Jig

{Closed}

<3

{Closed}

"Hi there, want AIDS, Syphilis, and The Clap?"

@FrozenEcstasy

A. Sweetheart, in this city, I'm the best supplier
B. No no thank you thank you but no
C. Do the Hokey-Kokie
D. Where do I sign?

#choosewisely2016 #dothehokeykokie
#ridiculouslynichreference

{Closed}

<Snipped quote by Jig>

Well they're both super duper fucking scary to piss off. I mean... One of Donna's favorite methods of torture is threatening a captive with an STD ridden prostitute.

@FrozenEcstasy

I'm gonna file that under "the horror, the horror".

{Closed}

<Snipped quote by Jig>

Bitch do you even tuck?

@FrozenEcstasy

I was tucking before it was cool.

^{I actually can't wait to see if Queenie and Mother Warhead will be best pals or hate each other.}

{Closed}

^{Gyles, Quinn -> Ariella, Alexander}
The job is on. We have find the little shits who've been pushing that whiplash throughout the city. We've been ordered to fan out and gather information for the time being, but not to take any rash actions. My best bet would be going through the prostitutes, they mess with some of the most fucked up johns sometimes. I ain't telling you what to do, and you can find information you're own way, but I'm gonna hit up the rings. In any case, we'll meet back up in six hours and share anything we've found. We gotta put a lid on this shit quick.

^{Ariella, Alexander -> Lécuyer, Arina; Lécuyer, Christopher}
trouble in paradise. whiplash leakage, damage limitation - spin??
if you know anything talk to mother xx

^{Ariella, Alexander -> Kowalski, Carl; Morello, Anna; Bridges, Peter}
allow limited whiplash for 48 hours. want to know where it’s coming from.
eat this message after reading <3 or else xx

Alexander put his phone down and sighed. He had felt it recently, just walking around the city. It had been cold. Cold and dead still. He lowered his lips over the straw of his iced and very frothy coffee, whose milky beigeness was clearly visible through its transparent, plastic container. On the table in front of him, his phone buzzed again, silent apart from the frantic vibrations driving into the wooden surface. He traced his upper lip with the tip of his tongue, catching flyaway drops of creamy coffee and underlining his thick, neat handlebar moustache.

^{Bridges, Peter -> Ariella, Alexander}
??

^{Ariella, Alexander -> Bridges, Peter}
mother knows best xx

Alexander rolled his eyes and tousled his hair, and climbed to his feet from the squashy sofa in the entrance hall of the Palace. It was an ironic name for the faux-retro converted ‘70’s warehouse that had, in its time, been a garage, a drug-den, a garage again, an unofficial music venue, a succession of here-today-gone-tomorrow yuppie cafes, before eventually falling into the Syndicate’s hands. It continued to pretend to be a bar, even now under Alexander’s tenure, masking its true nature under the whimsical and exclusionary habits of the similar-looking hipster hangouts in the local area. The organised crime of the new millennium.

He had been resident in the Palace since the Ariellas had acquired it, which they did in much the same way as wolves acquire carcasses. Back then, the helpful, concrete-lined cellar underneath the floor had been of particular use, with Alexander its guardian, but as Alexander had come to receive more and more of his growing family heritage in the past decade, unskilled work had been, rightly, subcontracted to the unskilled. Now, as their predecessors had begun to blaze trails in parts unknown, their old hangouts, favoured by a different generation of men, had come to seem a little old-fashioned, perhaps even a little irrelevant. The Palace now served, in Alexander’s mind, as a renewed and refreshed place to exist, bohemian from the ironic chandeliers to the assorted couches and armchairs strewn across the hard, concrete floor. Alexander had made a point of saving the bar that had been put in in one of the Palace’s previous iterations, and although the pumps were now purely decorative, from a bottle-perspective, he was rather well-stocked.

He rummaged his keys from his pocket and threw the empty plastic coffee cup over his shoulder on the way out, where it lay on the floor among the others. His thumb danced across his phone’s touch-screen as he shimmied out of the door.

^{Ariella, Alexander -> Quinn, Gyles}
these things are sent to try us. will have a look xx

There was much to do.

{Closed}

Someone else made a drag queen?
;-;

@FrozenEcstasy

To be fair, the drag part is all yours. :)

Just rest in the knowledge that we all know which one of us looks better in a dress

{Closed}

Ignore this drivel.

No, Really

Jig descends

^{#canitbe #breakthejigternet}

Honestly this was just for Bliss's amusement, because she's used to this shit.

{Closed}

Name: Alexander Arielli

Nickname: Mother Superior, Mother Warhead

Age: 35

Physical Description: Well-groomed, tick. Elaborate hand gestures, tick. Notable usage of eye makeup, tick. Basically, Mother Warhead comes up on most people's gaydars. He doesn't flamboyantly draw attention to himself, but it is hard not to notice that there is a certain conceited effeminacy in the way he presents himself. This is counter-acted somewhat by the fact that Mother is huge. We're not talking freakish giant territory, but, standing at 6"4 and with broad shoulders, there's a lot of Mother to contend with, especially given that the man is clearly a healthy specimen and physically fit, if not quite altogether 'stacked'.

Predictably, Mother has a full-on hipster moustache; the kind that makes a certain statement in archive photographs and a different statement on a high-street. His face structure, meanwhile, is stereotypically masculine, with a strong jawline and thick eyebrows; his dark hair is cut short, parted, and tousled artfully.

Syndicate Class: Security

How to RP certain traits

In my book, there's a deep, deep challenge in RPing as a medium, and this is kind of it.

"Charismatic" requires the one who is charismatic and the one who finds them charismatic. In order to prove your character is charismatic, another IC character has to find them charismatic: therefore, you have to invent a character to be a plot device or explain to another player that you're supposed to be charismatic. Neither is an ideal solution. It's a similar story with "smart", acknowledging that there are different kinds of smart; assuming it's book-smarts about a given universe's magic system, you the player need to know everything your character knows about the universe, and clarify that your character has an above-average access to that information.

For either of these traits to definitely manifest in an IC where characters actually interact, you either have to be in a really cooperative group, where people want to help you to tell your story (and where in return, you should do the same) - or it's Godmodding: "My character is officially charismatic and therefore your character should be persuaded" won't really work.

I'm reminded of a game on another forum. My character was basically a slacker and a coward, and had some information he wasn't letting on in order to avoid taking any responsibility for fixing a given situation. Another character, who had no possible way of knowing that he was concealing something, immediately rounded on mine when I mentioned OoC what he knew, and tenaciously pursued her baseless hunch based on the fact that she had the written the word 'perceptive'. The player clearly wanted to make good on her Character Sheet, which promised a total Mary Sue character who was clever without realising that firmly sticking to her guns put her firmly in godmodding territory. Character sheets don't translate directly into the IC.

I'm also reminded of another game, before the guildfall, where two players kinda wanted to put their characters forward as the 'big guns' of the group. Mine was more of an aggressive, arrogant ace archetype; the other was more of a hard-working team player with a flair for battle. At first we kinda felt that they were mutually exclusive, but, when we talked about it, we found that we could both tell really interesting stories about powerful characters. To begin with, we agreed that my character would be more powerful (or at least, win encounters), giving the other character the chance to prove her hard-working team-oriented nature, and eventually surpass mine, at which point my guy could learn a very important lesson about the power of friendship.

I know people disagree about this, but I firmly believe that for certain games, everybody talking about their characters and kinda what story they want to tell through them is an effective (I won't say "best") way of preventing player-to-player conflict and helping people to work together to tell the stories that interest them. You can't use charisma on a character that is too suspicious. A smart-alec grade-schooler with a high iq probably won't outwit their headteacher if their headteacher is a functioning adult. Character sheets are good indicator of where you are and where you want to get to, but, in my book, you need to talk to each other in order to actually plan your route. Otherwise, cross one set of fingers, stick the other set up your ass, put on your astronaut helmet and run around your living room shouting the word optimism because otherwise you're really just hoping for the best. I appreciate that some people like to play this way but ... ahem, I'm not convinced by the 'hope for the best' route.

Help with Advanced Roleplaying

My advice: don't stress. You've seen here that some Advanced GM's are more than willing to take somebody uncertain under their wing and give them some guidance, which is fantastic- though, I have to say, there's something to be said for just throwing yourself in and practising and there's really no substitute for the latter.

While there are some tips and tricks, which others have given you, to make your writing look and feel probably more interesting, my personal #1 rule is to avoid using the same word in a paragraph if I can help it. It's something an English teacher told me when I was seven, and I'm still using it. I don't know exactly what it is, but it does seem to make text more interesting.

That said, there's no rule without exception. My 'don't repeat' rule is instantly binned if there is value to be gained from repeating. Think about the tone you want your writing to carry and work toward it. If you want your work to be, for example, 'exciting', you can literally google that shit - you'll get advice to the effect of short sentences to simulate speed - but, then, you might find that a long sentence once in a while will simulate breathlessness.

- Said is dead. While the phrase 'X said/said x' is a easy go-to phrase it doesn't really carry emphasis. So I would advise to study on other emotional expressions to write or their synonyms. Repetitious use of said - as easy as it can be - is pretty boring.

@Dinh AaronMk

"I don't like to contradict, but I beg to differ. For me," Said Jig, who was outlining an example while far too drunk to do it properly, "a 'non-said'-word should only be used to emphasise one instance of direct speech every once in a while. Otherwise, I simply use 'said' if I feel that the speech needs a 'said'-word for flow but there's nothing really to express, or simply, you know," Jig's fingers drummed on the table, "Say literally anything else instead just to break up the speech."

- Learn the tropes and the cliches. Whether to avoid one or pull-off a well exercised inclusion of the other. So if you dare TvTropes will probably be the graveyard of your past-time.

I really do recommend TV Tropes. I've spent a few years wiki-walking TV-Tropes, and now I see tropes everywhere. It doesn't push things into pigeon-holes but, rather, gives you a broad outline to work from and see how everything fits in. The interest, as far as the reader is concerned, comes from your own individual variation and flair which is something you'll develop over time.

---

Apart from anything else, I'd say that many GM's in Advanced would rather take a 'weaker' player over a 'stronger' player if that 'weaker' play shows more interest, commitment, and a more cooperative attitude. Writing like Keates does not an Advanced Player alone make .