coboservice | Interest Check.......... 2!!

The Basics ✦ Story & Setting ✦ Interest Check

The Basics

What is Online Dragons Game?

Online Dragons Game is an invite-only Dreamwidth RP set in the canon world of Elsword Online. It is intended to be a relaxed, low-commitment game for friends who don't have time/energy for another full blown game, but do still want some form of structure to play around. It is also an excuse for me to ramble about Elsword Lore and trick people into reading it on purpose.

The tone will be mostly lighthearted with opportunities to explore the darker themes of the setting if that's what people want (fuck knows the actual canon won't). Expect a lot of jokes about video game logic, plot holes, DWRP logic, and a bit of gentle leaning on the fourth wall. NPCs will give out various quests to provide prompts for characters to play around with and gain rewards from. Characters will be brought in against their will, but may gain the ability to come and go freely or use the setting as an excuse to visit other character's worlds. The "plot" of the game will be light and mostly character-driven, and like with the tone I'll be trying to meet people halfway with their cracked up ideas. We'll see where we end up.

Stuff like the app and activity check(??) are still up in the air, but as the "relaxed, low-commitment" description implies, it'll be a very minimalist app and there will either be a light 5-comment AC or a pure check-in AC. Still haven't made up my mind yet! Feel free to give any opinions in the comments. Right now I'm leaning towards an actual-but-light AC just so I can trick my brain into tagging more.

This is still a work in progress!! So there may be changes before the game officially opens. If you have any strong opinions on something, speak now or perish.

Okay but why is it called Online Dragons Game?

i swear to fuck this is a real ad made by real people who worked for kog games. there are actually very few dragons in this game too, i have no idea why that's what they decided to focus on.

Do I have to know anything about Elsword Online to play here?

Nah, I'm writing everything with the expectation that the majority of everyone's experience with this canon is RP osmosis. I can and will write out a billion pages of lore, but think of it more as reference material and not homework you have to finish before you can play. also this canon has SO many plot holes, believe me when I say it would not matter if you fucked up some piece of important lore I'm just gonna wave everything off as timespace bullshit.

How do I get an invitation to play in this game?

If you're a friend of one of the mods/loremasters, congrats, you're invited by default! You can also invite other people! Hooray!

Aside from direct friends of the mods, any current player can also invite other people after they've in the game for... oh, let's say one month.

Also, you can just ask for an invite. I'm gonna be real here, this game is invite-only just so I can curate my modding experience and have 0-tolerance for people who wanna be rulesharks or jerks to me or my friends. Just ask!! (especially if you know Elsword canon) (please i am always hype to meet new people who have played this dumb mmo)

What kinds of characters can be played here?

All of them.

No, really. We're embracing the chaos. You can play canon characters, canon AUs, fan AUs, CRAUs, malleable protags, original characters, original characters from a canon, original characters from a book/comic/game you published yourself so now you're not sure if they should be called an OC or a canon character anymore, idk man you tell me what insane shit you wanna play and I'll tell you if I'll allow it. Unless it's in bad taste/offensive in some way, you're probably fine.

Doubles of characters will also be allowed, provided all current players of that character are cool with it. I'd prefer to see at least a little variety with doubles as well so they're not all just The Same Guy, ie. different canon points/AUs/etc.

Are there are character limits for players or casts?

Nah. You can even play multiple versions of the same character if you want!

Instead of a Taken Characters list we're just gonna have an Active Characters list, and dropped characters can either vanish mysteriously or be handwaved as background NPCs until they're picked back up again.

Is there a player limit? Are... are there any limits?

I am embracing the chaos. No limits.

I might regret this later but that's a problem for future Lavvy. I think at most I might swap to "direct invites from mods only" if the game gets too big somehow, but since the intent here is to be relaxed and low-commitment I think having player or character limits would act against that. I don't want people to feel pressured to drop a character because they're taking up a slot, and I also don't want people to feel pressured to stay because of their chardev/CR. I'd rather just have people come and go as they feel comfortable and as the mood for RP strikes them.

If I can play a bunch of doubles and characters from the same canon, what's stopping me from RPing with myself?

idk man what is stopping you... i mean it'd be kinda weird if you just wrote fanfic and never tagged anyone else, but ngl I'm not gonna stop you.

But if you ever need an excuse not to have your own characters interact (or not interact with certain characters for any reason, really), it's a little known fact that some people have conflicting spatiotemporal wavelengths and thus by the nature of reality itself will never happen to be in the same room at the same time long enough to talk to each other. That's a bunch of made-up bullshit, but yeah. Space time is fucked up so it's entirely possible for two people to exist in the same area and somehow never bump into each other. Characters are welcome to notice this IC, if anyone asks Add about it he will launch into full-blown conspiracy theorist mode.

Story & Setting

What kind of world is Elrios?

High fantasy, with magic and monsters and elves and all that jazz. There's a giant crystal from space that powers the world's magic and keeps everything from dying, or something. There are also "ancient" robots that are super high tech and they live in cool floating robot cities. Generic fantasy stuff.

To give an extremely stripped down version of the world's lore: the Great El is a very big and cool magic crystal from space that the people of Elrios worship as a gift from the goddess Ishmael. To keep it stable so the world doesn't end, one person is chosen to serve as the El Lady and essentially act as the living avatar of the goddess. The El Lady also slowly gets assimilated into the El so they have to get a new El Lady every few years. Eventually someone realized yo that's kinda fucked up??? and kidnapped the El Lady, which caused a Minor Apocalypse where the El exploded and then the world sucked for like 500 years. As of the current canon storyline, the Great El was fixed by ?????? i don't actually know how, they never fucking explained it, but it's still unstable so something something the protag squad is working very hard at figuring out how to fix it For Real, except no not really we've been stuck in filler arc hell for years now. it's not that important.

In even briefer terms: there's magic, super-advanced technology is considered a lost art to most of the world (but does still exist), and somehow the locals discovered interdimensional travel before going to space. An apocalypse happened but it's fine now dwbi.

How did everyone end up here?

It's summarized in the Premise, but to cut out all the fluff: Add has time travel/dimensional travel powers, and after playing the same instance of the character across two DWRPs I decided my headcanon would be that he went home and started researching how to visit all his new crosscanon friends. What a cute way to end a run of a character! Surely nothing could go horribly wrong!!

Anyway, those of you who have played against my Add should already know a fuck up was inevitable but here we are. He fucked up, everything is his fault, probably.

From the POV of characters arriving in the game, by default they simply fall into a spooky space hole that appears out of nowhere and end up in Henir's Time and Space, and from there they'll (eventually) end up in Elrios. Alternatively, I'm open to characters arriving in the world through other methods, like if a character is also capable of dimensional travel or if they just came fresh out of a DWRP and there's some fancy mechanic you wanna go out with. Just let me know and we'll make it happen.

Is there any power nerfing?

Powers are not required to be nerfed, though new arrivals may find that their abilities take some time to adjust. I only ask that you reign in any ridiculously OP powers and don't abuse them to godmode other players or "solve" all of the world's problems instantly (or end the world, i guess, that would also be bad). This is roleplay not a completionist speedrun.

For time travel and dimensional travel specifically, characters with those abilities will be the first to notice how supremely fucked up this world's timespace is. I'm not going to set any rules on how these abilities will be affected because I think it's more fun that way, but for now let's agree that Elrios has become something of a dimensional quicksand that's difficult for even the most skilled of dimensional-travellers to escape from. This will likely change in the future, depending on how things go.

Can non-human characters be humanized?

You can play a non-human character as non-human if you want! If they're awkwardly large or small, you may adjust their size as needed and blame it on the unstable timespace nonsense.

If you want to humanize a character that isn't already humanoid... sure, why not! They got bodyswapped with an AU of themselves on the way in and now there's a humanoid version of them stuck in a non-human body out there somewhere. That or some kind of magical bullshit happened. Don't worry about it.

Can my character bring a cool pet or companion?

Yeah why not. If it's an app-worthy character I'll probably ask you to at least give extra info on them in your app, but there are no character caps and doubles are allowed so there's no reason not to allow it. Please try to keep things reasonable, I'm trusting you all with this.

Did I hear something about quests earlier?

Yeah!!! There's gonna be a quest board, it'll be rad. For now, though, quests will appear in TDMs/monthly logs as prompts for characters to use. Some quests may involve interactions with NPCs, but not all of them. Quests will be the main way that characters can gain rewards in the game, including stuff like regains and learning magic and buying a house.

Learning magic??

Yeah!!!!!!! There's magic in Elrios, so characters can learn it if they want. There are some limitations to what can be done with Elrios' style of magic and how much of it any one person can learn, but I'm gonna ramble about that later when the option opens up. It'll be a thing, though!

Magic in Elrios is your standard elemental fare for the most part. The six elements are Fire, Water, Nature, Wind, Dark and Light. Each element also includes some sub-elements like Earth, Ice, Moon, Sun, etc. Spells are often cast using spell circles, though more basic spells (or skilled mages) can be performed without one. For some reason every character that uses magic seems to start with fire spells even though it's established lore that fire is the most difficult and dangerous element to control.

Technology in Elrios also runs on mana, so it's kind of like magic but also not really. More importantly, you can get cool cyborg augmentations, but they tend to clash with traditional forms of magic in Elrios. Basically, you can't be a cool cyborg and a cool wizard, and characters without any kind of magical talent will be much better at adapting to cyborg stuff. Robots can do insane shit that's basically the same thing as what you can do with magic, though, so it's less about limiting what characters can do and more about limiting how they can do those things.

Anyway, this won't be available right off the bat, but it'll probably involve the quest system as a way of tracking characters' progress in learning something.

Can my character adopt a pet in the game? Will it be... a magic pet?

Yes and yes.

Regular animals sort of exist, but why settle for a normal boring cat when you can have a MAGIC cat that FLIES?? There will be a system later into the game for characters to not only learn magic, but also train with the El Masters in order to earn an Artifact, which is... a pet! But magic!!

What do these magic pets actually do, you ask? Well, they can talk, and they look very cute. Also I guess they grow to reflect their owner's strength or whatever? It's fine, they're doing their best. Please take good care of your magic pet when we get there.

Is there an IC network? What's it like?

The Internet doesn't actually exist in Elrios, but we're making a new one so it's fine. The AlteraNet is currently being developed as a way for the Nasods of Altera and Elysion to communicate across dimensions. Anyone with a device that can normally connect to the Internet will be able to connect to the AlteraNet, much to the surprise of the devs who actually made it, but they'll just have to deal with that. Welcome to the beta test!!

As for what the AlteraNet looks like... think 90's Internet with very few public websites. There will a public forum where everyone can communicate and a private messaging system. Replies can be made in text, voice, video, and 3-D hologram (if your device is compatible). There are emojis. IC information will also be catalogued on the AlteraNet in the future.

The network's security on public spaces is weak, so private conversations and IC accounts can be hacked with player permission. That said, there will indeed be IC moderation and characters that are rude on the network may end up muted or banned. This will be played out purely for fun, though, so yeah. Stay tuned for when the network opens up and Officer Durenda, Known Robotic Hardass, absolutely demolishes everyone for their irresponsible use of network resources.

Interest Check

Okay but WHEN is this game actually opening? The last interest check was like six months ago

My brain decided it was time to Only Care About Making This Game Finally so uhhhhhhhh maybe very soon!! I'm not gonna put anything on a timeline but I'm planning to have a pre-game TDM together soon-ish and if the momentum seems right I'll keep on fleshing out the pages until the game is done. Maybe... July?? idk man we'll see what happens.

EDIT: TDM #0 is up! It will remain open until I'm done making the game. Feel free to mess around in there, you don't need an invite to TDM (who has the time to police that).

I want to help, how can I do that?

I am hoping (praying) that game upkeep will be minimal, so if you want to help with modding I'd mostly be looking for people who want to play NPCs and make up quests and events and stuff. As such, knowledge of Elsword canon is recommended!! but also I'm not gonna turn down help and writing things is Hard so please hit me up if you wanna help me out. I can and will feed the lore to you like a baby bird if needed.

Also if you want to play a canon character from Elsword, congrats, you're being voluntold!! I may ask for your help occasionally with giving out quests/lore/etc.

How can I keep up with updates on this game's dubious existence?

I made a plurk!! You can follow coboservice for Official Online Dragons Game Updates. This would also help me gauge how many people actually wanna play in this dumb game so yeah.

or yknow just ask me (Lavvy) how things are going.

Will you ever consider making this a public game?

absolutely not lmao, but I may consider having the occasional open app round where you don't need an invite to app. Depends on the amount of interest!! I will still be curating my experience so people who decide to be asses will be booted as I see fit.

I have a different question that wasn't answered here!

then ask it NERD