I'd like to say I agree to this, and I do, but once more personal experience has made me think that this sort of thinking doesn't pan out in practice. Once more, Gren is my example. I'll admit I do want to load him up with all sorts of cool shit I think it's possible in RWBY, shit like jetpacks, giant guns, and badass robot armor. In my own opinion that's stuff I can see Gren wanting and eventually getting. But the problem comes from the fact that he does have to interact with others, and in a semi-competitive combat RP, there needs to be balance. When Lugu said that Gren is likely the "strongest" character in the RP, I was confused and worried. I won't lie; he's pretty badass in a fight. But ideally, so is everyone else. We're fucking hunters, not Jaune. Each of us ought to be able to not only hold our own but carry others too, either when necessary or when possible. In my mind, Gren isn't the "strongest" character because I don't care if he's the strongest or not. He's just exactly what I want him to be, which is basically an ork-sized gundam.

But now that he's the "strongest", I feel like I have this pressure to both maintain a high level of strength, but also a limit to what else I can do or add onto him because he's already "the strongest", even if he hasn't achieved or obtained everything I wanted for him. SO that, plus me pondering and asking about getting him more things, have tended to backfire on me and makes me wonder if Gren is more work than he's worth. In this world of super powered teenage warriors, giant shadowy monsters, and weapons with no place in logic, I just wanted to be a giant robot. But I can't. And that makes me sad.

That's because he's loading on bullshit like one of Anaheim's crappy drugged-out creations.

Regards,
Strategic Naval Research Institute.

(PS. ATMOS was a shit, stick with Psycoframes)

Seriously though, if you want to play a giant robot, play a giant robot RPG.

Or get an actual existing in-universe mecha and customise the shit out of it if you want to be a giant robot.

If you're going to try buff your guy up and escalate, no shit you're going to get backlash, especially when you might have to fight them at some point. It's like minmaxers in a tabletop; competing with them requires you to go pull out the power buffs too and sometimes you can't be fucked.

So, would it be entirely wrong of me to say that your primary motivation for Gren is writing out combative technology and armaments and their usage?

Because while that's a perfectly fair attraction (it's RWBY after all), I think if that's ALL that's there, it's just a limitation on your skills that you don't have any need for. If all your character is to you is their gear and fighting skills...

You could explore a lot more with him, you know? You can keep the upgrades as an eventual goal (Shoutouts to my girl Gigi), but in the meantime, why not try and look at other sides of him? There's gotta be more than just that. The love of food, for instance? You could take that and the passion for cooking somewhere, and even if it's not too far, it could easily open up doors to other, more engaging stuff. Feasts are gatherings, maybe put one on and try to invite his friends and get some solid interaction down? Those sorts of situations oftentimes go a long way towards building connections and friendships between characters and, oftentimes, players. I first met Krayzikk waaaaaay back when some seven-odd years ago, when his character and mine both ended up being on the run from the same group and had to gut it out together, simply because my character was walking down the same alleyway.

Terrible example, but I hope the point's still there. You can take some small quirk or facet of your lad and use it to go places, even if they aren't the main point of why you wanted to play them.

Hypocritical though it is coming from me ("write more araragi, write more araragi, write more araragi"), I'd call exploring those other things a good start towards motivation. It's why I'm such a contest-whore, I get to look at different angles of Luke than the main game normally allows. It freshens up my takes on him, rounds him out and gives some supplemental info when I can sneak it in, and really helps me delve into how everything all connects back into who he is.

Whenever one of those character-driven prompts comes up, maybe give it a shot. Someone's bound to run another contest eventually, assuming this game's a fighter and comes back from these maybe-death throes.

<Snipped quote by Lucius Cypher>

That's because he's loading on bullshit like one of Anaheim's crappy drugged-out creations.

Regards,
Strategic Naval Research Institute.

(PS. ATMOS was a shit, stick with Psycoframes)

Seriously though, if you want to play a giant robot, play a giant robot RPG.

Or get an actual existing in-universe mecha and customise the shit out of it if you want to be a giant robot.

If you're going to try buff your guy up and escalate, no shit you're going to get backlash, especially when you might have to fight them at some point. It's like minmaxers in a tabletop; competing with them requires you to go pull out the power buffs too and sometimes you can't be fucked.

I'll admit, making Gren good at combat and making him better when I can is something I'm interested in, but I wouldn't call myself a minmaxer. Or at least, I didn't intend to be. For the same reason I felt uncomfortable at having Gren being labeled the strongest character; I just felt like this was something Gren could have, and if others wanted something like it too, who am I to stop them? You'll certainly never hear from me if someone is too powerful. I wanted him to be able to do or fit a certain image and I tried to achieve that. He's optimized for it, certainly. I wouldn't make a fighter and then dump his strength. I'm also aware that he may suffer from certain weaknesses, and I consider options to deal with them in the event they become an issue. Gren was originally built as a slow moving but tough and powerful guy, and I know speedster types could outmaneuver him. So I wanted to take steps to deal with them. And maybe mech brings the wrong image: Power Armor is more what I was going for in terms of his durability and strength. Big, covered in steel, and you probably don't want to try and box with him. But he can die, just like everyone else. He's just aware enough of his own drawbacks that his upgrades mostly consist of dealing with those drawbacks instead of improving what he already has.

Of course again, it becomes a matter of perspective. In my mind I made Gren to do a job and he is able to do it right. For others, he's an unstoppable Juggernaut because he can accomplish the purpose I've made him for. Though for me things like winning or beating others isn't the goal so much as simply being able to do what I want him to do. Sure, I could run a fragile speedster who relies on big damage but has the defense of a soggy napkin, but instead I wanted to make a tanky guy who could survive said damage, dish a bit of his own, and at some point realize that he needs to address the fact he can't hit shit because everyone is zipping around him.

So, would it be entirely wrong of me to say that your primary motivation for Gren is writing out combative technology and armaments and their usage?

Because while that's a perfectly fair attraction (it's RWBY after all), I think if that's ALL that's there, it's just a limitation on your skills that you don't have any need for. If all your character is to you is their gear and fighting skills...

You could explore a lot more with him, you know? You can keep the upgrades as an eventual goal (Shoutouts to my girl Gigi), but in the meantime, why not try and look at other sides of him? There's gotta be more than just that. The love of food, for instance? You could take that and the passion for cooking somewhere, and even if it's not too far, it could easily open up doors to other, more engaging stuff. Feasts are gatherings, maybe put one on and try to invite his friends and get some solid interaction down? Those sorts of situations oftentimes go a long way towards building connections and friendships between characters and, oftentimes, players. I first met Krayzikk waaaaaay back when some seven-odd years ago, when his character and mine both ended up being on the run from the same group and had to gut it out together.

Terrible example, but I hope the point's still there.

Hypocritical though it is coming from me ("write more araragi, write more araragi, write more araragi"), I'd call exploring those other things a good start towards motivation. It's why I'm such a contest-whore, I get to look at different angles of Luke than the main game normally allows. It freshens up my takes on him, rounds him out and gives some supplemental info when I can sneak it in, and really helps me delve into how everything all connects back into who he is.

Oh, but I do. That's also where other issues lie, such as his affiliation to the White Fang or the fact he might actually have skills outside of combat (See, makes his own tech). When I create characters I generally start with a single idea about that character I want to emphasis. For Gren, it was simply making a powered armored ork. Once I had that foundation made, then I went about expanding who he is outside of battle. I gave him his interests in cuisine and video games, a hobby for gardening, and a history that might explain how exactly he became who he today. His thoughts and beliefs about people and certain politics, and even tried my hand at romance (I knew shit when I tried though, which reflected in Gren). In a way I work backwards: I create the big picture first, and then I start filling in the details.

Now yes, making Gren into the warrior I wanted him to be was the first thing I had in mind. But that doesn't mean it was the only thing. There was always going to be more to him than just his weapons and abilities. He has his history, hobbies, and even a personality that isn't very warlike for someone built like him, and ideally he'll make friends that would take him away from the battlefield and let him live like a normal dude. But just because I can have those simple things doesn't mean I can't try to get the warrior bits too. Forgive me if I seem like the type of guy who wants his cake and to eat it too. As you may tell, I've always been the type of guy who has ambitions greater than what he deserves.

Well, as I said, you can keep the warrior goals for the long term, but your problem seems to be stemming from the fact that you are trying to make an ork in power armor while everyone else is making fairly decent to good freshmen hunters.

That is to say, the scales are substantially different. If I recall correctly, the main issue with, say, the reactor idea, was that if shit went wrong (with his old and I believe you specified faulty) gear, was that it was very likely to level the academy simply due to how nuclear reactors work (and fail). It's just a ridiculous amount of power to be dicking around with, even in the given setting with a large concentration of out-and-out superhumans dotting the landscape. That was what spooked most people, and I think many of the other criticisms were along those lines.

An ork in a world of spess mehrens is perfectly fine, but first-year hunters and huntresses are not spess mehrens. The simple physical capabilities may be comparable, but armaments like a bolter would fuck this entire setting's shit up.

Well it's that kinda of thinking is what is a cause for confusion for me. Bolters hardly seem like the strongest weapon in a world like RWBY, especially after seeing what some people can do with theirs (Coco tearing through Nevermores and Giant scorpions likes nothing being an example). The Nuclear reactor bit I'll admit was a dumb idea in that I had no idea what I was dealing with at the time. Gren was basically a guy permanently grafted into Fallout 4 Power Armor and I used references from there. I get that, but that only arose because someone needed to know the solid science behind how Gren can even exist because again, Gren is a Cyborg was a big issue back than that was either going to be eliminated or saved depending on how willing I was to fight for it. And I was very willing. And Gren being a cyborg was not only important for the purpose of being the warrior I wanted him to be, but for backstory reasons too, as well as utilizing information from canon that supports, though not quite proves, the idea that I had (The existence of humanoid machines and cybernetics).

And as for everyone else making characters not quite as ridiculous as Gren, again, this is where you view of "We are our own main characters" kinda falls apart. Because what I'm about to say may insult many of you: I don't care how you build your characters. They're not mines to judge and I'm not trying to intentionally make Gren better or equal to yours. I knew PvP was going to be something that was going to happen, but I didn't scope out the competition to try to outclass you. I just had ideas for Gren I wanted to use and did everything I could to get them as soon as possible. If everyone wanted to make their characters stronger than Gren then so be it. Like I said, I'm more concerned that Gren is capable of doing what I want him to do. I hope that everyone else got what they wanted from their characters too. And if they want more, I'm more than willing to help them achieve it in some way.

However as we can see, that's not always the case. I made Gren in his own world without really considering who might get involved in it. Because of that he's now considered unbalanced and in need of getting taken down a notch. I don't want that to happen, but it has happened before. It's selfish to think I can get what I want, and even when I do get it of course people won't like it. It's why I've always felt down about doing anything for this RP because every time I want to use Gren, I'm reminded that people don't like him, which in turn makes it feel like they don't like me. So now I just kinda hang out on my own and hope people can look past his combative stuff and try to interact with him as a normal person, without worrying about who he is or what he can do.

Who said you needed to be the strongest to be the main character though

I don't and I never cared to be. I wanted Gren to be tough. I wanted his semblance to be useful but kinda weird. I wanted his weapon to be big, loud, and properly orky. At some point I'd like him to be able to fly around. I also wanted him to be a cyborg. Whether or not that makes him the strongest never mattered to me. I never go into a fight thinking that I can't lose. But I do try not to lose. At some point, Gren was given the label of "the strongest" even though I felt it was undeserved because I made no real efforts to gain that title, and because I knew he had problems that I wanted to resolve. Things like the fact he was slow, or his cybernetics makes aura and electricity interact with him weirdly, so on and so forth. Lugu calling Gren the strongest felt more like a curse because that meant to me, I couldn't give Gren anything else. He was already the "best" even though there was so much more I wanted to do with him.

@Lucius Cypher I know my voice is probably that last anyone wants to hear on this discussion (again) but I think the main problem was that you created a character at the better levels of what was possible in RWBY, not the best or most terrifying but solidly ranked in power level. The rest of us sort of applied basic laws of physics and reality to the RWBYverse and based on a significantly reduced power scale created our own characters. I'm not saying that was bad or even in most cases intentional, just watch one of the RWBY fights and look at the ways, distances and powers they move with. When creating a character most of us forget that at our current training level jumped ten feet into the air would be easy and so forth. So you created a solid mid range character under RWBY's normal power levels, we all created solid mid range characters under the power levels of a general high school animeesque fantasy setting. It's sort of like putting down Yugio cards in a Pokemon card game, one by nature of being simply outclasses the other. On top of that because you'd created Gren under normal RWBY laws there wasn't really a solid way to argue with anything about his design. It's really a question of balancing more than anything else. The real problem is that at this stage there isn't really any concrete way of fixing it that doesn't gut Gren to the point he isn't the same character or require the rest of the group to do some serious reworking (which would very likely result in their characters becoming unrecognizable along the opposite path).

As I'm writing this I'm realizing there wasn't really a solution anywhere in there, more just a summary of the conflict up to this point.


To the real issue that we've sort of skirted away from, the continued existence of Heroes of Beacon. I am still very much interested in this. (@Multi_Media_Man I'll see about getting a post up in the next day or two, so sorry about the long wait, again.) The real problem with the RP is unfortunately in it's design. In order to keep momentum most of the time it requires groups of four or more to be active at the same time. When even one person has something else they must deal with an entire section grinds to a halt.

I don't really have a solution for that. The best thing I can say is that I really enjoy this RP, I love my character and will go along with whatever actions the group wants to take to keep HoB alive. Be it a reboot, recruitment, new GM/CoGMs, whatever. I have my own opinions on some of those until a discussion that gets into specifics starts I think a vaguely aimed rant from me wouldn't be the most helpful of things. Whatever needs to be done to keep our group together I'm willing to try.

Right. Focusing away from my woes, current issues to be addressed.

Frankly, I feel at this point it may be for the best to do away with the team system. While our characters still form with Each other in order to deal with drop outs or death, we need to be able to let our characters work alongside other characters from other teams. That alone will ensure that even if people are missing from the "team", that won't adversely affect something like missions.

More immediately however, the issue is motivation. My big spiel these past few hours basically amounts to a lack of motivation to do anything, for whatever reason. It's boring, nothing is going on, ornsome weird guilt. We don't really know where we're going with any of this anymore. The race was a bust and everyone is only loosely attempting to meet with family. I'm almost certain we've all forgotten about that wrestling match that's suppose to happen.

I guess now we need to come together for a vote or something. Try to either skip to something interesting or maybe just try to figure out what people could do now. As I mentioned before, I could at least have Gren respond to Billion and Forscythe. Just got to find the drive to give Gren life again.

@Lucius Cypher

I liked Gren the moment I read about him.

As a fellow powerhouse character maker, and cyborg enthusiast, I really like your idea of Gren. I actually have leaning toward going down the cyborg route with Ferris. He already has a prosthetic arm and leg and some artifical internal organs. I planned for him to get beat up pretty good several times. Emotional scars to match the physical ones, if I may be poetic for a moment.

That is also one reason I wanted to see Ferris meet up with Gren during the wrestling tournament. I wanted to explore how they may interact with their similar interests.

I'm not entirely sure what transpired in the past about being too powerful, and cyborgs that seems to put a quite a chip on a few shoulders, but I think its fine to have a powerful character. Not something to be self-conscious of. Even if they end up more powerful then average, as long as they a. Are not game-breaking b. Unreasonably so (like they have a good reason for it, a good backstory, and they gain it over a reasonable amount of time) and c. Are fine with the GMs.

I speak from experience because I like to make my characters powerful to explore ideas like power can't solve everything. And that has caused me to come into conflict with some GMs before.

My last bit of thought on getting new and cool gear, think of real life limitations, things like budget, storage, learning and or adjustment periods. Technology limitations, and perhaps govermental limitations. Things might be illegal for the public due to possible safety reasons (think if terrorists got a hold of them). Also, think what would be sacrificed by giving him something. Like mobility, dexterity, and speed for armor. Weight balance and arodynamics for jetpacks.

But, its very likely that what I'm saying is nothing new.

And your woes are just as important as debating how we will continue because it will affect how we as players function as a group from here on out. Its important to settle differences. If not quickly, then resolutely.

But again, newcomer here. What do I know? I'm not tring to reawaken any previous discussions.

@NarayanK

*Raises hand*

I remember!

@Crimson Raven :D

Frankly, I feel at this point it may be for the best to do away with the team system.

Thiiiiiiis. Team <inster here>OD<insert here> didn't actually have that many swaps and even those are killed me every time. That said, the only thing I have to facilitate this in any sensual manner is some sort of apocalyptic event where the school either can not exist in it's current format or at all - whether that's a skip to post vol. 4 or something else.

Also, regarding Hari's disappearance, let's not forget he's affiliated with US military. He may not be able or at liberty to even tell us when, why and where he's leaving. I know he couldn't when they had some exercise, and an actual deployment would be even stricter I think.

I have seen him viewing this topic months after his last post, so is it possible that he simply cannot communicate?

If I recall correctly he got a killer concussion or something, but that's just hearsay.

I know that Hari had both back problems and that he was going back on deployment months ago, so chances are he is busy. I just kinda wish we had some sort of a confirmation since he said he might be going, so I can only guess that's what happened.

Honestly, the idea of disbanding teams doesn't address the underlying issue.

The team structure aggravates it, yes, but not being organized into teams won't change what happens when someone isn't around. No offense to @Kaithas, but there are tons of times that he isn't around. We wait for him if we can, and it's practical, but that doesn't stop anyone else from doing whatever they want.

If someone's inactive and shows no signs of being around, break off the interaction. Jump ahead a little and cover the before stuff if they do get back. There's nothing that means you have to stick with a dead interaction, nor is there any obligation to stick purely within your own team. Luke and Gratia are together all the time, more than either one interacts with their own team, and @Crimmy and @HereComesTheSnow have never been on the same team.

On top of not solving the issue... It kinda kills a big piece of what makes RWBY unique. I know that I wouldn't have half as much fun if BASL weren't BASL.

The underlying issue isn't the teams, it's people not interacting outside of them. Or people failing to break away from interactions that aren't going to actually happen.

Frankly, I feel at this point it may be for the best to do away with the team system.

How about no.

<Snipped quote by Lucius Cypher>

How about no.

Well don't just leave it at that, elaborate. Include your argument.

Krayzikk stole all the good bits but I do have at least one thing to add.

The IC changes needed to do away with the teams would cause their own set of significant problems. People like the basic setting, jumping us forward to the Fall of Beacon or some other catastrophic event is far more likely to kill the game than the team system is.

Well as it is, very few of us have a full team left, and even for those who aren't explicate dead, what are we to do for the missing members? Pretend they don't exist or use them as NPC's? Even for more basic social interactions like what's happening right now, it doesn't change the fact that at some point we'll have to address that we're not working as a full team anymore. Granted it's not as if I have any better ideas either. I just feel that the need to not have to work together just because we're suppose to be a "team" would give our characters better opportunities to work with others (And by extension keep us interested) and/or give us a reason to seek each other out.