Not being on URP, I have no idea what the drama was, or what it was about, but I can guarantee right now that some people will react negatively to ANY suggestion of oversight on their characters.
I've often wished for some form of active GMing in CoH RP, because it would simplify things in many respects, but it would, ultimately, detract from the generally freeform characterisation that we see.
This is not to say that some reference that everyone can use would be a bad thing, but as you said, Ent, the "Last Night..." threads and the Unionverse wiki already cover a great deal of that sort of thing for us.
I do think that for people running plot lines that the wider community can join in might be well served by some form of tagging (adult themes, mature themes, comedy, pure heroism and the like) might work, but we'd have to hash out appropriate tags in advance, and there would be arguments over arbitration.
At the end of the day, nothing beats clear OOC communication up-front when it comes to these things, and that should continue to serve us well into the future.
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.*
Not a clue either what went on, but I do have this suggestion.
There should be no assumptions when facing a new character. That walking nuclear bomb could well be an expert swordsman too. You shouldn't assume anything based on the powersets and costume.
What should happen (and something people skip because of whatever reason) is -ask questions-. If you see a walking nuclear bomb, ask who he is and what he does. Be friendly, learn about the character and then base whatever happens next off of that.
Archie versus Punisher shouldn't happen because Punisher wouldn't -want- it to. Or vice versa. If you're faced with a character/plot that -you- don't like, you find a reason not to participate. If your character is faced with a character/plot that -they- wouldn't like, you've got to either explain their reason for not interacting, or develop/change the character's opinion.
If the argument boils down to "I want to play a silly character whilst everyone's being serious", then sorry, but it's not going to work, unless that silly character has a depth to them that allows them to be the Flash to the rest's Justice League.
(Okay, so analogies aren't working so well today. I think they've been nerfed).
Anyway, getting longwinded.
Forse: lvl 22 FF/NRG Defender
Tam Krannock: lvl 37 Shield/Mace Tanker
Toppa Grace: lvl 25 Fire/Ice Blaster
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Red Commissar: I'm in the Queen Mother. Only more awesome. And alive
I would also like to apologise for flying somewhat far off the hook at certain points last night. Let's just say that some of the arguments have come up before and I still stand by my views that one person has a persecution complex going, as well as flat out ignoring talk and explanations when they are offered. And being accused when I wasn't in fact involved directly in any of the RP was somewhat...hurtful?
But yeah, sorry for type-shouting and coming across as a tad of a git where I did. Discussion is a good thing, as the others have pointed out, and is pretty much mandatory for satisfactory (for all) RP. The threads and wiki do cover as much stuff as possible and, realistically, it'd be darn hard to record *everything* to happen ever. For one thing, some of it effects such a small portion of people (Inter-SG stuff, 1-1 people etc) that it's only relevant if it needs to be.
So, yeah. Talking is indeed good.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Risking being screamed at for putting my nose into Union business, and to reiterate whats already been said: Talk to people. If you don't feel your character fits the feel of others around you, walk away.
Also, tags arent a good thing, once again, due to differences in oppinions.
One person's MRP is another person's ERP... just they dont want to admit to the dirty dirty cybering, so try to lump themselves in the same batch as the gritty and nasty.
And congratulations on your first Union Roleplay argument. I miss the barking.
Hmm crossovers...interesting.
Dr Mechano has been many things.
A silly character (an insane old man proclaiming himself super villain)
A vigilante hero (his vigilantism actually got him re-arrested in the end and was a blow to any villainous reform schemes running at the time)
A downright dangerous villain who even other villains didn't want to risk teaming with (he was considered 'the joker' of the Unionverse for a while...and often still is by the people that knew him back then)
Now he's mellowed out to be a more Lex Luthoresque villain, content to merely be in the background, operating his highly illegal genetic engineering operation for profit and I will be announcing, very shortly, his next money making scheme.
The nature of the Unionverse allowed Dr Mechano to rise from obscurity, be considered a major villain and then slowly slide back into the background. There are still heroes and villains out there who hate his guts though. He can be as silly or as serious as I want or need him to be.
There a parts of the silly nature which have been kept throughout his career (he still employs a cybernetically enhanced Shivan named Steve...who wears a tie and has a blog called "Shivan Steve types!" which is part advertisting blog for Dr Mechanos company and part metahuman gossip column).
As for plot references, there are some of the past 'major' Unionverse plotlines labelled out on the wiki. From the huge 'everybody involved' plotline of Zero hour aka the Rikti second invasion to the smaller plotline of 'Dr Mechano screws with people on both sides of the fence' (harmless pranks on the three biggest Supergroup and Villaingroups in the unionverse but it didn't affect everyone).
As people have mentioned, sometimes the best thing is to walk away, if the plot or other characters aren't to your liking, don't get involved.
I have genuinely silly characters though, Lord Horace Hattings is one, he's a victorian pulp action hero who wrestles alligators, punches out Llamas, braves the deepest darkest parts of Africa all for the search for treasure to sell to the British mueseum to keep up his globe trotting lifestyle.
Heck, here's two of his adventure stories (done in the style of diary entries) I did for him.
Union has place for all sorts of characters but not everyone will want to RP with them.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
I must say that I envy you Unionversers... And I really need to make a bit of effort to pop over and get to be a part of it all.
That said, OOC communication is such a valuable thing.
More so, understanding and recognizing exactly what Spectral_Ent said about the different themes and genres of each individual character.
Sometimes my comical character is in a Punisher story... sometimes Punisher is in a comical story... Sometimes, we can deftly avoid things that would be too incongruous for anyone's fun.
This is all good stuff.
Mistakes will happen, arguments will erupt... in the end, understanding and well-intended efforts will allow the fun to continue!
Pardon my brief interruption!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
Well would'cha lookit what crops up while I'm at work. Imma just lump myself in with the rest advocating simple communication here. Tags can be useful, but I think common sense should be sufficient to determine whether a character does or does not fit into a particular plot setting. Just my 2 inf, though.
As to keeping a record of events, isn't there one of those on the Unionverse wiki? If not, how about making one? That should cover that aspect nicely, no?
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
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Originally Posted by Big_Lunk_NA
And congratulations on your first Union Roleplay argument. I miss the barking.
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Except I don't miss it so much.
I'd like to start off by apologising. Last night when I came onto URP, I was very tired, and more than a little upset. I really didn't come into that argument in good faith, and I feel I've made things more of... Well, an argument, which isn't what I come here to have. Having taken a step back, it's obvious to me that I should be talking instead of shouting, so we all hopefully reach some sort of consensus about the universe.
Now, Union has a lot of characters, and we all occupy a shared universe. I think the majority of Union's roleplaying community is proud of that fact. But the large amount of characters leads to problems when they're living side by side, namely because we don't have a fixed reference point. To a degree, we can look to game mechanics. A BS/Shield scrapper, for instance, is less likely to be, say, a walking nuclear bomb with power over energy. But even then people use sets to reference different things. One person's Kinetic Melee is short range sonic combat, and another's is ancient tai-chi that's unlocked their chakra potential. And even then we encounter fudge, such as if the walking nuclear reactor up there is *also* a good swordsman and primarily uses that in his fights, only going nuclear when he has to.
But even when we're on the same page with an approximate agreement of everyone's power level, or even in a situation where power level is less relevant such as talking or someone trying to hack a computer, people often have very different *tonal* ideas for their characters. One person's invulnerable superman expy is a dashing hero in a four colour comic. Someone else's is a haunted survivor of his grim and gritty superhero deconstruction. When we're interacting with communities where we've all implicitly understood where we're at, this is fine, but what do we do when we get crossovers? How can we avoid the inanity of a Punisher meets Archie situation? My proposal is very simple, we just need to be aware of tonality difference and talk it over beforehand. This is a very simple thing to do, to the point where it's usually implicit, but I feel we could do with bringing it up. I think a lot of people left pretty upset yesterday, and that's mainly a breakdown in communication. We all had very different ideas about what was going on. Now, this is easy to build on: We could get a tagging system, Virtue uses a "MRP" tag for their more mature characters, but the more complicated the idea gets the harder it'd be to implement. A little bit of talking would go a long way. And this isn't just for fights, either. It's not hard to imagine the conflict when a Hollywood style hacker encounters a system that's just not connected to the internet. Two people've brought different assumptions to the table and unless they talk to each other someone's going to be dissapointed. Even social situations might warrant this; If your cartoony superhero starts talking to someone else's Punisher type superhero, things might also be dissapointing on one end.
The second proposal I'll put forward is really more of a personal pipe dream, and that's the idea of keeping a record of events, maybe here or maybe on the Wiki. This'd serve to increase immersion if we left an evidence thread, and a contact, so people could more easily springboard into plot. I would happily look after this page if it got made, but someone has already pointed out the newspapers and "Last Night In" threads are already here, so it might just be a case of me using them more. Be the change you want to see and all that.
But wait, what if you don't like my ideas? That's fine. You're welcome to! I would, however, prefer that if you dislike the idea, you're specific about what you dislike. It's even better if you have a suggestion for how you'd change it. I'm really not trying to force people into a system of conflict resolution they don't like, I'm just trying to pitch the idea there should be one. The idea of a collective records thread is even more tenuous, and that's just on the "something I'd like to see" wishlist. Please don't take anything I've said as an attack on you, your characters, or your way of doing things. Please do take this as an invitation to an open debate. I don't mind if things get a little intense but let's focus that on the issue, not each other.