From the moment the trailer debuted, the game was an instant hit. A collaborative multiplayer game where you and your friends could form interact with all of your favorite characters across the gaming and animation worlds, whose responses were entirely based upon your interactions with them thanks to their own unique alternate intelligences programming them through their triumphs and defeats, their rivalries and romances? It seemed too good to be true - the kind of game that would be a guaranteed success for years to come.

This is not that game. This is the game before that game.

You see, the developers knew that they couldn't simply drop in an AI, never mind multiple AIs into a computerized world with no input and no chance to learn (the disaster of Kingdom Hearts 4 had been a testament to that much at least). But they had an idea - they had another game, an open world fantasy game they had been working on for years, with more than enough memory and server space to allow for their characters to grow and change, to begin to learn so that they could be prepared for the future. They could restructure the game to keep the characters limited enough to prevent them from degrading while also giving them a purpose to motivate them to explore the world - a quest to save this strange world and the gods who had promised them the chance to return with no harm done and a blessing to aid them in the future (or, perhaps, the chance to forge a new path in this new world they had found for themselves). It was a simple enough task to minimize the desire to escape (free will was always a powerful motivator) and to patch in enough elements to keep the world as familiar to its new inhabitants as it would be foreign - all that was left was to populate it with the new "adventurers" as the staff could program them.

Welcome... to the crossfade.


Welp, this may or may not be a good idea, but honestly, I've been hankering for a panfandom that could fit for what I want to do for so long that I've finally ended up breaking down after more than a year and just starting to make it myself. And like... Death can come for me, it's fine, I'll be cool just being able to be in my little corner with a few friends to do some nice things.

Crossfade is going to be... well, a bit of a unique panfandom setting where the characters themselves are in more of a fantasy-esque setting but where the outside framework for the players is much more modern, if not a little futuristic. As you can pick up from the teaser, the site's premise is that all of the characters are in a video game that they don't know is a video game, and while they're in this new world, they're going to be able to interact with each other to grow and develop while also having the option to be able to carry out "site missions" to expand the site with new rp areas and potentially unlock a mini story arc for each area (think like... if Kingdom Hearts was a bit more of an open-world concept, I guess?). I'm definitely not aiming for any MMO-aspects since the video game mechanics are just meant to explain some of the weirdness of the world (ie, why there's chocobos fighting Pikachus and Heartless or why any time you would "die" you just wake up in your bed the next day or why there's suddenly a new area to explore after a certain number of missions have been completed), and I'm hoping that everyone else takes it as being just a cool little wink and nod to the players who recognize that it's all just an rp and want to have some fun with this as well as acknowledgement that hey, this is something we just cannot introduce as a plot twist kind of development. (If you're worried about the world being too big though, don't worry - everyone is going to start with the only available area being a decent-sized town, just to build up some rapport, and even as more areas open up, magic is gonna allow "fast travel" so distance shouldn't be an issue.)

In terms of more concrete site developments... the site is going to be hosted on Jcink Premium and will be designed to be both 18+ (just so I don't have to worry about separating out a mature thread area) and semi-private in that outside of our open beta period, you will need either an invitation from a current member or a want ad you are picking up in order to join (I'm more than happy to take new members via buddy requests and whatnot, I just... don't have the kind of time and energy to spruce everything up to be a competitive public site with all the usual speed/activity pressures, y'feel?). Activity checks will be handled with monthly check-ins but characters won't be marked inactive unless they've not made an in-character post in three months. Additional characters will be determined on 1) not having any inactive characters and 2) having at least one additional post on all of your other approved characters from what you needed for your last one (aka, your first charrie will need 1 post for charrie number two but your fourth charrie will need 1 post, your third 2, your second 3, and your first 4 for character number five).

I'm planning on being... both a bit more lax and a bit more strict in terms of what I'm gonna accept for characters and content. As far as "more strict" goes, I'm thinking that I'm going to only be accepting series where the bulk of the fandom is based in an animated or illustrated style - thus, characters from, say, the Final Fantasy or FullMetal Alchemist fandoms would be fine while characters from Marvel/DC or Harry Potter wouldn't be. On the flip side though, I'm planning on being "more lax" in terms of what series I'm willing to accept - basically, I'm willing to take some of the more offensive or problematic series on provided that they're handled respectfully (aka, y'know, you're appropriately warning for intense or triggering content, you're handling it in a mature and respectful manner, you're keeping the more extreme topics out of the general discord, etc etc). Right now I'm thinking that I'm probably gonna be allowing people to play characters that are "player characters" (ie, Lavellan from Dragon Age) and "multiple iterations" of characters that are generally acknowledged as different within the fandom (ie, Yugi Motou vs Yami Yugi vs Pharaoh Atem), but I'm also a bit more up in the air on this. I do know though that I can assure that I'm not looking to put in character caps, whether for total characters or characters from a given series, since I'd rather operate on "you can't pick up two characters that would interact heavily with each other" and leave it at that.


I've been working on this a little bit off and on for a lot of October, and I think I have enough together to move forward with this for laying down some of the groundwork. With this in mind, I'm going to lay down a tentative alpha test period for December, but I'm also not going to hard commit to that since right now, I'm building the site out largely on my own, and even with the allowances I'm planning to lessen that burden, site-building is not easy and generally skinning aspect of it tends to what makes or breaks my timeline, and ofc that's something that's still very much a work in progress at the moment, so I just do not know what the future will bring in that regard. If you're interested in helping out with that (and being able to help push this along), I have a staff search posted up here where I'm looking for an event mod and 1-2 app mods.

Outside of that, if you like the official alpha tester recruitment post, I'll probably PM you a link when we're ready to go into "alpha period" (aka we're not public yet but I'm willing to let people come in and get a lay for the land and start laying down some reserves and submitting apps and the like) before we hit our public beta month and then settle in afterwards into that semi-private status I outlined earlier. There's no pressure to join if you change your mind later or the end product turns out to be something you can't get behind or your other commitments just won't allow for it - right now, I'm just looking to get an idea of what the headcount might be for this kind of project as I'm working on the development for it in the background of everything.

Also if you have any questions, obviously you can reply to this thread and I'll try to answer them as best I can!