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[F&F] - Mission Statement
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Fables and Fantasy RP is a Minecraft Server set in the magical and mysterious continent of Eden where players embark on epic adventures provided by the server’s talented team and player-driven content and narratives to shape and push the world forward as history is written. Fables, or FNF, aspires to create the biggest online “TTRPG” experience inspired by popular games in that genre such as D&D, Warhammer RPG, Pathfinder, etc. on the platform, diverging away from the established mold of Roleplay Servers and instead forming the biggest online gaming table to date where a team of driven and talented Game & Loremasters set an overall base narrative and setting within they drive the natural order of the world forward. At the same time, players themselves shape their personal space around them in the form of nations, camps, tribes, religions, families, and other content they wish to place into this world to create their own legacy and become part of Eden’s history.
The Core Experience
At the heart of the Fables experience should be the sense of being on an adventure every time you log on with enough player-driven content and filler content to keep players busy between events. Now, Fables and Fantasy has been in development for several years and even though great leaps towards achieving this end goal of realizing the vision of the Fables server have been made, there is still a long way to go. And to cement the vision and show our community and staff where we wish to go, publishing a clear and cut mission statement felt like the right way to start that. To get all the noses in the right direction and allow everyone to peek into the books and allow everyone to theorize and work on the vision as it seems like not everyone is fully aware of what we are actually doing here on Fables. Not even those closest to management at times.
The envisioned core experience of Fables and Fantasy RP is less so focused on the mold of the classic MCRP experience. Where the world is simply a vessel that is populated by the creations of players and the world moves forward on a might-makes-right basis until one faction dominates the map, and then a reset happens on a new continent. This is what I like to call the RTS formula. It has proven to either act as a smash hit or killing factor on many servers that came before us and it personally is a way of play that does not interest me (Arkhun) at all, thus having pushed me to create my own project where I wish to try something different.
My core long-term vision on Fables on the long term is to as stated above, create the largest online TTRPG table where lots of players come together to go on adventures together in an established world and setting created by the two most important teams when it comes to shaping the experience, that being Lore- and Gamemasters. The Lore team in essence is the team that crafts the toolkit used by Gamemasters to create their adventures. The world, its workings, magic, monsters, plants, materials, and more are being created by the Lore Team as tools for the Gamemasters to bring the game to life. In contrast, Gamemasters are the masters and rulers of everything that is not a player within Fables. Ranging from NPC (factions), monsters, nature, and large magical events. The team of talented individuals making up the Gamemaster team are in essence the beating heart and soul of Eseron and the powers surrounding it and are responsible for pulling people into the greater narratives that move the world forward. The current rendition of the Bone Lord’s campaign is a perfect example of such a campaign.
A constant stream of campaigns that invite people to come and adventure with their fellow players to reach a common goal is the endgame for Fables. Yet of course you cannot always be on adventure, so what do we do with the downtime? The downtime should be filled with player-driven content and automated server content that allows players to prepare for the next adventure. Creating new equipment, gathering resources, forming factions, and warring with others for supremacy, etc. are all part of this downtime content while GMs move the greater wheels of Eseron to constantly ensure the world feels alive and powers beyond the player factions are constantly at play to threaten their existence.
Player created content
A large part of the FNF experience is player content and additions to the gameplay environment. Everyone has on many occasions a whole line-up of characters ready to delve into the world and leave their mark on Eseron. Important is to actively encourage the creative output of each and every player and make sure they feel happy and comfortable adding their creation to the greater story, yet what I also deem important for a believable setting is to ensure that player content falls within the outer boundaries of what is possible on FNF. Control over the setting and what goes and not in every regard should lie with the Lore- and Gamemaster teams and the player is allowed to exist freely within that boundary. Examples of what this means can be described as follows:
- When a player chooses to create an Attian Human to play, they are expected to make their own character with their own quirks and personality, but at heart, to an extend they will always need to be an Attian Human unless a good reason through RP is otherwise provided. An example would be an Attian who spends their entire life in Luminion. They are obviously an Elvenized version of an Attian. But even then, the looks and such still have to align with the Attian vision.
- Cultures established in Fables have to be respected. One thing I (Arkhun) hate more than anything is a player taking over a (part of) an existing faction and pretending as if all established lore of the culture residing in that region is now irrelevant and the player takes the faction and completely breaks down everything established before and replace it with essentially nothing. The Hadrian takeover of 2023 is the pinnacle of that. When the entire established community was driven out of the faction and the entire lore and culture of that faction were declared void on day one of the takeover with nothing other in place than a promise of something different, maybe, one day. Fr fr. I expect that when someone gets their hand on a creation established over years by a lot of players, they take what is given to them and expand on it, give it their own spin, but never disrespect what is there because they don’t like what is there. A comparison would be someone taking hold of a fictional version of the Roman Empire in a server and suddenly deciding that they don’t like Romans and prefer to turn it into a large Egyptian nation, then voiding the existence of anything Roman and from that point on expecting everyone to forget what they are and play they way *THEY* like it. A similar example would be taking over a Viking faction and turning them into Arab merchants because you like that. From my point of view, cultures can change and should evolve throughout the generations of players, but it should always go naturally and through the progression of Lore and RP. Not on a whim.
Respect each other’s creations and make sure that any alterations and additions are done properly. Make sure it fits the setting and if you would like to see something completely new that is not found in the current line-up, write it out and submit it before applying it to make sure it does not feel out of place and seamlessly fits into the world and thus toolkit for Gamemasters to use. You, as the player in charge of a faction, are responsible for allowing its RP to move forward, not choking it out. A faction is not a simple template that can be used to paste whatever over it depending on who owns it. It is the RP hub for a whole culture of Fables and should be handled with care.
Okay, so where do you think we should go now?
A roadmap-ish for 2024
As stated above, I think Fables is moving in a good direction, yet the road has not been walked out to the end and we can do much to greatly improve on the player gameplay experience. A few bullet points then, as to what I would like to do in the coming period as we slowly make our way to the end of the year 2024.
A roadmap-ish for 2024
As stated above, I think Fables is moving in a good direction, yet the road has not been walked out to the end and we can do much to greatly improve on the player gameplay experience. A few bullet points then, as to what I would like to do in the coming period as we slowly make our way to the end of the year 2024.
- Introduce more large event lines similar to Krisa’s excellent handling of the modern bone lord campaign. It engages players and is of excellent quality that should be expanded on. Especially the time pressure format of “On date x, this happens, prepare for it. Good luck!” works perfectly to keep people busy, and preparing well for such events should be rewarded properly while not doing so should also have a major impact. Be it the loss of lives, towns, castles, etc.
- In order to keep returning players engaged and up-to-date with the current state of the setting, introduce IC-yearly major event posts to give a recap of what happened that year on the server. Kind of like a newsletter explaining power changes, event outcomes and movements, etc.
- Explore the concept of rating faction activity not based on (just) upkeep, but primarily on activity.
- Work on adding more progression and downtime content through a profession system to unlock the player market from its current state, get rid of excess resources, and allow for a greater dependency on each other since not everyone can create everything anymore.
- Focus with the Lore Team on establishing the setting more properly to give Gamemasters the tools they need to run events as described above and thus take away frustration points where a lot has to be improvised constantly due to missing lore while also giving players more options to play with for their own creations.
- Explore ways of adding more tools for players and GMs for communication and immersion. RP signs, a proper IC messaging system, etc.
- Explore ways instead of jumping from form to form for faction establishment, creating a way for new (GM) factions to establish themselves through RP and resource gathering that is not just coin and may overlap with existing land claims.