The Energon Pub

Hey, all.

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in writing a backstory for HMW (like a small group of us collaborating together to write it). I think it'd be great to finally have our own little HMWverse, and the backstory could be the first step towards it.

If anybody is interested just say so in this thread, or feel free to shoot me a PM. Likewise, if you'd like to express any certain ideas you may have for the story (largely undeveloped at this point), either lay it out here or drop me a PM.

Thanks, everyone!

I think you are onto something here. So far my ideas are: story includes teams belonging to others who post here in the HMW:GD; needs to include cybertron...

... that's it so far. Helpful, I know

You mean, including a back story of your team in the back story of HMW and how it all ties into the main objective of telling the tale for this game?
That seems rather interesting.
Everyone could partake in this as well and how their team revolves around how HMW began.

Neo Crusader wrote:I think you are onto something here. So far my ideas are: story includes teams belonging to others who post here in the HMW:GD; needs to include cybertron...

... that's it so far. Helpful, I know

Don't feel too bad; I have next to nothing floating around in my head.

The Rage Bot wrote:You mean, including a back story of your team in the back story of HMW and how it all ties into the main objective of telling the tale for this game?
That seems rather interesting.
Everyone could partake in this as well and how their team revolves around how HMW began.

Something like that, yeah.

Hmm... You just might be onto something...

As you can all already tell, I don't know where to start. So at this point, I'm looking for ideas ('cause they'll clearly be better than mine) for what could possibly spark into an actual backstory, or history, or something. It doesn't matter what you have in mind, I'd like to hear it. I want this to be about us (well...it'll be about our teams, really, but you know what I mean), and I'd love it to be as grand as we could make it. Something we'd be really proud of. I just hope it's possible...

Hey everyone - I'm extremely new to this community myself, not just HMW but also Seibertron, though I am an avid fan which is why I'm here.

I was thinking what might be cool even would be like almost digital mini comics that follow the progression of HMW.

I'm still level 0 so I haven't seen a ton of stuff, but the scenarios are intriguing and the battle system lays out the action and the outcome for us already.

Slightly different but of the same ilk in which your talking about because maybe we can do some fun stuff with a mini digital comic for the back story too - including our characters.

Either way I'd love to be involved!

We could kind of all collaborate with different cover art and different people working on different aspects and stuff - and there would be two versions - the Autobot and the Decepticons but we'd obviously tie them together somehow!

Hey Jason, although you are new to HMW and Seibertron I have seen you in a few missions and whatnot. Great pic of Dinobot. I think something along the lines of a mini-comic would be cool. Maybe even a short 1 page dealie like the Mosaic strip just involving HMW characters.

Yeah, I just actually checked one of those out today, might be an awesome idea to do something like that. And I've seen you around a few times and curse under my breath once or twice noticing your guys against mine!

But yeah, and the mosaic style mini comic could be in addition to more in depth styled story telling to get into deeper back stories for HMW - kind of combine the two ideas.

As I touched base with Plaything on the other night, This is a great idea that could do a number of good things for the game.

First off The Wiki that is is back in development is in need of material and Articles on the back story of the game would be a nice bit to fill it out.

IMO there are 2 eras that would need to be reviewed. The first is a set history for what happened prior to the big reset 2 years back now. As that period is set and nothing that occurs can truly alter those years it could be compiled as stand not only for a history of the game but as a tribute to some of the teams that stood out, but have since disappeared.

The second would be the game history since the reset, including the loss of some teams, the rise of others that have taken their place. Storyline to reflect the tournaments and events that have occurred, and can be updated to included any major events that occur as we move forward.

Ideally once these are set and people re-upload their team and unit information to the wiki, then they can tweak their various bios to reflect the history articles, and cross reference events to true create a proper historical record of the HMW.

lol mini-formers, but a lot more dramatic.

It's an interesting idea, and one that's been talked about off and on for the life of HMW. The problems it usually runs into are that not everyone with a team bio wants others to muck with them, some people have established team bios that run counter to other people with established team bios, and neither of them are likely to want to change the stories they worked hard on just to conform with someone else. Another problem is that when you're using another persons character in a story, you need to communicate with them to make sure that you're on the same page with how the character acts and talks. This way, you don't get a serious character acting like an idiot and vice versa. The final problem is that a lot of the players are either lazy (in that they haven't done a bio [raises hand]) or updated a bio in a while [raises hand again]) or just are not active on the boards, so you're missing out on a bunch of potential colaborators.

A problem with group writing in general is also, who dictates what is what? If team A is a beast wars team, that makes no mention of events from War Within, but team B is from War Within continuity, who says which works, or if they both work, how they both work? How about the Dead Universe? How about the Quints? Don't look at the Mosaics for an answer either, if you're trying to write out a coherient and unified story for a single universe. Some of the mosaics contradict each other, and a lot are contradicted by canon.

With what AZ just posted, and his very good points, I would suggest maybe just doing little one shot type strip that has no bearing on a total story.

Not to be rude,(I'm not trying to be, but could easily see that it can be seen that way) but the proposal was for a back-story based on the history of events in the game. not fan-fictions, which while always good to see and help flesh out teams and characters, is not (unless my discussions with Plaything were an indication of) the point of of collecting and presenting the events that have occurred in and around the game.

That said every side story has their place and if that can be rolled in to the living history all the better, but I just hope things don't go off track before they have a chance to get up and running.

As AZ and Editor touch upon, the biggest problem with trying to write a backstory for HMW is that pretty much everyone involved in the game has a slightly different idea of what the backstory should be; which elements from which series it uses, which parts of the comics count, which timeline takes precedence, etc. Getting that many people to agree takes considerable time, effort and - most likely - compromises that will likely leave some people disatisfied. This is the primary reason why it has never been done before (otherwise, an official backstory would have happened a long time ago most likely).

OTOH, the mosaic style is not a terrible choice to imitate. Making each piece stand alone, or a small number of writers continuing a storyline through various works, is both a good way to highlight your team and develop artistic skills. Making each portion a small, easily digestable piece also helps with attracting an audience on a message board as people (typically) tend not to have time for massive works (some members of this board being noted exceptions. There's little to stop you from developing your version of the HMW universe in such a manner; just be aware that others will see the setting differently.

Generally speaking people are open to creative works involving HMW characters as long as you treat other people's characters with respect. So if people wish to work on fiction (prose or comic format) involving HMW we look forward to seeing it, just remember to respect your fellw players' work and intentions (And get permission before using someone else's character).

Teams are plucked from the various continuities and dumped on a deserted Cybertron and left to fight it out. Completely unaware that there are higher entities (NOT Unicron or Primus) manipulating them for their own agendas.

blah blah blah.

Kaijubot wrote:OTOH, the mosaic style is not a terrible choice to imitate. Making each piece stand alone, or a small number of writers continuing a storyline through various works, is both a good way to highlight your team and develop artistic skills. Making each portion a small, easily digestable piece also helps with attracting an audience on a message board as people (typically) tend not to have time for massive works (some members of this board being noted exceptions.

This was the idea I was trying to get across, although a bit poorly I'll admit. I think keeping the stories short and varied would make it more interesting and easier to keep up with as well as create.

Kaijubot wrote:...just remember to respect your fellow players' work and intentions (And get permission before using someone else's character).

Definitely cannot forget this.

Burn wrote:Teams are plucked from the various continuities and dumped on a deserted Cybertron and left to fight it out. Completely unaware that there are higher entities (NOT Unicron or Primus) manipulating them for their own agendas.

blah blah blah.

Funny. This is how I kind of saw HMW myself. Maybe not transported for that specific reason but maybe they have gotten here in different ways and at different points in time. Makes it a bit easier to understand seeing all the different Primes and the different version of Megatron or the seeker jets in the game.

Aerialbot Commander wrote:

Burn wrote:Teams are plucked from the various continuities and dumped on a deserted Cybertron and left to fight it out. Completely unaware that there are higher entities (NOT Unicron or Primus) manipulating them for their own agendas.

blah blah blah.

Funny. This is how I kind of saw HMW myself. Maybe not transported for that specific reason but maybe they have gotten here in different ways and at different points in time. Makes it a bit easier to understand seeing all the different Primes and the different version of Megatron or the seeker jets in the game.

I also think Burn has summed it up well, for the same reasons Aerialbot Commander has stated (Also I thought of this after I had logged off to got to bed BED??? This is blasphemy who needs sleep?).

critically acclaimed Authorbot would like to help

Are we doing this as one huge complication, or as a series?

The way I see it there's no need to over complicate it.

You lay down the basis, you don't mention any particular teams, you just lay down the frame work and then individual members can build on that frame work and create a story for their own characters.

And if people don't want to use the frame work, that's their perogative too.

amazing how this topic is running off without notice of the original intent......

Plaything wrote: if you'd like to express any certain ideas you may have for the story (largely undeveloped at this point), either lay it out here or drop me a PM.

somehow a request for ideas to develop the back-story, has morphed into fanfics, comics and other bits.

Funny how a basic idea Plaything presented to me earlier I was quite enthusiastic for, has developed into a project I no longer have any interest in.

Hence why there's no need to over-complicate it.

Lay down the basics and people can spin off from there. Fics about their own teams, comics, cartoons ... whatever they like and they can tie it back to the frame work.

Burn wrote:The way I see it there's no need to over complicate it.

You lay down the basis, you don't mention any particular teams, you just lay down the frame work and then individual members can build on that frame work and create a story for their own characters.

And if people don't want to use the frame work, that's their perogative too.

I like what you've said, Burn. And yes...the last thing we want to do is over complicate it. Keeping it relatively simple and straightforward is imperative, as we don't want to confuse (and possibly scare) new players and players who have made a return after a lengthy absence.

As I said to Burn and Editor the other evening, the backstory itself would be kept vague, permitting those who have written for their team--and for those who haven't--the liberation and flexibility to still write what they may have in mind.

Editor wrote:Not to be rude,(I'm not trying to be, but could easily see that it can be seen that way) but the proposal was for a back-story based on the history of events in the game.

But how do you do that? Myself and Jeep ran a series of events based in out Transformers: Extinction universe, which were certainly events in the HMW history, but which never really accounted for things like the various resets and crashes (although our teams did to an extent cover the split and merging of the Beast factions). Most other events were in no way connected to ours story-wise, but were Beast era based, or WWi based of cartoon G1 or comic G1. It's just not possible to link the many and various events that have happened (and will continue to happen) in one convenient 'fanon'.

Ive always felt the best way to go about 'History of HMW' style fanons is to band together with a bunch of mates and have your teams exist in their particular universe, with friendships, rivalries and whatnot, that than expect even a tiny proportion of the small proportion of regular posters to agree on *anything*.

Burn wrote:Teams are plucked from the various continuities and dumped on a deserted Cybertron and left to fight it out. Completely unaware that there are higher entities (NOT Unicron or Primus) manipulating them for their own agendas.

blah blah blah.

That's actually pretty much what I was working on post reset... Except they where characters from different things I've worked on and got dumped into cybertronian bodies, so they had to deal with not only being dumped into a war, and given a side to fight for, but also no longer being human(or humanoids), and they not all of them were of the same alignment.

Editor wrote:somehow a request for ideas to develop the back-story, has morphed into fanfics, comics and other bits.

Funny how a basic idea Plaything presented to me earlier I was quite enthusiastic for, has developed into a project I no longer have any interest in.

The idea he presented the public was writing an offical backstory for HMW. I presented the problems with doing that. It's one thing if it's right after the launch of the game, it's completely different 7 years into it. Writing a story is different than writing a history, as a story shows creativity, even if it's a story about history, it isn't always 100% accurate, and exagerates things to keep the reader/listener interested, and a history is simply facts.

Burn's idea is probably the simpliest for a backstory, and one that should work for most people, but probably doesn't work for the story that Red and Jeep spent years working on. Which is where the main problem of working on a single origin story for the game comes into a problem. How do you fit the different players in, otherwise, you're going to end up with a lot of butthurt people.

If this ever gets sorted out, i would love to partake in this.

Personally, a poll would be in order with a bunch of different ideas that the community gets to vote on and the most popular one would be the basis of the back story.

Of course Burn's works well also.

I write all of my char's bios DURING the war, most were created for the war, not before, but again that's just me.

On back story iam trying to write some for my team but i am struggling can anyone help