I am interested on getting some feedback for my MMO Rise of Heroes. Here is the backstory. Dear Reader, Be mindful and watchful on your journey through space and in your quest for knowledge. With Great knowledge comes a even greater responsibility. Space is a wonderful place full of wonder and mystery that you can’t even begin to understand. However Space is also full of evil, death, and danger. So always remain on guard and remember not all stories and folklore are fantasy. Some legends and mythology are true. Some are meant as a warning passed down from one generation to another. They have some key elements twisted but the general idea remains true. Take Atlantis for example. What you have never heard of Atlantis? Then let me tell you all about the planet of Atlantis. In a day not so unlike our own a planet existed that fostered community, education, Goals to better the world around us as well as each other, and further the knowledge that helped us meet our goals. Aliens lived in peace on this planet all working toward the same goals. The Planet of Atlantis was alive and thriving in this peace. No explosions to blow apart her soil or blood to stain her many rivers and oceans. The Aliens of Atlantis took care of her and in return she took care of them. That was until the Holocaust started. A race of perfect killers part technology part biological with nothing but hatred for every other living thing that dared to breath. We called them Hell’s Demons. Once they saw you there was no hiding from them or pleading for your life. They could transport instantly from one location to another through this network of Portals. We called them gateways to hell. To this day we do not know how they managed to get that first portal on to Atlantis. Once the invasion started it came hard and fast. Our main cities were destroyed before we even managed to launch a counter offensive against them. Once the mutual fighting started wave after wave of our troops fell to these Hell’s Demons. The Rivers of Atlantis turned red from the blood of our troops. Smoke rose above our cities as ash fell from the sky. The fires were so fierce that they created their own weather systems. Giant Funnels of extreme heat, wind, and flame rose from the center of our largest cities sucking in everything that dare get to close. The fighting raged on for over 2 years. Finally when all hope was lost and the spirits of those few remaining survivors had all been broken we managed to push them back to where they came from. Out of the ashes rose a leader some might have called a hero. He came from a race that wield great power. He electrified us and made us believe that when so many before us had failed we could take them on. We would be the ones to bring about peace once more to Atlantis. The final Stand of Atlantis was the single most bloodiest battle of the entire 2 year war. Only a Handful of us survived. When the blasts fell silent, the air cooled off, and the ash no longer fell we had been on the winning side. The corpses of those who fell littered the streets and walking through puddles of blood were unavoidable. These were our fathers, our mothers, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, our friends, and our closest allies. After this final stand, we destroyed all of the gateways on Atlantis but 1. We were unable to get to it before a powerful force field was erected over it and all of our technology and spells were unable to get through the force field. A Keeper of the gate was appointed to stand guard over the gate. He was giving the gift of eternal life so he could full fill his duty with out having to find a replacement. Life on Atlantis carried on. Soon her soils started to heal and her blood stained rivers returned to their many shades of blue. Governments arose and our cities were rebuilt. Unsure of how the Hell’s Demons had found us a meeting of all of Atlantis’ governments were called and It was decided that Atlantis would go into hiding. Every piece of technology was banned, destroyed and thrown into large holes in the ground to be covered up. A dark age had falling upon Atlantis, a time of little learning and mourning for all we had lost. As the years passed our knowledge of the world outside our cities faded and our memories of the terrible Holocaust was lost in the back of our minds. The Gate Keeper was the only living being on Atlantis that remembered those terrible days. As the time passed every one kept to their own kind and the knowledge of each other’s existence grew into nothing more then legends and mythology.

When and where does the player come into this and when does Atlantis sink?

Okay, I'm a little confused. Are you trying to construct a unreliable narrator?

First two words "Dear Reader," establishes this as a document to be read. But the first paragraph closes with the narrator asking and answering his own question...Is this a hint that the narrator might be crazy?

Anyway...

Space , planets, etc. The narrator has read Spiderman, cool I guess. Danger, doom, evil, fairy tails might have truth. Okay so this is science fiction?

Then we dive into Atlantis. Aliens the seek knowledge and stuff. Look out! Hell Spawn invade. Big war. Hero steps up, destroys the teleportation thingies. War ends, someone appointed guardian of last teleporter. Dark age overcomes the planet, no more tech, no more trust between peoples. Planet Atlantis goes into hideing? Only guardian knows of universe beyond atlantis...Okay so this is fantasy?

So..

Either the narrator is the guardian, or Atlantis has come out of hideing (which makes this backstory rather pointless).

If the narrator is the guardian then why would he ask the reader if they heard of a "hidden" planet? So the narrator is unreliable, possably atlantians were the hell spawn teleporting to conqure another world?

In any case I think you might want to construct a deeper game world. It sounds like this will take place on atlantis with typical fantasy magic and such...but the space aspect doesn't seem to mesh well (seems more like an after thought) If this is indeed the backstory for the game, it doesn't sound like a game with much depth.

Dune, Star Wars, even the manga series Five Star Stories have integrated both fantasy and science fiction elements together with much success...as well as the Phantasy Star games. Not saying you need to copy those, but rather use them as inspirations for tying the conventions of the two genres together.

Quote:
Dune, Star Wars, even the manga series Five Star Stories have integrated both fantasy and science fiction elements together with much success...as well as the Phantasy Star games. Not saying you need to copy those, but rather use them as inspirations for tying the conventions of the two genres together.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi are writing styles and not, in essence, time periods or concepts derived from such.

Fantasy gives you something in a big picture sense, letting the reader's imagination take over on the details. Like magic, existence... etc.

Science-Fiction, on the other hand, tends to explain what forces are at work and how they work, capturing the imagination by offering fantastical and sometimes physically impossible explanations to problems.

I guess it's quite possible to mistake the two for something else, but that's what they are. Any mix of the two is often resultant in things like Steampunk Fantasy, in which technology is introduced and explained, but magic and otherworldly forces are left up to the reader.

style in the context of literature, film, even video games means something different (classical style, romantic style, etc) than what you describe. What you describe are genres, not styles.

Dune, Star Wars, Five Star Stories and even Phantasy Star can fit into a subgenre of science fiction often called space opera.

Genres do not have fixed boundries. Dune, Star Wars, Five star Stories, and Phantasy Star can fit both into science fiction and fantasy genres as they borrow freely from both genres. There is no explanation of how the wording way works or how the spice guild folds space in Dune, There is no explanation of how the force works in Star Wars, how the motorheads can teleport in Five Star Stories, how magic works in Phantasy Star...it just does. Its up to your imagination just like your description of the fantasy genre.

This bit of fantasy combined with space travel is a common element of space operas. Most space bound fiction includeing Star Trek and even video games like Mass Effect can easily be considered space opera.

But, I take it you know nothing of the Lensman series?

Quote: Original post by MSW

There is no explanation of how the force works in Star Wars.

Midi-Chlorians.

Anyway, you just stuffed yourself up, because I knew what I was describing and I said what I was describing. THEY ARE NOT CONCEPTS OR IDEALS, THEY ARE WRITING styleS TYPIFIED BY THE MASSES. People stupidly threw Sci-Fi under the tag 'contains space travel' and Fantasy under the 'contains Elves' tags when either one can contain, both space travel and elves.
Which automatically proves my point.

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs

Quote: Original post by MSW

There is no explanation of how the force works in Star Wars.

Midi-Chlorians.

Anyway, you just stuffed yourself up, because I knew what I was describing and I said what I was describing. THEY ARE NOT CONCEPTS OR IDEALS, THEY ARE WRITING styleS TYPIFIED BY THE MASSES. People stupidly threw Sci-Fi under the tag 'contains space travel' and Fantasy under the 'contains Elves' tags when either one can contain, both space travel and elves.
Which automatically proves my point.

Obviously, the naphthalene has clouded your intellect.


Midichlorians are to Star Wars what pixie dust and happy thoughts are to Peter Pan. Interesting diversion, but in no way does it contitute a worthwhile scientific explanation of an apparent magical phenomenon.

Writeing style, at its most basic, is the writers use of prose. How the writers choice of words are used, moreso than what they are used for. In effect writeing style is the personnality of a work irregardless of its use of genre conventions, concepts, and ideas. Its what makes a book by Michael Crichton different than one by Philip Kerr; even though they have both written books in a simular vein.

Genres are vague categories built from loose collections of conventions, ideas, and concepts (concepts like space travel and elves). As noted they have no set ridgid defintions. Western genre can contain horror genre concepts, Romance genre (different than romantic style) can contain mystery genre elements. Some genre catagories contain subgenre forms that typicaly contain a more focused shared collection of concepts and ideas (examples: Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Space Opera).

I didn't just make these definitions up. This is Creative Writing 101 level stuff taught in colleges world wide. These terms have been informed from hundreds of years critical analysis of literary works. By minds far more insightful than our own.


Now either you knew all this and are trolling. Or you are stubbornly clinging to misconceptions that you are too lazy to varify even with google...But given how you like to flaunt the mouth breather term 'Sci-Fi', I suspect the latter.

I do believe you called them Fantasy and Science Fiction ELEMENTS and not GENRES.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/style

Quote: Original post by Cpt Mothballs
I do believe you called them Fantasy and Science Fiction ELEMENTS and not GENRES.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/style

"Elements" referes to common concepts and conventions of the respective genres. Most people on a writeing form should realise that.

Also sense you keep confuseing 'genre' with 'writing style':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_style

thanks for your thoughts! We have decided to put the whole MMO on the back burner for right now and we are developing a Single Player RPG Surrounding this whole backstory. So the backstory before the MMO is created will get a major face lift and be much more in depth then it currently is. As we create the story for the RPG we will take all the comments from this thread into consideration and make the adjustments needed!