Establish a universal storyline

Here's my idea. So sometimes people might have trouble thinking of Rp ideas, Locations, ETC. So I was thinking that  a universal storyline could be a thing. With official characters  made by Admins or accepted by them. Nobody HAS to get involved with rhe official storyline. Nor do they loose the ability  to create their Own characters  or use fan made locations.  Just something to bring the site closer together 

And maybe a join date and post count requirement to suggest characters.

Sooo, from what I gather, you're saying we could do something like an event, except it runs throughout the year, kinda establishing a set 'canon' for the site? Just confirming this before I make my decision. If I'm wrong, could you expand a little on your idea?

The Red Blur wrote:Sooo, from what I gather, you're saying we could do something like an event, except it runs throughout the year, kinda establishing a set 'canon' for the site? Just confirming this before I make my decision. If I'm wrong, could you expand a little on your idea?

Well yes basically,  I don't want for people to be forced into doing it like a facism

Hmm... That could be interesting, with a little work. I'll put my vote to yes, for now. It's best to see what a mod thinks, though.

I vote yes if it's voluntary. Having some homebrew lore is nice if it's not salt just to make up for the fact SATAM isn't around, something in the Archie comics is disliked, or because of the games or whatnot. I think that perhaps this continuity should take place in our own little area, (not one to toot my own horn, but for example the city of Siag in my own stories), that way we could focus on this place, but it would have to be a key region and perhaps be very spacious. Also like I've stated you don't have to join in this lore if you don't want to, (I've been in some pretty bad groups where silly things like Scourge got killed in a bar, Eggman is dead, or that apparently Moebius never happened just for the sake of fandom.) It can get ugly if we don't allow this to be a choice.

What I'm trying to say is we shouldn't be elitist on this new continuity.

I'm not sure whether or not this is relevant, but don't we already have a kind of set site-canon? For I believe, all rp's but the non-canon ones are canon to both the site and the characters in it. I'm just confused as to what the actual idea behind this 'new canon' is

As far as I recall, the site does indeed already have a canon lore, which is formed of all the different rp's that go on in the canon section. I'll touch on this later, but this creative freedom is probably one of the reasons why we don't have a single overriding story. Dione explained this pretty well in her post, but I think it's less that people want to create a 'new' lore, and more just have a massive storyline running that works with with this.

Whilst the idea is interesting, I find some faults with it; one, the idea the admins would have to run this and use characters. It seems kinda silly trying to enforce this upon them. If you want to run a massive story arc, I am pretty certain you are allowed to do so, presuming it follows the sites rules and canon [I.E; no absolutely destroying cities in canon, I think? feel free to do so in non-canon, no using eggman and such]

2; a 'year long' event is... well, kinda tough. Like don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible, but the amount of planning and thinking that would have to go into such an idea would be incredibly time consuming.

3; claiming this is the 'main storyline' but making it optional seems incredibly redundant. I imagine one of the big reasons we don't have one is so the options to rp and create stuff remains open to everyone, and people do not feel like they have to be somewhat involved with one storyline to be in the 'main' event. It will stifle peoples creativity a fair amount, and whilst you state this would be optional, for many people it would not be; and with the possibility of mass amounts of people getting involved, it would become chaotic very quickly [and there is no promise people would even follow the story itself]. Again, there is a reason why people like to have smaller, slightly easier to control stories/rp's.

tl;dr: I think the idea is nice, but if you want a massive story event, you would be better off making it yourself, and not proclaiming it to be the main story. Feel free to say it's a big story line, but trying to force the forum's story to go in a single direction is just... kinda silly

Spark wrote: [I.E; no absolutely destroying cities in canon, I think?

This happened and it literally happened only by hands of members

I'm.. having trouble understanding what this suggestion asks us to do.
RPs MAKE the site canon. The fact that there was no BIG events is because there's so many members and so many RPs, and they're all BIG stories I presume, looking through some right now I see GUN kidnapping, evil forms attacking, and even more stuff. With so many separate groups of members and so many RPs it'd be hard to keep up with all of them.
...
And... I imagine you also meant site events. Uh. L-look there will eventually be more
ANYWAY

We used to have a site 'newspaper' but it died rather quickly and the member writing it left the site. Something like that to keep track of everything going on in RPs would be good
...
But genuinely, do you REALLY want some members to suffer through READING EVERY SINGLE RP ON THIS SITE just so everyone knows what's going on in the site canon? If someone WANTS to try - feel free to, genuinely. New Year's coming, time for changes, so any ideas you have you can throw it at me or any other staff that might be alive tbh.
For example a thread where everyone who makes an rp shortens what happened in it. I think that could sorta kinda work. It's a very general thing but it's a start and I think the first 'site canon' thread worked like that...?

Also, all the sonic canons are canon here. Like, the 'canon' is actually a mash up of comics, games, and yes, even Boom, and everyone can use any location they can think of. ...Apart from things like Eggman's base and such, for obvious reasons. So 'not being able to think of a location' sounds awfully silly, and I'm pretty sure this was already discussed somewhere.

So yeah uh

what

what was the problem again

EDIT: Though i must say that something to bring the site together sounds great. I just think it'll probably mean a lot of effort for all the members so it's only gonna work if everyone would want that

Having a canon for the site is a good thing - and in some respects we already have that, in terms of it essentially being a form of... melting pot for the multiple Sonic mediums out there. The big danger is making a canon that's too... strict or controlled. It's the reason why there's a lot of hesitance around things like characters who are gods, or big world-defining events. Because setting things like that in stone can become a problem for newer members of a forum. If you do one major thing to define the canon and set everything in stone, you have to expect everyone who joins the site to then learn all of these things before they can join - you can form a dangerous barrier of sorts between the forum and new members by over-establishing things.

That's sorta why we run on the more 'loose' canon we have. There are certain plot elements that have to be in place - Sonic himself being about for example, is pretty key for a Sonic-themed RP site. But locking down very explicit canon things like; 'Sonic also went to Mount Everest where he is now training with monks, which has unfortunately cast the whole world into darkness due to him not being around to be it's active protector'... that provides such a world-shapin impact that you lose the loose feel from people who may just wanna... well, join and RP, without reading up all the site-specific lore.

Essentially it's a fine line to tread. Always have to be very careful with canon stuff.

I see what the Dreg and Elec mean, to be honest. I mean, I'm probably just craving the chance to join a forum event, and that's why I want something like this, but yes, something for the whole forum to chip into could still be a great idea! Kinda like the TTT that's still going on, but... Maybe a little more open? I dunno.

Electrisa wrote:We used to have a site 'newspaper' but it died rather quickly and the member writing it left the site. Something like that to keep track of everything going on in RPs would be good

Why not have , as a requirement for ending canon rp, members write up a brief summary of what happened to be archived? There cold be a folder with entries each containing the title of the roleplay, who is involved, and what happened in a paragraph or two.

Elsewise I agree with the idea of a newspaper.