Important Info: Mod Posts, Mod Mechanics, and Expectations
With the IC stuff about to kick off, it's important for everyone to be on the same page about how I will be running this particular RP thread! As most of you will have noticed by now, I'm a big fan of ordered things, so there will be a generally recurring set of things that will be cropping up in my posts that I figure I should lay out here to make sure everyone is clear on what is going on.
Mod Posts
In order to avoid the cardinal sin of doubleposting as much as possible, I will be dividing my mod posts up into segments. The first segment will be the actions of NPC's and environmental effects that affect the members of the Harpy's Guild team. The second segment will be the same for the Golem's Hand team. Finally, the third segment will be the actions and perspective of Illedrith. At the top of these three segments will occasionally be an OOC instructions section which directly pertains to the contents of the post. This might contain information about which characters are visible to which other characters, which characters are in the position to potentially find an object that they're looking for, any special information that might be available to one or more of the characters, etc.
I hope to be progressing the story by making NPC action posts at least once every couple of days, but obviously if nothing has happened for one of the guild teams, their segment will be omitted. I will also be attempting to wait until all characters who are actively involved in the scene have had a reasonable chance to respond and act before I post up the next NPC post for their group. This will mean occasionally just writing NPC posts for one group or the other in isolation, but hopefully we'll be going at a reasonable enough pace that I can just group it all together for ease of reference.
From a formatting perspective, a solid horizontal line in the middle of a segment represents that the time, place, and active NPC group have changed. A dotted horizontal line means that the time and/or place has changed but it's still the same NPCs. A line of tildes (~) means that the time and place have not changed, but the active NPC group has changed. Any further recurring notes for this will be added to this post (which will be added as a hider to the first post in the OOC tab).
Mod Mechanics
In character creation I mentioned that I would be explaining how traps work. Well, here I will be explaining that as well as a bunch of other mechanics that I'll be using to shape how the story goes and make sure that there's a reasonable amount of challenge and equality for all characters as they go about their travels in Fiore.
Traps: Everyone's character is a wonderful, observant, fantastic trap spotter if given the chance. Unfortunately that's boring as hell and also unrealistic, since everyone's character is also a wonderful, stealthy genius who can make a bear trap look like a small puddle. As such, here is how traps work: if your party is walking into an area where they
absolutely know there will be traps, such as them actively hunting a person who they know uses traps, and who they know is aware they're after them, then you can potentially spot all the traps and avoid them. The same goes if you're in a place where you would usually consider searching for traps (dungeons, ruins, the houses of wealthy people etc.). If one of these conditions is not met, and someone has in fact set up traps, at least one of you is going to get hit by a trap. I will ask the team leader what the marching order of the group is, and then let the players know that in their posts they're going to stumble into a trap that they didn't see. It's then up to them to deal with how that works in their post.
As such, if you're a character with traps and you're planning on trapping an area, let me know in advance so that I can make any requisite preparations for it. Of course, once someone has set off your first trap, they're much less likely to get caught by a second or third one, but they then simply become obstacles for you to potentially use to your advantage in combat (knocking people back into them, making your enemies take tactically disadvantageous fights to avoid the traps, etc).
Object Hunts and Stealth: Similar to traps, hidden objects and hidden people are difficult to fairly adjudicate without dice and stats, so unless the story calls for something specific, the following will apply: A hidden character is impossible to find unless a) your group has a reason to suspect that someone is hidden nearby, b) you are actively looking for them, and c) you have a general idea of where they will be. There may be situational times where this will not apply, but that will be at the discretion of the relevant parties or for the purposes of advancing the story.
For both finding hidden individuals and objects, having fulfilled the three requirements, I will put in the OOC section of the post which characters in the group are able to find the object or person, and whether or not there will be any specific reactions or effects when they do eventually find it. This list will be pseudo-arbitrary based on where people are looking and whether they have specific skills that would help with searching.
GM Combat Text: On rare occasion, I may be required to exercise my GM powers to make some overarching decisions in fight scenes that to some extent will impinge on your pseudo-inviolable right to absolute control over your characters. This can be for story purposes, to make the fight more interesting, or simply because you've been 'A Bad' and have been abusing the leniency in the written text form and haven't been giving your opponent's attacks the respect that they deserve. The more epic (and by epic I mean close, and interesting, not an epic curbstomp unless you're overpowering complete mooks) you make your fights, and the better you respect the skills and attacks of your opponent (whether PC or NPC), the less I will need to intervene with these powers; optimally I won't have to use them at all!
They work as follows. When describing an action, if I deem that the way it needs to be interacted with is special, I will colour the action text a certain way. If it is a named attack, I will simply colour the attack name. If it's something else, like an environmental effect, physical attack, or anything which falls outside an easily named event, I will colour the part of the action that needs to be reacted to instead. For example:
'...the gathered power in his hands suddenly burst forth and ravaged the area in front of him. "
[Ravaging Shockwave]!!! Fall before my might!"...'
'...the explosions triggered a huge collapse further up the mountain, bringing down an
immense cascade of snow and rock onto the heads of the collected Harpies.'
The colours mean the following:
Blue means that this is an exceptionally powerful attack, and should be treated as if it is as powerful as your trump card. React to it as you would want your own most powerful spells to be reacted to, because that might just happen.
Red means that if you are the target, or in the path of this attack or event, it will hit you. Whether by skill or happenstance, this attack lands some level of damage on your person, proportional to how well equipped you are to handle it. Other than the requirement that it lands some level of damage, there are no further stipulations on this; how severe the damage, and how your character handles it are entirely up to you.
Purple is a rare combination of the two above colours. It will be almost exclusively reserved for important fights with powerful NPCs, and represents a powerful, undodgable attack. This will typically be the point in a traditional Fairy Tail fight which is the turning point before the true heroics and underdog fights happen.
Finally, and most rare of all are
Gold events. Whether for story reasons or personal reasons, a this attack will have a certain set of people it's targeted at, and it will without question remove them from the fight. Depending on the situation this could be anything from knocking them unconscious, to trapping them completely in ice, to teleporting them far far away from the fight, all the way up to complete molecular disintegration. It is important to note here that unless you have previously had discussions with me and approved of it, I will never put your characters in a place where they must permanently die, have faith that there will always be an out if you want to keep them alive. If you are planning on having your character die, do send me a PM asking about how I tend to have death scenes play out, because during them you gain essentially executive power over all NPCs to play out the death as you see fit.
I shall at this point reiterate that these will hopefully not have to be used often, if at all! If we're all on the same page about what makes writing, reading, and being part of a story entertaining, I won't need to be intervening at all because you'll all be treating the NPCs and each others characters with the respect they deserve, and we'll have super kickass fights because of it.
If you have concerns or issues with this, please do tell me and don't feel concerned that I will be displeased! As I've expressed to some people here already, it's important that you make your opinions about my decisions clear, so that I ensure that I'm taking the thread in a direction which my players are happy with! No question or concern is too minor or too silly for my inbox if you feel it's important to you.
Player Expectations
Just a quick section as a reminder to you all about what I'm expecting when it comes to post quality, content, and frequency. I'd like most of your posts to be at least two paragraphs long, with a hard minimum of at least a paragraph per post. See my expectations and guidelines on the first page for specifics of what I would expect to be present and absent in your posts.
As for frequency, I will be aiming to progress the NPC storyline at least once every 1-2 days, but that means that all individuals who are actively part of the scene (part of the conversation or in combat with the NPCs, or otherwise performing an action that needs moderation) need to be reasonably on the ball when it comes to ensuring that they have their posts in on time. If you don't have time due to life getting in the way, I totally understand, just please let us know in advance if possible so that we can write around you and you can rejoin when you're able! This also extends to just letting us know to move on without you if it's been a couple of days and you're not going to be able to post up in time. Just catch up when you can in the aftermath, but please don't make the rest of your team wait around for you to post if you aren't able to make a post in time.
Other than that, please do stay in touch with me for anything that you'd like to happen to or for your character. If there are particular NPC interactions that you'd like to happen, or you have a storyline from the backstory of your character that you'd actually like to introduce partially or completely into the main storyline of the thread (I know there are a couple of you already), please do tell me if there is a good time for it to happen. I'm always open to having some of the nameless, faceless NPCs that will populate some of the jobs become integral parts of your backstory that you can interact with as a side-quest that runs along with the actual job.
On a similar vein, if you have any suggestions for the general story of the thread, I'm also certainly open to those as well, feel free to just send me a PM whenever and we can have a chat about your ideas, and whether they'll fit with the overarching plot that I'm planning!
Finally, I'll reiterate that if you have any queries, concerns, or issues with anything (this post included), or have any themes that you can see coming that you would rather avoid having to interact with for any reason, I consider it an integral part of our relationship as GM and Player that you feel comfortable raising them with me. If you feel that I have failed in this regard, feel absolutely free to have a chat with one or more of the other players who might be able to help sort out the issues at hand, and hopefully we can ensure that everything is cleared up and sorted out; I am human and will make mistakes, and it will be up to you all as a collective to let me know where I have gone wrong and hold me accountable to make them right!
I look forward to roleplaying with all of you!
