Ammon

Meet at 8 by Blue Steel - we'll move from there for screenies if too many 'randoms' about

Memorial, not Funeral, as the body is not found

As you are probably aware, Britanic is leaving the game for a while, and is sending his heroic main character, Britanic, out with a bang.

If anyone would attend the Memorial service, and would like to be included in the papparazzi-taken photos of the memorial, then please be attired and ready in Kings Row tonight at 8pm.

I apologize for the dreadfully short notice, but sadly Britanic is losing his internet connection as of Monday IIRC, so we need to get these pics to him for inclusion in his own final newspaper story tonight so he has time to write it up tomorrow.

Thanks, everyone.

Stunned.

Totally.

I can say without any doubt that I personally have not seen any player have such a sustained and profound effect on the RP community in CoX. To say you'll be missed is the grossest understatement possible.

Words actually fail me, except to say, good luck mate. Take care, God speed, and I sincerely hope our paths will cross again.

Ammon

Sharkbait, if you send the forum moderator a message asking them to split this off into a new thread from your "eurhm , any advice..." post, not only might more people feel free to respond without spoiling a Listings thread, but also the new thread could be built up as great and lasting advice for others in the same position in future.

With a roleplaying SG, its a lot trickier than with others, because recruitment has to be done IC. So, first thing is "who do you know?" in-character. Then it becomes a question of recruiting them.

You can also do stuff, like create interesting storylines and events, to draw other players to bring their characters in. Otherwise you're pretty much limited to hanging around Pocket D and GG and hoping, which isn't a very efficient or satisfying method.

Create a storyline that makes other players think "Ooh, that'd be interesting, I'll have to bring/create my character into that" and that's when they send you an OOC tell to start arranging an opportunity to meet.

I think the one issue that might cause problems that exceed the value added, is the idea that Back Alley Brawler and Blue Steel are personally involved, and actively sponsoring the groups. Those are both other people's characters, even if the Devs, and deciding their actions is arguably godmoding.

Sooner or later this could become a far bigger issue, if the group got negative press, or were made to look bad, and thus someone would have to actually decide whether and when the characters of Back Alley Brawler and Blue Steel would choose to question, discuss, or even cease sponsoring the group.

Its far easier, and carries no down-side, to simply invent two unique sponsors that are not anyone else's creation. That then gives you total freedom to decide what they do and do not support, how they react, etc.

Its a relatively small detail, but to many a very important one. After all, you'd not want another player deciding what your character had chosen to sponsor and support.

Hope that's helpful, as it is certainly intended to be.

Borealis looks with a mixture of skepticism and disgust at the arachnids. Part of his mind immediately suspected the creatures were designed to be loyal to Romanov, and might even be able to poison any of the others, but he had a suspicion that was a moot concern.

As he reached out a gauntleted hand towards one of the arachnids, it demonstrated the incredible telepathic powers that Romanov had spoken of ... by reading Borealis' intention to pick it up. It instantly 'awoke' and scurried back away from his hand.

Borealis managed to catch the escaping critter, partly because his reflexes were a lot faster than one would suspect from appearance, but more because the arachnid was still sluggish from its dormancy, and from the cold that Borealis radiated.

It curled up into a ball on his gloved palm, apparently hoping the big cold creature would lose interest. Borealis swiftly lifted his open gloved hand to rest beside his cheek. The tiny spider curled up even tighter. It was certain that this giant blue-flesh frozen creature was too cold and too toxic to serve as a host.

"I rather sense that this thing isn't designed to cope with my ... unusual biology, Romanov."

A thin rime of ice started to build up on the spider as it began to slip into the equivalent of hypothermia induced coma.

"Will your next suggestion be a jet-propelled zombie homing-pigeon from the netherworld?"

What's wrong with GURPS? (And GURPs Lite is still Free too!)

"Thank you, ORACLE" Lord Borealis said, a satisfied smile still upon his face.

"I think you may underestimate the artistry we may yet require in the Liberty Islands. We are not about to waste anyone's talents. Jamming communications is far too crude. Hijacking means cutting into the middle, and relaying believable responses to both ends of the channel so that neither is aware the data they receive has been adjusted, or that their own transmissions were not recieved unchanged, do you see?"

"As Romanov has pointed out, this will be altogether a plan of subtleties rather than brute force. Applying brute force against such a small nation demonstrates nothing. But subtlety, ah, that is as hard against one person as a thousand people. That will be the test of our abilities, and the proof of concept we should seek, I believe"

"Do we all agree?"

I had a real Beavis and Butthead moment when reading this in the IC thread:
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He looked at her, suppressing the parts of him that were anticipating their private meeting later. “But you raise an interesting point, Ms Barzini.”

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Only the character Romanov would be so vain as to compliment the interestingness of his own raised and expectant pointy parts.

"On the contrary. This endeavour is all about the resources we can bring to bear, and I believe Dr Oswald has offered us an invaluable and essentail resource for the early phases of this operation"

Borealis turned his cold gaze to ORACLE

"Unless I am massively overestimating the capabilities of this delightful assistant, her very nature makes her our best asset for instantly assessing and appraising the changing situation, and providing hard data and suggested tactical adjustments"

"ORACLE, my dear, if we were to place you on the main island, how long would it take you to scan the communications network and gather data on unit deployments, movements, and the identities of key figures in the chain of command? Could you also prepare a plan to hijack the communication network if we needed to?"

Borealis smiled, confident that he had understood her unique capabilities fairly well from Hatesman's initial introduction, and watching her interactions then and now.

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Just want to add at this point that i may be a little miffed at KM-Tech being dragged into this without consulting me first, due to other 'projects' they're working on, but i am not a complete [censored], and will be happy to discuss with any* of the LoRDS, OOC, about using them, and how they can be worked in. (IE purchase information, etc)


(*well, i say any, i mean all but one of you, who i wouldn't even [censored] on if he was on fire )

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So far it is just a mention as a possibility. KM-Tech are not the lowest profile company in the game-world, especially not after supplying their PACS during the second Rikti invasion. I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect the LORDs to know that the company exist, and that the war hero CEO was able to regain a license.

Before your creation would be used in any way there'd obviously be OOC discussion regarding how the company deal with large anonymous orders. No godmodding or abuse is planned here.

At this stage it may well be Corpmunitions that are used, as they've already expressed a desire to become involved in the plot, but it simply struck me that your company would be slightly more 'top of mind' at a moment's thought, and that the added twist of implicating a 'turncoat' hero would be something they would consider.

I'll PM you with the OOC stuff and we'll see how it goes from there and whether you actually want to be involved in any way.

"It seems that we'll need a disposable front company to supply the resources to Buku then. Or better still, disposable patsies." Borealis fingered the right side of his twirling moustache thoughtfully.

"I think the simplest would be simply to have an existing arms company supply him, now, before we demonise him. Perhaps some firm like KM Technologies? The company that is run by that chappie who turned hero. That way we get to discredit the heroes once more too."

Loup, health has to come first. I hope the break will help you sort that stuff. All the best.



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I'm in the process of joining the Hyenas, and had hoped once I'd settled in there, to see if there was a coalition spot left so I could go to the Wall too. Perhaps a possibility I can persue with whoever takes it over.

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Hyenas are on CoV, and 4th wall is a hero SG base. Coalition is utterly impossible. Only a hero SG can have a hero SG in coalition.

Lord Borealis scanned the handout quickly, nodding at times to himself.

"Ah yes, once an important outpost for shipping travelling between the East and the West... until the Suez Canal made that great route redundant. After that, it became a relatively worthless piece of real estate apart from tourism to see the great Piton des Enfer, which if memory serves is just about the most active volcano in the world. I may not have recognised the name of the islands, but I could hardly forget that wonderful volcano"

He put the paper down and drummed his fingers for a moment as he considered. "Offers one of the worlds most accessible and abundant supplies of geo-thermal energy if we could tap that volcano..."

"Which side do we favour making puppets of?"

The Militia forum only just switched to needing human rather than automatic approval, so its a new measure people are still adapting to. Curse the automated forum-spambots for making it necessary.

"I agree" Borealis stated.

"Our meetings must be face to face, or via pre-agreed means and representatives. A secure plan must begin with secure planning." he allowed himself a small smile as he added, "A paranoid man thinks that the world is his enemy. We all know that the world is our enemy, because we are making it so."

"We must not assume that nobody can suspect anything. Not given the sheer number of fortune-tellers, psychics and mystics that Arachnos employ and place such faith in." he finished, with a look of mild distaste.

Lord Borealis strode into the room with the eerie stomp of his mechanized suit that could be felt more than heard on the thick rubber soles. He completely ignored the doorman, striding directly to his seat but standing until ensuring all the ladies were seated.

In his left hand he carried a very large, old-fashioned leather bag. The kind with a hinged, metal reinforced opening and brass crasp. It looked as though it should be heavy, but he carried it lightly enough.

"Good evening", he said simply, his gaze traversing the group and resting suspiciously upon the robot he had not seen before.

"Is that here as XV's representative?" he asked of noone in particular and the room in general. "It looks disposable. I don't like it."

It would be pointless to scan the robot for explosives, since usually the power-core alone would be more than sufficient to destroy the room. "Does this place have any blast shields we could stick this oversized walkie toaster in?"

Its really really good that you have all these creative ideas.

So why haven't you done anything with them of your own, rather than trying to control where someone else's plot is going?

If you want a more 'fantastic' style of villainy, then great. I'm all for choice and diversity. Go and start it. But its a different thing entirely to what the LORDs RP has so far been about, and exciting because of.

Seriously, go create a more fantastic, less psychological style of villain plot so people have a choice over what they can take part in.

But you might want to note that no real active faiths are used/abused in CoX. The closest they dared go to opening that can of law suits in the most litigatious nation on earth was to use bits of the Bible to inspire their Lady Grey TF.

There is no reference in game cannon to any real-world gods being any more vocal or physical than they are in our own world. (Apart from Zues, but I gues they were prepared to risk the wrath of religious zealots from the Zues worhippers ) To be sensitive to other faiths, you have to remember that those gods are already real, gettit?

<edit to add>
What I was getting at earlier when pointing out that gods are real in the CoX universe, isn't saying that gods are not real in ours. I'm saying there can be no such thing as an unbeliever in the CoX world where evidence of the existance of gods is right there in your face.

America is a Christian nation. God is already real, and has chosen, for his own reasons, to want people to show faith. The same with Allah, Budha, etc. They are already real, so there is absolutely no difference in how they behave.
</edit>

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Hell if Lex Luthor despite trying to kill the worlds most loved hero several thousand times can use his intelligence to be elected president of the USA, then I'm sure you'd be able to come up with something more than, robbing a house while the owners away on a global scale.

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I think we simply have radically different ideas of 'realism' and believability.

Obviously so if you are a superman fan, with superman being the most loathesome, boring and stupidly unbelievable and inconsistent super-hero of them all.

You apparently believe that smart people don't aim for efficiency. That the brilliant man doesn't work out who to achieve his aims with the least effort and risk, but instead invites failure by constantly reinventing the wheel and seeking the most expensive and wasteful ways to attain his aims.

I don't.

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Hell create a situation, start up hostilities, preform a terroist action and leave clue pointing to a different country. Kidnap the ruler of a country brainwash him, repalce him with a clone and have him bring you in as his new goverment. Hell do the same to all the people in power within the country.

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Brainwashing and clones huh? Never heard that before. I can see where your brilliance and originality lets you see my ideas as rather uninspired. Clones eh? My, that's stunningly original and unique.

Do you use a diferent version of the word 'uninspired' to mine? I ask because you seem to want us to do the same plots that already exist in game.

Raise an army of robots (Nemesis and the Council), replace people with duplicates under our control (Nemesis and Crey), or perform terrorist actions (every villain group, all three Terra Volta missions, every stop the bombs mission, etc) are all unoriginal.

Does your vesion of uninspired mean "something not directly inspired by or copying an existing idea"? My version means "lacking in inspiration, plaguarized, hackneyed, predictable"

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But relying on 'bleed in' from real world situations is lame.

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or ruthlessly efficient and realistic.

Sometimes its a fine line.

Personally, I want their plan to be chillingly believable, so that players can far more radily immerse themselves in the plot, from both sides. But I'm just one of the LORDs players, and we'll reach a collective balance that we're all happy with playing out.

I think that this discussion is all-in-all a good thing. Not merely specifically for finding the boundaries and game-realities we may need to use in the plot for LORDs, but for getting an idea of general feeling and concensus, and maybe hammering out some shared reality without which all plots become fundamentally flawed.

So yes, this discussion is a lot wider than just the current LORDs plot, and thus not every point I want to discuss or consider is directly related to LORDs alone.

I do favour a more realistic and believable gameworld than many. Some parts of the official game cannon make me cringe at how poorly thought out they are in real detail. If I were writing the game world from scratch then I'd be largely in agreement with CactusBrawler that the presence of super-heroes, super-natural entities, gods, magic, etc, for 80 years, should have had a major effect on the world around them, and radically altered the course of history.

The fact is that if this were a game world I was creating, I'd insist on a lot more detail and guidance regarding the state of the world. But the equally inescapable fact is that we didn't write this world. Instead there is a rather lazy and minimal game cannon that mirrors our own world except for a few sketchy details that don't even mesh together very well.

Somehow we all have to find just enough detail to tell a story that fits with our shared perception of reality. Because if we don't try to fundamentally affect the universe through RP (and yes of course there are game-world limits to that) then we are left without super-villains, left with nothing more than bank robbers with super-powers and no vision.

If you want villains that change nothing, and don't upset the status quo, then stick with missions and avoid RP. Because an RP villain is by nature never going to honour rules and limitations. The RP villain character needs to be rooted in some form of reality enough that he can live and breathe and run rampage through our imagination. He must present unthinkable threat and malice, because otherwise where is the thrill and exhilaration of foiling his plans?

There's no danger of the LORDs plot(s) being derailed. We all know we love the basic ideas, and are simply having a bit of discussion about scope and boundaries.

Part of the next steps will likely be the LORDs deciding which resources and groups they can use, which is a major chance for other villains to come into the plot. It is likely that, at first, they won't know what they are being recruited for, or who they are being manipulated by.

"Mr. Redfoot knew nothing. Mr. Soze rarely works with the same people for very long, and they never know who they're working for. One cannot be betrayed if one has no people" - Kobayashi

"Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And poof. Just like that, he's gone." - Verbal Kent

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I suggest a private forum on one of the Shades, Militia or Blood Countess sites.

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Romanov, I believe that everyone of the LORDs players except perhaps for Liz is already a member of the Militia forums, so asking Crimson Archer to set up a private forum viewable only with certain group permissions seems the sensible course.

If there are any problems with that, I'll simply set it up at the Shades forum as I have for a couple of other projects we wanted to work on without spoiling the surprise to everyone, as again, I think all but 2 of the LORDs players are already registered at the Shades forum.

Bah. My wifi reset and lost me my first reply to you, CB. Will try to encapsulate the main points of it again.

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If you were correct that this fictional world remains fractured with countryies at war despite the unifying effects of a global attack.

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One really huge clue is the UN. In the game cannon, we know that the UN exists, and we are told that the major change is simply that it added a bit of a sub-group dedicated to Super-human Affairs.

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The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress and human rights issues. The United Nations was founded in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, in the hope that it would intervene in conflicts between states and thereby avoid war.

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The UN exists purely to attempt to minimise international tensions. Not all countries subscribe to it. I am pretty certain that should any new global accord eliminate the threat of war, most Governments would far rather stop paying millions or billions of dollars into the UN, even if only to offer their citizens a tax cut and assure election victories.

Game cannon goes further. It tells us that Vanguard was created under the UN control and funding. Not equal to, and certainly not above UN authority, but under it. Why? Because the threat of countries not pulling together is still greater than the threat of the Rikti. The politics of ensuring that no nation decides to make a deal with the Rikti is still above the actual effort of fighting them. Why place the force under the UN? Because otherwise the Vanguard members would be partisan, fighting to defend their own turf, and not going abroad to where the key to victory might be. Only under UN guidance can they be reasonably sure that Vanguard won't just protect the first-world nations and ignore the lesser ones.

Its simple logic.


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Then why hasn't Nemisis done what the LoRDs are planning to do?

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Lord Borealis said "Because Nemesis is a moron, you dolt!"

Game cannon tells us that of all super-villains, Nemesis came the closest to a major victory when he attacked Washington and almost took control of the US. But the entire subtlety of his plan was to field the biggest army of clockwork robots the world had ever seen, and threaten to set off deadly toxic bombs he'd pre-planted in the major US cities if he was opposed.

All the brilliant subtlety of a brick to the head. His tactic was to use a bigger, clockwork powered hammer than anyone else had.

Only all these years later, in the timeline that we uncover in game-play, has he developped the subtlety of attempting to replace important people with clockwork doppelgangers.

Nemesis is still focussed on conquering the US too much, perhaps due to still fighting some personal grudge over WW1. All his brilliance is in the geeky sense of the mad inventor. He's not a people person, not gifted at manipulation, and has to expend considerable resources on creating an army of automata he can control because he's not that good with the far more readily available resource of people. Game cannon pretty much states he's not good at politics or manipulating people, and surrounds himself instead with automata.


One thing I personally find most interesting is that HeroCorps has global franchises in major cities all over the globe. Yet even with this resource as an already established international crime-fighting and peace-keeping force, they have not replaced the UN.

To rationalise that reality into something you can play with tells you that the international political situation is still very much as we know it, with super-humans only adding an additional tension.

Game cannon tells us that the governments were naturally displeased at certain heroes declaring themselves above the law and authority of nations. I can't blame them in a way, because as far as I can see, nobody ever elected Statesman, and he refuses to be answerable for his actions. This is precisely how, the game cannon tells us, so many super-heroes became super-villains.

Incidentally, while Game cannon specifically mentioned the ending of the cold war, you somehow think that the sudden outbreak of world peace, international cooperation, and a global cessation of hostilities was just ommitted?