Hello there.
I'm eli, one of the GM's for the game. Normally I'd try to PM you, but the rules of the forum require you to have like, 3 or 4 posts to even respond to PM's. I can pretty much always be found on
The Chatroom though, and it’s a lot more convenient than my wall of text, which, oddly enough, was so complex I needed to call in Pixelmage to help me.
First of all, yes the story is overwhelming. I agree that it is overwhelming. I was not expecting this to happen. At all. The plot so far, as best I can summarise it, is that the explorers on the castle first gained their bearings, making friends and starting guilds. When problems arose, they defeated them (such at the 1st floor boss battle of Kobolds), or they tried to work with them (like in the civil war). Certain characters were found to have darker pasts than originally thought, like Salvantas or Hector. Hector's old guild actually tracked him down, maiming him and starting a war. Stuff happened, guilds were scattered. Eventually we got the civil war sorted, and now there are roughly 6 floors open.
Now, that said, this RP runs on character driven and designed storylines. All I did was give you the absolute bare minimum. Every character has a storyline of their own, some with their own villains or secondary characters. Each writer can clue you into specifics, but I'll also point out that there is a
timelime in the forums with a general laconic of each post. You can also ask Qara in person, because she makes a point to read and know all the lore.
As far as quests completed, people (Players and GM’s) have made actual spreadsheets to keep track of the number of quests completed. Most of the time the actual quest count on the character sheet hasn’t been updated at all, or the players are months behind. It doesn't matter much in terms of gameplay or what you can or can't do, just a kind of track list of what your character accomplished in the game, not necessarily an experience bar or "the one who played more quests is stronger than the one who played less" so just think of that as a reference for where your character has been instead of a scoreboard. Most players focus more on “This is the cool thing that [x]’s storyline will do” rather than quests anyway.
If you want to know about
how we choose quests, it ends up being chosen through a few different criteria. We don’t like pairing up people with characters or styles that just won’t mesh. As you’re the new guy, we’ll have to do science (:D) and figure out who your character is, how your writing is and etc. We also pair up people with similar storylines, or who work together on a combined storyline. Notable examples are Scarab and Adell, who schemed up the Luca section of the civil war, Blurred9_L and Guyshane, who thought up the Assassin’s guild and a book that eats your soul if you read it, and… well I could list pretty much every pair. Their storylines aren’t exclusive either, all you need to do is make sure they’re okay with you writing with their NPC, and you’re good to go adding to the mystery/horror/intrigue/suspense.
The world below is weird. None of it is actually defined by word of god, though our characters did come from somewhere else. Some characters came from different countries, or from very specific places. If you like I can hunt down a more specific answer for you, one where I actually list all of everywhere people come from. In summary, it’s like everything else in the RP, up to you as a writer. As long as your canon doesn’t directly conflict with another’s, (i.e. Player one: The sky is blue. Player two: The sky is iridescent purple.) you’ll be perfectly fine.
These choices tend to be more cosmetic than not. Say, if your sword breaks in a quest and you lore-justify buying a replacement from the blacksmith in order to still have a weapon, then there's no mechanical difference. Same as if you never narrate your sword breaking down, even if it's technically breakable. It being truly unbreakable, however is something the GM’s would have to briefly debate. The castle has everything from Fairy Swords to dynamite, even if you started with a very weak lvl1 sword that just sort of shatters, you can always work around the problem.
Beating a quest allows you to earn rewards, as I’m pretty sure you well know. If you want to actually make your unbreakable sword a story arc your character goes through, we can help you through that by giving you the materials or rewards you need.
So, yeah. I’m sorry about the wall of text. I hope that we answered your questions, well enough that you feel more at home with the concept. If not, keep asking.
I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 4:26 pm
All we know is: it has an ocean.
Have fun!