Idea for an Original Character Tournament

Premise

There are two types of Original Character Tournaments on DeviantArt. One is the Tournament proper, where the participants are paired off in knockout single-elimination rounds, with the winner passing to the next round. In these tournaments, the characters compete for a goal in the setting, fighting against other participants’ characters, and often coming at odds with the secret plan the setting and it’s NPC’s have in store. The other kind is the League, where participants are allowed to duel against anyone on the roster, in order to increase their ranking.

Both types of tournaments have their pros and cons. The Tournament proper usually has a strong storyline, with the winners of the various rounds often influencing the setting. The downside of it is, defeated participants don’t have any incentive, and often cannot canonically contribute anymore to the tournament once they lose. The format discourages cooperative victory and formation of teams. And once the story is over, there is no more reason to contribute to the setting and explore it’s aftermath. Also, the prize the OC winner receives in universe does not ‘stick’ with him, as the participant isn’t obliged to continue the character’s story (if the character was made especially for the tournament) or make it part of the character’s canon (for characters imported from the participants own stories). Finally, you cannot duel the people you would like to duel, as match making is random or follows a predetermined ladder.

The League does provide the latter in the form of the roster, as well as the ability to duel others in various formats, from comics to written pieces. It also provides a strong community, and a permanent setting. The downside of it is, it lacks the strong storyline that you get from tournaments, as the participants are not compelled to follow the canon version of a certain battle, and the setting often remains in its original status quo. Even tournaments set in this setting are often not taken into account in future battles.

As for the matches themselves, the current format is a ‘duel’ where opposing characters confront each other over an objective (which often is battle or a race), and resolve their issues. The norm for most duels is that they are somewhat physical in nature, which means fighter characters are the norm, while non fighters have a hard time coming up with a way to beat them. It also discourages other match formats, such as ‘create the best picture’ matches, or ‘best story that advances the overall plot’. This may be a minor issue, as most people join OCT’s for the chance of their characters ‘duelling’ and defeating other characters, but there could be some potential in these kind of duels.

Idea

To form a league, possibly open to both writers and artists, that is both competitive and collaborative in nature. Participants will be able to duel each other, and through these duels, contribute and influence the ongoing storylines, both of the characters involved in the duel, and of the overall storylines of the setting. In this league, canon duels and tournaments have consequences, which in turn spawn numerous other events and storylines for other characters to pick up, for winning character to follow through, and for losing characters to work around in order to achieve their objectives.

Proposed Setting

A series of interconnected dimensions, each with it’s own specific theme, theme duels and storylines. Centre to these dimensions is the City, a circular city with deep chasms, a central caldera, and four giant tusks on which buildings can be built, three circling the caldera, and one emerging from the centre. The city is surrounded by walls, with a number of towers dotting them. This city exists simultaneously in five different dimensions, but can only be accessed by the dimension it is currently in phase with, with the city phasing through each dimension in turn, to keep the system in equilibrium. These central dimensions are also connected between each other and to other, outer dimensions through the use of portals.

The central dimensions and the City will be the main focus of most storylines, especially tournament related, but events in other dimensions can have further repercussions to the former, and thus to the City.

Proposed ideas for the central dimensions is to have three allied to the City, one in political disarray, and one actively opposing the City. They will be based around the colour wheel of Magic the Gathering, or other ideas to be discussed with the administrators. One dimension could be a never-ending city, another could be a forest with a number of medieval kingdoms, another could serve as the forge for the City and it’s organization, the rebel dimension could be immersed in constant twilight, and the final, water dimension could be the place where rationality and science mix.

The City will rule the central dimensions, and possibly have outer dimensions under their control, thanks to the alliance of the city dimension and the water dimension, and the forge dimension producing everything needed for their army. They currently have a firm control on the forest dimension, but the political situation there requires constant supervision. As for the rebel world, they control just a few outposts outside the city, but the remainder is in the hands of the rebels.

Rules and Structure

For every central dimension, including the City, there will be a judge/ administrator/volounteer monitoring that dimension, and the duels and events going on in it, advising participants on what could and could not work for canon, and organizing events. These ‘Guardians’, alongside the remaining judges, administrators, and possibly even a couple of volounteers, will be in charge of ‘the Council’, which will oversee the entirety of the setting, contribute to the setting with snippets involved the higher ups of the City government, note potential repercussions of events in one dimension to other dimensions, and organizing tournaments.

Participants will be entered in a general roster, with the newest entry starting at the bottom of the list. By winning duels, the participants will be able to climb up the roster and reach the top places. To make climbing the roster worthwhile, special events, with prizes in-universe (control of a storyline, start of a series of events, character rewards etc.) and to the participants (artwork, points or subscriptions) will be offered to the top X participants of the roster on a regular basis. These events will form the basis of the continuing storyline of the setting.

When a particular storyline could potentially radically alter a setting, a tournament will be held, using both participants of the events involved, and other participants to fill up the empty places. The winner will obtain, amongst all the other prizes offered both in-universe and to the participant, the chance to propose ideas and collaborate with the council of Guardians in matters related to the setting.

Participants join the league by creating a ‘Champion’, which is done by providing a reference sheet and an audition piece of the character to the league. This OC will be the protagonist of the story that they want to introduce to the setting, and most of participant’s duels and entries will serve to further their Champion’s storyline, with the opponent’s Champion serving as the willing or unwilling antagonist, or obstacle, or collaborator, depending on the nature of the duel. The winning duel will serve as the canon story that everyone must take into account in future duels.

Not all duels have to involve opposing champions, however. Duels can be ‘write the best story’, or ‘further a particular event without your characters’, or other such examples, and in such cases, participants will be able to create and reuse other characters, or use other characters and NPC’s. However, the main focus on the storylines will be the Champions, and as such, a Champion will be required for tournaments, and possibly most of the special events.

Participants may be allowed to create more than one champion, up to a maximum limit, provided they meet certain requirements, such as rank, or number of entries posted per month, or as special prize for events.

Any kind of dimension (within reason) can serve as the background of a duel, however, most duels in the City or in the central dimensions will become part of the canon, while duels set in the external dimension can be non-canon, depending on the results of the duel, and how connected the outer dimension is to one of the inner ones. Each of the central dimensions plus the City could also have preferred theme duels. The twilight dimension, and possibly the forest one, could hold most of the physical duels, while political intrigue could be the theme for the city dimension and the kingdom politics of the forest dimension. Participants wanting a certain kind of duel could station their Champion in a sub-roster containing all the ‘local’ Champions in random order, promoting duels between bottom and top ranking participants. Champions are free to change dimensions, as long as there is an in-universe justification for this change.

Potential Problems

-Participants who refuse to take canon duels into account, for various reasons. The point of this league is to have a setting where character actions and duels have consequences for everyone, winner, loser, and bystanders alike, as this makes the setting much more challenging and interesting, especially for the latter two categories, as they are forced to rethink their plans. However, there may be cases where opponents intentionally derail the plot or kill off characters for the lulz, or out of spite, or due to bad storytelling that may win due to better grammar and structure. Such cases should be dealt ultimately by the judge of the duel, and, in cases of canon brawls and events of relative importance, by the appropriate Guardian.

-Overtly complex plot: as the story progresses, and many storylines get developed, it will progressively become harder to track the events that have become canon, for both the Champions and the setting, which makes it hard both for veterans and new participants to follow the story without resorting to reading ALL the previous entries. One solution to this is to have a ‘tracker’, a log of each significant event, both for the setting and for the champions. Participants are required to keep their character’s tracker updated at all times, while administrators and Guardians will do so for the setting. At different intervals, such as 10-15 duels per character, and every two-three months for the setting, the character profile/setting description will be updated with all the canon changes, and the tracker reset.

-Canon timeline placement: With different duels potentially affecting each other, timeline placing will become an important issue. To solve this, the duels will be arranged on a first come, first serve basis, and Champions can only duel once all their current duels have been judged. This will require judges being prompt in their judging, to allow participants to use their champion in other duels as soon as they can. Participants could be allowed to book their duels in the timeline beforehand, or start work on them while working on others, in which case they should indicate a date by which the judges of the previous duels should have completed their judgement, in order to take it into account in their future duel.

Current Status

Writing a draft intro story of my Champion into the setting, will start looking for people interested quite soon.

Showing the backstory, and probability

Whew, been a while since I have last posted on here, hasn’t it?

I’ve been pretty much busy with writing down Fairy Chess for NaNoWriMo. It was quite hard doing the challenge, mainly because it’s quite hard to come up with ideas on what’s going to happen in a scene, even if you know the general outline. But I managed to persevere, and in the end, I managed to write 50219 words, and about one third of the novel. Which is a great achievement for me, since every time I even managed to start a novel in these past few years, it would always stop somewhere before the third chapter...

Anyway, alongside the main story, I have written a couple of short stories that explain a few things about the two main character’s background. If anyone wants to have a look at them, and comment on them, then feel free to have a look. But beware. I copypasted the story directly from my unedited NaNoWriMo novel, so the text is still full of plot of holes, and with enough grammar errors to feed a Grammar Nazi. Tread carefully. XD

Attack at the school: http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/FC-Attack-at-the-school-189150523?q=in:scraps+sort:time+gallery:thy-robocop&qo=4

Sophie’s first time: http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/FC-Sophie-s-first-time-189267207?q=in:scraps+sort:time+gallery:thy-robocop&qo=3

The Gun Kata Training: http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/FC-The-Gun-Kata-Training-189273704?q=in:scraps+sort:time+gallery:thy-robocop&qo=2

Pest Control: http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/FC-Pest-Control-189380994?q=in:scraps+sort:time+gallery:thy-robocop&qo=1

The Confrontation: http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/FC-The-confrontation-189387844?q=in:scraps+sort:time+gallery:thy-robocop&qo=0

So, the other thing I want to talk about is Alyssa. Again. Really, this girl is giving me so many problems...

During the course of Fairy Chess, in her backstory, and in the future stories I have in mind for her, as well as in her OCBZ version, Alyssa engages in various dangerous activities, such as escaping from magical girls, spying on them, organizing an attack on them, escaping from their prison once she is captured, convince the other prisoners to aid her, organize a raid on the girls and kill a large quantity of them through bombs and zerg rush, remain hidden from the wrathful girls, engage a magical girl into a one of one gun kata battle, finish off her previous job of eradicating the magical girls... All interesting things that I would like Alyssa to do in the course of the story, and many other for future stories. But there’s a problem with that.

The problem with the above is that, in order for her to pull off these kinds of situations, she would have to be a) a Mary Sue, b) the goddamn Batman, or c) incredibly lucky. Option a) is the one I would quite like to avoid, thank you very much. Option b) is also out of the question, because that kind of defeats the point I wanted to get with Alyssa. She wants to be in control of her life, but life continuously puts it out of control, and being the goddamn Batman, while it may be something she aspires to, is a much more stable situation than the one I want her to be in. Also, the backstory I have in mind for her does not really allow for it. And the problem with option c) is that the stuff Alyssa needs to do requires her to be extremely lucky, and people may start calling out on such extremes of luck that comes without any particular reason. Unless...

I had a chat with one of my friends a while ago, where I basically illustrated all the points above. And he said: “Well, why don’t you give her some low end luck manipulating powers?”. This simple yet elegant solution has provided me not only an answer to my problem, but also inspiration for ideas in future stories (such as, what would happen if Alyssa, who wants to be in control, gains enough power to basically have Fate itself do her bidding?).

I shall be working to develop this idea further in my stories. And right now, I have got a couple of questions to answer, to start integrating it in Alyssa’s character:

1)What is the nature of this power over Fate? What can it do, and what are it’s drawbacks? How does Alyssa control it?

2)How do I keep Alyssa and others from noticing it until later on in the story? How do I keep the power low key?

3) How can I alter some main events to fit this idea, but not make it too obvious? Can I include any negativity from this power?

4)Will Alyssa become in the future that which she greatly despises, being a magical girl?

5)Could I use this power to further Alyssa’s tendency to weaponize memes and tropes?

Well, that’s some more work to be done, and it will be something I shall be working on once I finish off my semester exams.

See ya around!

Thy-Robocop.

Justifying Alyssa: the solution

First thing’s first: My Birthday is tomorrow! Soon I will no longer be a teenager anymore!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to business.

In these last few days of my teenage life, I have journeyed deep into the recesses of the TV tropes, in search for something that would help me work out the problem with Alyssa. And after a few days research, I have stumbled upon one golden suggestion, that has made everything click into place.

That golden suggestion was ‘memory wiping’.

By building on this suggestion, I have remodelled my original idea of the magical girl sister blowing up her village, and worked out some of the elements that followed. Here’s how the updated version of Alyssa’s backstory goes:

Alyssa is spending some time chatting to her friends in the school canteen, talking about this and that and other things. Suddenly, one of her friends starts turning into a monster. Panic ensures as the monster goes on a rampage, killing a couple of Alyssa’s other friends and everyone else in the vicinity. Alyssa manages to save herself and a couple others, and witnesses the magical girls duelling this creature. However, this creature proves too much for the girls to handle, and they have to resort to more extreme methods. Long story short, they end up blowing up a good section of the school.

Now, of course, Alyssa is shocked by all of this, and tries to get to her friends to talk about it, only she witnesses the magical girls doing something to all the people present at the incident, effectively mind wiping them. She then sets to try and convince everyone about the truth, even finding some evidence from people videotaping it. Her magical girl sister Alice, who was present at the incident, catches wind of her sister’s strange behaviour, realizes what she’s up to, and decided to wipe her sister’s mind.

She goes to Alyssa’s room at night, to do it without her sister noticing. However, Alyssa, being a bit paranoid after the attack, manages to catch Alice by surprise, in full magical girl gear (as she can’t do the spell without it). They have a verbal confrontation, with Alice trying to convince Alyssa that oblivion is the best solution for the both of them, and Alyssa telling instead that she does not want to forget. Seeing that they will not be budged, Alyssa tricks Alice into getting close to her, and then stabs her with a knife.

Later on, after Alyssa escapes and builds herself a new life somehow, she stumbles upon the girl who caused the transformation of her friend, a dark magical girl on the Infernal’s side (...or is she?) who uses insects to infect people and turn them into monsters. Alyssa manages to trap her, and interrogate her, to find out why she did it. Through her, she learns about the magical girl civil war, and realizes that what happened at the school could happen again, unless she stops them. So, after disposing of the insect girl (pouring fuel or something flammable on her, and maybe using a lens to set it aflame), she starts her crusade against magical girls.

So, what do you think about this new history? There are still some more details to flesh out, such as how she manages to avoid detection until she joins the magical girl hunter group, her life within the group, and how she obtains the bouncy ball as her weapon, but for now, I think I have progressed quite a lot, don’t you think?

I have enabled comments from anyone on this blog, so feel free to contribute!

Justifying Alyssa

One of the main problems I have when coming up with ideas for my stories (a weakness that a guy called Drakhael in the OCBZ chat loves to exploits, nuking my character and sending me back to the drawing board) is that I often can’t justify the existence of my characters in a certain setting. Either that, or the reasons I use to justify them end up causing more problems and plot holes than before. And the character I can’t seem to justify at all is, ironically, my main character, the ones people might know me for, if they know me at all: Alyssa Gillespine

Alyssa originated in a story called Encounter at The Art Gallery, which you can still find in my scraps on my DA page.  http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1xty9n In this story, she was a former cultists of a so-called ‘god’, who decided to use the powers of Yog-Sothoth (a more powerful, and relatively more reasonable Lovecraftian outer god) against her former colleagues, and against the magical girls, who were so focused on dealing with outer threats that they did not realize they were actually helping the false gods themselves.

Over the course of the past couple of years, she has had many changes, but a few core traits have remained:

1) Alyssa always wants to be in control of her life, but situations arise that takes it out of her control, and into a territory she is unfamiliar with, or into the hands of people too powerful for her to overcome. She constantly struggles to get it back into her control, even if that means doing questionable acts such as mass murder and the like.

2) She loves talking, almost to Miss Exposition levels; she never lies outright, preferring instead to be misleading; she loves taking memes, tropes and quotes  and use them when she speaks; and finally, she is hard to anger.

3) She has a thing for surprise attacks and disproportionate retribution, so much that every time she attacks, she leaves people wondering “WTF just happened here?”. Ways to achieve that have included explosives, Great Old Ones magic, bringing guns to a magical fight, environmental kills, and changing the rules and the stakes of the game.

4) She has a strong dislike for magical girls, which has lead her to become what I term as “the Joker ( especially Hearth Ledger’s one) to the magical girls’ Batman”.

Based on these traits, I am trying to build up a new version of Alyssa for my NaNoWriMo story, and so far, I have come up with a couple of plausible ways to explain the above traits that she has. There are still others that I need to tackle, some of which I shall be posting here. But the main problem I would really want to solve, as almost everything else about her is connected to that event, is this:

Why is she killing magical girls?

The only idea I have come up so far involves her having a magical girl sister, who at some point in her past blew up half her village, and thus wrecked her entire life, in order to destroy some dangerously genre savvy monsters of the week. Alyssa witnesses all this, and, enraged, she strangles her own sister to death, and then start murdering magical girls to ‘eliminate these variables from my life’, as she would put it.

Now, the thing I have found wrong about this idea is that it’s too much, too sudden for Alyssa. And I really don’t see her murdering her sister like that, hot blooded. Especially after seeing that her sister could level an entire village if she so wants to. So the way I have to work around it is that, after her initial anger, Alyssa would calm down, try and find out more about her opponent and the reasons she did it, then realize something negative about the magical girls that makes it clear that the only good magical girl is a dead magical girl, and that it’s her duty to mankind to take them all down.

So, do you think this line of reasoning is sound and reasonable? And if so, what could Alyssa find out about magical girls to justify her killings? In my setting, most, if not all of the magical girls are engaged in a civil war between Celestials (those who get their powers from the planets of the solar system, and their associates), the Terrans (those whose powers derive from Gaia herself, and who consider both Celestials and Infernals and invaders), and the Infernals (a catch all term to indicate those enemies with powers from different sources other than the ones cited above), but how do I present it in such a was that Alyssa believes all ‘magical girls’ are to be killed, rather than make her realize that “Oh, they are actually some that are really good, and without them, we are all screwed, and maybe I can help them out instead of murdering them indiscriminantly”? And if you think that my idea was taking it a bit too far, then what else can I use to push Alyssa over the edge, without resorting to drastic measures, and without making her realize the above?

Enjoy cracking your head around this puzzle. See ya later!

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

I have set up this blog mainly to post my raw ideas for my stories, in the hopes that maybe you could help me flesh those ideas out, and make them believable in the story. If not, then perhaps venting my ideas, and looking through them, might help me out anyways. XD For now, the ideas I will be posting will mostly be about my upcoming NaNoWriMo story, which will explore the backstory of my signature OC, Alyssa http://thy-robocop.deviantart.com/art/Alyssa-OCBZ-Profile-169928454?q=&qo= . Once that’s finished, I will continue using this blog to post ideas for the other stories set in that setting, and maybe of my other stories as well.

Apart from that, I may be posting excerpts from my stories, quick funny scenes involving my characters, mainly Alyssa, and maybe some personal thoughts or considerations about the way I view the world. I am aiming to write something at least every week, to keep my creative juices flowing, and to avoid the blog falling into inactivity, as some of my other accounts have.

And what’s my NaNoWriMo story, you may ask? Well, I will be telling more about it in future entries, but the basis of it is that it’s a urban fantasy novel involving magical girl, based on the idea: “What would realistically happen if Magical Girls were made to face enemies such as the Joker and Lovercraft’s eldricht abominations (Cthulhu and company)?”

I hope you enjoy your time on here!

Robert