Badges and RP

Okay, everyone knows that some people like to...restrict themselves to fit a concept. (There's a thread about it) I was wondering how far that went, and if it went to badges with specific types of significance.

Let's take this to the extreme, someone with every badge one could hope to own.

Accolades:

Demonic. You have a demon inhabiting you, granting you great defensive power.

Archmage. Your study of arcane things (even if your character hates the arcane) grants you a spell to defend yourself.

Force of Nature: The power description states you have been bestowed the fury of the elements for your destructive ways.

Freedom Phalanx reserve: Do I need to go into it?

And there are more, some day jobs, and the like.

Basically, the entire point of this little exercise is to ask, do you incorporate these? Do you ignore them? Do you actively avoid the badge to not even have it a part of your history?

I don't see it as "restrictive." If I see/know of one that's fitting, I'll take a few minutes (or longer) to go after it.

For instance, just the other night I was in AE, building up tickets for salvage (because market prices are amusing) to build a bunch of 35 and 40 Damage IOs. Why? Because the character is a mercenary and arms dealer. Noticed the badge ("Arms Dealer,") got the badge.

In general, though, I don't bother either really seeking out or ignoring badges. They're just "there."

See my Guides and Tutorials

Well, I remember it being said that someone "Hated having their backstory told to them", which is what got me thinking.

Is there anyone out there who, even privately, doesn't want a demon inhabiting their character, even if it doesn't affect anything.

What I want to know is how many roleplayers presume that their character is actually receiving badges from some sort of municipal authority. Some of them certainly seem to be designed as literal badges, such as Freedom Phalanx Reserve Membership. Who is giving you a badge upon your hundredth defeat of a Fake Nemesis, though? The city, for your outstanding civic duty on the piers of Peregrine Island and the hellscape of Firebase Zulu? The Freedom Phalanx themselves, in anticipation of your later defeat of two hundred clockwork gears and a hundred Freakshow tanks? It's a little odd! Arguably not as odd as getting badges for your work in the Rogue Isles, however.

I like to fit my badge title to the character I'm roleplaying, but I don't go out of my way to get appropriate badges.

Take my main, for example: he's a wealthy Englishman with superpowers, but he's generally considered to be quite charming. What badge title would suit him better than "Charmer"?

Or his sister, an equally wealthy, sociable party animal: "Socialite".

It's just there to amuse me, not to constrain me in any way. I certainly don't consider my main to "have" all of the accolade powers and day job powers sitting on him. But I'm a badge hunter. Archmage goes completely against his concept and background, so I ignore it for RP.

Get all badges, pick a nice one for a character.

Natasha Sheers, my Fire/Fire Brute reporter, has Newsgirl at hers.

Quickfrost, my Ice/Ice Blaster, has Cold Warrior.

It's just a nice thing to be able to give a character a badge title, but I'd never not get a badge just based on character purposes.

I enjoy one of the badges from the new DA Arcs myself, and it's a challenge if you're solo and NOT a +3 incarnate. Sometimes I'll pick one that sounds funny, sometimes it'll fit the character.

But yeah Katsumi Tatsumaki Knows No Fear.

But I want a 'Can Breathe in Space' badge from the SSA1 Finale.

Most of my characters just have whatever random badges they've "stumbled" over as they played through the game.

But for my main badging characters I have the luxury of choosing pretty much any badge I want as a badge title for them. I actually take this one step further and use costume/settitle binds to give each of their costume slots a unique badge title so that the badge describes the outfit appropriately.

Bottomline I think badges should apply to your character concepts as much or as little as you'd like.

I generally treat badges as a secondary title or as a "mood" thing. There have been a few characters where I deliberately sought out a particular badge that I felt enhanced the character concept. I don't even really see it as RP so much as just a variation on the titles that we get to add to our names at certain milestone levels.

I've actually been advocating for a few years now for the ability to display badge art as costume emblems. Some of the badges are pretty nifty looking.

Given how detailed many of the badge icons are, they'd be pretty incongruous with existing chest details. I question whether the costume system can handle items that high resolution, or with that color depth. They'd also need to be "stretchable" based on body sliders and size, or cape physics or what have you, depending on where they were to be usable. Finally, most of them are a fairly uniform size and then a couple of them are freaking gigantic. V.I.P., I'm looking at you.

I do this.

But mostly only with specific, notable badges, that I have to strive to obtain. (You can avoid an accolade power easily, but to avoid an exploration badge is a lot tougher.)

The most obvious example I have is my character as part of the Vanguard. His loyalty is to Vanguard alone, and therefore I did not take the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade.

No, I don't incorporate these. I may select a badge that applies a particular match to a character, as others have mentioned doing, but I don't avoid badges that are inappropriate (and I certainly don't go go "OMG, I've earned the demonic badge, I don't want my character to be demonically-possessed. I can't delete the badge! Reroll! REROLL!").

Badges are a bit different from selecting powers that you find inappropriate for your character. Few of my "naturals" have travel powers of any sort (temp travel power jetpacks aside) because they're a very visible contradiction to my character's concept. A badge isn't going to be as visible.

I do like picking badge titles to display for my characters that are at least somewhat flavorful and appropriate, but it's not an end all for my RP... especially for certain characters I've made pre-i21 that have gone through Praetoria OOCly.

(OK, it slightly bothers me on one character, since I play him often, but not usually.)

Put another way, badges are flavor. The fact that you can scan my character to see what badges he or she has earned is a game mechanic, not some statement about my hero or villain's personal characteristics. The only badge that matters to my character is the one that is currently listed under his or her name, assuming that one is listed at all.

None of my heroes or villains would portray themselves as if they had literally been awarded medals by some authority figure or organization, nor would they treat the badge flavor text as if it was some sort of definitive statement about his or her character. It's a title, nothing more.

As far as I am aware, there isn't a hero-scout that pins badges onto the scarves of my toons as they earn them. I tend to just ignore the badges. The only time I ever go out of my way to contradict the badges is when I refer to my villains as Archvillains and my heroes as... well... Heroes. That benchmark is applied to the moment they solo their first AV/Hero.

I always look for a good badge title for my character, whether I plan on lots of IC interaction or not - they all have concepts behind them.

My human/rularuu hybrid escaped product of mad science is "Misbegotten."

My Midnight Squad occultist who tricks people out of their lifespans to maintain his own immortality is "Time Saver." I have two versions of him, and the second has "Old Fashioned" - he's pretty much stuck in the 1940s, personality-wise.

My time-displaced, partially-steampunk particle physicist is "Scientist." She makes a pretty big deal of that fact.


And I only wish that Mender Lathrop, heroic wielder of a hefty 1.21 jigowatts, could be "Doc."

I collect all badges, as many as I can get without feeling like I'm beating my skull against a wall (so not all of them). I don't incorporate all of them into my story as I don't view them as in-character RP items.

The ones I choose as titles are chosen for RP reasons that do fit my character's story, such as "Destined for Valhallla" "Apocalypse Survivor" "Saved the World" and "Lord of War". In this way the badges help tell my story, but don't write it for me.

I badge when I'm bored, want a particular badge title for a character, or want a certain accolade. I don't see having an accolade that passively gives me 10% more HP as somehow altering my concept at all anymore than using IOs. The accolades just help me perform better by having more end and HP to play with.

I do like getting certain titles for my characters though.

My young adventurer-archaeologist gets "Seeker of the Unknown". She's had that one on for years.

My master thief and femme fatale? "Headline Stealer".

I'm totally getting "Steel Savior" for my giant robot.

And so on.

It's like... if Batman were in-game, he'd have the badge title of "Dark Knight" or "Caped Crusader" or something. It's flavor, and that's about all I think of it.

With my previous post on page one stated, I forgot to mention one badge title I (and several others I know) have RPed out: getting the Hero of the City badge.

That's the only real exception.

I kind of took the "RP" view with my namesake when it came to badges. He's also my 'badge hunter' character and when Going Rogue came out, I had to make a hard decision. Was I going to 'go rouge' and get the villainside badges on him?

I decided I wouldn't. He's a werewolf. If he gave in to the beast to do evil, even just a little, that'd be a downward spiral for him that he probably could never recover from. The whole point of him being a hero is avoiding that temptation to embrace his beastial nature, with the badges there's now an actual temptation to resist making this choice more important for him, if that makes any sense.

My villain? Oh he's all about doing whatever he wants to suit his ends, and doesn't care if people see him as a villain or hero in the end, in fact he revels in being mysterious like that. He's working on both sets of badges.