Brovo

Cheap Death in Storys?

Magic Magnum said
To be fair, they were rushed by EA.By a whole year from what I recall.Plus they half-made up for it when the free expansion DLC on the ending later.

To be fair, I was cracking a joke. :p

The Name Game

Aw yes, booze.

Cheap Death in Storys?

Dervish said
Spoilers for Mass Effect if you haven't played and intend to ahead:Going back to Mass Effect for a minute, I was just thinking about it, but you're looking at that from a player perspective. Any game that lets you reload can apply to that, but Mass Effect was actually pretty good for character deaths that could have been prevented if you did the right thing, but your team can die if you don't do things right. Like Wrex in ME1, not upgrading the Normandy in ME2 as well as picking the wrong people to do certain duties on the suicide mission, and quite a few variations in ME3 like not being able to talk the Virmire survivor into trusting you about Udina, if Thane died in ME2 than it's Kirrahe who dies in ME3, and if both were dead by ME3, then the salarian Councillor gets assassinated, sabotaging the genophage with Wrex still alive has him confront Shepard, forcing Shepard to kill him. Mordin is almost guaranteed to die in ME3 unless you do some very specific things leading up to it, and so on so forth. Mass Effect kind of handles death with a sudden and rather unpreventable finality if you don't do things the right way well in advanced, and simply loading a save often can't prevent someone's fate from coming to pass, unless you wanted to replay the entire game.

Played it, but yeah, this isn't about the other deaths in ME, this is about bringing someone back from the dead and how that can impact the narrative and, well, the impact of death.

I used ME 2's opening as an example because you have literally no control over whether you live or die, and regardless of the fact that you do actually die, fall into a planetary atmosphere after suffering emergency decompression and presumable splat against the surface of the planet they reincarnate you and the only lasting consequence is a scar on your face that is apparently affected by whether you're a nice guy or a raging dick.

The death had no consequence on the story. Shepard is still alive, Shepard can still do everything he did before, and aside from a cosmetic effect Shepard is otherwise not in any way, shape, or form affected by the experience of spacial decompression, falling into an atmosphere, and hitting a planet from orbit at terminal velocity aside from the occasional "oh yeah I'm not dead guys" moment. Which, while funny, again, holds little consequence and no long term effect.

tl;dr: Mass Effect failed to wield a Jesus Arc properly by ignoring the latter half of it. Kind of like how it ignored having a quality ending, but I digress.

As I said above. Death has tension if actions have consequence: If the character's death and reincarnation causes a long lasting effect on the world in some manner (ex: the main hero sacrificing a village and becoming evil to bring their lover back from the dead) then it had a lasting consequence, not necessarily on the person who was dead, but on the world itself and the people they once knew. :p

The Obsession with High Casual?

Generally speaking, the tl;dr to high casual as a tag.

High casual spawned a long time ago in an old guild far far away because of a schism back between 2007-2008 in the advanced section. You had a bunch of elitist twats and not-so-elitist twats and the elitists often bullied or picked on those whom weren't "at their level" of writing excessive, nonsensical, incoherent ramblings for posts. Eventually they left to start their own site and it failed hilariously, they took most of the elitism with them.

"Most" being the key word. It took another year or two before the poison was really ironed out of the system by the rest of us with common sense simply ignoring the pitiful pleas from others to kick people because they didn't spend fourteen paragraphs describing walking down a hallway. During this time high casual really became a thing as the interim between casual (which was swarmed with people who could barely surmount a paragraph) and those "exiled" from advanced (2+ paragraphs being their average).

Over the last couple of years high casual as a term has mutated into a synonym for quality and effort. The key word here being effort. Advanced requires things, high casual requests things, I suppose, is the main difference in thought between the two. One is inherently softer and makes a person feel more comfortable if they don't reach it, but really, what remaining elitism there is in advanced is mainly self-mocking: Egotistical twats like me tend to make fun of ourselves nowadays.

The reality of the situation now? High casual is a tag that is used to request quality role players. Since every GM in casual wants quality role players, de cream l'crop, the vast majority put it in there whether or not they understand the term or its historical connotations. Simply: High casual used to have a logical place. It no longer does really. Casual requires one paragraph or more, there are no limitations beyond that. You can write a fourteen paragraph post in casual if you want to, nothing is stopping you and unlike in Free, people will probably actually read it and admire you for the effort. Advanced requires two or more paragraphs with a good grip of the English language, though by "good grip" I've found junior high level or greater (basic grammar, intermediate literacy) tends to be passable, with high school levels being the normal level at which people write there.

The jump from casual to advanced is actually quite small now. It's basically one extra foot of water in the pool, though it looks so much scarier, in reality, it's not, really. I role play in both sections.

The real difference isn't particularly in quality nowadays so much as it is simply in style. Casual role plays tend to have a more games-like feel to them, many often incorporate classes and combat roles, or base themselves in action-oriented narratives. Advanced role plays tend to have a more novel-like feel to them, they push away the more gamey-feeling stuff to have larger and more complex plot lines with several cherishing character development and interpersonal relationships--and all the dynamics that come with that--over sheer action. You'll find more mystery plots here, or grand Tolkien-like adventures in which most of the story is not centered around combat, but instead around the evolution of the story and its characters as people and ideologies and nations collide.

The above paragraph is also self-demonstrating: The casual section gets to the point as quickly and concisely as it can. The advanced section likes to be long winded and wordy and artsy with mixed results.

EDIT

And yes. This is a tl;dr of high casual, believe it or not.

101 Stereotypes & Tropes: Characters edition!

Dervish said
That is magical and hilarious. XD Brovo, you should throw "All characters are inevitably sex machines, virginity be damned" on that list.

#34: No matter how inexperienced, all sex is to be described as being perfect. Always.

;)

Kaga said
I can never get enough of these.

Excellent! :3

Legend of Renalta 2 (Dark Fantasy)

@Everyone: I'm delaying writing a post a bit, though I'm sure everyone noticed. The post will go up within the next 24 hours. If you haven't posted by then, you're being left behind.

101 Stereotypes & Tropes: Characters edition!

As on the old RPG I figured to bring this back for the same reasons as I, and others who contributed, did the previous entries: To make you laugh and maybe be a little bit enlightening.

In this case, instead of being about a particular genre, I'm attacking character-based tropes and stereotypes and cliches and etc.

Note: These are not infallible rules even if they reference themselves as rules. There are always exceptions. Always. This is just common stuff.

101S&T

#1: The parent fatality rate in role plays is likely high enough to cause systemic population problems.

#2: Origin stories are either boring or horrifyingly tragic. There's no such thing as a somewhat depressing life.

#3: Speaking of which, when sorrow occurs, expect it to be a catastrophic internally based event that is all consuming of a character's other traits.

#4: "History" will be used interchangeable with "personality". Whether you like it or not.

#5: "Personality" will be mistaken for emotional states, whether you like that or not.

#6: Characters who suddenly gain competency or even mastery over a skill set will reference a point in their history that was nowhere listed in their history.

#7: A sigh must take several seconds of concentrated detail to get just the right tone to indicate the character's suspected irritation. Much like the reader's own irritation.

#8: Characters magically become competent at the age of sixteen. Prior to that it might be unrealistic.

#9: If the parents are still alive, chances are they have extreme issues with the character, taught them everything they knew, or are so completely distant and removed from the character's life, may as well be dead. (Tempest)

#10: All characters are adventurers. The ones that aren't are usually terrible written.

#11: Characters who claim a trait often don't have that trait. Like a wise character is not wise, a charismatic character is not charismatic, and so on.
Addendum: Unless they actually do, in which case, they have so much of that particular trait that they would be clinically dead in the real world. Like enough strength to blow open a steel door. With their face.

#12: Everyone comes from a backwards shittown that nobody has ever heard of. Ever. (Zed)
Addendum: Or they're a long lost uberpowerful chosen one/member of royalty/etc. (Drago)

#13: Everyone is clean, even in settings where this doesn't make any sense.

#14: Also no such thing as diseases, leave alone STD's or STI's. I mean, who the hell could get AIDS in an environment with no birth control anyway?

#15: While on the topic, there's no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy either.

#16: They are from a evil race but are pure hearted as all fuck. (Hellis.)

#17: Speaking of evil, there's no such thing as only kinda selfishly dickish. If you're evil, you kill babies and rape women and destroy homesteads. Stole something once? YOU ARE EVIL. KILL! KILL! KILL!

#18: Morality is typically portrayed from a pro-western/modern world view, even in time periods where this would be completely inane, or universes where this mindset would be completely incomprehensible. Such as Warhammer 40K.

#19: The D&D alignment wheel will also be used as a morality compass to be strictly adhered to, even in situations where this makes no sense.

#20: Racial stereotypes are abundant, even in stories about how racism and racial profiling is wrong, such as drunken dwarves who are excellent smiths, greedy beyond reason humans, evil or hounourable orcs (sometimes both), egotistical elves, and so on.

#21: So are gender-based ones. Staff chicks are still a thing. Efforts to combat this usually take it to an extreme and apply the wrong principle, like putting a woman in power armour and having her reject all feminine qualities for masculine ones: This isn't fixing the problem, this is slapping a pair of tits on a male fantasy. Good job.

#22: The adventuring party requires an obligatory female. (Esper.)

#23: Women shall never be ugly.

#24: ...Or fat.

#25: Characters are either completely incapable of being serious or so grim dark as to have had their capacity for laughter or smiling surgically removed. (Thanks Drago.)

#26: No one ever has a pre-existing handicap unless: 1) they have a mental illness pertaining to their views on reality or general stability... 2) they lost an eye 3) they lost a limb AND it was replaced with a better one. (Tempest)

#27: Speaking of insanity: There is no such thing as a mild disorder. It has to be all consuming of a character's personality just like sorrow is. Unless it's depression. Then it is sorrow. Endless sorrow. For no reason.

#28: Insanity will also be used as a scapegoat for random, destructive behaviour, even if it wouldn't fit the profile of the disorder...

#29: ...And atop all of this, the mentally unstable are usually portrayed as incompetent at best, or inhumane monsters at worst.

#30: If there is male and female duo. The female is usually the magic user. If they are both magic users she is usually the healer. (Esper)

#31: Love is often treated as being the most sacred power in the universe, despite it simply being another facet of a healthy person's behaviour towards other people.

#32: Love is all consuming and overriding of a character's more logical or sensible nature: To be incapable of thinking of other things is unhealthy at best...

#33: A romance arc is usually wrapped up within a day in the universe. Maybe a week at the most.

#34: No matter how inexperienced, all sex is to be described as being perfect. Always.

#35: Half-bloods will never have any genetically related issues. A half-elf and half-human for example is always without a single potential biological problem as the result of two different species going at it.

#36: Children are either hellspawn or little angels. There is no middle ground on this.

#37: Most role plays will never actually feature children. New characters simply pop out of holes in the ground. This is especially poignant for a fantasy RP where players walk through towns of adults... And only adults.

#38: All legal ages now are the same as in the past or in the future. After all, medieval peasants totally waited until they were eighteen to get married and have kids. Totally. Mmhmm.

#39: Mages are either miracle genius children or bumbling old men. Technicians usually also follow under this trait.

#40: Characters always seem to know the right answers for any problems. There is never any problem they don't know how to resolve inherently, or god forbid incorrectly.

#41: A character's religion is usually shared auspiciously with their author.

#42: Anime pictures and oriental names or weapons being used on characters that are not in any way, shape, or form, oriental.

#43: There is no such thing as a power curve. Characters either never grow in strength or grow whenever they feel it convenient.

#44: Loners nearly always have a tragic past and nearly always gravitate towards a romantic relationship with the nearest person of the opposite (or sometimes same) gender whom pays them any sympathies.

#45: Roles often determine personality traits: Warriors are aggressive and stubborn, mages are intellectuals, thieves are cunning, rogues are wily, technicians are ingenuitive, godmoders are mary sues...

#46: Mary Sues will always be demonized as being the utmost of all evils and being flawless, despite the fact that their main characteristic of believing they're own flawlessness is narcissistic and inherently flawed...

#47: If a character has banged a hot lady/man, she or he will bang more then 1 within the near future. (Hellis)

#48: FxF, MxM, FxM, or otherwise sexually-based determinations for characters to have in a future role play increase the chances of explicit sexual content to occur in the IC. If anything along the lines of submissives and dominants are mentioned, your best option is to run away before you get banned.

#49: Speaking of retreat, this will never happen. Nobody runs away from a fight unless the entire point of the role play is to constantly run away.

#50: Most often characters in danger aren't. Damn you plot armour! Damn you to hell!

#51: The more war-based experience your character has, the more likely they will die horrible as an example to all the others about how horrible the situation has become.

#52: Characters never suffer from crippling levels of panic or fear. They could be a peasant wielding a pick axe or a fresh recruit for a war, but by god if they aren't some of the damned bravest red shirts ever to grace the field.

#53: ...Characters with names have a much greater chance of survival.

#54: ... Unless their name is Jimmy.

#55: Names often reflect the nature of a character. The softer the name, the kinder they are. The more serpentine or coarse the name, the rougher they are. After all, when was the last time Jimmy bullied Butch?

#56: There's no such thing as characters over 40 unless their only remarkable trait is to be that "one old guy" who constantly remarks about "being too old for this shit".

#57: If a character has a top secret code, the big bads will for some reason either not know or know and not unleash their biggest possible arsenal to defeat them.

#58: Characters often don't have motivations that actually tie into the plot in any way.

#59: The most powerful evil is always depicted as being present, locked away, or hidden in conspicuous places. (Asuras)

#60: Characters, if they are human, will nine times out of ten reflect the racial heritage of their authors, even if they're supposed to come from a foreign culture...

#61: "Unique" will often be used interchangeable with "original" when describing a character.

#62: Player character aliens are nearly always humanoid. Convenient!

#63: The more light-based or healing-based the magic is, the more likely the character is to be religiously-inclined.

#64: Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Her beautiful, sharp, piercing eyes..."

#65: The more strength a character has, the bigger their weapon will be.

#66: The smaller a character is, the more likely they'll rely on stealth or dexterity.

#67: ...Stealth will be handled about as well as attempting to backstab someone in broad daylight in a crowd on a podium.

#68: Despite how mechanically advanced something might be, a character will instantly understand it, or at least crudely decipher it to the point of being able to run it. Even if it would normally take years of training or is completely foreign/alien in design.

#69: All romance will culminate in sex as the ultimate expression of love, even though it isn't. Thanks Bioware!

#70: Characters who murdered their own families not only won't feel regret over it, but will generally have a completely valid excuse for why it happened, which will never come up again.
Addendum: Bonus points on the above if those parents were either maniacally abusive or so absolutely innocent as to make Jesus Christ weep with envy.

#71: If any family member hasn't been genocidally murdered off one way or another, they still won't become adventurers themselves. Only the character showed this level of initiative. Out of their entire family.

#72: Bisexual women will be far more common than bisexual men... I wonder why...

#73: The edgier the backstory, the sharper the sword. (Herzi)

#74: Characters who have riches either completely forget that they do or are conveniently separated from them.

#75: Wolverine healing powers come standard for all characters.

#76: Wounds taken will never be truly lethal wounds unless a healer is nearby who can fix that riiiight up!
Addendum: Bonus points if severe or debilitating wounds only hit limbs.

#77: Characters using melee weapons against characters who use ranged weapons across a large, open field, and who think this is a good idea...

#78: Healers never lack the resources they need to heal wounds in question. Especially pertinent if the healing is not magical in nature.

#79: Theme songs used for characters will rarely actually reflect the character in question except in some superficial manner.
Addendum: Besides, a three minute song that repeats itself three or four times should not be capable of summarizing an entire person.

#80: Characters who do sing, dance, or play instruments, are masters of their craft. Never is there just some hobbyist whose voice still cracks or who still plays the occasional wrong note.

#81: Evil characters who join a good party usually don't mesh well.
Addendum: Especially silly if the evil character in question is on a quest to do an otherwise noble deed, like rescue a princess.

#82: Characters are only rarely in positions of actual power and command over others (ex: captain) and when they are they usually don't ever think to wield that power.

#83: Admirals, generals, political savants and more are all happy to go on adventures and never have responsibilities at home that might prevent such a thing.

#84: Pets don't have minds of their own, they always obey their masters. If they don't, they immediately turn cowardly or genocidal.

#85: No character joins the campaign with an existing romantic relationship. "Sorry babe, I've gotta play hero... Cya~" (Tempest)

#86: NPC's who remark about how great their lives are going to be when they get home or when the war is over are going to die horrible, don't get attached to them-- oh, there goes Jimmy.

#87: Characters whom have a very noticeable weakness in their group (such as the lack of a warrior in a standard fantasy party) never think to just go to the local tavern and hire a mercenary.

#88: Characters all have the same level of education as their authors do, even in settings where they should have more or less.

#89: Characters of opposite genders who have a rivalry of some kind? You bet there are sexual tensions there. How could there not be?

#90: Pets, save for the purposes of scenes or being instructed to do something reside in hammer space. They're never truly in harm's way either. (Tempest)

#91: Characters go to the Leeroy Jenkins school of training and never think to set up ambushes or create formations and strategy.

#92: The party will never end up in a situation where they must sacrifice anything that would truly pain them.

#93: A character cannot lose a battle and simply be captured and and sold back. No if they are captured they will be tortured. Horrible.

#94: Tortured characters never have any scars or skin imperfections that do not in some way make them "more badass" or otherwise service to gratify their looks.

#95: Most role play characters cannot pass the SELF test: Who am I, what do I want, why am I here, how will I move on?

#96: Magic used by characters will never be used in subtle ways. The technological version of magic in science fiction has this same principle applied.

#97: Characters are either complete morons or absolute masters at the art of survivalism, which always includes tracking, hunting, cooking, skinning, sewing wounds or clothing or capes, knowing what is poisonous at a glance...

#98: Nobody seems to realize the irony of the Drow being evil black people and the High Elves being good white blonde haired blue eyed people and will play this trope straight as an arrow.

#99: Immortal characters will never "know" more about the world and its history and so on as any regular character. (ex: A 500 year old elf can only know as much as the 23 year old human.)

#100: Previous criminal associations will never bite a character in the ass later on.

#101: Never, ever, will a character ever conceive of the idea of the GM PC leading everyone into a trap, and will follow the GM PC blindly. Bonus points if they do the same for one or more other party members, even MORE bonus points if the only person they trust in the entire party is also the one they fell in love with at first sight.

Thank you for reading and feel free to leave a comment with even more stuff you've noticed about characters! Or just to say that this was funny... Or that you hate it.

Contests: It's like an interest check

WOTM isn't dead. We'll be back. We just need a little more time. ;)

Insecurity In One's Own Writing

Take a cue from university-level writing courses on this. Write a first version... Then walk away from it. Don't come back until you've thoroughly cleansed yourself of that particular train of thought. Return. Reread. Repair. Repeat until satisfied.

In a role play though you generally don't have that kind of luxury unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands. So I'd recommend just writing your first post, getting it out there, then going back a couple days later to read it over again and compare it to the other posts. Could you make it through your own post? No? Why not? Write down why not. Practice these things consciously in your next post. Reread, repair in future posts, recycle, repeat until satisfied. If there are methods of writing or certain phrases or words others use which you like a lot, maybe because it just sounds good or maybe because it's clever to you, reuse it. Repeat it. Learn where it fits and where it doesn't and keep doing it until it sticks in your mind as a subconsciously drawn from term. My favourite word of the moment is "ferreting", I'm using it everywhere.

The original Legend of Renalta, which lasted four years, went through six or seven different versions before I finally found one that stuck through constant trial and error. Legend of Renalta 2, currently on this site, had its own stat system undergo four complete rewrites before I found one I was satisfied with. I wrote roughly six hundred traits and only used 1/6th of those in the final version.

tl;dr: You will write a lot of garbage before you write things you like, and even then, what you like, another might not. So the only yardstick to measure yourself by is your own expectations. Don't set it too far out of your own bounds but always seek to improve yourself through trial and error, learning from your mistakes... And don't be afraid to make them. You will never learn unless you try. If you never learn you will never improve. If you never improve, well... Then you'll just be stuck in that rut forever.

Opinions on: Smacking; Commercial Surrogacy.

Halo said
I'm curious about general opinions on two issues:
1. Smacking children (fairly self-explanatory.)
2. Fertility tourism (.)

I'm participating in debates about these two topics, and have been doing some background reading. I've formulated some of my own ideas on them, and I'm curious to see how others feel about them.

Okay.

1) Yes, when other methods are exhausted and the thing that needs to be taught is a matter of survival. (Basically: Case by case basis. Equal force for equal necessity.)

2) I have little in the way of knowledge on this subject but would initially feel caution would be in order. Not necessarily outright make it illegal, but take it warily.