Blackdove_EU

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I ask as I have an article for when I finally get an internet connection back and I'd rather put it in there (with permission) than create another magazine for it.

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Heya!
Capes is my creation and I would very happy to receive articles for it. I created a wikipage for Capes. When you get your connection back, send me the article and we'll talk.

Shadowplay is a friend's character, dark/dark scrapper who dreams of being able to dual wield pistols. The picture is inked line-art and photoshopped after scanning.

Shadowplay

Feedback welcome!

(( Just an OOC notice that next Sunday is one of the days when the invasion is active, and it is more than likely that Talos will be hit at least once during the evening. Would be good to think of in advance how you'll handle that IC. ))

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I thought "revert" was just when a change is made and then somebody undoes it (on Wikipedia there's an undo button on the history page; I don't see it on the Handbook though) so it goes back to the previous version. Your scenario would then be three edits, not three reverts? (I may be entirely wrong on that).

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Ah, if it's three reverts like that, then I don't see any particular harm in having such feature, and possible benefits. (Though still optimistically hoping there wouldn't be a need.) Disregard my earlier comments on that .

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Things to be covered in the Meeting:
Page Protection - I've heard that MediaWiki can be set up so only the user who created a page or a mod can make alterations, something to consider.
3 Times Revert Policy - Something from Wiki, where if a page gets reverted 3 times in quick succession, it becomes protected so that only moderators can change it, so the mod team can step in to work.
Adjudication Board - Setting up a system so that a panel of users can decide on pages in some cases.
Categories - Discussing the details of these, what should be added and what shouldn't (of course, there is the point of abstaining too, if you don't want to use a certain category, don't.)


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Page Protection: Personally I think the sexualitytags made a bigger reaction than it really warranted and I'd hate to see us go down the road of restrictions and rules just because of one incident. No one (to my knowledge) has been maliciously changing the pages, nor has there been any other well-intented but badly executed friendly changes than this one time.

What this would mean as well as keeping someone's personal page untouched? I'd assume it'd mean that everyone would need to register to the site before making entries, and be logged on before could make any changes. It is additional encumbarance. No more than logging into any normal forum, but I have personally enjoyed the freedom of going to unionwiki from any computer without having to worry about logins. Especially in case of shared computers it saves effort not to be logging in and out all the time (which HAS been bit of pain with some forums).

Second point is that the page wouldn't be editable by someone else, even if that would be desirable. I have asked other people to read my entries, and they have fixed some typos and categories for me while reading, without having to come back to me and tell me where and what to fix and have me to do it.

Third point, and the most important one: What about non-personal pages? The supergroups pages mainly, but also location and business ones? They are not necessarily owned by a single invidual, but a group of people. I think everyone (from that SG) being able to make changes to the page, add their characters, their bit of history, whatever is a BIG benefit. Otherwise there would have to be a selected person to look after the wikipage, which is more administration and if that person should drop the face of the internet, then no one but mods would have the ability to edit the page. (Yes, the mods probably could give the right to someone else then too, I'd hope, but that is additional work too).

I agree if there's a problem with people changing other people's pages without permission and causing grief that way, then page protection would be needed and welcome. But that's not the case here, is it? Optimistically, I am going to hope it won't go to that either.

3 Times Revert Policy: Again, I don't see there would be actual need for this, and I see the negative aspect of pages getting locked down unnecessarily rather than after someone maliciously changing pages. As in: I write my page, hit save. Read my page, notice typo. Edit and save. Read on, notice second typo, edit and save. Read on, notice yet another typo, edit and save, and oops have my page locked down.

I guess this feature would be mostly useful in case of two or more people starting a fight over page, which way it should be, editing and re-editing. If that kind of thing has been happening, then it is warranted, but again, I hope it has not been.

Adjudication Board Some users deciding on some pages, is vague enough to cover most things But in general principle I think that's fine. If the mods feel the need for such, I'd say go ahead.

Categories: With currently over 100 character pages, and the amount raising still I would be in favor of lot of categories, better too many than too few. The players can choose themselves which categories they want to add to their character, so they still keep their personal freedom. The categories should be arranged in some logical manner, but I believe you mods can do it fine . Adding these categories to the cheat sheet would be necessary, otherwise people won't know what all is out there.

Whoa, people are getting a bit carried away here. Yes, Liz had gotten over-enthustiatic and made a mistake in adding the sexuality categories to everyone, but that's fixed now, lesson learned. No need for public cruxification, is there?

Everyone is allowed to add their own categories, see post by Pious:
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Concerning categories. Its up to the individual to setup any category of their choice (within reason or it'll be removed) and then tag it to their profiles.

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Secondly, there are no RULES posted on these vampire/zombie pages. There is a short description taken directly from wikipedia and few hints and tips how to make your character more vampire-like. Which points are justified on the page, the wiki entry more than tips. I saw no mentions of 'you have to be like X to be a vampire' which I would agree shouldn't be there. As for spelling errors, it is no worse than quite a few unionwiki pages, or general posting on these forums. I honestly think picking on someone's grammar just looks petty. If you want corrections to that page, you could use the talk page, I am sure?

I am certain we can all act like adults, in constructive spirit instead of going into petty bickering. As in right now, if you don't like someone's category, make a suggestion how to make it better, or if you can't suggest something, then don't use that category, simple as that.

This wiki project has been great so far, big kudos and cheer to Pious and Zortel for their hard work. But please don't repay their hard work with bringing useless flaming and bad feelings to these boards, how do you think it makes them feel? Instead try to please be positive and constructive.

Just for the record, I think having a shapeshifter category AND werewolf category is far more beneficial than merging them into one. Possibly have one as subcategory? As far as I know, you can add your character to both categories anyway.

Regarding Liz's tips on how to create vampire/zombie characters, it might be also an idea for her to write a short guide about it and have it placed into vampire/zombie (resp.) category, then you could go more into depth and no one would be confusing the tips into rules.

I've read most of this before already from militia forum and I thought it was very well written and alive. Last part was as good as the rest (I want to see that cover, even if I'd have to make it myself..!)

Good work!
/cheer

I'm not really an SG leader, but been involved many years.

My advice; Persistence. There's times when it looks bad, and there's days when you feel like meh, heck with it. That you want to and can come back the next day and say 'hey, let's try again.'

Have fun. If the overall experience isn't fun for you in a long term, then it's not worth it. Also people are usually attracted to things others enjoy, thinking they will too. The 'hey, that looks fun, I want in!'-feeling.

Use what you have. If you have 4 members, then gather together and make it work for you four, have fun with that group. All good things start from something small.

Continuing contact. It's important that people spend time together. If it's small group, it might be that leaving things to chance, everyone is around one at a time. Some times when people know others will be around would be good, be it social or missions.

In general I've found that any group needs a certain core or seed group. Be it just two people who are around lot and others can join in with, or group of five with more varying times. But once you got that little kernel of stability and activism, you can build around it. It's also a vulnerability. If the kernel is two people and suddenly one of them leaves, that can throw everything off the track.

I would like to nominate Pious for his Acting Avatars threads.

I'm echoing Coile's sentiments on this. The continuing effort to create avatars and tune them for others day after day, week after week is amazing. I think Pious' creative output has touched and brightened the day of so many people, and really given the community something that he well deserves this award. Heck, if it was up to me, I'd give him unique forum title of his own. The Creative Casting Genius .

Kudos Pious!

Faith healer? TV evangelist? I love that idea!

Of course, it would have to be pretty darn charismatic personality, and requires very good RPing (something I wouldnt dare to try, for example). But as a concept, brilliant!

Feel the Light of Jesus! Be HEALED! BAM!

Rarely a week goes by without a large building somewhere in Paragon City blowing up. Knock yourself out

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Begining to see it now, a so called 'Veteran' could of RP'd for 20 years and still be poor at it. A week old player to RP could be better than the player whos been doing it for 20 years. Or atleast has the potential to be, so really, how long you've been doing it hardly comes into it?

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Pretty much, IMO, yes. "Veteran" isn't dependant to how good you are at RPing, although by indirect link can give some idea. As in, despite ice cream sales and drowning accidents being both high in the summer, one doesn't cause the other. But having a lable and trying to define that is always a tricky question and never will everyone agree . Me, I'm just a roleplayer. Immersive storyteller, if I want some definements.

Generally people tend to become better at roleplaying when they have been doing it for awhile. When they learn the conventions and cliche's of it, and learn to avoid or use them to their advantage. But that's not quite enough to make one really good roleplayer. Roleplaying is a mutual effort, and learning to be a teamplayer is something some people never learn.

Perhaps the difference between newbie and veteran (in CoH mostly) is that when first rolls Alien Lesbian Fairy Catgirl In Short Skirt Who Has Amnesia And Her Family Was Horribly Killed By Rikti he thinks it's brand new, great idea that'll impress everyone. The veteran knows it's been done to death a few times already, and tries to bring some new perspective to it, or just make fun of the cliche.

Out of my characters, Pyranha's background story (in her Bio) says something like "City reecords show that she tells she had amnesia and her family was killed by the Rikti, and her age is 21." I think there was three cliches mixed up in that, the only catch was that it was actually what she had told them, and it was a story to cover up the fact that she was a fifteen year old runaway girl, with two very much alive and worried parents in some little town in Michigan.

But I was a newbie once too, and had my characters of Tragic Past and Butchered Family and all that.

From Newbie to Veteran? I haven't thought of it like that, more on the terms of good/bad RP or different styles. The term n00b I reserve only to those tools who are ignorant and not willing to change their ways as it's the world that is wrong, not them.

After a quick think: I think one could be considered Veteran when he has been roleplaying in more than one community / system. Why? Because only then perceive the differences and similarities of different RP, and what is inheritant to the system, and what is more general way.

But like someone already pointed out, being a veteran and being a good roleplayer aren't the same thing. Some are just good at it the first time they try, some take long time to learn, and some maybe never learn.

Even if the whole good / bad RP is highly relative and mostly applicable as good = close to how I RP, bad = not the way I RP.

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I'm also mostly unaware when it comes to what passes as "standard" RP behaviour in CoX. I'm, drawing from my own experiences of comic books and tabletop roleplaying, and that's about it. I'm slowly realizing there are more or less "standardized" ways of doing things regarding RP in CoH.

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There's more than one "standards" of RP here, just to make it more confusing ^^. Don't worry, it can't be that hard since I've managed fine too. Regards you talking about your character in meta level.... There's a big group of roleplayers who just love to talk about their characters and RPing (I'm one ) without meaning that information to become IC or lead to IC consequences just like that. I generally try to keep big stuff about my characters secret OOCly as well if they are IC unknown, after having few bad experiences with other godmodding the hell out of me based on their OOC knowledge.

To change a subject a little, I saw you mention somewhere earlier how Punisher is watered down lately, and I was curious if you were refering to MAX, or have read those at all. I just read them not so long ago and thought they were quite excellent.

I write and read recaps. If the recaps are of characters I know or the recap is interestingly written, I'm more likely to read it. But if I'm bored I'll read anything. On the contrary I don't usually read IC stories. Mostly because they are longer, and the quality of writing matters more, it has to be one heck of a good writer to make a story about character I don't know well interesting, while recap is more introductionary.

I write recaps mostly to keep tabs of what is happening when. So that after a year I can read those and see what was happening with my character. There is many recaps I have written just for myself and aren't published anywhere, some that are posted only on the SG forum, and then some that are also posted here. Posting here serves a few purposes; One, to give other RPers an idea what's going on and if it's something that would coincede their stories or characters, there's a chance of having a larger story. And even if they don't get involved in anyway, they'll still know there is other plots going on. Two, to encourage others to post as well. Three, advertisement, maybe someone nice reads them and thinks 'oh, that's fun, I'll go check it out'.

It seems that writing recaps has been shriveling up lately, a shame.

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Depends on what you see as "entertainment", I guess. To me, any cultural phenomenon devoid of reference to the "real world" is devoid of meaning. It's like paintings, sculpture or movies: They are at their best when they try to do more than just bring bread and circuses to the masses.

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Regarding real world vs. make believe. I, too, believe that art that makes people think or feel is the most precious. Sometimes the art can be violent and explicit and upsetting. For example, personally, reading The Color Purple was such experience.

CoX by default is escapinist and quite light entertainment, even if the game content alone features fascists, cultists, soul-eaters, kidnappers, genetic experiments, drugs, demon worship, you name it. But these are handled in casual, B-grade action filler style. We don't get ideological debates about fascism, or aftermath of being kidnapped and almost your soul sucked out.

The players add their own content in their storylines, generally featuring all the missing meaningful stuff, coated with loads of angst and drama. The relevance to real world issues varies between players, some dislike any mentions of RL problems and prefer everything to be distanced into make-believe. Which in most cases simply means renaming the RL issues to your own invented names.

For me, keeping the sense of immersion is quite important, and mentions of Iraq or such might break my immersion and make me think of the RL issues from RL point of view, not my characters. But on the other hand, you can never know what issues do that for other people and if you get paranoid about it, you can talk about nothing but weather, and even that in short sentences.

From the sounds of it, you (Krank) got quite level-headed approach on discussing these subjects ingame, and what you post in your blog is your own business. But when dealing with highly provocative issues like this, a little distancing is often good and you might get more people interested of it. If you talk about imaginary prison camp, people can think of it without getting defensive reaction of the real world name and the weight of already existing opinions and feelings of it.

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All I see is a fairly polite discussion on what would and wouldn't be gotten away with.

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The thing is, some people want to play Punisher / Spiderman level of characters, others want to be Avengers or Galactus. In the comics, Punisher gets away with his antics, because no one puts a Thor in his trail. Sure, in CoX universe everything can connect to anything else, and your Thor can get involved with someone else's Spiderman. But that only happens when players invite the interference.

In here, if you put Uber level hero on the crimescene, who can pinpoint the location of the perp from the orbit, sure the A-bom would get caught. But the question really is, why would the Uber hero be there? There's tons of crimes happening all over, scientist, journalists and politicians kidnapped and killed left and right, why this particular one? In real world there is some amazing coincedences and chances, but in the game world, you cannot accidently stumble into HIS crime scene, because it only exists in his imagination. And unless he invites others to participate, we cannot intrude to it. So yes, IMO he certainly can get away with it. If he'd be bragging about it IC in PD, then it'd be different story, but he isn't.

Plus he's hardly the only nor worst of the licensed heroes or vigilantes who walk around killing people.

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I'm contacting Bridge and asking him to close this thread as the topic is dead.

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He could just remove the gender discussion (or move it to off-topic forum). There might still be some interesting things to say about g*ay heroes. Especially after PD is flooded by the pink handbag brigade!

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To me, both assumptions are simply wrong. First of all, I know enough women to know you aren't a heterogeneous group. You have more or less the same range of personality, interests, knowledges etc as "men".

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You mean women aren't homogeneous group, I think. Or then I am baffled.

Hey, I said homogeneous. Does it mean I was slightly on-topic?

If this thread has given someone the spark of 'oh! That's the kind of character I want to create', then go for it. If you want to make your character the gheyest **** evah, or biker tom of finland or just the ordinary (super) joe who just happens to dig guys, not girls, do that. Whatever it was that grabbed at you and made you think of a character.

I very much doubt creating g*y characters becomes a the new Lesbian Catgirls. And if it does, so what? There's a trend that passes, and hopefully people had fun during it. (Except for the homophobes). It's not like things would stay the same anyway.

Personally, I get inspirations for my characters from various sources, but often it's one quirk, personality trait, belief or appearance that surfaces first and the rest builds itself up around it. One of my characters infact started out with pretty much this premise, he was 'a purple g*y entertainer' (back in SWG), so I cannot fault someone from having one of the starting defining features of their character as g*y.

Dr_Mechano: The [censored] aspect sounds fun, I hope you post screenies soon!

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er...I was only kidding. You were supposed to laugh and say "Yes I saw Silence of the Lambs too!" or something.

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Darn it. There goes a point out of my geek score, not recognizing Silence of the Lambs reference. I am pretty sure I've seen it, I must've had. Everyone's seen it. /sigh

The popularity of lesbians in MMO's isn't just CoX, it's everywhere. Personally, the amount of lesbians never bothered me, only I'd too wish there was more homosexual men around.

My characters, there's one asexual, one straight(-ish), two bi, one furry, one mechanophile and one furry bunnyboy working as escort (who did brief appearance as NPC).

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You know what they say about "assume"...

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Oh? What DOES it mean then?

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Sadly, a lot of them are still brushed into the "kiddy with his pants down" category which is enormously frustrating.

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What does this mean? (probably some british thing I don't understand... yet again)

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I assume it means that some people think that men play lesbians in order to have hawt lesbian sexxor online and gratifying hand excercise offline.

A short news article in Paragon Tribune, about heroine Chronopulse.

Chronopulse makes news

Blackdove