Kiddo

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

It was all very important, she was sure, but after a while, Mary was nothing but bored by the goings-on in this place of brutality. She continued to watch for what she could learn about various parties’ powers, but even that was barely holding her attention. The one fight she’d wanted to see, the one person whose powers she wanted to study for her own personal reasons, had forfeited without using his powers at all. The rest of these fighters, why did they matter? They were of no import to her. She had not fought them, and they were all too low on the totem pole for her to really care. The information she gained here would be unimportant. She would not needto defeat them, since it wouldn’t do anything.

Taking out Sickle, though, and a whole segment of this city’s vulnerable bomb would crumble. Maybe it would blow. Maybe it would all fall apart, leaving the city safe. Maybe if they killed him, they could quiz his spirit on that pyromancer who’d killed their mother: someone that important was more likely to know something, right? But she’d been robbed the chance to really see what he could do. They couldn’t go on the offensive yet.

But then something went wrong, and she leaned forward on her bleacher as the atmosphere changed. The next battle was 3v3, but apparently that hadn’t been the original intention? She frowned as people got up to place new bets, leaning side to side to see around them into the pit. Being so short was certainly not an advantage here. The girl in front of her turned about, a hooded teen with a book, eyes wide as saucers, and Mary nodded to her before trying again to get a good look beyond. And then a different voice came over the intercom, and she stood, glancing first at the row of backs between her and the speaker, and then into the cage at the person whom the speaker mentioned. She saw the change there, saw his will bend to that of the speaker, and a shiver went up her spine. A mind controller. She had to get out of there. She pulled an explosive-filled pen from her pocket, gripping it tightly as she looked for some way to get out of here, but it was total chaos. Half of those in attendance were trying to escape, half were eagerly stealing their seats to see what brutalities this Master-fueled fight would unveil. No one paid any mind to a weak little girl like herself. Or to the girl in front of her, whom Mary noticed, even through her sudden fear, opening her book and flipping through pages of monstrous drawings before hovering her hand over one.

It was a conspicuous movement, obviously intentional, but her hand was shaking. Mary stared at it, remembering the girl’s face. She’d been scared before there was even a threat. What was she? A summoner? Would something come from that book? A shapeshifter? Would she transform into that drawing? And if she did, would she be able to control herself or a summon in that mental state?

Mary leaned over her and grabbed the hovering hand, pulling it away and kicking the book shut with her foot as she did so. “Hey, what do you think you’re trying?” she yelled over the din, trying to make sure the other could hear her. “There’s a null-magic field! We can’t fight! We gotta go!” She was being a bit insincere, since she’d realized that something must be wrong with the field if that master was able to mind control someone while in it, but she tried to make it sound like the truth. Maybe this other girl could fight, but she didn’t have the power to. If she could get away without, that was preferable, and if she did have to, maybe claiming this girl as an ally would help.

@Lasrever

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

@Sickle-cell Neat, thanks for taking your time to compose a response to that! Merry Christmas to you, as well ^.^

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Heeeeeeeeeey sorry for being late to the party with this one:
@Sickle-cell Why does Conflux's persuasion ability work in the power nullification field? However she's exerting her will, it seems like it would be coming from where she's standing (in the audience, which is within the nullification field), not from where the target is standing (in the arena, where the field is absent). Even if it is based on where the target is, Tony is in the field, and so should be unaffected.

Since we're on the subject, I didn't speak up when you first brought in your two mindcontrol characters, but if there's any reason I'm going to quit this RP, know that it's highly likely to be them. Mind control is a concept that's been captured over and over in games successfully, but the "there's no save from this you just have to do what the person says for the convenience of plot" has never been one of those working solutions. I won't make too much of a stink about it here, since it's not affecting me, but keep them away from my characters.

If you're looking for suggestions in making that sort of power work better:
* Make it require the use of someone's true name. This makes the use of this ability due to a player's failure to keep such important information secret. Don't magically pull a character's true name out of your butt without giving the player some method of defense against its discovery.
* Provide a saving throw: literal dice would work here, with a reasonable difficulty arranged by you and the player. Let the player roll the dice.
* Make it require Concentration. This would make a team effective against these targets. Up the number of concurrent concentrations and difficulty breaking concentration based on intended threat level.
* Limit uses per day. Make small commands use a small portion of this pool, and large ones a large portion. Increase pool size based on intended threat level.
* Create a link between the caster and the target: any negative affects on the target are transferred directly to the caster. Lop off the controlled character's head, you killed the caster, too.

Basically, mind control powers need interaction and counterplay. If you're using mind control and don't know how the players can defeat it, you're using it wrong. You're going to create a lot of power escalation as players try to kill the threat. And they will, since the threat is not just threatening the character's wellbeing, but also their sanctity as "their character." Killing it is the only available method of interaction, so players will take it.

Mind control characters are the enemy of fun: this is good to use if you want the players going all out to stop them, less so if you intend to keep your mind control character around.

References: Myself, a player of many games and professional game designer at Firaxis. We make XCOM: we know all about difficult but fun gameplay ;)

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Tagging Banana doesn't work anymore TT^TT

Also, who should I be interacting with, now that Mary is in the crowd at the Circus? Any volunteers?

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Well that's good: no reason to keep that extra hell sticking around.

As for me:
youtube.com/watch?v=IOT9T15mkX0

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Wow lookit that Maryland is back.

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

“We need to go after them.”

Mary sighed and wiped the towel over her face, scrubbing away the last of the water from her quick shower. “No, we don’t. They hurt us, but that doesn’t mean we should do anything stupid.” She sat on the desk chair, poking the computer’s mouse so that the screen came back alive, showing their latest internet search. The Covenant. Simply by searching the different factions in the city, they’d come across enough evidence that these were the mooks that they’d fought against.

“What about Pipeline? You think that he got away?” They hadn’t seen his dead body lying on the battlefield after they made their hasty retreat, so it seemed rather likely that he was still at large.

“Probably.” All in all, a completely failed excursion to go save people. Things had gotten way out of hand, they’d gotten too deep into the fight. Should have just bailed on it as soon as their surprise attacks had failed. “So you think we made any enemies?”

“Probably.” It was annoying to be on the outskirts of the main groups: they didn’t know how other independent capes kept up with the news, but prowling social media and chat servers seemed to be the best that Maryland could do without getting an official contact. It meant that it was hard to gauge the response to their actions, and to get invited to cape-only events. Not impossible, but hard.

Tonight, amid the responses and conspiracy theories around the morning’s fight, a tantalizing bit of news stuck out. Capes were converging on a large, rundown building, and digital murmurs of “Circus” came from the more knowledgeable theorists. The way that Dragon hummed and hawed over the messages could only mean one thing: she wanted them to go. “Do you think it would be safe, after this morning? If anybody were there, they’d recognize you pretty easily.”

“That’s why you would go alone. Just don’t wear your combat gear, and no one will know.”

Mary raised a curious eyebrow; it wasn’t like Dragon to recommend something so… sensible. But she had to admit that she was curious, too. And it was true that she’d been completely covered up during the battle, so no one should notice her…

It was easy to find where she was supposed to be going. Once Mary was in the right vicinity, she needed only to move with the crowds of thugs and weirdly-dressed capes. She was hiding in a blue pull-over hoody that did nothing to convince anyone that she belonged there. But she managed to slip by with few questions, since most of those attending were the sort to rape a nine-year-old, not ask if they needed help finding mommy. She made it just in time to see the last big attendee take his seat, and jostled into position to see as best she could. But she was more focused on who was sitting above her than anything going on below. She recognized the whole Covenant crowd, and Pipeline. Apparently not dead, though. She recognized the others more remotely, from images off the internet. Honestly, none of them looked as impressive sitting on their thrones as she had expected they would.

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Maryland will show up, but they have no intention of officially fighting, especially once Dragon finds out about the power nullification field ;)

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

ALRIGHT WE BACK!

@Banana I bet I've missed something, but this two-characters-in-Anomaly's head thing... is this new? Or has she always had it, and it's just exacerbated by having absorbed a rage emotion?

@Sickle-Cell What do you think would be the best course of action for me to get back into things?

Worm - The Malfesant Throne

Almost out of the rough, team. Soooooon