The Maze Interest

[Guest]

An idea for a really casual and open-ended rp that anybody can join and people can come and go from with ease.

Characters wake up alone in a brick and mortar maze with no memory of how they got there. As they travel the corridors, some open to the sky and others with ceilings, they discover the other players and decide to band together rather than continue alone. They also discover that they are not alone in this maze, monstrous beings hunting the fleshy humans for food. The creatures range everything from body horror aberrations that resemble distorted and corrupted humans(ala Silent Hill) to shadows that come alive and drag people off to the darkness, never to be heard from again. The maze, connected by turns and corners, evolves as they travel, sometimes passing through rooms and what appear to be houses, only to emerge from the front door to meet the progression of the endless hallway. This game is about survival, about collecting clues and figuring out creative solutions to stay alive, figure out what the maze is, and finally, to just break the fuck out of it.

I figure this might be optimal for a group rp that is very casual and flexible. Anybody can join at any point with a new character because we will constantly be finding new people as the group travels the maze together. Anybody can either quit or go on hiatus for a while because it will be believable that sometimes characters may disappear in the middle of the night. Or when we get to a new area and we all ask, "Wait, where did Jerry go?" and we all surmise that he was left behind. It leaves it open for that person to return if they feel like it(having Jerry reappear at a different point in the maze or catch up to us) but we're not all stuck waiting for him, the plot depending on him in order to progress.

The focus of the rp would be survival and character interactions more than ever actually escaping the maze. To make it more appealing to new players, we will keep the canon discoveries and over all story background to a minimum, so that people don't have to read an entire campaign and research before getting involved. The discoveries will be purely in character and about characters as we learn more about each other and try to figure out why we might all be here. It is understandable that being plucked from our lives, our characters will bring with them any baggage they had before arriving in the maze.

To keep from being dependent on any one person, anybody can come up with new areas of the maze to find and new monsters we encounter. We'll take turns with describing a new area that has been discovered or a monster attack/appearance. The maze can extend from any terrain or environment, from hedgerow, stone, open sky, corridors and hallways, sewers, rooms, etc. so long as it keeps the maze-like form, forcing our characters to choose among a set number of directions. This is the same as a disappearing or absent player: if someone has opened a room and is describing the new area we are in but they do not show up within a timely fashion, we move on to a new area or someone else takes over. There will always be opportunities for new areas and discoveries to be made if that person comes back. I think that a waiting period should be about 2 weeks if we don't hear from someone at all. If we're notified that someone is busy and might be returning but it'll take a while, we can focus on other character interactions while we wait or battle a monster in the meantime.

As per being in the Casual section the minimum post length is 2 paragraphs and nobody is required to write more than that. Anybody interested?

[Tartra]

I kinda want to do this. I don't have time these days for a full-on roleplay, but the rules and setting of this one seem relaxed enough to pop in and out (tee-hee) whenever.

Give me a shout when this starts running!

[Guest]

Sure. I would like to see more flow of people here and thus a bit more interest before starting, since the basis of it is focused so much on character interactions.

[Tartra]

Yep, yep! Like I said, just give a shout.

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