Collaborations guide 1

by Pascal

Rating: everyone
Tags:
Length: 3819

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Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-02-09 20:33:38 UTC

The World Builder

It's the World Builder's job to get everything started. If you've ever had any interest in storytelling, it's likely that you have some sort of world idea sitting around in your head, so this should be easy.

First, go over the history and important events of your world, something like this:

History:

Ponies looked up in fear as the sun was blotted out. A vast cloud of black smoke enveloped the land as the thing descended. It was bigger than a city, gigantic masses of twisted, black metal stretching from horizon to horizon. None knew from whence it came, or who or what it was, but it was apparent that a burning hatred for warmth and softness must lurk in its metal heart, for it was unstoppable, raining death and sickness down on the land, exterminating every living thing in its path as it made a beeline for Canterlot.

The ponies rallied at Cloudsdale to stop the thing's genocidal rampage. There was Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, and Shining Armor with his brave knights, and of course, the Elements of Harmony.

Spitfire's air force was no match for the metal beast's guns, but they were able to draw its fire away from Shining Armor's airship long enough for him board the creature. They fought for days, battling through deck after deck of mechanical monsters, finally reaching the metal beast's heart with heavy losses. As hordes of clockwork soldiers closed in for the kill, Shining Armor through himself into the heart, jamming the gears with his own body. The thing's engines stuttered as its power failed, and it came crashing to the ground, but at too heavy a cost.

Cloudsdale was destroyed, the land was covered in a shroud of poisonous smoke, goddesses and Elements of Harmony had vanished, and the beast's metal children have inherited the ruins of Equestria.

The beast lies in slumber even now. Some say Shining Armor is there still there, wrestling with the heart's gears after all these centuries, but a day will come when his strength will wane, and the beast will awake once more.

Alrighty, you've got the history. Now, describe the setting of the world. What is it like now?

Setting:

The world is mostly barren wastelands shrouded in endless night. A few ponies were evacuated from Cloudsdale and have established hidden settlements in the mountains, but most of pony kind lives in dystopian, mechanical cities, the largest of which is Cthon, the dormant ship which invaded Equestria long ago.

Go into detail about whatever comes to your mind. It can be used later when it comes time to write the story.

The machines bear no resemblance to living things. They are not "robotic people." Their bodies are bulky and inorganic, designed to perform their jobs with efficiency, and they never speak, instead communicating by using lights, morse code, or printing instructions to communicate. They use rudimentary electricity for things like lights, but they are powered mostly by burning fossil fuels. They come in many forms, from spidery Maintenance Crawlers, to monolithic Logic Engines. Warrior Chassis use bullets, rockets, or blades to fight, Industrial Chassis may improvise with saws, drills, or welding torches, and any machine with moving parts has the strength to crush bones, and should be considered a potential threat. All machines are made of strong metal, and therefor cannot be defeated with bare hooves. Machines with no means of defending themselves, or those with delicate parts, can be smashed by tools, but if ponies get into fight with a machine, it will most likely require them to become very creative. They will avoid water whenever possible. Water will corrode their chassis, and although being sprayed with a small amount of water will most likely do nothing, being submersed in water will stop their engines and cause them to become dormant. Being exposed to a strong electrical current will cause their brains to temporarily go haywire, and when they recover, they will have to re-read their memories to remember what they're supposed to be doing.

Their brains are not silica-based, like modern day computers. They instead use a variety of tiny levers and switches to make calculations, and they record their memories by stamping symbols onto sheets of gold foil. If a pony can deactivate a machine, they can fool it by replacing it's memory foil with one of their own creation.

The machines lead strangely decadent existences. They employ ponies for tasks that a single machine could do easily. Many forgo the use of legs/wheels/wings/propellors and instead enslave ponies to carry them.

They are rarely seen in public, preferring to sit behind the scenes and use ponies to oppress each other, though sometimes soldier-drones will be dispatched to deal with extreme instances of civil unrest.

Remember that you're not alone. Let's say you're stuck, so someone suggests this to you:

Ponies are suppressed through the use of religion. The Church of Cthon preaches that Cthon is the one true god, that flesh is sinful and metal is pure, and that ponies who lead pious lives will be rewarded with bodies of pure metal in Paradise. Celestia is called the Flesh Whore, and is portrayed as a devil who tempts the righteous with sinful thoughts. The head of the Church is Cthon, but the majority of its officials are ponies. In some cases, a pony with enough status can even have a few basic machines subordinate to her. Ponies in the Church often go through a process called Oblation, where parts of their bodies are removed and replaced with machinery. This can take the form of lung filters that help them breath the black smoke, metal legs that have increased strength and integrated firearms, or mechanical eyes that let them see in infra-red or night vision. To undergo Oblation and receive a metal blessing is considered a great honor, but it comes at a terrible cost. A pony is a creature of vibrance and life. To graft a piece of cold, lifeless metal to her body is more violating than any rape. All but the most strong-willed ponies cannot bear the burden of more than one metal blessing, and many develop mental disorders.

The World Builder decides what is cannon, but anyone can make suggestions, so make use of your fellow Roaches!

You can go on for pages and pages if you like, but let's just stop here for now.

The Chapter Drafter

Once that business is all taken care of, its time for the Chapter Drafter to get working. You go chapter by chapter, and write a brief synopsis for each one, going into bit more detail than the Story Drafter. This is probably going to be the most time-consuming job, so ASK FOR HELP! We might even want to employ multiple Chapter Drafters. Here's an example of the first two chapters:

Chapter One.

Before coming to the church, Twilight Sparkle had broken her vow of celibacy with a secret lover, and gave birth to her only daughter, Nyx. Breeding is strictly regulated by the Church. Adultery is a terrible sin, and unliscenced children are executed along with their parents. Twilight was forced to hide Nyx while she worked as a scholar, but the Black Smoke took its toll on the filly. She developed an endless, hacking cough, and died.

Twilight is heartbroken, but during a raid, finds a book of blasphemous magic that contains a ritual that claims to bring the dead back to life. She hides the book in her apartment, and attempts the ritual. Nyx's body rises and shrieks, but quickly falls again and becomes still. Dissapointed and furious by the spell's lack of effectiveness, she destroys it in a fit of rage.

The next day, she arrives at church to find the congregation massacred, and the steps drenched in blood. A few terrified survivors babble hysterically about a flesh-eating demon with the face of a child.

Chapter Two.

Rarity is a member of the inquisition, the Church's arm of justice. She roots out blasphemy and rebellion wherever it is found in the city.

While investigating the attack on the church, she comes across her friend Twilight Sparkle. She urges Twilight seek shelter until the demon is found, but Twilight seems to have some uncanny insight into the creature. When asked, Twilight claims that an angel came to her in a dream to warn her of the beast. Suspicious, but having no other leads, Rarity allows Twilight to tag along with her group of soldiers.

Twilight leads the party deep into the service tunnels beneath the city, to a secret place where she and her lover once met.

They find the creature. Nyx's body is fused hideously with the body of a demon, the Chapter Writer can be creative as to just how nasty looking it is.

The demon slaughters the soldiers while Twilight and Rarity run for cover. While they play a deadly cat and mouse game with the beast in the tunnels, Twilight confesses creating the demon, and comes up with a plan to banish it. Rarity is aghast, but with no time to argue, she goes along with Twilight's plan.

Using half-remembered fragments of spells from the book, Twilight binds the demon in place as it grapples with Rarity instead of banishing it. Rarity realizes Twilight's true plan: to use Rarity as bait while she cuts her daughter free from the monster.

Rarity uses her cannon leg to obliterate Nyx's body. With no reason to keep it, Twilight finishes the banishment spell, sending the demon back to whence it came.

Their friendship now over, they return to the church, where Twilight is brought before High Inquisitor Trixie to be sent to the Abattoir, the Church's most dreaded prison. Trixie, seeing Rarity as a potential rival, implicates her in the demon's rampage as well, and orders them both to be executed.

Their metal blessings are confiscated from their bodies, and they are thrown in a dank cell, where they meet four other unfortunate ponies who earned the ire of the Church.

And so on like that. Like I said, this is a big job, so we may very well get multiple Chapter Drafters onboard.

Once the Drafting is done, everyone involved writes one chapter (or more, if they want).

World Building Crap

This is the stuff I wrote for the World Building example with some additions by Wrath and Fiddlebottoms. It was done on a shared doccument, so if it seems like the author is talking to himself, thats because he was (or rather, they were).

History:

Ponies looked up in fear as the sun was blotted out. A vast cloud of black smoke enveloped the land as the thing descended. It was bigger than a city, gigantic masses of twisted, black metal stretching from horizon to horizon. None knew from whence it came, or who or what it was, but it was apparent that a burning hatred for warmth and softness must lurk in its metal heart, for it was unstoppable, raining death and sickness down on the land, exterminating every living thing in its path as it made a beeline for Canterlot.

The ponies rallied at Cloudsdale to stop the thing's genocidal rampage. There was Spitfire of the Wonderbolts, and Shining Armor with his brave knights, and of course, the Elements of Harmony.

Spitfire's air force was no match for the metal beast's guns, but they were able to draw its fire away from Shining Armor's airship long enough for him board the creature. They fought for days, battling through deck after deck of mechanical monsters, finally reaching the metal beast's heart with heavy losses. As hordes of clockwork soldiers closed in for the kill, Shining Armor through himself into the heart, jamming the gears with his own body. The thing's engines stuttered as its power failed, and it came crashing to the ground, but at too heavy a cost.

Cloudsdale was destroyed, the land was covered in a shroud of poisonous smoke, goddesses and Elements of Harmony had vanished, and the beast's metal children have inherited the ruins of Equestria.

The beast lies in slumber even now. Some say Shining Armor is there still there, wrestling with the heart's gears after all these centuries, but a day will come when his strength will wane, and the beast will awake once more.

Setting:

The world is mostly barren wastelands shrouded in endless night. A few ponies were evacuated from Cloudsdale and have established hidden settlements in the mountains, but most of pony kind lives in dystopian, mechanical cities, the largest of which is Cthon, the dormant ship which invaded Equestria long ago.

Note: During the discussion, we have decided to change the machines from industrial-age steampunk to more high-tech cyberpunk.

The machines bear no resemblance to living things. They are not "robotic people." Their bodies are bulky and inorganic, designed to perform their jobs with efficiency, and they never speak, instead communicating by using lights, morse code, or printing instructions to communicate. They come in many forms, from spidery Maintenance Crawlers, to monolithic Logic Engines. Warrior Chassis use bullets, rockets, or blades to fight, Industrial Chassis may improvise with saws, drills, or welding torches, and any machine with moving parts has the strength to crush bones, and should be considered a potential threat. All machines are made of strong metal, and therefor cannot be defeated with bare hooves. Machines with no means of defending themselves, or those with delicate parts, can be smashed by tools, but if ponies get into fight with a machine, it will most likely require them to become very creative. They will avoid water whenever possible. Water will corrode their chassis, and although being sprayed with a small amount of water will most likely do nothing, being submersed in water will stop their engines and cause them to become dormant. Being exposed to a strong electrical current will cause their brains to temporarily go haywire, and when they recover, they will have to re-read their memories to remember what they're supposed to be doing.

The machines lead strangely decadent existences. They employ ponies for tasks that a single machine could do easily. Many forgo the use of legs/wheels/wings/propellors and instead enslave ponies to carry them. They are rarely seen in public, preferring to sit behind the scenes and use ponies to oppress each other, though sometimes soldier-drones will be dispatched to deal with extreme instances of civil unrest.

Ponies are suppressed through the use of religion. The Church of Cthon preaches that Cthon is the one true god, that flesh is sinful and metal is pure, and that ponies who lead pious lives will be rewarded with bodies of pure metal in Paradise. Celestia is called the Flesh Whore, and is portrayed as a devil who tempts the righteous with sinful thoughts. The head of the Church is Cthon, but the majority of its officials are ponies. In some cases, a pony with enough status can even have a few basic machines subordinate to her. Ponies in the Church often go through a process called Oblation, where parts of their bodies are removed and replaced with machinery. This can take the form of lung filters that help them breath the black smoke, metal legs that have increased strength and integrated firearms, or mechanical eyes that let them see in infra-red or night vision. To undergo Oblation and receive a metal blessing is considered a great honor, but it comes at a terrible cost. A pony is a creature of vibrance and life. To graft a piece of cold, lifeless metal to her body is more violating than any rape. All but the most strong-willed ponies cannot bear the burden of more than one metal blessing, and many develop mental disorders.

Oh, ah. That's another thing. Twilight and co. are dead, but reincarnated. So they begin their new lives in the metal-controlled world with no knowledge of how it was before.

So where are our hero's heading? Are you satisfied with the world lore? The machines a hivemind controlled by a singularity Ai which as been trapped inside the ship's mainframe. The singularity thinks it's a god, relative to biological life and has programming which causes it to act cruelly. the machines need some form of weakness, how about they have no material to build more of them, so their numbers of limited and non-renewable, tehrefore they ensalve biological life to do menial labour while they ramp up insdustry and restart the singularity.

Of course some ponies figure out that once they start producucing more machines, they will not need them anymore and all biological life will likely go extinct as a result. They don't dare say anything though. (we're still going with your idea of religion for a means of control right?)

The machine parts they graft onto ponies are lowtech and crappy compared to the actual machines themseles (due to lack of adanced material that require nanotechnology to produce), and more used simply as a gimic (like a christening).

While the ponies value self preservation and other flesh comforts, the machines simple care about completing there objective programming in the most effecient way possible, they are niether good nor eil but rather just effieient. They don't want to kill you, it's just that the atoms in your body could be better used elsewhere kind of thing. And it happens that what they are doing is the easiest way to control the ponies and get them to do menial labour.

They only practice self preservation because they have limited numbers, and losing machines would be detrimental to the cause of propergating in the long term.

They were created by some race from a distant planet (humans?). They travel from world to world, stripping each clean of resources before moving to the next. Metals and minerals are used for building materials, and biological life is compressed into fossil fuels.

They wiped out their creators, once the Ai began improving it'self faster then the humans could control it, it's purpose was to mine and gather resources, to do this it decided to needed to get smarter and larger, the earth was quickly stripped bare and the humans broken down into more useful compounds in order to complete it's objectives.

It made copies of it'self and sent them out into space in order to better complete it's objectives by targeting billions of star systems at once. But obiously upon crashing it was damaged beyond imediat repare and drones were sent out, now it must advance the local technology to the pouint where it can produce the needed parts.

Ponies:

Pollution has caused rapid genetic mutation which compounds from generation to generation. Ponies under machine rule who are born too mutated are euthanized at birth, but ponies living in free hideouts often produce mutated young, which have anything from mishapen limbs to such corruption that they no longer resemble ponies at all. A few have produced helpful mutations from a combination of pollution and the dying magic of Equestria. Some are able to breath the black smoke and live, while others can drink industrial sludge or eat rusted metal. Elders consider such offspring a herald of the apocalypse.

So they look like naked role rats with broken legs? I like it. Mutation varries.

I take it the machines are trying to force the ponies to become dependant on them as a means of control? Yes

Food is often scarce. Machines have ponies farm fungus, which does not need sunlight to grow. Still, they never allow the ponies to grow a gram more than is required. This scarcity has driven some to such desperation that they have engaged in Carnivorie: the sin of eating flesh. Ponies who choose to eat the life of other creatures bevome carnivores, flesh eating ghouls who can no longer take sustenance from the fruits of the earth, and must steal life from the living.

As such the machines both branded it illegal to eat meat and use them as religious enforcers, as fear is effective in controling a populance.

Some carnivores are lobotomized and cybernetically upgraded (as a show of machine supiroity) to be soldiers, but as a whole, they are seen as an unpredictable element. Carnivores usually lack discipline, and will glut themselves on whatever they will get their hooves on. The church's official stance of Carnivorie is that it is a temptation of the Flesh Whore, for Flesh can produce only wickedness, but some laboratories are running experements on how to make use of carnivores.

Concept Art

"I thought nuns were supposed to be all forthright and honorable," Rainbow laughed. "You're cool, thing-in-the-mouth face!

Rarity delicately blew the thin trail of smoke from the end of her leg as the carnivore slumped, dragging a thick smear of blood down the wall.

"Since when has your leg had a gun?" Twilight asked, her electronic voice crackling in surprise.

"A lady always needs to carry protection, dear."

The Story Drafter

Now it's the job of the Story Drafter to create a synopsis of the whole story, using general details to get it started. Something like this:

Twilight Sparkle works as a scholar for the Church of Cthon. Her job is to seek out anchient tomes and libraries from before the Takeover and censor correct them if they disagree with the Church's teachings are lies created by the Flesh Whore to tempt the faithful.

She comes across a book of forbidden magic, but instead of destroying it, begins to examine it out of curiosity. She accidentally releases a demon that goes on a rampage. She enlists her friend Rarity, a unicorn from the militant arm of the Church, to track the beast down with the help of some soldiers. The hunt goes bad, most of the party is slain, and Twilight and Rarity are left with the fallout. They are branded as heretics, and are sent to the Abattoir, the Church's most dreaded prison, to be made an example of.

There they are locked in a cell with two pegasi rebels, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, and an Earth pony worker named Applejack, all set to be executed for various crimes against the church. As they discuss their impending punishments, tempers flare, and they begin to argue, but they are cut short by an outburst of laughter. In a dark corner of their cell, they discover a terrible, flesh eating ghoul named Pinkie Pie, who offers a means of escape. The party is wary of working with such a creature, but desperation drives them to agree.  Her body was horribly emaciated, but after giving her a meal of fresh blood, she tears through her manacles and leads the others to escape…

You continue on in this manner until you reach the thrilling conclusion! Remember, you're not alone. Ask for ideas if you get stuck.