Nexus Co-Op World?

[Kitsuneko]

On the subject of map-making, I found this webpage a while ago and I really love it: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~fc503/geoff/climate.html (Apparently there's a few other pages on worldbuilding too I'd like to check out.) It explains a lot about how and why different areas develop different climates.
I used it to redo my map of Athanasia and the results were interesting--relatively the same for the most part, but a few spots had drastic differences.

[Yakima]

I already have to many worlds to play on so I'm afraid I'll have to pass. I came in at the tail end of the Alskyr Project and never was part of Danach or Icarus or anything. I am still fleshing out Treval's world, Anarendor (Anar), so, yeah...

Though I will say a world that has more land mass would probably work better. Alskyr's islands really make everything seem more isolated, expecially trade and whatnot. Yeah, each of us had a reason to have our own cultures and ideas and dragons/gryphons look different, but it really limits some things. Makes the sea-faring people very, very important, though. lol (oh, there must be lots of pirates on Alskyr...lol)

Anyway...I will probably lurk if anything between working on various projects like my Records Database.

[Dray]

Are there any map generators out there? We could start by making a few and posting them up so that we can pick and choose!

Even if bonding isn't a natural thing, having a reason to have humans and dragons interacting regularly seems necessary, if we're sticking to a similar concept to what we've seen in the Nexus. I mean... are we going to make the end result of this so that we're making our own Weyrs/castles/places that we adopt from, or is it building a world more for the RP and story writing? Whatever the end result will be will probably really influence what the details are!

[aireona93]

I have no idea about map generators, though that would be super handy. Worse come to worse we can sketch some stuff out and then add painstaking details once we have decided on a map that we like.

As for bonding, it could vary between species and cultures. If we have any kind of magic going on, that could always play a role as well; thus allowing certain cultures to "induce" bonding if they want. That would give us a lot of room to mess with things, because you could go from a culture that sees bonding as shameful to one that sees it as entirely necessary (rite of passage?) to people that just bond with close friends or partners that happen to be dragons... though I guess if magic were involved, bonding could occur between two dragons or two humanoids. That general path would allow everyone to do what they want with their respective creations, so there could be Weyrs (etc) if people so choose.

Kitsuneko, that is a sweet site. I love scientific details like that. I have a whole book about sci-fi world building on my shelf. Thanks for the link! I will definitely reference it; if not for this, definitely for some of my other worlds.

Yakima, is your Anarendor site still up? The one with all the info on your dragon species? Cause I was in love with all that info, and after your Xmas giveaway, I'd love to read through it all. :3 And lurking is always fun... though so tempting here. **pokes her backlog of dragons**

[Shard]

Yeah I do, I have Fractal Terrains which was used for the Alskyran maps. That one was very random, it was just something I came up with using the program and it stuck. I have plenty of other ways to make them, including by filling in land by hand.

[Guest]

By vague idea I mean something like "a planet of ice, with a temperate band around the equator" or "a world with little free-standing water" or something like that.

I really think this is a good idea. It sort of sets the "character" of the world for us to start working around. As far as maps go, I like them but they're not my area of expertise, so I'll leave them to those who like them!

As for bonding, it could vary between species and cultures. If we have any kind of magic going on, that could always play a role as well; thus allowing certain cultures to "induce" bonding if they want. That would give us a lot of room to mess with things, because you could go from a culture that sees bonding as shameful to one that sees it as entirely necessary (rite of passage?) to people that just bond with close friends or partners that happen to be dragons... though I guess if magic were involved, bonding could occur between two dragons or two humanoids. That general path would allow everyone to do what they want with their respective creations, so there could be Weyrs (etc) if people so choose.

LOL what you said! ;D I love these ideas! Especially the part about the "rite of passage." Maybe unbonded, these creatures/dragons would be dangerous and wild, and therefore a challenge to both find and bond. Or even maybe the humanoids would naturally lack the ability to do magic at all unless they were spiritually joined with a creature that could? Just thoughts!

When I think about reasons for bonding, the classic schemes always come to mind; they bond for a partnership to fight a common enemy, or for some other symbiotic need. This always seems so one-sided to me though - if a dragon/creature is intelligent and powerful, why would they need a puny humanoid for help? In Pern it worked out because the dragons had limited intelligence and memory, but when you start getting into high0magic-wielding intelligent species, it gets harder to justify, in my opinion.

I also like the idea of a society where bonding is a taboo. And maybe it's just me, but the first thing that comes to mind for me is a highly organized religious or military presence that has deemed bonding as immoral or wrong. Like in other examples of games and movies (like X-Men, or FF13), people who have powers other people don't or can't have or don't know much about are usually ostracized out of jealousy and fear.

Sorry for the big wad of thoughts! ;D

[Dray]

Ba ha ha, if humanoids can bond one another and that's a sort of union like marriage, wtf does that make bonding dragons? XD Awkward?


I don't think that I'd be as interested in a world solely composed of fantasy elements... they're alright, but high fantasy isn't my favorite genre. I'd prefer, also, that if there's a threat that requires bonding, it isn't a generic world-wide enemy like Thread or ants. Maybe a different draconic species, instead? The bonding as a right of passage instantly brings to mind the Navi and their bug-chickens from Avatar... don't know if that's what you're going for, but there are parallels there!

Lastly, I think it would be neat if teleportation was impossible or nearly impossible in this world. It would give a reason for relatively isolated pockets of civilization and would pave the way for magical or technological advances in locomotion and transportation. If you wanted to have a race that held onto beliefs thousands of years old, it wouldn't make sense to have teleportation that some other culture could pop up and undermine said race's culture. Because it seems like that's what teleportation would be used for in a world that's not unified by one common terror. XD That and dropping bombs on people, sheesh.

Maybe my mind's just on war and conflict right now. I think that it's one thing that we haven't seen a lot of in co-op worlds!

[Guest]

It would be interesting to see dragons / etc that don't have teleportation as a natural ability... most of those in the Nexus at present do have that ability (under one name or another)...

Perhaps some of the not-naturally bonding dragon types could... or maybe some of the bonding-types that are naturally a fairly private "respectful" race (like, they may teleport, but they enjoy watching other cultures without interfering)...

[Yakima]

Yakima, is your Anarendor site still up? The one with all the info on your dragon species? Cause I was in love with all that info, and after your Xmas giveaway, I'd love to read through it all. :3 And lurking is always fun... though so tempting here. **pokes her backlog of dragons**

Yep, it's up though I don't think I've updated any new stuff that I may have added thus far.

http://www.wolf-mage.com/anarendor/

It would be interesting to see dragons / etc that don't have teleportation as a natural ability... most of those in the Nexus at present do have that ability (under one name or another)...

I think that always came as a 'necessity' to get our characters and dragons to other worlds.

As for maps, I like drawing maps. My map for Treval was fun. I've hand drawn plenty of maps in the past, too. (like for Cani and Elrion). *shrug*
Cani (home of the Canese wolves)

Elrion (home of the Elruvian Wolves)

Rerir (Nexus Version)


First Map of Anar/Anarendor - I drew this completly by hand, including the details. It was actually fun.

A newer/current version of Anarendor which includes the new country of Narda.

[Dray]

I figure that if it's a co-op world, characters made within it probably won't need to get into the Nexus as much as they would if they were coming from our own, individual areas. I just like the thought of dragons and creatures having actual ramifications for their abilities, as well as a joint attempt to build something that's more specific and suited to the world than the generic element sets that inevitably crop up whenever magic enters the playing field.

For the matter of teleportation... what if our 'world' consisted of two small, habitable planetoids that orbited one another as well as their sun? The dragon creatures that are able to 'teleport' are actually using some magic or damper field or something to move between the gravity wells of the planets? XD This way we can hang a lampshade on characters moving between worlds without having dragons that can instantly go anywhere on the planet, we have two worlds that we can designate for settling disparate opinions, and we can play around with more variables. It could lend a reason for some really really different evolutions, as well. Besides, I don't know if I've seen something exactly like this in the Nexus... I have read a couple of different people's stories about their being twin worlds connected by portals and such, but I'm not sure about a couple of worlds that just chill out in orbit of one another.

...Can you imagine the tides on a place like that? Talk about surfing x-treme. XD

[Shard]

Hey - to kill several birds with one stone, what about when we create anything, it's kind of assumed that we create both a "good" and a "bad" sort? A pile of baddies that anyone might pick up on, so if say someone produced a clan of evil necromancers who rode skeletal dragon remains, and someone else didn't want to expand on their own baddie that they could expand and have their own branch of that one instead.

That way a good idea gets spread around a bit, but there are also others to choose from for personal use anyway. Kind of like Dray's "make two and choose one" candidate ideas for the random dragon thread.

Myself the world I think needs to be more fleshed out than JUST 'an ice world' or whatnot, because those are sooooo overdone and cliche - in fact on DA when I uploaded one of my world maps (Dragondeep, actually) someone commented randomly that they'd never seen a world actually look like a world, rather too many people insist on just 'dropping blocks from the sky' and calling them continents. I'm a big fan of 'realistic' world-making, with planets which would actually have a coherent ecosystem rather than just one dominant thing and animals/people populating it even if there's no reason for them to be there through evolution.

Magic obviously changes this... a lot

>_> Heck, Dragondeep is almost finished in terms of information - I was putting my rpg stats to it but that's a much longer-term idea for it... it's got magic, psionics, many different groups of people as well as technologically advanced folk, gates to other worlds, and of course dragons... though the dragons are quite different from ones we've had here.

[aireona93]

Maybe in some cultures bonding would be part of the marriage ceremony. :3 I mean, if neither species does it naturally, than there would be no reason that two humanoids couldn't share a bond between them... or even a whole village. Those are possibilities that we could play with in our cultures, if we so wanted.

As far as magic goes, I completely agree with the teleportation restriction. That might also allow us to have alliances or rivalries between neighboring groups, and "discoveries" of cultures on distant continents, or whatever.

Perhaps other magical abilities could be restricted as well? As in, there is the possibility of certain magical phenomena, but maybe more along the lines of like folklore magic... or my idea of folklore magic. Very religious in nature, works sometimes but not always, and can only solve a select set of problems. So like, a magic user on this world may be able to bond two willing people, but they can't throw fire balls or something. Does that make any sense? Maybe civilizations that want to grow powerful have to give up their magic in favor of technology... I'm rambling now. Hahaha.

Or would you guys prefer no magic at all? Cause we could definitely work with that too.

Thanks for the link, Yakima, that will be super helpful when I get around to working on those characters. ^ ^ Also, your maps are really nice too. The last one for Anarendor, though simple, is my favorite. The landmass shapes look so natural.

I like your idea of two worlds, Dray. That could be really interesting. I don't know if anyone is a Star Wars fan here, but that reminds me of Dxun and Onderon. I don't think the set up is physically possible in real life, but for these worlds, the atmospheres were actually close enough for creatures to pass from one world to the next. If I am remembering right.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dxun

Whatever specifics we decide for that though, if we do go with two worlds orbiting one another, that could make for some really cool cultural ramifications. I am pretty excited about that idea, actually.

EDIT:
I just want to say real quick that I would kinda be against any species being entirely good or bad. If other people really want that, I can deal, but I find it more interesting to think that individuals of a species can be either good or evil, but their culture and instincts may further push them in one direction or another. That way, you could have characters that are more free to develop as they experience the world.

And Shard, I completely agree with your suggestion for the world's ecosystem. I think it should be variable and semi-realistic. But we could tweak it somewhat depending on where the world(s) is located in relation to its star. Like, maybe instead of an "iceworld" we could have a world in the midst of an ice age. So you would get lots of glaciers and what not, but you still have forests and deserts closer to the equator.

[Dray]

Speaking of cultures, would you rather have each person developing their own culture? That was the first thing that crossed my mind, but then, why make candidates to trade between agencies if that's the case? Aside from diplomatic relations, making vastly different cultures for each person might prove difficult in the long-run, especially if we're running with the idea of complex and realistic cultures instead of simplified ones. Perhaps if we focused on an empire-like main culture being the most important to develop, and used other cultures to play around with in the background, we could then have a legitimate, in-game reason for an exchange of characters to different agencies. It could be that the daughter states/countries that we create individually can be vastly different from one another, but that, being tied together by one unifying nation (which I agree should neither be entirely good or evil!) the daughter-states at least share one thing in common.

[Yakima]

Thanks for the link, Yakima, that will be super helpful when I get around to working on those characters. ^ ^ Also, your maps are really nice too. The last one for Anarendor, though simple, is my favorite. The landmass shapes look so natural.

I should have posted this one:

I want to go back and redo the Wastelands to be more...rocky and desert like. I've developed a more believable (i think) history for this world. Just need to type it and get it up - among the zillion other things to go with it. *sigh*

EDIT: I changed it...brighter colors and updated. XD

[Dray]

I was thinking, if we're going to make a co-op world, what do you guys think about taking that world and using it as a basis for adoption in a place like Gaia, or Pony Island, or some other place that has a tonne of newbies who might be interested in dragons?

If we were to look at this world (or worlds, since I was throwing that around) as a place for newbies to RP in, and we 'sold' our dragon images the same way that cyberpets are sold on Gaia as RP characters, we could probably garner some interest in the rest of the Nexus. I think that we know one another well enough at this point and that we have so freakin' many dragons that competing amongst ourselves for more and more has lost its appeal.

But what if we set up a shop after we've developed this world, as a little 'business' group, where we each develop a kind of creature that we can then hold events for? If you don't like the RP aspect, we could even probably hire a native to the forums to keep an eye on that while we go about making new creatures, or writing stories for them?

I think that, while browsing Gaia, we could offer something to them in the form of offering a 'gold or stories' way to gain their dragons. A lot of people on Gaia have a tonne of money and seem to just want to adopt to play their creatures out or collect them. But introducing writing stories as an alternative seems like it might stimulate their brains some more and give us a brand new pool of people from which we could begin to interest.

The world could then be co-operative for us Nexians, but involve newbies and give us all a chance to grow some new branches. We need some new blood and could stand to have something different from the usual formula of 'write story, get dragon/get freebie, page freebie'. Seeing as how we could participate just as much as we could run a shop, it might be a pretty nifty venture.

[Kitsuneko]

I'm not really that familiar with Gaia-type sites, but anything that will bring in new blood sounds good to me. I intended to pimp out Sedona to a few places, but all the cyber-adoption agencies seem to be closed, and I'm always wary about RP Weyrs, since it's pretty different from Sedona. :/
But yeah, if we started something like that, I'd probably at least give it a try.

[Keilin Alyr]

It's an interesting idea... I don't play Gaia, and I wouldn't personally use PI as a foundation, since the very idea of that many drama-plagued 13-year-olds in here makes me want to tear my hair out. I know the population of older adopters is getting thin, but I don't wanna sacrifice quite that much of my sanity. XD

There are variations of its fundamental idea though. I've been recently hooked on a PI-offshoot site called Secundi that's supposed to be focused on being a community marketplace for cyberpets. There's another pet site called Aywas that's supposed to be for adults, but I haven't checked it out yet.

But speaking as someone who is participating in fun little events to earn critters, I've been enjoying the change of pace. =)

[StarFyre]

Gaia might be an interesting place to advertise something like this. I know I used to be involved in some adoptable-rp type adventures there on the forums. Though, it could really wobble between some really, really intelligent people who'd make awesome posts to some really, really _bad_ posters who'd do chat-speak one-liners, unless you make some rule about that.

[Dray]

We could set some ground rules right at the start, and then run events from a communal account, if you guys would like. I loathe chat-speak and I think that having drama-filled people would be frustrating... but if we 'hired' someone who was competent and willing to supervise RP and the like, or took turns or something, it might not be so bad.

Secundi sounds interesting! Is it very popular? Seems like it might be a good place to run some things as it's not so popular that it will be filled with newbies that we're generally going to be wary about, but it looks like it sees a lot of traffic still.

[JKatkina]

This could be a real revitalizing force, kind of tempting people in by showing them how awesome the Nexus can be... and giving us a new audience for the overflow of dragons around here.

I'd totally be interested in doing this. For me, communally would be ideal; set up a 'Nexus' group wherever we end up wanting to do this (all the ones I've seen suggested have different merits; weirdly, Gaia seems like the one most prone to doing things the way we do it, with characters and stories and potentially roleplay) and take turns being at the forefront, running clutches or events. That would allow for those of us who are used to moving more slowly than places like Gaia tend to. XD In any case, the division of labour on the more irritating stuff to run might make things like raffles and contests and moderating chatspeak roleplays a little easier.

[StarFyre]

If we do it on Gaia, my old account has more than enough gold to pay for locals to do some stuff for us, and if we need more, I have about 20+ monthly collectables from back in 2007 or so that can be sold for retarded amounts. <.<;;

[jess d]

Jumping in a bit late, but have some input on Secundi. It is strictly 13 and up, and has, so far, very little drama. A couple incidents, but they have been small, and over quickly. A lot of people there seem to enjoy writing and RP

Secundi is set up to be its own world, but there shouldn't be any problem with a Nexiian world being run from there, even partially.

Secundi is a good part of the reason I haven't been around as much recently.... I'm one of the founders/admin >.>

[Keilin Alyr]

Secundi is a good part of the reason I haven't been around as much recently.... I'm one of the founders/admin >.>

*blinks a few times... rusty gears start spinning in the back of her head... and click*

Wait a second... you're Lectral! I have no clue how I never put two and two together until now! XD Seriously though, I was always hoping to find a regular who I didn't know primarily through either the Orchard or PI. This is awesome. =)

But confirming what Jess has said, it is a nice little community. I've found the site oddly addictive, but I guess that's because it takes me back to some of the old-style forum and market adoptions I remember from high school. I'm such a nostalgia junkie.

[jess d]

Yep, that is me - I am not surprised it didn't click sooner; the name isn't the same after all, and I don't have anything on there that would scream "Nexus"... I don't think, anyways XD

Except for my avatar, possibly... as she is/I am a pan-thar, though not one often seen on my actual world >.>

I was really happy to see someone I recognized from pre-PI days show up on Secundi though XD

[Dray]

I've been lurking Secundi for a few weeks, mostly to horde money. >_> I'm not used to the style of adoptables that they run, with stats and competitions and monetary purchases... and I'm a bit leery to adopt creatures out if they're not going to be treated as characters so much as pokemans! Still, it's a pretty neat place and, lurking the forums, everyone seems really nice. Might be worth a shot to run a single dragon species there just to test the waters.

[Keilin Alyr]

I've been lurking Secundi for a few weeks, mostly to horde money. >_> I'm not used to the style of adoptables that they run, with stats and competitions and monetary purchases... and I'm a bit leery to adopt creatures out if they're not going to be treated as characters so much as pokemans! Still, it's a pretty neat place and, lurking the forums, everyone seems really nice. Might be worth a shot to run a single dragon species there just to test the waters.

Quite a few of the adoptions are based on real-world pets or heavily influenced by them, so some of the popular adoptions like the Kennel, the Stable, Quinsta, Garden Noms/the Feli, etc. don't deal with sentient creatures and are run like classic market-based adoptions. I'm assuming this is the style of adoption you don't want to give the impression of running.

There are a few sentients or roleplay-based adoptions that I've noticed, the WildGrowths, The Ranch: Horse Rescue, Howl's Island, and the Jaeman Prophecy being a few I remember off-hand. I know The Ranch even went so far as to track health and happiness of your adopted horses (who were supposed to be rescues from less than desirable circumstances) via a short roleplay/diary snippet each thread, which was supposed to detail visits from the vet and other professionals who were checking up on your horses.

Roleplay and story incentives can include anything from special items to out-of-season breeding rewards, little special things that won't screw over your primary audience but still be sought after. And roleplaying alongside your interested adopters can be a great motivator. =)

Also, the best way to ensure that roleplayers treat your creatures as sentients is to present the adopters with stories and other information in-thread or in-website, maybe even give them personality stat blocks. Since this is a marketplace, you'll always have your collectors or those who mean well but don't fully get to the point of roleplay/story writing, but it should be minimized at least.

[Dray]

I'll probably include personality bits with the pickups. :) I don't think that I mind if people don't role-play them, so long as they don't treat them like... dog-sentience!