Kovacs

Some good lineage advice from @ CalliopeVale

I am obviously very late to this particular party (by a whole year!), but as someone who just started a project like this? Let's see what advice I've got.

First huge thing is to either learn site coding or find a very detailed guide. This one is what I used, and it had almost everything i wound up needing. Coding is quite important for making your thread look appealing, which is what makes people actually stick around long enough to even find your lore.

Second huge thing is said lore. People don't really get in on lineage projects just because they're lineage projects; they join because they think it has cool lore and cool opportunities. You don't need a perfectly unique idea, though at least having a unique spin would help - ultimately, you need to make it interesting.

To use my project as an example? My core idea was dream magic, preferably to a sweeter end. Alright, cool, the theme becomes Sweet Dreams. From there, I needed to figure out what they do with their magic and why.

What do they do? They spread sweet dreams, simple as that. Why do they do that? I considered just making it be "because they can and they feel compelled to", but that's boring on its own, and no one minds if I go a little bigger. So I whipped up a dramatic event - a plague of nightmares brought on by the return of the Ancients. Now that's a good hook - and if you were one of very few people who could stop a dramatic magical plague, wouldn't you feel compelled to do it? Not always, but probably.

Then, you need to find a way for other people to make their dragons engage with yours. It's no fun if they can't take the exciting story ideas and do stuff with them - how are they going to participate?

With Sweet Dreams, I built that in at the end of the lore. My founders ran into one another at my clan, realized they shared abilities, and decided that it would be more efficient to have children who could then scatter and cure people on their own, even if it was harder for them to do. I also made the last line a question of if they would, leaving people the option to write a rogue/renegade child if they wanted to. Then, in my rules section, I invited people to cross with other lineages and explore the kinds of children that would make, for both personality and power. This one isn't necessary, but it should definitely be considered.

After the lore is all settled, start figuring out your rules. Who can count as a member? Do you want to have just any descendant qualify, or are there restrictions on colors, genes, breed, maybe even element? (Maybe you could have two lines, one with tight restrictions, one for everyone else, as in Viking's Dirge.) When can people qualify, in the sense of being added to the registry? Most people have a level restriction of some sort so that only the kids people care about make it on instead of clogging it with the results of every breeding ever. Are you going to allow crosses with other projects? What about between generations of your project once they get far enough removed? (Most people allow the former but not the latter.) And possibly the most importantly - do you want to have official affiliates?

With all of that done, it's time to start putting together your actual thread. First, you'll want graphics - I don't know where people pull their stock ones from, but I commissioned custom thread headers, a breeding card, and a button from Milky Way Designs, which are gorgeous and, of course, suit my project perfectly. (Later on, after I'd gained some traction, I also reached out to a friend about putting together a bio template, but that is truly optional.)

My suggestion is to do your actual coding, post-by-post, off-site before making the thread itself. And you will absolutely want multiple posts for people to navigate between - it makes it much, much easier. Five seems to be a common base.

At some point, of course, you're going to need to get actual dragons to start your lineage with. By now, you should have a solid grasp of your theme and aesthetics, so finding a good breed, color(s), and geneset shouldn't take forever; then it's just a matter of finding good ones. Don't be afraid to ask other players about buying dragons off of them! Explain why, though.

Finally, a word of advice. It will take time for your project to take off. At the start, there will be very few hatchlings you can sell, and no one else has any they can breed for you. And no one knows your project is out there, either; it's why people tend to affiliate in the first place. This is normal, not something to be discouraged over. Mine's been going for almost two months now and exactly one other user has engaged with the thread - someone I reached out to in private to figure out a coding issue I was having with my registry