners or people who are just going to write one or two paragraphs per posts.
- PM me with the following:
1. A Writing Sample
2. Courage
3. And Anything Else You think is necessary.
The Shopping List
“Come one, come all! Welcome to the world's greatest entertainment since the fall of Rome. Life, death, victims, voyeurs. The best of society, the lowest of plebians. And to keep it all extremely interesting, today's patrons could very easily be tomorrow's entertainment. All compliments of the ultimate showman - Fate. All that's missing is the coliseum.”
This is a menagerie of interests that I would be interested in role-playing. My level of interest is indicated by the number of * next to these things, 4 being the max and 1 being the least interested. Note that I am interested in other fandoms than the one’s listed down below but you’ll have to convince me to do other fandoms that you may be interested in.
Fandoms
Fallout ****
Fallout is an awesome setting, rife with potential for awesome role-plays set in a pulp post-apocalyptic setting with moral ambiguity and cheesiness. There are plenty of ideas for playing in this setting and I would be willing to worldbuild an entire setting from scratch if you are so patient yourself. Here are my ideas so far……
- The most boring idea thus far would be to have a re-hash of the plotlines of the original games. I am only accepting re-hashes for Fallout 1, 2, 3 and New Vegas. No Fallout 4.
- The most fun idea for a Fallout RP would be to RP in a new and original region that has been thus far unexplored in the main games. New Orleans or the region of Lousiana is the most highly promising one. Witch-Doctor Cults, slave empires, remnants of the Brotherhood and the Enclave and the Pirates all fight over the ruins of what’s left of post-war Lousiana. Miami, Canada or hell, even the UK would be my options in mind. If you can think of a new original area that you would be willing to RP with me, tht would be neato.
- A Fallout RP that takes place in the pre-war era would be nice as well. Plot ideas could include a Chinese immigrant struggling to integrate in a 2060 America that is violently anti-communist and anti-chinese. Roleplaying the origin of the Brotherhood of the Steel, with Captain Roger Maxson’s rebellion from the U.S Army, would also be highly interesting.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R is the acronym for Stalker.Tracker.Adventurer.Killer.Explorers.Robbers and is a sci-fi post apocalyptic setting inspired by Roadside Picnic, a Russian sci-fi original written by the Sturgatsky brothers. There are mutliple ideas that I would like to play with this setting if anyone’s interested.
- Re-locate the Zone to some other area or have multiple Zones appearing across all over the world with the recent influx of nuclear meltdowns such as Fukishima and the Three-Mile Incident. Zones have now garnered such permanent influence that they have become sovereign nations in their own right, ruled by a motley band of warlords with any attempts to re-take the Zones becoming abandoned by the UN.
- The Zone eventually expands to cover the entirety of the world itself. Humanity lives on a series of artefact-powered space stations that is in geosynchrous orbit with the entire earth. Stalkers are no longer illegal; instead, becoming legal and are considered to be the celebrities of the new generation.
- A lone stalker escorts a high-paying client into the Zone in search of the Wish-Granter which the client has paid an exorbitant amount of money to find the legendary artefact. However, the stalker may have agendas of their own…….
- The UN has officially began a resolution, headed by all countries all over the world, to rid the Zone of illegal activity and cordon it off permanently from the otuside world. Purges of stalkers and their related activities begin, despite outcry from the public. A group of stalkers do one last job to secure their way out of the Zone while evading the UN.
Aw yeah, baby. Pokemon, you know where it’s at. Do I really need to explain it? Anyway, here are my ideas for Pokemon settings that I want to play.
- In the land of Arnon, where monsters roam the earth and men quail under their feet, there is only one way to survive. Branding. The very act of bonding your own life-force with another monster in order to make them submit to your will. Ever since the secrets of branding have been disseminated by the Grand Champion himself, the legendary vanguard of Arnon and all modern civilization, kingdoms have rosen, wars have been fought and people have been slaughtered. A tedium of uneasy peace reigns over Arnon and all it takes is one push to set the pieces into motion.
- After unsuccessful attempts to stop illegal pokemon fighting rings in the Johto Region, an aspiring young Interpol Agent joins a A.C.E black ops operation to bring down the leader of a powerful criminal organisation based in Viridian City. The agent struggles to maintain any semblance of moral high ground as she trudges further and further into the urban depths of the underground mafia.
- A innocent death row prisoner is recruited into a special government program that will completely absolve them of their crimes if they are willing to conduct their experiments. The plot thickens as the prisoner recognises one of the researchers as their childhood friend. The Foundation isn’t that keen of personal relationships……
- Anomalies have compeltely disappeared from this earth. In the chaos, the Church of the Broken God, Marshall, Carter and Dark LTD and mutliple other hostile groups are now in a state of chaos, rabidly attacking anything in sight . The Foundation is slowly on the urge of closing down forever whilst discussing how to deal with the multiple D-Classes still in lock-up.
Writing Sample
Stillness. Silence. Then, for the first time in 30 years, the wormwood door whined open with the tune of a jingling bell. Motes of dust hovered around in the room, swirling clouds in the limelight of the sun as I move through the abandoned corridors of the supermarket. No one comes to greet me. I like to think that the odd spirit or soul is still left in here, wandering around, haunting the damn place. Everywhere I looked, burnt shadows are blasted on the walls and floors, still and unmoving, as if they would leap upon me any second. I try not to notice the shifting in the corner of my eyes.
Grandpa used to bring me to stores like this. It’s once filled shelves were now empty, sawdust and cobwebs lining the interiors. I remember him. My old gramps, two stumps for an arm and a leg, a thousand-yard stare that was feeble but hard like bent iron. I remember he said something. Before he gave off his only last retching chortle of his life. I never thought my gramps would have a taste for puns. War does not determine who is right. Only who is left. An old proverb that bitterly stings. A small announcement comes from the speakers, a high pitched tone full of energy and patriotism. “Invest in the victory of the American People by buying war bonds today!”
How did it come to this?
I shoulder on past another dingy shelving unit full of jerry cans, prices reading “REGULAR: $ 80,000 per litre. PREMIUM: $ 200,000 per litre.” Puddles of oil and streams of gasoline radiating out of it like spilt blood. Out of the corner of my eye, a sign with a cheery little tortoise wearing a soldier’s helm, sugar wrapped in bright, endearing colours, with cartoonish proportions, underneath the background of a mushroom cloud stating “REMEMBER. DUCK AND COVER.” Another poster amuses me. The oppressive image of a red sky, filled with giant monstrous, stereotypical images of gorillas with Asian features. Dressed in soldier garb. Sickle, hammer, all in putrid yellow. The propagandist phrase of the day on the bottom. “FEAR THE RED MENACE.”
We were blind to the real fear: ourselves.
I look outside for a moment, at the spiderweb of canyons and trenches that line the once pristine landscape. It’s now that I wonder if opening Pandora’s Box was worth it in those days. Stealing fire from the gods and suffering the consequences. Ending up with a great, dead corpse in the desert, only small tufts of grass growing out of the remains. No great bird would wish to rise from these bittersweet ashes. Then, a howling wind comes through the building, forcing me to freeze still in anxiety for a moment, heart racing, mind pumping adrenaline and then, something papery smacks me in the face. I cough for a second before looking at it.
A large piece of slightly torn green paper. A face emblazoned on the front side. A ridiculous figure of 3 million on the right hand corner. Musty, with the faint smell of blood and fresh-mint paper pressing. I almost threw it away, out of disgust at the embodiment of human sin but then, out of the cockles of my heart, the underwater crevasses of my subconscious, I felt something…intrinsic about it. Something that needed to be done. I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.
Ah. I finally arrived at my haven. A ivory man sitting on the weathered chair still, rictus grin struck on its ashen white face, a flat cap laid lopsided on his smooth, curved head. A jar labelled “TIPS” with a bony hand gripped around it. I scoured through the comics, the tabloid rags, the gossipy magazines before I found it. The Public Gazette. 3rd Edition. Ads, stories of the past, something to keep myself sane before I even considered taking that journey off the cliff. There’s barely a few left. I almost made my way out, stuffing a rolled up book in my moleskin bag, when the glint of the glass jar blinded me for a second. Glinting as if asking me for something. The dollar in my pocket buzzing. In another time, another place, I would have ransacked the whole place without any notion or care in the world, without any inhibitions. But this time, I had cash. I took the green wad of paper gingerly out of my pocket before levelling them towards the counter as it was an ancient ritual. The empty, blank eye sockets stared at me intensely, asking me to get it done and over with. I awkwardly dropped it inside the jar before going out of the store with a crinkled smile, newspaper carried in my lanky arm. The last image I remember, I can’t tell if it was real or not, was the odd tilting of the skeleton’s head, a stiff nod as it were. Approving. Of what exactly? I would never know.
A phrase sprung out of the backward depths of my skull at that moment. One from my gramps.
It’s the little things that matter most in life.
Original Plots
Original Plot 1 - Pyrhhic
1. A metrical foot consisting of two short or unaccented syllables
2. achieved at excessive cost
There are no heroes or villains in the same way there are no such things such as truths or lies, my child. Lies are truths that we chose not to believe whilst truths are lies that we choose to devoutly believe. Which is more comfortable? The lie or the truth?
Do you really think that you’re the hero of this story?
Ever since the shift happened after 1945, a new paradigm emerged in the recovering world. Aberrants. People, things or monsters with fantastical abilities which could revolutionize the world. After five world wars, four nuclear holocausts and three tastes of Armageddon that shattered an entire continent, the UN was disbanded in favor of a world where only Aberrance begets power. The world was divided and segregated with no future of inter-cooperative efforts or any international peace whatsoever. Peace was dictated by threats and alliances were formed in mutual defiance of common enemies.
It is now the year, 1999, the dawn of a new century which lies upon us. The sixth World War is almost approaching, a new abberant arms race surging about in every country and alliances being broken and hastily formed at a rate that has never been seen on the scale of human history. In the middle of all this, a father protects their child, a newly born abberant whose power has the likes of capsizing the world and breaking the status quo apart, in hopes of escorting her to a safe haven outside from the purview of the war. When unknown forces begin targeting the pair, the father must break, borrow and deal with the devil in the hopes of saving their child.
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