The Sites that Could Have Been

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This is a place to showcase sites that never opened or at least talk about them. What was the idea for the site? Why didn't you open it? What are some of the cool things you had planned? Optionally post a link to it. This isn't really a place for posting sites you do intend to open eventually, but other members are free to review the sites and maybe you'll find a renewed interest in your concept.

This here was Glow of a Firefly. It was going to be a heavily AU Naruto site that was more or less free form with some restricted powers. I started the project for the wrong reasons but did really enjoy working on lore for it. It was going to start off with an event that brought all the countires into one territory and then after getting a memberbase it'd be pretty standard fare Naruto. One of the things I did was move clans around to different AU villages. I had like cat worshiping Egyptian style Uchiha.

I worked on it off and on for a few years but I don't know I just kind of fell out of love with it. Mainly from a waning interest in the series and realizing how much I was AUing to get away from it. I decided just to join an existing site instead for when I get the itch to play magic ninjas.

I also at one point tried to make a site with influences like Bobobo-bo bo-bobo. I actually opened but noone joined because the concept was really out there I'll admit. There was a lot of breaking the fourth wall and the plot was purposely bizarre. I also included a combat system that was kind of an infantile version of what I use now, which learning was asking a lot for such a weird site.
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wow, i have so many sites-that-could-have-been. one amongst them was a grand ffxiv project, where i was imagining having three separate boards for each of the regions gridania (the black shroud I GUESS see this is why it will never get made), thanalan, and la noscea... and i guess a spinoff maybe for the other regions like coerthas and stuff. they'd have interconnected plots but largely be their own thriving places / economies / cultures. sometimes there would be battles maybe ?!?! tension ?!?!

i don't remember if i went anywhere with the three-site idea but i did start to try to make a skin for at least one ffxiv site. my interest in ffxiv waxes and wanes with my subscription hahaha so it probably will never come to fruition.
last edit on May 2, 2020 21:09:16 GMT by syhrinx
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So I had to stop and think first, what do I have in my backlog of ideas that never went anywhere.

And well, I was working on a Rune Factory/Pokemon crossover site

Honestly I'm pretty shocked at how much I had gotten done on my own lol. I'm pretty impressed with myself ngl. Damn, did I really started on this in 2016? Holy shit that was a whole 4 years ago, wow, it feels like forever ago....

November 17th, 2016 - Sun and Moon still aren't out yet in NA. Have resorted to talking to myself while building site in anticipation.


lmao im hilarious

anywaayyyy....

inspired off gen 6 at the time, the idea was that because of the great calamity/war/whatever it was, in one universe, opened up a gateway between worlds, and now pokemon were somehow finding themselves in the land of Selphia. So, pokemon with elves, and dwarves, and magic, and monsters (that they kicked the crap out of lmao). The idea I think I wanted for it was for players to discover pokemon and make a proto-pokedex that was all member submitted.

Now with gen 8 and RF4 Special out, this wouldn't be a bad time to re-visit the idea, or at least re-work and update it a little. Maybe with an original town instead and the likes, idk lol.

I think the only reason I didn't go through with it was that I was very dedicated to my current rp at that time (which was a bit of a mistake), and I was just working on this on the side. Granted I'm still working on a site rn, but if someone was really super interested in this one, then I wouldn't mind splitting time between it.

Or if someone just wanted to take the concept for their own like, fucking do it dude, live my dreams for me.
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I think around May of last year, I really wanted to make a Non-Canon Player-Plot Driven One-Punch Man rp where death was no-consent. Outside of managing hero ranks, and moderating the story for balancing, I wanted to experiment and see what players would do against each other with the stakes so high, and what stories people would write. I had written a whole lore page, time line justification, balancing and power system, and even legitimate reasons for lack of canon characters.

I think what stopped me from making the site and opening it was because of my chaotic writing style. While yes, blind siding people is fun, but I feel like such unpredictable story arcs would drive people away from joining. And to even get people to join.. To say the least, I have a horrible personality, and I feared that would deter people from joining. I also didn't have the money to up-keep a jcink premium forum, as the rp was probably going to be 18+ due to mature content and violence.

I also lacked people to help me get the site going. This was around the time my old site shut down, and nobody really liked to stray away from fantasy rp. So.. I was kinda by myself on this.

Idk, maybe with enough support I'll revive this idea.

EDIT: Even if I dont ever make it, I'd love to see someone else try. Maybe I'd help out /shrug. I just- am horrible with heading stuff. One-Punch has a special place in my heart, and I would love to see more sites surrounding such a good story.
last edit on May 2, 2020 23:14:18 GMT by dijit.exe
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Oof I have so many that I will give you a short rundown of each.

unfold you

A progressive post apocalyptic board inspired by Resident Evil, The Division and 28 Days Later. It has arcs that are semi-member and is a board with a beginning and an end since it follows a story and board sections open and close depending on where we are in the plot. Basically, there is a site wide story line that require members to participate in - like reading a book and going through chapters, except that members are writing this one collaboratively. Therefore there is no static plot but one that is going to be revealed with time and with the help of the members.

E.g the SoL arc, the spread of the virus, the mutation of it, how it effects the monsters that were revived, or perhaps later on experimenting on people for a vaccine, some of the infected recovering without aid and politics covering it due to ethical questions etc.

That said, I wrote the events, whole arcs, member groups, chapters, systems etc back in 2016, tried my hand at a skin last year but just never opened it. It's just in bad taste to make a site where characters get quarantined when we deal with corona in real life already.

justicar

Justicar is a shelter, sanctuary and perhaps a church for the fallen ones and wanderers both. It's secluded from foreign eyes, hidden deep under the mines where everything but the supernatural can survive the heat. It has a population of a few tens of thousand of residents, but is at a growing number. There are demons around the corners, angels with their wings tucked away, crusaders with cracked armors crawling on the streets. It's a second chance to exiled ones, a bazaar for the travelers and house of desperate prayers.

There is no money here, but instead, your deeds on the living worlds are sold. When a person prays or commits a sin, you are required to be there to pass on a judgment, or swing their following actions on your way. For this, you shall receive a golden coin, which translates into ration of food and other resources. A common language for holy species had been crafted far long ago, but after the genocide, it was replaced with English.

Justiciar is a representation of todays X, down to the changing climate, culturally rich environment and beautifully crafted architecture. The species have no way of knowing each other unless their transformation is complete.
a divinity roleplay set in an alternate world called sanctuary where it is inspired by bleach primarily, then defense devil, bayonetta & diablo.

on the smaller side i had farewell to the kings - an attack on titan inspired vrmmo that is meant to play like dark souls where everything is tough and cooperation is the key - probably too niche to actually be a thing. i also have been wanting a ffxv setting, but not plot, (royalty, futurism, post-apoc) forever but guess who will never make it.

i later learned to keep my scope small with time and would probably change a ton if i were to rethink anything. last time, i overdid with setting/possibilities and ended up burning myself out so badly.
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Oh jeezus... I've had so many. The one I can think of the farthest back was one based on Fushigi Yuugi, which I called Wo Ai Ni... I even had someone help me make a skin for it and everything. But I never could get the info written up for it and had more fun making the graphics and such.

The biggest project, and one I keep telling myself I will open because it is SO CLOSE TO FINISHED is one based off of Final Fantasy: Explorers, XIV, Tactics, all those fun games... I worked really hard on the lore and I did everything by myself... I've never really shared it but here goes: Esuna, my forever WIP baby. Seriously. It has been a WIP for six years...

Honestly, it is such a huge project that it was daunting to have to run it by myself. SO I never opened it. Couldn't find a co-admin that would stick around. T_T;
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Oh jeezus... I've had so many. The one I can think of the farthest back was one based on Fushigi Yuugi, which I called Wo Ai Ni... I even had someone help me make a skin for it and everything. But I never could get the info written up for it and had more fun making the graphics and such.

The biggest project, and one I keep telling myself I will open because it is SO CLOSE TO FINISHED is one based off of Final Fantasy: Explorers, XIV, Tactics, all those fun games... I worked really hard on the lore and I did everything by myself... I've never really shared it but here goes: Esuna, my forever WIP baby. Seriously. It has been a WIP for six years...

Honestly, it is such a huge project that it was daunting to have to run it by myself. SO I never opened it. Couldn't find a co-admin that would stick around. T_T;
This site looks amazing! Great aesthetics and it only took me a minute or two to grasp the system.
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hello. it's me again. i'm back

caesura is the closest i've ever come to opening up a site (minus the one i'm currently working on). i've been roleplaying in the indie marvel scene on tumblr for, oh, maybe 9-10 years now? and i was really itching for that kind of experience but in more of a cohesive group. no duplicates, synchronized histories between characters (mostly), still the freedom to grab and take elements from various marvel sources as wanted, and more importantly, no snap/thanos/gritty-edgy-nobody-can-be-friends shit.

which like, don't get me wrong, there'd still be a million opportunities for like, angst circles and shit. but i just don't like thanos or the direction they went with civil war, so like. none of that. we can start with good slice of life and team building dynamics and characters actually being friends first, dammit, before we throw them in the meat grinder

i'm still proud of that skin. i think it's neat, if a bit too bright for my tastes right now. also i made a really cute miniprofile for it that i'm proud of
last edit on May 3, 2020 15:47:38 GMT by syhrinx
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special acknowledgement that none of these concepts are ones i would return to except as private games. i have stuff laying around for fun, but these became novel settings or made me nervous to open to the public. i am a grouch living alone in a very nice trash can and i like it that way. it’s better for all involved.

(can a get a hell yeah for who owned their bizarre personality quirks. i respect you. you are a philosopher; this era’s socrates. we are cut from the same fated cloth, except mine is the one where i am a cranky hermit with no patience or common sense. anyway, the point is we are both horrible. :thumbs up: )




supernatural/psych horror – a fully fictional midwestern city setting engineered around the existence of living nightmares, playable urban legends, ghosts, demons, eldritch abominations, and other supernatural horrors. sat atop a cave system literally intended to be a nod to a gateway to hell. involved a retooling of silent hill’s hellscape that periodically invades player character lives, summoned through black magic or satanic or pagan rituals. best categorized as stephen king-esque in that the setting was intentionally realistic and disturbing by virtue of its sitting parallel to reality as we perceive it. bad stuff happened as well, to keep in line with the “survival” in survival horror, but even dead characters could continue as ghosts unable to move on or be possessed by demonic presences written by the player.


quirky fantasy – a run-of-the-mill fantasy setting with an especially whimsical flair. the game took place on a moving island largely unexplored beyond a majora’s mask-esque clock tower governed by a drunk, amicable wizard deity of time. surly, foul-mouthed post bunnies dive-bombed from the sky to deliver mail, phantom trains (in the literal sense of being a ghost) chugged away happily throughout all corners of the town and its homes, and characters came at the behest of the kingdom in a fantasy-style gold rush to, idk, find legendary treasure. there was an explorer!element as a whole in that, while the areas were designed into the forum already, the intention was to use events as a method for characters to discover and open new boards over time. very rune-factory inspired but had a mix of little witch academy and grim grimoire in that magic books dictated physics and occasionally went haywire to funny, wacky effects like the entire island blipping out of one existence into another or time loops. since this was common, everyone who was a town NPC canonically pretended it either didn't happen or was over, so why think too much about it.


cognitive spies – a sci-fi setting where all characters developed complete retrograde amnesia for a plot reason which goes unexplained to everyone in the game. the intelligence agency followed was a global initiative exploring the use of hacking. there were two factions: white hackers (government) versus black hackers (rogue), and players within these groups were attempting to find out what exactly happened to the leader of a major terrorist group who went quiet roughly around the same time as the amnesia started. drew heavily from the animatrix, paprika, eden of the east, inception, and black mirror as influences. generally played with this idea of “how would you write a character whose history was unknown to them beyond a certain point?” was a combo of political espionage, artificial intelligence mumbo jumbo, and mystery since players were encouraged to write their character's story in more depth as they discovered new plot points.
last edit on May 3, 2020 16:29:43 GMT by spectrum
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the only real "site that could have been" thing that i have is secunda, a noncanon elder scrolls rp set a few hundred years after the events of skyrim

the main concept of the site is that it's faction-based and with a user-driven plot. factions would be the ones seen in the games: thieves guild, dark brotherhood (i.e. assassins), mage's guild, fighter's guild, blades (i.e royal guard), town guard, etc

characters would gain "points" for their faction by posting in threads, plotting, basically just being active around site. every month or so, events would revolve around the factions with the highest & lowest point totals. so if, say, the thieves guild had the highest point total and the blades had the lowest point total, there'd be an event where the thieves guild is planning on breaking into the royal treasury and the blades need to devise a way to stop it. plot beats would be dictated by the outcomes of these events and ideally everything would conglomerate into a site "timeline" that helps trigger future events.

i'm too flighty to ever staff and honestly everything from trying to figure out how to handle faceclaims to making combat systems to needing to read so....much....elder scrolls....lore....makes me wanna combust into flames orz
last edit on May 3, 2020 16:47:52 GMT by selkie
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Oh jeezus... I've had so many. The one I can think of the farthest back was one based on Fushigi Yuugi, which I called Wo Ai Ni... I even had someone help me make a skin for it and everything. But I never could get the info written up for it and had more fun making the graphics and such.

The biggest project, and one I keep telling myself I will open because it is SO CLOSE TO FINISHED is one based off of Final Fantasy: Explorers, XIV, Tactics, all those fun games... I worked really hard on the lore and I did everything by myself... I've never really shared it but here goes: Esuna, my forever WIP baby. Seriously. It has been a WIP for six years...

Honestly, it is such a huge project that it was daunting to have to run it by myself. SO I never opened it. Couldn't find a co-admin that would stick around. T_T;
This site looks amazing! Great aesthetics and it only took me a minute or two to grasp the system.


Thanks! I still really want to open this someday and maybe I will since I'm stuck at home now. I had such high hopes for this place~ it deserves to see the light of day.

I just need to probably revamp some things and it'll be good!
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i think the site i will forever remember as "the site that could have been" for me is link cable.

it was supposed to be a vrmmo pokemon site that was really kind of..... meant to turn a lot of assumptions about pokemon rp on their heads (like the combat system was largely different, legendaries were going to be a thing, there were going to be really cool missions and boss fights, lots of member modding, just..... an honestly fun time tbeh) and i had a lot of really cool bits of coding for it (like a sortable pokedex so i could casually do things like "the hoenn expansion" and i made ample use of the awards and shop system for jcink to be able to give out pixel awards for things and automate a lot of the shop process) and the templates were really gorgeous and i really loved the skin.

it was meant to be the successor of my last pokemon site, reach for the sky, and i almost salvaged it a couple times years later either as it was meant to be or as a panfandom setting, before i choked on it because i'm honestly just....... so burned out on staffing these days, i don't really have the energy or motivation for the bulk of the work anymore, and the prospect of having to try to run a site that's the combination of two mod heavy genres just...... killed me inside.

i still hold out hope that i might go back to it one day, but i'm also.... very realistic about the fact that i don't think i'll ever be able to do it the full justice it deserves (at least not in the foreseeable future) and i've largely accepted that it's probably better to leave it in the grave.

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A couple sites that I had ideas for, made, but never opened.

tokyo mew mew: at your service. inspired by the shoujo anime/manga that we all have seen in our childhood at least once, it was supposed to be an au take on the series with more maturity, a lot more locations to explore, and more options for characters with powers. Original mew mews, original aliens, two knights, four progenitors(like ryuu, but with different domestic animals presumably), and even a couple of humans who had been experimented on before the Mew Project and obtained powers because of it. The only problem was that I could never form a cohesive plotline/direction for it that didn't mimic the series, and I was largely nervous that it wouldn't work out because of the larger availability and accession of sailor moon sites floating around.

chemical compound. based on the concept that everyone goes somewhere after they die. An original rp beautifully located in the Toshima ward/city within Tokyo, which was picked primarily because of the optimistic name of its "Sunshine City" building, its diversity compared to other places in Tokyo, and because it is as much of a commercial as it is a residential district -- it just seemed like the perfect place. The idea of the roleplay was that each person would be (re)born as a color, and other characters would only know them by that color. No last names. No first names. Just a color. The twist being that these characters were reincarnated not remembering ANYTHING of their former life, and only knew of the life they currently have in the rp; the reason being that each and every character had committed suicide when they had been on earth. The game would focus on the different sol struggles of each character as they slowly start to remember who they are and what they did in their past, how they died, etc. This was an idea I was in pure love with, but I came up short when trying to work out how characters could remember their past lives, what events could be done, if there would be a higher power, staff influence, if the suicidal concept would be too offensive, if characters should be rewarded for memory retrieval, and if/how to tie into possible soulmate mechanics. it's only half-way done, and I always thought I would finish it one day. I might try to get it off the ground eventually, but I would need someone to bounce ideas off of help me fill out all the missing pieces, and convince me that it would last.
last edit on May 5, 2020 3:53:15 GMT by Deleted
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Thou Shall Not Bite. A small town vampire site, where the vampires were out of the coffin and it was forbidden to feed on humans in city limits. Unfortunately no one got the concept ...