RP Commendation Thread

Hello all. The forum RP on TV Tropes are a wonderful thing. It allows Tropers from all different backgrounds and places to kick back and have some fun doing some good, old-fashioned Role Playing.

However, throughout one-post threads and drama filled games, some RP's stand out a cut above the rest. These RP's have dedicated GM's, creative players, and a fun setting overall. These are easy to spot - the discussion thread is active and full of inside jokes, the RP itself can last months, years, or even still be ongoing, and you just get a sense of fun in the atmosphere of the game.

Those RP's are what this thread is here for. A kind of trophy case, if you will. To nominate an RP that you think deserves a spot in this Pantheon of the good ones, a player or GM needs only to put a meaningful post in here containing a...

• Brief premise of the RP
• When the RP started and when it ended (if at all)
• What's so great about it.
• (Optional) - Funny stories, good characters, overarching story plots, or just any fun stuff we should know about the RP.

However, one recommendation won't necessarily earn the RP the right to this honor. It'd be great if you got your fellow players/GM to also post their thougths on the RP. However, quality recommendations will earn a spot here, not necessarily quantity.

Post away! We'd be happy to hear everyone's experiences and thoughts.

Fantasy's been wanting people to come talk about how awesome my RP is, but I don't feel like being shamelessly self promoting today. So instead I'm here to tell you about an old RP I used to be in, that was some of the best times I've had in any RP.

I'm referring to the Massive Multi-Fandom Role Playing Game, or MMFRPG, specifically seasons 1 and 2. Season 3 I am not including for personal reasons and because it died prematurely; and I'm not including the reboot either because I'm not in it and don't intend to be, so I can't really speak for it. But this is a thread for remembering good times, not bad ones, so time to get back on track.

Something to the tune of over six years ago, I found the MMFRPG by accident while trying to see if TV Tropes had a trope page for roleplaying; before then, I didn't even know the site had a forum, much less a roleplaying section. Just by reading the signup thread, I was sold, and made my account that very day to join up. And thus began my first foray into forum roleplaying, with the MMFRPG, season 1.

The MMFRPG was a crossover RP, meaning players would sign up with established fictional characters, (though eventually a few OCs did sneak in) and the setting was simply a bizarre city seemingly stuck between dimensions and populated solely by literal Uncanny Valley Non Player Characters and the Player Characters themselves. To spice things up, each day had the chance to bring along with it a "curse", that would bend the rules of the city and possibly the PCs themselves for the duration of that particular day. Examples included: A day where the city became overrun with jungle, a day where everyone got turned into animals, a day where half of the city was in outer space while the other half was a Halloween monster mash theme, a day where everyone got a mech or mecha, and of course who could forget, the day where everyone had their genders flipped around.

The premise and setting seemed fun, and to make it even better, it was big. How big? You know how some RPs here have crawled to slow, unfortunate deaths because one player stopped posting during some key time? The MMFRPG was so big, that it was able to survive losing the GM... Multiple times.

When I joined, the MMFRPG was on its second GM, who was actually just admitting that he wasn't up to the task anymore, and willingly handed it off to a pair of players who decided to run it as co-GMs; one of them quickly disappeared though, leaving just the other. He stayed on for some time, before announcing that he was going to be away for a week and picked someone to act as referee until he returned; he never did, leaving that referee in charge. After it became apparent that the referee would have to go full on GM for the RP, it did hit a bit of a rough patch for a while; said referee turned out to have a bit of an anger issue along with kind of just being a jerk, and not helping matters was that English was not his first language, which led to some stupid misunderstandings. In fact, he finally left the RP after becoming too frustrated with players not agreeing with him, and his last act as GM was initiating a scenario that could only normally end in a Total Party Kill.

Thus it was up to the second in command he left in charge to prevent said TPK and finish up the RP as it was nearing the end of the first season. That second in command was Demovere, the best and longest running GM the series had, who started off his part as GM by wrapping up the first season in epic ways.

All told, the first season of the MMFRPG was stupid, but fun stupid. No, not just fun; an absolute blast fun stupid. There's simply an excellent charm to a game that had mech battles against the Borg from Star Trek, a later battle sequence of those same Borg turned into random animals fighting a battalion of Star Wars storm troopers who had been turned into penguins, a fight of those same storm troopers now turned into women against Selvaria from Valkyria Chronicles, and a multi-stage final boss battle that included a flaming duck tornado. You read that right; a tornado of ducks, lit on fire.

But the first season did eventually come to a close, which brought us to season two. Season two was planned to be like the first season, but bigger, better, and with an actual plot. And not only did it succeed, it was awesome. Using the power of the final boss from the first season who made the initial pocket dimension city, a new villain created a new pocket dimension city and filled it with tons and tons of inhabitants from multiple universes, including the Player Characters. Gone were the literal Uncanny Valley Non Player Characters, replaced with thousands of scared and mostly helpless people from around the multiverse, while forces outside of the pocket dimension attempted to break in and help free those trapped inside.

New features from season two included almost daily (in game) boss battles, tied into the theme of whatever the curse of the day was, a special Journey to the Center of the Mind day where multiple Player Characters had to have their minds gone into in order to awake from their High School AU personas they had taken due to the curse of the previous day, the city literally shifting around when you weren't looking, (To explain Hand Waves in inconsistent travel times between locations.) and again, an actual arcing plot with beginning, middle and end happening through the course of the RP. The ending included another absolutely epic final boss, courtesy of the main villain getting doused in the same Applied Phlebotinum that had been used to make all of the previous day bosses and going One-Winged Angel.

Season two also saw out of character changes, when Demovere nearly got burnt out under the sheer weight of how many players were participating, (At its height, we had 30-50 active players.) and had to promote certain players into sub-GM status so they could help keep things afloat; this was in time changed so that they were full on co-GMs, with everyone sharing equal power and running the RP as a collective team. At its largest, that team reached six members when they promoted the latest member to be added during the second season... Me. Other than running a single fight during the first season, that was my first hands-on GMing experience in a forum format.

... To continue past that would again be dredging up bad memories instead of good ones, so I'll skip ahead to now. If this description sounded awesome and you'd like to play a similar game, you've got two options. (Kind of.)

There is of course, the MMFRPG reboot, which is being run mostly by the same team that was in charge when Demovere finally left in season 3. Other than the fact that it's a continuation of the season 3 plot, I don't really know much about the reboot; but since season 3 was a massive change to formula and not really anything like the first two seasons, I would hazard a guess that it's not much like them either. As mentioned, I'm not in it and don't really want anything to do with it, for personal reasons.

The other option is a spiritual successor RP, by name of Edge of the Multiverse. It's currently run by one of the other members of the old GM team, and is an attempt to return to the formula that made the first two MMFRPG seasons so much fun. Unlike the reboot, I am in it.

Well, that took a while to type. If you're wondering about the linked music, they're the music themes to those seasons. (Both were suggested by yours truly. )

edited 20th Nov '13 4:41:25 AM by FirockFinion

I will second Firock's recommendation here. I too was part of the MMFRPG, from the trailing end of Season 1 all the way through to Season 3 and its reboot. It had a winning combo of a well-managed GM team (and fantastic GMs such as Demovere), a diverse and talented group of players, and a setting that just begged for you to mess around in it. It also has a special place in my heart because it was my first foray into RPing and GMing too (I was part of the GM team for Season 2 and part of Season 3).

There were definitely some mis-steps, and I'll readily admit that my posts in the first Season could have been improved (one line posts everywhere!). But on the whole I think it was truly a fantastic experience, which as Firock said I've been trying to recapture in my own roleplay.

I third the recommendation. I joined at what I think was just over the half-way point of Season 1, going on through seasons 2 and 3. I have to say, I had a great time playing as Vezon, Invader Zim and his Team Irken, and even Makuta and his army. The characters were great to bounce off of, the scenarios and 'curses' were always a blast, and the ongoing story lead through some very intriguing developments. Sure, it had its flaws and missteps. I myself was the rookiest of rookies and had trouble sticking in character sometimes, but if there were ever an RP worth remembering and preserving, that was it.

Now, I'm not sure what else I could recommend. I mean, there is my RP, which a lot of people enjoy, but I'd rather someone else talk about that, since I'm not sure how much I can say without coming across as egotistical or self-flagellating.

For various reasons, we've been making a shift back towards a Season 2-style city-based RP in the current reboot. We're also trying to run things in a way that allows for a balanced mix of serious plot/character development and wacky shenanigans, since both of those things are an important aspect of the game. Curses aren't really a thing any more, but that's mostly because there's only so much you can do with that after a certain point; however, as with many things, we're definitely open to suggestions and ideas from players (although that's more of a matter for the MMFRPG thread).

Obviously, everyone likes different things, and it's going to be impossible to please everyone. However, feedback from players in the thread has generally been positive, including feedback from veteran players. It is therefore reasonable to assume that at least something of what attracted those players to the game in the first place is still present.

Firock, I understand that why you don't want to return to the game for personal reasons, but I still really think that all of that came down to a misunderstanding, and I think it's slightly mean-spirited to continue bringing it up when it is unnecessary to do so. Please don't make assumptions about R Ps that you are not in and do not wish to join. You could have just said you left during Season 3.

I'd thank people for the commendations, but given that I wasn't really involved in Season 1, or Seasons 2 and 3 on a GM level, I'd feel a bit weird doing so. Maybe we can drag Demovere out of the ether for that or something.

Anyway, on another note, I think A Game of Gods (and its spinoffs) definitely deserve a mention here. Another long-running series, with multiple GM changes and a ton of players. I'll admit I've only been in any of the games briefly, mostly because there's usually only like two crossover-suitable characters that I ever want to play at any one time, but they've got some cool stuff going on there and they definitely deserve a mention.

Edit - I feel bad clogging up the thread with that, but as one of the reboot's G Ms, I feel like I needed to address those issues. Sorry, guys.

edited 26th Nov '13 3:30:33 AM by KiriAme

Wow, I honestly didn't expect so much praise for the MMF to show up here, particularly for the earlier seasons. I'm not really responsible for any of the specific compliments that were paid to it, but it's still nice to hear, all the same.

To sort of throw in my own brief description of the MMF reboot (before I get on to the R Ps I'm actually recommending ), it's a lot different from how it used to be. Kiri sort of covered most of this, but here we go.

The descriptions so far have mostly been about seasons one and two, which happened quite a long time ago, by this point. I've been running things either partly or fully since near the start of season 2, and back when I joined, the game wasn't much more than "a ton of characters show up in the same city and do crazy things". It was pretty fun, but it was mostly just a chance for people to mess around with silly ideas. The plot was pretty minimal, for the most part, but it was fun.

Season 3 was sort of an attempt to move toward a more structured plot, with a lot more emphasis on character development and tying together some of the more disjointed plot elements from the first two seasons, of which there were a lot. In a game like that, inconsistencies are going to happen, and we wanted to try and fix that. We also hoped to try out a new format: Specifically, instead of having all the characters just running amok in a huge city, we decided to try out a setting where the characters had to survive in a sort of Falloutesque wasteland as part of a caravan, with a clear goal at the very end that was always visible. We also wanted to handle fights and other such dangers a bit more realistically. While most of the players kept an open mind and gave it a good shot, after a while, it became obvious that a format like that just didn't work as well, so due to a combination of that and all the current G Ms having quite a lot of real life obligations to deal with, we decided to shut the game down, with the hope that we'd be able to continue things sometime.

Once we decided to start things back up again, we took a while to work out what worked in season 3 and what didn't. We knew we didn't want to return entirely to the way things were in the first two seasons, since we were and still are quite proud of the story we came up with, but we couldn't do things the way they were in season 3, since, quite simply, season 3 wasn't really that fun. There were fun moments, sure, but looking back, it became obvious to us that a lot of the ideas we had were more "this sounds like a cool thing", rather than "this actually works and is fun to do in an online RP". So, as it is now, we've got a format that's part-way between seasons 2 and 3, with the emphasis on character development and a more serious and structured storyline alongside a much less restrictive framework.

If nothing else, we at least try to learn from our mistakes.

Anyway, since this is a thread about recommendations, I've got two other R Ps to talk about. First of all, A Game of Gods, and its various offshoots. AGOG was made by Locoman - another MMF player - back during season 2. It's got the same general format of "characters from different franchises end up in the same place and do things", only with a much larger emphasis on player-created and player-run content than the MMF has ever had, especially back then. The characters run through challenges assigned to them, each of which is created and run by a player, so essentially, everyone has a chance to GM something. There are three different - but interconnected - teams of characters, each with their own thread, and there are even crossovers between the two from time to time.

To be totally honest, until the reboot, AGOG was basically doing what the MMF was trying to do, only better. In my own (almost definitely biased) opinion, I'd say our two games are probably pretty close in terms of quality now, but they caught on to what a good format was long before we did. If you're looking for a multifandom game, AGOG is the one I'd recommend.

The other one I'd like to recommend is Lizard's Justice Avengers games. Those are a couple of really ambitious ideas for R Ps, in that they combine the Marvel and DC universes into one, then leave basically everything else up to the players. Each player can reboot and re-imagine their characters however they like, and that's made the games end up with some really cool, unique characters. If you like Marvel or DC, I'd suggest checking this one out. Even if you aren't a comic book fan, the players in it are accommodating and generally just a cool group of people, so I'd suggest checking it out regardless.

So yeah, those are my recommendations. The only reason I'm not in both of them is because running an RP is a lot of work, and I'm already busy enough with real life stuff as it is. I have no idea how some of you people juggle multiple games at once. Maybe my attention span is just bad.

edited 26th Nov '13 3:49:46 AM by DoctorThunder

I'll second Thunder's recommendation. I have been in Justice Avengers (both the East and West Coast) and it really is a great concept that is executed by a great GM. I may not be the most active of participants in it but that is only because the other players are so enthusiastic about this RP that I find myself having to read about four or five pages just to keep up! It's truly awesome and you feel great when your characters' actions introduce a new sub-plot.

Well this didn't get going as much as I had hoped but I have had a similar idea that I thought I'd post here for anybody interested. What if, every month, there was some voting going around for a "Best TV Tropes RP of the Month" award. It'd be a nice little treat for the players and GM for sticking through with something and maybe we could give the participants (or maybe just the GM) a special badge. We could also do a "Best New Tropes RP" for those RP's that are less than a month old but have a creative premise/good players/funny jokes/what have you. Thoughts?

We actually did have a "best TV Tropes RP" vote once.

It created some unnecessary drama when people in one RP went out of their way to downvote another RP. So I'd approach reviving the idea with caution.

Well I was hoping this would be less competition and more a select "council" - if you will (maybe composed of some mods or something) - would pick it each month.

There's only two mods for the RP boards (as far as I know) and they're not on all R Ps.

Indeed. If we wanted only a "qualified" council to do said voting, it would probably have to be the GMs of the RPs.

Then we'd have to figure out rules to say what makes you qualify and what doesn't, to avoid people just making a quick signup thread the day before the vote and claiming status as a GM. And we'd probably have to put in a rule that nobody is allowed to vote for (one of) their own RP(s).

This also means we'd have to not use the built-in voting system, since that lets anyone vote on any option by its very nature. So it's all a bit more complicated than it may be worth.

edited 29th Apr '14 9:01:57 PM by FirockFinion