BrokenPromise

Battle Toyale — Christmas Rumble!

@Shinny Boy, it's been a long time since I watched small soldiers.I may have to watch that again at some point. I recall it being a good B-movie.

I find the somewhat nebulous state of this "animated essence" a little concerning, but since this is going to be my first arena RP and it doesn't seem like we're meant to take much of anything too seriously, I'll just assume you know what you're doing and will make fair judgements regarding wounds. Otherwise that did answer my questions pretty completely. Thank you.

It may be a bit before I get a character sheet up, but it should be before the deadline.

Battle Toyale — Christmas Rumble!

@Shinny



Our characters were turned into toys and put inside some weird death game in a toy store. But what sort of combat are we looking for here? Are we going to "play it straight" where everyone is more or less "human powered" relative to their size or are we going for lightly powered, heavily powered, or anime powered? There's a lot of wiggle room between "Don't blow up the store" and "be a dangerous toy."

Since our characters are toys, do they have human vitals? Will a gut wound cripple someone? Does a toy have to be totally destroyed or do they have a sort of heart/brain that needs to be destroyed to end the toy's life? Do they need to breathe and can they get tired?

Do you care where the characters in question come from? Is the toymaster just pulling these people out of a sort of multiverse and turning them into toys? Related to this, can toys have abilities/powers/magic that are similar to how they were before being a toy or would everything have to conform strictly to how they would function as a toy?

Is there going to be a character sheet?

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Oh dear….”

— Suki Oyama

A cutlass? No, that was not correct. The sword that the Miseria captain held was unquestionably a katana. A japanese native would identify it as no other weapon. This might have seemed like a strange thing for a pirates hold, however, it may have been a reference to William Adams. The GM is really enjoying Shogun by James Clavell if it wasn’t obvious.

The Captain kept his eyes on Nyxiaa as she launched her salvo of death beams. He sheathed his katana and hovered his hand over the hilt, much like ronin tended to do in movies before a speed draw. The initial beams hit their mark with ease, and as time passed, they would eat deeper and deeper into the bone dutchman’s hull. The eye beans closed in on the captain, he drew his blade…

…And used its edge like a mirror.

While it took the captain effort to reflect the full brunt of Nyxia’s power, the weaker beams were far easier for him to intercept. They were deftly reflected right back at Nyxia, striking not her, but her precious baby. This was all the dutchman needed to escape the incoming lasers, which had only done superficial damage to her hull. Before Nyxia could resume her attack, five flying gunmen over her head had started firing on her position. Each shot of their gun fired a cluster of metal pellets, not unlike a blunderbuss or grape shot.

After giving one of the fliers a taste of their own medicine, Acid Drop decided to take the fight to the captain. It wasn’t hard given her speed, but she could feel herself slowing down. Acid drop had peaked and her speed was going to gradually decline until her power was all spent up. Until then, steel met steel, and the hyperspeed combatants fought above the ocean. Maybe she could keep the captain busy until the ship could be destroyed, but maybe not.

It started to look like Oros was going to get overwhelmed. While the normal miseria were easy enough to dispatch, these pirates were not the kissing kind. They struggled far too much, and they actually fought back. "Uh, guys? A little um, help?” She bit her lip as a few pirates drew closer, and prepared for the worst.

Then an unexpected friend showed up.

Shatterscape took to the beach swinging. Those without weapons were quickly turned into a fine black mist, but those armed with swords were able to deflect her blows as she rampaged past them. These were not ordinary miseria. In fact, one would be forgiven for not thinking they were anything like the shapeless, dumb, cowardly, weak creatures that dark magical girls only hunted for power. The pirates had an ounce of self preservation and understood pack tactics. Moreover, they had proven that they could change and adapt their strategies to deal with new threats. When it became clear that Shatterscape couldn’t instantly kill the sword pirates, the unarmed ones started to wait behind them. Then, when she was in mid swing, they would envelope her.

But such tactics did not allow them to impede Earthshaker, who was able to jump at the rising ship and deliver her stored up energy into a single, precise, penetrating blow. And sure enough, the blast was enough to punch a hole through the hull and even a few floors inside the ship. Some pirates looked outside of the newly made hole and descended on top of Roche. They didn’t attack so much as they climbed around her shield and arms. They attempted to lock her limbs in place while another one scaled her back and attempted to choke her out.

But at least it seemed like the tide was shifting…

…

…

…

”Iz Morganite Monday, biznatch!”

— The Magnificent Morganite

Morganite never retreated, she only advanced in different directions.

A 1v4 wan’t impossible odds for Morganite, but if you’re going to tank that much firepower, might as well just make it a 2v4 so that you can achieve victory against such scrubs. And so, Morganite brought a charming little white witch back to the beach so that she could launch her counter attack. She could already see the detention club’s defeat playing out in her mind as she said something snide to each and every one of them before knocking them out and scribbling all over their faces.

But it didn’t involve a fifth member showing up, or pirate miseria, or a ship of bone. Hell, the hostage situation was something she felt was a little below them. Figures they’d try to force the entire beach into being their harem. Looked like one of them had tentacles of blood wrapped around them, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out where things were going next.

”Eh…” She shrugged her shoulders, totally nonplussed by the chaos. ”Lez free da harem from these weirdos!”

The witch nodded, winked, made a peace sign with one hand, and used her other to fire a lance of light down the beach. Oros was able to avoid it by tipping her head, but it harpooned ten pirates before vanishing into the sea. Then the duo ran down the beach towards Oros’s position.

"...Guys?”

Symphony on High

"Do I have to turn this van around?"

— Mika Fang

@Ponn@Majoraa

Mika’s grip on the steering wheel got tighter as Ashley and Finn continued to spar words with one another. Mika wasn’t rooting for one or the other, only that they could decide on a course of action. But it was clear this was not something that was going to get settled right now, as both Ashley and Finn were more interested in their current social dynamic. Mika considered this far less important that discovering who the mole was before they sabotaged a second time. They got Angelie killed, and while Finn kind of did in Dante, things were only hard because someone sent him everything they could on Timekeeper. Someone else was going to die if they didn’t stop them. Well, die sooner, at least. Mika wasn’t so stupid as to think any of them were going to get out of this alive. What was being an esper but rolling the dice and hope you get a high roll?

But if they couldn’t cooperate in a low-stress environment like Su’s van, then maybe this had to be dealt with first.

The rear view mirror let mika look directly into Finn’s eyes. She could look at Ashley easily enough just by glancing into the passenger seat. She knew she wasn’t a smart girl, but she knew what the doctor would want her to do in this situation.

The road was empty. Anyone with a car was out of Pax Septimus or hunkering down in a garage somewhere. Only an esper or a deranged storm chaser would be on the road right now. As tense as the air was, Mika resisted the urge to slam on the breaks and instead slowly brought the van to a stop. Then she turned to ashley and rested her elbow on the steering wheel like a trucker might.

"Pair-a-dice is waiting for us a few blocks away. Fritzi also said Cereza and Cerise are good healers and will be joining us as well." She moved her finger between herself and Ashley. "Then there’s you and me. A full squad is just five espers, right?"

---

@Vertigo@The World@Nakushita

Trixy laughed, then snorted like a pig. ”’We’re all about having fun here, Sovereign! I’m looking forward to having fun with you too!”

”’...Mario?” Trixy raised an eyebrow, but decided to answer marrie’s questions instead of make sense of her wordplay. ”’Those names are just what GEMINI calls them, which happens to be what the rest of the esper folks have taken to calling them. We don’t know their exact shape, but if it’s anything like ‘highway to hell’ we can probably expect it to be something like a train. So probably a giant snake, an eel, or maybe even a pair of drakes!” She chuckled when Marrie mentioned how things tend to get convoluted. ”’Oh they absolutely do! But I wouldn’t worry my pretty little head off about if or when we meet the other ‘train’. How we react to it is going to depend on how we fair with Crazy Train. If we get control of them, or uh, they die before Peace train shows up, then of course we’re going to help them! But if we have our hands full and the church is holding their own, well, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right?” She rubbed her chin. ”’As for anything else… Crazy train seems to be greatly wounded, maybe? It seems to be leaking some black fluid. Could be blood, or maybe oil or diesel. But those were some very good questions! I bet as soon as we get over there, you’ll figure something out right away.” She waved her hand. ”’Let’s get aboard Boteg!”

With a leap, Trixy fell in place right behind Himiko, who hadn’t stopped tormenting Boteg with her unusual questions. ”’Boteg is just a little shy. But he’s going to work with you and everyone else so long as you’re with us on this operation! He’s a Maverick now, after all.” She placed her hands on himiko’s ribs, to better center herself during the flight, of course. ”’Yes, that’s a great observation! I think as soon as we arrive, we’re going to have a better idea of what has to be done!”

Once everyone was loaded up, Boteg pushed off the ground. All espers aboard could feel the downforce from the dragon’s mighty jump. Then Boteg spread his wings and began to coast forwards. One might have been expected to get pelted by rain as they flew, but it seemed as though boteg was inside some rain and wind resistant barrier. The dragon remained dry in flight, and the espers could only feel a gentle breeze as it flew through the air.

Below them was Pax Septimus, Black tar roads and grey concrete buildings. The rainfall only washed out the colors more. For those who witnessed the diver’s arrival, they might have compared this day to that one. Hopefully things will end better this time.

Boteg peaked over his shoulder to look at his passengers before returning his gaze forward.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Is this going to be like the magical girl version of 300?”

— Suki Oyama

Oros the Joyful was starting to live up to her namesake. With every new victim for her harem she found, she recovered some of her strength. But before long, there were no more targets that she could reach. Her tentacles had her bound to the other beach goers, and Acid Drop was making sure nobody got close to them. At least Oros thought it was Acid Drop. Between the sand and the people behind her freaking out, she might have just been imagining Acid Drop when she looked into the exploding beach. She kept her eyes closed and bright her arm in front of her face.

Roche had an easier time dealing with miseria that were coming for her specifically, especially ones with powerful attacks that she could steal energy from. In no time at all her stores of energy had cranked back up as the intensity of the fighting escalated. Though while she was able to do some impressive things with her powers, these pirate miseria weren’t the frail, stupid creatures that happily waltzed to their death. These ones could take a beating before going down. When Roche took on the cannonballs head on, sometimes a sword miseria would use its sword to partially absorb the attack. And after they fell into the water around Roche, they rallied and distracted her from all sides so others could make it onto the beach. Oros and Acid Drop would have no shortage of pests to deal with, despite Roche’s efforts.

Perhaps the fighting would come to its end when Nyxia’s beam of death struck the dutchman. The miseria certainly seemed intimidated by it. A few of those still on board went wide eyed as the beam closed in on the ship..The captain, however, stared the beam down with his unblinking gaze. He placed one foot up on the railing and had a hand on his sheathed katana. Then, when the time was that, he raced down the side of the ship without a care for the laws of gravity. He placed himself between the ship and the death beam and drew his sword at the last possible moment. Nyxia’s beam of destruction collided with the sword, but could press no further. The captain’s sword arm quivered, Nyxia pumped more energy into her attack, but this stalemate didn’t seem to change. Then with a swing of his blade, the lazer was sent reeling and squiggling through the sky back towards the beach, like a rope cast off before a voyage. The captain kept an eye on Nyxia as the ship started to move, but they remained firmly planted on the side of the ship.

But for those that weren’t presently in Acid Drop’s sand cloud, they could make out silhouettes in the sky. It seemed like the dutchman had released a few extra miseria while everyone was momentarily blinded. But this was an unusual fourth type of pirate miseria. Ones with guns… And propeller backpacks! They fired down on the dark magical girls from above as their companions on the ground pushed further up the beach. Just how many more surprises did these pirates have?

Symphony on High

"And I thought I was the super baka."

— Mika Fang

@Ponn@Majoraa

When Ashley asked Mika if Fritzi knew about her plan, she slowly shook her head. "She knows I found something. I didn’t tell her what it was. It’s hard to get her by herself." It wasn’t that Dr Moller wasn’t trustworthy, she just surrounded herself with a lot of people. Whoever the mole was, they were someone that she trusted very much. Thus, keeping her discovery a secret from the doctor was a must. Maybe that was the wrong call, but at least Mika knew Ashley and Finn weren’t moles. It wasn’t totally impossible, she supposed. But as much as Ashley and Finn drove her nuts, she didn’t feel like they would make for good double agents.

That didn’t mean they weren’t going to find their own ways to sabotage the operation. Ashley decided now was the best time to press Finn about his relationships. He retaliated with all the maturity someone of his age was afforded. Maybe Himiko was right, but Mika wasn’t ready to admit it.

"Can we talk about the mole without bringing up Timekeeper’s girl friends?" It was something Mika was personally done hearing about, and didn’t feel like wasting more time on someone that absolutely wasn’t worth it. "And maybe don’t do the chuuni act? I’m being serious guys…" Hopefully there wouldn’t be any more incidents. "So our prime moles are Binky and Faith. I trust Timekeeper didn’t tell Betty our mission. If I remember correctly, he met with her before the meeting and didn’t see her again until after it concluded, right?" Mika hated coddling Finn like this. There were a lot of reasons why she detested it, but the main one is that she had to acknowledge that Ashley was the more mature one of the two of them. "Has anyone spent any time with either one of them? Faith always acts weird to me and I haven’t personally spoken with Binky. What should we do?"

They didn’t have long to devise a plan. The others would be joining them shortly.

---

@Vertigo@The World@Nakushita

As bewildered as the dragon looked at Himiko’s comments, that confusion seemed to melt away as soon as Marrie started talking. Boteg grinned and his head bobbed up and down. ”’Tis most splendid to be called ‘chill.’ Thou art most right! Methinks asking for thy blood tis most unusual. If thou wish to devour captain crunch, go to the glass rectangle and get a chewy block!”

This seemed to pacify Himiko Or the shita just forgot to post and Ciri was too busy being antisocial to respond. But there was someone present that wasn’t too antisocial to respond .

”’Hey girls!” Trixy gave everyone a big wave. One so big that it might have even shamed Marrie with how big it was. It was a full hundred and eighty degree wave, and her feet practically left the ground with every swing of her arm. ”’You guys must be the freelancers! I’m Trixy! Boteg here is going to fly us over to Crazy Train, at which point you guys and Ciri are going to hop off. Then I’m going to stay with Boteg and keep him safe. The other Mavericks are going to join us later via cars, but you guys need to figure out what has this behemoth so upset and see if we can rectify it.” She rubbed her chin. ”’Like maybe it’s giving birth, or it wants to meet up with the other train for a hot date. I dunno, monsters are weird sometimes. But if we can find out what it wants, we can calm it down.”

---

@TaintedMushroom@Kero

When the two late arriving espers arrived, Raphael turned to look at them, but answered Noah first.

”Yes, you are the last ones to arrive. Though while you have arrived late, I suppose it was inevitable. The storm made getting here a little difficult, didn’t it?’” He folded his massive arms. ”But none of the other factions have acted yet, so we still have time. Would the lot of you like to get introduced?’”

The other freelance espers would turn to look at the newly arrived. Both Noah and Asher might be taken back by what they saw. For Noah, it would be that there were four other nun espers not unlike herself. For Asher, it would be that these nuns had tried to kill him in the last operation they were on. Though one of them a nun wearing little more than a habit and some wraps seemed to be a new addition, or just wasn’t present during the attack. Or maybe she was present, and she had just gone unnoticed?

”We’re familiar with this one, anyway!” Lenore stepped up to Asher and stuck out her hand. ”No hard feelings about last time, right? We’re freelancers, and we’re all in it for the money in the end. Bobo might be scowling right now, but she won’t shoot you unless you shoot her first.” She winked.

Nova and the new nun were grinning right along with Lenore, but Bobo wasn’t smiling. ”Small world.” she groaned.

Raphael looked between Lenore and Asher. ”Is there a problem?’”

The new nun strutted past Asher and approached Noah. She was a tall woman, and her massive head dress made her seem taller still. ”Well, these are all new faces to me.” A smirk crossed her lips as she, too, extended her hand to shake Noah’s ”I’m Lexi, and the four of us make up Black Sabbath.”

Books

Yard sales are a great place to get books if you're not looking for anything too specific or care to get them second hand. The prices are more or less unbeatable.

If you have access to a thrift shop that might be worth looking into as well, though the increased foot traffic in those places means that they have usually been picked through.

Death of the genre

@Shu@Lith

I think the real reason 1x1 gets dunked on so much is because of the high turnover rate. A group RP can be expected to make it to the first few rounds of posts or even last a month or two in most cases. But in 1x1 it's pretty frequent to just have people ghost on you during the planning phase. It requires a different approach than group RP does, and different expectations too. Hence why I think it's always 1x1 RPers who question the health of the site/pbp/genre/etc.

Symphony on High

"For someone who’s always complaining about having something to react to, Ashley sure didn’t give me much to work with…"

— Mika Fang

@Ponn@Majoraa

Mika would have picked up Finn first. When she first decided she was going to do this, he seemed like a cool, if not very well put together individual. Basically, someone very similar to herself. But after that happened it was clear that they didn’t have that much in common after all. Perhaps any of the new agents could have been picked up first, but Mika didn’t trust them. They were new hires and could have been plants from the mole. As much as Mika hated to admit it, Ashley was the lesser of two evils, and so she swung by her first. Not only that, but she had some aversion to letting Mika and her neighbor interact. It sounded stupid, but it meant that Ashley could show up a few blocks away from her home en route to someone else.

She didn;t exchange any words with Ashley. The door to her mother’s van swung open and she was able to step in out of the rain. Then she was off again. The wipers were working overtime to keep the window clear. After driving for a few minutes, they entered a more affluent part of Pax Septimus where Finn’s home was. But again, Mika couldn’t get too close. This time it was because of police directing traffic away from the homes, as the area was suspected to be hit directly by the hurricane. Once fin was inside, Mika started driving again.

"I told you guys we have a mole." She had told Finn before their “date” at the fair, and she had told Ashley in person just a day afterwards. She made sure both times she was away from HQ so that nobody would know. But she hadn’t told them much more than that. "Someone sent Dante stuff about Timekeeper the day of the operation. I saved it in the glove box." If Ashley cared to look in the glovebox, she would see a single page dossier on Finn. An outline of his abilities, his appearance in both esper and normal form, as well as his close family and notes about his behavior. "I think the nuns were told about me and Oros too. We were told about our jobs a day before. There aren’t a lot of people the mole could be…"

---

@Vertigo@The World@Nakushita

The rain hadn’t quite set in over Boteg and Ciri yet, but as the clouds started to move in, he extended his wing over the oni so that she would stay dry. When she asked if they could ditch them, Boteg pulled his head back as if she had just farted.

”Big tech ask me to wait for signal. ” Boteg looked out ahead. ”Time is important. If thy scares cannot assemble before the signal is shown, methinks it would be best if we enacted the plan ourselves. ”

What plan hadn’t been said yet, which was a maverick standard. Billy was very big on winging things, and likely knew Ciri wouldn’t have the willpower or attention to repeat everything to the freelancers. That said, it was anyone’s guess was to why Boteg was left with the plan. He was a flight risk, and he had a tendency to turn everything he said into something incomprehensible.

Before long, the Freelancers started to show up. The first of which was Marrie, who greeted everyone on her arrival. Boteg’s expression immediately brightened, and his tail swung side to side. ”Methinks thy quest will be difficult, but thy optimistic attitude tis most pleasing!” An observant eye might have noticed a nervous twitch in Boteg’s eye. Even now, he was really nervous around espers.

And he didn’t feel any better when Himiko showed up. First she badgered Ciri, then she started half-flirting with Boteg, which was about as effective as Ciri’s puns when she tried to sway Boteg last week. ”Beg pardon!?” The conversation only got stranger as Himiko went on about what his blood was made out of and asked him to reconsider her offer. Was this a threat? Boteg’s eyes went wide and he looked to Ciri, silently pleading for her to save him from the tiny human on his back that was interested in his blood. and companionship.

Death of the genre

The fighting game genre is dying. Old fandoms are dying. The Tumblr art community is dying.

I think the reason why topics like this cause me to roll my eyes is because I have plenty of stuff to keep me busy. I'm running two group RPs, participating in a third albeit slower moving one, and I have a few 1x1 RPs going on. Despite this, I still come across a lot of stuff I could conceivably join. I do not visit other forums as I can barely keep up with what I do with this one. While you'd be crazy to not acknowledge that forums and forum roleplays are getting more niche, suggesting that they are "dying" implies that interest in them is going to all but evaporate.

There's a few reasons for their decline. We have discord, roll20, and tons of other platforms for RPing. And while they all do what they do well, they aren't a perfect replacement for PbP RPing. Discord has too many irritations for me to ever consider seriously writing on it, and acting out your character spontaneously in roll 20 isn't the same as writing and reading posts. So long as nothing works quite like PbP, it will never be replaced.

There is a second part of this discussion, which is the people who keep insisting that PbP is dying. I've noticed it's always someone who primarily RPs in 1x1 stuff. As someone who's tried both I can say that it can be difficult to find a 1x1 partner to write with. I even joke that the 1x1 section is the place to go when you feel like hating yourself. What makes for a good group interest check make for a horrible 1x1 interest check. Group roleplayers want to know that their GM has an idea of what the hell they are doing and would love to participate in some well constructed world with understandable rules. But 1x1 players typically want something that caters to their specific tastes. Having page after page of reference material will cause their eyes to glaze over as they back out of your interest check and look for something they can have more influence on. They want to be involved with the creation process and help decide how the bricks are laid.

Or they're gooners.

As for how I cement myself, I guess it's a combination of understanding what everyone wants and also a willingness to try things that aren't 100% in my wheelhouse. Magical girls are actually not something that I prefer to write about all the time, but I let my friends drag me into RPs and we end up having fun regardless.