
In a post-apocalyptic world where most people have already forgotten what the Earth was once like, in the middle of an endless wasteland that holds as many mysteries as it does dangers lies the City, the one and only known bastion of humanity. A place so enormous that it could almost be considered a country or a small continent of its own, filled to the brim with millions, if not billions of people.
A place where futuristic technologies that surpass human imagination and the rules of reality meet the traditions of the old times to create a somewhat grim environment full of conflicts and secrets.
This is the place where you live as well, and where you make your best effort to get along with your life without biting the dust too soon.
Except that, your life is never quite as peaceful as you would like it to be, as somehow you always manage to get wrapped up in one of the countless dark mysteries of the City.
Not to mention more and more signs of some greater calamity looming over the horizon started rearing their head recently, even if most, including you, might not be aware of these.
A cataclysm so large in scale that it might just engulf the whole City, and...
What, then?
You might not be too familiar with me, but here I am. Paradise Lost is my first actual project on this forum, but it is a project that I have invested countless hours and many sleepless nights into. As you would expect, it is a play-by-post roleplay that is about solving complex - and sometimes not so complex - mysteries, taking part in intense supernatural battles and enjoying lighter, more relaxing slice of life events inbetween, all with a somewhat dark and somtimes bizarre undertone that comes with the setting itself. A setting that otherwise features a wide variety of themes, and in which you might encounter all sorts of NPCs and stumble upon rather perplexing locations and phenomena.
The system that I built up from scratch for this roleplay draws inspiration from a number of sources, and those who are well-versed in video games and anime will likely notice a lot of references that I used here and there (even if they are often not even really quite close to the real thing). Regardless, it is a pretty detailed system that I built up with the purpose of creating a somewhat stable framework and an environment in which a great deal of customization options are presented to the players. A selfish goal, perhaps, but seeing the unique and exceptionally creative things that others can come up with is one of my greatest joys as a GM, a player, and even just as a person in general. Still, instead of talking too much about what exactly is in the rulebook, here is the link for it, so that you can just see for yourselves. I apologize for how long it turned out to be - but I can only hope that the length does not actually scare anyone away.
Now, for the other technicalities that I should mention here...The deadline will probably be a few weeks from now. The exact date I will probably announce about a week ahead. However, just because there is plenty of time, I would like to ask anyone who is interested in this roleplay to not save things for the last few days, and at least note me about their interest in joining and about the basic concept of their character well ahead of time. During this period, I will also be more than glad to answer any questions that anyone might have, along with providing assistance with the character creation. The rulebook will also be updated with NPC profiles and more lore bits from time to time. Other parts of the rulebook, especially the math heavy sections, might go through minor changes as well, although I will try to really keep these minor and make sure that they do not really affect anyone too much. An example sheet will also be added in the coming days, probably tomorrow or the day after once I got a moment to relax after all the stress and excitement that creating the system caused, especially in these last few days.
As for how many players will be accepted...I dunno yet. Will see how many people are interested in the first place, and after that I can probably give a better estimation. However, considering that I gave my best to create this project and will keep giving it my best to make it as pleasant and exciting of an experience for my players as I possibly can, I expect to see some effort put into the sheets as well. Half-assed attempts will be rejected without too much consideration.
If you have any other questions, or if I have left anything out, feel free to ask here, or preferably on discord where I go by the same name on the Regalia server.
Also, before I forget, the most important part. Much thanks to Verg, who was altogether a great help whether it came to noticing my embarrassing typos or keeping me inspired through what proved to be a rather rigorous process. Similarly, many thanks to Airen as well, who read through my rather lengthy creation a number of times and provided valuable feedback that helped me stay motivated. Thanks to Aya and Kuro as well, who were always there to listen to my silly ideas and give their own insight, despite having rather busy lives with not much free time on their hands.
To avoid just having a single massive document that takes ages to load and eats up multiple gbs of memory, I have made a separate gdoc for the NPCs that will appear in the roleplay. Here is the link. It will gradually grow every few days depending on the amount of time I can allocate to working on them, but each time a new batch is added to the mix I will make a note about it on the discord server.
As promised (perhaps a bit later than what I promised) here is the example sheet. I tried to include a number of topics to give a better idea what certain things are like, though it would have been hard to incorporate everything into a single sheet. A blank version of the sheet can also be found here, feel free to use it and tune it to your liking if you want. The table borders can be made invisible by setting border thickness to "0" in the table properties.