What would you like to see more of on Althanas

[Hysteria]

Vote!

More stories about them, more facts or even just generally more :D

[Rayleigh]

Ghosties. I love them, and I think they're a blast to write about.
Also, the last option.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I think the biggest takeaway here is that Althanas needs a world-wide tech revolution.

[Cards of Fate]

I'm with Andy on this one, expect the Tarot to be doing tinkering threads in the future to create some badass stuff

[Lye]

I'm expecting to get some homunculi work out there, and I had a rather elaborate idea for a wiki entry on Magicite this morning. Something that should help move Althanas into a pseudo tech era using various runes, glyphs, and crystals instead of machinery and physics.

[Tobias Stalt]

Dragons. The answer is always dragons.

Also, Demons.

[BloodandBlades]

More official species for us to choose from! Lye made the homunculi, Hoytti the corralians, I made up the tantibus, and Sei of course started the legacy of the mystics! Why don't we make more species and rp them like this? It would be great for our original species we make up to get more attention.

[black shadow]

Everything sound cool to me except undead, we already have enough of that.

[Hysteria]

Looks like we favour the big monsters, giant's, dragon's and constructs ^_^

[Silence Sei]

Tankita getting a lightsaber, confirmed.

[Hysteria]

Everything sound cool to me except undead, we already have enough of that.

Do we? I know we have had a recent spurt with the Red Forest and then going back a long way the lich guy. But not much else.

When I think of undead, it more the 'mysterious curse causing a town to be plagued by undead' sort of thing. In the same way as werewolves (and there are lots of them in corone) not being a present reality for our characters.

[Apocalyptica]

Everything sound cool to me except undead, we already have enough of that.

Watch your tongue or I may eat it.

[Silence Sei]

We have Apocalyptica, Grom the Zombie, Xem'Zund, and the whole nation of Lavinya for Zombies.

[Cards of Fate]

We just don't see very many undead charactersactive at the moment

[hoytti]

Grond the Zombie will be active soon. I just need to get his story line set up and then start writing it. I also need to get a good hold on what the Island of Grace is like since I lost all my data.

[Salem]

Could you add "Werebeast/animals" to the werewolf or lycans idea? I think it would be fun.

[Hysteria]

Unfortunately the polls are locked once you make them. I did kinda assume in that category would include other were- creatures.

[Rayse Valentino]

What would I like to see more of?

Lore.

Not another monster of the week, but backstory for the world. More descriptions of towns that litter the regions, the kinds of forests, tunnels, plains, caves, mountains, and everything else that runs between them. The difference in flora and fauna, the struggles of the people that live there, the stories they know, the people they've seen.

The towns themselves, what's their layout? Who rules or governs them? Is the lord just or cruel? What are their local traditions, religions, politics? We should have a myriad of minor gods, mythical figures, famous historical figures that are revered, reviled, repulsed, returning. Maybe people in one region worship two or three minor gods, that colors the way everything works there. What sort of conflicts are brewing? We need to find the middle of the scale. Right now, it feels as though we're at 1 or 10 on the scale of things going on in the world. Either it's a microcosm, just an event with your character and a few others, or it's some world-changing force, but what if someone only affects a localized area? What if the repercussions spread far and wide? What if they don't?

Also, the supernatural. It's often used as an element to introduce philosophical and psychological discussion. Souls, spirits, curses, magic, fate. Settlers chance upon cursed ruins, building their town upon it and suffering the effects for generations. All sorts of problems that stem back a long time, and not those that are easily solved by the player, or hell maybe they're not solvable at all, and everyone just has to live with it. Beinost has spirits of the dead wandering the city, Salvar has mysterious creatures lurking just outside the borders of the towns, Raiaera has a haunted forest. Again, tradition, religion, all well-documented, all causing conflict, camaraderie, complaints, conflagration, confluence, conceit. Talking about the unique locations that you're constantly surrounded by, having stories of the people that went there, of the events that transpired yesterday, last week, last month, last decade.

It often doesn't feel like our characters aren't part of this world. It's there, and we're foreign elements, not bound by fate. We travel the world so hastily that we miss everything along the way, and it's only natural to do so, because there's so little described. Even a simple road between towns could have dragons skeletons along the way, shattered caravans, trolls lurking in the brush, travelers passing through or lost, bandits, cultists, missionaries, colonists, strange outcroppings of unique plants or rock formations in the region. People have problems, but we often don't know them. Even if most of us don't care, we should be able to hear them, see them, entering a busy city should lend itself to unique memories right away. Just by walking through, we should be able to paint a picture of the people who live there, the politics, religion, and traditions.

But it's overwhelming to do this yourself every story. We should be building on each others' work, crafting the lore together and appropriating it. When I enter a notable city, I should be walking in the footsteps of all the writers before me, using what they wrote to enrich the location even more, and reference what they've done or seen. I've seen some people say we need more fantasy races, but what's the point if we barely use what we've got? What's the difference between a Salvaran human and a Coronian human? Location? There should be way more than that, and even among these locations we should further segregate by geographical, political, religious distinctions, to both breed familiarity and proper contempt. The wiki entries have descriptions, descriptions, but little player activity, it reads like a high school history textbook, not a roleplay guide, not a history of how writers have used the location, what kind of notable events they've wrought.

[Hysteria]

There were two reasons why I threw up the poll. The first was to help me think about what sort of quests/battles/etc would interest our RPers. The second was to inform us on lore that we might add to the wiki (and I encourage everyone to make entries in the wiki). I saw your post in the discussion on the thaynes, that exactly what I think Althanas could use to be come more complete.

As for this thread, I want to look at 'Golems, Constructs and Automatons' and if we can link it to Alerar. We can add in more lore on their technology, on how they protect it, on great inventors that have changed how their civilisation has managed to grow so advanced over the others as well as the types of constructs found in use.

[Lye]

Oh man... I am so on that.

[Cards of Fate]

Just wait for my new profile coming up! This character is gonna do all sorts of shit with constructs.

[Zook Murnig]

Let's not forget that giants tied with automatons, and dragons and No Doge ranked very highly.

[Doge]

The Doge are a noble breed of canine adventurers!

But aye, Giants are cool.

[Hysteria]

Let's not forget that giants tied with automatons, and dragons and No Doge ranked very highly.

TBH i didn't expect Giants to get that high. Skyrim does a good job linking giants with elder creatures and god-like entities. That could pay into the pantheon of minior gods.

[Lightfoot]

Something I would love to see is a return of the Althanas short story book that was in the works years ago. But in order to do that, we need a full and complete world, just like Rayse said. That's often been a concern of mine as well. Since we cater to people joining the site, wanting to bring their own stories, Althanas starts to feel less like a living and breathing world to play in, and more like a generic playground we shape to suit our needs.

Something I want to see return are the contests we had before where people would submit new countries or new monsters. I think we could expand on that idea. We could run contests for folklore of different regions, superstitions and customs, maybe even create a pivotal point in history.

My favorite fantasy books are the ones that transport me to a world that I wholly believe could exist. With so many little details that seem plausible yet completely different. Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind comes to mind in this. That book was a beautiful introduction into his world, and it was completely believable in the confines of the world.

I think there needs to be less of a focus on EXP, and more of a focus on world building and story telling. I think the only way that this site can really evolve as a community is when we start taking the world of Althanas and its mythos seriously. I guarantee that most of the newbies we have on this site don't even know what the Thayne are, let alone tell you the name of one. We should have not only Mods (obviously) but other groups dedicated to keeping the lore. And I mean a group, not just Christoph. Maybe have 2-3 people for each country/region.

There's more that I can point out, but I think you guys probably get it by now. That's just my two cents.