Welcome to Dragon World RPG
Dragon World RPG
Registering
Before we begin, an important note: When you register your first account, register it as an "OOC" Account for yourself. This will represent you the player. Future accounts you create will be named after your characters. This makes organizing Dragon World much easier!
Try to keep all of your in-character posts to your character accounts, while all of your out-of-character posts are reserved for your OOC Account, such as managing the character sheets for your various characters.
Note! For those who don't want to create multiple emails for their account, you you can add a variant to the end of your email using the + symbol. For example: myname@email.com and myname+goku@email.com will both send emails to the same inbox.
Introduction
Dragon World RPG, or just Dragon World, is a play-by-post Dragon Ball roleplay forum running on a "d20 system"--that is, D&D style--with strategy and tabletop elements.
The goal and vision of Dragon World is to provide an experience for roleplayers to truly live and feel like they're living within Akira Toriyama's Dragon World setting through their characters. Our focus is to recreate the darker, more serious nature of Dragon Ball from the Demon King Piccolo Saga all the way through the end of Dragon Ball Z proper. We want players to have the experience of traveling through space, becoming Super Saiyans, adventuring through the Afterlife, collecting the Dragon Balls, acquiring power ups, discovering powerful items, defeating strong foes that threaten the world, many worlds, or the entire universe. They may even have the opportunity to battle, and become, Gods.
Your characters will do all this alongside other player-characters, whether as allies or enemies. Dragon World is designed to strongly encourage interaction between player-characters, to the point that if you aren't regularly doing something with others, you're probably missing out. This will be reflected in nothing moreso than the various Sagas that you will experience, which will be interconnected series of events to help recreate the feeling of the original source materials -- but with entirely new characters. In these, you will have the opportunity to work with or against your fellow players to deal with new and escalating threats, and it will be your choices that determine the fate of entire races and worlds.
Borrowing further from D&D-style tabletop experiences, Dragon World will be run in various Campaigns. These Campaigns will be be made up of a number of Sagas, which themselves will involve various Events, all orchestrated by our Moderators and Administrators as a kind of Game Master. When a Campaign reaches its natural conclusion, heavily influenced by the players at the time, a new Campaign will begin.
If being part of this is what you want? Continue reading the section below and then move on to Joining the Dragon World.
The Dragon World
Our take on the Dragon World isn't quite exactly the same as the canon of Akira Toriyama's Dragon World. You'll notice, as you continue to read through our rules, a number of minute differences where the world has been slightly altered or added to. The example that might be most obvious is the creation of Transformations for the various races, such as Human, that didn't have their own, to give everyone the ability to keep up with the incredible growth of the series-favorite Saiyans.
This version of the Dragon World will see its Campaign begin in Age 900. It can be thought of as an alternate universe, wherein the events of the main timeline simply never transpired. Freeza never destroyed Vegeta, because Freeza never existed. Goku never left for Earth because Goku, too, never existed. Instead, this is a Dragon World where the story will be shaped in part by your hands, and it will be your characters that create a legacy for themselves.
At the beginning of our Campaign, which takes place over a century after the majority of the Dragon Ball story, the universe is somewhat different. The Saiyans are no longer subservient to Freeza's people, referred to as the Changelings. Instead, they run their own empire, conquering worlds of economic and political importance to other races throughout the galaxy. The people of Earth, too, have recently joined the interstellar community, now regularly interacting with the other races of the universe.
Much of the rest of the Dragon World is similar. The Namekians are a peaceful people that, while formidably powerful when they need to be, prefer to live in relative isolation in their agrarian communities. The Changelings continue to buy and sell worlds for a profit. Androids and Cyborgs of all kinds and origins can be found throughout the stars. High in the heavens above, the Shinjin watch over the universe and afterlife alike with a keen eye.
Our story begins as the Dragon World begins to experience great change, and what happens in it next will be up to you and your fellow players.
About Dragon World
Why don't you get stronger by posts and word count?
A common mechanic on other RP forums is for characters to grow in power based on how much you, the player, write. While this can be a fun experience it often requires immense investments of time and effort simply to become and remain competitive with the rest of the players, particularly those that started before you.
Dragon World intends to reward player interaction above volume. Characters that are out there fighting, participating in Events, undergoing Quests with others, and generally rocking ass, are the ones who are going to be the best. This will be the case regardless of how big their roleplay posts are or are not. It is for this reason that new characters will always start very close to the power of the other player-characters, to ensure that all characters become a relevant and impactful force in our world immediately.
It is important to note that while Dragon World wants to reward players who have contributed much, it doesn't want to do so at the cost of making new or less-prolific writers irrelevant.
Why a d20 system?
The combination of a d20 system with play-by-post roleplay forums is more common that one might believe.
In our case, a d20 system was chosen because of its ease of use and flexibility. These systems are most often used for tabletop games that take place live, whether online or in-person. They need to be lightweight enough to be easy to track and use in the moment, during primarily-verbal roleplay. This has allowed Dragon World to create a system that provides interesting and varied game mechanics, while not impeding the focus on character actions, words, and choices.
Additionally, many other roleplay forums use deterministic systems that have no elements of chance or luck. The fundamentals of light dice mechanics ensures that the outcome of no fight is ever certain, whether between closely matched opponents or even those with great advantages of the other.
You mentioned there will be a story a-la a D&D Campaign run by a Dungeon Master. Why not let it be entirely player-driven?
The agency of player-characters is a high priority for us, but the decision to have a core story of Sagas run by the staff of Dragon World was an easy one. The previous experiences of the primary creator of Dragon World demonstrated that while entirely player-driven RP forums can be fun, the experience dramatically hinges on the choices of other players. More passive players, or simply more passive player-characters, can create large swaths of downtime that other writers don't find very engaging.
To combat this, there will always be an underlying Saga at play, always with the intention of bringing players together against another threat or simply each other. It is important to know, however, that the actions and choices of players themselves will always be the priority, and the Campaign's primary goal is to provide opportunities to make those decisions interesting and fun for everyone.
What happens when other players become too powerful?
A frequent problem encountered by other RP forums like Dragon World is when player-characters, or a group of them, become so successful and powerful that no other player or team can reasonably threaten them. While this might be satisfying in the moment for that top player or group, it quickly becomes boring and stifling for everyone.
Dragon World deals with this in a few ways. First, differences in power provide a decisive advantage. We want players to be able to feel like they're the Freeza to the Krillin at times, but their advantage should not be an insurmountable one. Outnumbering an opponent, the right items and techniques, or even just a potent wish on the Dragon Balls can overcome any individual or team. Furthermore, there are a number of unique methods of gaining power available only to player-characters that are not among the strongest. Finally, Dragon World follows a very general rule of thumb: the strongest character (by Power Level) shouldn't be more than 5x stronger than the weakest.
We firmly believe that no matter how powerful you and your allies are, the experience is more interesting and fun for everyone if there's always a threat to face.
Is there a limit to the number of players, like in other tabletop games?
The Staff of Dragon World want to create a compelling Campaign that is tailored to, and deeply involves, the characters of our world as much as possible. This becomes more and more difficult with more characters to manage, though is easier than a live, at-the-table experience.
The number of characters each player is allowed to play will rise and fall with interest in Dragon World. Although not a hard rule, the current limit is 15 to 20 characters in total.
If the number of people who want to play is great enough, and there are the necessary staff are available to manage them, other Universes can be created.
Wait, other Universes? Does that mean I can run my own Campaign and Universe on Dragon World?
Yes, other Universes! Much like the source material introduced the concept of the Multiverse, it is also compatible with Dragon World.
If we have enough interested players actively playing enough characters, we can create another Universe for them. This Universe will need its own Campaign managed by its own Staff. As such, all the necessary pieces must be in place: the players, the characters, and the staff members able and willing to do such a thing.
Should that all come together, new Universes will be made, and yes: you might be able to run your very own Campaign in one of them as one of our staff!
Dragon World RPG
Registering
Before we begin, an important note: When you register your first account, register it as an "OOC" Account for yourself. This will represent you the player. Future accounts you create will be named after your characters. This makes organizing Dragon World much easier!
Try to keep all of your in-character posts to your character accounts, while all of your out-of-character posts are reserved for your OOC Account, such as managing the character sheets for your various characters.
Note! For those who don't want to create multiple emails for their account, you you can add a variant to the end of your email using the + symbol. For example: myname@email.com and myname+goku@email.com will both send emails to the same inbox.
Introduction
Dragon World RPG, or just Dragon World, is a play-by-post Dragon Ball roleplay forum running on a "d20 system"--that is, D&D style--with strategy and tabletop elements.
The goal and vision of Dragon World is to provide an experience for roleplayers to truly live and feel like they're living within Akira Toriyama's Dragon World setting through their characters. Our focus is to recreate the darker, more serious nature of Dragon Ball from the Demon King Piccolo Saga all the way through the end of Dragon Ball Z proper. We want players to have the experience of traveling through space, becoming Super Saiyans, adventuring through the Afterlife, collecting the Dragon Balls, acquiring power ups, discovering powerful items, defeating strong foes that threaten the world, many worlds, or the entire universe. They may even have the opportunity to battle, and become, Gods.
Your characters will do all this alongside other player-characters, whether as allies or enemies. Dragon World is designed to strongly encourage interaction between player-characters, to the point that if you aren't regularly doing something with others, you're probably missing out. This will be reflected in nothing moreso than the various Sagas that you will experience, which will be interconnected series of events to help recreate the feeling of the original source materials -- but with entirely new characters. In these, you will have the opportunity to work with or against your fellow players to deal with new and escalating threats, and it will be your choices that determine the fate of entire races and worlds.
Borrowing further from D&D-style tabletop experiences, Dragon World will be run in various Campaigns. These Campaigns will be be made up of a number of Sagas, which themselves will involve various Events, all orchestrated by our Moderators and Administrators as a kind of Game Master. When a Campaign reaches its natural conclusion, heavily influenced by the players at the time, a new Campaign will begin.
If being part of this is what you want? Continue reading the section below and then move on to Joining the Dragon World.
The Dragon World
Our take on the Dragon World isn't quite exactly the same as the canon of Akira Toriyama's Dragon World. You'll notice, as you continue to read through our rules, a number of minute differences where the world has been slightly altered or added to. The example that might be most obvious is the creation of Transformations for the various races, such as Human, that didn't have their own, to give everyone the ability to keep up with the incredible growth of the series-favorite Saiyans.
This version of the Dragon World will see its Campaign begin in Age 900. It can be thought of as an alternate universe, wherein the events of the main timeline simply never transpired. Freeza never destroyed Vegeta, because Freeza never existed. Goku never left for Earth because Goku, too, never existed. Instead, this is a Dragon World where the story will be shaped in part by your hands, and it will be your characters that create a legacy for themselves.
At the beginning of our Campaign, which takes place over a century after the majority of the Dragon Ball story, the universe is somewhat different. The Saiyans are no longer subservient to Freeza's people, referred to as the Changelings. Instead, they run their own empire, conquering worlds of economic and political importance to other races throughout the galaxy. The people of Earth, too, have recently joined the interstellar community, now regularly interacting with the other races of the universe.
Much of the rest of the Dragon World is similar. The Namekians are a peaceful people that, while formidably powerful when they need to be, prefer to live in relative isolation in their agrarian communities. The Changelings continue to buy and sell worlds for a profit. Androids and Cyborgs of all kinds and origins can be found throughout the stars. High in the heavens above, the Shinjin watch over the universe and afterlife alike with a keen eye.
Our story begins as the Dragon World begins to experience great change, and what happens in it next will be up to you and your fellow players.
About Dragon World
Why don't you get stronger by posts and word count?
A common mechanic on other RP forums is for characters to grow in power based on how much you, the player, write. While this can be a fun experience it often requires immense investments of time and effort simply to become and remain competitive with the rest of the players, particularly those that started before you.
Dragon World intends to reward player interaction above volume. Characters that are out there fighting, participating in Events, undergoing Quests with others, and generally rocking ass, are the ones who are going to be the best. This will be the case regardless of how big their roleplay posts are or are not. It is for this reason that new characters will always start very close to the power of the other player-characters, to ensure that all characters become a relevant and impactful force in our world immediately.
It is important to note that while Dragon World wants to reward players who have contributed much, it doesn't want to do so at the cost of making new or less-prolific writers irrelevant.
Why a d20 system?
The combination of a d20 system with play-by-post roleplay forums is more common that one might believe.
In our case, a d20 system was chosen because of its ease of use and flexibility. These systems are most often used for tabletop games that take place live, whether online or in-person. They need to be lightweight enough to be easy to track and use in the moment, during primarily-verbal roleplay. This has allowed Dragon World to create a system that provides interesting and varied game mechanics, while not impeding the focus on character actions, words, and choices.
Additionally, many other roleplay forums use deterministic systems that have no elements of chance or luck. The fundamentals of light dice mechanics ensures that the outcome of no fight is ever certain, whether between closely matched opponents or even those with great advantages of the other.
You mentioned there will be a story a-la a D&D Campaign run by a Dungeon Master. Why not let it be entirely player-driven?
The agency of player-characters is a high priority for us, but the decision to have a core story of Sagas run by the staff of Dragon World was an easy one. The previous experiences of the primary creator of Dragon World demonstrated that while entirely player-driven RP forums can be fun, the experience dramatically hinges on the choices of other players. More passive players, or simply more passive player-characters, can create large swaths of downtime that other writers don't find very engaging.
To combat this, there will always be an underlying Saga at play, always with the intention of bringing players together against another threat or simply each other. It is important to know, however, that the actions and choices of players themselves will always be the priority, and the Campaign's primary goal is to provide opportunities to make those decisions interesting and fun for everyone.
What happens when other players become too powerful?
A frequent problem encountered by other RP forums like Dragon World is when player-characters, or a group of them, become so successful and powerful that no other player or team can reasonably threaten them. While this might be satisfying in the moment for that top player or group, it quickly becomes boring and stifling for everyone.
Dragon World deals with this in a few ways. First, differences in power provide a decisive advantage. We want players to be able to feel like they're the Freeza to the Krillin at times, but their advantage should not be an insurmountable one. Outnumbering an opponent, the right items and techniques, or even just a potent wish on the Dragon Balls can overcome any individual or team. Furthermore, there are a number of unique methods of gaining power available only to player-characters that are not among the strongest. Finally, Dragon World follows a very general rule of thumb: the strongest character (by Power Level) shouldn't be more than 5x stronger than the weakest.
We firmly believe that no matter how powerful you and your allies are, the experience is more interesting and fun for everyone if there's always a threat to face.
Is there a limit to the number of players, like in other tabletop games?
The Staff of Dragon World want to create a compelling Campaign that is tailored to, and deeply involves, the characters of our world as much as possible. This becomes more and more difficult with more characters to manage, though is easier than a live, at-the-table experience.
The number of characters each player is allowed to play will rise and fall with interest in Dragon World. Although not a hard rule, the current limit is 15 to 20 characters in total.
If the number of people who want to play is great enough, and there are the necessary staff are available to manage them, other Universes can be created.
Wait, other Universes? Does that mean I can run my own Campaign and Universe on Dragon World?
Yes, other Universes! Much like the source material introduced the concept of the Multiverse, it is also compatible with Dragon World.
If we have enough interested players actively playing enough characters, we can create another Universe for them. This Universe will need its own Campaign managed by its own Staff. As such, all the necessary pieces must be in place: the players, the characters, and the staff members able and willing to do such a thing.
Should that all come together, new Universes will be made, and yes: you might be able to run your very own Campaign in one of them as one of our staff!
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