Kevinswatch Novel Based On A World of Our Creation

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Kevinswatch Novel Based On A World of Our Creation

Post by aTOMiC »

Would it be possible for the writers of Kevinswatch to produce a collection of stories based upon a world of our creation?

Each author writing his/her story using shared characters/environments/elements creating essentially a Kevinswatch Anthology type collection with a common theme.

This idea has occured to us before but I was thinking about it with a fresh perspective the other day from the point of view of some watchers asking to contribute fan fiction to the anthology. What if they could? We would read all kinds of interesting takes on established characters. Speculative stories about Foamfollower, Shetra, Mhoram, Prothal, TC, LA etc.

Okay. We can't do fan fiction but we can do the next best thing. Create a world of our own and let everyone go nuts.
I imagine a familiar fantasy/sci fi world where times are difficult. There is a dark, powerful, nearly unstoppable antagonist bent on total domination. There are heroes gifted with incredible powers. Armies battling for the survival/desctruction of the realm etc.
I'd like to see both magic and tech possible and pitted against each other. Space travel and mystical teleportation. Personal and expansive, grand conflicts. Shady, bit players out for themselves in the midst of the larger drama unfolding.

If we establish the facts then the individual authors can take all of those toys and have a ball playing around with them.
We'd have to agree that no matter where an individual story was taken you could not ulitmately destroy the "dark lord' or kill off the main protagonist. You could however kick their butts around alot. Introduce whatever new characters, weapons, history you want to serve your part of the story. Have them interact with the established personalities. You would have free reign to kill off your new character if you desire or make him/her available for another story.

I think we would build an intriquing, compelling world rather quickly with moments of wild, amazing events full of tragedy, treachery, sacrifice and honor.

I for one would look forward to destroying whole regions, laying waste to worlds and killing off thousands of characters. Which I usually do. :biggrin:

Just a thought ladies and gentlemen.

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Post by High Lord Tolkien »

I like it.
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Post by aliantha »

Sounds like fun. :)
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Post by stonemaybe »

aTOMic, you don't spend enough time in Gravin Threndor :D There's already all that going on, several times over!

But I do think it's a great idea.
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Post by Vraith »

Neat: play time in the KW sandbox.
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Post by aTOMiC »

Stonemaybe wrote:aTOMic, you don't spend enough time in Gravin Threndor :D There's already all that going on, several times over!

But I do think it's a great idea.

I only know what's going on in there peripherally. I see posts about it and it's been suggested that some of the content there would be appropriate for the KWAnthologies.

Aside from the fact that there are some of us who do not participate in the role playing thats going on I'm guessing the main difference would be that the aim here would be to possibly publish the stories we create as we do with the Anthologies.

I guess I really should peek in on Gravin Threndor in any case. :biggrin:
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Post by stonemaybe »

I guess I really should peek in on Gravin Threndor in any case.
You should! Though they're classed as roleplaying games, I see them more, and get more out of them, as world-building and writing games. (and I'm only playing 2 of them!)
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Post by Menolly »

aTOMiC wrote:I only know what's going on in there peripherally. I see posts about it and it's been suggested that some of the content there would be appropriate for the KWAnthologies.
If I recall correctly, Syl had a story published in one of the anthologies about Simjen and jastrau and the leaf. Ah yes, in Anthology III, The Tale of the Pipe. That was straight out of a Pantheon contest. So Gravin Threndor has already been represented in the anthologies...
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Post by rdhopeca »

I'm in.
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Post by lucimay »

great idea aTomic. it was, in fact, how i saw my role in Pantheon (stone just got here before me! :P :lol: ) and why i wrote and played as i did.

Creator and i collaborated serveral times (in p2, i believe) on scenes with our characters (i believe one of those scenes took place in a tavern and was the first time the infamous Dwarrow Ale appeared in the game! :D) interacting. it was great fun. Creator was really good at it and it was the first and only time i've ever collaborated in writing with another writer. THAT was totally thrilling to me. i loved it and would love to do it again! :D

and also would LOVE to get Seareach involved in something like this. she is awesome writer!!!!
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Post by High Lord Tolkien »

Would it be something like Martin's Wildcard-verse concept.
Where we are given an outline or a framework with a few themes to follow?

I'd like to suggest a reverse of Mordant's Need then.

Where mirrors in our reality allow openings into and out of other realities.
Much like Stargate but the worlds/realities we connect to are only limited by the writers imaginations.
We have to create a conflict and have it resolved (or perhaps not) by the end of our stories.
The pass through limit would depend on the size of the mirror.
Keep the science behind the mirrors vague, make it just a rare combination of minerals so it's not ALL mirrors or...... something like that.
Something simple.
Stories could involve the dangers of introductions of alien ecosystems, being of incredible abilities, exotic energy sources, Zombies, plagues, cures, social interactions/relationships......

Everything that was only barely hinted at in Mordants need.
We could do anything.

I don't know.
Just tossing the idea out there.
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Post by rdhopeca »

I like the idea a lot, HLT. It would allow us to create our own characters in the "alternate realities" if needed before bringing them to our reality...
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Post by Vraith »

Just to make sure I'm reading HLT correctly...the "main" universe isn't the main because it's the "real" real one, but because it's the POV universe of the stories? [heh...I hope that makes sense, and I hope that's what HLT meant, cuz it sounds cool to me...and not having it be mirrors per se but something else works for the stranger-minded people, who might want a place where mirrors are not possible in any ordinary sense...again, if I'm reading that portion correctly]

A thing to work out maybe: simultaneous writing? sequential? or whatever floats your boat?
Would if be kosher, or intrusive if Rhod. wrote about A, B, C and meno continued B,C's stories with d and x, while I went back and wrote "I'm A...b&c said L happened...but this is the truth.."
Bah..I guess I'm asking, do the stories just interact in environment? Or is it completely open?
(I'm probably getting ahead of the game...maybe just let it go, and what works works).
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Post by High Lord Tolkien »

I don't think I'd be interested in trying to continue someone else's story or want someone continuing mine.
From what I've read in the past, like Wild Cards for example, each short story stands on it's own.
I've seen an event in one story influence another and characters written in a way that shows they know of each other.
That's always pretty cool, imo.

Vraith, I'm sorry but I have no idea what you're saying.
Sounds like you made it more complex than I had in mind.

I'm just tossing ideas out there.
I like aTOMic's idea too.
Just make it a "Wild World" of ideas and stories.
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Post by aliantha »

The advantage I see to using mirrors like in Mordant's Need is that you could do anything with it. SRD brought in a spaceman, fer goodness sake. So if folks were more inspired to write sci-fi or whatever than fantasy, they could do that -- as long as they worked in a translating mirror somehow...
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Post by matrixman »

I'm an interested party. This might be the start of something good.
But I don't quite follow some of the suggestions. So I'll wait until there is a consensus as to what this is about before I commit myself.
In other words, no promises. :wink:
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Post by aTOMiC »

The central idea that sparked this notion is the fan fiction perspective. As far as the actual stories are concerned they, like most fan fiction, are independent of each other but bound together by the central core of the original text. I understand in our case we have no original text so we'll have to rely on an overall guideline/plot that we will create before we begin.
We need to establish the landscape/geography of our playground. What is at stake? Who is involved? What are the ground rules? Every story has to establish these basic building blocks in order to function.

HLT's mirror translator is a cool idea and can easily be included in the general physics of our world. It also doesn't matter if someone else comes up with a different way to get their characters/tools to where to they need to go just as long as where they go has some connection to our general theme.

Let's say there is a single world where the main drama takes place. Every aspect of our story should have some relevance to that drama.

An example would be if I wrote a story about a distant asteroid outpost/listening station where only 5 people live and work. I could tell a story about how one day a man appears suddenly without explanation. He's wearing badly burned robes and is carrying a staff but is otherwise healthy and alert. His intentions are unknown but he focuses on a young woman/scientist who will at some point be taken away to our central world by the man, after the other 4 crewmen fight valiantly to protect her but ultimately are unequal to the stranger's unusual powers. This woman at some point later in the story will play a pivotal role in a drama well beyond her ken. Ala Terisa Morgan. In general my story mainly deals with a personal conflict in a claustrophobic space station however in the larger story it's impact is relevant. The mysterious man is one of the main characters in our general story. As if Lord Mhoram translated himself, at great cost, to a Mars station to collect someone absolutely necessary to confound Lord Foul's plans.

You can weave hundreds of different stories scenerios this way. My example takes us away from the central conflict but I could just as easily write a story about the leader of the 101st brigade battling "Lord Butthole's" minions on the slopes of his castle or whatever. Right there in the thick of it or way off on another world. Anything is possible.

At least that's what I had in mind. :-)
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Post by wayfriend »

As I am interested, but also am sure I won't find the time to contribute ... it seems to me like the shared realm idea is a good one, but then when you let everyone bring in characters from another universe, it defeats the purpose, as there's not much left that is shared. Writing a story in a predecided setting is a boundary which is an interesting challenge; it's watered down by adding parallel universes which are tantamount to saying that there's no boundary at all, to the point of, why bother?

The idea of incongruous translations from one universe to another is also an interesting idea, but it has nothing to do with a shared realm sort of thing.

EDIT: here's a thought.... what about a collection of stories about people in the real world who are magically transported to a fantasy realm? It would sort of be a nod to the Chroncles and Mordant but not cross any legal lines. You could even get together and have every author share the same fantasy realm, as a twist.
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Post by High Lord Tolkien »

wayfriend wrote:
The idea of incongruous translations from one universe to another is also an interesting idea, but it has nothing to do with a shared realm sort of thing.

It could be if the initial batch of stories all shared a theme.
The next batch, or volume, could build upon the previous if a writer was so inclined.

For example, I could write a scene where my characters are being pursued by a vampire and they save themselves by driving by a several square mile area of the earth that is being blasted by a localized solar flare created by a writer in Volume I or something.
(sunlight kills vampires type of thing)

wayfriend wrote:EDIT: here's a thought.... what about a collection of stories about people in the real world who are magically transported to a fantasy realm? It would sort of be a nod to the Chroncles and Mordant but not cross any legal lines. You could even get together and have every author share the same fantasy realm, as a twist.
You'd have to create a new world and that's tough. :lol:
Using our reality as a base and introducing outside characters is easier, imo.
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Post by iQuestor »

I like it, though I usually like Toms ideas.

Anyone read WellWorld novels? That was interesting. I like the idea of a seprate world, and each person's story involves them being transported there, completing some task or solving some problem, and then returning.

The world itself would need rules. In Well WOrld, the world was made up of 1026 hexogonal land masses, each with a different race. In a world, either Magic or technology worked, but not both. There were different levels of technology, with some stone agers and some very advanced. If you flew a plane over a Hex where technology didnt work, you crashed, so spaceflight for those people was close to impossible.

If people found WellWorld, they were captured and fed into a portal and they came out into a random Hex, and were converted to that particular race of people.

Our world could have similar rules -- new people were identified and treated in certain ways, either angels, demons, or something else. It would be fun to set the rules and then see how people interpret them and twine them into a meaningful story.

I like it, its a good idea.
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