Avatar of Darkmatter
  • Last Seen: 5 yrs ago
  • Old Guild Username: It starts with a D and rhymes with sharkmatter.
  • Joined: 11 yrs ago
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  • Username history
    1. Darkmatter 11 yrs ago

Status

Recent Statuses

9 yrs ago
Current Currently buried in a number of things which I hope will benefit the Guild.
9 yrs ago
In some ways, the guildfall was a blessing. It makes it harder for my original 2009 RPing to be found...
1 like
9 yrs ago
I've finally returned to the Guild. Many months of much RPing ahead.
10 yrs ago
A thousand things to be done; plenty motivation.

Bio

Aeronautical Engineer
Irish
TV and Film addict

Been here on the guild since April '08, seen a lot of change but still love it. I've been on and off, I've GM'd fantastic projects and train-wrecks, it all comes with the territory. I once tried to make a YouTube ad for the guild because I'm slightly insane. In a weird place with the Guild right now, seems like so many names I knew are gone, but more than happy and ready to meet new people. Been writing casually for over a decade, a lot of that practice has been here. I have some small short sci-fi stories printed in anthologies but those are so heavily edited they don't even feel like mine any more.

When not on the Guild I'm most likely working, playing FFXIV or the Souls series or (insert recent must play video game).
Anyone with a passing interest in sci fi needs to read Saga by Brian K Vaughan.

Most Recent Posts

Yes that title is just some catchy words. It worked though

So I've a few basic concepts. I usually do large scale NRPs as they are undoubtedly my favourite.
I'm also interested in posting a World/setting I've been creating and just straight up RPing a story in it.
Ideally of course I'd like a mix of the two with some nation building for a week or so moving swiftly onto roleplaying.
Personally I'd like to see how using my pre built world goes but that depends on people enjoying/liking the setting.
So shout out preferences, thriller intrigue, space opera, nation RP etc.
I tend to attempt to.implement deadlines in my RP's in a positive way just so as to keep the story moving fluidly.
Feel free to post questions, interest, ideas and what not.
I look forward to new and old faces.

EDIT:

I've decided to use the Free State as a basic setting and do a character based tale of intrigue. Don't fret on the setting too much, it'll come in time.

For now, enjoy (or hate) our introduction
Mr. Gressil sat in his chair, which in turn sat behind his desk, sat in the centre of his office which finally, sat atop his office building. One hundred and three years he had come to work and sat behind a desk. The dates changed as too had his desk, yet nothing could change the monotony of a Monday. Not just that, he was almost sure it was a common disdain regardless of species; that all those across the sector felt the perfunctory nature of a Monday’s endeavour. ‘Least I don’t have any snark to answer to,’ he thought to himself. Mostly true due to the fact he was the CEO.

Reaching forward in his seat, Gressil tapped the comms button, “Send in the first appointment.” He asked curtly to his secretary.
‘What was her name again,’ he wondered.
A Dowinite, he knew that much. These interns were huffled and shuffled along like nobody’s business these days. Certainly not business he bothered himself with. He had relinquished the frivolities of day-to-day management of any kind many years ago. Even these meetings he had on a daily basis were nay but the most obligatory of responsibilities.
“He’s on his way in now sir, and also...”
“That’s fine thank you.” Gressil interrupted the secretary.

Time to act as a CEO should. Shuffling in his chair, he straightened himself up, sat forwards and made himself as grandiose as possible. These diplomat types were usually self-righteous, pompous ass kissers. Nothing could ever prepare them for the indifference they met in this office.

“Good morning Mr Gressil.” The greeting was chirped from the beak nosed, suited up human who had just entered.

“My name is Haron, Dick Haron. I’m here representing vested interests of The Assembly and affilia..”

“I know exactly who you represent Mr.Haron. You hardly think you’re the first nor last pencil pusher to walk through my office doors.”
Gressil interrupted without hesitation or prudence. Leaning intently forward he place his two hands on the desk and all pair of eyes became fixated on the young man before him. Barely fresh out of the nest, evidently, Gressil wouldn’t have been surprised if this was this chickling’s first shin dig.

“Ahem. Indeed.”murmed Haron attempting to assert some kind of dominance, or at the very least a kind of mutual respect. It didn’t go well.

“Currently there are some concerns regarding a few of your more nuanced business practices.”

Gressil sat back in his chair having already ascertained the inevitable outcome of this conversation. Haron had ruffled up his feathers, but to no avail. Definitely new to game Gressil decided emphatically.

“Mr Haron I can assure that,” began Gressil before being distracted slightly but a slight beep coming from his haptic comms centre situated on the his desk. It was accompanied, with zero subtlety, by a ominously obvious red light.

“As I was iterating, here at Valencis Industries, we uphold naught but the utmost integrity of the law when conducting our operations. Everything, from our commercial entertainment to our large scale food production is completely above board. You and yours seem..” Gressil was cut short once again by his own comms panel. Two more notifications in quick succession.

“Again, this must be the, what is it, twelfth audit in as many years? It’s…sorry could you excuse me a minute.” Snarled Gressil angry at his own comms. The red alert was literally just that; an alert of the utmost gravity.
Flicking a hand out he activated the viewing function of his panel. Near instantly a jumble of light was scattered out of the desk and into the room before him, looking almost as if it was wrangling itself into submission. After a few seconds the photons settled into their correct pattern and there before him stood his Chief Surveillance Officer. The holo-message began relaying its message,

“Code  1. I Repeat  1.” The message looped over onto the second message which bore the same information.
Gressil shot out of his seat like a man possessed; and he was possessed by a great a sudden urge of ambition and surprise.
“Out.” He said frankly to the glorified clerk.

“This is very unprofe…”

“Now!” bellowed the Corvexian gesturing aggressively towards the door.

Fumbling with his body and confidence, both of which had been scattered by Grissel’s presence, Haron scurried out the room huffing and fuming. Leaving through the door he had entered only moments before, he heard one last message over the comm before he was out the door and out of earshot.

“We’ve found it sir. We’ve bloody found it.”
Narrator: Now if there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that nothing is more powerful than a young boy's wish. Except an Apache helicopter. An Apache helicopter has machine guns AND missiles. It is an unbelievably impressive complement of weaponry, an absolute death machine.
Jeddaven said
No outstanding issues so far, but I do have to agree that detail can get a bit too excessive. It's not that the writing is bad, per se, it's just long-winded.I'll be posting a more detailed response in about an hour.


Per se would imply you do think it is 'bad'.
It's long for sure but long winded is something else entirely. If I remain in the RP I'll be posting several thousand word posts on a regular basis. I wouldn't have presumed that'd have been an issue.

Edit:
Look things have already got a sour air. Clearly there's a large difference of opinion here and there's no point moving forward. Consider me out.

I'll start own of my own, as I normally did.
That said no hard feels and I wish you all the sucess with the RP.
I like the insect-esque quasi religious gender relations of the Legion. It's interesting.
Pepperm1nts said
Okay, cool. That's good.Oh. Welcome back. I thought you were focusing on IC. Huh. Okay. To be honest, no. I have not read your sheets. I skimmed them. Outside of IC, I generally only read things that have grasped my interest. Unless they are to-the-point, in which case I read them because then I can do it without getting bored halfway through. To be fair though, I do have ADHD.Cool. I for one think IC posts are a better representation of a writer's skill, and use that to determine whether or not they are someone I would like to interact with.


If you have the time read the sheet. Consider it a favor from you to me. Just in the interest of seeing if it all changes your opinion and so you can actually assess the writing as you seem eager to do.

If you don't I won't take any offence of course.

I'm working on plot ideas but I'll still be active on the thread. I meant I didn't feel like continue something that was threatening to descend into argument.
All I'll say is this;

Obviously character development is paramount. I've said this myself in countless RP's. Especially in Sci Fi. Where great Sci Fi is all about the why and who.

That said context is important.

A 10k ns is nothing compared to an IC sections with hundreds of pages.

I am not going to discuss the issue further unless the gm has something to ask of me.

Instead I'm going to focus on telling my story IC and sharing and creating stories with the other players.

Have you actually read mine or terminal's sheet?

You're saying it's daunting.
I for one think a well.written ns makes me excited to write with that rper and interact with that creation.
Pepperm1nts said
@Terminal: You might still have plenty to write about after posting your sheet. Sure, you may have a bottomless chest of ideas to write about. If so, good on you. But, , that is not the case for everyone else. If you were all full of ideas, your roleplays would last. It may suit you to make lengthy sheets, and you may still have plenty of things to write about after. But let's not set sheets like yours as prime examples of what is to be desired, because clearly that is not working. Let's not perpetuate this endless cycle of roleplays where everyone exhausts their creative energies filling sheets up with numbingly-stupid information, when they could be using that energy, and those ideas, to make good IC posts. I am speaking based on what I have seen. And that is people talking, dick-waving, and sometimes arguing about things for stupidly long periods. Then, when the roleplay starts, they post once, maybe twice, and the roleplay dies because everyone's already exhausted and out of ideas. Again, you may be an exception. But clearly this is not the case for everyone else. Therefore we shouldn't pretend the length of someone's sheet has any bearing on their skill as a writer. Let's not encourage people to join in and waste their time writing sheets that are 70% fluff anyway. Let's instead encourage people to save their energy and creativity for IC posts.I find it is preferable for someone to make a lengthy, detailed post in IC, than a mind-numbingly long sheet. The IC is what matters; that is what determines a good writer. But as I said, I am not targeting anyone. If you took personal offense, then that's on you. I am not criticizing people out of spite. I am only offering some advice. A suggestion, really. That being 'make smaller, to-the-point sheets and save the goods for IC, where it matters.' Maybe then you'll have something to post about.To clarify, though, the reason you haven't seen me around is because, frankly, I avoid roleplays like the ones I described above. I will not claim to be popular though, anyway. I tend to stay low. And again, I am speaking generally. Some of the people I may be thinking of may not be here, but they are in other roleplays where the same problem persists. But to each their own.PS: Let's also not get mad, or consider it "impolite" when someone doesn't read a sheet worthy of a World Wonder classification for its sheer size alone. Not everyone has the time, or interest, to read them, and you can't blame them. It's your job as a writer to interest the reader. Your writing (in-character) should be what makes a reader go "Oh, man.. this is interesting. I want to learn more!". You are failing to do that unless you are making posts that prompt that kind of reaction. And if your posts don't do that, you can't honestly expect someone to care to read a ridiculously-long sheet about something they have already deemed boring.


We never said to take our sheets as standard. We enjoy our sheets as is and love reading those of others. You're blubbering about perspective but not even thinking of the other side. We enjoy it. Nobody asked you to write one of equal length and nobody thinks it matters.

It's all at the gm discretion. It's very easy for you to sit back and criticise. Show me the RP you ran for months on end?
We.haven't perfected it yet but here We are trying our hearts out again.

I've already started working on IC posts, and brainstorming character based stories whilst you're here blubbering.
ASTA said
I think the underlining point here is that the PoW crew does their roleplaying in a set, predetermined fashion and therefore has specific expectations that don't mesh well with those of certain writers such as Darkmatter and Terminal.


Not sure what you mean.

Also, ditto to everything Terminal said who has elaborated more than I.
ASTA said
Darkmatter and Terminal don't power play or power creep. I've been in several roleplays with them before. However, and are two of the main things that persistently slaughters roleplays in this particular section of Mahz's neglected side piece (honorable mentions goes to OOC arguments over power levels, land disputes and when ASTA discovers a critical fault in a RP's premise that he somehow manages to perceive as a threat to his continued existence). New Sun's roleplay, Darkmatter's previous science fiction roleplay (name forgotten) and Serp's all come to mind when thinking about the issues that have been impacting the NRP section, though Serp's creation is still ongoing, but previous trends imply that it's on its way out.Going to be brutally honest here for a moment: This RP isn't going to last more than three weeks tops, so I suggest everyone recycle material to save themselves a lot of lost life hours.


I appreciate you sticking up for us.

However I vastly disagree with the negativity. Every RP should be gone into with the utmost optimism that it will succeed and that it will be enjoyable.

@Pepper
Also as for the accusations I power play my last RP I GMd had an intro paragraph damning that exact practice.

So can we all now stop, all this is is the time consuming bickering you were complaining about.

The RP will survive if we all just commit to it and play nice.

I for one will continue to join and start Sci Fi NRPs until we get the formula right.
Pepperm1nts said
Forgive me if this comes off rudely - I've been wanting to say this after witnessing a lot of the roleplays some of you have participated in sit around for ridiculous amounts of time before starting up, only to fail shortly after that. I am not going to claim I know exactly why that is, but I have a theory.Your sheets/apps are too detailed.You sit around for literally weeks sometimes, talking about what your faction has or doesn't have, does or doesn't do, will do or won't do, and then spill literally every detail about said faction into a ridiculously long sheet. All your ideas wasted on a sheet. By the time the RP starts, you have nothing interesting to reveal about your faction. There is no room for story/faction development because you have already told us everything there is to know about your faction. For some of you, it's like the RP is played in OOC in the weeks leading to the actual start of the RP. You drain all your energy and creativity writing an unreasonably long sheet, and debating/arguing amongst yourselves in OOC when you should be saving all of that for IC, so you actually have things to reveal and play through.I'll go a step further and straight-up say that a lot of the information some of you provide is pointless anyway. Nobody cares what your tanks are like. Or at least no-one should. It's irrelevant unless you are planning to play the RP like a video-game, which you shouldn't be trying to do because all that breeds is conflict. When you try to one-up people, or claim you have this and that, and are able to destroy this and that, in this many shots, all you're going to do is start arguments about why this and that is OP. And then what you get is a massive dick-waving contest that stalls the RP, and often times even kills it. You shouldn't be playing like it's a video-game. You should be playing like you are trying to write a good story that people are going to want to read. This means being willing to lose, to be outgunned, outsmarted. It means not going into stupid shit nobody cares about, like what your tank is able to withstand, or what its cannons are like. Or, at least don't do it in the sheet. If for whatever reason you have to specify the caliber of the gun, or the thickness of the armor, or the name of the tank, while you are actually writing a post about it, then by all means do it. But otherwise, nobody cares what the Bumbuster Panzer tank is like. When you spend unreasonable amounts of time and energy going into the details of a tank, or every single type of unit in your military, you are not only wasting energy and creativity that could be put towards a good post, but you are also telling us "Hey, look, I am playing this like a game! I don't care about story, all I care about is how cool and powerful my guys are! Look! Look at me wave my dick around!"Half the time, you don't even have to name tanks and guns, anyway. This:"The machine-gun nests roared to life as the tanks began to rumble forth." Is preferable to this undecipherable mess of meaningless characters:"The T47 Bumblasters opened up with their AT78 guns just as the Spitfeur-800s began to fly over the battlefield."The second example leaves the reader wondering what the fuck T47, AT78, and Spitfeur-800s are, whereas the first example is clear in its message. Machine-guns are firing, and tanks are rolling forth. Cool. So if you are going to name your tanks, or whatever, there is no reason to do it in the sheet. You're just making your sheets unbearably long for no reason. Do it passively in posts if you have to.Your sheets should be to the point. Don't tell us too much to where there is nothing left to add later. Tell us just enough, and then reveal more in IC. That way you have shit to write about when the RP actually starts. If you tell us every goddamn detail about your people's culture in a sheet, there will be no room for you to tell us more about it in IC. And then you all sit around wondering why no one is posting and the RP is dead. The answer being that everyone already wasted their creativity and energy writing their sheets and fighting over who has bigger guns.A bit of a rant, but I had to say something. And when I say 'you guys' and such, I don't mean all of you. I am talking in general.EDIT: If you absolutely MUST archive every detail about your faction, do it in a separate post from your main sheet. And add to that post as you go. Not all at once. Add to it after IC posts. So if an IC post talks about culture, add what was talked about in the post into the 'Archive' post later. That way, people who care to read about it, will do it. People who don't can just read the main sheet.


Yes this does come off rudely.

If you think I burn out all my ideas on a sheet then I'd only ever roleplay once.

Yes I enjoy fleshing out my nation. You don't have to read all of it. I personally love reading them.

Now if you'd actually taken the time to read the IC posts from "us people" you'd notice cleverly worked ideas, detailed character development and well written dialogue.

I'm a writer by trade, part time and spend all day coming up with new ideas and being accused of being stale does come as quite an insult.

The real reason these tend to fail is the sheer size and ambition of them mixed with the effort of having to organise a large number of people.

In six years of RPing I've Gmd and participated in dozens of RPs that have been seen to completion.

Now from your perspective I can see what you're saying and how it may seem. You're exaggerating it and laying blame.
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