Zortel

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((Looks okay for a start but... skip the "Superman" reference right? He doesn't exist in CoX and would be a break of the EULA if you tried to incorporate him. Use "Statesman" instead. Same character-type anyway.
Other that that... keep it up!))

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((I only saw Superman mentioned in ooc chat, Übermensch is something completely different.))

Awesome work, Max. LOving the version of Toucha-toucha-touch me.

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i spent ages yesterday looking for a copy of "Gabe's Law of Internet F***tardery" from Penny Arcade. But then it got late, so i gave up.
It basicaly says "normal person+percieved annonanimity=f***tard"

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This one, you mean? (Some swearing)

I'll try and have a hunt around for the quote at some point, it was either Posi or Statesman. Which is why I always find it impressive when people go to the lengths they do to make a base 'homey', improvising and tweeking to make it looking as good as possible.

And they possibly have got a blindfold over their eyes, seeing as what bases were designed to be used for (Raiding, CoP trial) don't work that well/not at all. I'd say more people use bases as a RP location than the above, though most just use it for storage/TP's.

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I get the distinct feeling you RP INSPITE of the game, not because of it at times.

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Indeed, as many have come to the same realization. We RP inspite of the game, in some cases we have to fight against it, or blag things to cover up game mechanic flaws ('I lose half my powers because I go into Siren's Call/Bloody Bay? That's the radiation having an effect on me.' was one of the best reasons I've seen for the auto exemplar, thanks Gideon for that one), we also have to deal with the other little things which amount into big things and generally make RPing a bit of a chore.

A year ago pretty soon, I took a break from CoH and started up an IRC/forum based version of Paragon City, and decided 'Hey, I don't have game mechanics and the like to bind me, let's try some different things!'.

There was more than one train station per zone. There were no zones. The war walls never existed (Instead, built under the roads were the 'War Wall' field generators which acted as containment for city blocks if needed), there was subway systems, busses, churches, mosques, synagogues, schools, arcades, fitness centres, parks, shoping arcades, shoping malls, parts of the city were being more rebuilt (And in one memorable instance, one of the player characters blew a chunk out of Boomtown. You just -had- to light the match, didn't you?), and et cetera et cetera.

And seeing as it was being written down in one place, it meant we didn't have the problem of having big gaps in the lore/city info. Ask how people are prevented from fighting in Pocket D and you'll get a wide range of answers, from 'they aren't at all!' to 'power suppressing' to 'I told DJ Zero his music sucked and he teleported me outside.'

Hero licenses, the mediport system, the Zig teleport system (Or not. Do we just leave people laying there, do the police come, do we have 'zig tags' to teleport them away once subdued?), I could reel off thing after thing that RPe'rs have to contend with and work around.

Being on World of Warcraft at the moment (And being on an RP server), Blizzard don't give two hoots about RP servers, or even enforcing the rules on them. I did post a bit of a rant on the forums, which can be found: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....0222&sid=1

Cryptic and City of Heroes, how long have we had to wait for a cellphone emote (one that one of the Galaxy City contact has used for ages)? Heck, Positron said he didn't realise people were going to use bases for personal home and roleplaying (which explains why the item selection sucks at times, and leads to fairly creative useage from people to make things. I've seen off floodlights as shower heads, bookcases used as walls, little tricks and things to make personal bases and homes in spite of the games limitations.

MMORPG's don't really seem to give a damn about RP'ers in general. Which is odd, seeing as RP'ers, from what I've seen, usually stay for the longest amount of time.

As for the griefers, fighting back never works. Not unless you have the ability to hand out temp bans from the game. Because of the nature of the griefing, IE: them impeeding and messing with something you enjoy doing, you will quickly lose patientce before they do, and even if they go away, I often find my mood wrecked and just wanting to log out.

@Zortel agrees, even if @Zortel or @Xortel doesn't play much anymore.

Though if our global names get sold to advertising companies and I start getting cold tells asking if I'm interested in getting a new phone...

I'd be willing to write up articles on places. I have maps and floorplans too, even for the Up-n-Away by Galaxy Girl Statue.

"What about the Requi-"
"Don't mention the War!"

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This reminds me of something i was talking to Brit about (might not of been Brit. i got a terrible memory)
We should have our own glossary. Sort of a Union-RPers-Wiki.
That way we can have a nice and neat collection of all RPSG descriptions, companies, events, and possibly even RPer bios.

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There's been one already, I'll just go and find the link...

Ah!

Galaxy Girl Wikipedia

There's things listed in there, places, people, brands, products and et cetera.

In game, rael world brands are used most of the time, but products and stores from the in game advertisements (Major Flanders, Up-n-Away Burger, Wizards Well Comic Store, Red Beast energy drink, Mighty Mart and Mega Mart supermarkets, Paragon Pizza Pie and the like) are used as well, and other establishments have been created by players (filling a space somewhere within the city, often RP'ed or made in Supergroup bases, or done eleswhere on MSN, AIM or IRC or the like.)

As Coile mentioned, one of my characters runs a nightclub in Kings Row, called the Pits of Hell. An alternative place, with a BDSM theme, a nice place to go for a drink with people who don't give a damn if you're blue, horned or 8 foot tall, listen to live music, have some good food in the chillout bar and meet some interesting folks.

Sapphos, situated in the heart of Steel Canyon's Bronze District, is one of Paragon City's premier lesbian nightclubs, I forgot what the guy's version club was called, would need to search logs for that.

Prometheus Park Cafe is situated by Prometheus Lake in Atlas Park, with an outdoor seating area, good view over the lake and surrounding park, and excellent food, it is also the workplace of hero Nene 'Number Nine' Ninnezt.

Julia's Cafe in Equinox, Galaxy City, is run by Alex and Samantha Reed, a young couple with some ties to the hero community, though neither are heroes themselves (Well, not anymore ), and is a pretty good place to grab a great cuppa jo.

More will come to mind at some point, but if a character goes to Major Flanders, I'd recommend the Puffball Chicken, and if you go to Up-n-Away, for god's sake don't eat the spring chicken salad. Catch once had that, and the next few days later she was mutating into a Lost Pariah. Go for the Rocket Kids Meal (With cool free toy!) or the Rocket Supreme burger.

"Hmm... that van's been parked outside the Unity Vigil headquaters for over two weeks now..."
"Yeah, probably theirs or something."
"Heh, if it was an ice cream van or something, it'd be like in those movies where they spy on people and tap their phones or something."

Two people in a cafe in Skyway City.

Poor Echo, I think she was getting a bit creeped out by Jan! :P

Great fun all around.

THere's also an official timeline here of events, with further detail for each section accessed from the dropdown menu.

I was playing my Forsaken Priest earlier on in the day, he likes to preach, you just get in a mindset for these kinds of things.

Respect, Tenacity, Power! We are Forsaken in name only, for the Forgotten Shadow guides us. Praise be the shadows!

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On the subject of elitism: Being an elitist is looking down on one part of society and refusing to see another sides story (it's my way or the highway syndrome), this did become most clear during the forum split with the people for heroes plotline, some people of BOTH sides refused to see the points that some people were making and come to a friendly conclusion. So people on both sides could be labelled elitist.


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Just as a point of note, that plotline isn't the first time the RP community has schismed, and it won't be the last; you can be sure of that. Not trying to doomsay, but these things are cyclical. I think it's about the third split I've seen since being here.

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And I've seen twice more. Heck, we had an RP community schism in the first month of the EU game going live. First ever GG meet? There was an OOC chat beforehand between a group of players after a huge argument on the forums. History will repeat itself time and time again in the same fashion, some faces and names change, but it'll stay pretty similar.

Heck, maybe it was thrice more times than three these eyes have seen. It's one of those things you learn to live with.

Sometimes I'll point things out, it depends on what mood I'm in really, and how the person seems to be acting. But as people have said, after a while you just lose patience with doing it for nothing (if you're lucky, if not, you get verbal abuse and snarkyness), and that patience is a very, very hard thing to recover.

Like with Bartending as Alraune. I tried to be patient, but in the end the stress of having to put up with godmodders stealing, refusing to pay for drinks and the like, things that I could do nothing about, got to me and I just quit it.

After a while with these things, a general feeling of apathy sets in. I know that's stopped me logging in lately.

It'd be nice to change that, but at the moment, I just get fustrated if I try and force myself in.

Posting on behalf of Shadowe:

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I've not been here as long as some RPers, and I know that I've let myself be dragged into some silly arguments in the past (for the record, it's never personal, guys), but this is a matter that's really close to my heart: How do we attract new RPers to the scene on CoH, without being seen as a clique? And we are, trust me on that.

As Z can attest (and possibly FFM if he can remember back that far) due to some trawling of the old GG thread, I turned up at the statue in January 2006.

Once.

I tried. I really did. But it's damn hard to get involved without being pushy, and given that I'm generally quite shy and afraid of putting myself forward (it's true!), that single time ended in ignominous failure. But, thanks to the efforts of some people there I wasn't put off going back. It just took me 4 or 5 months to get my head straight about it and try again. I actually wish I'd been more persistent first time round, but like I said, I'm a bit shy about that sort of thing.

Now, I mentioned the chap we call 'Tool' a bit earlier. I'm of two minds with regard to him. First off, he can be annoying as hell. He butts in to a lot of conversations and this winds a lot of people up. I'm one of them. Seondly, though, is the fact that he keeps trying. If I were to go back and look at my chatlogs, I'm sure I'd see a learning curve. He's a lot better than he was, and I rejoice in his presence at times, because it means that the RP community members who turn up at GG haven't stagnated.

The thing is, like FFM said, I'm there to RP my toons, and interrupting that to educate someone on what we consider 'proper' behaviour is... frustrating.

So, flat out question, then. What can we, as current RPers, do to try and make sure that new RPers aren't driven away by our seeming-closed-off-ness. Because we do appear that way.


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So, unfortunately, those that have the patience to teach usually run out of it because those that really do need teaching won't want to learn and find it an insult when they're told they should.

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Sadly quoted for personal truth. You try and teach, correct important spellings (you know, like the race of an energy-based symboite your character is bonded with), give tips or the like, and you just get insults and ignoring back. Why bother after that?

Hmm... what would define the difference between wanting a good standard of roleplaying and being an elitist?

Hmm... I'd say for the former, to have a good standard of RP, you need:
Legible typing and spelling skills, and learning some spellings if needed (important lore ones, for instance), without shorthand or emoticons (of course, some characters can pull this off, but I'll get back to that later.)
Able to keep IC IC and OOC OOC, using the correct way to go OOC if needed, not going OOC too much in public channels (I don't want to hear about who did what in your family or who's coming to visit, if you must discuss it, use tells or team chat or global channels or SG chat. It's what they're there for.)
Knowing that actions have consequences.
A grip of the character your playing, keeping your backstory at least consistent (I remember one player who's characters origin changed depending on the TV show he had watched on the previous night...)

And hmm... my brain just frazzled, and I'm finding it hard to find words for the rest of the points >.<

But yes, going back to the bit about shorthand, this is usually a no-no in RP, but for every rule there is an exception. If my character is sending a text or an MSN message or an E-mail to someone, there may be some emotes or text speak in there, depending on the character. Some characters may also use versions in real life.

Fusebox, a rather computer-savvy teen girl often says "Be-ar-be!" (As in "Hey Yoko! I'll just be-ar-be, okay?"), and she might even say "Lol." in a sarcastic manner if something isn't that funny. Jane's been known to say "Ex dee!" or "Colon dee!" (XD and respectively), because she has a perfectly valid, if insane, reason to do so.

Alright! *cracks knuckles*

Pocket D is a good place to meet other RP'ers, both heroes and villains can go there, it's a neutral place so you don't have to worry about getting attacked. As for being easy to get to, if you have the Good vs Evil version of the game, you get a teleporter that teleports you to Pocket D, useable from level 3, with a recharge of 30 minutes. Otherwise, you can get there from Kings Row (Close to the station), Talos Island (Close to the station) and FOunders Falls hero side, and Port Oakes (Close to the ferry, but you have to run through Mercy to get there first if you're starting out), Sharkhead Isle and St. Martial on villains side.

Regarding the speechbubbles, I'm not sure if you can turn them off for individual channels, to write custom emotes you can use /em , /e or ; followed by your text, which unfortunately appear in thought bubbles above your head, but in the chat window look like:

*I type /e leans on the bar and orders a glass of wine.*
Zortel leans on the bar and orders a glass of wine.

And it'll appear above your head in a thought bubble as:

leans on the bar and orders a glass of wine.

I'll be grinding to upgrade the UV's base, get Nene to 20 (Woo, second costume) and team with other friends and RP'ers. PD was rather deserted last time.

Curiousity Nearly Killed The Cat

When a series of earthquakes rocked Rolando Island, home of the leader of the Unity Vigil, Zortel, her partner, family and friends, Miss Ellie went to the Rolando Family villa, where she found Tessa Rolando in the lounge with her son and daughter, Kelly and Michael. After checking they were okay, she headed down the elevator into the lab where Zorielle spent time working on various projects. On the holodisplay was various readouts showing the epicenters of the quakes, and other things. Zorielle herself seemed a little harried as she worked, warning lights blazing, and she ensured Ellie that the island was safe and there was no risk of tsunami. She said that drones would check under the island, and that Ellie should go and make sure everyone was okay.

After a check around the Island, stopping in at the houses of her friends, she went to the north point and phase shifted to explore one of the thermal vents spewing steam bubbles into the ocean. Sinking under the lava, she found various drone orbs working away, and started to head down, exploring the underbelly of the island.

Surprise surprise, when she found a series of caverns and rooms having been built deep under the island in addition to what was already there... several elevator shafts lead up to the top of the island, and there were several heavily fortified rooms...

Going to explore the room, Ellie's life was put in grave danger when ZorTel Industries Security AI Overmind BODICIA detected her quantum matrix, and started to arm several quantum arrays, ready to obliterate the retired heroine. Luckily or not for Ellie, Zorielle was there herself, clad in the Zortel suit. Telling BODICIA to disarm, she lead Ellie out to one of the elevators, filled with deactivated construction droids. It was rather silent, and Ellie was feeling very, very ashamed of herself. As they got back to Zorielle's lab, she made them some tea, asked some questions, had some asked of her, and told Ellie a few things, including not to mention what she saw to her wife, Grav Mistress. Ellie headed back to the Tower her house was built around (The downside of living with a mage, they always want a tower.) to clean up what had fallen over.

The question remains though... just why is Zorielle excavating caverns under the island? What is BODICIA guarding, and why is it so heavily protected? Protected enough that it would even try and stop Ellie from entering with lethal force?

Well, Coile managed to put what I was trying to say much, much better. Good post, I think you hit the nail on the head with the first one, I've often heard people say that they 'don't understand' roleplaying, so that reasoning makes sense. Or to psychobable, it has face validity.

And same with the latter, including the problems of dealing with them that you and FFM mentioned. Personally? I hide behind a staircase and take a look about Pocket D, listening and looking to see who's there. If there's people I know of, I go up. If there's people I don't know of, but they're roleplaying to a reasonable standard after some observation, I'll head up. Most nights? I just think "Urgh... I can't be bothered..." and head off. Maybe that's me being elitist, maybe it's just me trying to ensure I don't get fustrated and annoyed with something I do for fun.

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Seeing how people feel the situation is getting worse here I find myself wondering if it has anything to do with the situation back on Earthen Ring also seeming to degenerate. I can't see why it'd be some kind of global phenomenon, but the timing seems just a triffle too coincidental, somehow. o_O

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Damn you nub, bringing your RP wilting disease with you.

((Nah, just kidding. Kompi's great. ))

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Don't wanna sound bitchy but what really annoys me are the semi-roleplayers. They often seem okay to begin with but then they start mixing up IC and OOC,

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Doesn't sound bitchy at all to me, Zurra. I'm sure that the people I'm thinking of and the people person X is thinking of are probably the same that you're thinking of. And trying not to be elitist (but probably am anyway), I don't really want to RP with semi-RP'ers, who blurr the IC/OOC lines. Why? Because I then have to work harder to ignore the OOC stuff that they come out with. Which makes my game experience less fun.

It's not just you who has noticed. It's been decreasing for a while, with people blurring the lines between IC and OOC too being something I've noticed as well as the tool increase.

That plus 2 years and 3 months of playing have led to me being less sporadically in game (though those I rp with know how to contact me for RP if needed, and vice versa )

""Hey, you know that superhero in the armour, Cauter, was in last night getting those condoms? Well, he came in again with that huge giant of a girlfriend of his, and they brought a pregnancy testing kit! Guess something didn't go well for those two!"

-A girl gossiping to another in one of the brand name chemists in Atlas Park.-

GG has been every night pretty much since it started on March 3rd 2005, I have 200mb of text files to prove it. >_<

Unfortunately, it's one of those things where the backstory kind of leaves us adrift and people have to come to their own conclusions and theories. Take for instance how violence is prevented in Pocket D. We don't know why heroes and villains can't attack each other. Is it just some kind of verbal pact of truce, or is there some form of mechanical or magical preventive? Does it only affect violence between hero and villain, or hero/hero and villain/villain? How do you deal with people breaking the rules? (My prefered form of this is DJ Zero teleporting the person out of the club, and then putting the person on ignore if they're truely annoying.) Same with laws on alcohol and the like.

What's the solution to this? Not a clue, personally. :P
Most of the time, common sense laws seem to gel fairly well, but every so often that's not enough.

I have noticed that it's been deathly quiet in PD as of late, though. :<

((Oooh... tasty sum for Jan Boa... *considers*))