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After 72 hours on her feet, rest was coming to greet her. The blankets embraced her like a warm mother, diluting her aches and her anxieties. She had made it, and now she was allowed to sleep. The smell of tuna never left her fingers, but she didn't care, at that point. Survival had become a full time job, and she was becoming extremely good at it.

Just when she was slipping into a placid state of blissful relaxation, the noise began. The depository of all her love was also the source of all her stress, and the affection given was returned in the form of screams and fetid refuse. She pushed a pillow over her own head, hoping she would quiet the screams, but it was not working.

The high pitched wailing struck her body like a lightning, leaving that acrid taste in the roof of her mouth. She was, again, wide awake, trembling, and feeling her life was being drained through her eardrums. She stood up, and walked towards the little angel. It had been born with teeth and hair; huge, grotesque, misshaped. It had broken her on arrival, and destroyed her life afterwards. And she was supposed to love the screaming beast. She pressed a pillow against the gaping hole of its mouth, and didn't move until the noise was long gone. She felt a cold finger tracing her spine, but the noise was gone. She went back to sleep, to relax, to forget. Silence hugged her tighter than any blanket, with its cold breath whispering "Murderer" in her ears.

She was surprised to discover that a whisper inside her head was so much powerful than a scream from a cot.

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Welcome to the Theatre of Souls; What is this place? - Technical Information
Topic Started: Feb 18 2016, 11:30 AM (275 Views)
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Welcome to the Theatre of Souls. We are happy to have you, and you are probably curious about this place. Let us explain, in broad strokes, what is it that we do here:

ToS is an online, board based, Role Playing Game, loosely inspired in the Swedish RPG Kult. Note that the inspiration is distant and not so obvious, at many times. This means that, if you are an avid Kult player, and you have read all the books, that will make close to no difference here. Some elements are taken from the original game, but they are so deeply changed they are most of the times hard to recognize.

ToS is a game about stories. As any RPG, the main point of the game is to tell stories in a cooperative environment. Some players take the role of Storytellers, while others assume the role of actors. The Storytellers provide the situations, and play out all of the characters around the main actors; the players invest their energies in one character each, following their path along the story. Whatever the Storyteller says, it happens. No matter how outlandish, or apparently unfair, events dictated by the Storyteller will happen. That is the first, and most important rule. This means that Storytellers have a great deal of responsibility on their shoulders.

ToS is not a Fan Fiction writing board. The goal is not to create the next "50 Shades", or to collectively push the paths of a group of likeable characters through a story that could be published eventually. It is a game. The fact that it is a game that cannot be won, doesn't make it less of a game. Players intending to create the incredible sagas of their beloved characters, are bound to be disappointed here. As such, importing characters from different universes, characters that have been played for a long time, and that have become the second skin of the player, is an idea that is not likely to work well in this environment.

LIFE AND DEATH


In ToS, characters die. They die all the time. And that is fine. Holding on to a character's survival too much can make the character's actions irrelevant. In fact, most of the character development occurs after death, which can be shocking for many old school RPG players.

The player is not just playing a character; he is playing the character's soul. After a character dies, the soul is judged, and valued for its actions. Then, it travels through time and space, and reincarnates in a new body, in a new character. The player gets to play again, with a new character, but with the same soul. Everything the soul learns, remains, as well as any scar and any unwanted burden. Not that the character remembers his past life, or that he even has a hint of it; but Karma is there, stalking from the shadows, ready to pay its debts, and collect what's owed to her.

Players can play various different characters simultaneously, as long as that's authorized by a Moderator, and the characters never interact in any way, it is fine. Some characters are bound to be more short lived than others, while others will be involved in stories that burn more slowly.

GOALS


The goal of the Storytellers is not to usher the doors of players' imagination, arranging the world at players' whim to make anything they wish happen; the goal of players is not to make their characters win the game, or even survive to any given scenario; the goal of the characters is not to be Gods, or Kings, nor to override their own shortcomings with logic and puzzle solving skills.

Storytellers need to tell stories; their goal is to open the necessary doors for characters to evolve, to deteriorate, and to become seamless, integral parts of the plots. Players need to explore and exploit their characters to the last consequence; their goal is to enjoy all the options each character has to offer, all the meanders in the story's plot, and all the delightfully horrible consequences the character might suffer for exerting their own free will. Characters need to struggle; they are conditioned by personal goals, and by personal circumstances. When Storytellers become players' butlers, players obsess about winning, and characters conveniently forget goals and circumstances, the game becomes a chore, and it fades away in tedious statistics.

Be brave. Dare to be a part of a great story. Take the plunge, and let your character be his own being, without fear of losing, or dying. Mediocre characters can win and survive; great characters are beyond those petty goals.

THE SANDBOX & THE STORY


There are two basic forms of Storytelling that we contemplate in ToS. One of them is closest to the purest form of the game we are trying to create, while the other is more relaxed, and easygoing. Both forms coexist, but seldom intersect:
  • The base of the game are the Stories. These are closed boxes, with closed casts. A story has a beginning, a midpoint, and an ending. They are not necessarily deterministic, but they are definitely closed. Many stories belong to specific genres, while other stories are more free in their form. In any case, players involved in a story are expected to retire their characters -should they survive- at the end of the story. These retired characters could, at best, be rescued in the future, if the story had a sequel.

    Stories change the characters in ways that are irreparable. Take, as an example, any great film, or book. Look at the journey of the main characters. The way in which characters change makes them hard to adapt to any other environment. Furthermore, these stories are created around these characters, and these characters are, in a way, the walls that hold the story together. Trying to take a character from one story, and inserting him in a different story, generally works poorly, and gets unflattering results; you might love "The Godfather", and "The Dark Knight" equally, but you know that Michael Corleone has nothing to do in Gotham, and that the Joker would not be the right fit for The Family.

    Player Characters that inhabit Stories are called: INCARNATES
  • The Sandbox works the other way around. It is a more modern, and less taxing form of Storytelling. The ones who retain the control here are the players, and the cycles are slower. A Sandbox character is free to roam around, and to discover the world at his own pace. In many ways, it resembles the underlying idea behind many modern day video games; there are stories to be told, but there is not a single path to approach them. A Sandbox character can spend his time doing things that would not be conductive to any conventional form of storytelling, and that would be fine. No pressure.

    Sandbox characters do not need to retire after they achieve their goals, or after their starting point story is over; they can linger on, and come up with new goals. They can evolve, and develop. They can die, too... but that is not mandatory. The development of characters in the Sandbox environment is slower, and their exposure to the hidden layers of the world comes in smaller doses.

    Characters in the Sandbox can be anywhere in the world. They can meet with other characters in the Sandbox, or they can be on their own as long as they want. Storytellers can propose ideas, and throw plot hooks around; characters are free to take them or not. Obviously, there is a matter of coherence; the right hook, in front of the right character, should always be accepted.

    Player Characters that inhabit the Sandbox are called: CORE CHARACTERS
A player can play as many Incarnates as he wants -within reason, and pending Storyteller's approval-, but they can only play one Core Character at a time. In order to play a new Core Character, the old one needs to die, or to retire. Willingly retired Core Characters cannot be taken back; they can appear in the form of cameos, or even as NPC's; their deaths off screen can be negotiated between the Player and the Storytellers, but they cannot be resurrected as active Core Characters. They can, however, reappear in the form of Incarnates, for some last story before going away for good.

TECHNICALITIES: ACCOUNTS


Maybe you've noticed already, maybe you haven't: the whole board is divided in two big areas:
  • OOC: Or "Out of Character", this is the area for information that is relevant out of the game itself. From light hearted comments, to rule posts, to character descriptions and submissions, to story proposals, to this very thread, wherever players and storytellers speak to each other normally, like regular Real Life human beings, they do so in the OOC half of the board.
  • IC: Or "In Character", this is the area for the game itself. Every post and thread here is part of the fiction. No OOC communication happens here. Any visitor could read any thread or post in the IC area, and find a piece of fiction.
This division makes the board more organized, and easy to grasp. But there is more...

Each player has a minimum of two accounts; one OOC account, and one for each character he plays. OOC accounts don't have the ability to post in the IC side of the board, and character accounts can't post in the OOC side. As a player, you only have one OOC account. You use that account for everything OOC; from posting your character submissions, to declaring what's your favourite color in a poll opened by some other chromatophilic player. Once you open that account, you don't have to open any other account. As soon as one of your characters gets approved, the Moderation team will give you access to a Character Account, with IC access, providing a temporary password for you to change at will.

As your character evolves, he gets more areas in which he can post; his IC Level rises. As you get more involved in the game, your OOC Level rises as well, and you get access to more World Information, learning more about the universe of ToS the more you play.

REALISM, MYSTICISM, AND COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Playing a realistic RPG is always challenging. Players can either go and write exclusively about things they know first hand, or they can use their imagination, and try to explore territories they ignore. There is always something of a balancing act between the two options; too much in the side of veracity, and all stories look the same, and call characters are identical, while putting too much emphasis in imagination can lead to poorly researched ideas, shallow concepts, and bad narrative. There is a middle point, though, that is always hard to achieve. The Moderation Team is always around, with the goal of helping players finding that sweet middle point, and assist them creating characters and stories that are interesting, original, and as realistic as possible, within the scenario provided.

If you are creating a character that is not from your own culture, try to make some research. It is very easy to become insulting, condescending, and disrespectful, particularly when dealing with cultures that have strong reputations thanks to films and entertainment. Remember: painting any culture as killers and criminals is as insulting as painting them as "normal people who happen to be hated for no reason". Do your research and, if you are not sure if you can measure up, don't make the character's ethnicity the central point of the creation. Similarly, any subject dealing with identity can be hairy. At the end of the day, it all boils down to a very simple question: Are you sure you want to make your character's existence so focused on that sort of issue? If you are, make sure you can pull it out in a dignified way. Take in consideration that a good story (as a good character) doesn't give us the moral answers, but the questions. If you feel the need to provide the moral answer to the questions your character and your story provides, it's possible you are growing too close to this character.

When creating characters from any corner of the world you don't know much about, first and foremost make your research. It sounds like pure insistence, but it will be better in the long run. We are all heavily influenced by film and literature, and it's sometimes hard to dislodge our own preconceptions from what the world of entertainment offers us. If you are creating a character who has lived his childhood, for example, in Ulan Bator, chances are you will not be able to portray a traditional US High School drama, where the popular Cheerleaders marginalize the poor nerd girl; different location, different world.

The game, the universe we propose, makes use of some clear esoteric imagery. We draw inspiration from sources such as the Tarot, the Kabbalah, and the Astrology, among others. This doesn't mean that having previous knowledge of anything occult related will be of any advantage to any player; we have made a conscious effort to take the inspiration we need, and twist the meanings of the symbol to fit out wishes, so the meanings of traditional esoteric symbolism is twisted and turned into something that's not traditional nor expectable.
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