BangoSkank — Roleplayer Guild

Things I Wrote

Someone suggested special powers as a writing prompt and someone else suggested the power for me.  So I had to write something about being the best breather ever.

I breathe better than anyone.  Catching my breath is not an issue for me as I never lose it.  I can swim underwater for a pretty long time compared to a normal man though my incredibly average musculature means I still can't really swim all that far without coming up for air.  Boy howdy though, when I do come up for air I don't bob in the water gasping and wheezing.  I take one deep full breath and I'm right back in the game.  The swimming game that is.  I can run for a pretty long time as well as each breath delivers plentiful oxygen into my body, but I still get tired fairly quickly do to lactic acid buildup and my general disdain for actually running.  I can probably yodel very well but I don't know how to yodel.  Ditto for playing saxophone or tuba.  I never hyperventilate so that is nice I guess, though I never had problems with hyperventilating in the first place so it's really kind of a toss up there.  Overall these powers are a slight increase to my quality of life but not much more than that really.  I can blow up a balloon like nobody's business though, so I've got that going for me.

Roald Cliffbloom - Ratling Trailblazer

In a ship full of strange Servitors and Squats and giant warrior women nothing ever seemed so strange to Roald as the sight of himself decked out in his dress uniform.  Every so often it was called for and every so often Roald put himself through the rigmarole of arranging everything just so.  Rogue Traders, this one in particular, had higher standards than some of the ruffians he had traveled with.  Sometimes he missed the laxer standards.

Most days his dress uniform lay waiting for the next time it would be carefully inspected, briefly worn, and then set away once more to await its next three to four hour tour of duty.  Ironed out with just enough starch.  Picked clean of any offending hair or metal brushing or deviant thread yearning for freedom.  Patches just precisely level and just precisely at this distance from one another.  Proportionally at least.  Ratlings only had so much space to work with.  Thankfully as a Ratling he hadn't much need to worry about the standards of Medals and Honors.  Having none.  

This careful arrangement was supposed to make everyone in the Imperial Guard look uniform.  Like one unit, one body expressing one purpose and one movement, His.

Roald looked like a fucking OD Green Orangutan Sausage.  A small one.

He marched through the ship to meet the others, passing the Servitors and giving them a distance slightly beyond respectful.  Who knew when or if one of them might decide he was slightly less Human an Abhuman today.  He made sure to bathe and deodorize and all of that, even so.

Arriving to greet the others he made a beeline for the other Abhuman and settled in, working out any remaining wrinkles in his uniform and cursing whoever it was who had clearly been in a hurry when they guesstimated how long the sleeves for a Ratlings dress shirt ought to be.

San Francisco, California
9:48 PM, December 31st 1967

Timely.

I always tried to be timely.  The military drilled that in to me, but even before all of that it was something that mattered to me.  I learned early on you couldn't control it, there were too many variables, all you could do was try to be prepared when things shifted.  I wasn't ready when pneumonia took my mother.  I disappeared into comics, decided I would be an artist.  I wasn't ready when the war came to America.  God I was so skinny then.  I had no idea what I was getting in to.  None of us did.  We couldn't have.  I was timely though.

My recruiter, when I got rejected for being underage and so damn skinny, he had a motivational poster taped up in that cheap little cubicle on the white turning yellow walls.  I can almost see it now.  A nature scene, for some reason.  I never got that.  I did get the message.  It put things into words better than I could.  It said that Luck was the Intersection of Preparation and Opportunity.  I like to think I've been prepared.  I like to think I've been timely.

You probably wouldn't believe how timely.  Or how lucky.  

"So then," the grizzled old man across the bar locked eyes with me and interrupted me from my reverie, "You gonna just keep staring at that mug or are you going to tell me about your day?"

I was distracted, lost in more ways than one, looking back into a once familiar face.  Jesus Christ.

"It helps you know," Duggan said as he poured some good whiskey in an old mug and slid it over to me, "We don't talk."

"Irishmen?" I replied over my mug.

"Oh absolutely lad.  Especially us Irish.  But any of us really.  You know how long it took me to get some of these fuckers to talk?  That shit it don't come natural, after what we've seen, what we've done.  You don't want to remember, you don't want to put that on your brothers.  Don't want their sympathy, don't want their pity.  None of us do, but you said you'd talk Rogers.  It's New Years, it's what we do."

"I was never much for talking about the past.  About memories.  You know, all those years, it was action.  All movement, all action, just one thing after another.  Go, go, go."

"Yeah," my suddenly old buddy Dum Dum Duggan replied, with a loud unhealthy sounding exhale "I remember that, remember it better than most.  Maybe more than anyone left, but for some of us memories is all we got left.  Memories, this shit little bar, and now you Steve.  A long lost friend come back.  You owe it to us.  That day, your day, our day."

"It's a hell of a thing."

Old Dum Dum looked back at me, 23 years older than when I had last seen him.  He had been a tank of a man, where had it all gone.  Years on years, and it had all been just a few weeks ago.  For me.  It was a hell of a thing.  How one day can change your world.

One Day

It was hard to breathe.  You couldn't catch the air.  Not here.  I was somewhere around 38,000 feet, moving at nearly 400 miles an hour, I was 26 years old, I was a soldier, I was Captain America, and I was scared to death.  It was April 14, 1945.  In Italy the US Fifth Army was launching it's final offensive in Italy, moving into the Po Valley.  High over the North Atlantic my pilot and I were dying and we knew it.  It was happening again.  

My pilot was 23 years old, from Irvine California, he was allergic to grapes and engaged to the daughter of an architect.  Her name was Maggie McMurray, his name was Adam Koslik.  We called him Tight Pants because he showed up on Day One in pants that had shrunk in the wash.  His pants were tight.  He was Jewish, she was an atheist.  She was pregnant with a son, Michael after his Uncle.  They wanted to keep it quiet until after the wedding to avoid the shame.  They wanted a sister for Michael, Evangeline for her grandmother.  Probably would have been invited to the bar-mitzvah and bat-mitzvah.  He was shot once in the left lung and once through the right shoulder.  The plane was smoking, jittering.  We were at 27,000 feet now and still coming in right about 400 miles an hour.  Still hard to breathe.

Hard to catch the air when you're going that fast.  Hard to breathe when every breath hurts.  Hard to control the yoke with a bullet in your shoulder and blood filling your lungs but it wouldn't have mattered anyway.  We were both young men, we were both about to die, and there was nothing anyone was going to be able to do to save us.  I was losing another friend, another brother.  Bucky had been lost over the English Channel only a few months ago.  I had never really processed that and now Tight Pants, and me with him.  It was happening again.

We said the Lord's Prayer together through shuddering breaths as the instrument panel lit up and screeched meaningless warnings to us, I placed my hand on his shoulder, and a moment later the shaking intensified as the plane began to fall apart and we were lost to the skies and the frigid seas.  

When I look back now those few minutes with Tight Pants took longer than the next 23 years.  I could tell you all kinds of things about the cockpit of that fighter in those few minutes.  

Tight Pant's shampoo smelled like apples.  His deodorant smelled like that terrible chemically standard issue deodorant because that is exactly what it was.  I had a rock in my boot.  I still had a blown out blood vessel in my left arm from working out on base.  That photo of his wife and him in San Francisco had come untaped and got sucked out the window.  A piece of bread launched up from the floor as Tight Pants fought valiantly to save us.  Muttering to pull through the pain and it would have had to hurt something fierce with that hole in his shoulder.  Tight Pants had been eating in here.  Wasn't supposed to.  Probably wanted to eat with Maggie.  I would have to reprimand him some other time.

All I could tell you about my experiences the last twenty years is that it was cold.  Probably.

I woke up on a Japanese ship, the Ishii.  I was under enemy control, they had put some serious research into what freezing conditions do to a human body.  How to bring them back.  It had been 23 years.  They weren't the enemy anymore.  They did their best for us.  Their best wasn't enough to save Adam Koslik.  That might have been because he had been hit twice by bullets that had somehow missed me.  It might have been because of what Operation Rebirth had done to me.  We had been dead for 23 years.  We had been dead as long as Tight Pants had been alive and he still was.  Adam was still dead.  Bucky was still dead.  Not me, not old Blondie.  I was reborn.  Again.  Tight Pants and I, we had been found, but I would come to find I was still very much lost.  

San Francisco, California
10:18 PM, December 31st 1967

"You said Adam Kauslic?"

"Yeah," I replied pressing my fingertips into my temples.  

Dum Dum pulled out a notebook and started scribbling.

"You said..."

"Adam Koslik, K-O-S-L-I-K, Tight Pants from Irvine.  He was 23 years old.  Engaged to Maggie McMurray, son on the way, Michael."

I took another drink.  I needed it, and as I turned to Dum Dum to ask about all this I found him already pouring more into my mug and he started speaking.

"This woman, her husband is missing in action in Vietnam.  Commander Hoff.  We're doing a thing.  Well she's doing it and I'm aiming to help.  Take a look at that mug."

It had a small black and white flag.  Said POW MIA in a banner above a bowed head.

"That's going to be big for the family.  What about the body?"

I told him the body had been sent back with me.  Tight Pants and I had taken one last flight together.  He was back in America, should be on the way home by now.  He told me how much this was going to help.  How it would bring closure.

I downed the mug.

"Survivor's guilt." He said, pouring into my mug once more but not quite so full.

"It's different.  I'm different."

"No," he replied surprisingly forcefully, "No you aren't Steve.  Not in this."

"Sure I am.  You were one of the few who could keep up with me Dum Dum.  They-"

"I know what they did Steven.  That doesn't have shit to do with this."

I tried to respond again.  It was different.  Luck.  Timeliness.  Preferential treatment.  I was Captain America.  When I tried to protest more he interrupted me.

"That's survivor's guilt Rogers.  That is what. it. is.  Everyone has got reasons they think it's different for them.  We all got something we feel guilty for.  Someone we feel guilty about.  We're survivors.  Survivor's guilt."

I looked around.  Got about half nods and half folks hiding their faces.  I turned back.

"No Steve, take a good hard look."

I did.  I was younger than most of them.  I was in much better shape than most of them.  I was intact.  I was alive.  Unscarred.

"We're The Leftovers Rogers," he said while I looked.

"You're a Leftover too." he said.  Then he told me how he became a Leftover.

Vietnam
December 31st 1967

Yeah yeah yeah.  Yeah.  You heard right.  Vietnam is hot.  It's muggy.  It smells different.  It looks different.  That don't mean everything is different though.  People are still people and fuck yes New Years Eve is still New Years Eve.  

The last day of December 1967 and goddam if we weren't still riding high off Tam Quan.  This shit was what we here for.  This shit was one hundred percent the shit that I was here for.  Every single one of us who was here to be here had gotten some this December and after we got done getting some and we got back to what passes for civilization out here you know god damn well we got some.  If you weren't getting it from someone in your unit you were getting it somewhere.  All of it.  Sex, booze, smokes, weed, acid, speed, uppers, downers, zips, zooms, and whamwhams.

We'd just been walking the fences since then.  Baking in the sun.  Sharing stories and bodily fluids with each other.  Training together, talking shit together, playing cards together, listening to music together, killing time in the armpit of the world man, together.  There were so many of us, it was so goddamned hot, and we were all still so pepped up on Tam Quan.  That was where I met Betsy.  Fucking Betsy man.  Thinking about her gets me antsy again.  Ooo wee.

See December had jumped off quick.  Word came down in the tail end of November that Intelligence had heard the PAVN or Vietcong or LASV or some group was heading on down to Bong Son so we were ready.  We were itching.  PAVN, LASV, Vietcong, those are all just slight variations on enemy.  Sure enough in the first few days of December they headed down Highway 1 and started moving on our boys, that's ARVN, Army of the Republic of Vietnam.  The good guys, second place anyway.  America is Number One and all that shit.  So that's how it started, the Battle of Tam Quan.

December 6th and they send the 9th Cav in to investigate.  They're pinned down quick so they call in the 8th Cav and they send me with 'em.  Goddamned Captain America shit here we go.  Hey bartender get me a beer yeah?  Whatever you got.  Yeah that's right I drink this shit.  It's beer man.  No.  Fuck no they ain't gonna poison me, I'm a regular customer and these are friendlies.  Plus I'm just too damn good.  Look at me.  Just look at me.

You know how we do it.  1725 Hours they tell us to go.  1800 Hours my feet hit the street and I've got a new dancing partner.  Helicopter crew was worried, they smelled it so they hooked me up with my girl.  Betsy.  You know where Betsy came from brother?  Goddamned General Electric.  No, I'm not kidding.  General Electric.  This sweet piece of ass is a scaled down M61 Vulcan.  She can put out 4,000 a minute before she overheats.  That's more than your mom.  Goddamn, right?  

So like I was saying.  1800 Hours we're landed, by 2100 we've got the 9th Cav on their way out and we're setting up perimeter.  Betsy wanted to dance.  You should really see us go.  We do a mean Mashed Potato.

What happened next?  Yeah, sure I'll tell yeah.  Let me just get a drink.  Long story.  Shit gets real you know?  You want one?  I got you, it's no problem.

Tam Quan, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam
December 1967

We just about always came onto the scene the same way.  Hot, fast, and spitting lead with a fury that spirit of vengeance those preachers are so fond of might find familiar.  Not everyone is in it.  They never are.  Enough folk have second thoughts, enough don't really want to be there.  Me and my boys were right where we wanted to be.  I was right where I was made to be.  My element.

My assistant gunner wasn't much of a killer.  Isaiah Green.  Maybe Greene with an E, I never did see it spelled out.  He wasn't any good behind a barrel but he was goddamned fearless.  Shouldn't have been here, got into a whole pile of shit for dating the wrong white woman and didn't let those sons of bitches just beat him to death.  Got his pick between life behind bars and death out in the jungles of fucking Vietnam.  He was good people.  He painted my face up right every morning and he kept Betsy dancing all through the night.  He shouldn't have been here but thank fuck he was.  Kept me from getting myself into too much trouble when I was feeling myself a little too much.

And god damn if I wasn't feeling myself that day.  Bare feet hanging out the chopper, and I was just looking for a target, someone that wanted shooting.  Sometimes the pickings were slim and these were definitely some slim pickings.  Made our job easier but a lot less fun.  No one for me to shoot, no need for Isaiah to keep my belt fed, just a quick landing and we all met up with the 50th Infantry and piled into their ACAV armored carrier.  Took us straight into Tam Quan no fuss no muss.  They come in from LZ English and took us all the way in.  By 2100 Hours we had the 9th Cav on their way out and we were setting in for the fun to come.  Night Perimeter.  Whole lot of nothing.  Hair trigger tension.  Sweat beading out and trickling down your face.  Bugs eating you up.  Just watching the seconds tick and waiting for the shit to kick.  Shit never did kick, not all night. 

Morning start up and I smelled it.  Fuck if I know what it smells like but you do the right time and you can smell it.  No mistaking it.  Not ever.  It was coming and when shit like that come you gotta be ready or you'll be dead.  Gotta take inventory of who you got and what you got.  Gotta be able to judge a man.  I'm a goddam killer and no doubt about it.  Isaiah wasn't no killer.  His business never was killing, but he got down to anything else with a fear of nothing but God.  Rumlow was solid too.  Killer just like me except he was pay for play, wasn't in no ones service but his own.  Damn good though, good man to have on your side and a horrible man to have for an enemy.  Most of the other men I knew by face and reputation.  Not much sense in learning names at the rate we were dropping.  

Sat there with Isaiah talking shit out.  Man had a keen mind.  We did that more often than not.  I knew one side of it, the killing.  Isaiah had a sharp mind for all the other shit.  The shit that meant me and mine could keep on killing without getting killed our damn selves.  Vehicle positioning, traps, assignments, that was mostly his doing.  Lead where you can right but know your limits.  While he was going over all that I finished my preparations.  Cheap shit MRE, watery mashed potatoes.  Helped them out with a Red.  Broke it apart and mixed the innards in with the potatoes.  Isaiah kept talking and time kept on ticking.  Threw another Red in there.  I smelled it.  The boys would be busy soon enough.

Most of them weren't killers but you didn't have to be a killer to be a soldier.  You had to follow orders or at least try to.  In Vietnam a lot of men died trying.  Lot of men decided not to try and a lot of them we saw sure to dying.  Wasn't nice.  War never was.  By the time we got clear to Tam Quan we'd cut most of the fat.

Lean meat.  All around the perimeter.  I'm talking prime beef.  Betsy front and center behind a couple of barrels.  Dancing shoes strapped tight.  Vehicles positioned up front for cover and early detection.  Traps laid.  Bright eyed and bushy tailed.  The best of America just waiting for what every one of us knew was coming, and then it did.

0725 that morning they hit the vehicles hard.  Blew the Jeep apart and tore up the ACAV pretty decent.  Poured a shit ton of artillery fire in too.  Too far away to be accurate and we were dug in well.  Only suffered one casualty.  Youngster got his with a bolt from the Jeep, pulped his head.  Quick death.  No pain.

From there it was all action.  Reinforcements got flown in.  More men, more weapons.  ARVN, 40th Regiment.  We reformed the perimeter and then me and my boys set out to get some.  Sent Rumlow out to the East, where they was coming from, to rustle some shit up.  Flamethrowers, grenade launchers, our last Armored Personnel Carrier, half diversion half retribution.  They pushed hard.  That Rumlow was a hard son of a bitch.  Pushed hard East, got around those bastards and pushed them back.  Back to us.

I always liked to keep shit simple.  Direct.  Lethal.

Colt Commander .45, my M60, my KA-BAR, a few grenades.  That was my standard issue.  8 round magazines for the pistol.  Belts for the M60.  She was a hungry bitch too, ate them belts up fast.  Gas operated, short stroke, open bolt, more than 500 rounds per minute.  That was my kit.  Sometimes I took some extra goodies, but I kept it simple today.  Simple is good, simple is predictable.  

Rumlow did things different and today, with Betsy, it all worked out just fine.  Just fine.

That day and the days that would follow, the Battle of Tam Quan.  That's Vietnam in a nutshell brother.

Us and the ARVN holding the line.  A bunch of American boys in the middle of Vietnam standing beside a bunch of Vietnamese boys while another bunch of Vietnamese boys come at us.  Screaming bloody murder, opening fire, running out of the tree line.  My brothers firing on them.  Their brothers firing on us.  Blood.  Fire.  Smoke.  Oil.  Clouds of CS coming out from behind them, flushing the Vietcong out.  That would be Rumlow's work.  The gas and the fire.  Chaos on chaos.  Can't hardly hear a thing over the shots.  Can't hardly see a thing over the flames and the smoke.  Just shapes running at you pointing sparking sticks at you, and then they're gone.  

It's a nightmare.  It's a dream.  And there I am.  Flag paint mostly washed off ages ago from the sweat and the heat but I got a new paint.  My own paint, got opened up a bit at some point.  Didn't even notice it.  Was a bit busy.  I notice it now in this one instant.  This postcard memory of Tam Quan.

I'm standing there in the middle of it.  Fucking rooted.  Blood leaking from my head, trickling down my chest.  The heat of flames drying it out, dancing on my skin.  The sight of the smoke.  The sounds of our guns and occasionally the sound of one of their rounds zipping past our heads.  Betsy dancing in my hands, Isaiah keeping her fed.  The smell of coppery blood, oil, and the lavender scent of the gas Rumlow was using to flush the enemy out.  If I hadn't been so hopped up I might be running too.  

Probably not though.  Would have missed out on this.  Couldn't do that.  Not ever.  Can't forget it.  Not ever.  Couldn't tell you what day I took that little mental snapshot.  Some time between December 6th and the 9th.  That's Vietnam baby.  It all bleeds into one.

San Francisco, California
10:24 PM, December 31st 1967

Dum Dum and I, we went way back.  We fought together through some of the most substantial battles of that war, recorded, not recorded, and top secret.  Two Irish boys, me from Brooklyn and him from Boston, going through horrors no man should have to face.  Horrors that never should have been.  We know each other's stories well.  We are bonded in sweat and blood, triumph and tribulation.  Nick Fury, Howling Commandos, French Resistance, the Red Skull.  He was my brother and I was his.

In my hubris I believed I knew his story.  What more could he tell me.  I was there for so much.  The years we had spent together, the adventures we had had.  I imagined the day that changed his life was the day he met me.

"You probably figure the day I met you was the day for me, the one day."

He was right, I sure had.

"Sure Rogers, that was a big day for me but I was already on a course long before then.  Already knew Fury, already Second in Command of the Howling Commandos.  Already fought with the Dirty Dozen, before you ever did.  Our meeting, it wasn't some grand revelation for me.  It didn't change the way I viewed the world.  I was already riding hard, but man when you came into the equation I turned it up to eleven.  We turned it up to eleven, all through the war.  Now shaddap Rogers, this is my story."

We had.  We sure had.  And I did, I sure did.    

"For a long time I thought that that would be the day for me Rogers.  I was fine with it.  We pushed each other to be better men, pushed each other to the very limit.  We set a hard pace and we held it steady.  So yeah, that was an important day.  The day we lost you Steve, that was another day that changed my life, but it still wasn't THE day.  Not my day."

After I was gone he had stayed in the fight.  Having faced the horrors of World War Two he took up the mantle once more when his country asked.  Went to Korea.  Fought a whole war there while I was frozen in the North Atlantic.  Reunited the Howling Commandos with Nick Fury.  Led them all through it.   That took up most of the 1950s, then in '59 he formed a team.  Pulled them from all over the world.  Madripoor, Paris, the Emerald Coast, and right back in his backyard, in Boston.  They were a team of superhumans, he said.  They weren't all exactly what we might call heroes today.  Dangerous men, but they answered the call and they were led by the super-est human I know.

"We fought Red Skull again and we killed him.  One of my men, Victor Creed, wasn't exactly the most put together but they were difficult times, Creed cut his head off and as evil as he was that really ought to do it.  Red Skull, he was trying to remake you.  Was trying to make an army of Super Soldiers.  He had a sample of the Serum, but we picked it up off his corpse."

He and his team protected General Hill from an assassination attempt.  They rescued Black Panther from a resurgent group of Nazis who still hadn't accepted their defeat.  In the beginning of this decade he and Fury had taken steps to forging a lasting peace.  The real dream.  They had called it The Great Wheel.  It had broken, but what a beautiful dream.  He had helped Fury form S.H.I.E.L.D. and continued to work with them as an operative.  A year after the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D. he had been grievously wounded by a ricocheted bullet.

"I should have died Rogers.  I was dying.  My body wasn't strong enough to pull me through my injuries or keep me kicking after the surgery."

I had a hard time believing that.  When was Dum Dum ever not strong enough.

"That was my one day Rogers.  The day I wasn't strong enough.  They pulled the bullet out, had the best doctors available working on me and my heart gave out.  Doctors said it was a miracle I'd lived that long.  That I hadn't had a massive coronary getting up one morning or walking up some stairs.  They told me my odds and they weren't good.  Last rites.  Whole nine yards.  Fury came to visit, so did a few of the Commandos.  Our old pal Liberty Belle, she came by to represent the All-Star Squadron.  Hell T'Chaka came by to send me off.  Good to see him again, never thought I would."

I sat there, probably slack jawed.  He didn't look like I remembered him.  He'd lost a lot of weight and gained some wrinkles, I could believe 20 years had passed easily enough, but this was hard to believe.  Maybe I just didn't want to.  He had always been one of the strongest men I ever served with.  A tough, brave, bear of a man.  It was hard to hear I had almost missed seeing him again.  I tapped my finger on the bar, couldn't think of what to say to that.

"Fury gave me something called the Infinity Formula that's supposed to help it.  Slows aging, helps me stick around.  I'm not going anywhere just yet but it's not going to undo the damage.  I nearly killed myself trying to keep with you all those years Rogers.  Nearly killed myself trying to keep that same pace after you were gone.  I didn't want to sully our Legacy."

I never had much of a poker face, not with my men at least.  I guess he saw what I was thinking straight away.  

"Don't get me wrong now, those were the best days of my life.  I'm proud of what we did.  I'm damn proud.  I don't regret those days with you and I never will but I found a new way.  You're already a leader Rogers, you can't not be, it's not in you, but I want you to embrace it.  There are new wars, we were soldiers and we were damn good at it, but it's time for us to transition."

I didn't quite protest.  Dum Dum was a brother and it was clear he felt passionately about this.  But I wasn't ready to hear it either.  

"I didn't tell you about my day and expect you to make a decision today.  There is still so much you don't know.  We have twenty years of history to catch up on.  We have wars, Presidents, movements, government operations, a lot has happened since we lost you.  A lot of stuff that will be hard to hear.  The end of the war was complicated.  The years since haven't gotten any more simple.  You and I will have to talk about a lot in the coming days, certainly about that ship that found you.  The Ishii, that might be some serious trouble Steve."

He reached under his desk and pulled out a box then pushed it across the bar toward me.

"I wanted to hear your story and I wanted you to hear mine.  It's been amazing to see you again.  1968 is going to be a hell of a year.  With all that's ahead I wanted to give you something to help keep you rooted to the past.  Fury helped me out, they cleared out your place after you disappeared, but we held on to some of it.  Open the box."

He poured me another drink and pointed toward the box.  I shook my head, drank it down and opened the box up.  It was a lot to take in.  His story, his state, and the box.

"I know there isn't much in it.  They took most of your stuff for museums.  Everyone wanted a piece.  Captain America memorabilia, hell there is still a big market for it.  I tried to grab the most important stuff.  The most Steve Rogers-y stuff.  They didn't want to let me take the baseball but I don't think they had the stones to tell me no."

"No," I said in response, "This is great Dum Dum.  This is amazing."

It wouldn't look like much to much of anyone else.  An old baseball.  An old picture.  An old sketchbook.  

If you were a baseball fan you would probably recognize my ball and you might just take off with it.  Made sense it would be what folks tried to keep.  Signed by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Babe Ruth, The Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat.  Yankee.  Over 700 home runs.  .690 batting slugging average.  1.164 on-base plus slugging.  The greatest that ever lived.  I would come to find out later he no longer did.  Lou Gehrig, The Iron Horse, renowned for his durability.  Yankee.  All-Star seven consecutive times, Triple Crown winner, American League MVP twice, a member of six World Series Championship teams.  Passed away at just thirty seven from a disease they would name after him.  First player to have his uniform number retired by a team.  It was just an old baseball but it was my old baseball.

A picture with me, out of my Captain America uniform, and Bucky.  Just two soldiers in World War Two posing beside a plane.  Me being me, Bucky being him, no airs, standing next to the plane he was in when he disappeared from the world forever.  It had been the last time I ever saw him.  Through all the war we had come together and parted and come together again.  I never thought that cycle was going to change until it did.

My sketchpad and some art supplies.  It was a fresh pad, just one drawing on the first page and not even finished.  A recreation.  Taped to the page was an old picture of a smiling woman.  My mother.  The drawing wasn't even halfway finished, I had been taking my time.

"I got one more thing for you.  Technically it's still in deep storage somewhere.  Officially it's still in deep storage somewhere."

My shield.  My old original shield, triangular.  Three stars horizontal across the top and nine stripes vertical down it's length.  Had barely seen this thing since T'Chaka gave me the circular one I always carried.

"It's almost New Years Steve, I want you to enjoy it.  I've got one more thing I want to say to you and then I want you to mix in.  We've all seen a lot, we've all got stories."

It was a lot to take in, but I was going to try.  

"You're more than just a fighter Rogers.  I've led men who wanted nothing but a battle, I've known men who were nothing more than fighters, that isn't you.  You're a defender, you're a leader.  The world didn't love you just because you killed Nazis.  Killing something repugnant, even the Nazis, that alone isn't enough to generate love, not real love.  They loved you because you defended their brothers, their husbands and their sons.  You're a defender, a beacon, a leader, like it or not.  You're a symbol of America Steven, it's up to you what that symbol means."

We shared a drink after that.  It was kind of hard to pick up a conversation after something like that and he really did want me to talk with the others.  Dum Dum had given me a lot to think about and he gave me a little more to get me moving.  He gave me a smile and a nod and a light push on the shoulder to spin my stool around, urging me to get out there and talk to the others.  I guess that was it, that was my christening.  World War Two was over and had been for decades.  New wars had been fought, newer wars were being fought.  Dugan was right, I was a Leftover now, we all were.  Couldn't ask for better company.

Classified
(IP Logged - Contact Administrator)

Two voices on the line, two different sides of the country.

"He just left with the box, met a few of my guys and he seems ok, he's trying [*buzzing noise*].  He's definitely trying."
"What does he know?"
"Doesn't seem like he knows much, been in the ice and all, but one thing, we have to look in to one thing.  And I mean right now.  We talked a little, about coming back.  The ship that picked him up out of the drink, it was the Ishii.  They had him [*buzzing noise*]."
"Fuck."
"Yeah."
"Did he know the significance?"
"No, didn't seem like he did.  But-"
"Yeah.  I know."
"He's not ready for this shit [*buzzing noise*].  It's a different world, it's so goddamned different from what we knew and he-"
"Don't tell him shit."
"I don't like it.  I don't like keeping secrets from him.  He deserves better than that."
"Deserve doesn't have shit to do with it."
"He's going to start asking questions.  [*buzzing noise*] isn't the type to just go along, you know that, and I can't lie to him.  Not to him."
"We will deal with that when we come to it."
"Listen, I can't lie to him.  I can decide not to tell him things, to protect him I can do that, but I can't lie to him."

The line went silent for a moment.

"[*buzzing noise*] is an idealist in a less than ideal world.  We don't deal with the world as we would like it to be, we deal with what we have.  What we have right now is a big shit sandwich and we're all going to have to take a bite.  You tell him there is work to be done.  A soldier's work.  There's a place here for him still, but if he starts digging too fast."
"What?  What if he does?"
"We will deal with that when we come to it, if we come to it.  For now we manage him.  Surface answers.  Let him figure things out organically, slowly.  We control the pace."

San Francisco, California
January 1st 1968

I walked back to my apartment a little over an hour into the year.  It had been good for me.  We shared some stories, shared a beer.  I wore my Captain America Smile.  It's always strange to me to hear how similar but how different our experiences were.  Stranger still to hear how people perceived me, mostly still do.  Those feelings, the way people imagine Captain America to be, have only grown stronger in these last decades.

It's like I died 20 years ago, yet some version of me became immortal.

There was Captain America and there was Steven Rogers.  Captain America was a propaganda poster, a figment, a smiling face, and Steven Rogers was a young man in the 1940s who dreamed of being a cartoonist and ended up a soldier.  Both of them were dead but I was still around.  Twenty Five years old in 1968.  Built like a brick shit house, pardon my French, walking through the streets of San Francisco on New Years Eve feeling sorry for myself and feeling guilty for feeling sorry for myself when so many of my brothers were dead.

I ran through a list of names as I walked.  Not knowing where to go or what to do.  That list grows so long.  I knew it was longer than I realized.  Common sense told me it had grown considerably longer while I was a popsicle.  I felt tears running down my cheeks, but slowly and sparsely, stubborn.  I fought them back but it was a losing fight.  I was a mess.  Survivor's guilt, maybe, but naming it didn't change anything.  Dum Dum helped, I knew I wasn't alone.  I knew I had a purpose, or at least there was a purpose Dum Dum envisioned for me, but I felt this great pressure pushing down on me.  

Dum Dum he wanted me out there, wanted me building a new life, leading the future.  All I wanted was to sleep.  I knew it then but would never admit it, I wanted to return to the ice.  To where Bucky was smiling that goofy smile, Peggy was shooting me those eyes of hers, Dum Dum was right there at my side backing my every play.  All my other brothers, we were young and we were doing the right thing.  The life of Steve Rogers instead of whoever the fuck I was now.  

I kept walking, I made it back home, and I climbed in to bed.  I'd won the war tonight.  I was still kicking.  Tomorrow would be another battle.  At least I had my shield back.

Blackcoats

A crusty old man with a sly smile greets you as you amble toward a campsite set far on the outskirts of town.

Howdy feller.  Don't think I recognize you.  Might be you don't really want to be 'round these parts tonight, but I won't chase you off no how.  We havin a bit of a get together and folks here aint all as nice as me.  Still aint gonna chase you off just the same.  Been sitting too long already and these legs don't carry me round like they used to.  Damn knees pop like a campfire sparking up if I ask em to do too much and you should see my bunions.  Second thought maybe better ya didn't.

Ok, alright.  You wanna stay you can stay.  I ain't gonna hurt ya.  Not unless you mind havin your ear talked offa ya.  I'm a bit of a blabber mouth ya see.  You new in town?  That's alright, don't gotta answer.  I'm just talkin out loud.  Blabber mouth you member.  Must be.  New in town I mean.  I know just about ever one round here and you I don't know.  Lemme tell ya a bit.

The days stretch on out here as the summer months come on in.  Prolly knew that already.  You work under that oppressive sun and even the whitest of collars become drenched in sweat by days end.  Folk come staggering in half the time plum wore out from the heat.  Done sweat all their water out so their face is dry but you can tell just fine by those salt stains ringing they necks and arms that they had just about enough.  You be careful bout that you stick around ya hear?  We drug more'n a few folk in to the Doc had spent too long out in the heat and lost their druthers.  Some of em aint never found em again neither. 

Anyway with work done that's when we all get on to doing what we do to make it all worth it, least if we can.  Pay for your food, pay for your lodgings, if you're smart you squirrel a little away for a rainy day.  Wouldn't be here if you were smart though now would ya?  It's damn near to desert out here.  Not a lot of rain.  Most folk say damn it all to hell and send that money to the barman.  Get themselves a bit of whiskey or maybe go to the back room for refreshment of a different sort.  You do what ya want now.  I ain't exactly one to judge.  All sorts of sins going on out here on the frontier.

You hang around those sorts long enough you hear all manner of stories.  That's sort of where I come in you see.  The stories.  I come to make my living off them, sure did take awhile though.  Some them are tall tales now, some them are the sort of tall tale ever body know is a tall tale.  Some them is the sort that folk want to believe in.  Some them is the sort folk don't want to believe in but still can't help themselves.  Most of em I can't rightly tell you if they're true or false.  Whose to say right?

Union boy say this.  Rebel boy say that.  Sometimes them boys get to arguing, more often they get to shooting.  Which one was telling the truth hell if I know, but story that gets spread round is usually the story the boy who don't go in the ground tell.  We get plenty other fights too of course.  Card cheats, freakshow refunds, lovers quarrels, gunfighters wantin to show they're the real McCoy.  Indians from one tribe or another not happy with each other.  Sometimes they're not happy with us.  Sometimes they're right not to be.  They all got stories you know?  I gots a real good memory and I tell them on.  Keeps me belly full.

He points at his belly, which is indeed rather prodigious, and continues on to talk to you about this and that as the last bits of daylight fade and the night approaches.  As it grows dark a rather diverse group saunters over to the campfire, many giving you suspicious glances and glares, and makes themselves comfortable.  The man produces some meat and skewers and the others do likewise, they then begin to chat as they prepare their dinners.

This feller just got into town now, just in time for tonight's story.  Lucky feller innit he?

There is a bit of grumbling from the others, but most seem more interested in their food and the story to come than in you.

You can have some of mine stranger.  Truth be told I aint got much of an appetite no more.  Figure I keep on eating much as I do more out of habit than hunger.  That an' I ain't exactly ready to walk cross that crossroads them preachers talk about and see whats waitin' fer me.  You unnerstan.

There is a more appreciative grumble from the others.  Similar mindset perhaps.  

After a few more minutes most of them have cooked their meager dinners, seemingly waiting for the story to start before they eat.  The man offers you about half of his simple dinner of meat, then takes a bite of the stringy fare for himself and begins his speech.  The others indeed take this as their cue to begin eating.

Alright now fellers.  We mostly know each other, new feller aside, and you all done told me your stories.  Know who I am, heard plenty of stories before.  I been doing this for a minute.  Met Union boys, met Union deserters.  Met Rebel boys, met Rebel deserters.  Met boys hunting one or the other group.  Met boys hunting boys hunting one or the other group.  Met slavers, met slaver hunters, met slaver hunter hunters, prolly met slaver hunter hunter hunters but this gettin ridiculous now.  I met just about all the tribes at one time or another and heard their stories about the tribes they were at war with or the states they were at war with and every once in a while I even met one who had only known peace.  Imagine that, folk who had never known war.  

You might not know this now new feller but this here a town with all kind of history.  Some of it real dark.  Lot of bodies.  Lot of murdering, lot of robbing, lot of bad business a gentleman don't talk about.  I talk about all of it a course.  Take a look at me, I ain't no gentleman.  Sorry to tell ya new feller but I ain't exactly walking on water myself.  I trys to keep it on the straight and narrow but I know sin.  All of us do.  I figure probably you do too.  Figure I'll find out soon enough anyhows.

Lot of weird shit go on in these parts.  Weird by any account you understand.  Whether you follow the feller that walks on water or the feller who took a night walk up into the sky or wise old coyote or that feller sleepin' in the sea.  Don't matter which, there some weird goings on.  I'm fittin to tell you one a them stories.  Except this one is for true.  This my special story.  I don't tell it to ever one come along so it's yer lucky night new feller.  Lemme just get this fire stoked and finish up my dinner and we can get started.

He takes awhile, doddering around on his old legs, to build the fire up in a manner that ought to last for the night and to finish his dinner.  By the time he is done the lights of the town have mostly gone out save for what is most likely the bars and other houses of ill repute.  Between the waning moon, the town winding down and the smoke of the fire it is difficult to see much beyond the reaches of the flames light.  It is difficult to resist being drawn closer to the warmth and light of the fire and the voice of the man as his tale begins.  

He speaks first about the beginning of the War Between the States or, as it's now becoming known as it stretches on, the Civil War.  He relays the history of it, occasionally drawing grumbles from one listener or another.

Go on now, stow it.  I don't much care to hear from any of y'all on this.  You really feel so raw hows about you just go on an' shoot each other an let me tell my story.  You know well as I we all been killing each other for damn near any reason long as we had any reasonin in our heads.  Plenty of folk done ugly things and most folk say one day or another they gonna be judged, by another if not by us.  Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself.  Look what you made me do.  Gol durn it.

Point is there been a lot of ugliness.  Lot of bad business.  Don't care what color coat they was wearing.  Blue, Grey or Red.  Or even if they wasn't wearing em.  Don't need no gubbermint sanction to be an evil bastard.  Plenty of ugliness done to and by settlers.  Plenty of ugliness done to and by the First Sons out here, that's the tribes new feller.  Plenty of killing over the color of someone's skin or what magical spirit in the sky they thought were in charge or what piece of land they called home.  Lot of bull shit if you ask me, but then no one ever do ask me.

Member what I said bout the coats.  Fer you new feller an' fer them of you just never bothered to tell one invader from another, they mean something.  Blue is Union, Grey is the Rebels, Red is the British.  I think Blue were Frenchies at one point too an' if'n I'm not mistaken Reds was Spanish down in Mexico.  Don't quote me on that now.  I ain't never been down there.  Anywho, point is there come to be another color too.  This the story of what they is and where they comed from and what they do.  It ain't no tall tale now.

I ain't got time for no long ass regurgitatin of all the sins and meanness and petty bullshit of man right.  Ain't no need for it anyhow.  You all seen enough.  I told you plenty stories bout the evil folk do to each other.  It's ever body, it always has been.  Ain't no need to go into ancient history tryin' to account fer ever body.  There a lot of darkness out there.  There a lot of darkness in here.  Little history just the same.

Civil War.  Y'all know why we fightin, or if'n you prefer why they fightin.  That a whole barrel of bad business.  That a whole ship of barrels, matter of fact that a few fleets of ships all full of barrels of bad business.  Comin' out this ways maybe you thought you got away from all the bad business in the New World, well you know better now don't you.  Plenty of bad business out West too.  Wars with the First Sons. First Sons warring with each other.  You go the Californios.  You got the Vaqueros coming up from the South.  We was pushin' plenty of evil West with us, even as we was driving them First Sons out in front.  That's where them new Coats done comed from.  Kind of.

We called it Manifest Destiny.  Said god told us we could take all the Indians land and it was all ok.  This one feller he called it something else and he got it in his head that he was gonna put a stop to it.  Only knowed one way to do that.  Ain't never heard his name, or least I forget it if I did, but this feller he left his tribe and headed all the way East.  Feller believed he knew what he were doin' well enough he made his way right through all manner of hell back to the East Coast, clear on back to North Caroliner, and he set to defeatin both of em.  Union and Rebels that is.  Wanted ever one of us back across that ocean.  Clear enough that didn't work out, but the story ain't done just yet.

Feller went clear on back to where the first English colony were set up.  Roanoke.  Might be familiar to those of you what have interest in history.  Don't know how long he were there putting together whatever it were he put together, but while he were doing it we was fast approachin' a big day in history.  Biggest battle, so far, of the Civil War and the way things are lookin' these days probably gonna be the biggest for some time.  Gettysburg.  Y'all heard about it.  What y'all ain't heard is what I'm fixin ta tell ya.

Now maybe it were just happenstance or maybe some a what that First Son feller in Roanoke were doin' done led him to the right day to do his thing, but it come to be that he do his little thing right smack dab in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg.  

This brings forth a good deal of grumbling.  It is harder now to see the others as the flames of the fire are just beginning to die down.  Others seem to recognize this as well and scoot in closer to the flames.  It is cold and dark out there and bringing up that Battle doesn't exactly bring forth the most pleasant of thoughts.  As you too scoot nearer the flames you look about at the others and see similar expressions on many of their faces.  This is a more troubling story than they expected.  No Paul Bunyan here.

Might be some a yous was there.  Might be some a yous was supposed to be there but ya walked out.  Might be some a yous already told me yous was there or wasn't there but was supposed to be.  Ain't gonna change the story fer your sensitive dispositions.  My sincerest of apologies.  We all know what went down there.  Least most of it.  War.  Men killing each other, up close and personal.  Ugly bad business.  Worst battle of the war.  Worser than you might realize.  See that feller in Roanoke he wanted justice.  Fer the wrongs done to his people and all them other people we had wronged and was wronging.  You may or may not believe in the old magics fellers but he did, and them old magics they believed in him too I guess.  Least to an extent.

You know well as I do weren't no winner in Gettysburg.  And I don't mean just in some pyrrhic victory or moral sense.  That were a turning point and no one never explained why.  Well this here is why.  That feller he called up some of the old magic.  He called on the old ways, the old justice.  Old Testament type shit.  He got it too.  Called on spirits was around long before we started talking about forgiveness and salvation and all type of nice happy shit.  Called on them for justice, to stop the stealing of lands, violating of contracts, murder and pillage and rape and all the mean spirited evil shit of the world.  Called the dead back up.

The Black Coats started there.  Crashed in like a wave on Gettysburg.  Guess that were a concentration then.  Makes sense you think about it.  Whole lot of dying and killing.  Whole lot of pain, misery, fear, anger, rage, hate.  Whole lot of ugliness but it was about to get a whole lot more uglier.  Native feller called up a judgement on man.  Wanted the Europeans gone from his land so his folk could return to the world before we all washed up on their shores.  Started right there in Gettysburg, the freshly dead got called on up.  Not all of them though.  That were part of it.

Y'all probably had brothers or friends or at least enemies fought in that battle.  Some of them were good folk, fighting for whatever reasons they were fighting for.  They stayed there in the dirt among the trees and brush and all that.  Some of them weren't good folk.  They were the ones that raised up.  

Blood crusted, clothes and bodies torn, limbs missing, eyes bulging, mouths twisted.  They spilt their lives blood on the Earth there but something else filled em back up and they marched once more.  Fought a new battle and both of the old sides were fightin' a losing battle.  Dead don't get demoralized.  Don't get tired.  Don't get scared.  Don't retreat.  Don't surrender.  They just keep on coming.  Some of the men they kilt stayed dead, they was good men.  Some of the men they kilt though raised right up once their clock had ticked it's final tock.

By the time the battle was over and both the Union and Rebel boys had drawn back from the battlefield to figure out just what exactly was going on...by that time the risen dead was covered in blood and the blood had all soaked in and dried up.  Their coats were sodden with blood and gore.  Blackened with it.  They were the Blackcoats and that wasn't the end of them.

Years come they spread out and their purpose spread on with em.  That Native feller that called em up would come to regret it.  Their judgement extended not just to the white man from across the sea but to ever feller in their reach.  They got a taste for evil, but not necessarily what you and I consider evil.  Their standards ain't ours.  Hell some a the stories I told y'all is more'n enough to bring them on and they always out there, somewhere.  Creepin' in the wood.  Quiet.  Patient.  Lingerin.

The winds picked up around you, bringing in the cold and a subtle smell that grew stronger.  Danker.

We all sinners out here and that judgement that feller called down it come for us all.

The man leaned forward to place his hands on his knees and pushed up to a standing position, his knees indeed audibly cracking as he rose.  He pulled a necklace out from his shirt, a simple leather thong holding a strange totem that began to buzz as it touched the open air.

One of the First Sons who had come to the campfire drew down on the man and fired.  It was hard to see but a sharp eye might recognize the campfire flames reaching out to take the bullet as it flew.  Maybe you saw it, maybe you didn't, but either way the storyteller was untouched.  And either way, whether you saw it or not, you for sure heard the rustling coming from the darkness around you. 

It's judgement time fellers.  I done heard most of yer stories but it ain't my judgement what matters.  Blackcoats is about.  I don't know about you but I'm real curious to see what they think.  Good luck stranger.  Best comfort I can give you is ya wont even see it coming.  Blackcoats is hard to see in the dark.

With that the fire died.  It didn't blow out, it didn't shrink and smoulder, it just died out all at once and the dark rushed in.  The dark of a cold frontier night on the far outskirts of a small town in the West, and all that comes with it.

The year is 1879 but in the world of Deadlands it is a very different 1879.  In both of our worlds the year of 1863 saw the United States at war with itself but in this world things went very differently.  For one thing, the war did not end two years later.  For another rumors persist...persistently...enough that many have good reason, though oddly little evidence, to believe something else quite important happened that day.  The dead of Gettysburg rose and beset the living, Blue or Grey making no difference whatsoever. 

That's ancient history now though.  Well 16 years, but much has changed in those years.  Slavery has been abolished.  A new natural resource, known as Ghost Rock, has been found that burns Five Times Hotter and One Hundred Times Longer than Coal.  California has, in large part, been reclaimed by the Pacific leaving a broken land known as The Great Maze.  Utah has been taken over and renamed The Republic of Deseret.  What's more Manifest Destiny has been considerably delayed with the founding of two separate large Indian nations, The Coyote Confederacy and the Sioux Nations.  Amid all this chaos, Ghost Rock has dropped the nations into an Industrial Age.

What Is This?

This RP is an attempt to combine the freedom of collaborative non-linear roleplay with some linear storytelling, incorporating as much as possible actual Pen and Paper rules to ensure a dangerous engaging experience.  Hopefully it works.

It's a fairly short story with a start and a finish, though leaving things open to play or encounter our characters again.

For this story we will all be either living in or making our way toward a small town in Kansas called Selina. Selina is a small town North East of Dodge. Kansas is known as Bloody Kansas in this setting. Selina is rather basic, consisting of a respectable if quite bare bones Bed and Breakfast run by one Father O’Flanagan, the monastery where O’Flanagan works, a General Store run by a ex-miner who once hit it big, a taxidermist by the name of Zeke, and a small three man operation Sheriff's Department. Selina is more friendly than most toward the various Indian tribes as there has been in large part an unofficial policy of live and let live. Most inhabitants of Selina get by by being as self sufficient as possible and selling any food or goods beyond what very little they truly need in Dodge.

Our Party

2sky11 - Rick Matthews, Union Cavalryman
Dragonbud - Aveline, Blessed
ElGappa - Constantin LeBlanc, French Soldier of Fortune
Lewis - John Blackburn, Investigator
Wampower - Franz Kaufman, Austrian Gunsmith and Ex-Soldier

About The Setting

While this adventure won't explore most of the world or many of the themes here is a bit, fresh from the Player's Guide, to explain the setting and where it differs from the world we all live in.

Bloody Kansas and Dodge
Kansas has been the site of 25 years of guerilla warfare, and shows no signs of calming down any time soon. According to the original Kansas-Nebraska act, which opened Kansas to settlement back in 1854, the people of the territory would vote on whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or slave state. One can guess what kind of conflict this caused.
For a while, Kansas had been fighting its very own Civil War, well before the Blues and Grays ran into their little problem. “Border ruffians” from Missouri filtered across the border and tried to ensure Kansas became a slave state, while abolitionists called “Jayhawkers” tried to counter their efforts. Neither group shied from violence to influence the decision of Kansas’ citizens. Kansas wound up joining the Union as a free state only a few months before the Civil War broke out.

While no major military campaigns have been fought here, the long tradition of guerilla warfare and intimidation continues to this day. Diehard Rebs and staunch Unionists often live side by side in some Kansas towns. The fact that regular military units are pretty much prohibited in Kansas only allows these tensions to boil out of control, sometimes even erupting into “Territorial Wars” between towns loyal to differing nations. The fire of the Civil War may only be embers and coals, but Kansas is a powder keg, and the fuse is still burning.

Dodge meanwhile, though we’re not going there in this story, is a large bustling trade center thanks to it being a stop on two major rail lines and an area with a plentiful buffalo population.  Between all the trade, all the buffalo hunters, and the general tensions of Kansas it’s a hell of a dangerous city.  Fortunately Deputy Wyatt Earp has the constitution necessary to enforce a law requiring the temporary confiscation of firearms upon entrance into town.

An Ugly Past
Let’s get this out of the way early— whether in the North, South, West, or somewhere in between, slavery is a thing of the past. While it was a divisive issue in 19th Century America, and many on both sides of the Civil War cited it as a moral motivation to prosecute the war, the real causes of the Civil War were quite a bit more complicated.

In any event, it rapidly became clear to Confederate leadership that in order for the fledgling nation to gain international recognition, the “Peculiar Institution” must be discarded. In 1864, Generals Robert E. Lee and Patrick R. Cleburne proposed a plan to offer slaves their freedom in exchange for military service. President Davis quickly endorsed the plan in a Congressional address.

This helped convert the British Empire’s passive sympathy toward the Confederate cause into formal recognition of its independence, and French Emperor Napoleon III soon followed suit. In exchange for the aid of England and France in breaking the Union blockade of Southern ports, and an agreement with England to fix the Confederate dollar to the British pound at a very favorable rate, the British asked the Confederacy to abolish slavery altogether. The Davis administration complied, and on April 9, 1865, all slaves in the Confederate States of America were freed.

Fearful of losing the moral high ground (and “naturally anti­ slavery” himself), United States President Abraham Lincoln quickly followed the earlier Emancipation Proclamation (which only abolished slavery in states in rebellion against the United States) with the proposed 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which would end slavery in America. The Amend­ ment was ratified by the end of the year.

By 1879, racism is becoming a thing of the past in the Weird West. Progress has been made, and more will come as peace returns and folks resume their normal lives. The prospect of further integration of Confederate society is aided by a greater sense of community and shared values than in actual history. Circumstances are similar in the North. Just as in the real West, folks are willing to overlook the color of a person’s skin in favor of the content of his or her character.
Bottom line: just as in our own lives, bigoted and outright racist attitudes are the province of villains and the shamefully ignorant.

roleplayerguild.com/topics/171780-dea…

Sunshine State

I run.

I gasp.

I choke.

I run some more.

My family is beside me for awhile.

I look back and they are gone.

I have no time to mourn them.

A stranger beside me turns and meets my eye.

I wish he wouldn't do that, it only makes it harder.

I say a silent prayer that we both make it to the border.

A moment later he falls in tatters.

I keep running.
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[This is Thresher to Georgia Peach, come in Georgia Peach. Over]

[This is Georgia Peach, reading you loud and clear. Over]

[Sit. Rep. on the run aways Georgia Peach, they've been eliminated. Stupid bastards tried to smuggle out some tech]

[Read you loud and clear Thresher, good work. Steel Be With You. Over]

[And with you. Over]
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Steel boots carelessly step on my pelvis, crushing it to dust and pushing some internal organs out onto the floor. If I weren't in an absurd amount of shock I imagine it would be a very painful but enlightening experience. How often does one get to see his own insides, they're usually, well, inside.

The men who slaughtered my family form three circular perimeters. One around the spot where my mother and my sister were lost, one around the still twitching body of that stranger, and a final around my body. They face outward to keep an eye on any interlopers while a single soldier from each circle steps out of his suit. Their sleek shiny suits cutting a sharp contrast across the barren wastelands their campaign has recreated.

Wouldn't you know it, the soldier who has come to check me is a woman. She is beautiful, radiant even. Her skin is clean. Her hair is golden brown and slightly sweaty, a lock falls into her face as she kneels over to examine me. If we had met under different circumstances I believe I'd have fallen in love with her at this very moment, and perhaps we'd have gone on to have children of our own.

She reaches towards my pants and if I had enough blood to blush I certainly would. She is just checking for tech of course. The pain is excruciating as she moves my body about to allow her to more easily search my bloody pockets. She finds the chip, it's not really worth much, just a component, but it's worth an awful lot more than my life.

I could be okay with that. A piece of metal with some bits of plastic, some silicon, some other random crap thrown together. I could be okay with those random bits being worth more than the sum of my years on this godforsaken planet.

But I'm not okay with the piece of metal [censored] in my pocket being worth more than my mom. I'm not okay with them killing my sister and tossing her tiny body around like a rag doll trying to find some other stupid ****ing little chip.

The woman turns around.

My anger gives me the strength I need to turn over, despite my shattered hip screaming at me to stop, insisting that I lie down and die. I twist just enough to reach behind me. I grit my teeth almost enjoying the pain. The pain tells me that I'm still alive enough to do this. I feel underneath my body for agonizing seconds until my hands happen upon my revolver.

I scatter the brain matter of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen across the dirt, somewhere near the Southern border of what was once Georgia. I'm done running.

roleplayerguild.com/topics/184286-kin…

RPing Ain't Always Easy: A Collaborative Guide To The Stuff That Makes This Hobby Less Fun Sometimes And How To Make It More Betterer

I found the secret, roleplayers hate me, I just don't start any RPs.  Can't get rejected if you never try.  Bazinga.

For realzies though, trying to start an RP and having no one join can be very frustrating.  You have a great idea in your mind, you've put some portion of that in to a post and people just aren't seeing the brilliant possibilities of your idea.  It can be hard to know why.  Maybe it's because everyone is in my much better RP but probably not.  They can't meet my high standards.

What problems have you had in joining in with the RPing?  What worked for you to overcome those problems?  What didn't?  How thankful are you to me for being the one true sure solution to all your problems?  You're welcome.

This is a hobby most of us love.  That love isn't always as strong as it is at the best times.  You put a lot of yourself into this hobby and so the failures can hurt.  They're not always your fault and even when they are that is simply part of the process.  You fall on your face again and again until you fall on your face a little bit less.

I started a goofy little thread here and a bunch of really high quality users contributed and contributed and eventually it took form as this.  I have tried to credit everyone who participated by either naming the Hider after them or mentioning them at the start of the section they wrote using the @Username format, I imagine they would be happy to receive a "Thanks for what you said in that one thread, it helped me," if something they say helps you.  Cheers.

@Tuujaimaa
The key to a writing a good roleplay that will stand the metaphorical test of time is introspection, reflection, and iteration.

Use Hiders to excess, everyone loves excessive Hiders

If your Interest Check is too rudimentary many will not want to join an underdeveloped setting.  Some will.  Some will love the idea of helping to build a world collaboratively to RP in, but many expect the OP to have a Setting ready and waiting to go.

Here are some examples of Good to Great Presentation, In No Particular Order (including my own because I'm full of myself)

The Blackwood 
- Lovely gradient title (I don't know how to do that)
- Image that sets a tone and also sets a...setting 
- Guidelines for participation
- Worldbuilding including Races, Gods, Stats, and use of Rolls
roleplayerguild.com/topics/183420-the…

The Witcher: Under The Shadow 
- Another image that sets a tone and this one is actually a gif, that's neat
- Flavor content in the form of a poem and a historical quote from the existing lore
- An introduction, a map, and a list of big factions and important people
roleplayerguild.com/topics/180815-the…

Warhammer 40K: Enemy Without, Enemy Within [Jb]
- Title Banner is centered right about an image that sets the tone quite well
- A Summary explaining what players should expect and what the GM will expect of the players
- An in character prompt to explain where things stand as the story begins
- Links to existing lore for those less familiar with the setting
- Rules and a Sample Character Sheet format
roleplayerguild.com/topics/157848-war…

Deadlands - A Supernatural Western 
- An image to establish tone and setting, this one had the name of the thread built in 
- Short introduction to establish setting and tone
- Explanation of factions, character types, and forms of magic
- Character Sheet template
roleplayerguild.com/topics/171547-dea…

Rosefell High 
- Title in a cool font
- Image to establish setting a bit better and it's a gif, which is neat
- Brief introduction followed by a bit about expectations
- Rules and Guidelines for Character Creation
- Excellent Character Sheet template
- That excellent template led to some of the best Character Sheets I've seen.  It's worth it to go to the Characters Tab just to get a look at how good this format looks and how much work the participants put in to making some good ass character sheets.  Hot damn.
roleplayerguild.com/topics/183907-ros…

As you can see mine is the simplest of them all.  A single image at the beginning, a short explanation of the setting and a short listing of basically flavor material classes.  It's not much, the other examples have a lot more, but it's still just a bit more than the minimum.

@Ammokkx
I've found that in order to have a good interest check, you need to have at least some elements (but not all) of the following (and I definitely have left some gaps but oh well):

Being able to clearly articulate your idea. You may have the best ideas in the world, but if you can't properly explain what it's about then you're not going to get anywhere.

Doing something that people are both asking for, and others aren't providing. This one's a bit more abstract, but what it comes down to is this: Interest for a generic fantasy adventure is always high, but if your adventure is too generic, and there's 3 other RPs already on the market dealing with the same thing, people are going to be playing in those instead.

Knowing what you want. This isn't the same as having a detailed idea, mind. I've gotten away with posting an interest check titled "let's brainstorm a yugioh roleplay together" and I sure did draw a crowd from it (even if, when it got time to actual writing, it all fell apart). Thing is, even in that brainstorm thread I still laid out a few fundamental things I was looking for. Close to the anime, none o' dat meta shit, a lot of freedom in how duels unfolded (so no simulators). The details of the actual plot was for everyone interested to figure out together. This, too, was made clear. Set your boundaries and stick to them.

Putting effort into presentation. I'm not saying "use colours, tables, images and gifs like your life depends on it" since, really, I don't do that either. But do try to format your text in a clearly readable, easily accessible manner. Organizing your thread to have a clear beginning-middle-end structure and making sure it has at least some logical chronology to it goes a loooong way.

@ERode
 from my point of view, there's two ways in which players are drawn/stuck with a RP: the promise of a fun plot, and the potential for characters to grow. If you can formulate an idea that offers both ways, that's even better! To clarify what I mean, I guess I'll ram in some examples...
School-based RPs are essentially all about character development. If this is a battle school, people can look forward to growth in terms of their supernatural or martial abilities. If this is a SoL school, people can look forward to hooking up and causing melodrama. If you add in a concrete overworld plot ("This is a post-apocalyptic world with a dystopian government who sends superpowered teens on ridiculously lethal missions"), you heighten the potential for even more positive/negative developments by letting your plot spark inter-PC drama. Sometimes, it backfires by making people get pissed OOCly at each other, but I've seen at least one time where it worked VERY well, and culminated into a RP that didn't lose any players at all. Initially, it's the promise that something special will happen to your character, and your character alone, that draws in interest, whether it be GM-sanctioned power upgrades or a trashy, dumpster-fire romance sparked by an encounter gone horribly wrong.

As extra examples, Ariamis's Magical Girl CYOA makes character creation hella involved by adding in an element of randomness that gives people ideas about their character that they wouldn't immediately have thought about or considered on their own. Rune's Epic of Beginnings encourages making cool, heavy backstories (cult leader, literally Oda Nobunaga) because you get a superpower based off that backstory, and then afterwards, that backstory can be used to inform your character's trajectory through what is otherwise a sandbox-y setting.

Adventure RPs depend on having a delicious plot to draw people in, and they paint a fantasy of involvement, of being part of something that'd change the world rather than yourself. Sparking a rebellion, escaping a prison island, killing a dragon, all those pull in attention through having any character you make involved in something lasting, something big. If you can get people excited about what they're going to do, and what they're going to plan against, then that excitement can be the momentum you use to drive the RP until they've become invested enough that it'd feel bad to leave. Conveying the idea that they'd have something to do immediately when IC begins, and then carrying through with that promise, gives potential players something to look forward to, and then something to enjoy. In this case, even people who're not interested in having long, philosophical chatter with other players can enjoy the RP, just by beating up baddies or braining themselves outta dicey situations.

As extra examples, Valor's FEARLESS had a hell of a start where PCs of a rebellion immediately crashed a prison to get someone else out, had a deadly encounter with an elite guard of a dystopian, superpowered government, and managed to escape after suffering a good amount of injuries, and all that really materialized the sensation of how shit is definitely real, how kid gloves don't exist at all. RC3's Goblin Quest offered a sense of achievement just through the mundane-est of things, such as beating up and eating raw rabbits or crafting random tools on your way to surviving, which worked out well, cause the players start as orphan goblins trying to figure out how to get strong fast, before the humans that slaughtered most of their tribe find them.

And if you can mix plot and development together (Yankee's Windfall comes to mind for creating an ensemble adventure RP where everyone's traveling together around the continent to fulfill different quests that have personal/continental impacts BUT THE SPECIFICS OF HOW THE PLOTS WILL GO IS PLOTTED BY EVERY PLAYER EXCEPT FOR THE ONE WHO PURSUES THAT PLOT), then it becomes fuckin' delicious.

If you can convey the sense that such things are possible, AND the sense that you're able to offer that to players (which may really just be something dependent on something as intangible as the vibes that your post gives off), I think that there's a pretty good chance you'll have at least some interested folk, whether you're new or not. Presentation, of course, also helps a ton (I've become so visually-dependent that my mind shrivels up without A E S T H E T I C S to keep me engaged), while I'd say that branding your RP as based off something else (rather than just being inspired by it), is a double-edged sword in terms of getting people's attention. Pretty sure others make better points about it than I did though.

@Yankee
Presentation is very important. That doesn't mean a lot of fancy bbcode, but it does mean taking a moment to present your ideas in a clear, concise way. For example, a large wall of block of text can be a big turn off, but breaking that wall down into multiple paragraphs is already an improvement to help with information digestion. Also, less is more! Especially when it comes to 1x1 checks, not to come off rude but... no one needs your life story. Make your RP ideas front and center, at least!

@fledermaus

> have a header with the title large above a centered image that represents the roleplay; image height shouldnt be smaller than 250px or taller than 700px

> break your information into sections and have a header smaller than the title above it (i typically have premise (where i give the story bit), setting, ooc information, and rules)

> use some varied  color. nothing is more offputting to me than a block of white or a block of xyz. pick a color, make it the color of your headers and title, and either leave the rest white or color it gray (my preference)

@fledermaus
lizard brain likes pretty things, make it look nice

It is harder to find people to join your RPs when you are just starting.  People will not know who you are, how you write, how you deal with conflict in RPs and that may make them more reluctant to join your RP.  Being just too damn good of a writer may have that effect as well.  I can't tell you how many times someone has told me "Hey BangoSkank, I'd love to join one of the many many brilliant RPs you have started but you are just too damn good.  Too damn handsome.  I can't keep up."  It is my gift and my curse, my cross to bear.

@Yankee
As far as reputation goes, you'd be surprised how far a name and avatar change can go along with a dedicated plan to turn over a new leaf. If you're worried about your reputation putting people off, try on a new "brand" so to speak and work to change it, especially by reaching out to others. They say you get what you give, so joining other people's checks will give some good karma

[@TGM]
Do note reputation works in the inverse as well. If you have a reputation as someone who people don't want to be around, unreliable, temperamental, bad GMing, etc. people will pass on you. It's up to you to fix your reputation at that point and show you've grown past your past issues and consistencies. 

@Obscene Symphony
Reputation is  e x t r e m e l y  important. If you're new and don't have much posting history for people to look at (or if you mainly RP in PMs), write up some writing samples (or some previous RP posts you're particularly proud of) in a Gallery thread for potential partners or GMs to peruse. If you have a history of making an ass of yourself in the OOC, you'll have a hard time. Et cetera.

@PPQ Purple
What keeps a game alive is not IC but OCC. If people are excited about the game and chatting constantly in OOC either about the game or just with each other they remain invested in it. And such a game can survive a lot, even people vanishing for a long while. But if the OOC is quiet and people are only ever posting IC odds are good that any significant delay or drop in the post rate will kill the game dead.

@Hero
I think sometimes people want more interest than they need. For example, you get a group of maybe 4-5 when you anticipate double that. Sometimes smaller groups actually work out better than larger groups, but they get discouraged when they have only a few people expressing interest if that makes sense.

@Obscene Symphony
Honestly evaluate your skill level and write at that level. Not everyone is cut out for Advanced or even High Casual, and that's okay. Write with people of a similar skill level (no shame in dipping into Free if that's where you fit), be receptive to criticism and take an interest in improving your writing and you WILL get better, and in turn you'll have more options open to you. Because yes, the quality of your writing often DOES matter to potential partners/GMs. You might not like it, but it's true; and luckily, it's entirely within your control to change.  

Most of all, be willing to put in the work. Focus on making every post better than your last and over time you will get results. Better yet, your partners and group members will recognize the effort you put in, and hopefully appreciate you for it. What WON'T get you results, though, is giving up because you think you're doomed or that nobody "understands." Life isn't fair, nothing worth doing is easy, you don't always get rewarded for your efforts, and the only good way to cope with it is to keep trying anyway.

@yoshua171
something else to keep in mind when it comes to taking constructive criticism is that trying a piece of advice once and it failing does not constitute the advice being wrong or responsible for the failure. It just means you tried it once and that time didn't work. Try again.

Don't drop a piece of advice just because it fails once, twice, or three times. If you've tried to make RPs/threads X amount of times and have gotten failure (resulting in a perception of a pattern of failures/bad luck) then why not try a given piece of advice (or more than one) just as many times to see if that method has the same rate of failure.

@Obscene Symphony
don't keep a tally of your failed RPs, cause that's literally just a discouragement machine in the forefront of your mind. Anyone who's been RPing for a few years or more probably has dozens, if not hundreds, of failed RPs under their belt, but they also probably can't even remember most of them cause they moved on rather than dwelling on it. 

Think of it this way. If we ranked hockey players by how many shots they missed and not by how many goals they scored, even the best of the best would look like hot garbage.

@BrokenPromise said
Something else I'd like to say that didn't get hammered home enough in my other post is that sometimes finishing an RP just isn't fun. You feel accomplished when it happens but it can be a drag to get that far. You're not always smiling and hugging your RP buddies, sometimes you're slouching in your chair, vodka in one hand and an empty mug in the other, thinking "Glad that's over!"

[@TGM] replied
If it is a chore to finish a RP, shouldn't you call it quits before it gets to that point? If you aren't having fun and are just doing it to be a completionist it just seems weird to me. Sometimes the best thing you can to do is pull the plug and move on.

@yoshua171
It's funny because it's so easy to think that other people are having a much easier time than you. The reason for that is generally--unless you're specifically looking for it--you only ever see people's successes (RPs that are active/alive long enough for you to notice), whereas their failures (so to speak) are quickly swallowed by newer, more active threads, as they are pushed further and further back through numerous pages.

So yeah, this idea that "everyone else is galloping," is just a result of you not paying individual attention to every attempt that other users on this site have made to get something going. Plus, other aspects of that just happen behind the scenes (On discord, in PMs, etc) so there's not even any chance for you to see it.

Essentially, if you're only looking for peoples' successes, that's the only thing you're going to see.

@stone
You might got good ideas, good characters, hell, even a good camaraderie goin' on with your partner (or group). And then BOOM BAM POW it's all gone (or is it more of a gradual whizzzzzzz as the air deflates out of the RP?)

I've been a GM for ages now. Lots of years. I honestly dunno when I started, at this point. As much as it saddens me to say it, I still haven't seen a forum RP to completion. It's not even an issue with the players I have, and I don't think it's a personal problem of mine, either. It's just the nature of RPing. Hell, my longtime 1x1 partner and I let our RPs die all the goddamn time. It just happens. But we keep going because it's about the journey. And also because of our insatiable need to use the godlike face claims we find online.

An Interest is Niche when it is very specific and has a small group of fans.  Niche Interests are going to be harder to find RPers to RP with.  If you want to do a Sonic The Hedgehog x Naruto Film Noire RP set in the last days of WW2 Tokyo you may have a hard time finding people to RP with you.  Particularly if you want to RP as that Bat Lady with the just really big Ta-Tas and expect it to have Adult Themes. Do you uh...do you want to make that RP?

This is less of a concern than it may seem at first.  There are some very average writers, like me, in Advanced and there are some very good writers in Casual.  If you want to start in Casual start in Casual, if you want to start in Advanced start in Advanced.  Folks here are quite unlikely to be rude to you if you're not quite keeping up.  Sometimes RPing with people better than you is the best way to develop your own writing ability.

Join someone else's RPs.  Starting your own RP is often difficult even in the best of circumstances.  There are many RPs here and many of the RPers here are already in one or more RP.  We all have limited time and so can only join a limited number of RPs.  Joining someone else's RP is a chance for you to meet other RPers, develop a reputation, develop some friendships, and maybe find a new setting you never would have thought of but absolutely adore.

You don't have to, but you should (for your own wellbeing) understand that being less compromising means it will be harder for you to find writing partners.  Here, from @Demonic Raven, is advice on Compromise.

"Your idea might be great but in the end there's a few things that might bug your partner the wrong way. Coming up with solutions for these things and creating new twists and turns for your idea can be a handy skill as it can lead to more involvement from your partner. Collaboration on ideas is a key thing when creating a long lasting plot. For example, your potential partner loves the idea about a werewolf and a vampire but doesn't like the idea of blood and gore. You can come up with a neat idea like the vampires don't feed on blood but instead on life force or energy. Improve courses can help with this actually as it can help you think on your feet while planning the RP or actually RPing."

@Demonic Raven with advice on Over Planning
Over planning a plot can be a big turn off when people are looking for an RP. Now if you wish to attract others who over plot obviously over plot in your interest check and go into great detail. But if you want to seek a broader audience be vague in your idea and then plot with your partner about the nitty gritty details. Now there is also just jumping into a very under planned RP as well which is also what some people like. What you express in your interest check plots will determine the kind of people you RP with. 

@ERode has more advice for balancing Compromise and Over Planning
To supplement old man Broken's ramblings, I would like to say that even if overplanning is perhaps not too great, having a clear end in mind IS very useful, because then, that means you (and the players) have a general idea of where to go in the end. The only RPs I've completed as a GM were relatively short RPs which had a pretty big focus on a quest-like plot, whether it be plunging into the eldritch depths of the Inverted Spire or destroying the goblin nest of Rugome Fort. Both of these had a clear end (everyone died before they reached the end of the Spire, and almost everyone died against the goblins because the goblin leader contracted with an alien god), and also lead to the teasing of future plot threads to pursue and keep in mind if you wish to continue it (what the hell was that last thing they saw in the Spire before their death? why the hell did an alien god grant their boons onto a single frickin' goblin?).

A pattern of having a problem, solving/failing the problem, and then the reflections afterwards forms the backbones of the RPs I've enjoyed along the years. There's always that adage about how the journey's more important than the destination, but having a destination informs the journey and gives meaning to it. Also it cuts down on the dread of an ending RP if you've always been prepared to end your year-old baby from the beginning.

Just don't be so excited that you start talking about how cool future arcs would be, while neglecting to make the starting arc fun and engaging. One, it's spoilers, two, it kills the surprise. That being said, I guess this is more RP-running advice rather than RP-interest-gathering advice. Or perhaps they're one and the same?

Some thoughts from @BangoSkank which is me
I, Bango, which is me, would add to this that Over Planning can also end up hurting your experience because you know where the story is going and the only thing that remains is to get there.  It can make you want to rush to that one really cool set piece you know is coming up but is still so far away.  Taken to it's extremes it can also turn a fun hobby into a chore as you have this Outline planned for all the cool stuff that can happen and frustration when your fellow RPers want to take things in a slightly different direction.  If you have an entire storyline planned out for the drunk old man who bumps into them in The Moldy Dog but they just knock him on his ass and walk away it can be frustrating for the OP trying to make things work the way he imagined them and for the other RPers just trying to do their own thing.

Based on an Example given by [@Ambra] and Advice given by @Demonic Raven

"How about people that want to start RPs on obscure fandoms? I was thinking of eventually starting a Wings of Fire RP or even one centered around dinosaurs."

Try to use all the tools here to find people to RP with.  Word of mouth is golden when doing niche role plays!

- Status Bar : You can post to the Status Bar on the Right Hand Side of the Main Page by going into your profile (click your Name at the Top Right next to Log Out and scroll down a bit to where it says "What's On Your Mind" but don't flood it.

- Partners : Put your friends to work by asking them directly if they would be interested in exploring a niche you like with you or if they know anyone else who might be. 
 
- RPG Discord : Download Discord and join RPG's Discord.  There are one or two channels in the Discord designed for Advertising RPs and Discussing Potential RPs.

Try explaining the setting and it's themes and what about them fascinates you.  Other's may have no idea what in the hell "Wings of Fire" is, but they may LOVE one of the themes or something about the setting.  They may also read the title and make assumptions that prove to be untrue.  Tone can be important here, it is the difference between Warhammer With Dinosaurs or Monster Hunter with Dinosaurs or DuckTales with Dinosaurs.  If you don't know what DuckTales is open YouTube now.  You are welcome.

They were interested in your RP.  They submitted an excellent character sheet.  You changed what you had planned for the plot because I mean, my god, what a character sheet.  That character sheet was almost as good as one of BangoSkank's character sheets.  And then they disappeared forever.  You got ghosted son/lady son.

You can hate being ghosted with all your being, that is not going to eliminate it.  It's something we all experience, it's something we all do much as we try to avoid it.  It is a reality of the hobby and something you need to come to terms with if you are going to continue in the hobby.  Don't hate the ghoster, accept it is part of the hobby.

@stone
It's a fact of life. It sucks when an RP dies. It sucks when you get SUPER ready for an RP and then something happens. 

But you can't hold it against people. You really can't.

Shit happens. It happens a LOT. People get ill, they have to move, they go to school, they drown under homework, depression. There are so MANY things that happen to everybody. So much of it is uncontrollable. So much of it is inevitable. And, sometimes, people just don't have the time or energy to say something. Obviously it would be GREAT if everyone could, but everyone has their own circumstances. Maybe someone's house fuckin burns down and they're left without internet access for a whole three months. I'm sure the first thought in their mind isn't "man I really gotta tell my RP partner that I can't respond." It's probably more like "holy shit my house burned down with all my valuables and I have to get my life back together and find another place to live and survive." And you definitely can't fault them for ghosting in that situation, right?

And of course, that's an extreme. Of course most of your partners or groups won't be dealing with something as heavy as that. Most of the time it's just motivation, or schoolwork, or any of the things I said above and more.

The key thing is to remember the human. There's another person there on the other side of the screen. There's someone else typing out their own worlds, characters, stories. There's another person dealing with their own set of life circumstances. You have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

@Demonic Raven
I get that frustration, it's not great, but all you can do is keep trying until it sticks. That is the one thing that can be infuriating at times about role playing, things don't stick, nothing is guaranteed, and a great role play you love can be done in an instant. All you can do is to pick yourself up, dust off and try again with someone new. That's how the cycle of role playing works. There is very rarely a role play that lasts longer than a year from what I've experienced. So accepting that will help you feel less down when it inevitably happens.

You're going to be rejected more often than not, most likely, if you are constantly trying to join RPs.  Lots of people have preferred groups they enjoy RPing with and RP with them over and over and it can be hard to get into one of those groups sometimes.  Even if you are friends with a group here RPs often only really have so many slots for characters before they become unwieldy.  It may come down to "We like you and we like your character but BangoSkank is just so much better and his character is a work of art and also my god have you seen him?  So handsome, so we're going with him."

That is a common problem here.  Try not to take it personally.  Happens to everyone, except me.

RPs almost never live long enough to properly finish.  It happens sometimes but that is the exception rather than the rule.  If you have participated in an RP from it's birth through it's awkward teenage years and then to a satisfying conclusion Congratulations!!!.  If you haven't try to understand that that is the norm.  People lose interest, life intervenes, inspiration waxes and wanes, and sometimes people just have the attention spans of goldfish and attach to a new RP.  It doesn't mean you're a bad writer, it doesn't mean they're bad writers, it doesn't mean anyone is a dick, it's just how this hobby goes.

As @Obscene Symphony says,
"The thing people don't brag about when they celebrate their RPs' 1, 2, 3+ year anniversaries are the 95%+ of their other RPs that died in the first month. It's a death-heavy hobby, if you can't cope with that then you might be better off writing solo. I've been at this for over 7 years and do you know how many of the RPs I've been in lasted a year or more? Three. And of those, only one ever got an actual ending. We're in this because it's fun while it lasts, not because we think every RP will last forever."

@BrokenPromise has some excellent advice on keeping it alive and keeping a healthy perspective
A lot of RPs that I start end up coming to completion. Part of it is because I've been failing doing this for a long time, another part is because I have a lot of autism determination, and I'm not one to give up on an RP just because a few people leave, or if even my favorite people leave. My Danganronpa RP is the first RP I started on this forum about three months into my membership, and it's going to have a satisfying ending right at the 4 year mark. That's going to happen because I decided to keep running the RP when most of the players left, and was willing to wait out some long hiatuses to make things work. And of course because I have players that I am willing to put that kind of effort in for. They have been just as patient and tolerant as I have, and are a large part of why I'm willing to hold out for them. Hell, they had to kick my ass into gear a few times and they probably didn't even know it. But it does take effort.

But that's sort of the exception. Usually I run an RP for a year or two with an end in mind. And hey, sometimes even those fail. Doesn't matter too much to me though. I've got great memories of RPs that didn't finish, and friends I made along the way. Yea, completing an RP does give you that rush of accomplishment. Like hiking up a tall mountain and conquering it. But even if you don't conquer the mountain, the hike can be its own reward.

One thing that can lead to the down fall of an RP is if you constantly ask your RP partner if your post is okay or if an idea is okay! Lord knows that it's hard in the beginning to fully gain the confidence to say "Hey, I did a great job with my post and if my partner doesn't like it that's okay as we can resolve it or go our separate ways. Ending a role play because of artistic differences in writing is natural and okay!" Remember, not everyone will have the same writing style as you and sometimes you'll clash. But have confidence in yourself and what you write as it's hard to keep an RP going if you constantly get messages asking if the post was okay and if you need to rewrite it. Learn your writing strengths as well and play into them when writing, this will significantly boost your confidence.  Try not to compare yourself too much to others.  There are some excellent writers here but everyone has their off days and their on days.  Except me, all on days here.

@CorrosiveCherri
Personally, I try to take a very relaxed approach to the hobby as a whole. Unless I'm really trying to get into some coolsy-cool stuff and write collaborative fiction at a high level, I use it more as a way to blow off steam and work out the kinks in my writing style, as well as help buff up my word choice and try different themes and voice for characters and worlds alike. It's a hobby, and in my opinion, it's a hobby ancillary to compelling narrative writing as a whole. Dealing with differences both in terms of creativity and skill level can be difficult, but sometimes you just have to breathe and remind yourself "hey, you know, they've got their vibe and I've got mine." Sometimes you can make your patterns and styles tessellate, but it's rare to click perfectly with someone. 

If you're having trouble with roleplays dying over and over and over again, it might be time to look at what your standards of writing are, or if the side hobby is even something for you at the moment. It's not like sports where you could get injured and be out of it for the rest of your life. You can take breaks from it and focus on things that make you happy, rather than letting it absorb all of your attention and time. 

But, in a similarly personal vein, I find the best way to get yourself out there is to put yourself out there. Show off the best of what you've got. Write pretty words, try original settings that other people just aren't doing--take advantage of the fact that you can just pull a concept from the ether and put it on a page. Hell, coming up with a new plotline and world wireframe every day or every few days or so is a great creative writing exercise. Work on what you're doing and ensure your demeanor is pleasant and casual, and I'm sure the posters will come. 

Rome wasn't built in a day, but hey, Minecraft lets you do some pretty cool shit in a pretty short amount of time. Don't look for your Rome. Look for your sweet gamer Minecraft house for gamers. ...That metaphor got away from me.

@Celaira
After a certain point you want to sit back and look at several things: 

1. What are people currently interested in? What are some popular RPs that are alive right now, and what do they focus on? Do they line up with anything I'm interested in?

2. If the RPs themselves don't interest you, but some of their themes do, utilize those themes in your next thread!

3. If you don't have partners or friends who can/want to join your thread, post an interest check and let people engage with the idea there. 

Realistically, you should also try and join threads if you want to make them. Joining other RPs allows you to meet people, and make friends who then might be interested when you start up a thread of your own.

@Bork Lazer
You must first recognise that play by post roleplaying on a forum such as this and many others such as RPNation and Iwaku are inherently mercurial and chaotic in nature. Posters are not electronic robots that you encounter on the wild wastes of the internet. They are people. We have made this grave for ourselves whereby we value some abstract concept of literary quality as the marker of a good RP. There are multiple factors that make a good RP and focusing inherently on one single factor does nothing good for you. 

Blaming them for the failure of your RP is about as useful as blaming water for being wet. It’s redundant at best.

Ultimately, I would encourage everyone that the best way to get more out of this hobby is to learn and adapt. Staying stagnant with one single routine and one single fandom and trying to get people to fit within a mold that you have crafted isn’t the best approach. Join other RPs. Learn from other successful posters. Try to have fun. Learn from your failures. Failure is a teacher whose lessons are not always obvious at first but it’s up to you whether or not to take those lessons to heart.

@Rapid Reader
I always feel there's a bit of a case of exaggerated expectations for RPing (and creative pursuits in general).

You have to ask yourself, "what does success mean for me as a GM/RPer"?

And realistically, if success for you is a several year long RP that runs perfectly, you will always be disappointed. Even expecting more than two people to post their interest or even commit to an RP is a pretty lofty goal.

RPing is like any form of writing (although I don't really think it's exactly the same as novel writing) in that it takes a lot of work, practice, and failure to learn. And like life, it's doomed to die. You can never beat death. Your RP no matter how great, no matter how fun, no matter how much effort you put into it will die (but you should embrace that and it be a motivating factor).

Reasonable goals when you start (or as you learn) are things like "I want to get 1-3 posts in before this RP dies" (as a player or GM). Looking at all the RPs posted on this forum, if you manage to make one post as a player or get one player post in your RP, then congrats, you've now reached the elite of the elite in terms of RPs, players, and GMs.

Eventually you might find groups or individual players you jam with. This however rare, this is special, and it isn't something you should expect to find regularly (e.g., if you are going into RPing expecting to find your creative soul mate or best friends for life, then you are setting yourself up for failure). If you do find people that you mesh with, then at that point just enjoy it for however long it lasts (there are no assurances of time in RPing or life).

RPing is a fun, ethereal hobby you should engage in purely for your own amusement, chasing success (outside of your own fun and the fun of other people) or "popularity" is massive waste of time in a medium that amounts to "I put on my wizard hat".

when i'm not in it

Success as a GM means that my players are engaged and having fun interacting with each other in IC and OOC. It doesn't matter how long it lasts as long as they had fun while it did.

Success as a GM is getting players to post, like, at all. That's a serious answer, if you need it. The GM's job, in my mind, is to make a fun adventure for the players. I struggle with this concept, like, a lot. As long as people are posting, or at the very least want to post, I am doing my job right. If they do not want to engage with the story, I have done something wrong and need to change my approach.

Successes for me is completing my goals. Yes, that is finishing the RP, but that is a very long term goal. I also have lots of short terms goals that I strive to hit. Sometimes it's wrapping a player up in the RP's story, getting a reaction out of someone, acquiring a waifu ,or just hitting any kind of milestone. I don't really set out with these goals in mind, they just kind of pop up while I'm RPing. I guess Success for me is just ensuring these little goals actually appear to me. so long as I have an objective, I seem to be enjoying myself.

Success for me as a GM means that everyone has fun no matter how long it lasts.

As player success is completing a character sheet that I am happy with.

I consider it a bonus and view an RP as extremely successful as a player if I manage to make one post in character before said RP dies.

Although I don't GM, if I did GM I would consider a group RP as successful if I got three players to submit character sheets. If each of my three players posted once before my RP died, I would consider my RP to be extremely successful.

Finally, although I will never 1 x 1, if I did 1 x 1, I would consider it a massive success if one person expressed interest in my ideas. Getting a 1 x 1 to the planning stage would be even more of a success and getting one post each into a 1 x 1 would in my book lead me to consider it successful.

Honestly, even if the rp dies, so long as I had fun and had good memories, I consider it a success? Idk in my head a rp dying =/= failure per se, though I guess you can argue it depends on when it died. Failure to launch rps are easy enough to discern I think

I tried to list everyone next to their contributions, but in case I missed crediting anyone and for the people who participated in the thread but didn't provide suggestions for writing here are contributors.  Let me know if I missed someone.  It is incredibly unlikely as I am quite good at things, but let me know.

Ambra
Ammokkx
Asuras
BangoSkank
Blackmist16
Bork Lazer
BrokenPromise
Celaira
Chuuya
CorrosiveCherri
Demonic Raven
elgappa
ERode
fledermaus
Hero
Kuro
Majoras End
metanoia
Obscene Symphony
Odin
Rapid Reader
rebornfan320
stone
TGM
Tuujaimaa
Yankee
yoshua171

This is Dervish's Guide to GMing as recommended in the original thread.

He GM'd The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep which lasted two years.  17 pages totaling 336 posts of In Character posting, 28 pages totaling 542 posts in the OOC, 16 characters lived through it and 13 characters either died or disappeared throughout the adventure and they wrote up a grip of fleshed out NPCs too just because.

So yeah, it was a success I guess.  Technically.  No Halflings getting blasted on booze and going on adventures and shit though, just saying.  Priorities yo.  

roleplayerguild.com/topics/177495-der…

roleplayerguild.com/topics/188622-per…

Episode 8: The Great Not-Very-Polychromactdyly-At-All of the Double Deep Jeiti and Other Unnecessities

Atramentous though the Alderson disk was, Dangerrutito Fontaniuxic sank gently, almost seductively really, corpuscating through that Vantablack nightworld as he calibrated the Recursive Diolunium Dial on his Aromatic-Polyamide Weave Gloved Left Hand.  Activating the spozmodiametrical aspect of his Panoptic Hex Texx-Gogs.  It looked just like home as it faded away.  First the Alderson Disk, Fontaniuxiciccix 4 as he lovingly called it, was one, then two, then on and on in just that fashion (as that is the manner in which one counts) Balthazars away.  It was a needless bit of ceremony of course.  Out here in the Double Deep Jeiti far from the meddling of any other, femrikilometers into the Toroidal Body of a Stibious and Frangulic Galaxy, here he was truly and wondrously alone.  And hungry.  Also horny.  A little tired.  Slightly confused.

It was a most needless task yet he must insist upon it.  Whispering to himself he entered a euphmoic trance.  As his Aromatic-Polyamide Weave-Gloved Hands settled upon each bit of equipment he whispered its corresponding name into the Pourii depths about him.

Neoborhium Manticulated into an Q-Bramble blade, sometimes referred to as a Q-Bramblade, polished to an intrinsically implausible sheen, it was his ultimate adytum.  He sensed it, NAY!, he heard it, NAY AGAIN!, he tasted it before he felt it.  The Blade of Legend.  The Sword of Myth.  The Katana of Dread.  The Loosener of Shackles.  The Remover of Bras.  The Sabre of the Downtrodden.  The Zweihander of the Einhanded.  Trapped within it the soul of his Bastard Child, B-Rad.  Ever pleading in perfect iambic pentameter to be loosed upon the world.  It's name was Trilobisekni. 

Only one such as he, Dangerrutito Fontaniuxic, could wield such a blade and only with it could any being even dream of performing the famed manuever known only as the Hiden Doblee Triplut Forbidan Yin Releese Ohm-Mega.

The names of the rest of his gear are longer still, their reputations more reputationy still.  These things were taken by the winds of space, that they may not fall upon the auricular caverns of one unproven.  His whispers taken by the very pulse of the galaxy and his urgent calling growing more urgenter with every passing drot of time goo, he had to pull himself from the reverie. 

No longer free to franisculate in such frivolity.  This time too must pass.

Grimly and with much conscious intent Dangerrutito Fontaniuxic began resetting his Panoptic Hex-Texx-Gogs to an awareness of a scant 14 Muons and corpisculating his Nascense fullindrically he ceased his dramatic dithering.  Gravity had no bearing here.  Gravity was for blutos.  There was no reason to free fall Balthazar by Balthazar as his beloved home, the Fontaniuxiciccix 4, disappeared into the enigmatic and all around pretty damn excellente effluvium.  Even so in his inchoate ritualism it had a value.  A brief respite from the glin and the gribbum of this stolid spacescape.  Tomorrow would wait not one femtoparsec longer.  Dangerrutito ventures once more...

INTO THE FINSTERNISH!!!

Gravid, crustaceous, and corralescing through a vantablack sea of ectoplasmic inexistence, Dangerrutito Fontaniuxic comes to a most non-fortudious and vexxing conscious knowledgiment of self.  He should have taken that left at Albuquerque.  He couldn't hardly grok it.  This was not the illustriously illicit interspatial galaxy of Whore Island 6 at all.  Despite his trepiditious knowledge of Barreliann mathematics and Ciccixitracxtical Physics he must have forgotten to carry the 5.

What a Vetrutooti he was.  A real blummerschoot of a dilly of a pickle this had turned out to be.  Verily, he hathed committed an honest to God fucky-wucky.

Clicking the Xeogenix Toggle on his Panoptic-Hex-Texx-Goggs again and confirming that their awareness was still set to a scant 14 Muons, for what kind of mumpity wumple would risk a Muonnic Conclipse, he began to explore this new world.  The atramentiest of vantablacks, this place had been sucked dry of all color life and sound.  Twas a verifiable veritable void of all...oh.

Despite the Aromatic-Polyamide-Weaved--Gloves encasing his hands in a flexible weave stronger than the strongerest of n-Dimensional Space Spiders he could still tell what the problem was.  That light switch right there was turned to the Off Position.  Most inconvenient really.  Terribly terribly rude.

Flipping the switch the world became most pollutudiously brightened.  A sea of bright beige and grey.

"Step right this way," said an equally beige manthing.

"Kyter!" Dangerrutito declared, "What is this?"

"Huh?" the heavily tattooed but still quite beige and not particuarly interesting, really not worth describing in any further detail or developing any further in terms of character or motives, man replied.

"KYTER! WHAT IS THIS!?!?!?!?" Dangerrutito repeated himself very loudly and very coherently.

After a rather long and confusing conversation involving much illurid and truchasious terminologies Dangerrutito emerged from the equivalent of Not Hell ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) and stepped into Not Hell Proper.

"Hmmm, I can smell the Q-Goo." he vocaloided into his Thaumic VocoRecordoer as he held one Aromatic--Polyamide-Weaved--Glove to shield his Panoptic-Hex=Texx-Goggos from the glare of an entirely too illuminolating landscape.  

"Mmmmmm," he mumbled to himself very masculinly as he reached up without even looking and locked in the Xeogenix Toggle then cranked the Muon Capacitator down to an even more scanter 10 Muons.  It was a really paltry total Muon count at this point, but Dangerrutito had seen one Muonnic Conclipse Event and as the old saying goes "One Muonnic Conclipse Event Is One Muonnic Conclipse Event Too Many" if you know what Dangerrutito is talking about.

Well below the zero-point now Dangerrutito took it all in.  Curvillinear spaces properly luminolated.  Tesseracts tesseraed real nice like.  Demon people doing demon people type shit.  It wasn't at all like in the Chronicles of Xeniikuhix the Brave But Foolish.  There was a lot more leather.  A lot more cigars.  A lot more scantily clad demon and or angel and or other vaguely religious or at least spiritual ladies.  Many of them had nice big tatas.  There was also a lot less polychromatic goblins with huge wangs tearing people apart with hacksaws while gibbering at the moon.

"Not Hell huh," his artificially deepend and made-to-sound-more-cool voice entoned in an attempted one-liner, chuckling briefly in a very unorganic but quite cinematic way, "Hell...ha ha ha...I could get used to this."

"Yeah, that's fucking great bud.  That's kinda the idea right?  What can I do for yas since ya standin in da road?  What's your poison?  Booze?  Uppers?  Downers?  Boomers?  Zoomers?  Whammers? Women?  Men?  Dogs?  Hah, I'm just fucken witcha bud.  We ain't do that shit round here.  We're not monsters, just demons."

"Hmmmm," Dangerrutito intoned again, looking down at a Squat Bearded, Pot Bellied, Bespectacled, and Otherwise Accessorized Demon, he replied in his best Enigmatic Protagonist Voice while winking slowly and with great effort "Surprise me."

As the hustle and bustle of Not Hell surrounds him Dangerrutito Fontaniuxic spreads his arms wide open as if to embrace all that Not Hell might have to offer, looking slowly across its expanse, just really letting it waft over him.  Yeahhhh, yeahhhh.  He could get used to this.  In time it might even feel like home.  It just might.  It really could.  Waiting for some dramatic music to start up and the credits to begin and then a nice slow fade to black.  That would be nice.  Right about now.

"Ey, douche canoe, get in the fucken cab already.  I can get other fares ya know if you just want to stand there monging about like fucken Spidermans on a rooftop and shit.  I got demonlings to feed and if I get home early I got demonlings ta make if ya know what I mean.  Imma fuck my demon wife is what I mean.  Now get your big metally ass in the cab, I got a surprise for ya."

"It's not metal," Dangerrutito mumbles forlornly as his big finish is now ruined, "It's way better than that it's an Aromatic Polyamide Weave over a-"

"Just get in da fucken cab before I Airamatic Polemike ya fucken head in already."

"Cheezus Criminus dese fucken foreigners is all da same.  Fuckin too old for this shit.  Fuckin gas prices...fuckin Union..."

The cabbies cursing continues until he slams the door of his Not Hell Cab shut and drives into Aeternus, eager to drop this jamoke off in a demon bar or demon titty club or demon fight pit or really whatever comes up first that the fella seems to take any interest in.  As the car pulls away into the heavy traffic going to one den of sin or another this post does actually begin a slow dramatic and extremely cinematic fade to black.  It washes over you like a thing which would be very pleasant to have washing over you.

If you turn the volume up you can just barely hear Dangerrutito bitching about how if the cabbie had just waited another minute he could have gotten his proper fade to black ending.  Whether you turned the volume up or not you can definitely hear the cabbie's brakes screeching hard against the Not Brimstone streets.
BangoSkank Member

Halfway Intriguing Halfling

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