@wraithborn:
Well, if i can help or give some advice: there are things you need to consider then. If the main "villian" is a cosmic big bad, you need to give people an incentive to want to stop it. Obviously, the simple answer to that is that the world would be destroyed- fine, clear as day. But then you need to think about why the villian is destroying earth in the first place. What's its incentive? This is important because: what incentive can you give people to want to join the "evil armada"? They are going to lose, so better be on the side that is winning. But if it destroys everything, what would the point of joining or particpating if they don't benefit from the victory (a part from life). People may not join/finish because the ending will never be satisfying.
Another thing to consider is that, if people are going to work together to stop it, how can you ensure that they couldn't do that very quickly. A lot of characters here have really tough powers (even weak ones) that could potentially approach the enemy in the first or second post, so how would you avoid that? Making the enemy onmipotent and unbeatable is not going to be attractive and help your storyline if you give them false hope that they could win. Unless, you change the scope of the storyline to be that: everyone WILL lose; how will YOU spend your last days? Which would then allow various people to join because their level difference don't matter, and what does is their character's internal/ external development, which might be more satisfying for the writer. But if you do that, then you need a time limit.
So, time limit is also important for your original idea (forget the one i just suggested for now). A time limit would force people to be creative and work harder to succeed- whatever that might be. Otherwise, people will go away because there is no sense of danger (not even earth being destroyed by a cosmic big bad is dangerous on it's own) because it could last forever.
You need to hold their hands. In order to have their full attention, you need to make each writer feel important, so you need to have something happen cosntantly. (I don't fully understand the torch thing, if it is physical or a metaphor) but it is better if it is tangible. If the torch is something that you want to have, you need to give people the incentive of having it, even if you are on opposing sides. What is important about the torch (if it is a physical thing that is)? So you would be expected to be active constantly, so you may want to share your power with a few people that can force writers to react to things. Otherwise people will just sit there and monologue and only think about doing things- and then they will get bored.
If people do have a chance to win (beat the enemy), make it slim but not impossible. Give constant hints of possible ways of beating it, but also give hints of ways to stop them from winning. Why would they want to stop them? If the enemy wins, people will prosper afterwards. If the enemy dies, the whole universe will die...Unless...? So, you have to constantly approach people with new ways to make their decisons attractive, effective (and possibly destructive).
Make either teams lose, but give more opportunities to win. Give them a reason to keep fighting for it, otherwise, if the writer constantly loses, they might give up and leave. So, they may have lost one thing but gained soemthing else.
If you want this to be successful, you can't sit back and watch it, you would have to be actively involved or have other people help you to push it forward.
(In the end this may not be helpful, because you have probably thought of all this already. But let me know if it was helpful :D) Looking forward to it
Log in to comment