Shoryu Magami

If Communism had a Stand...

Suddenly it all makes sense.

Combat in text based RPs. How does it work?

Having the involved players talk among themselves and determine the outcome is usually the best solution. It keeps a fight scene from dragging out from a lot of repetitive back and forth and it can lead to an honest assessment of the character skills and their advantages and disadvantages. By walking through the scene and what would likely happen via PM or IM, you can streamline the process and make it into a collab that reads excellently and the outcome is unknown by the rest of the RP.

@Dervish

This is (when used in combination with some real time simulation tests to gauge unpredictable elements in the characters' IC tendencies), in my opinion, the most ideal way to write combat when it's not strictly Arena; in fact, it's how I usually go about dealing with battle scenes in my story-driven role-plays (especially since I've done a lot of role-playing over IM in my 'career'), and I plan on doing exactly the same thing in the role-play I'm currently running on this site now (with an additionally little gimmick that should make things quite intense for the players and readers).

Ideally, people simply being good sports should be the priority in Arena -- it's what determines a good Arena player. That said, I can understand why rolling dice might be needed to people who can't be mature about this sort of thing. I can acknowledge that, since for some people the desire to win overrides the desire to win logically. Tossing in RPG mechanics just isn't something I like to do, because I feel like it takes from the realism/depth/immersion. As @ArenaSnow said, picking your opponent is the key to having an enjoyable battle role-play. Honestly, it's the same as not playing against people in fighting games who've got a reputation for rage quitting or lag abusing.

The idea you gave about doing it as a collaboration is, in my eyes, the best method. It doesn't feel as 'pointlessly long', but it's still run in 'real time' and therefore feels realistic and doesn't suffer from the OOC problems created by predetermining the outcome. I find myself pretty good at running battle simulations without even needing to write the battle, so that sometimes helps the outcome move forward smoother.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

Hotel, Inside | April 14, 2012 (02:10 PM)

_{♫ Baccano! OST - Manhattan Bridge ni Kakeru Yume}

`She looks Arabian, but she sounds Russian... Interesting.` the Eurasian man thought to himself, `Well, that's not so far-fetched really. People immigrate all the time -- her parents could've been immigrants if she isn't.`

With a casual expression on his face, the man listened to the woman explaining that she was feeding her baby. He looked like he might have been about to say something, or at least like his mind was contemplating for a moment, but then the baby interrupted his thought process and the mother introduced her child. While his facial expression remained friendly as the boy reached out at him, he once again looked like thoughts were going through his head.

`'Mitya'...? So, 'Dmitri' then...?` he thought to himself, recalling information.

Actually, this particular man - though sometimes coming across as an airhead to others - had an extraordinarily good memory when it came to collecting info, so he only needed to hear about 'Mitya' being a nickname for 'Dmitri' once in his life and that was pretty much it -- embedding in the database of his brain. Sure, the computer in his head was hardly flawless, so he kept data on his laptop too, but he often found he could access information without using it. Only a vague afterthought went into his mind about how the boy was wearing a helmet, but a mental note was made regardless.

Once again, he had something he intended to say -- introducing himself to the baby, to be specific. Before he could do it though, the young mother had apparently realized that she needed to respond to the initial question he asked her, and she confirmed that she was fine -- just lost. The way she explained it caused the Eurasian man to look surprised for just a moment though. Of all of the possible moments for this to happen... He had only just been thinking about how none of the guests of Monsieur Bonaparte seemed to be at this hotel, and now one of them was in front of him. Really, there was no mistaking that envelop, since he was carrying one exactly like it in his luggage. The man just stood there calmly as the young woman looked at her baby playing with the envelop, and then the man slowly placed his luggage bags down.

"My name's Sven, Dmitri -- Sven Lund." the man said with a friendly expression on his face, sitting down and seemingly opening one of his bags, "And you are...?" Sven asked the boy's mother.

After a brief moment to let the woman introduce herself - if she did, that is - the man continued.

"First off, public breastfeeding's legal in France, so you can relax -- it's widely accepted here." Sven explained, "Secondly," he continued, pulling out an envelop identical to the woman's and showing it, "it looks like we're heading to the same place. Actually, there's an escort picking everyone up at this hotel in a few hours, but I plan to head out sooner."

Sven was not entirely sure if this young mother even planned on taking the escort, or if she had come into this hotel knowing it was the location for the escort -- while the escort meeting point was explained clearly in Sven's own language in the information provided to him, this woman was unable to read the signs and more or less had just implied she was lost. Either way, if they were heading to the same place, all she needed to do was wait here or say 'Monsieur Bonaparte's estate' to any cab driver and she would get there fine.

Avatars that sound dirty, but aren't a Single Word

Honestly, the spam forum crew seems to be getting somewhat desperate for ideas lately, because they're getting more random. I haven't been on this site for all that long, but it's just the vibe I'm getting. The threads we've had opened up since 2017 started seem a lot weirder than usual.

If Communism had a Stand...

Is it just me, or has the spam forum crew been getting a lot more aggressive lately in terms of coming up with weird ideas?

Just think about the last month or so.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

Honestly, I've been waiting for this sort of discussion to come up. I tried to initiate discussion about it in the interest check - multiple times, actually - and it just sort of never happened. That's why I put up the comment I did in the last status update I just made, since this has been on my mind for a while now.

I'll respond to each point separately:

• Realistically, there's no such thing as a truly 'original' idea. Originality is more about taking something that already exists and doing something inventive with it. Essentially, everything draws inspiration from something else -- there's basically no exception. While I know you did say it's not necessarily bad, I feel the need to bring this up because it seems to be a major problem with writers in this era -- everyone's so desperate to be original that they forget it's an egotistical illusion. I'm not saying you are, but it's a common issue. Being creative is a good thing, but it's easy to be creative with a tried and true classic if you're a good writer. So while I agree the voting system could be potentially boring, it's not for this reason.

• This, alongside the previous point, is the only point that I don't find too relevant. I think it's just as easy to pull off something that isn't a classic; in fact, it's become a conformity in modern literature to take a classic idea, flip it upside down, and call that 'original'. It's pretty much as overdone - probably far more so, actually - as the classic now. It's gotten to the point that I actually often think it's more predictable to see a trope get subverted/inverted now than it is to see it played straight. Classic ideas are good if they're done well, in the same way that they're bad if they're done poorly. There is, with some exceptions (and these exceptions are all built around subjective bias - you have them, and I have them, because we all have them - so those exceptions are irrelevant), no such thing as a bad trope or cliché -- only a bad writer. You'd also have a difficult time finding an idea that hasn't been done a lot already, so I think how something's executed is more important. I don't want this discussion about the voting system to turn into a pointless debate about 'whether tropes are good or bad' though, so we'll move to the more important (in my eyes) points below now.

• It only technically plays off the idea of mob mentality if you're all pointing your fingers at someone randomly, instead of actually trying to work together to deduce a culprit (and the culprit is trying to mislead or frame you), which is what you guys will be doing with or without the voting system. With that said though, I can understand why the players would be dissatisfied with the results. This is one of the reasons I kept asking people to discuss the system, but it never really happened. At the very least, we never discussed it as a group. People just kept coming to me about it, which is why I asked you to post all of this in the OOC instead of PM. For the most part, we agree on most of the points you've presented, starting from this one down, but this is all meaningless unless the whole group can have their input. When I told @Ailyn Evensen a few days ago that I'd be posting this discussing into the OOC here, I actually made the joke that we're 'voting about whether or not to vote' (even if we're not really 'voting' here, it's still funny).

• I actually completely agree with the issue of the psychological elements being cheapened; in fact, this is my primary reason for actually being more in favour of removing the voting system than keeping it (I wouldn't keep bringing it up for discussion if I actually definitely wanted to keep it). My primary concern for removing it is that characters might starting dying too slowly, which would make it too easy for the protagonists to 'win'. I do, however, have several other systems in place that can kill the characters (this was made very clear in the opening post of the OOC -- the murderer concept is only a part of this role-play, not the whole thing). Actually, each time your guys manage to get closer to uncovering the truth by winning a 'level' of the 'game' (best terminology I can think of), the stakes will actually get higher and new mechanics are added. I've been planning on adapting some of the new ones in on the fly, without planning them in advance.

• I'm in agreement with this point for the same reasons as the previous response I've given, and - just like the last point - my only concern was the possibility of the characters not taking initiative. I'd like to hope that weeding out a murderer or traitor in your group would be enough incentive for your characters to take initiative, but would they kill them over it? Some of them might, but it's still a thought that crossed my mind during the months I've contemplated this. Bonaparte ultimately wouldn't set up a scenario he couldn't 'win'.

• Honestly, while I agree with you, I think an easier way to think of it is that your characters could still end up being responsible for murdering an innocent person -- the murderer could frame someone else for a murder they committed and get this person killed. Once again, my biggest concern with leaving the punishment of culprits entirely in the hands of the players, instead of forcing them to do it, was the concern that they might just refuse to do it entirely, which makes the game too easy for them. Bonaparte wouldn't make things easy for you. If we have ways to work around this, then there's no problem really.

Anything the system adds to the role-play was largely built around making sure it wasn't too easy for the protagonists to survive, but I've got other methods planned out that I've been keeping hidden from you guys (though if you read the OOC, and all the discussions we've had and hints I've made, it should be sort of apparent). Due to this, the system was never actually needed, and pretty much only existed due to being a breadcrumb left behind from the game that's being shamelessly plugged here that this role-play was originally 'inspired' by. If people are generally in favour of removing it, I'm actually fine with that because I've been indifferent towards the system pretty much since the interest check. Me and Ed discussed an alternate version of it we could use, but it never really worked out.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

@Aewin@Pudding@Melo@Ailyn Evensen@Snagglepuss89@tsukune@Shadow007@Eidolen@MayLien@Heap241
@banjoanjo@CrazyShadowy@JaceBeleren@aviendha@Indra

Status update:

• Still waiting on Daniel's CS, which was meant to be up by now. There's gonna be a problem if these sort of delays are a routine. I'm not able to let someone take part in this if they can't keep active -- was blatantly in the rules. I'm currently remaining patient because I assume he's having exams like Tsu is, but this can't become a norm.

• Preparations for the shift to the next chapter are taking place, with two collaborations I'm part of needing to be completed in order for this to happen (one with Phantom, the other with Tsu and Pudd), and there's meant to be a collaboration between Lotus and Henneth happening before these are posted.

• Y'all might've noticed a new player character being introduced into the IC today. I've currently got his CS in the work, so I'll post that up in my next update. I've been planning him out for a little bit now, but I decided to post in the IC first because I told aviendha that I'd give her some interaction.

• In some other good news, I'll have my new computer starting tomorrow, though I might not have it set up the same day. It's all still sort of up in the air how easy it'll be to have the new one running at the same time as my current machine. Nevertheless, I'll be returning to the Discord chat once my mate and I manage to organize an anti-virus that'll prevent Discord from giving me the virus issues I keep having.

• Since we're getting close to the time that we head to the estate, I figured it was time to bring this up one last time. Specifically, a certain 'gameplay mechanic' that the role-play is using. Some of the concepts were discussed a bit during the interest check, but they honestly never got completely discussed in detail before we moved to this thread, and with several people now part of the group who were never part of the interest check, I thought I'd let everyone give their thoughts.
  
  This'll be the last chance anyone can give input/opinions about this concept before it's likely too late.
  
  Basically, whenever a murder happens, a plot event will occur where your characters can investigate the crime scene, and then an event where you all have to deduce and discuss who you believe the culprit was will take place, resulting in a majority vote that will kill off whichever character is most suspected of being the killer. I won't spoil plot reasons for how any of this works (all I'll say is that your group'll more or less be obligated to participate in the voting -- how you use your votes are your own call though, but they've gotta be used), but I wanted your thoughts on it. The idea was to build more psychological conflict between your characters and sow mistrust in the group, since they have to come to terms with being 'responsible' for the death of this person (who your characters won't be told if they really were the murderer or not, fyi).
  
  For clarity, I'll mention that I'm not committed to using the voting system myself yet, because I'm fully aware that it has negative points as well as positive points, so that's why I wanted (in the interest check) - and still do want - some group discussion about it. This mechanic is, to put it bluntly, not vital to the rest of the system I've set up for the role-play and we can operate with or without it. If you guys would rather just let the murderers go free without so much as a slap on the wrist (unless you guys decide to kill who you think is the murderer -- murdering a murderer, per se), then we can just do that.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

@Pudding

For all intents and purposes, I'm good to work on the collaboration whenever you and @tsukune are both around. I can open up the pad now, if you have questions about it or something.

I'll be making another big status update post here in the OOC sometime soon -- hopefully tonight.

𝕲𝖗𝖎𝖒 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖗'𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖇𝖎𝖙

Hotel, Inside | April 14, 2012 (02:08 PM)

_{♫ Baccano! OST - Manhattan Bridge ni Kakeru Yume}

The sound of a toilet flushing went off, coming from the bathroom connected to the lobby of the hotel that was the meeting point for those seeking the escort to Monsieur Bonaparte's estate. The entrance to this toilet would have been a short distance away from where Sonya was currently seated on the floor as she fed Dmitri, although not immediately next to her.

After a short period of time - no more than perhaps five minutes - a man stepped out of the bathroom, carrying a bag of luggage in each hand and an oddball look on his face.

The seemingly young man was generally unimposing, with a fairly average height and weight, and he lacked much in the way of physical characteristics that would make him stand out from an ordinary Eurasian man -- very clearly what he was if Sonya was to simply take a look at him. He had roughly chin-length dark brown hair - difficult to determine if natural or dyed - which was mostly straight and was parted into bangs that framed down both sides of his forehead, though there were larger bangs on the left side than on the right. His dark brown eyes had a pair of square rimless reading glasses covering them. He had an extremely slight amount of facial hair -- just a few stray stands around his chin that seemingly got missed during his last shave. His outfit consisted of a simple green T-shirt, with a pair of dark grey pants - worn with a black belt that has a silver buckle - and very dark brown dress shoes. A yellow overcoat was also worn over his outfit, which was left open and fell down to his knees. Worn around his neck, in a manner similar to a pendant with a long chain, was a silver pocket watch.

`Alright, so... I'm not forgetting anything, am I...?` the young man thought, taking a few steps away from the bathroom entrance and placing his luggage down for a moment, scratching his chin with a contemplative look on his face afterwards -- not that his expression could be seen clearly with the light reflecting on his glasses.

"... I think I'm good." he said in English, just speaking out loud to himself in the language he was most accustomed to people knowing -- English was, after all, somewhat universal in the modern era. The sound of his accent was vaguely Swedish, but he otherwise sounded sort of indistinguishable.

Moving the hand away from his chin and using a finger to adjust his glasses slightly, the young man took a look around the lobby and observed the people who were around him, mostly just contemplating how weird the whole situation was. He had chosen this hotel specifically because he knew the meeting point for the escort was outside of it. This was not due to having decided that he would definitely take the escort - he sort of preferred his privacy, and there was a lot on his mind - but rather because he figured that anyone who arrived in Paris prior to April 14 would most likely stay at this hotel to make arriving for the escort easier -- those who planned on taking it, anyway. It was the most logical option, so the logical reaction on his part - as someone who liked to be informed - would be to stay at the same hotel, in order to get a chance to see what he could make of the people he would presumably be spending a fair bit of time with for a while. This was all under the assumption that the way the letter was worded meant what it implied -- a 'gathering' indicated that multiple people - not just him - were being called to this little shindig. Surely enough, he had done a little bit of internet browsing and confirmed rumours spreading about multiple people besides himself receiving a similar letter from the legendary 'Methuselah of Paris'.

It all made sense on paper that people would come here, yet strangely enough the entire time he had been staying in the hotel he had not even seen one person who looked like they might be one of those people invited. He had even struck up a conversation with several of the guests idly in the lobby on occasion, being relatively honest about the fact that he was one of the 'fabled guests invited by Monsieur Bonaparte'. Normally, he would not bother telling strangers something like that, since they did not need to know, but - considering how he wanted to be as informed as possible before arriving - it was a good strategy to make an exception. Still, while he could not guarantee it, he was fairly certain he had not met any of the other guests yet.

Holding out his pocket watch for a moment, he checked the time...

`Sixteen past two... That's not too bad.` he thought to himself, letting the pocket watch fall and dangle again a little as he looked around again.

That was when he noticed a woman -- at least, he was fairly sure it was a woman from her appearance, but she was mostly turned around.

From what he could tell, the woman almost seemed to be intentionally hiding herself as she sat on the floor in the corner of the room, almost looking like a beggar with that blanked draped over her like that, and the way she was staring at the wall made it stranger -- it was as if she was hiding something. He had seen some unusual things in his life, but this was probably the first time he had seen someone who looked homeless sitting inside of such a nice hotel, hidden away from sight. This never even factored in her ethnicity, which he could barely make our currently but from what he could tell she was a minority. She almost looked Arabian, but he could only see part of her face and shoulder.

"Erm, excuse me miss," the man said casually, with a fairly relaxed tone in his voice, "you alright there...?" he asked politely, a concerned look on his face. He had walked a short distance to the corner of the room, carrying his luggage with him.

I want to change my username?

@Alder

Long answer: roleplayerguild.com/topics/159083-name..

Short answer: You'll have to contact Mahz if you want any chance of doing that, and he might not reply.