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...the whole thing therefore comes across as a pointless exercise and has resulted in one of the earliest public RPers in CoH withdrawing from roleplay entirely, due to frustration caused by this petition.
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However, blaming publically another player for someone's quitting, is harsh and unfair.
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Read what I said again. I said a player has left due to frustration cause by this petition. I said nothing about any particular player. Nor is it harsh and unfair, as knowing Kelvin OOC, I've spoken with him about it and know EXACTLY why he's taken this decision. My statement is fact.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Read what I said again. I said a player has left due to frustration cause by this petition. I said nothing about any particular player. Nor is it harsh and unfair, as knowing Kelvin OOC, I've spoken with him about it and know EXACTLY why he's taken this decision. My statement is fact.
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Yes, a _petition_ started by _a_certain_player_. You really think you can say 'it's petition's fault', and not assign any blame for the person who wrote it?
And what I said, was that "blaming PUBLICALLY" is harsh and unfair. We all could dig up lot of dirt and post our bits as a fact, and for what? To create more negativity and ill feeling. Or what do you think, someone is going to feel better after your accusations?
Blackdove
I suggest this thread stops now. If this continues, I'll email Bridger to have it locked.
This is getting totally out of hand.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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If people responding IC to this petition assumed different, then they would have also posted the collectors delivering said signatures to central points, or RP'd asking for such information. But like me, they didn't as they made a reasonable assumption that there was no NEED to, as it appeared to be an organised petition. We still have not been given any IC reason to know otherwise.
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Erm... FFM, this is an OOC conversation isn't it? You may well have assumed that IC. But you're asking what's happening to it OOC. Making the assumption IC is fine, but we're not IC. If you have those concerns IC ask them IC. If you don't have them IC, why do you need to know now OOC?
Secondly, your logic is flawed. I assumed differently - that it was pretty disorganised, just people passing forms on to people and passing them back again, ad hoc - but I didn't post anything about them collecting or delivering them, nor do I see a need to right now. Maybe in a week or two if nothing had happened I would. Petitions aren't usually quick things.
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Nothing wrong with it per se, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a GM to respond to IC actions visibly. Several days have passed since the Scotbot handed those signatures over. Once the player took that action, it was down to the GM to respond in some way, even if such response took the form of a private PM. It's still the GM's job to let players know actions have been acknowledged in some way.
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Has the player in question PM'd the OP (I'm not saying GM because, you know, it's freeform)? Is it anyone else's business until it becomes public?
And several days? Petitions, as I've already said several times, often take weeks.
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I suggest this thread stops now. If this continues, I'll email Bridger to have it locked.
This is getting totally out of hand.
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Good idea. As of now, I'm walking away from this. None of my characters have had any kind of involvement in this thing as of now. I'm retconning it out. Miss Ellie never gave her opinion, or saw the open letter, and Eloise never stopped any mugging involving a petitioner.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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I think the small amount of released information regarding this storyline has resulted in people improvising. I think that is causing confusion and too many plot problems.
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That's always a risk with the more freeform approach. But it also often results in some of the best plots, storylines, and characterisation you'll see, as evidenced by the IC thread. How well it goes is very dependent on the ability of the players though, and on the whole, that seems to have been quite high IMO.
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Mostly, I think that no one is in control of this 'plot' anymore and it's fallen into chaos and bickering, and it needs to be shut down.
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I disagree with that. If you look at the participation overall, it's only been a few who could be said to have been bickering. I don't think the whole plot should be shut down because of that, particularly since it appears that those who do have problems have now made the sensible decision not to participate.
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As I've said, this plot cannot result in anything actually happening. If we get a memorial park in I10, we can look back and say that "that damn petition did some good at least." But we aren't going to get a reply from Cryptic about that anytime soon, and we cannot change the world our characters live in, except on a personal level.
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That's not a reason not to try. 
Anyway, it could always be linked into the Suggestions forum if the petition actually ended up getting a significant level of support! 
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I wish to publicly praise Ammon for his initiative and creativity. Well done! Not nearly everyone knows how to do something like this.
Kudos, man!
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I'd like to second this. I like this approach and I've enjoyed reading the IC thread. Kudos indeed.
Great idea Ammon, I really like how you have managed to create something that has engaged so many people IC. Now OOC engagement is a bit of a problem as you have seen. That said keep up the good work! 
(To all the nay sayers, you don't like how it's working, step away from it, it's as simple as that)
Shadowplay - Scrapper DM/DA SL 50
Doctor Storm- Brute SS/Elec SL 50
"speed boosts someone in the face" - Cognito
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That's not a reason not to try. Anyway, it could always be linked into the Suggestions forum if the petition actually ended up getting a significant level of support!
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The best you can do is have someone hand in a petition at City Hall and to have City Hall issue a statement that the petition is being considered. You cannot write plot for Cryptic, you cannot change the game, and you will not hear a reply from Cryptic about any memorial in time for us all to hold a vistory party for White Vampyre at Pocket D.
If we did wait for such a victory party, keeping up this level of 'entertainment' I can guarantee that just about everyone will have quit roleplaying by the end of it.
I'm not about to argue about it anymore. As you said, I'm making the sensible choice and ignoring it. It's a shame that at least one person felt it permeated Union roleplay so much that he couldn't ignore it, and has left. I'm thankful that I found someone to roleplay with last night who found it more interesting to talk to the weird girl from the Rogue Isles than talk politics, otherwise, I'd probably be quitting too.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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The best you can do is have someone hand in a petition at City Hall and to have City Hall issue a statement that the petition is being considered. You cannot write plot for Cryptic, you cannot change the game, and you will not hear a reply from Cryptic about any memorial in time for us all to hold a vistory party for White Vampyre at Pocket D.
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My point is that handing a petition in to City Hall is the equivalent of making a suggestion to Cryptic. City Hall can ignore it (and probably will judging by the level of contention regarding the issue). Cryptic can ignore it. Doesn't stop them being equivalent, or rule out the possibility that a more universally supported suggestion might actually have some impact.
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If we did wait for such a victory party, keeping up this level of 'entertainment' I can guarantee that just about everyone will have quit roleplaying by the end of it.
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This kind of thing would take months IRL, but people wouldn't spend every day demanding to know about any progress and arguing about it. Well, some people might, but in general they wouldn't. You play the active part, you let it drop in to the background. Maybe it dies there, maybe it doesn't and it comes back into the foreground later. It's only a problem if people make it a problem.
While i'm not withdrawing my involvement already posted and although the initial idea was very good and held lots of possibilities even "freeform" rp needs reasonable bounderies.
if you disagree i'm sure myself or another time manipulation hero will be happy to change time and make sure it never happened if you want to get out of this quickly and cleanly
I have to agree, have someone do a 'City council statement regarding the Heroes for people petition' and that it is being considered. Actually i suggested it about 1-2 pages ago, i'll even post it myself if i get permission from Ammon.
That way the petition itself becomes finished with, the IC storylines created because of the petition (Suzi's disappearance, what will be happening to Smith...yes i have had it thought out now and he will return under a different and villainous guise) should continue but the petition itself is finished with.
While i like the idea, even being new i can see that this is tearing the community apart and i don't want the RP to die before it's really begun for me and then resort to going back to waiting for groups for instances in World of Warcraft on a non-RP server.
As for the Doctor finding the petition...well..lets just say he left his passport at home and doesn't even get through Rogue isle customs.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
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if i get permission from Ammon.
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Why wait for that?
It's freeform, there is no GM, there is no need for permission.
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
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if i get permission from Ammon.
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Why wait for that?
It's freeform, there is no GM, there is no need for permission.
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Because it may depend on Ammon as a character player rather than Ammon as a GM?
Personally I'd wait at least until Monday. Even just one week seems rather hasty for making a statement on a petition.
yeah but he/she/it is the originator of the idea and i'd rather have them go "yes..for the love of all that's sane in this world do it...please" or Ammon could do it.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
Ammon has said something along the lines of: (yes, I'm too lazy to look it up and quote directly)
Some friends of Suzie (undefined, not player character) have coppied the petition for distributing (therefor easily NPCed by... anyone, really)
It's not my plot, it's out there, I take no ownership or responsibility over it.
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
Yes but in that one week the petition has caused havoc throughout the city. So City hall would act pretty quickly regarding it.
Oh and i have a draft of the statement from City hall already written up, i could post it for your views on it and any wording change you'd like to see if i am indeed allowed to post it as a topic
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
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Some friends of Suzie (undefined, not player character) have coppied the petition for distributing (therefor easily NPCed by... anyone, really)
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Indeed, but given that no-one else is playing those friends, and that the petitions would most likely eventually (not typically in just a few days) end up with said friends or the originator of the petition, it's just common sense to PM Ammon to ask as a player character whether the petitions are ending up with them for them to do something with or not. And if not, if it's ok for them to take it that one of the said friends has gathered the petitions in and handed them into City Hall. Sure, it's not essential, but it's a pretty obvious sensible thing to do.
Seriously, there's no rush here. If someone has PM'd Ammon and doesn't get a response in a reasonable timeframe - and in the context of a petition, a few days is fine - then by all means push ahead. But PM'ing them is just common sense, surely?
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Sure, it's not essential, but it's a pretty obvious sensible thing to do.
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Why should that start now 
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
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Sure, it's not essential, but it's a pretty obvious sensible thing to do.
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Why should that start now
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It's never too late.
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Yes but in that one week the petition has caused havoc throughout the city. So City hall would act pretty quickly regarding it.
Oh and i have a draft of the statement from City hall already written up, i could post it for your views on it and any wording change you'd like to see if i am indeed allowed to post it as a topic
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Missed this post before:
I wouldn't say it's caused havoc. A relative few (relative to the number of heroes in the city) refusing to sign it, arguing about it, and writing letters to the local rags, isn't really havoc. Protest marches, statues being vandalised (by heroes/civilians rather than by the usual villainous activities), rioting, that would be havoc. Fun too. Although even then, I'm not sure anyone would really notice. This is Paragon City after all.
Seeing the draft could be interesting, but might also detract from the impact if/when it's released? I'd personally be happy to offer input on it via PM though.
Sheesh, so many posts!
Will try to answer what I can, but please bear with me, as I'm on the game to play my own character, a Player Character named Suzi White, AKA White Vampyr, and she is not an NPC. I'm not going to spend my entire gaming time on everyone else characters, except where it directly affects Suzi, IC.
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As I see it, we were presented with a petition, which we were told was being distributed in the original post. Therefore, using ONLY the IC knowledge from that original post, it is wholly reasonable to assume proper distrubution and collection channels, and that's the way all the IC posts have handled it as far as I can tell.
Yes, the petitioner NPC's are created by the individual writer, BUT once the petition is signed, I and I presume all the other contributors have made the totally valid assumption that the signature is passed up to the organisers, and therefore become the OP's responsibility to deal with.
I do not see this as an unreasonable assumption; Ammon started this plot off, it's now Ammon's job to deal with the signatures, including the complete list provided by the Scotbot, that have been handed to him. It's not our job to RP the handing over of the signatures, as the OP made it clear the petition was being distributed in an organised fashion. All we needed to do was to sign, or not sign; and the rest is up to Ammon. Like it or not, this is HIS plot, and this makes him the GM for it, whether he wants to be or not.
Now it seems that this reasonable assumption is wrong, there are no official distrubution or collection channels; the whole thing therefore comes across as a pointless exercise and has resulted in one of the earliest public RPers in CoH withdrawing from roleplay entirely, due to frustration caused by this petition.
If Ammon doesn't want to accept the responsibility of GMing a plot HE created, then there's no point at all in playing it out and people are likely to just ignore the whole thing and retcon it out of their characters.
Originally posted by FFM
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A lot of things there.
Okay, lets start at the beginning, the assumption of information beyond that given. Reasonable assumptions can differ, because people's life experiences differ. For example, for a lot of British people, they reasonably assume that America, being such a rich country, has a Welfare State that is as advanced and supportive as our own. The reality is rather different. Reasonable assumptions are not always going to be correct, because they are based on your personal experience, not that of the person or dituation you are making assumptions about.
There is an excellent reason why Zortel's RP guide was stickied. It is a darn good guide. The very first point of all the tips provided is: If in doubt, ask..
Anytime you must make an assumption, there is a level of doubt, and it is easily remedied with a brief PM or OOC question.
I too made a wrongful assumption in thinking the story-line, which is really only a hook for others, would only get a very few responses, and thus didn't need a huge amount of OOC background. I honestly only really expected the players I'd interacted with IC as Suzi to pick up the idea and run with it.
I've acknowledged the error of that assumption several times, the most obvious being in the Opening Post of this thread.
It is a collaborative story. It does absolutely depend on people being generous to other players (not charcaters), and so requires a level of maturity that I felt this community has. In the main, I've found that to be perfectly true, and the vast majority of respondants have been able to creatively add their own interactions and storylines from the hook provided, and have those actions incorporated into the responses of others, and thus the overall storyline.
As shown time and again, the idea has drawn in some quite new RPers, and I for one am more delighted about that than anything else. If a plot draws in new RPers, it makes the RP opportunities richer for us all henceforth.
What seems a little odd is that it isn't the newer roleplayers having any trouble adjusting to freeform RP, but mainly the older players, who've perhaps got a bit more set in there ways about how a RP session must run.
Again, if in doubt, ask.
Another very important tip from the Stickied RP guide is number 13 on the list:
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13: I'm not comfortable with what's happening.
Sometimes things come up in RP that may disturb a player. If your character is not involved, then moving out of earshot or using /ignore charactername can help. If your character is involved, then a polite tell to the person running the plot or the others involved can really help, they can figure out something to remove you from the source of the uncomfortableness.
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That's not only a rule to apply to topics that cause distress, but also the RP situation itself. If you are not comfortable with freeform RP, or uncomfortable with the limits or parameters being applied, there should be nothing forcing you to be involved, and always feel free to step away.
Things RP'd in public may be joined in by other characters around. In this way, Kelvinbridge deciding to post an IC article that attacked the petition was entirely reasonable. Likewise, other characters responding to that article, with follow-up news stories and IC actions are perfectly reasonable. Kelvinbridge does not become the GM of the entire story at that point, obviously, but one of the collaborative players.
His news article, just like the original petition are things that you can choose to respond to, or to ignore, depending on whether you want a character to participate or not in the collaborative storyline. The same level of consideration and ownership really applies to both - both things were given to the community to play with collaboratively for shared RP enjoyment.
The Scotbot situation was not expected of course. Kelvinbridge stated elsewhere in his posts that he disliked the entire storyline and wanted to see it die, so the production of a printout of the signatures of every hero registered in the city was a pretty obvious attempt to close the discussion, all signatures gained - story over.
However, reading that post you can see the NPC hero who gained these was unsure and uncomfortable with the signatures gained in this way, especially since it was clear that the Scotbot did not understand the meaning of the signatures in the context (thought they were going on sale on eBay IIRC). Whether the hero handed them in to whoever he'd goten the petition from (which if it were Suzi would mean waiting for her to reappear) or decided they were unusable is one of those situations where Kelvinbridge would need to be asked.
Assuming those signatures were handed over, then we have the Character they are handed to having to decide if they are usable. (Suzi would ask that they be returned to the Scotbot if it were her, but would likely also get in touch with her PPD contacts about possible fraud, and a super-powered entity dangerously giving away perfectly forged signatures without knowing to whom or for what).
Complicated? Can be - the more people get involved, the more complex and intricate the game situation, which is why freeform is really the only style for this, sharing responsibility for actions and reactions among all, rather than trying to place it all on one player.
Of course, there is wonderful advice in the stickied RP guide that again should be required reading for all. Someone called FloatingFatMan (that name seems familiar) wrote there:
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Creating such a stupidly powerful character as a god or similar is also not the best of ideas. Other players are very unlikely to accept your view of your characters omnipotence and could easily just ignore you, or worse, ridicule you either IC or OOC. (I learned this the hard way!).
Plus, if you do have such a powerful character, you'll find people won't want to involve you in plots as you can fix whatever the problem is with a wave of your godlike powers... This makes RP a lot less fun.
So generally, it's better to play your characters at a more "human" power level.
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A robot that can create anything at all at will or on command using improbability meachanics is certainly a ridiculously overpowered character that a great many RPers might well ignore.
As the wise man said: "it is better to play characters at a more human or reasonable level". Personally, I'd pretty much ignored the Scotbot, as the character is frankly banale, and even if the character had to be accepted rather than ignored (remember point 13), Suzi would have scrapped the unusable signatures anyway.
http://www.savecoh.com/
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A robot that can create anything at all at will or on command using improbability meachanics is certainly a ridiculously overpowered character that a great many RPers might well ignore.
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This is possibly (just my PoV onthe matter, could be way off the mark here) one reason why the Scotbot's player was well known for his plot-dodging abilities and the erratic behaviour of the wee robots
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The Scotbot situation was not expected of course. Kelvinbridge stated elsewhere in his posts that he disliked the entire storyline and wanted to see it die, so the production of a printout of the signatures of every hero registered in the city was a pretty obvious attempt to close the discussion, all signatures gained - story over.
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he did that before he decided the plot wasn't going anywhere
also you've bviously never played with the scotbot - there's abeen almost hundreds of them because they keep breaking and malfunctioning. they're also very rude and very scottish.
ie, one time he tried to produce an entire supergroup base for Red Commisar... and promptly broke.
I wish to publicly praise Ammon for his initiative and creativity. Well done! Not nearly everyone knows how to do something like this.
Kudos, man!