An attempt to re-insert myself into RP.

I'm not sure *exactly* what you're looking for, but I'm new to the server, I have 20+ years of roleplaying experience (including Superheroes/Villains Unlimited, D&D, Iron/Jadeclaw, Deadlands, and a host of other traditional RPG's), and at 10+ years in online MMO's/MUD's/FFRP Forums and what-have-you. While I'm new to COH and all that it implies, I'm certainly no stranger to quality RP.

To give you a sample of what I bring to the table, here's the old wiki file for my Human Paladin in World of Warcraft, Gospel Lightfaith. Everything there was written and/or planned by me with the exception of a handful of stories.

I suppose I should list specifics of what I used to do.

-I freeform RP. No rules, no WoD junk (those guys irritate me), no hit rolls, just flowing RP. Decisions on the fly. No governing body.
-I RP just about anything. I have such a wide variety of characters and each of their stories is different, with only a few knowing explicit information of one or two others.
-I'm all for open-zone RP. If you're gonna be a gamblin' man or bookie, why sit in the D? Go to St. Martial and spend some time sipping margaritas on a rooftop in Double Down while you write the papers for your 'family.' Military? Hang out in the troubled parts of Nerva or survey Grandville from it's outlying islands. (Be more creative, is the bullet point you should take away from this presentation)
-Don't freaking godmode. I know your character can shoot lightning from their eyes, mine can light people on fire with his breath! Equal opportunity fights and decisions.

I thought I was the only one!

We should form a club.

I was part of the Green Dragon Inn RP community for 4 years -- all we knew back then was Free-form, since that was all the internet chatrooms we used seemed to be able to do. I ran a very complex and entertaining storyline that spanned two years (real time); it was all FFRP.

Personally, I never have my characters know one another, save on perhaps basis of reputation. They'll never actually have an opportunity to interact in-game, so there's no real point in having their storylines merge and/or intersect.

Considering I don't even know what the RP hotspots are for COH yet, I suppose I'll just have to RP wherever I find myself! (Which is what I usually do anyway, but that's beside the point!) I agree, though, get outside the box sometimes, you never know what (or who) you might find.

I think every RP'er anywhere hates godmoders. In all honesty, I don't think any of my characters has ever straight-up "won" a fight. >.> Not that they're weak or that they're pushovers; they fight to a stalemate and the villain runs off to "live and fight another day". It happens all the time in the comics, so it makes sense. *lol*

You're not alone!

*chuckles*

While there are times that RP dictates a bit of in-base discussion, I much prefer to be out doing stuff that superheroes should do, especially when playing my main, Hero Prime.

Where do we go from here?

Nice. By the way, I noticed you're from my hometown.

Some of them know each other because they are each other. My forum namesake is a 50 Dark/Dark/Soul Brute, and he has a continuation in the form of a 38 Demon/Dark MM. The only other characters of mine that know each other on a semi-personal level are my 50 Illu/Kin Controller and my 35 Sonic/NRG Blaster as they're in the same mutant-themed SG and my Ill/Kin is an officer/community representative.

Well, I can tell you right now that (for some bass-ackwards reason) Pocket D is a veritable Courtyard Commons for RP. Every RPer type will wind up there unless they make a conscious choice to avoid it. Military, gang, mafia, alien, hero, villain, comic, performer, you name it and you'll find it there. It's also a rather unfortunate place to be if you ask any veteran of the server; it's a hotbed of ERP grossness.

The other big place for a lot of RP cliques tends to be the SG/VG base. The biggest problem I had with my previous active VG (I won't name names publicly but I'm sure anyone on this forum knows them; they're notorious for godmoding and making life frustrating in general) was that they would do an AE arc and then sit in their base for hours on end, just standing around and presenting their characters into awkward situations for laughs. Sometimes they wouldn't do an arc, they'd just retire to the base for a "meeting" that only concerned about 10 people max and left the rest of the VG twiddling their thumbs and waiting to go actually do something. Not my cup of tea.

I tend to size up how text fights are going to go based on level and character appearance; my level 27 Dual Blades/Willpower roughneck named Streetrazor isn't about to give a Level 50 Super Strength/Shield guy named Ironsmash any business and want to talk about it later. Best example was some level 6 'incubus' running around Port Oakes blathering off RP, and ended up getting in my 50 Dark/Dark Brute's face. That ended swiftly.


I'll freaking do it. I'll buy us jackets!

Thank you. Thank all three of you! I can't stand just puttering around a VG/SG base unless we've just saved the world or at least stopped a building from being blown up and now we have to pinpoint our next go-to spot, or even better, have a Rogue/Vigilante moment. Stuff like that is sit-still appropriate. Allow me to elaborate and give some insight into my villain main.

My villain main is a demon overlord named Nalrok Ath'Zim. Visually, he's your basic big demon; horns, wings, plated leather, a few chains, spiked belt. Here, this should help.

Here are his level 50 Brute and level 38 MM incarnations, in order:


Now, personality-wise, he's not your stereotypical Demon Lord from The (Evil Place Name Here). He won't mock you, he won't laugh derisively as he sneers at you, and he most certainly won't (nor has he ever) uttered a sentence with the words "foolish" and "mortal" in it. The closest he's ever come to a remark of that nature was back when Solrac played; he called Solrac an 'impudent wretch.' Nalrok prefers to be polite and, rather than boast his strengths and accomplishments, he takes in what others have to say about themselves. He's more concerned with making strong allies and friends than running around and smashing apart the planet for his own amusement. Now, this doesn't mean he's not one evil son-of-a-b**ch. He'll kill anyone who tries to kill him and enjoy it. One of his favorite things is to plow his fist into his opponent's ribcage and rot them from the inside out with nether energies. He'll laugh, or chuckle, or even grin with excitement as he does it. Like any demon, he'll occasionally fly into an uncontrollable rage (Frenzy alignment power helps here) and won't stop tearing people's faces off until there's no one left but his allies.

(Hell, one time he actually ((with permission)) killed a character by picking them up by the shoulders and tearing them down the middle. Holy crap.)

*pant* Monologue complete on that one. My point, as I seem to have failed to make yet, is that my main villain isn't the type to sit in a black-stone throne and brood about how evil he is; he likes to meet evil people and considers every slaughter both a personal victory and a small vacation from reading his gargantuan library of tomes left by his bloodline.

Well, I'm not from H-town proper, more of an outlying suburb, but it's the closest major metropolis that people would associate with. XD

Now in that situation, I can understand, when a character is an alt of another character. However, the situations I'm talking about are like so:

Having two characters that are "best friends" (like I've seen elsewhere); it just doesn't make sense. You'd never see them together, so how can they be "best friends"? Or to have two characters that are romantically involved... who are never seen together, ever. The list goes on and on of people having these intricate (and sometimes intimate) relationships with their own characters -- when those characters would never have the opportunity to interact in-game. To me, it just breaks the quality of the RP.

Well, I have no idea where that is yet, so... I'll settle for RPing in Atlas City? XD

I tend to agree, but I'm sure there are those who would argue that Character Story trumps Character Level (an argument I've heard *many* times in the past). That's a different debate for a different day, though.

Most common entry-points for new players are via Kings Row (generally between levels 6 and 8, but accessible at level 1), Port Oakes for villains and Studio 55 for Praetorians (through a manhole just underneath a staircase.)

Also, the Good vs. Evil Edition includes a power that lets you teleport to Pocket D.

Just about every roleplayer has an opinion of Pocket D, and they're all pretty much justifiable. Pocket D is the closest approximation to a tavern scene on Virtue. Similar in a few ways to the Jester back on Earthen Ring, but actually a lot better overall.

I encourage you to give it a try.

Have I told you I'm still madly in love with you and have subsequently stalked you to another game? <3

I'll give it a look-see, if I can figure out how to get there. XD I'm still learning. Day Two so far, but it's been fun.

Global: @Writerholic -- For those interested. Be gentle with me, though, I'm new to COH and am still trying to figure things out. x_x

I'm originally from North Harris. Know where Tomball is? I was 30 minutes Southeast. Moved since then.

Oh no, I can't do that. All of my characters are male as I stink at playing women, so the closest they'll ever get is SG subortinate/superior, like my 'troller and Blaster. I know people that do that and... well, they're a lot better at multi-tasking than I am, I tell you what.

More open-zone RP would be good for the game; it'd also give this new influx of GR-purchase players a good idea of what Virtue's about!

I hear that a lot too. If a character is well-written enough, I'll work something out OOC with their player for the sake of not mucking up either of our reputations. I mean, a level 5 uppercutting a level 35 successfully would be passed around. It's best to reach a middle ground before going at it.

I'm not saying you should never ever go there. I'm saying that unless you're a DJ, active clubber, or a party animal you shouldn't park your character there for every RP event they have. Also avoid the catgirls.

Yes.

Yeah, I know where Tomball is. I work in Humble, but live in Cleveland.

Hahaha, sadly, the latest expansion had less influence on my decision to play than the number of friends that I have that *already* play.

But... Katja is a catgirl. Well, catwoman really, but one with an intricately detailed and long personal history (She's the character I played at the GDI for years... I revamped and tooled her story a bit so that she ended up in COH.)

Oh, well, good. At least we have a good Stalker/Stalkee relationship.

This.with boobs.

((grabs her lunch now has time to expound on her original cryptic statement))

I'm a hardcore roleplayer, I weave description with prose, I'm active in game, forums and anywhere else I can find RP. I've been a storyteller forever and I've been an MMOrp'er for about 8 years now. I like cinimatic rp and realism. I dont back down from graphic rp and although I have been called an rp elitist I dont think having standards is a bad thing. I havent found a supergroup I'm wiling to try out yet and although I was going to make a proper sg of my own all of that energy has gone into returning to my art. I will rp where ever you find me as long as I'm not punching something in the face and I try to go to events if they are going on when I'm logged in. I rp very rarely during the week days but more regularly on the weekend. I rp with friends in all sorts of systems and games and I'm always looking for more.

A word on catgirls they are generally portrayed as being extremely slutastic and drama queens someones slave and the running joke is they give you herpes. Sorry Tala

Catgirls are... sort of a running joke/meme/thoroughly-beaten dead horse on Virtue. At one point forever ago, there was a rather substantial fraction of catgirls among the population, and complaints about catgirls became commonplace. They continue to this day, despite the fact that they're currently like 3% of characters from what I've seen.

Normally I'd (reluctantly) agree, but with Halloween near, another thing to consider is keeping an eye out for in-game Halloween parties to attend. They're usually fun, since people can put together some nifty 'costumes' with the character creator, and give a bit easier structure to work a character into conversation, in my opinion.

Well, catgirls are a running joke everywhere, I think. Even back at the peak of Katja's career in the GDI, they were frowned upon, and then came the age of "furries" (furres?) where everyone who played a catgirl (or any kind of anthro) was a closet pervert.

I just hope this isn't an issue of judge first, RP later (meaning never). Katja is a quality character built over years of practice, love, and inspiration.

The way you avoid being lumped in with the rest of Virtue's crap-content catgirls is by proving yourself. Don't be a catgirl, be a girl who has cat bits. If that makes sense.

>_> That's not what she is, though. She was never human and just happens to have cat-bits. She comes from a race of primal and proud cat-folk known as the Tyberan (my own creation) who are very much a warrior-oriented caste-society. You fight or you die and the strong rule over the weak. It's made her an interesting character (if I do say so myself) -- but I suppose that will all be in the proving, should I get into RPing here on Virtue.

Exactly.

Of course, this brings up a whole different, but similar, issue when it comes to RP communities creating their own dividing lines: The "You have to prove you're worth RPing with" mentality. Why should anyone have to "prove" anything? It sets a daunting and, quite frankly, unfriendly expectation that a new arrival won't be welcome unless they're "up to snuff". It also subtly reeks of Elitism. (*scoff* You aren't good enough to RP with me.)

I roleplay with everyone equally. If I enjoy the RP, then I'll add them to friends and seek them out for more RP. If I don't enjoy it, well, I'll call it a wash and probably not actively seek them out in the future. I won't flat-out avoid them or ignore them should I come across them, they just wouldn't be first on my list to call when I'm in the mood for some RP.

I try to keep in consideration that online RPing is still relatively new to a lot of people. For others, the entire concept of "roleplay" is a foreign idea. So there are a lot of new people out there that just need a guiding hand. However, if you're just going to glove-slap them from the start, well, that leaves a lasting impression -- although, not one you'd be likely to be proud of. It's situations like these where people are snubbed for what are ultimately petty reasons that lead to a server's "bad reputation".