[Comments] Topic Ideas

[kingmonkey]

Some time ago, I asked applicants for a game I was then starting to try something different. Since the system was to remain a mystery and the characters would have no sheets, roll no dice, etc. I instead asked them to submit a single-post story based on the idea of "an act of cruelty". I got some wonderfully sinister entries.

http://rpgcrossing.com/showthread.php?t=95109&page=5

I guess what I'm saying is a single phrase, rather than a whole elaborate concept, or a single word might provide just enough to kickstart something great without bogging it down from the start.

[Securis]

Kobayashi maru

[vincenti dabituri]

why not have an assasin and his prey get sucked into a portal and they need to depend on each other to survive?

[Bogatyr]

Why not have a scientist working under an authoritarian regime in a dystopian world teach a robot to loathe?

[Aethera]

That might be a little specific for our competition, Bogatyr, but I'll think about ways to include it.

[Bogatyr]

Hey, no problemo =]

Here's another one - an organization isolates children, teaching them to collaborate with minimal outside contact, and then re-introduces them into society as specialist teams in crises.

This is what this thread is for, right? Pitching ideas hoping to see them turned into something?

[Aethera]

That's definitely what this thread is for. If you check the competition thread, though, you'll see that our prompts are a lot less specific. You've given me two that are specific scenarios, instead of letting our writers take the prompt and come up with whatever they like.

If we have ties or a winner doesn't come up with a prompt, that's when I turn to this thread. I might use the second one as "Disconnected Crisis Management", but not more than that. Thanks for the ideas, I'll keep them in mind.

[akaczism]

I just got done looking through all the old topics (not all the stories mind, that's a lot of reading but eventually I will read them all I bet!), and I'm almost disappointed I missed some of them. Subterranean exploration is a pet favourite setting of mine especially, I even drew on it a little bit for my entry for the "words of long-dead wise men" topic . Anyway, I wanted to read through them before I tried to suggest something only to find out it's already been done, aha, and I like the wide variety I saw.

As for my own suggestions: It's a bit similar to both adventures on the open sea and subterranean exploration, but I still like the idea of under the sea, and then haunted also (you can be haunted by loads of things without it having to sound like a Halloween spook I think).

ETA: Oh, and not to infringe on Bogatyr's suggestions I hope, but perhaps something simpler from each of those would be neat, like artificial emotions (not sure that's the best phrasing, but robots and emotions fascinate me so much) or isolation?

[Negoth]

You could base it off a well-known novel with a different twist. I was required to do a short story that was A Space Odyssey with an epic hero. It's fun to see how different people take that different directions.

[Aethera]

The way we post a theme word/phrase and challenge elements makes it a little hard to grab at novels, I think, but maybe I'm wrong. How would you pose such a theme? (Once you simplify the plot theme enough, it might negate the entire based-on-a-novel concept.)

At the moment I'm not ready to change the style of theme/challenge for prompts, and I try to leave the genre very open-ended, so people can write fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal, etc. For alternate prompt writing, you should check out the "Writing Prompts" folder, I've got some other styles of prompts there and I'm open to posting others, too.

[OllieNorth]

How about "A Connecticut Yankee in Intergalactic Traffic Court"

[Aethera]

*snicker* I think it'd be hilarious. Any way you could take that and turn it into a theme and challenge? Maybe "misplaced retelling of a common tale" or something like that, let people decide for themselves? Thanks for weighing in.

[OllieNorth]

I was thinking something more along the lines of contemporary human transposed to sci-fi future. But Mismatched Fairy Tales would be fun too.

[Aethera]

I've been trying to leave themes as open as possible for everyone to have more chance of something that they are interested in writing (and not coming up with the same story as someone else). Genres aren't always easy for everyone to write, but we could write it in some fashion that meant the starting setting jumped X centuries into the future (so fantasy/contemporary would work just as well as contemp/scifi).

[OllieNorth]

Hmm, "500 Years Fast Forward"