Anyone else notice a stark lack of roleplay on BYOND lately? Maybe I just don't know where to look, maybe they're all private servers, or maybe it's because I sleep from noon to nine and miss the majority of the active players in doing so. Whatever the reason, there's a stark lack of RP in my life, and this does not make Evre happy.

To that end, I've been thinking more and more about starting up my big project to make the next best thing on BYOND. There's only one thing definitely set about the project so far, and that's that it will be RP-enforced. As far as likelihoods, I'm looking into making it grapihcal, over text-only, and set in a modernish sort of Anne Rice world. Vampire the Masquerade meets D20 Modern is a good way to gloss over it.

Reading Hedgemistress' copious design notes on Through a Looking Glass Darkly didn't help keep my setting bias in check at all. I absolutely adore alot of her ideas, predominantly Circle Magic, Psychics, and being able to have high-tech and mysticism together without suspending disbelief too much.

Honestly, I'd like to directly use some of her mechanics and ideas, but that's a big no-no without permission. If anyone knows how I can get in touch with her, I'd be extremely appreciative. She has a history of not wanting contact from people she doesn't know very well, which isn't going to help my case at all, but it's better than not asking at all.

Graphics are another concern - I'm decent at the art, but I imagine the sheer scope of this project is going to go beyond a single person's managable workload, especially when she has a real job to deal with as well. Players are going to be able to customize their appearance using pre-made "body parts" like various types of eyes, mouths, torsos, etc. Additionally, I'd like each piece of equipment to be visible on the characters (within reason, of course.) In that sense, I suppose I'm borrowing from Space Station 13, but it's a wonderful idea, and given enough diversity of choice, I'm hoping it'll make player characters truly unique from one another, instead of just being the same sprite with different colorations.

Combat is going to play a much less signifigant role in this game, which is going to imply some interesting things. With fewer people being true combatants, those who are combatants are going to have an easier time of beating others into submission. Repurcussions will be in place to discourage this, of course, but it's still a viable approach. Since combat isn't going to be the primary driving goal for the majority of characters, that's going to entail me writing much more indepth systems for not only things like crafting and magic, but several other interesting professions as well. Suggestions in that field would be appreciated as well.

I like the idea of advancement being partially or entirely time-based, much like in HrH, though it does encourage "AFK Botting", which is going to hurt server lag and defeat the purpose of playing. I might just base it on player-file age, with modifiers attained from certain ingame actions with positive or negative effects on experience netgain.

It all sounds very abstract, I know, but I'm hoping to capture several of the better qualities of a lot of popular BYOND games of the past and present, and roll them into one package, where hopefully they'll all complement one another nicely.

My name isn't very well known in the community, and I wish that weren't the case. Without anything to back me up, this just sounds like another case of a newbie spouting out dreams of inevitable vapourware. Regardless, I don't plan on letting this project die, should it get started. Having others to support me, or even help me, would be a substantial benefit to the process. If you're interested in helping with the code, graphics, music, or even just want to suggest something (who says the idea people aren't important?), please please please don't hesitate to tell me.

On a side note, I found my very first BYOND key from way back in my "pretend to be a boy" phase. It's dated in early 2002, which officially makes me an oldbie, I think. Not that it really matters, but I thought it was fun.