metamemes | COLLABORATIVE WORLDBUILDING MEME

COLLABORATIVE
WORLDBUILDING MEME
While the mods are committed to providing a variety of fun, engaging mod-run events in the context of a mod-guided metaplot, Meta Heroes operated on the ethic that DWRP is at its best when players are given the freedom to run wild and contribute meaningfully to the setting. Given that Meta Heroes offers players a substantial sandbox with lots of freedom, the setting will always grow and evolve with the playerbase.

This collaborative worldbuilding meme will be a recurring spot for players to share the toys they've developed — giving other players more to work with and reference, as well as helping the mods keep track of that information. Over time, the mods intend to add businesses and the like to the LOCATIONS page based on what players develop. The goal behind this is to make all of the information as easy to access as possible.

Below are a list of possible contributions and suggested forms to reply to this meme with. Please feel free to brainstorm ideas that aren't fully developed in the comments of this post! Players can also do this kind of brainstorming at our static OOC DISCUSSION AND PLOTTING post outside of the usual meme hours.

Guidelines

01. Be sensitive to the way players are impacted by real events. Do not reference real people or real events. Do not fictionalize real people or real tragedies. If necessary, the mods will veto any suggestions that cause concern from other players.

02. Collaborate with one another on these ideas.

03. Avoid duplications.

City Locations
Each city in Meta Heroes is designed to reflect its own flavor/subgenre, both in homage to the wide array of comics subgenres and out of respect to the fact that the playerbase loves a wide variety of plot types. To that end, players are invited to develop locations, community practices, and other setting elements to help personalize the cities to your needs. Below is a little reminder of the overall vibe for each of our locations:

LITTLE LOVE is a slow-paced, rural farming town that also features a number of manufacturing plants. Its “supervillains” are largely the products of wayward alien technology or kids who got carried away with their newfound powers. Think Smallville.

CENTRAL CITY is a midwestern city to all things grimdark and urban noir. Organized and violent crime runs rampant. This is where you’d most likely find your Falcone families, your Jokers, and your Kingpins. In addition, this is the most politically active of the cities. You'll also find the people who don't get their own hands dirty, like Lex Luthor, preferring to move behind the scenes.

SUNSET FALLS is a mid-sized suburb in the West, full of magic, mystery, and dimensional weirdness. Think of it as Sunnydale meets Mystic Falls. Hell can't wait to swallow this shithole, err, whole. This is where you’d get your Enchantresses, your Klarion the Witchboys, and your hoards of vampires.

EXCELSIOR CITY is the coastal tech capital of the United States on this Earth! Think Eureka. Disillusioned scientists, angry ex-partners, and technology just plain going wrong! You’d find your Man-Bats, Green Goblins, and Paste Pot Petes here.

For each of these cities, players can contribute things like native NPC businesses, parks, cultural events, and geographic features (think bridges, statues, and art installations). Please use the form below to share setting elements of this kind:

Businesses
All players are welcome to have their characters set up IC businesses, charities and organizations, provided they could realistically do so with the resources at their disposal. To start a PC-run business, please fill out a SETTING ENGAGEMENT for approval. (Note: this post has been recently updated!)

Already approved businesses and locations can be posted here to share with other players for their use in threads using the form below. Players can also use this form to establish an NPC-run business that characters frequent, including US-based mega-corporations that are antagonistic, friendly, or anywhere in-between.

Minor NPCs
Players are invited to design heroic and villainous NPCs for use in small-scale plots and to populate cities. These can be allies or enemies, developed within or across guilds. The guidelines below are not strict! They’re merely suggestions as to what players can expect for the day to day.

WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THESE MINOR NPCS?
Players can freely use player-created minor NPCs in logs and plots. Please be courteous with other people's toys; it's not a good idea to kill a minor NPC made by or frequently used by someone else without talking to them or pitching an idea in metaooc first. These are intended to flesh out the setting and give superpowered characters something more specific to fight against.

As a reminder, guidelines for what kinds of plots require approval can be found at our newly updated PLOTTING page. Thwarting small schemes, bank robberies, and plots without civilian death or widespread destruction — as well as silly things like everyone suddenly losing their left shoe — don’t require mod approval. Players are free to reference them or run them without running them by the mods. The crux is that if person or property is going to be damaged substantially in a way that other people would notice, players should be communicating with the mod team.

WHAT IF I WANT TO APP A SHORT-TERM VILLAIN CHARACTER?
You sure can! Players have multiple options for how to execute this. One route is to submit an application for the character and include plot plans within the application. Another is to contact the mods at the MOD CONTACT page. Lastly, players could submit short-term villain requests to the PLOTTING page.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

NAME: The Hurly-Burly House
LOCATION: In Sunset Falls, at the end of a dead end street, atop a hill, backing onto a wooded strip of land that abruptly ends in a cliff, there sits the Hurly-burly House. No one can recall who owns it now. The last attempt to live in it was more than 30 years ago, and it's front approach is wildly overgrown. The gingerbread is in rough shape - it hardly looks worth the effort despite the size.
DESCRIPTION: The house is eccentric-looking, with two mismatched towers. It's built of orange brick with gingerbread trim, and it is in sore need of care. While it's not condemnable, yet, the paint is peeling, several shutters are missing, and the wood of the stairs and porch are soft and bouncy.
ASSOCIATED NPCS: The locales all know the story, and yet, none of them know the true tale.

Jas. Hurley, Esq., built the house in 1722 for his dramatic young bride Sibella, and they immediately set about having a dozen children, five of which survived to adulthood: the third, Sophie, the sixth, Dorothea, the ninth, Bridget, the twelfth, Rose, and the eldest, James Hurley II.

The four sisters were classically educated by tutors, as their father was progressive enough to believe that daughters should become wives that their husbands would want to talk to Armed with math and reading skills, Dorothea lead the sisters in successfully defending their inheritance from their swindling brother when their parents died in a blizzard in 1754. They bought their brother out of the house and business, Bridget took the reins of the company, and the sisters settled into a happy life of spinsters.

in 1785, a new pastor came to town. In his sixties, he was soft-spoken and preached a more subtle fire-and-brimstone than the Johnathan Edwardses of the First Great Awakening. The sisters almost immediately became his target. Unnatural, that was the word, with their Latin and numbers and Dorothea’s pants. His audience knew what he meant, and soon every action of the sisters became a strike against them, and a new word that was whispered under breath, because Massachusetts had put a stop to the trials decades prior: witch.

In 1792, an angry mob, riled but not accompanied by the preacher, stormed the Hurly-burly House, drug the women out, and murdered them. The deaths were recorded as natural, but over a dozen contemporary accounts reference the witch-hunt, calling it the hurly-burly. The pastor was not seen in the town again, and the contemporary references document the town’s belief that the Hurley witches murdered the pastor.

James Hurley II returned to town and took up residence at Hurley House. Six months later, on the night of the full moon, he dropped dead in the night. One account remains of finding his body, which was described as wretched and wasted with a horrorstruck expression. Children began calling it the hurly-burly house

Since then, the house has had 11 owners and 27 attempts at residency. No resident has lasted more than six months, although only three have died. They speak of drafts and strange noises, but none have been willing to talk much about the Hurly-burly House. When the last owner passed away in 1989, no relatives came to claim the deed and none could be found. Bona vacantia. Funny thing though... the town didn't want to deal with it either. And so it sits.

And that, is what "everyone knows".

But here’s what you know, dear reader. They. Were. Witches. The sisters did not have time to defend their home as they were performing a ritual to ensure that their spirits would remain to revenge themselves against the misogynists and zealots of the world. So long as they persist in the world, so will the sisters. Bound within the property lines, they’re waiting for you to come calling. With tea and scones, and a place for your bones, if the world would be happier without you.

Note: It's the intent of several of us to have our characters negotiate with the ghosts to live there in the house in exchange for simple home repairs. We'll be using this post to track any additional details about the sister ghosts.