I'm in, of course, if this starts after June 1st

H'okay, I've been reading through this thread periodically, but I haven't had access to a computer with internet access until just now, but I'll just say quick that I've done (and hosted) this exact sort of thing quite a few times. I'll try and show up at some point tonight and give y'all a basic rundown of how I've seen it done - obviously we'd have to make a few changes to accommodate the specific challenges of this community, but I think that it's totally doable, and shouldn't even be that difficult.

Okay, so, I'm in the middle of my honeymoon, but here's a basic rundown of how I've seen this sort of thing done. I'm sure that some of this would be extraneous, but I figure I might as well give you the whole shebang and we can tailor it to our specific needs.

The story's author generally posts a prologue on the forum, giving the audience and writers a sense of how the story is going to look. (What universe it's set in, what the main plotline is, how the characters conceivably got where they are, etc.)

After this, all users of the forums are invited to send in applications for characters who fit into the story's universe, generally consisting of Name, Gender, Species (if applicable), Age, Occupation, Physical Description, and Character Traits. If we're playing as people (and I assume we are) there should also be a picture. Along with this, writers send in a 200-500 word sample of writing, basically a scene showing the audience how the character interacts with others and introducing their main character dynamic. (This should essentially be chapter one of your character's story, so don't reveal all of their secrets or anything like that.) If we wanted to do a more thorough thingamajig, I would recommend reading this for a general idea: http://londonsfallen.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=acceptedhuzzah&action=display&thread=7506&page=1

Once the deadline for applications has passed, the hosts would sit down, read through every single application, then choose the top nine or ten, and those characters become the main characters in the story, and take over the plotline from there on in. (Alternatively, the hosts sometimes have categories, with keywords like "Dancer," "Drunkard," or "Thief," etcetera, and the authors tailor their characters towards one of those keywords. The hosts then pick the top three for each category, and the audience votes on which of those three should participate in the story. If the same author wins multiple categories, they choose which character they play as, and the second-placer joins the cast instead.)

Obviously, since we're doing this in a bit more of an everybody-can-join format, that step is unnecessary.

The host creates a forum, which only player characters have posting permissions for. There are subforums for each round, and each story post is put up in a new thread.

There should also be a separate forum just for authors to discuss plotlines and plan the story. (I've seen other RPs try to do this via Skype, and it was an incredible hassle, and completely screwed authors who weren't online during critical plot discussions.) That way, authors can be like, "Oh, hey, I had this great idea about how your character and mine can interact, what if we tried this?" It's also a good idea to post drafts of your writing, and wait for the approval of anybody else's character that appears in your post, so that if you're getting something wrong, or you have major spelling/grammar errors, other people can give you advice and help you out. There's a bit of a wait between posts because you have to get approval from other authors, but it's not as bad as havng to wait for a moderator's approval, but since you know what other people are writing before they post it, you can get started on your post ahead of time.

Then with the voting, pretty much the "PM your vote to the host" format is the way to go.

Yeah, two weeks should be fine.

Eh, I'd still advise that it be alias, if only because even when it's more or less obvious who's RPing who, it tends to be a lot easier to focus on the actual character when you're not thinking of them as Rob or Matt or Leos, and thinking of them as Steve or Jacques or Brunhilda - especially when voting is involved.

I'd say we should wait to see how many people actually submit a character before we plot out how many deaths per week we should have. Quite a number of people could have dropped off the face of the earth in the time between signups and now.

I'd also suggest that if we're going to do multiple deaths, we should send in ranked lists of the other characters, and axe the three characters who have the lowest (highest?) point totals get eliminated, as opposed to only being allowed to vote for one person. The one-vote system opens itself to shenanigans and weird vote ploys, and that seems like it would kind of work against the whole "focus on writing well" sort of feel that it seems like we're going for...

Out of curiosity, what would we do if the votes kill the killer?

FEnal Destination.