Regarding Maelstrom's Future Direction

Hello People of Maelstrom,

I apologize for the wait, but the meetings that we had set up regarding our future direction took quite a bit longer to resolve than I had anticipated. I’d like to use this opportunity to give a little bit of the deliberation and reasoning behind the next stage in our journey.

To get things started, I wanted to get across a few of the issues that our community has run into since the start of our collective story:

1: Our story is incomprehensibly huge. I used to spend all of my free time trying to keep up with it, and have continued to do so trying to make sure pieces fit together, but there’s no way for others to see it.

• People, as a general rule, are uncomfortable with having things happen to their characters that lie beyond their control. We each have ideas and goals for our characters that we’d like to explore, and don’t want to be told that something very distant from our decisions (Like Noxus leaving the league) will prevent us from looking at it. 
  
  
• As a result of the above, nearly every one of our attempted larger events in the canon have been generally disliked, in many cases generating enough animosity to chase away those who designed them. A divergent story cannot exist without events to move it forward.
  
  
• Turnover of characters creates huge problems for the ongoing story. Not only are we forced to abandon concepts in progress, but it becomes more and more difficult to find an incoming roleplayer willing to take on decisions made by others. More often than not, people want to come to Maelstrom to roleplay a champion, not to roleplay a Maelstrom champion.

2: Communication between roleplayers is absolutely critical as story develops, and we’ve run out of good ways to keep everyone in contact with each other. 

• Our population will never be huge. It’s one thing to ensure that someone is playing the champion we’re interested in working with. It’s another to try to convince them to join what you’re working on. If the designated player doesn’t want to work with you for any reason, you’re forced to think of something else.
  
• If there’s someone out there who’s working on a story that you just don’t want to interact with, ignoring them is not a solution. No isolated character can function in a massive collective story like Maelstrom, and their actions will still effect the world that you do have to interact with. The more schisms that appear the more progress is forced to stagnate.

3: The current paradigm of leadership requires far more overhead than we believe anyone would be able to provide. Trying to create storylines that incorporate everyone’s ideas, motivate people to continue exploring their characters, act as the sole repository of lore knowledge in the world, and mediate social conflicts that arise is truly on the verge of burning us out completely.

• The biggest thing that bothers us is having to tell people no. That they can’t overwrite the plots that others have already started. That their champion can’t change factions to explore something new in their character. That the capabilities that they’ve created don’t make sense in the context of the world.

With these problems in mind, we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to generate some very major changes to the way that our writing community is structured. Put simply, we will be moving away from Maelstrom to start a new website in the very near future. What I truly want is to be able to facilitate roleplaying on a high level through the structures I’m good at providing, so there are a few major things that I want to change:

1: Your account represents you as a writer, rather than the characters you’re roleplaying. There is no need to limit your perspective in a story to that of a single champion: while leading an RP with Jarvan, you may also be his people, his court, his allies in battle, and the assassin that cripples him. In addition, this frees you from the need to generate entire new accounts to help fill in the characters of someone else’s story, or drabble with a new champion entirely.

2: The stories of others needn’t affect your own. Using structural hierarchy, we will set up a series of worlds with their basic lore defined. In these, you’re free to roleplay without limit, using any champions, plots, or ideas that you wish, regardless of the threads already present. More refined stories will receive their own sections and rules for joining, ranging from guided dungeon crawls to worlds as big as Maelstrom itself.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This does NOT mean that anyone can walk into your stories claiming whatever they want. It DOES mean you’ll want to talk to people before you start. Roleplaying is a collaborative experience: use the opportunity to get to know each other!

3: You have the power to choose: join the stories that others have started, or find people to join your own. Applications to establish a world will require significant effort and collaboration with others; however, this will grant you a segment of the world to control as your own GM.

4: Joining the site requires no claiming of champions. We encourage you to make use of the top level of the site for casual roleplaying as you get to know members and begin developing characters. To join an existing story, however, we ask that you contact those responsible for it: they will be designated as moderators.

I know that this kind of change may not appeal to everyone on the site, and I do apologize to you. As I envision it, this system should allow Maelstrom as it exists now to take place fully within these changes. I simply no longer believe that Maelstrom fully embodies what roleplayers are looking for. Please feel free to contact me with your questions and concerns, but know that I’ve spent a long time thinking about this concept. As those in the meeting found out, there are many things that may seem a simple solution at a glance, but the arguments rapidly become circular and difficult to manage.

Thank you for your patience with me as we try to bring about a new community. Happy writing!

~Wyerden