Shadowe

Okay, so this has stretched a little far afield, but the one thing I was always careful to modify in my D&D games was the "Lawful = obeys the law" thing (and yes, it was written that way in many of the rulebooks).

To me, Lawful Good means "obeys a code of conduct designed to benefit the most people as much as possible" while Lawful Evil means "obeys a code of conduct to benefit themselves (or an affiliation) as much as possible". Chaotic Good is "does whatever seems necessary to benefit the most people as much as possible" and Chaotic Evil is "does whatever seems necessary to benefit themselves (or an affiliation) as much as possible".

Without this clarification, a Paladin in D&D is an impotent class if the find themselves in an Evil society, because if it's "follows the law", the Paladin has no choice but to follow the Evil laws. And that's utter bunkum.

Please note that this pretty much reduces the 9 classic D&D alignments to the simplified 4E alignment system, because the pairings LE and NE, CG and NG are effectively identical.

Bringing this back to CoH, a Hero (selflessly perform acts to the benefit of others) is fairly close to LG, while a Vigilante is clearly NG or CG (Good, in the 4E system) (performs whatever actions are needed to get the "good" result they are seeking). A Villain is Chaotic Evil (of course, take any well RP'd villain, scratch the surface, and you'll find that they are usually doing "evil" things to the benefit of people that aren't themselves or their "group" - they often are acting "for the benefit of everyone"), while a Rogue is actually pretty close to Neutral - making and breaking promises with equal fervour, helping others and harming them depending on what mood strikes them.

Anyway, all that said and done, I think Wolfram's post is far and away the best description I've seen here.

Laptop? £750.00

Car? £13,000.00

Wallet? £4.00

Satellite Navigation System? £160.00

Fuel? £50.00

Money for Entry, drinks and snacks? £50.00

The chance to hang out with a bunch of nutbars who all play City of Heroes? Priceless.

See you on Saturday morning.

And definitely not Hot Fuzz.

Had a good experience in the revised Positron TF (2nd one, I think - whichever one ends with you facing a certain medical professional), and we hit a glitch (I forget what) in one of the missions. The whole team petitioned it, then we thought "Hmmm, maybe we should reset the mission?" which we did, and managed to avoid the glitch.

A couple of missions later (just as we're waiting to face off against the big bad, in fact), a GM appears and asks if we still have a problem. It had been maybe 20 minutes since we sent the petitions.

We said "no", obviously, and invited the GM to stick around while we tried to take out the nasty. Which he did.

Very little chatter, but tbh none of us cared at all - we were having a lot of fun, and the friendly GM was watching an understrength group battering (and getting battered by) a villain.

I have the utmost respect for the GMs - it's a rough job, and if any of them ever feel the desire to pop around wherever I am in-game, I'm always happy to see them.

In that case... Lost are humans. There is nothing saying they can't breed (as far as I know), but I'm pretty certain that the result of a Lost/Normal (or even a Lost/Lost) relationship would just be a normal human, because Lost are artificially adjusted humans - saying they would produce anything different would be like saying that a man with a prosthetic foot would produce babies that have prosthetic feet from birth.

Contemplating showing my face (I've been hemming and hawing about this for ages) - just need to speak to Pix and see how she feels. Might only turn up for one day, might hang out forever. Maybe see you there, folks.

(I'll bring my lappy if I show.)

Fire/Fire Blaster: Exploderbull
BS/* Scrapper: Stabberbull
Earth/* Controller: Minerbull
Empathy/* Defender: Healerbull (Battlecry: "ARE YOU HEALERBULL? NO! BUT I AM!")
Philosophy student: Debaterbull

Sorry... my wife hates it when I do bull jokes. The insertion of high explosives into a male bovine? Abominable.

Sounds like a mild borking of the normal "No bosses" code: When the game rolls a boss (or there's one set to appear in a mission), it downgrades them to a Lt version of the same type - less HP, resistance, defenses, but other than that IDENTICAL to the boss.

Now, in a mission, if the mission is written to generate a hostage-spawn including a boss of a particular type (Master Illusionist, say), then with "No Bosses", you're guaranteed to get the Lt MI.

Outdoors, though... that's a little weird.

The true point, though, is that a -1/x1/No/No character shouldn't ever get a Boss rolled by the spawn generator, so except for unique spawns, you should not be coming across Lt-rank Bosses.

Whoa.

Overdramatic, much?

The way I read this is "I can't get my own way, so I'm gonna just ignore anyone and anything I want, rather than taking part in the shared world that hundreds of people have tried to work together to roleplay in". (I'm willing to concede that you probably don't intend it to come off that way, but that's how it seems to me.)

Absolutely nobody has said that you can't play whatever character you want. Absolutely nobody has said that you can't play whatever plot you want. The only argument anyone's made that you seem to take exception to is that you created a plotline that was too public and too extreme to not generate a widescale response that we, your fellow players, cannot adequately represent in-game.

You want to play an abused character, do so. More power to you. That's your choice. Some people will avoid that character because of their own preferences, but as long as you make no attempt to force interaction, nobody will actually care.

You want to have villains plot to blow up a school, kindergarten, nursery, maternity ward, do so. More power to you. That's your choice. Some people will avoid the plot because of their own preferences, but as long as you either don't let it actually happen, or leave it as a mystery for people to solve (rather than a big red target pointing at someone else's characters) who are interested in doing so in your plotline, nobody will actually care.

You want to have some villainous organisation secretly kidnap homeless people off the streets, or enhance existing villain groups, or anything you like that's hidden from the public eye, do so. More power to you. That's your choice. Some people will avoid the plot because of their own preferences, others because they don't want to get involved, but as long as you make no attempt to push people into interacting with your plotline, nobody will actually care.

Some people will avoid RPing with you (generic "you") because they think your plots and characters are lame. Others will avoid RPing with you because they find your plots and characters offensive. Others will avoid RPing with you because they think you have failed to grasp some fundamental aspect of roleplaying in a shared world. But there will be others who don't believe any of those things, and will be happy to get involved.

The whole point of this thread has been to point out that there has to be give and take in the plots we choose to throw at the world, and the one conclusion that everyone seems to have reached is that as long as the plot would not essentially guarantee action on the part of NPCs who are outside player control, you can pretty much get away with anything you want.

And (again, how I'm reading things) because the overall consensus is that a plotline you chose to implement crossed that line, you are announcing (unnecessarily) that you intend to ignore certain (unnamed) people and plotlines. You could have just done it.

There are a lot of threads hereabouts regarding "ultra-amazing-everything" characters and how to handle them (particularly from the point of view of playing one), so I'm not going to go into that again - I think if people want to discuss them in detail, those threads could be necro'd.

This does raise one interesting thing that's also been covered elsewhere, though, which is "game mechanics - do they matter in RP?"

In many respects, yes. Game mechanics (and also game lore, which says that Statesman is the strongest, toughest, most hard-hitting SOB out there... except Recluse) are there for a reason - they provide a limit to the capabilities of characters on the things that the game engine covers. So, damage output, combat skill, defences, whatever. If the game says you have these things, then it makes sense to RP having these things, and if the game says you don't, then it doesn'y make sense to RP having them.

However, not everything is covered by "The Rules" (i.e. the game mechanics) and that allows a lot of flexibility.

One concept I'm particularly fond of is that of the "Special Effect" (yep, I'm a Champions PnP fan), which basically says that the game mechanics let you do X, but it's up to you to define what X actually means in the game world. Here's a good case in point: Your character is effectively immortal. No matter how much of a pounding your character takes, when he drops to the floor, you hit "Go to Hospital" and PING! you're back at full health and endurance. For my main, I've translated that into "a sufficient burst of energy, such as that from the medical systems at the hospitals, is enough for him to rebuild his body instantly, healing all wounds". That's my special effect. Other people have turned Energy Blast into Water Blast (which isn't a bad translation), because the special effect results in the same thing when the powers are used.

On the other hand, though, I do not believe that characters should be restrained by the game mechanics except where those mechanics directly affect a character's interaction with other characters or the game-world. So, something like Ellie's (to borrow FFM's toon to illustrate a point) super-hearing is allowed. Unfortunately, her vulnerability to loud noises isn't modelled in the game world (I would actually love some form of enhancements that reduced certain attributes in favour of others - so Ellie could take vulnerability to Sonic effects, and gain elsewhere), but that's for RP to sort out.

If everyone approaches RP with the perspective that each other person is a rational human being whose aim is not to win an e-peen-waving contest, then the RP that can be had is awesome. Unfortunately some people believe it is, and that causes a lot of problems. For the most part we manage, we cope, we discuss and we compromise.

I would consider it a great thing if some sort of arbitration panel could be created within the Unionverse, so that those of us who are interested in RPing fairly and maturely can go to the panel for rulings on outcomes and so forth, but I can't see it happening, because there's no way everyone would agree.

Known Issue. Castle has said the patch is in the pipeline.

I have a kid coming in January... thanks for giving me an appreciation of what to expect!

What's "too evil" is an impossible question to answer, really. Everyones view will be different.

Artform, not science.

And to my eyes, it's the wrong question to ask. I've played a villain who will use psychic powers to perform depraved acts on their victims, and that's been too much for some people - and I don't hold it against them in any way. They've always had the opportunity to avoid the plots, and I took great pains to tone the character down. But he was no less despicable for it. I was always careful to keep his actions low-key, off the radar, utterly ignorable if someone didn't want to deal with him.

The point, though, is that if you are planning to have someone do something atrocious, then it is your responsibility to leave an "out" for people who choose not to get involved. And if your plotline "demands" the widespread circulation of knowledge of the atrocities, then common courtesy demands that you make people aware of such an impending horror well in advance. Announce it on URP, create a "WARNING to Union RPers" thread on the forums, do everything you can to let people know in advance that something is coming that will be common knowledge and possibly strongly emotive, and then listen to what people have to say. You don't even have to advertise the details - just let people know that something is going to happen that may engender a wider response.

With the Unionverse we're trying to create as realistic an experience as we can, and we have to give and take on our ideas. CB has done a good job with the adjustments he has chosen to make, and now the attack he created can become part of Unionverse lore and history, and I'm very happy to accept it. I do have to wonder how differently this thread would have been if he'd first asked "I'm going to insert an event where some kids die in an attack on a school, how many is too many?"

Utterly fine in my eyes.