BangoSkank

Perchance! A Persistently Preposterous Perfidy of Petulant Pugilism : Moldovan Masked and Mustachioed Muscle Man from Mount Magora MEETS MOLE-MAN!!!!!

"Fine Alejandro, fine. You pick. Fucking dinner at 8. I swear to God. I don't care if you are still on Dubai Time I'm tired of this shit. You better not pick some weird shit either. Remember when you tried to make me eat Svio?"
"It's a delicacy Guillemot. It takes forever to cook and we only ever have it once or twice a year. It was supposed to be an honor."
"It's a fucking goat head Alize. A fucking goat head cut in half. It was looking at me the whole time."
"You could have ate the eye first you know. They're a delicacy"
"Ooooooo coulda ate the eye first, it's a delicacy. That's you. That's what you sound like."
"What happened to you Gilberto, you used to be brave. We used to go on adventures together. You used to-"

They didn't even seem to notice as their mics cut out, they were so distracted by their bickering.

Some other jackass got on the mic for a moment to describe the action.

"Check, check, one two. Yeah? It's good. Heheheh. Look Mom I'm on TV!"

A voice can barely be heard live, and will be cut from the broadcast, indicating to this dipshit that he is not on camera he is speaking into a mic. His mother will not be able to see him. She will only briefly be able to hear him. And after that he will once again fade into the shadows, just another indistinct minion skittering about to feed the machine the precious oil it needs to keep operating until gradually he is crushed between the gears and discarded like the worthless peon he is. Also his haircut is stupid and he isn't fooling anyone with those expensive shoes he went out and bought. Basically he's a Bitch. Basically.

"Well that was rude. Ok folks so we got...we got uh."

Rustling papers can be heard.

"Who names these guys? What kind of stupid fucki- OK Guys! Looks like Danger, Danger Fontaine doesn't know what to do. Probably not rare for this guy he's a dumb bastard isn't he folks? What was that elbow drop? He telegraphed that shit like crazy. Tried to take a page right out of Macho Man Rand-"

His mic cuts out now too. Referencing a rival promotion. Very stupid. That dumbass is being just tossed directly between the gears of the machinery now. Like in that old Looney Tunes cartoon from like 1950 or some shit. The one where the guy is tossed directly between the gears of some machinery. Like that.

Meanwhile MOLE-MAN the Mole Man Massages his Mercilessly Mollywhopped Mole Man head and downs a substantial portion of the Ibuprofen. MOLE-MAN the Mole Man's Mole Man Manager, MOLE-MANAGER, Makes sure to clean up MOLE-MAN's general cranium area. MOLE-MANAGER has got to wipe away all the sweat, and blood, and baby oil off his Mole Man Managee, MOLE-MAN. That's just like Safety 101.

"Muuuhhhgeeefeeeekahhhh, oooooooaaaeeeyyyy azzzzzz beeeeezhk." Mole Manager, MOLE-MANAGER Mutters Morosely, looking for A little Assistance from the Announcers who are now well into their Argument and Utterly Unaware that the show is still technically going on.

Why isn't Danger, Danger Fontaine Owning his Opponent? Or is that Pwning. Who the fuck says Pwning. Is Pwning even a verb? Would it be PWNing? Did folks stop saying that, or typing that, like 5 years ago back in like 2008. Jesus fuck that was 14 years ago. Oh my god I'm getting older. Death is inevitable. The end of my life is coming. What have I done with my life? Where are the years going? Those years start coming and they don't stop coming, fed to the rules and I hit the ground running, didn't make sense not to live for fun, your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb.

Danger, Danger Fontaine Had Headbutted Himself back into 1999. Back to an age when Smash Mouth was a band and not just those guys who did that thing that was in Shrek. Everyone loves Shrek. Fucking Michael Myers. National Treasure.

Danger, Danger Fontaine however was not thinking about Shrek. Danger, Danger Fontaine was too busy dancing seductively and reapplying the body oil that had come off following his latest tussle to notice everything going on. Not the Melting Marriage or the Mole Man going to war with himself, very much risking an Ibuprofen Overdose. That's no joke. That shit will fuck you up. He also didn't notice the several Mole Men, or at least Mole Individuals Presenting Mostly As Men But Who Can Tell With Mole Individuals, Let's Just Be Considerate You Guys, who were Pulling up the Padding just outside the ring.

Carefully with those weird little claw hand things they have they pulled the padding away and then threw it over the guardrail onto the crowd. Several of whom were seriously wounded. Sucks to suck. They then knocked on the ground and scurried away without even exchanging Insurance Information. That'll be a lawsuit for sure. Bet.

Up from the just now cleared away ground emerged two Mole Men. No idea what their names are. Let's just call them PRIMARY-MOLE-MAN-ANNOUNCER and SECONDARY-MOLE-MAN-ANNOUNCER for now. We'll call the one with the mustache PRIMARY-MOLE-MAN-ANNOUNCER. Seems like he's probably the more senior of the two. There's got to be some kind of grooming standard for these guys right? Figure they wave it a little bit once you have enough seniority. More experience, more friends, makes it harder to replace you. It's messed up but that's usually how it works. Politics right? Who needs them. Wait. Hold up. How does a Mole Man have a Mustache. That's stupid. They're covered in hair. No. No. It makes no sense.

"What does that say?" Danger, Danger Fontaine shouts, as the Mole Men pull an Announcing Table out of the hole and set it up ringside.

"Is that code? IS that an Acronym? What language is that? Fucking MOLESE? What the fuck does that say! Did Bill Gates hire them?!?!?"

The two Mole Men ignore him as they continue to set up their table and Ensure Everything is in proper order. In order to distract from the general chaos and Danger, Danger Fontaine's increasing Petulant, Paradoxical ad Paranoid ramblings they begin playing a song through the speakers.

It seems they lost their Creedence Clearwater Revival CDs, and their Rocky CDs, and their Top Gun CDs. They're playing "Just The Two Of Us" over the loudspeakers. Not the Will Smith one either. The old ass one. Weird choice. It has the benefit of calming down Antionette and Gibraltar though. They're no longer stomping their feet and red in the face with anger. Now they're making out and red in the face with passion. Very nice. Maybe they really will build those castles in the sky, just the two of them, them and them. Just. The. Two. Of Them.

"WHATS HAPPENING!?!?!?!?" Danger, Danger Fontaine screams, clearly unhappy with how far afield this all has gone.

"This is bullshit. This is supposed to be my match. Why are the announcers making out? Why is my opponent taking an irresponsible quantity of Ibuprofen? Who the fuck are those two and WHAT IN THE FUCK DOES THAT TABLE SAY?!?!?"

The Primary Mustachioed Mole-Man Announcer, PRIMARY-MOLE--MAN-ANNOUNCER gets on the mic and spouts a bunch of Mole Gibberish in the most assuring, confident, thoughtful Manner iMaginable.

"Someone put a stop to this," Danger, Danger Fontaine responds, shaking the ring ropes like the Ultimate Warrior used to.
"This Must End! What Malicious Malediction Might These Mole Men Mutter?"

The Secondary Mustacheless Mole-Man Announcer, SECONDARY-MOLE-MAN-ANNOUNCER picks up the mic and replies in an even tone.

"You are an idiot. The table says "Monthly Mole Man Motivational Invitational" in English and in a plain and clear font. I am MOLE-TRANSLATOR, a Mole Man Translator. Earlier MOLE-MAN's Mole Man Manager, MOLE-MANAGER said "Motherfucker, oily ass bitch," after you left his Mole Man Managee, MOLE-MAN covered in your baby oil. We are all caught up now. The match can begin but first allow me to instruct you all on the very real dangers of Irresponsible Ibuprofen usage."

WHAT A TWIST!

SECONDARY-MOLE-MAN-ANNOUNCER was actually MOLE-TRANSLATOR in disguise all along!

I thought I knew the guy. Fucking crazy man. Shook me to my core.

MOLE-TRANSLATOR then went on to carefully outline the correct dosage relevant to each age group and the many dangers of using too much over a long or short period of time, such as:

Mild Symptoms

• Tinnitus
• Heartburn
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Stomach pain
• Diarrhea
• Dizziness
• Blurred Vision
• Rash
• Sweating

Severe Symptoms

• Difficult or Slow Breathing
• Convulsions
• Hypotension
• Seizures
• Little to No Urine Production
• Severe Headache
• Coma
• Running A Joke That Wasn't That Funny To Begin With Into The Ground And Pretending Like Self-Awareness Is Going To Mitigate That

Sensing that the joke had run it's course MOLE-ANNOUNCER then Mole Announced that the match was back on.

"The match is back on. Ding ding ding." MOLE-ANNOUNCER announced.

Circling around Danger, Danger Fontaine holds out a gloved hand for the traditional masculine sportsmany glove touch thing fighters do before they start, or restart I guess, a fight.

"You good little Mole Man Bro? You ready to turn this up a notch? You ready to really Fucking brain Fuck these Fans with some Fantastic Fighting FanFare For fa..fi..French... You ready to Go Bro?"

Just warning you all before I stage a coup and turn this into "ZaibatsuGuild"

Good place to join then. There's basically metaphorically literally always at least one or two superhero RPs going down here.

If you want I'll link you to one current and two former ones.

Just don't join and call dibs on Wolverine or Captain America, they're my homies.

What shows/movies are you watching?

Watched The Boys and then Terminal List over the last couple weeks.

Very different shows. Both great.

Particularly Terminal List. Like goddam. Alright then.

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

There needs to be a level of cooperation in order for competition to be interesting, at least to me.

Poor two second analogy, but I have to be willing to admit you hit me in the head. I didn't block it. I didnt tense me neck muscles at just the right time to absorb the force. I didn't open my mouth and bite your fist at the last second. I'm not actually a master of the Iron Jaw technique and therefore you didn't actually just break your own fist in my face.

You got me. It hurt. I'm probably bleeding. My bell is a little rung. I'm gonna have to adapt. I wasn't ready for that. Fucking ouch man. Damn.

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

Yeah you definitely benefit a lot from writing/playing with folks who don't just want to be the strongest on the board.

If I were to GM one again, I haven't GMed a Nation or Faction RP in a long time I would probably include a Strengths and Weaknesses tab in each descriptor

Like Military/Politics/Economy/Science!

Have folks explain either to the group or at least to the GM what they can see going wrong or what would cripple them, and come to an understanding with them that if they get too powerful issues will start popping up.

Done that a few times.

Political betrayal, appearance of Tunnelers (Fallout series monster), looming threat of a huge GM controlled army that was poking around at one border.

Can be fun to create a bit of a back and forth between the GMs and the players too.

Example

Faction not Nation but...

Sunshine State. A Fallout RP.
IIRC threats were Original Mean Greedy Fuck Brotherhood of Steel coming from Georgia to claim all tech. Supermutants in the middle. Bayou Lizard things in the South. A farming conglomerate trying to monopolize the market in the middle.

All the groups except the Brotherhood were player controlled, and I used BoS to create a sort of driving threat moving North to South and then occasionally along the coastline.

Just like in Character Based RPs the fun comes from seeing good writers develop their ideas and characters and this develop their writing. Sometimes Nation RPs last a looooooong ass time too. There was one here that lasted I want to say a year or two and still gets started over or little sequels every so often. War, war never changes.

SCI-Fi Prison Themed roleplay

You should check out the design documents for Van Buren, the cancelled original l Fallout 3 game. Starts out in a prison. Kinda sorta revolves around that prison and it's prisoners and ex-prisoners. Some of the characters and ideas from it made it into Fallout: New Vegas

The Draw of Nation Roleplay.

>Or, rather, what is the draw? I have some guesses already, from it being a more detailed and freeform way to flesh out your nation/polity, to exploring certain ideas but in relation to others. My question at that point though is one, why not just play an empire building game? And two, why not just worldbuild a whole nation from said game or from scratch? You can worry about the exact setting later after all, or not at all if it's largely inconsequential or not the main focus, or already taken care of in the case of a grand strategy game.

So there are basically three common, or at least in my experience common, sort of genres of RP. Character, Faction and Nation.

Character Based.
Most common here and most common in most places. You write as one single character. Sometimes you write as two or three, rarely more than that. You make a Character Sheet for that one character, or one each for several characters. 1x1 usually falls into that, though it doesn't have to.
This is Doctor Murrow, the depressed doctor trying to make it through a disaster and keep as many of his fellow men alive as possible.

Faction Based.
You write as a relatively small faction. Usually without a real formal limitation but usually ranging from like 10-100. You make a Faction Sheet explaining what this group believes, why they're together, what they're after and what they're going to do to get what they're after.
This is the Followers of the Apocalypse. A bunch of survivors in the aftermath of The Big One. They're trying to take control of as many military installations as possible to prevent their weapons from being used against any survivors...but probably gradually giving in to the appeal of power themselves.

Nation RP
You write as a big fuck of a Nation. Depending on the timeline and setting hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands. Even millions if you're doing SciFi or like Peak Civilization Fantasy. Your writing is establishing your politics. Military, leadership, hopefully alternate leadership like another political party.
This is the Western Commonwealth of the United States. The states of the Pacific Northwest coming together with Texas and Arizona, moving into Nevada and Utah and looking East to expand further. Utilizing simpler weaponry and masses of transport vehicles from seized military bases to quickly push their boundaries outward.

I don't like Nation RPs.

They're fun, in theory, because you can use it to tell stories in your own small world and then have occasional interactions with other folks worlds. If I'm that Southwestern States and you're Midwestern States we will eventually meet somewhere in the bordering areas.

You're likely writing as several characters. A President or Prime Minister or small Parliament. An opposing political party in your own nation. General common citizen characters. Maybe a military hero with aspirations of becoming president himself one day.

So most of the time you are either expanding, shoring up after encountering something while expanding, investing into some technology, or maybe fighting your own political battles.

They can be awesome. I just find that often the writers end up loving their main characters or entire nations too much and it becomes a convention of Mary Sues.

Conventions are a common trope in these RPs too. Annual, usually, meetings where delegations from each nation get together to meet each other and brag about what they've done. Could be really cool, could be a not particularly subtle dick measuring contest. You know, politics.

Am I New?

Welcome back stranger.

No shortage of RPs here. Some serious, some less so. Always good to have another writer. I think most of us have gone through periods where we stop writing for a bit. It's hard not to run into writers block or just life events at some point. Good to have you back.

Anyone got cute formatting to share?

You're very welcome.

For my money that one is the perfect mix between detail and brevity.

You can change it up pretty quick to work for a Faction or Nation or add/remove characteristics. It's got a pretty clear place for an Image to get slotted in. Plus lots of folks do or have used it so you can see what folks have done with it at different times.

I've used it for like three or four of my favorite characters and probably will continue to for some time.

Why I Roleplay Female Characters (As a Cisgender Man)

<Snipped quote by BangoSkank>

>I fail to see how writing a being without stereotypes is a bad thing. Note that I say being rather than human, as with humans or adjacent cultures to our own it's harder to do. Or prevent interpretation of such.

@Zyx

Depends on what you include in stereotypes, and getting into trouble about it doesn't necessarily mean it is actually a bad thing. They can be accurate or inaccurate or somewhere in that spectrum. They can also be positive or negative and have a lot of implications or very few. They can also be dealt with respectfully or disrespectfully. Delicate issues.

A lot of it comes down to perception. The whole general "token" concept. If you're writing a woman who is in every way a male character except that you note in your intro post that she's a woman and you use female pronouns. That's one end of the issue. The other end is a character who is little more than a pile of preconceptions.

If you write a Native American woman character during the days of the Wild West when one generation back her people roamed a huge chunk of Nebraska and moved with the seasons, but now her and her family have been moved to a reservation and they and their children are being taught new ways, new languages, and a new religion. If you write her in a way that is indistinguishable from a white male settler or a British railroad magnate, it's not gonna make some folks happy. It's not a very considerate way to write a character.

(I used Native Americans as the example because I had some Native American characters in my Deadlands RP and was trying to figure out how to handle them right)

There are fewer stereotypes with aliens and folks are less likely to care. More likely to just be bored with your writing if you go for 1950s greys without some humor or conspiracy or something to stand out.