I\'ve seen a lot of arguments in this forum about such and such fantasy icon not existing in the PS universe. The problem with this is that it is still very early, and the PS universe hasn\'t been fully defined yet. There is still a LOT of room for new concepts and aspects of the planeshift universe to be fleshed out.
One of the things I like about planeshift is the attempt to be unique and to avoid extremely common fantasy world aspects, like dragons and orcs, etc... Perhaps it has failed in some respects, such as having dwarven, elven, and cat-people characters, but that doesn\'t mean we can\'t still try to adhere to this direction when roleplaying.
Now, when it comes to roleplaying, I generally take a very open ended stance. I think people should be allowed a lot of freedom to roleplay as they like, whether they are new at roleplaying or experienced, good or bad (not saying all experienced roleplayers are good or newbies bad), and be able to roleplay casually or seriously. So take the above as more of a suggestion than a rule per say. It doesn\'t take many limitations and rules before you being to seriously stifle creativity which is what roleplaying is all about.
That said, I do want to make the open suggestion that people \"start from scratch\" when it comes to characters, creatures, etc.. in planeshift. By that I mean try to just throw away most of the popular rpg and fantasy lore, forget you ever read Tolkien(sp?) or Vampire Chronicals, or played D&D, and remember that we are creating a whole new world here.
Now, as an example of this, let\'s take a look at vampires in planeshift. A few people have argued to great lengths (and with short tempers) for and against vampire roleplay in planeshift. Some people who\'ve been in support of vampire roleplay actually yell at people who try to make a unique spin on vampires for planeshift, citing some vampire reference or another as they way they SHOULD be done.
Well, vampire roleplay is fun, but obviously it has been done to death, and very unoriginal. But, here\'s an alternative:
Vampires can represent a lot of things. Fundamentally, they can represent secret societies, corruption of a person\'s soul (a hunger for \"carnal\" pleasures, taken to the extreme), or a \"curse\" or \"punishment\" for a past misdeed (or the misdeed of an ancestor) by a higher being. Now, given those elements and what we have of the planeshift\'s background, we have a lot of possibilities. To start out with, we have the Red Way, a dark sect of magic that has corrupting effects on the caster and her victims. Some of the dark way spells absorb life and magical energy from the victim. In addition, the planeshift universe has multiple gods (three were mentioned in the background), so it\'s possible that an outside dark god or goddess is secretly creating a sect of followers within the general population. Perhaps this goddess curses her followers, so that they must do her bidding or suffer dire consequences. So already you can see there are a lot of alternate possibilities rather than simply roleplaying as a \"vampire\".
Anyway, just wanted to put that out there.
- Miya
