[OOC] Return to the Multiverse

[Prostagma]

Because those are the only ones you ever talk about? Everyone else gets like, a oneliner at best. Inexplicable Super Demon Guy was admittedly better but all that's doing is supplanting Chaos as "The one guy in grandsword's stable of characters that does things." Plus there's that whole "ONLY THE MASTERSWORD" thing which means the only thing your characters are adding is risk of friendly fire. Also, people who shoot into a melee that are usually considered jerks. Also are you sure you want to be complaining about things being slow, grandsword? Really? Like I can get wanting a phase for your guy to fight in, you could probably just ask the guy running the fight, incrediblebee, to toss you something; but complaints about things being slow coming from the guy who posts once every two-and-a-half days on average (that's total, not IC) is pretty hard to take seriously.

[Zero Hex]

how did you bring that up again? i'm done with it. all i was saying was that if we do boss fights where players only have one person fighting, it'll slow things down. it has nothing to do with personal qualms.

grandsword

i'd suggest, if we must have one and only one person fighting, then have some sort of secondary objective for the others in the boss area.

grandsword

I bring it up because you taking solo fights as people going "haha fuck those other guys" and obviously taking issue with a character, not a player but a character, stopping and/or admonishing people for interrupting is, let's face it, a rather personal take on it all. Bee (the player) not once actively stopped others from taking part in the fight, whether IC or OOC, and Ajax's reactions when people did so were, you know, Ajax's. As in, I acted in character. I then proceeded to explain just why fights should generally be solo in this game and how to involve others including examples, which I'd already done a few pages back but I figure no one actually read because it was a bit of a long post. I guess you didn't read the new explanation either, considering that second quote I just put up there. Also, and I have no diplomatic way to say this, you know why I have trouble keeping track of your characters? Because you have a whole lot of them, not all of them have been posted in the characters section and your posts are super short so they each get like a sentence dedicated to them or so and sometimes not even that. This means that your own posts sometimes don't remember all of your characters and even when they do the stuff relating to each of them is left so vague that it all compounds into making each of them pretty damn obscure. Have you considered writing a paragraph for each or having less characters?

[Kalamadea]

You know, it's funny. I was just planning on having Samus get her own fight down in that magma there to explain why she's not showed back up yet. Also, you other guys present at the Volvagias fight are free to just keep going until you get bored? I'll figure something out (suggestions would be nice). Anyway, let's not keep arguing here, because it's really not getting anywhere. The plan from now on is to have some tailored encounters so every character gets their spotlight, just as we're doing here now. It's better than the clusterfucks we had before by a long shot.

[JonxlatheLion]

*cough cough* check out my new CS *cough cough* This one you should like better

[grandsword]

i had four. three now. as for post length, excuse me for missing where an RP turned into writing a paper each post. pardon me for making the attempt to balance this, with college, two jobs, a part in a play, and a household to run. but certainly. let me lessen my characters. let me remove another reason for me to stay. we're still around lava right? i'll just have two of them take a dip. then kill the other one later, and then..oh, right, then be done. come to think of it, why not not leave now? obviously, I suck too much for you people's standards, and the rp would be better off if i wasn't here, so why not just leave? I give. a. damn. about this thing. you all can second guess me, my posting, my ability in rping..but you know what, at the end of the day i give more of a Damn about this RP than you know. so if you lot want to drive me off, guess what. i've been loyal to this for four years. i ain't leaving or removing my cast because people want one character per person or paragraphs every post, or a ratio of posting every day. take offence if you will. but i stand firm. and that's my final piece on the matter.

[Zero Hex]

*cough cough* check out my new CS *cough cough* This one you should like better

JonxlatheLion

Well since you're opening the floor like that. The moderate marksman thing is arguable, depending on the player Gordon Freeman can perform absolutely ridiculous, impossible shots, doing things like engaging in long distance sniping duels with a pistol that isn't built for precision shooting and whatnot. The high intellect and PHD might be a thing on paper so hey, technically not wrong, but let's not kid ourselves, Gordon is an errand boy. He carts shit around, he pushes buttons, he plugs stuff in and turns valves, he doesn't do science, he does basic puzzles and serves as muscle for the actual scientists. The crowbar thing's fine. Gordon Freeman can indeed age and he's not perpetually protected from death. He doesn't age between games because, you know, he's been stuck in a timeless limbo since destroying the Nihilanth. He can also die and fail, it's just that to actually see the end of the game you must keep trying, but Gordon can indeed die. The G-Man might stack the deck in his favor on occasion, but things imply that yes, Gordon did the shit he did on his own and had he failed the G-Man would've likely found another subject. Being unable to decide what happens to him, fair enough. The weapons are okay, missing out on some fun stuff but I'm sure they'll come with upgrades. Of course we could start arguing about whether actually bringing in Gordon himself is a good idea given his status as a non-character with zero given dialogue and personality whose everything, far and away, is ultimately determined by the player in a range most games that tout player choice cannot match. Even the iconic Doomguy had a given personality and mindset in his game's manual, while Gordon Freeman's everything is the player behind the screen. And while this might allow you to technically play something canon as you like, if you're going to self-insert that hard I feel as though making a Half Life fan who got sucked in and got Half Life related powers would be a better idea. Can't say the same thing about Samus because she's been given a manner of personality and sense of self, however slight.

[Earnest Evans]

i had four. three now. as for post length, excuse me for missing where an RP turned into writing a paper each post. pardon me for making the attempt to balance this, with college, two jobs, a part in a play, and a household to run. but certainly. let me lessen my characters. let me remove another reason for me to stay. we're still around lava right? i'll just have two of them take a dip. then kill the other one later, and then..oh, right, then be done. come to think of it, why not not leave now? obviously, I suck too much for you people's standards, and the rp would be better off if i wasn't here, so why not just leave? I give. a. damn. about this thing. you all can second guess me, my posting, my ability in rping..but you know what, at the end of the day i give more of a Damn about this RP than you know. so if you lot want to drive me off, guess what. i've been loyal to this for four years. i ain't leaving or removing my cast because people want one character per person or paragraphs every post, or a ratio of posting every day. take offence if you will. but i stand firm. and that's my final piece on the matter.

grandsword

We've all got shit on our plate. It doesn't change the fact that you haven't posted a damn thing for over a week, have hardly posted more than a paragraph per character since I got here, and have thus far not attempted to interact with the other characters who aren't Ajax, Bee, or Ganondorf. The absolute extent of what you've done to Cirno, Jack, Pete, and Utsuho can be summed up as thus: Chaos walking into the castle and telling people to follow him. You probably care about this RP, but it's clearly not shining through. You've been on last night and the night before, yet haven't posted anything IC, not even Omega killing Volvagias or Alpha running off to join the fight against Beast Ganon or your robed dude actually doing something other than looming over Ganondorf and a Darknut. You haven't answered any of this guy's questions beyond waving it off with a "I'm busy and I'm stressed", but you're clearly not busy enough to avoid arguing with people.

[Kalamadea]

I do try, lol. I realize Samus does have that evidence of a personality, and working to keep to that evidence is a challenge I enjoy taking on. It's not for everyone, I know, but I enjoy that bit of challenge to keep to what's canon. With Samus I scrapped Other M's shitty Samus persona and went with what all the other games presented, and built off of that to try and get a fully fleshed personality. For my needs to roleplay something mostly original, Kalama's got that down pat for when he starts getting more involved in interactions. He's never, of course, doing combat, but he'll be participating in dialog and such, providing some pointers here and there in ways he currently can't since he's not able to actually send people around the internet. He can do it just fine everywhere else, but right now he's just going "heads up, this is next" while the crucible yanks you into a world, if that makes sense. Feel free to question this stuff so I (well, we) can get it all settled in an agreeable manner. EDIT: Kaze, first things first, I'd like you to actually fill out the personality section here. Everyone else did, it just makes you look kinda lazy by comparison and it would be unfair if it got accepted that way when everyone else put at least a bit of work into that section. Doesn't have to be anything fancy as long as it's something for you to build off of.

[Zero Hex]

i had four. three now. as for post length, excuse me for missing where an RP turned into writing a paper each post. pardon me for making the attempt to balance this, with college, two jobs, a part in a play, and a household to run. but certainly. let me lessen my characters. let me remove another reason for me to stay. we're still around lava right? i'll just have two of them take a dip. then kill the other one later, and then..oh, right, then be done. come to think of it, why not not leave now? obviously, I suck too much for you people's standards, and the rp would be better off if i wasn't here, so why not just leave? I give. a. damn. about this thing. you all can second guess me, my posting, my ability in rping..but you know what, at the end of the day i give more of a Damn about this RP than you know. so if you lot want to drive me off, guess what. i've been loyal to this for four years. i ain't leaving or removing my cast because people want one character per person or paragraphs every post, or a ratio of posting every day. take offence if you will. but i stand firm. and that's my final piece on the matter.

grandsword

Three or four characters is a fair amount when you can't keep all of them straight and active. It's why I continue to suggest you do just the one, so you are better immersed in a single experience and write more for a single person. A paragraph of 4 or 5 lines per character isn't a paper, even if you had 4 of them, don't exagerate. Having more characters shouldn't in any way be a particular reason to hang around in any roleplay, you can do things with just the one and several players are doing so, in fact. If your life is currently too hectic to keep up with things, then perhaps it would be best to just have the one character to keep track of, yes? Also you get fairly contradictory, you threaten to leave yet go on to speak about how much you care for this roleplay and how you're gonna stick to it. No one's ever told you to leave. In fact, I have encouraged you to stay. Doesn't change the fact that, in my opinion, it would help your writing to learn how to focus and write for a single character instead of having 3 or 4. I'm not forcing anyone to do anything, I don't particularly have the power to, but what I can do is discuss and present arguments that I feel support my point of view, something you're not particularly managing at the moment. I've yet to see a single shred of evidence that you really need to have all these characters when you can barely keep track of them all and write for them all, nevermind giving each of them an engaging situation even if it's something as simple as, say, Jack wandering off to loot with no challenge. Others agree with me, and please, don't even try to call this being teamed up on or a conspiracy, shit's embarrasing, people can naturally agree over points without it turning into a direct attack on your person. Believe it or not, I'm actually trying to help you here. Forum roleplaying is all about creative writing, fully portraying a character and giving people a look at their mindset, their situations, how they see the world and interact with it. Learning to get the handle of setting a scene and delving into character mentality for every post, even if it's something simple and inconsequential to the overall plot, will make your narrative that much more engaging. And you can get a better grasp of this if you, you guessed it, stick to the one character and try to write at least 4 or 5 lines per post.

[Kalamadea]

I do agree on that. I do feel more comfortable with two, doing a paragraph each, but I can and will leave Kalama in the Void if I can't keep up. Post is coming along poorly, though, mainly due to my exhaustion. I'll try and post up tomorrow for sure to get Samus's one-on-one fight started. Once she's done, someone else gets their spotlight there unless Rawk feels comfortable having another boss pop in. Samus has "the" Volvagia covered in the form of the Magma Dragon Matriarch I'm writing up.

[Zero Hex]

You do realize that perhaps you should actually GM the encounter for everyone, yes? Rather than focus on narrating your own battle? I mean with Ganondorf it was a bit hard 'cause the formula had been established and all but you have several dragons jumping around, you could very well separate and attack the different group members in different manners and whatnot. Or should people just, handle their own battle posts and narrate how awesome their character is as long as they don't oneshot the dragons? Just have everyone do their own battle however they wish and there's no actual GMing or anything of the sort there?

[rawkhawk64]

I'm fine with another boss, especially one I'm not in control of. I write fanfiction as another hobby, so I could try to do my own fights (as I've been doing), but it's always more fun if someone else is in control of the fight, so it seems a little more interactive and exciting. And I do wanna apologize for getting defensive over the changes I wanted to make to Rawk. It's just that I felt this was a good place to take the character for a test run, but I kinda forgot that this RP is made for over-powered characters.

[Zero Hex]

The powerlevel was kind of totally not the issue people took with the guy. It was more getting rid of the chess pieces, which were a fun gimmick that set the character apart and had good progression to them, and replacing that with just ripping off the Monado. Getting rid of something nice and fun that no one else was doing in favor of being yet another magic swordsman, not even an original one to boot. Also, that the given elemental weaknesses made no sense what with being immune to ice magics, but cold harmed him and whatnot. Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I'd get rid of the cyber swords and super duper psychic powers and just work with a cool chess set gimmick. It's something fun, that no one's doing, lets you fill in the petmaster role which is a fun one and meshes better with the super IQ, actual chessmaster stuff. Like, the cyber swords and psyker powers seem tossed in because you think they're cool and they kind of are, but they don't particularly mesh all that well, neither with eachother nor the chess powers beyond correlating high intelect to psychic abilities.

[rawkhawk64]

The powerlevel was kind of totally not the issue people took with the guy. It was more getting rid of the chess pieces, which were a fun gimmick that set the character apart and had good progression to them, and replacing that with just ripping off the Monado. Getting rid of something nice and fun that no one else was doing in favor of being yet another magic swordsman, not even an original one to boot. Also, that the given elemental weaknesses made no sense what with being immune to ice magics, but cold harmed him and whatnot. Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I'd get rid of the cyber swords and super duper psychic powers and just work with a cool chess set gimmick. It's something fun, that no one's doing, lets you fill in the petmaster role which is a fun one and meshes better with the super IQ, actual chessmaster stuff. Like, the cyber swords and psyker powers seem tossed in because you think they're cool and they kind of are, but they don't particularly mesh all that well, neither with eachother nor the chess powers beyond correlating high intelect to psychic abilities.

Zero Hex

The main reason for including the Psychic abilities is more for exploration/puzzle-solving, and the swords are so he's not completely reliant on the Chess Pieces. I might get rid of the swords (not sure of that yet), but I want the psychic powers to stay, again mostly for exploration and puzzle solving.

[Earnest Evans]

The main reason for including the Psychic abilities is more for exploration/puzzle-solving, and the swords are so he's not completely reliant on the Chess Pieces. I might get rid of the swords (not sure of that yet), but I want the psychic powers to stay, again mostly for exploration and puzzle solving.

rawkhawk64

What kind of exploration and puzzle-solving do you think would require absolute the ability to completely understand every aspect of the past, present, and future, and still maintain the kind of visceral problem-solving that makes an intellectual character useful? There's no procedural or thought process to be found here, it's just your character seeing a smoldering crater, picking up a shred of ash, and instantly knowing that the crater was made by Omrok The Flesh-Despoiler on his quest to find the Crucible, situated some five miles to the northwest in the village of Berlinia? There's no satisfaction in immediately solving any problem whatsoever!

[rawkhawk64]

The main reason for including the Psychic abilities is more for exploration/puzzle-solving, and the swords are so he's not completely reliant on the Chess Pieces. I might get rid of the swords (not sure of that yet), but I want the psychic powers to stay, again mostly for exploration and puzzle solving.

rawkhawk64

What kind of exploration and puzzle-solving do you think would require absolute the ability to completely understand every aspect of the past, present, and future, and still maintain the kind of visceral problem-solving that makes an intellectual character useful? There's no procedural or thought process to be found here, it's just your character seeing a smoldering crater, picking up a shred of ash, and instantly knowing that the crater was made by Omrok The Flesh-Despoiler on his quest to find the Crucible, situated some five miles to the northwest in the village of Berlinia? There's no satisfaction in immediately solving any problem whatsoever!

Earnest Evans

He only gets a view of the past, and where something significant has happened. He doesn't get any details that aren't relevant to said event. So, in your example, he'd just know that the crater was made by Omrok and that he was looking for the Crucible, since that's all that's relevant. I wasn't planning on abusing the power like your example stated.

[Earnest Evans]

Right, which is why he uses Mediumship to speak with whatever was made into a crater and figure out what to do. If there wasn't a ghost, that's when you'll have to resort to basic observational skills and head over to the village on the horizon. From there you can get back into your character's omniscient comfort zone. Again, by granting your character immediate and relevant knowledge as soon as you want, you carve out the most fun parts of an investigation. Want to catch a murderer? Ask the ghost! Ghost doesn't know? Learn everything from the murder weapon! Caught the murderer in the act but he's got a gun on you? Telekinetically disarm him! There is no problem you can't solve, sport! The sky's the limit!

[Zero Hex]

Also lets not forget being able to sense thoughts from people around you at all times, so hey you just take a walk around town and listen in to people's heads and whadayakno, that guy's the murderer because he thought about it in detail that could be known to no one but the killer himself, now all that's left is to prove how with access to all the knowledge of what happened provided by the ghost, the crime scene and potentially the murder weapon as well. And no I can't really come up with ways to replace this umbrella of metagaming abilities with chess. I can, however, suggest replacing the swords with some kind of decorated mace scepter, because clearly you're the king in chess terms.

[rawkhawk64]

Right, which is why he uses Mediumship to speak with whatever was made into a crater and figure out what to do. Again, by granting your character immediate and relevant knowledge as soon as you want, you carve out the most fun parts of an investigation. Want to catch a murderer? Ask the ghost! Ghost doesn't know? Learn everything from the murder weapon! Caught the murderer in the act but he's got a gun on you? Telekinetically disarm him! There is no problem you can't solve, sport! The sky's the limit!

Earnest Evans

What exactly would make a murder significant? I'm talking about something historically significant.

Also lets not forget being able to sense thoughts from people around you at all times, so hey you just take a walk around town and listen in to people's heads and whadayakno, that guy's the murderer because he thought about it in detail that could be known to no one but the killer himself, now all that's left is to prove how with access to all the knowledge of what happened provided by the ghost, the crime scene and potentially the murder weapon as well. And no I can't really come up with ways to replace this umbrella of metagaming abilities with chess. I can, however, suggest replacing the swords with some kind of decorated mace scepter, because clearly you're the king in chess terms.

Zero Hex

Again, it has to be of historical significance, and I might put a limit that it can't be from a recent event. I might consider using a crucible upgrade to something like a scepter, but I dunno yet. I do admit you all have very valid points, so I think the issue here is I automatically assumed you all understood the limits I had in mind about the character (major personality flaw of mine, and one not likely to change due to circumstances outside my control).

[Professor_Wyvern]

What exactly would make a murder significant? I'm talking about something historically significant.

rawkhawk64

The fact it is a murder. That is why it is significant. Just really popping in to say that.