User blog:LaviBookman/Interest Check: Sandbox Universe (again)

You must be going "UGHHH LAVI! WHY U BLABBERING 'BOUT DIS AGINNNNN??!!?11!" Hear me out first. Yes, I do want to blabber about this again, though this would be a planned venture, instead of BLAH, DO SCHTUFF!, where a lack of direction quickly overwhelmed previous interest.

We experimented with original universes before, in the form of Wazurai, but it never really got off the ground. There was debate on what the focus should be and it wasn't clear what Ten had in mind in starting up the wiki; it took weeks after Wazurai's inception for me to learn that Ten wanted the universe to be akin to a Japanese manga. As a result of unclear focus, we had two different Wazurais, which we called Wazurai 1.0 and 2.0.

I liked 2.0 a lot, since it would be an entire fantasy universe created from scratch, but I realized that nation building isn't everyone's thing. Although we had pretty much everyone on-board and intrigued in 1.0, when the setting was based off of the real world, it all fell through with the silently approved decision to move to an original setting. Personally, I love the concept of nation building, since it is basically creating mini-universes with endless exploration to history and future development. However, there is a lot of time and effort involved in creating a fictitious country, which delays the most fun part: role-playing with the country. The nice thing about fan fiction is that everything is already set out for the person, but original universes do not have the boundaries that fan fiction does have. Literally, anything can go in a original universe, which would create a dynamic and interesting story that we as a community can continue on instead of having disjointed fan fic plots that somehow relate to each other as interest in each fan fic plot waxes and wanes.

This is why I want to see what people thought about starting a new setting. It will not be Wazurai again, as much as I would like it to be, because an original universe will not succeed without there being set boundaries ahead of time. As for the everlasting problem of nation building to populate the lands, I can set up skeleton countries, based on people's recommendations, and flesh them out as a community instead of as individuals.

As for boundaries that I would set, it would include the following:
 * 1) Fantasy/medieval/feudal time period only (magic included): I believe some people felt that the ability to go modern or sci-fi in Wazurai was a turn-off. There will be an element of magic, though I would prefer that we discuss how this magic would work instead of one person saying "oh, it would be like the Force from Star Wars" or "like zanpakutō from Bleach." The idea for magic has to be that it would be fun for everyone without being a real hassle to work with. An example of a "hassle to work with" would have to be Naruto jutsu - every single jutsu is a regimented technique with name, function, etc. It's really rigid and a pain in the ass to come up with a plethora of jutsu just for one character.
 * 2) Power levels: I do want to avoid words synonymous to "the most powerful," since it usually indicates the alpha male complex ("Cannot have anyone stronger, yarr!!"). It also implies perfection of strength and we know how much . I would like to avoid clearly established power levels like how it is here, too, since I feel that it's stagnating writing skills. Honestly, nearly every powers section I've looked at read similarly: I stopped reading others' articles because of the set up.
 * 3) Language: I would say anything goes. I don't want people to feel like "oh, we have to use Japanese" or whatever. Use whatever language works for you, I would say: Gaelican, Thai, Swedish, whatever. As long as it represents what you want. It seems that people are really tied up in using a limited dictionary of Japanese terms: words like heavenly ("ten") or moon ("tsuki") get thrown around a lot, and it dilutes the coolness of the words, in my opinion. We need a bit of diversity here, and not having to use Japanese simply because the story is Japanese would be nice.

What are your thoughts? Both positive and negative ones are accepted.