Ideas on the Board: The Future of BV

[Vio]

<sup>Hey, folks! Well, it’s time to present a rather strange idea for the future of Bon Voyage, and to get your opinions and feedback on it!

The Limits of the Present
As BV is now, all of our characters and stories are told in a singular instance of the world of One Piece—a deviation from the canon events of the series starting from the Time Skip’s tail end and the effects that the Summit War had on the world. While this is absolutely fine, the fact we share a single instance of the same world means that some stories are awkward, difficult, or outright impossible to tell. The very world of One Piece is a power funnel, but that also means it’s a bottleneck for anyone seeking greater goals.

Many players and their characters seek the One Piece to become the Pirate King. While that as a goal is realistically unachievable in our meta knowledge (and lack thereof) of the series as is, that shouldn’t dampen each character’s pursuit of such a goal. The problem that exists is that if any one character achieves that goal, no other character can then do so, even if that’s the story that the player wanted to tell.

While Pirate King is certainly a major goal to work towards, this problem exists in many other forms throughout the world we play in: If somebody does something first, then it becomes impossible for anyone else to do it. If somebody defeats Kaido, nobody else can do that, because he’s been defeated. The singular, static instance of the world enforces a “first come, first serve” hierarchy—the longest serving and fastest posting members take the cake while the rest are left with just the crumbs.

If multiple people want to tell the same type of story, then it becomes impossible for them to do so. While we’re all expected to make compromises for the sake of telling a collaborative story, there are most certainly times where those compromises become a complete roadblock on your intended route rather than just a small diversion. Similarly, the singular shared instance forces us (the staff) to impose numerous limitations on what can and can’t be done because of how it could complicate the setting for everyone if new information comes to light.

The Ideal Storytelling Environment
The very nature of a community storytelling experience already places obstacles in front of what we would otherwise want to achieve by telling our own, individual stories. However, the ideal environment would have to be a collection of things: It would have to be friendly toward the setting it intends to use; it would need to allow everyone to be able to use the materials of the setting in different ways for the purpose of their storytelling, and; it would need to respect the limitations of collaborative storytelling efforts.

A single universe, even as an Alternate Universe, cannot hope to accomplish all three of the above highlighted points. It’s not feasible to allow everyone to use the same materials in different ways, because that immediately goes against the idea of respecting the limitations of collaborative stories. You can only ever accomplish two of the points, never the third.

The Multiversal Soup
This suggestion is based around fulfilling all three of the points highlighted above, but I have no doubt it will be a controversial topic to broach. The idea is to enable storytelling while remaining as friendly to the setting as possible, respecting collaborative storytelling and individual storytelling alike, and generally allowing everyone to use the provided material to their own liking (within sufficient reason). The soup metaphor is strong with this one, so get your ladles ready!

A Pot of Ingredients
The expansive world of One Piece is an absolute treat to roleplay and tell stories with. It provides so much to potentially work with—people, places, events, etc—and these very things are our ingredients. Even now, we use them to tell stories, but we’re significantly limited in how we do so because all of these ingredients always have to be put in our shared pot in a static order, like following a recipe.

But what if each player could pick and choose which ingredients they took to make their soup with? Conceptually, this would allow every character to exist within their own bubble within that soup, selecting the ingredients that are most necessary to the story the player envisions and omitting the rest. The result is a potentially limitless but distinctly setting-friendly assortment of multiverses, each telling different potential stories.

One bubble could be set in a timeline where the Summit War never happened, Whitebeard remains alive (or perhaps he’s simply died of age and illness as his withering condition suggested) and the Marines are still under the vigilant command of Sengoku. Another could be set in a world where Luffy was never born and the entire story of the Strawhats never transpired—if he didn’t defeat Crocodile, what would have happened? Another still could be set in the era of Gol D. Roger himself, taking place many years before our present timeline.

The possibilities are endless! However, the collaborative storytelling side of things gets in the way of this, because the general goal is to work together to tell stories. But what if you still could? What if your character’s story could freely overlap with the stories of others despite differences in their respective bubbles? Well…

The Rainbow Mist
A concept originally used in a filler arc of the anime, the name lends itself to some inspirational ideas that admittedly feel strange, even in the context of One Piece as a whole. Each character can only see so far into the hypothetical mist of their own universe. Everything beyond that is unknown and irrelevant to their personal story—unless you want it to be!

While characters are more than capable of existing within their own bubble, the mist works in strange and unforeseen ways. It enables players to take ingredients from other bubbles that they might enjoy—such as a particular island’s destruction or the defeat of a particular individual—and use them in their universe without necessarily being a direct part of the bubbles that caused them. Characters can merge and split bubbles as necessary, allowing players to have character meetings that might otherwise not work in the separated universes those characters exist in, provided the members collaborate on what makes the most sense for them and agree as such. You can even treat some of these interactions as non-canon filler arcs for your characters, but what might be non-canon to one might not be to the other.

The mist serves as a gateway between the many worlds and stories we all wish to tell and, as such, enables some appropriately strange and wonderful shenanigans. For one, the onus of the bubble your character exists within is on you. If multiple people agree to play the same bubble, they can! If you don’t want to be part of another, particular bubble, you are not forced to! Essentially, the mist allows multiple stories that would otherwise clash to be told… without actually clashing.

The mist is the thickest parts of that multiversal soup, mixing freely and in unusual ways, though that does facilitate some additional shenanigans:

Canonical Shifts: New Potentials
Though I speak for myself when I say this, I’m sure others have felt the same. Another constraint of our singular, shared world is that we (as mentioned before) have to hedge out potentially conflicting details and difficult interactions. But, if everyone can have their own bubbles using different ingredients, many of those issues fade into the mist.

It becomes fully reasonable for a character to have been the slave of a Celestial Dragon without causing any potential worldly problems, because their instance—their bubble—allows for it. It becomes possible for characters to have interacted with certain canonical elements on a closer basis without issue, because that interaction is unique to them—those seeking to become the World’s Greatest Swords(wo)man can have their run-in with Mihawk! It becomes possible for a particular canon character to have impacted a player character’s story in a more direct sense because it doesn’t become a contest between individuals looking for a similar plot beat.

Of course, certain things would still be somewhat limited, but those instances would be based on our overall understanding of the setting rather than a particularly awkward situation arising. This mix of soup and mist makes for so many potential stories, all waiting to be told. Of course, there will always be several main constants of One Piece, but let’s talk about one that has been a thorn in the side of some for a long time…

Devil Fruits
As we know, Devil Fruits are unique. There cannot be more than one instance of each Devil Fruit in active circulation—only the first bite grants the power up until the user’s death. Thanks to the mist, however, it is technically possible for there to be multiple users of the same Devil Fruit, all within different bubbles, with the main barrier being that those individuals could never canonically interact with one another. One cannot exist in the same space as the other, because that would break the setting, and the mist does its utmost to prevent such impossible events. There cannot be two true users of the Mera Mera no Mi in the same bubble.

This means that the usual struggle and “first come, first serve” nature of Devil Fruits on site is omitted. This also enables canon Devil Fruits to be attainable by players, because their characters that own those powers perhaps come from bubbles where that particular Devil Fruit never found its way into the hands of the canon character that we know owns it—they might never have existed, even! In regards to original powers, however, permission would be needed from the creator should you wish to have a copy of their creation (and it would still need to be re-applied for in your own words and style).

The Final Form
In short, the Multiversal Soup and its many bubbles—coupled with the mysterious phenomenon that is the Rainbow Mist—allows for all manner of stories to be told with far less limits as the current site enforces. It doesn’t prevent collaborative efforts, but it also doesn’t force them upon players, either. It offers a solution (albeit a very strange one) to potentially odd meetings, but otherwise allows people to shape and mold the world around their character. Creating new villains, recycling canonical ones? It’s all possible within this idea, and if you want to peer through the mist and have events in other bubbles affect your character’s bubble (or not), that’s your choice—that’s your helping of our soup.

And remember, people’s dreams… don’t ever end! Am I right?</sup>

[Jade]

Howdy folks! Jade here with an informal addition to this announcement in the form of a showcase of what one particular "bubble" could look like, to start giving folks an idea of where my head is at with this particular pitch.

I've been workshopping this since shortly after we started the discussions that lead to the announcement you've read above this. In short, this is something I'm tentatively calling the...

Roger Era AU

... or, at least, that is how it would start. See, what I'm talking about is curating a specific shared bubble that others could take part in if they wished to, taking place in the era of Roger's great accomplishments leading up to him becoming the King of the Pirates - though maybe without the man himself present! The era of rising legends that would go on to shake up the entire world, before but leading into things like the rise of the four Pirate Emperors, the Shichibukai, and more, with our original characters being the ones to shape how things turn out.

The goal would be to work together to create and shape this story with those taking part in it until it reaches its natural crescendo, with maybe Roger himself or another character taking "his place" in creating the legend of the One Piece and kicking off an alternate version of the Great Pirate Era. From there, we would pause the stories and figure out some form of timeskip, working out which characters ended up where, with some potentially retiring from active use to become facets of this new AU timeline - perhaps becoming Yonko, Admirals, Shichibukai, or other major players on the world stage while new rookies begin to rise in their wake!

I bring this before you all as a showcase of the sorts of things that would be possible in the system refresh laid out above: It would allow for telling the sorts of stories that have been historically impossible on Bon Voyage, at least without making the concession that they couldn't really be canon or earn the characters taking part any form of progression currency. We can create a collaborative AU, shaping it, telling "complete" stories, and then even take a massive timeskip into the following era, keeping with the same continuity even if prior characters have retired from being OCs.

[Vio]

<sup>Hey, folks! With this general presentation receiving a mostly neutral to slightly positive reception, one thing we noticed is that people aren’t quite getting the full structure of how this is intended to work, and that’s more than likely down to the use of ‘bubbles’. So, here’s a somewhat more apt description of what this system’s vision is, using something far more familiar to all of us as fans of One Piece:

Following Your Route
Think of each character’s (or crew’s) experiences in the world as their own story—they are following a particular route of the “Grand Line” that is their story and experience, with the Grand Line being the endless possibilities of different timelines. Each personal arc in your stories is an independent experience that could potentially have a bigger impact on the world, if others decided they wanted to actively incorporate that into their story as well (and people will, because that’s generally what roleplayers do to at least a small extent). At the same time, the key point of this system presentation is to allow the potential to tell one’s own story in the One Piece world—not in the story that Oda has been telling, but in the world he has been creating.

As a strange but interesting example, you can use the Supernovae and their own personal adventures on the Grand Line. Up until the nine crews gathered at the Sabaody Archipelago, none of them (as far as we know) had any direct interaction with one another—they all experienced their own stories and did their own things without any direct input from one another. Certain elements are maintained between each of them, because they can be argued to have been taking elements of each others’ “worlds” and collaborating in that sense, and each time they have come together they have omitted things that have been irrelevant and used those that have been relevant to their meetings.

We know that Eustass Kid and Killer were responsible for heavy civilian casualties during their campaigns, but it’s never been detailed what exactly provoked them to do that, where they did that, or any related details. None of that is relevant to the story we’ve been following (the Strawhats’ “world”) beyond the fact that they’ve done it. It’s all been lost in the mist.

This has been a core concern of several members that’s been rightfully voiced in regards these proposed changes, and we do appreciate this opinion on the matter; so far, this is the best way we can describe how that concern can be addressed within this idea’s concept. Plus, it’s also important to remember that we all already do this to some extent: People ignore, purposefully circumvent, or incorporate the elements of others’ stories as they generally see fit for the story they want to tell, and this doesn’t change that at all. Some of you have voiced that you like incorporating events from other peoples’ stories even if their characters weren’t ever directly involved with one another—you can still do that.

There are, as mentioned, certain elements that might be a bit strange, but when these do crop up (likely few and far between) you’ll just have to do what we already do as roleplayers enjoying a collaborative storytelling experience and figure out the steps you’re going to take. If you can’t agree on it, no thread happens; the same as would happen now. If you can find a way, then that’s great!

The Mist In-Universe
Perhaps not properly explained in the initial announcement, but our intent was to incorporate the “Rainbow Mist” as a tangible element of the universe (and subsequent “multiverse”) that players could use as a plot device for their characters. It isn’t really meant to be a deus ex machina, but a facilitator for the possibilities of what could be within the context of your story being told.

Is this strange for the setting? Yes, but it’s a necessary tool to add to you (the player’s) available kit to explain the stranger interactions that can be brought about by the nature of this system. And, just like any tool in your toolbox, nothing really forces you to use it outside of convenience. You’re not going to use a hammer to drive in a screw (i.e. a complete inconsistency in your collaboration), but a screwdriver will do the trick!

Devil Fruits: Revisited
Taking this back to the drawing board a little, we’ve been assessing as many pros and cons as we can, and have generally agreed on a few potential options, as follows:

Permissions vs. Concepts
The idea here is that all Devil Fruits that aren’t a unique spin on a particular concept are essentially “fair game”—so any Zoans (Regular & Ancient), Logia, and Special Paramecia—because their concept and interpretation doesn’t really deviate anywhere unique (even if the character in question is using the exact power in a unique way). For example, a Porcupine Zoan turns you into a Porcupine person; no real room for creative license there aside from some quirks of appearance.

For Paramecia and Mythical Zoans, their base concepts (for their stranger abilities) can be a bit less restrictive, but there is the potential for people (from beyond the mist) to request your exact Devil Fruit. This would require your express permission (given as part of the approval process), but also means they have your exact base ability—the Devil Fruit as you created it—and won’t have to make an application of their own. That power “exists” in the space of the site and isn’t just a re-interpretation of a similar concept. This same idea more clearly allows for many canon Devil Fruits to be implemented, because they would all be using the same core ability, and not just bouncing off a similar conceptual idea.

You can’t “stake your claim” on a concept so much as you can your unique interpretation of that concept. Oda’s technically already done this a couple of times, once in a canon-canon instance (Concept of “Weight”: Kilo/Ton) and once in a filler-canon instance (Concept of “Heat”: Atsu/Netsu).</sup>