The Gifted - Vansterike Academy (Open house! Summoners, Mages, Psions, join in!)

[3Dog]

Plot

Set in an alternate and futuristic reality, this RP follows the trials and tribulations of a plethora of supernaturally-gifted humans as they seek their way in the world and attempt to discover how they will leave their mark in history. The Gifted, as they begun to refer to themselves in response to being labelled freaks and mutants, represent a small minority of humans on the planet but are widely feared and discriminated against due to their staggering powers. The divide between the communities became much more pronounced and resulted in a power shift when the Gifted suffered heavy casualties in a civil war that took place many years ago, leading to an even smaller population and debilitating restrictions (such as forced microchipping) imposed upon them by the federal government.


Today, opinions and emotions on the enmity between humans and gifted vary sharply within both communities. Several human rights groups have incorporated stances of equality and have persistently called for discrimination against Gifted to end although this has met little to no success due to fear and anti-gifted bias propagated by the media.
On the other side, Gifted opinion on humans varies to a much lesser degree due to the successful influence of the benevolent headmaster of the Vansterike academy, Professor Alvarez, who has campaigned for peace between the two parties for the vast majority of his life. His charm and magnetic personality have set him aside as an anomaly within the media, who generally hold a favourable opinion of him despite their anti-Gifted stance. However, whilst Alvarez promotes the message of peace, the embers of vindication among the more vengeful-minded Gifted are being stoked by a shadowy underworld figure… Which side will you pick?


Setting

This RP’s primary location is on the massive grounds of Vansterike’s Academy for the Gifted. The academy is located just a few miles outside the borders of Ceteris, a megacity and bustling metropolis that many of the students in the academy visit often. Ceteris is located where Chicago would be in the state of Illinois in this alternate-reality vision of America. The slums of Ceteris are also a secondary location within the RP as they have high concentrations of Gifted living there. Although it would seem a large group of Gifted oppressed by a human-led government and poverty would have a society marked with rebellious attitudes, they are relatively peaceful thanks to the guiding of the community Elder, a wise old man named Mortar who just happens to be a close friend of Alvarez’s. Students are free to explore the rest of the city in their spare time; however, they must understand to back down when denied entry into some areas, such as certain restaurants and malls, based on their status as Gifted. Students who fail to show this maturity may be banned from entering Ceteris by the Academy administration. First year students are 14 and final year students are 22. There are several postgraduates who also attend the academy and are studying specialised courses.


Race/Class


As of now, the only race available to RP as is Gifted since the main locations of the RP are the Academy and the Slums. Gifted are divided into one of four Guilds in the Academy based on their dominant power. You can choose a maximum of two powers, with one being your primary power that helps to determine which Guild your character will be in. The Guilds are:


Black Mage Guild: Black Mages have control over five elements although they can choose to specialise in a specific element, whichever one suits their style. Elements that Black Mages can control are: Fire, Water, Earth, Ice and Lightning.


Psion Guild: Telepathy and Telekinesis. Each counts as one power. You cannot be a telekinetic, a telepath AND have another power. Telepathy is the ability to read minds and leads to a better understanding of others in social situations… and a deadly form of attack in the form of a full-on mind assault, usually manifesting itself in concentrating extremely loud and uncomfortable sounds within your opponent’s head or overloading it with information/voices/sounds. If you have Telepathy as your primary power, you can also affect an opponent's brain chemistry in such a way as to create hallucinations that will surely prove to be distracting. Telepaths must be aware of clouding... It is a technique used by other Gifted in order to prevent their minds being read passively. However, if a Telepath wishes, he can force himself into the mind of his target and read the minds that way... it just won't be a secret of who did it anymore.

Telekinesis is a blunt force power, so you cannot create sharp manifestations of the power such as knives and swords. It is used to push, pull and lift, meaning you can use it to fly!


Summoner Guild:A very special kind of Gifted that has developed a mental connection with a fourth dimension and can use this to summon special and unique beings to aid themselves in battle. You are limited to two summons and can only have one summon out in the field at a time. Although summons are very powerful, it can take a long time to summon and until you do, you’re vulnerable unless you use another power to form a barrier over yourself. If you’re interrupted during a summon, you’ll have to restart the process. I’ll trust you guys to be far with this power! :) By the way, summons are very rarely taller than 30 feet.


White Mage Guild: They mostly focus on benign powers such as healing, although they can use some light-based attacks. The biggest advantage of being a White Mage is your ability to banish summons. However, this takes at least a minute to accomplish so be careful!

I’m not going to set any restrictions on the power of combinations you can have just to give everyone freedom, but please be fair in your battles and don’t godmod! Losing battles can be great character development too and we all lose sometimes! :)

Well, that’s about it. I think we can make this a great, fun RP and develop some really cool and intricate storylines with each other. I’m not going to make myself the main character as I want everyone to have equal opportunity and freedom to construct some beautiful and deeply involving plots, but try to make these personal ones guys, don’t introduce an overarching plot without discussing it with me first. I think I’ll take care of the overarching plot, but I’ll definitely do it in a way where every character is important and it’s not just one person writing their own story with everyone else’s characters as little more than sideshows. I will be RP’ing as authorities within the academy such as the headmaster and teachers, but if you want to RP as a teacher as a one-time or permanent thing then just shoot me a PM!

For now, anyone besides me or a co-GM can only have two characters, just so we can avoid clutter in the short-term. If you’re reaaallly interested in an extra character, PM me and we’ll make a decision together. By the way, if you decide to RP as a teacher, then you can still have two student characters as it’s really the students in this RP that will advance the plot forward the most :)

Any questions?

[HowlingWolf]

Hmmm...not really questions, other than I'm interested...although, what category would this be in?

[Ebrithil]

Very intriguing. I would be interested in joining.

[LJCOMICS]

Initially this RP piques my interest, but as I read more of it, the powers available, their categories and their limitations are rather disappointing.

[Yael Stellarand]

Initially this RP piques my interest, but as I read more of it, the powers available, their categories and their limitations are rather disappointing.

I've played a more limited version of the this RP with 3Dog 6 months ago and the way the powers were organized worked out well and the RP developed really well. What would be some changes that you would suggest that would make the system less disappointing? Because it seems like the way its set up is excluding something that you'd be interested in.

[LJCOMICS]

Being given both the powers we're allowed to choose from and the limitation of essentially "you can be good at one thing, and crappy at some other thing" stifle my creativity a bit, and don't appear to leave any room for growth.

If it were up to me, though I understand that it's not, I would work everything out like so: only two houses, one for mages and one for psions. Mages explicitly practice magic, which one has to be born with the aptitude for, but is a learned skill. Psions practice psionics, which are inborn abilities that have to be practiced and exercised to strengthened. Mages and psions each have whole hosts of abilities available to them, some paralleling those in the other house, but are intrinsically different. Players could choose a "school" of magic or psionics that they are particularly adept in, and then be allowed their choice of either spells or powers that they are capable of, how many they are allowed and how powerful they are being dependent on how long they have been in the school (each one would need to be approved by the GM, of course).

Like, here's a quick little example CS for what I'm talking about.

Name: Mike
Age: 14
Year: 1
House: Psions
Speciality: Metacreativity
Powers: Shield- Mike can make psychic shield
Sword- Mike can make a psychic sword

[3Dog]

Thanks for the interest, guys. This is just an interest check topic so you don't need to post your profiles yet, I'll put the template and powers guide in the OOC topic so that you can all have the knowledge to craft a profile without anyone having to approve it :)

Howling Wolf- I'm not sure, but I was thinking either Free or Casual, leaning a bit more towards Free right now. Do you have a preference or advice for where it should be placed?

EDIT: After seeing some of the reactions... Casual. Definitely Casual.

LJ- The powers and limitations have been set up in such a manner to prevent anyone from becoming overpowered or godmodding. Based on my experience, having too much freedom always results in [i]that guy[i]. That guy will place all of his efforts into making his character a powerhouse that absolutely can not be defeated in combat. To avoid this, powers have limitations and secondary powers aren't as strong as primary powers so that your opponent has an advantage over you and vice-versa.

Let's say there's a fight between a Black Mage/Telepath and a Telepath/Black Mage. The Black Mage will have the advantage of having a mastery over the elements and can use all of them in his attacks to great extent. This theoretical fighter would be able to combine magic (such as water and electricity) and in general, the damage of his black magic attacks would be far greater than his opponent's. However, as a secondary Telepath, he wouldn't be able to defeat a dedicated Telepath. This creates variance in fights and creates distinct classes, each with their own pros and cons. The fights become more interesting and less predictable and a really great show can be put on that highlights the difference between characters and their abilities. A primary Telepath would be able to induce hallucinations and piercing attacks to the mind, whereas the primary Black Mage wouldn't be able to do the former and the latter would be much less powerful than the Telepath's. These kinds of differences are essential, in my opinion, as it creates specialised characters and avoids someone becoming a jack of all trades. The current system does this in a simple way that allows players to jump right into the story instead of going over their profile multiple times with me.

More importantly, powers have limitations on them so that people are given the right environment to create an interesting character who defines himself/herself through his/her personality, actions and choices. Too many people fall into the hole of defining who their characters are by their powers, and that's something I think we all want to avoid as it leads to much deeper characters. These limitations are there to prevent people from creating extremely unique powers that would lead to the Academy being sort of useless to them as it can't cater for such unique powers. We could have people choosing powers that wouldn't be present in the universe, such as controlling time, or as you saw above, someone being able to manipulate and control plant life. I think the limitations aren't restrictive at all and help to exercise further creativity when you're working in the confines of a set universe... I also think they're kind of essential for order, otherwise people will complain about others being overpowered.

If you really want to specialise, there are still ways to do it within the current framework. For example, the Metacreativity could easily be replicated by a Black Mage who could utilise solid elements (such as Ice and Earth) to make the sword and shield. Sure, they wouldn't be invisible, but close enough right? Thanks for your interest and suggestions though, I definitely did consider them but as of now I'd like to keep the framework of the RP as it is in order to not over-complicate things and focus on character development, storylines and personalities.

[LJCOMICS]

Regardless of absolutely anything else, if you're making this a free RP, I'm not interested.

Good luck, though.

[3Dog]

LOL It's funny, I was about to edit my previous post after browsing through some of the other interest checks and noticing that the free section has a certain stigma attached to it! I'm really new here so I'm not too experienced with the different sections but after seeing a general consensus in other topics, I'll make this a Casual. You have to admit though, sometimes one-liners can have a snappy effect to them...

[LJCOMICS]

Alright, if it's casual, I'm willing to work this out.

I feel that you could achieve the same results in terms of balance and character quality through GM discretion, and not have to use such a rigid system. If something doesn't fit, or you think they're unbalanced, just tell them to change it. If someone wants to make a character that doesn't fit into these rigid archetypes, well, they can't. Just as I don't want my character defined by their powers, I don't want them defined by their "class", as you say. "Oh you're a such-and-such? Well I'm a such-and-such, and we're better, huehuehue."

The issue most personal to me is that I want to play a character that, given the current restrictions, would be defined as a Black Mage, but I don't want to play a final fantasy class. Or even any kind of mage, for that matter. I like psionic fluff much better.