True but you use the end of the world plot to spark of other events in the storyline.
The heroes start to interfere, so you strike out at them, their families etc
Sure the plot is going to end with your machine in ruins and you dead,destroyed, imprisioned or sailing off into the night on your airship
But the minor events are what makes it up, the ehroes girlfriend kidnapped, the school/workplace bombed, the final fight atop the giant mechanical gorrila thats absorbing the sun.
All aiming to end the world does is elavate the intial spark from something more than a Paste Pot Pete level 'I hate Hero man because he stopped my bank robbery, i'm so going to run over his cat one of these days"
I mean take Dr Doom he's got the whole focused on the FF thing, but rather than a simple plot like I don't know blowing up their house, he'd do something like steal the moon and then hold it hostage unless the FF surrendered to him.
Of course in the end you know the moon will be back and the core members of the FF will be okay, But the humans torch or the things current girlfriend, will she be able to cope with the stress of ebing a target, will she perish etc etc
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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That's why, IMO, it's better to run plots that just affect small groups of people. Minimises player conflicts, makes them easier to keep a handle on, and are generally more fun.
Of course, YMMV, but it's pretty hard to convince players that their world is going to end.
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I tend to agree with this. I have a potential world-destroyer on my list of villains, but I am very careful to ensure that he would never decide to end the world. Destroy my main? Yep. Destroy my main and all his friends and family? Hell, yes! Proclaim himself a God and work to provide peace and happiness to all the cattl... erm... people inhabiting HIS world? Abso-flippin-lutely! But destroy the world? No.
The last and best attempt I saw at a world-destruction plotline was the Requiem War, which a) was phenomenally done, b) involved a large chunk of the RP community, c) needed the tacit agreement of even those RPers who weren't involved and d) caused NO END of OOC conflict because of all of the above.
Better to run a plotline where the impact is relatively minor to the gameworld (which is NOT the same thing as being minor to the characters involved). It's about the same level as the general agreement that kicks around amongst RPers: Don't make your character the President of the United States. Don't make your character Sister Psyche's husband. Don't run a world-destruction plot unless you can follow through if every player in the game ignores you.
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Thats why you drop the plot if no one is getting involved/ getting too personaly involved.
I mean after all if everyone is ignoring you all your basically doing is writing fan fiction and not actually RPing at all.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
That works in comics because comics are a story. RP isn't a story, it has a "life" of its own. Generally, it's considerably less fun if you know that you can't lose.
Anyway... I'm not saying you can't DO them... I'm just saying they're a pet hate of mine! 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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God modders! KILL!!
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I have to admit that I am as guilty as all sin of god-modding... but at a very specific level of interaction. And that is personal, one-to-one interaction between characters who are friends.
Example time: Shadowe rests his hand on Ryan's shoulder and squeezes gently. "It's alright, my boy."
Oops. I just god-modded. Ryan being Cindersnap, one of Zortel's characters, and if I do that emote (which would be pretty typical of my main), I have technically god-modded. I catch it every time, and if you ever see me saying something like Shadowe moves to rest his hand on Ryan's shoulder... then that's me noticing and avoiding it, particularly with characters that my toons don't know very well.
On the other hand, if I end up in a 'fight' scene (which doesn't necessarily mean two characters going at it, just one where the two characters have a personal interest in the other NOT having free reign on actions), then I'll go out of my way to avoid it.
The wisdom of Shadowe: Ghostraptor: The Shadowe is wise ...; FFM: Shadowe is no longer wise.
; Techbot_Alpha: Also, what Shadowe said. It seems he is still somewhat wise 
; Bull Throttle: Shadowe was unwise in this instance...; Rock_Powerfist: in this instance Shadowe is wise.; Techbot_Alpha: Shadowe is very wise *nods*; Zortel: *Quotable line about Shadowe being wise goes here.*
Oh, I think everyone accepts certain thinks like a pat on the shoulder and a shake of the hand... It's how you do it in real life too, after all. I meant more the "Character A punches character B in the face and shatters his nose" type of god modding. That annoys the HELL outta me, and perpetrators should be strung up by their D6's!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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That works in comics because comics are a story. RP isn't a story, it has a "life" of its own. Generally, it's considerably less fun if you know that you can't lose.
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Again won the war but lost the battle.
Yeah you've stopped Dr Devious and his plan to turn everyone in the wrold into Rick Gervais, so its all tea and biscuits all round.
But try and tell that to Captain Incredible who has to look after his Girlriend for the rest of his life, said girlfriend being lobotmised by Dr Devious because Captain Incredible dared stand up to him.
All having a doom days device really should do is spark the confrontations and keep the heroes going on even if they have had their spirits shattered by revenge attacks.
After all even though their 'world' is broken the real one is in peril.
Likewise the fact that the Gervais-arisor is so close to completion and that the world is only days away from seeing the funny side, should be there to stop the villian simply throwing up their hands and saying 'these heroes are too tough I'm out of here'
Then again its up to the players how they react maybe the loss of his family is so painful that despite the peril to the world Captain Couragous can't force hismelf to fight on
Maybe the prospect of a world of funny fat men isn't enough to make Baron Squidhands face the power of the Justice Force again.
Maybe if no one joins in or everyone leaves Dr Devious will suddenly realise he doesn't actualy like Ricky Gervais that much and will ditch the project.
But all the device does it start it and possibly keep it going until it gets presonal.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
<---- slaps self fully aware of his annoying personality fault of taking tangents too far.
God modding irritates the hell out of me, obviously not stuff like patting some one on the sholder, though I sually add attempts before I do anything like that.
But stuff like just happening to despite it not being based on any earth technology, not even operating on a level of physics normally used in Earth technology and written in none binary code, being able to interface with a machine.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
God-characters.... those characters that could kick God's [censored] without breaking a sweat. Hate them! 
Only mine should be able to do that and lord over the rest of your characters if she wants!
@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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Don't make your character the President of the United States.
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Rolando '08. Vote for Zorielle today for a better tomorrow.
As for that situation with Richard squeezing Ryan's shoulder, I wouldn't say that was godmodding. It was in context for character, relationship and situation. Now, Richard was some stranger he only just met, Ryan might shy away a little. If they had a fight, Ryan might shrug the squeeze off and move away.
My only pet hate in RP land are lesbian cat-girls.
Know any Lesbian Cat-Girls anyone?
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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Don't make your character the President of the United States.
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Rolando '08. Vote for Zorielle today for a better tomorrow.
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I remember talking to someone about something like this once. Its so much better that a char EARNS something IC, rather than being wrote into the position. The idea of a mayoral election in paragon cropped up to.
Rolando has my votes if there is :P
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My only pet hate in RP land are lesbian cat-girls.
Know any Lesbian Cat-Girls anyone?
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I know one or two, but would never play such a creature... Ever.
Now... ALIEN lesbian cat-girls...
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Emote Combat. I hate it, it sucks, people take it too far and I never want a part in it ever.
Also Characters with no real flaws or weakness'. Where's the fun in that? Bah I say!
Where to start (without sounding like a whiner)?
End of the world plots. Love them for the drama. Hate them for the inclusiveness of all. End someone's world, not everyone's.
Plots and events of great, earth shattering significance enacted *at the statue*. That way we HAVE to participate (which usually ends up in a huge ruck) or ignore the 60ft flame spewing helldemon (or whatever) and carry on reading the paper (huh?).
The assumption that the zig has a revolving door. Exactly how stupid and incompetent do we think the people running the city are? The escapes at the start of CoV are the result of a coordinated military assault. Not someone just wondering off.
Characters who can somehow trump an entire government agency staffed by the best minds in the country. Repeatedly. Without much time or effort on their part. You've got a huge corporation to come up with the tech / info, fine. You've made a unique, one-off discovery, fine. MAGI / SERAPH / whatever are all retarded morons who can't tie their shoes? No. Sorry, no.
"The law doesn't apply to me" heroes. Not vigilantes like Bats or some such. Regular, everyday heroes who will decide they'll walk into MAGI and borrow the codex of ultimate thingyness without asking? Then tell everyone about it? This is the ICA=ICC thing again. If one more person walks up to the statue and declares to a dozen upholders of the law that they've just committed a crime... I dunno. I'm going to darn well arrest them or something. ANYTHING other than having my hero ignore it again for the sake of not tossing someone's beloved toon in the zig for 5 years. (And they don't get let out on good behavior in 3 hours (see above)).
And probably top of the list - characters who somehow equate "hero license" with "permit to blow the **** out of anything you like". Blowing up buildings in a crowded city (and showering passers by with rubble). Pulling guns on people because they don't like their attitude. Actual violence towards people because they don't like them. I've said it before, I'll say it again.Heroes are expected to use reasonable force for a situation. If the bad guys have rocket launchers, we can expect and will accept some property damage (from both sides). But if you do something your average police officer won't get away with without getting busted, tried and jailed for, you sure as hell can't expect to get away with it as a private citizen, even if the city does let you "help out".
And for crying out loud... you're a private citizen and the government has given you a tactical missile launcher / tank / whatever? WHY? Either you've somehow earned an insane amount of trust from the high-ups, who can't be bothered to let their own people fire the thing (which is why we HAVE an army) or they're giving away significant destructive hardware to any person who walks in the door. That's no critique of characters who carry high tech weapons. It's a problem with character who acquire something close to a WMD and claim that not only does the gvmnt permit such a thing to remain in private hands, but actively endorses it. You have destructive superpowers, that's one thing. That's part of what you are and can't be helped. You have a TACNUC?? No. Sorry. No. Hand it over to the authorities. Or I know an entire city full of superbeings who will help them come and take it off you.
The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
First things first: :ets Hates::
Now. I'm not sure which of these count as pet hates, but, whilst we're a-hating:
Spelling and grammar used to bother me quite a bit. I just seem to have got used to the mistakes. A lot of the time there is a good reason - English not a first language being the main one. For myself, I'm a ruthless perfectionist, so I tend to second-guess my spelling and grammar so much that I fall behind in IC conversations.
The IC consequences thing is quite a big one for me. The problem being that without any way for us to enforce such consequences (we can't actually arrest that hero who just admitted to a crime without the player agreeing to it), we just have to trust everyone not to break the RP world in which we're working. If you're a hero, the default assumption is that you're a hero. Blur the divide, ok, but if the believable consequence of your action is arrest and imprisonment - accept the consequence, or don't do it.
The one about the Zig is a niggle, too. It's not good for our poor little heroes' minds to have them assume that escapes from the Zig are frequent, just because the same villains seem to keep turning up. It raises the question of why they keept trying. There've been plenty of good ways around the problem - with the Militia, when we kept on facing FrostFire in the early days, we decided among ourselves that the name was just a title, and that we weren't just fighting the same guy over and over.
Edit: I'll throw in the canon/consistency one, too. Little inconsistencies don't annoy me too much, but when someone decides to rewrite history for all of us, that's just going too far. No, your character didn't kill everyone in my character's home town, or avert the well-documented disaster that defined his life. Because otherwise he wouldn't be here, see?
Knights Exemplar: Wolfram, Autumnfox, Starlit Spirit.
Militia: The Portent, Wavekite, Mr. Sandman.
The Cadre: WarpLocke, Zajin.
Numerous others.
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First things first: :ets Hates::
Now. I'm not sure which of these count as pet hates, but, whilst we're a-hating:
Spelling and grammar used to bother me quite a bit. I just seem to have got used to the mistakes. A lot of the time there is a good reason - English not a first language being the main one. For myself, I'm a ruthless perfectionist, so I tend to second-guess my spelling and grammar so much that I fall behind in IC conversations.
The IC consequences thing is quite a big one for me. The problem being that without any way for us to enforce such consequences (we can't actually arrest that hero who just admitted to a crime without the player agreeing to it), we just have to trust everyone not to break the RP world in which we're working. If you're a hero, the default assumption is that you're a hero. Blur the divide, ok, but if the believable consequence of your action is arrest and imprisonment - accept the consequence, or don't do it.
The one about the Zig is a niggle, too. It's not good for our poor little heroes' minds to have them assume that escapes from the Zig are frequent, just because the same villains seem to keep turning up. It raises the question of why they keept trying. There've been plenty of good ways around the problem - with the Militia, when we kept on facing FrostFire in the early days, we decided among ourselves that the name was just a title, and that we weren't just fighting the same guy over and over.
Edit: I'll throw in the canon/consistency one, too. Little inconsistencies don't annoy me too much, but when someone decides to rewrite history for all of us, that's just going too far. No, your character didn't kill everyone in my character's home town, or avert the well-documented disaster that defined his life. Because otherwise he wouldn't be here, see?
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You could go the Batman route and go 'It doesn't matter that Arkham is a revolving door and by capturing neigh insisting they are captured and not killed I'm partially responsable for the death of thousands of innocents. I'm honoring my parents memory and not compramising my morals to do so!"
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
Indeed txt talk is something I could never stand in an RP unless your some robot/cyborg that somehow communicates via a text display and its a programming quirk.
Though while I can tolerate most minor spelling and grammer issues (Darn those typo deamons that posses our keyboards), I realy get annoyed at those people that type like a hundred words a second, making it hard for anyone to get a single word in or reply before they've taken over the conversation and your left standing there looking like a mute. For crying out loud people, when in a small or large groups TAKE IT IN TURNS TO REPLY!. This especialy applies to RP combat.
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I realy get annoyed at those people that type like a hundred words a second, making it hard for anyone to get a single word in or reply before they've taken over the conversation and your left standing there looking like a mute. For crying out loud people, when in a small or large groups TAKE IT IN TURNS TO REPLY!.
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That could be intentional... I mean, some people are like that in real life, so why not in RP?
I have to admit, though, I'm probably guilty of this sometimes. I do type very quickly, and sometimes when a character has a lot to say, rather than have a great big huge block of text appear all at once, I'll split it into two or three chunks, so that slower typists have a chance to start writing their reply while I'm still speaking. That may look like I'm not giving people a chance to reply, but that isn't my intention.
The Purple Party Pagan of Paragon
Globals: @Morgana Fiolett / @Genevieve Moore
Altoholic with too many characters to count now I have all these shiny servers...
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Mine are:
There, Their and They're/Your and You're - It's a common topic for primary school kids who are only just grappling with the English language, and while some manage to grasp it, some, unfortunately fail. Forever managing to mix them up long into adult life. For people who's second language is English, this is forgiveable, but for everyone else, it's really simple if you missed it:
- There is over there.
- Their belongs to them.
- They're means "they are".
- You're means "you are".
- Your means belonging to you.
All Lower Case RP - When your shift key is broken, or you're too busy not caring about other people to have the consideration to just cap your first word in a sentence with a nice big capital letter. I might be able to understand it if the little finger on either hand didn't naturally sit above a shift key on a keyboard.
It's sloppy, lazy and when you see it you instantly jump to (sometimes wrongful) conclusions that this person doesn't know what they're doing and doesn't care. So why RP with them?
Also, every I in a sentence and every Name of Something (noun) needs a capital letter. Using a lower case "i" to talk about yourself has always traditionally been seen as a lack of self respect. Be proud of yourself, it's a very endearing quality.
Internet Speak in RP - That's abbreviations and smiley faces. No one can say "" phonetically it's pronounced 'colon end bracket' which sounds like something you'd find on the business end of a Cyborg. (I'm here all week, try the buffet.) If you want to smile use /e smiles or ;smiles or *Smiles* or [Smiles].
Not to mention, no one laughs genuinely by saying "lol" in real life. "Ha ha ha!" Is interesting and engaging on so many more levels and it's a real life natural response. While it would be epic win, you don't hear lol'ing hyenas.
Much Love
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Try skype mate, save yourself the stress of other peoples typing not living up to your expectations.
Voice comms are useless in an RP environment, Londoner. Kind of immersion breaking when the cute Swedish blonde you're chatting to has the voice of a brickie from Glasgow.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Voice comms are useless in an RP environment, Londoner. Kind of immersion breaking when the cute Swedish blonde you're chatting to has the voice of a brickie from Glasgow.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
While your point is fairly valid, Londoner, I assume that this discussion is about the text-based RP of the type we have in CoX.
Yes, we could just set up a server to chat over vocally, but some people won't be able to, some people won't want to, some people will have pathetic connections and quality will go to pot and make it unintelligible.
Far easier, in this circumstance, to consider our common RP-ground, which is RP in this game.
The wisdom of Shadowe: Ghostraptor: The Shadowe is wise ...; FFM: Shadowe is no longer wise.
; Techbot_Alpha: Also, what Shadowe said. It seems he is still somewhat wise ; Bull Throttle: Shadowe was unwise in this instance...; Rock_Powerfist: in this instance Shadowe is wise.; Techbot_Alpha: Shadowe is very wise *nods*; Zortel: *Quotable line about Shadowe being wise goes here.*
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"though"/"tho" annoys me though
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The use of tho' is acceptable though - as the apostrophe denotes that part of the word is missing.
I'm a spelling nazi and I like the occasions when a person asks how to spell a word - it's the past life as a 19th century school marm I'm sure. For me, at least, it doesn't break any walls down - but then I suppose that's because I often use the (sp?) term if I am unsure of something.
Grammar is not something that we use all the time, unless we're playing someone with precise grammar and pronunciation - a lot of people use 'trash-talk' which suits their character.
'' is not a word, nor will it ever be so. /giggles, /chuckles, /guffaws, /bursts out laughing, /collapses in a heap of laughter, /winks at... don't take very long to type and can often say more than 'lol' which, as has been pointed out before by many others, is not a punctuation mark 
Right, it'll take me at least half an hour to edit this post to ensure there are no glaringly obvious mistakes in it...
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Voice comms are useless in an RP environment, Londoner. Kind of immersion breaking when the cute Swedish blonde you're chatting to has the voice of a brickie from Glasgow.
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Where is you imagination man
This is just a personal opinion, but generally, when I conceive a plot, I don't actually have a clue what's going to happen in the end! I keep a few key points in mind so I can prod it at times, but the overall shape and outcome of the plot are decided on by those taking part, not me. I'm even prepared for that character to die, if that's the way things go...
(And yes, that applies to my current plot with Burned Ice. 
). They're usually as open as I can make them, and anyone is free to take part, or not, as they choose. It won't affect anyone outside of those taking part, and some of my own chars of course. 
That way, *I* get to have just as much fun as the players are, cause I don't have a sodding clue what's going to happen!
Anyway... Back to pet hates in RP...
God modders! KILL!!
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.