So when Krayz posts a character up, we'll have four, including me (maybe five including Ironwolf). I'd like to hold out for a couple more, but no probs starting it like this for now and allowing more players in as time goes on.
For now, I'll post up some brainstorms of mine from the old interest check thread, just some splurges of ideas I had. They're from early on, so they don't have anything concrete on the Cartel, Oligarchy, or Atayo City, but I think they still retain something of the feel of Rufren.
For more brainsauce, I like to think of Rufren Mayata as Spirited Away meets Sin City, as Gintama meets The Sopranos, and as Inuyasha meets Blacksad.
Brainsauce;
For example, maybe one character is a witch hunter on the trail of a witch he has been stalking for some time. He stops at a fairy market in the woods for supplies, and overhears talk (talk between an imp, and a group of masked youths) of a travelling circus group with a new performer whom sounds like she could be the witch he is hunting. Going to see the performance, he sees the "new girl" is not in fact the witch he is stalking but a beautiful young psychic, who wows the audience with her telekinetic powers.
Trying to find this girl backstage after the show, he is blocked by two hefty bodyguards, a chain-smoking minotaur and a giggling catgirl. The catgirl eventually persuades her partner to let the witch hunter have his mind read by the psychic, whilst the two bodyguards stand watch.
Another idea...two magicians, from rival schools of magic, engage each other in regular and friendly magic-based "duels" taking place across various settings, atop a huge white tower, in a secluded mountain resort, at a student festival, etc. The two are quite famous and acquire interesting sidekicks with their own abilities over time. One of these sidekicks summons a hungry Jinn for a duel...only to find out, halfway through the magician's battle, that the Jinn is on a demonic Wanted List, and suddenly elite demonic policemen appear on the scene. Chaos ensues, with both magicians' teams classed as hostiles along with the baffled Jinn, who only agreed to be summoned in the first place if he was fed his favourite brand of dumplings, and promptly flees the messy battle in pursuit of them...
Now say that the sidekick who summoned the Jinn was the witch who was being hunted in the first story.
Another one...say a rogue succubus happens to find comfort and solace in the companionship of an attractive homosexual ninja assassin, whom also happens to be a supermodel, and whose chiselled features are seen on the front of magazines and billboards. The two have a happy friendship, the famous ninja giving the vein and flirty succubus camera time and her own photoshoots in return for added protection being as the whole world knows the ninja's identity.
Enter a glamorous pop diva who is a celebrity in her own right, and who used to be on the same modelling agency as the ninja. She hires (read:seduces) a motley crew of unlikelys(harlequins, catboys, wizards) into kidnapping the succubus and using her to blackmail the ninja into retirement, and also because she has the hots for our ninja, and believes that she is "the right woman" that he "needs" to find. Hilarity ensues.
If you felt a
little dash of steampunk in amongst any of this, you wouldn't be too wrong. Only a little dash, though.