Yeah, that attitude is a big part of why I've been debating on the randomization part vs. some other method. Re-rolls might be fine and like I said, I'd plan for at least one aspect they get to have full control over so that would also hopefully make people feel more comfortable (ex: can pick the character's gender, but not their species so they could be anything from human to animalfolk of some kind...though I know that has an issue cause art).


On another note, sexuality is something I would not have as being randomized as that I think is part of what would be interesting to explore based on the character's gender, so they're free to play that however they want. Admittedly, part of that was I had a character on a trapped in VRMMORPG site who had been crossplaying before being trapped and I had wanted to explore their dealing with those type of questions as part of the character's story but sadly never was able to get things going.

If, however, the randomization is too much of a hurtle then will have to reconsider how to set it up. The randomization/point system/whatever is all just a way to sort of force people mechanically to play with the theme a bit more.

So, a Log Horizon/MHA kind of mixup? I could dig it, but depends on the type of system you want to draw on to do the RPG mechanics (I might suggests "Masks: A New Generation" as a potential starting point if you don't want a DnD 5e kind of inspired system).

So, since it's gotten some hits in "Sites I Want to See" and my post for "Quick Interest Check" was getting long, might as well take a shot at being able to drag myself to making this idea a bit more of a reality:

So, had a thought on an isekai-ish site I thought of on this thread a while back, where the idea was people dying and the isekai world being a sort of "second chance" to live a different life. Had an idea of a site mechanic where your character's new "life" is partially random, like species (cause fantasy series), background, maybe even gender or something. Perhaps characters get a boon of some sort and get to pick one or a few of these, but not enough boons/points/etc. to get to choose everything. Might allow for an interesting setup as people deal with their past lives vs. new ones and adjusting.

Watching/reading Beastars has reinvigorated my desire to try a Zootopia RP. I knew of like one I used to be on, but then they started taking stuff from the original plot with, like, the shock collars and stuff so it was getting too dark, and an outright Beastars setting might be a bit too much for me too (I like my fluff), but something somewhere between Zootopia and Beastars might do the trick. Zootopia setting with a bit of the Beastar's world-building to raise the tension a little while keeping an ultimately upbeat feel.

...basically, I just want Zootopia/Beastars mix without the "Hey, here's the shady part of town where they sell corpses, body parts, and just a bit of trafficking for flavor."

I've been on a fantasy-setting MMO site for a while, and while I'm enjoying myself I do find there's a bit of bloat as systems gotten more complex so I've been considering a site that relies on Dungeon World-type mechanics (a variant of the Powered by the Apocalypse) instead and maybe changing things up with a broader isekai setting than MMO just to kind of move away from being super stat heavy but maybe keeping up some of that flavor.

Anyway, of things I've always found potentially interesting for MMO/Isekai settings is having characters dealing with potentially wild differences between their old and new lives, regardless of what that might be: class status, sex/gender, species, etc. (okay, I'll also just cop to being a bit of a furry too). How to actually express that in a setting is tricky, though. Obviously, it means a wide variety of races, but building it into site "plot" (which I'm always more freeform/slice of life) feels difficult to address. Perhaps a setting that's implied to be almost a sort of purgatory-ish place where the forms people take reflect subconscious desires or perhaps a little karmic retribution? That pushes more towards a fantasy setting, I think.

This is all just some initial thoughts on the idea: still plenty more to think about and build on.

Sooo, I used to run an RP based on The Lion Guard, that Lion King cartoon Disney's running. It's in its last season, and I'm a little nostalgic for it. The second season set up a good setting too, with "Pridelanders" vs Scar's Outland army. Creates conflict, allows for a mission/quest system, a good way to allow for an overlying plot.

I just don't have the time to really run the site, though. I mean, it exists, it's got a nice skin, an old Discord server, literally just needs the admin with the time for it, maybe update info (which I could help with).

This sounds like a murder mystery party, which sounds like an excellent social event idea!

But yeah, as someone whose mostly done slice-of-life-ish events, social events are something I'm familiar with but have frankly never quite done right. I have had luck with blind date events where people randomly paired, but that had the benefit of a group of RPers where most characters were pretty flexible in their orientations. Made things easy to balance out. It was great fun, though, but yeah, interest can die out pretty fast if you don't have:

A) Things to naturally get people interacting beyond whatever little niche they've already got going.