Avatar of JohnSolaris
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    1. JohnSolaris 10 yrs ago

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@lydyn: Aside from two small nitpicks I have, your profile is acceptable.

1. You should know that a significant portion of otherwise normal weapons and armors are enchanted with some basic magic that makes them more resistant to tampering by hostile metal mages. You can still rip away soldiers' weapons if you magically overwhelm the (not all that strong) protective enchantments on their weapons, though it would be harder than if the weapons weren't enchanted; Elenor shouldn't be able to effortlessly disarm a whole army like that.

2. If the royal bracelet is so tight, how does Elenor put it on and take it off? Assuming it can be put on and taken off by magic, it'd then be possible to hijack the magical circuits in the bracelet to take it off without Elenor's permission, and thus steal it. The bracelet's magic could be strong and complex enough to be highly resistant to most forms of tampering, since it's a royal artifact, but it should still be theoretically stealable. Not saying that someone will actually try to steal the bracelet during the game, of course; it's just that something that's completely impossible to steal violates my "nothing is absolute" rule.



Also, I've made four factions on the Magi side, which can be found in the first post under the Characters section. I'll make some Tech factions tomorrow.

And no, no IC post from me today; got distracted by a video game. Feel free to yell at me now.
Out of all the people who were going to sign up, @Dead Cruiser and @clericbeast said to me via PM that they'll no longer be participating, due to the inability to come up with any satisfactory character ideas and the lack of time, respectively. @Satsuki's participation will also be uncertain, as he's busy with real life as well. So now we have @lydyn, @MelonHead, @Warm Regret, @BCTheEntity, @gammaflux, @Behemoth542, and myself, seven players in total. I hope this is enough to get the RP off the ground.

Since we still don't have too many player-created factions, I think I'll have to create some of them myself to flesh out the world a bit more. I apologize if they're not the most detailed or original, since I can't put too much effort on each individual one when I'm making a number of them at the same time. If anyone has any ideas that expand on one of the factions I created, feel free to tell me through PM or this thread; I can even let you take control of one of these factions if you're interested. These factions will be in the first post under the Characters tab once I'm done with them.

Of course, it'd be even better if you guys can come up with more factions of your own.

Also, my first IC post should be up tomorrow. If not, feel free to yell at me about it.
Sorry, I'm dealing with some real life issues at the moment, so my first IC post might be delayed for a bit. Those who're still working on their character sheets can continue to work on their character sheets in the meantime, I guess.
@BCTheEntity has finished his character sheet. Since we've been discussing his character for the past few days, he's already edited his character to an acceptable state, so I allowed him to post it directly under the Characters tab. It's in the same post as his faction.

And before anyone throws any accusations, I can vouch that BC is not deliberately trying to be an overpowered munchkin. He... just tends to give his characters all the abilities he thinks it makes sense in-universe for the characters to have. I've known him for long enough to trust that he won't disrupt this RP.

I'm going to write my first in-character post... some time later today. After that's posted, everyone who has been accepted can start posting. If any of you have any plot ideas that involve more than one character, you can discuss them in the OOC tab.
@lydyn's elven kingdom faction is accepted.

I've finished my second character, Alice, and added her profile to my first post under the Characters tab. If you thought my first character was bad, this one ain't any better. I hope everyone who can't stand these kinds of characters and/or can't trust me to not abuse their power has already left. If you're among those people but haven't left, well, please leave now and avoid stirring up too much more drama.

I know that @BCTheEntity almost has his character sheet finished. So once he's finished, I'll start the game. And then I can finally start showing people that my characters aren't invincible gods who exist only to fulfill my power fantasies.
FYI, I didn't give my character a power limiter as an excuse to have him tag along with other PCs. Whether he tags along or not will be determined by the character interactions when they happen. If the other characters don't want him in the group, he's hardly going to stalk them. And if it makes no sense for him to run into the other characters at all, I'm hardly going to force such a thing to happen.

I gave him the power limiter as further evidence that he will not use his power to simply effortlessly solve all the other characters' problems. If he runs into them at all. It makes sense for him (as someone who's afraid of his own power) to have such a limiter, so I don't see why it's a bad thing.

I also hardly changed any rules. The rules always said that player characters are limited to a certain power level, unless the player discusses his or her idea with me extensively beforehand. Anyone always could've made a powerful character if they wanted; they just needed to convince me to trust them with such power. I do think a setting like mine needs a few "top dogs", and since there's no real distinction between "PCs" and "NPCs", I don't see why letting players create these epic-tier characters would be a bad thing if they can handle the power responsibly.

The intent of this post is not to try to convince @Shotgun Bear to stay. It's to convince other people who might want to leave because of what he said. But what he said was a pretty significant blow to my confidence and motivation. If too many people leave, maybe my style of hosting and storytelling isn't right for this forum after all.
@lydyn: There are probably at least a few subtypes of elves, e.g. high elves, wood elves, dark elves. You might want to specify which type of elf your kingdom consists of. Also, I don't think your kingdom should be the only major elven kingdom; maybe the other elven factions are made of other types of elves or something. The faction will be accepted after you make these minor changes.

@MelonHead: The one main problem with that is that modern technology pretty much died out completely in the past 200 years, due to the superiority of magic, and due to the lack of support in a post-apocalyptic world (e.g. no working phone signals or gas stations). If the Church of Remus was founded only ten years ago, it's unlikely for it to be based on hatred for something that should've died out long ago, unless their doctrine is based on making sure history doesn't repeat (e.g. not another nuclear war). And they'd also be against militaristic magical technology, and the technology that the Tech side uses. Is this good? If so, make the corresponding edits, and the faction will be accepted.

Oh, and Johnathan is accepted. You can post him under the Characters tab now.



I've given my character another Evoked magical item, a cloak that hides his power level from detection. But as a consequence of how it works, the cloak also acts as a power limiter to him, preventing him from using any power above his displayed level (probably PC-level) unless he deactivates it and thus blows his cover. It will automatically deactivate if his body suffers mortal wounds. Obviously, Evan will be extremely reluctant to take off such a power limiter for pretty much any reason. This should help a bit in making sure he doesn't overshadow the PCs or ruin the plot.

My other character, almost as strong as Evan, will also have a similar power limiter, for similar reasons.
The Church of Remus was specifically designed to restrict all technological growth of a militaristic kind (while promoting the use of 'natural' 'god given' magic, so it would have been doing that even before the Tech faction emerged, but I'll re-clarify that as well.


So they seek to restrict magical technologies as well? Magical technologies include things like alchemy, enchanting, and golem construction. The point of magical technology is to let those with weak magic, or no magic at all, to still be able to use magical items to improve their lives. This kind of implies that the Church of Remus seeks to limit the power of magic to only the strong mages, not the weak muggles who don't have much magic naturally. Is this your intention? If yes, it would fit the theme of an ambiguously corrupt church quite well.

I've changed the continent to Europe and the countries to roughly comparable countries, Germania, Italia and France.
Would people prefer roughly similar city names as well? So far I've made up the capitols of each country, but this is all up to everyone else, I don't want to make decisions just because I'm the first person to clarify this stuff.


I personally don't think each city name needs to be different, unless anyone thinks of any interesting historical events that happened in the past two centuries that justify a name change.



Also, I backpedaled. My character Evan's race is now a full cosmic elemental, because I thought about it for a bit and decided that a creature like him should be classified as a full spirit under my system. He was a half-human, half dragon when he was a mortal, then died and became a full spirit. The draconic aspects are still present in his soul, but he'd still be a full spirit, not a half spirit half mortal dragon.

No, I'm not saying that something like a half-elemental, half-dragon is too improbable or Mary Sue-ish to exist. My setting was always designed to have these kinds of hybrids as reasonably commonplace. I do think hybrid creatures like these are interesting, at least more so than your plain old orcs and dragons and such that everyone's seen a hundred times already.

In fact, I'd like it better if players on the Magi side mixed up their races a bit. I want some variety, and not have every character be just a human.
Johnathan is accepted, but I do have one minor concern. Since this is still planet Earth, the continent of Hellus has to be one of Earth's pre-existing continents renamed. It's only been two hundred years, unlikely for any significant continental drift to have occurred. Unless, of course, a group of powerful mages got together and reshaped a continent, which is also unlikely, since there aren't that many of those epic-level mages around. You should clarify which continent Hellus actually is, or maybe just go back to using the regular continent name if the name change isn't too important.

There's also a bit of a problem with the Church of Remus. The existence of the Tech side was only known to the Magi a few months ago, when the two sides made contact. And the Church existed for ten years before that, so it must've had a goal other than stopping the Tech side. You need to provide that goal before the faction can be logically consistent.

Also, a heads up to those of you who are worried that I might abuse overpowered characters. I'm going to make a second character, one almost as powerful as Evan; she has her own different reasons for being conflicted and doubtful regarding her powers. I will use this character and Evan together to explore the themes of power, altruism, and morality. The scope of their subplot should be mostly limited to themselves and the people they encounter; this will not result in the two of them trying to change the world together or anything. When the overarching plot emerges, I will make sure that my characters are limited to support roles at most, one way or another, and not steal the spotlight from the other player characters. So if any of you really find it hard to trust me to keep even one powerful character in check, you might as well leave now, because the doubt is only going to get worse. Until you actually see my characters in action, of course, but you aren't going to get that far unless you give me some trust to begin with.

I will also remind everyone again that at least a handful of those "epic-tier" characters, with power levels comparable to Evan and my upcoming second character, exist on both the Magi and Tech sides. For example, the leader of the Church of Remus is one such epic-tier character, as I've discussed with @MelonHead. You guys are all allowed to make epic-tier characters like these; you just need to discuss the idea in detail with me beforehand. Characters like these should take a back seat to the main player characters' conflicts, like Remus and my two characters, or they can be explicitly antagonistic toward some or all of the player characters. My epic-tier characters will be carefully played to not interfere with the story, so the same are expected of you if you make epic-tier characters of your own.
At this point I don't think it'll be very productive to continue arguing with @71342 directly. If anyone else has similar concerns as him, but is willing to give my game and characters a chance, feel free to voice those concerns again, and I'll address them to the best of my ability.

One concern that several other people seem to have is that they think my character is simply too powerful in comparison to the rest of the setting. This is not true. The reason that the sorcerer-king decided to merge with the Dweomerheart and become a god, even though he could already destroy mountains before that, was that he knew he wasn't powerful enough to conquer the world unless he gained the extra power from deification. Without the power level of a deity, he might've been able to take out any other mage in the world at the time in a one-on-one fair fight, but he'd have absolutely no chance if they all attacked him at once, unless he became a god. And now, he's quite a bit weaker than his pre-deification self. There should exist quite a few characters, on both the Magi and Tech sides, whose powers are on the same level as him, and most of them should have far more political influence than my character due to likely being leaders of major factions instead of a nameless recluse. It is simply not true that my character could easily solve all of the world's problems with a snap of his fingers if he wanted; he isn't nearly powerful enough for that. If you want to play as one of those characters whose power level is comparable to my character's, you can discuss your ideas with me, and we'll see if we can work something out.

Secondly, as @lydyn already pointed out, there's no essential difference between a "PC" and an "NPC", especially since everyone is allowed to make as many characters as he or she wants. All characters are just characters, whose actions are, one way or another, decided by the players (counting myself as one of the players), so it's not very meaningful to arbitrarily label some of them as PCs and others as NPCs.

"I don't have to mention any weaknesses,"


This is only because including all of the weaknesses and limitations will make the character sheet even longer. If you want to know the limitations of any particular ability of my character's, ask and I shall answer. I have a set of very strict rules in place in my setting, and no one, not even my own characters, can break these.

"my characters can be defeated, but only when I decide they can."


I'm the GM. It is always the case that my characters can only be defeated when I decide they can, regardless of how powerful they are. I've made my character powerful not to make him invincible (there exist other characters who are each nearly as powerful as him, as I said above), but because I want to explore the idea of how it's not easy to change the world for the better even if one has a lot of power at his or her disposal. Also because of personal wish fulfillment, but again, I don't think that's a bad thing if the character itself is compelling and well-written.

If theses are DMPCs as opposed to NPCs, they will have to take a serious backseat to the players; essentially demoting them to NPCs regardless.


See above for the lack of fundamental distinction between PCs and NPCs. If your concern is one of plot importance, I've already said that I will do everything in my power to make sure my characters do not ruin the conflict for the other characters. One of the symptoms of a Mary Sue is how she can warp the plot to revolve entirely around her, and that is something I specifically want to avoid. I will not turn the plot into "Evan's quest to revolutionize the world, with the player characters as his lackeys". What I intend to do with my character is to explore his personality, motivations, and psychological issues. It's a psychological journey that's intended to end with him becoming more at ease with himself, not a physical journey that ends with him having changed the world to suit his views better. The other player characters may play a part in his psychological development by interacting with him, but they're certainly not going to become extras as he takes center stage and decide the fate of the world.

I find the CS with ots extensive list of the character's many powers and whatnot to be rather masturbatory.


Yes, it's indeed masturbatory, because it's wish fulfillment. But, as I've said a few times now, I'm also trying to make a well-written character out of this. Characters should be judged on their displayed quality alone, as if the author doesn't exist. Because as far as the story itself is concerned, out-of-story elements like the author really don't exist.

I've got my reservations about the character, too. There's not enough buffer between you and being absurdly overpowered because you... Sort of removed them all, for yourself, so we just have to trust you. I don't know you, GM--I can't do that yet. Only thing I can trust is the setting you laid out, which has a lot of writing and research gone into it.

Currently, I'm giving you benefit of the doubt, but if it starts turning fishy in here, I'm out.


And this is perfectly reasonable. I'm new here, and you guys haven't seen me roleplay or host. But as long as you give me a chance, like what you're doing now, my actions should speak for themselves when you witness them.

Oh, about the half-elemental thing. If anyone is interested, I'm fully willing to explain why my character is technically classified as a half-elemental, half-dragon, and why such a thing isn't all that abnormal, relative to everything else in the setting. But I don't want to bore people with only tangentially related minutiae on how speciation (or the lack thereof) works in my setting, so I'll only go into details if anyone is actually interested in the worldbuilding.
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