Developing the World of Ensnared

Everyone has seen me preach my point but I think it's high time to be a bit more thorough in the execution and much more elaborate in the design. This has obviously been a long time coming and while not a huge focus on my mind during the day it would be a major contribution since those cat ears. Jokes aside, the biggest thing we are lacking is a coherent narrative. We have a lot of people running around being controlled/losing control/controlling and we need something to tie it all together. The problem is attempts in the past to suggest implementation of a consistent continuity have often been rejected since we lacked the users and commitment not to mention the forum started as somewhere to get our "fix". With size, the complaint has been pushed forward and is now something many have called attention to.

The problem with an idea like developing the world and committing characters to a set plot is everyone wants to be something. Someone might want to be the hero and that's great. We need a protagonist (or a dozen) and an antagonist. The issue isn't who will play these parts, but much rather how we would do it so everyone had a fair chance to explore that part. Our other issue is how would we even tie everything together? Obviously everyone loves doing their own thing and this might actually cause some persons to speak out in objection.

But that's my argument against. To design a setting around the world of Ensnared would be a grand idea worthy of merit and exploration. For one, people could contribute things like landmarks, big bad, the initial plot of a chapter in the story, etc. For another, it brings users through the roleplay together in a coherent narrative and gets newer users involved while avoiding the possibility of ostracizing simply because certain kinks aren't met by that person. Keep in mind, we've rarely had an issue (if ever) where that has happened but personally it would give us all a chance to interact and even cooperate collectively on how something should go. So really, it's a good idea.

Our problem isn't "is this a good idea?" because it seems to me that people would love for it to be. The issue is everyone disagreeing on how things should be done or how we should go about planning something like this. Obviously today (Saturday) we got a taste of that and the end result was a lot of circle arguments and frustrations reaching their boiling point. An issue we have to cover before we make any progress on this is how we should go about doing things so that if not everyone can be pleased, we can at least get a 2:1 ratio. The obsession with "let's figure out this and that" before finding out how everyone feels and taking into account the majority opinion can lead to major problems before this thing even gets off the ground.

Now, to avoid that eternal debate that generally leads to everyone agreeing to disagree, let's see through the problem and resolve it, shall we? Why not everyone contributes an idea and we vote on it? Not some chat vote but a week-long ideas thing and we keep the voting anonymous so everyone can get a good idea of what direction their peers would like to take things and go from there? In fact, I'm of the opinion that this thread should have a poll stickied so we can better assess things.

I'll close with saying we need a more "developed world" and "connecting plot" if only to bring "dead" (forgotten in this sense) heroes and mistresses back as well as tie everything in and make something great.