Palace Caprae (Sburblike RP)

So, okay, being a Homestuck fan, I kind of think Sburb is really cool. Like, it's a big huge multiple-world game setting, chock full of convoluted game mechanics and secrets, and its content is tailored to its players on a fundamental level. It seems like it'd be really cool to run a roleplay in that setting- and as evidenced by like, there (formerly) being a whole Trollslum board over at MSPA Forums, a lot of people had the same idea.

But it's kind of played out by now, really. Like, Homestuck's more or less already exposited how the quest framework and overarching story works, and the "everyone is a hero of destiny" shtick is tricky to pull off in a general-purpose sense without being super juvenile about it. There's still some fun to be had, but there's a definite staleness to the concept. (Also, if I have to read one more character introduction that starts with "Your name is CAPITAL LETTERS, and here is ALL THE RELEVANT INFORMATION ABOUT YOU", I'm going to do an acrobatic pirouette off the other Homestuck meme I'm sick of.)

Palace Caprae is an attempt to put some of the mystery and life back into the whole Sburb RP thing... by totally throwing out like, practically everything about Sburb. A brand new cosmology, game world, symbology, mechanics set, narrative framework... essentially redoing the whole biz, as if you rewound your memory back to Act 1 and nobody knew anything about how Sburb was supposed to go.

Things that are sort of still the same:
-A group of people get together to play a video game, which ends up transporting them to a new and mysterious world.
-Players accelerate in gaining power and significance as the world opens up and increases in scale.
-There exists an esoteric alchemical crafting system.
-Game tropes and structure pervade the world the players are exploring.
-Features a convoluted yet flexible library of mythological concepts and symbols.
-The act of playing the game poses a catastrophic threat to the players' native planet that the players may or may not be responsible for.

Things that are not the same:
-Pretty much anything else.
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So that's the pitch! There is a problem with the pitch, though!

In order to preserve the whole mystery and discovery thing, I've gotta keep the majority of what the deal is under wraps. Which is to say, I need to dole out discoveries over the course of gameplay, with actual players. Which is to say, I need to play the role of GM to a bunch of players. Which is to say, there is a problem because I've never done anything like that.

I've done a bunch of reading on the subject- from Giant in the Playground and Darths and Droids and /tg/ and forum adventures? But I don't actually have experience doing that kind of stuff, and my campaign notes are kind of all over the place. Like, literally all over the place, there's like two notebooks and a couple of untitled text files and some tumblr posts and a sync.in and some of it is missing. I've got like pages and pages of ridiculous game mechanics and adaptive worldbuilding stuff, but I'm not totally sure how it'll all play out.

But whatever, I'm thinking I have to start somewhere and I'm fairly confident I can avoid fucking up.

I'm thinking I'd run it primarily over IRC, with logs and notes and stuff posted in a central thread- for a freeform thing without dice or whatever, I'm assuming that's the way it's done? For hidden secret plot and symbology reasons, I'd prefer to have eight players, but that'd be biting off more than I can chew so I'd probably go with 4 (or more, if there's more interest than I'm anticipating.)

So that's what I want to do- I'll hold off on more specific details about the game's hook and what I'd need from players until I know whether this is like, a good idea that could work.