Frequently Asked Questions

[oversight]

OOC Logistics

What is this, exactly? A game?

Nope! This is a GPSL+ roguelite deckbuilding game- just kidding. It's a fancy group psl, it's more or less a sandbox with a little plot. There is no AC, and it isn't moderated so much as enthusiastically organized. My goal is for the overarching plot and mechanics to be a collaboration between everybody that's involved, so everyone gets to have input on story beats that appeal to them. In addition, this method means that I won't burn out trying to craft "events" and entire metaplot things myself the way I would if I were actually trying to mod a game. I'm mostly just planning to help streamline things, and make some discerning judgment calls to make sure things stay on-theme and engaging and somewhat make sense.

Who is invited?

Right now, just a small handful of people I've reached out to. If there's interest and appeal among all of us once we get started, we can have a discussion about opening things up further to more people with the concept of having multiple clusters involved, maybe. I'm kinda down to kick that concept around some time, but it's up to ya'll.

What should I do to get involved once I decide to join?

Whatever you want, I'm not your dad. Just kidding, here's a loose suggestion:

• Post to the EMP meme with the character(s) you're interested in bringing to the cluster and chat it out with folks to see which ones compliment/contrast others, which have overlapping themes you wanna touch on, etc.
• Once you decide, join the community with the relevant journal(s), and comment on the OOC Plotting Post. This is an ongoing place where you can list out what threads you're interested in playing during the current month, and collaborate with everyone else in the cluster to plan it as much or as little as you'd like!
• Make a top-level in the IC Inbox post, to help make things easier for the rest of us to shamelessly stalk in one central location.
• Write a top-level to the current month's general fucking-around post, or make your own post, or tag into other people, do the thing!
• Optional: join the discord server if you wanna communicate with everybody more easily — or don't, if you're discord-shy, it's cool.

What warnings should I be on the lookout for?

• As a whole, this GPSL will contain explicit sex at times. It is not a requirement to play this, but the intimacy of sex among a cluster, which transcends both sexuality and personal dynamic, is a big component of Sense8. Players and characters can engage with this as much or as little as they're comfortable with.
• Aside from that, there will be violence, traumatic histories, mentions of suicide, and probably a murder-villain.
• Threadjacking is more than just a given, it's practically a necessity. We can start out by communicating this in advance but honestly I hope we all get to a comfort level that lets everyone feel confident slipping a tag cameo or two into others' threads spontaneously, seeing as the cluster is always connected and there is no real privacy among them. Just be cool and considerate about it, and if someone threadjacks something you're not comfortable with, be willing to let them know! Communication is key!

For individual character warnings, check the OOC Plotting Post.

What if I want to change characters?

Follow your heart. We can either retcon them or we can implement a mechanic of some kind to explain it, like 'when a sensate dies the cluster replaces them with another sibling', or we can make them an offshoot of cluster parents, who birth other sensates and pass on some of their memories/feelings/thoughts for the replacement character to experience, so characters are never Truly left behind, and you get to retain some CR.

Will there be events?

Sort of! My idea right now is for us to chat about an overarching metaplot, maybe slip in a few surprises Tabletop D&D style for you guys because I can't resist, and then maybe making a once a month general 'this is what's going on' log post you guys can tag on directly. It'll have some highlights about noteworthy events or themes outside of whatever canon-adjacent ones you're currently playing out together.

What's the status of privacy on the community?

The EMP meme will be set to public so you can post to it with a bunch of journals. Any posts containing sex should be set to members only. Other posts, be it monthly logs or personal logs, can be set to whatever you guys feel comfortable with.

IC Logistics

What is the premise?

We're repurposing the overarching concept of Sense8, but reworking some of the mechanics to better suit our needs. In essence, characters will slowly begin to experience their first, earliest ventures into waking up as Sensates. They will begin to slowly meet the other members of their cluster, and eventually learn to take over for one another, experience one another's memories, share each other's dreams at times, general psychological fuckery like that.

But how active should I actually be?

As active as you want, man. This is just a fancy GPSL, it's meant to be low-effort, low-commitment, low-stress, no expectation. If you go an entire month without having the energy to tag, fine — just give a shout if you have any multi-person threads going that should carry on without you or if there's something important you want to handwave. It's literally so chill, dude.

On the flip side, conversely, please do not feel left behind or overwhelmed if you notice a few people following their dopamine trail and boomeranging 500 comments. It just be like that sometimes.

How do mechanics differ from the show?

Location: Most of the characters are all in separate universes, to begin with. One or two are welcome to originate from the same place if the canon setting is similar enough (ie vanilla 21st century basic bitch earth) and you're feeling froggy, with the caveat that those characters still should be from separate canons. We want to keep the primary cluster roster as cross-canon/lcw as possible.

Time: Being in different universes means that time may pass at different rates for everyone. Six weeks to one character could be a decade later for another character. Mechanically, this is so everyone can play out AU versions of canon plot points they want to rewrite with Sensate Stuff without being restricted to the same 1:1 timescale as their thread partners.

Powers: characters with superpower type shit can channel it through whoever they're sensating into at the time. I will leave it up to ya'll how that manifests, how hard it is to accomplish, whether it's something everyone has learn like a skill that must be practiced or what. Just do whatever's the most fun for you!

Can I play a second character?

Sure! As long as you're comfortable writing your characters interacting with one another from time to time when necessary, at least until we have a group convo about starting a second cluster or something.

What's the deal with NPCs and canon relationships?

Supported and encouraged! I'm willing to NPC canonmates for anybody whose canon I am familiar with, and other people are also willing to do the same. This can be as big and frequent or as rare and infrequent as you want. Thread an entire relationship arc with Cluster-Blorbo and their Will-They-Won't-They Best Friend, this is only good news for us, because it means we all get to weigh in on it.

Love in all forms is an extremely important theme in Sense8. The cluster will never break up a canon ship, if anything they're likely to begin loving that person as much as their canon-mate does. Cluster orgies also aren't considered cheating; in a transcendental way, it's not eight separate people, it's one person with seven other selves. Clusters transcend labels and definitions and barriers; there can be members of the cluster with absolutely no sexual interest in another member personally, but by the nature of cluster intimacy, that's irrelevant.

In other words, you can bring the NPCs to the orgy.

Are the characters ever going to actually meet in the same place?

Yeah! I have loose plans to work out with ya'll involving a "part two" of this whole thing, where they get dragged to a jamjar style universe (setting tbd) with perhaps the thought being it's a world specifically pulling in sensate clusters for Some Reason. We can work more of that out later.

Who is the villain? Is there more than one villain?

Depends on which characters we get! I was thinking of repurposing canon antagonists for this, possibly ones who are doing a similar cluster-thing to connect to other canon characters' antagonists. Unless we come up with something better, possibly Chuck (the asshole Christian God from Supernatural) with maybe a sprinkling of Hannibal or something.