i wasnt here for the very beginning of the war mill, but i remember chatting in the chat room (hint hint) and hearing about some guilds and how this guy did this bad thing and this guild was going to get revenge, etc...then i checked out the war mill and i dont recall any real rules...i just started posting...the world itself seemed to form and change as we RPed...we didn't start with any real cohesion...that came with time
i know El doesn't want an original war mill recreated, but i can't help but like the way it worked
the warmill/RPmill home page came afterwards...it was just a collection of characters that already existed and things that had already taken place and a picture of the map that came into being slowly as we RPed
i guess i like this just jumping in thing better than starting out with the world in place and 20 guilds already formed...most of the time guilds formed because some people had similar ideas and decided to group together, rather than Joe Dragon saying one day "Hey, im gonna make a dragon guild cause it sounds cool, who wants in?"
bottom line - creating as we go seems better to me, than dropping a few dozen characters into an already fabricated world
however, you'll ahve a ahrder time creating "special" guilds, that have requirements or something, because characters willalready have been created 8(
Exactly wht I'm saying Serra. Don't make the stories fit a history, we've just begun. Make them have a purpose, and make the history fit the stories, later on.
The Maxx
I'd say let there be no backstory for anything. Let the world spring forth and let its history begin then. I'm not sure how well the extradimensional place idea is taking, but it could be that a gateway to a new world forms, and people decide to explore it. Through their actions, the history of the world begins. Your actions, which start out as the present, become the past you end up referring to.