Hm...Would a celebrity esper that uses their powers to put on public performances, with the public accepting that they're just practical effects, be within the bounds of willful suspension of disbelief in this setting?

@Nyahahameha Are you asking if the public would consider their magic to just be some fancy tricks? Absolutely. If they get a little too crazy they might inspire some conspiracy theorists or something like that, but the average human doesn't believe in magic and will try to rationalize everything they see in the reality they understand.

@BrokenPromise Well, my question was more about how that idea relates to the tone of the setting. It seems like the whole idea is for espers to do their thing in secrecy, like Spider-Man or magical girls, so of course I zeroed-in on that aspect as a potential source of intrigue via trend-bucking. I just want to make sure I wouldn't be going too far in the wrong direction by having my character be an in-universe celebrity who uses their esper powers for fame.

@Nyahahameha I absolutely love that with all the superheroes that you could have chosen, you singled out Spider-Man and "magical girls." I shouldn't have found that as amusing as I did.

last RP didn't have nearly as much esper/normie interaction as I would have liked. But I had always assumed that while there were many espers that went superhero/magical girl route, there were a few that decided it was a lot safer to use their powers in ways that didn't put them in front of deadly monsters. Though they would have to be careful, as mana doesn't regenerate too fast. Another esper would also be aware of what was going on. The government might not like it too much if they were trying to spread awareness of magic, as they kind of want to keep the monster problem out of the public eye. But those are more difficulties for the character than the player. It doesn't sound hard to pull off to me.

@BrokenPromise I'm happy to have amused you so much, and hope to continue doing so! ^_^ Thank you for relaying your reaction to me.

Understood, that helps me narrow down my character ideas to two. I'm heavily leaning towards one of them over the other, who would be a Freelancer, but taking a look at the Characters tab shows me that this RP has a dearth of Maverick Alternative player characters, and the idea I'm leaning away from would be perfect for that faction. I'm open to a push in that direction if it would be beneficial for the RP!

Also, separate topic question: in the Doctrine of Combat Supremacy, the Construction section has two Notes that are described as having limits of 5x5 and 1x1, but there's no units given. The Puddle Note has a similar aspect of its description that specifies "feet" as the unit of measurement, so should I assume feet are being used for those notes as well?

@Nyahahameha One thing I will mention that I didn't get in above is that the operation segments of the RP are heavily combat focused. So I don't advise making a totally civilian/non-combat esper. you wouldn't have much to do during the months operations run.

Going Maverick Alternative would be nice, but the RP would still be stacked pretty heavily against them. I'd consider your RP style and what you want to do in the RP. If you want to just vibe with everyone (except for when you can't) then Freelancer is the better choice. If you want to oppose the government and have unique (read: friendly) interactions with characters that no one else in the RP can befriend, then Maverick is great for that. The last RP didn't have any Mavericks and it turned out okay, so don't feel like it's something you need to do.

Yea it's feet. I'll clarify that later. Thanks for pointing it out.

@BrokenPromise As much as unique interactions with characters nobody else can befriend sounds really appealing...I think I'll keep the Maverick idea as a backup character in case this one permadies or something. Also, making a non-combat character wasn't anywhere close to my intent, so no worries there. :)

Another unrelated question: concerning the link to this RP's Discord server on page 3 of OOC, is that only for players whose character has been accepted, or am I free to join now to make discussing my CS easier?

@Nyahahameha I would use the one on the 0th post, as it hasn't expired. C :

And yea, you can use it if you want to meet the crew.

I'm gonna be really shocked if this character isn't a Gundam fan.

The first post is up. You can situate your character in their scene and the operations will commence next week. I tend to update over Saturday/Sunday and rarely miss a week.

@Majoraa is running the GEMINI Casino operation, while I'm running the kidnapped Truck Kun operation. If you have any questions, you know which GM to seek out for answers.

@NyahahamehaYou seemed conflicted on discord, so I'll hold off on reviewing it until you tell me you're ready. There's still plenty of time to get accepted.

Y'know what, screw it, I'll go ahead and post the other CSs I've put together for this setting. I know they're not going to be approved for use or anything, I've just been having a blast fitting my OCs into the framework of this RP and don't want to keep all this work to myself. I don't expect anyone to read through these unless they just like reading CSes for fun.

Y'know what, screw it, I'll go ahead and post the other CSs I've put together for this setting. I know they're not going to be approved for use or anything, I've just been having a blast fitting my OCs into the framework of this RP and don't want to keep all this work to myself. I don't expect anyone to read through these unless they just like reading CSes for fun.

I do, so I read them. :)

Here's another one. Why not? :)

None of your extra characters' Leitmotifs have grades.

@PonnWell, Mika's didn't, so I thought they weren't supposed to be listed, since you can usually just process of elimination it O.o I can correct that though if it's too confusing.

@Nyahahameha Yea that was a typo that my Co-GM missed. (Because I didn't show it to them) So I guess I'll fix that now.

Alright, all my CSes have Graded Leitmotifs now.

Here's another one. XD I think I managed to balance her! It was fun working out how to make her weird power set work here.

Alright everyone, here's the scoop.

“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men."

― John F. Kennedy, American president... Quoting Phillips Brooks, clergyman

With the current operations over, machinations, for good or for ill, have made certain entities in the city of blood stronger. Fortunately, you are among those who have grown in power.

SoH has a "pyramid" level up system. You may chose to upgrade a core glamor (Instrument, Style, Genre, Leitmotif) by one grade if you have at least one other glamour of the same grade. As an example, Finn has three silver glamors and one bronze. They may upgrade any of their silver glamors to gold rank. Meanwhile, Mika has one gold, one silver, and two bronze. They cannot upgrade a glamor to gold because they only have one silver. They will have to upgrade one of their bronze glamors to silver. If you like to plan out your levels far into the future, you should have one Diamond, Gold, Silver, and Bronze glamor by the time the final operation rolls around. Elroy has been added to my detailed NPC list if you want to see what your character would compare to. Upgrades won't be implemented until downtime starts next week, but you're free to prepare and get set up for when they do.

The two supplemental glamors (PR, Backup) are upgraded/downgraded based on events that transpire in the RP, and are more closely tied to your character's performance. In the case of PR, this is improved by rising through the ranks of your chosen faction. For Gemini, this means getting on Fritzi's good side by being an obedient little agent. For Maverick Alternative, this means being a rootin' tootin' maverick with Billy. For Freelancers, this means doing your job and satisfying all of your employer's criteria. I think for this first operation we're not going to see a whole lot of changes here. GEMINI totally owned those weretigers, but it was a rather straightforward operation. Meanwhile, the Freelancers were served a total fluster cluck that involved runaway dragons, a second set of theives, and Oros the flippin' Mad. It was no freelancer's shining moment, but can you blame them? Do keep in mind that with higher rank/pay comes higher expectations. This is especially true if you're above silver, so don't go promotion hunting if you can't take more difficult assignments. Oh, and then there's backup. Basically an esper can get a totem object from someone they've interacted with over downtime. It would be easier to explain how this is acquired once downtime starts.

Now for the slightly less fun stuff. There's going to be some "patch updates" to the DoCS, but it's mostly going to be to clarify a few things that weren't executed 100% in this operation. It's fairly minute, and I'm mostly bringing it up now because it didn't seem worthwhile to do during the RP because it wasn't going to have a huge effect on the outcome of events.

#1: Effect notes (particularly push and pull) and the Aoe/Zone note

The idea for these has always been that the origin of those modification notes is at their center, and they just kind of "blow out" like an explosion. So in the case of a push/pull note being used, it's going to treat the center of the effect as the spot that's getting pushed/pulled to.

#2: Targeting parts of a target (Restrain/Suspend)

Restrain essentially binds part of a target to something nearby, be it a foot to the ground or a wrist to a shoulder. It targets part of a target. Suspend freezes a character's center of mass in a 3d space. Being able to target specific areas with suspend causes a lot of uncomfortable situations to arise. If you can target weapons, does that mean that if you shoot someone in the pants, they can just kind of, undress, to restore their movement? Suspend needs to work on the entire target to prevent the thirstier of you from getting ideas!

#3: "Targets" are assumed to be human in size

A sort of addendum to the above, if something is larger than a human, you can expect notes to behave differently. Weightless is a nifty note if you don't want to worry about gravity for a moment, but you can't just turn a kaiju into a parade float and kick them into the stratosphere. Monsters that are larger than humans will usually be effected properly by weightless due to being a monster and thus weaker to arcane effects. But if it's massive enough, even that won't be enough to justify a melody working.

#4: Flight/Speedster + Push/Pull combo

Flight/Speedster are buffs with a duration. They allow for faster movement, and in the case of Flight, they also allow you to fly. Push/Pull is an instantaneous effect that moves a target a set distance in a set direction. There is no overlap between these notes. If used together, You'd get shoved/pulled in a direction and then your speed buff would take over, which is based on your esper's SPEED score and not your momentum. This has its uses for a quick strafe into a speed boost, but they don't combined to grant SSS++APEX/CHAD rank SPEED.

In addition to clarifying above, a lot of the element specific notes don't feel special enough and will be getting some pretty interesting buffs/changes over downtime. Might even add a new type of supplemental glamor. Though it's probably one most of you aren't going to want to use... anyway, more details about the updates will be available after their implementation.