Dervish

Mass Effect: Wanted

Cpt Toellner said
First IC post in two years.

Achievement Unlocked? :D

I suppose I should feel flattered it's in my game. Good to have you along, buddy!

Character Sheet vs. Non-Bio

With me, sheets are king.

As mentioned, it's a very good litmus test in determining somebody's writing capability as well as how well they understand the setting, as well as making sure that their character is appropriate for the roleplay, be it their history, race, class, whatever. It also, as mentioned by other posters, ensures that there's consistency. I can't count how many times I've had to go back to reference my character sheet to make sure I kept facts straight. It doesn't matter how good your memory is, if it's an obscure thing you write in a single sentence six months ago chances are the details are foggy.

By having a sheet, you also keep people from justifying having powers/ weapons/ connections or whatever that they failed to mention beforehand that makes the game rather unfair. I can't count how many times I've seen games where basically anyone who submitted a sheet was accepted that somebody would pull something in game that caused a rather lengthy argument, which does not bode well for a game's health. If you're a GM, asking for a good sheet is basically like asking for a resume. You want to find out if somebody's a good fit for your game, and it's one of the best ways to do it. If you just let anybody in the door, you have no idea what you're about to encounter or deal with. If you're lucky, it's somebody who understands what the game's about and doesn't exploit the lack of standards. But chances are, you'll have one or two people who will need to be dealt with, sooner or later.

Accents In Roleplays.

If it works for the character, sure. It's boring to think everyone sounds exactly the same.

Right now, one of my main characters has a pseudo British accent that's a bit different from anything on Earth on account of it being a regional dialect of a planetary colony, and I have an NPC in another game that a fantasy pseudo-British accent on a much more crude and improper way, chiefly substituting my with me in sentences, among other things.

Most of my characters have a distinguishable accent, but it's usually not reflected in their dialog past the occasional slang term, but that's more cultural.

Mass Effect: Wanted

Alrighty, just need Voltaire, Toellner, and Vivid to post and I'll get the next post up afterwards! So far, excellent group of writers we have here.

Seeing as Vivid hasn't been online for 4 days, I'll probably just carry on with Toellner and Voltaire posting and say Saseen was at the meeting regardless. No sense in holding a game up unless we absolutely have to.

Drawing Spam Members as Cats

Raxacoricofallapatorius said
Don't say I never did anything for you

It's Lavar Burton cat!

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

Oh noes. D: That's not good!

Mass Effect: Wanted

Sixsmith said
I am mildly concerned about my well being, should I be?Anyway, I'll try and get a post up tonight. I fixed the issue with Loral infecting half his crew to make it fit better with his personality. And to answer the question 'bout Loral keeping the slaves from killing the slavers, it was purely because he didn't want evidence that the ship was taken by extreme force and that people died because of it. As long as there was no direct link to Loral and the deaths of a bunch of slavers, then he was fine with killing them afterwards. Well, maybe not outright, but... using them as a distraction, regardless of whether or not they got killed. I think jamming the guns was more out of a moral dilemma in regards to harming the colonists who tried to help, but also because he can be a vindictive sonofabitch.I'm reading through all the posts (amazing writing from everyone, btw; I hope my intro's up to snuff!) and I'll try and get my post up tonight, as well.

Suits me! :D

Also, from your last (most excellent) post, you seem to have gotten the impression that everyone is stuffing into a small hotel room. In a lot of hotels, they have conference halls they rent out that are usually on the main floor or its own wing. It's big enough for a wedding reception, so fear not; we're not all piling on the beds like the world's most uncomfortable slumber party. :D

The Elder Scrolls: Vengeance of the Deep

Hegathe Guard Barracks

Within the outer walls of the compound, Blade was confronted with a large two story structure. To his immediate right to the East, a large training courtyard with archery target, training dummies, and an agility course sat unused on account the majority of the guards being deployed to quell the current uprising. Across from the building was a shady garden with flowering shrubs, an aquifer-fed fountain (which also provided fresh water to the barracks), and a covered patio with various floor cushions and short tables with various dining implements still across the surfaces; the guards clearly left in a hurry.

The structure’s lower floor contained the common area for the guards that had a direct exit to the South, as well as a separate sleeping area branching off to the West and a locked armoury to the North. To the East, the room gave way to a long corridor with six detaining cells, three on either side, meant for short overnight stays until transport could be arranged to take the prisoners to court to stand trial or the rowdy drunks had a chance to sleep off their stupor. Passed that was a reception area with an adjoining interrogation room. The entrance here is to the East. There is a storage cellar beneath the building, accessible from the outside to the North, but it is secured with a heavy iron bar and padlock. All of the windows on the bottom floor are protected by shutters and iron bars.

The building’s second floor, accessed by a locked staircase from the reception area, leads to the quarters of the Guard Captain’s suite, which encompasses half of the upper floor and is dominated by an open floor plan and is surrounded by a second story balcony. The man lives opulently, but securely.

The unmistakable sounds of conflict rang through the air, catching the attention of the bored guard sitting at the reception desk. He grabbed a mace from the floor beside him, a sense of dread and unease filling his heart. Normally, there were at least fifteen guards in the barracks at any given time, often more. Now there were but seven, himself included, plus Captain Doshin’s two elite bodyguards. The rest had departed under the Captain’s orders to bring about order before the citizens foolishly destroyed large sections of the city and killed someone. The receptionist hurried to a window and was greeted by the sight of two of his coworkers dead by the gate. He covered his mouth in shock, stepping back. Like most Redguard, he was a trained warrior, but not a very practiced one. Not two hours ago, he had spoken to both of those men and made plans to meet up in the park in the afternoon outside of the Ebonarm mosque with their children, something that was an impossibility given the sudden riots and the fact that both men were dead, slain by an unknown assailant at the gates.

This wasn’t the work of rioters, he was certain. There was definitely brutal purpose behind it, and now the killer was loose within the compound. Seeing as the front door was not opened, it could only mean he entered somewhere else. The receptionist hurried to lock the doors to the area and hurried upstairs to the Captain’s suite, securing the doors behind him as he went.
_ _ _ _ _

Three of the off duty guards in the common area sat at a table playing cards when the barracks door opened, initially glancing over curiously to see if it was their fellow guards returning with news of the riot. To their surprise, it wasn’t one of theirs.

They sprung to their feet, already in armour as they were on stand-by and gathered their weapons as the argonian approached. Two of the guards had small bucklers on their off-arm with one-handed swords and the third carried a glaive. While they scrambled to prepare, it took them very little time to adopt battle-ready positions. These were not soft, inexperienced men.

The one with the glaive moved to a more open area where he could freely swing his weapon or thrust while the two buckler-wielding guards spread out, advancing on the bloodied argonian from wide angles. He would need to be quick and rather dexterous to fend off attacks from both of them. The men held their bucklers out front, their blades resting on the sides with the points protruding past them. They waited for the argonian to make his first move, and likely his last. Choosing one over the other left him exposed.
_ _ _ _ _

“Guards! Help!” An old man cried, panting as if he had been running for several minutes. The guard sergeant, a hard looking woman and one of the few not wearing a helm, turned to look to see what the matter was. Her men had subdued several of the rioters, and killed those who resisted. The idiots did not seem to understand the meaning of martial law.

“Speak, citizen.” She commanded, her voice one of authority but professionalism. She did not berate the old man for taking her attentions from what was clearly more than a pressing matter.

“The guardhouse… a man… an argonian murdered the guards stationed at the gates! I think he went inside, but it was so…” he managed to get out between ragged breaths.
The sergeant wasted no time. “Ali! I need six men. The barracks are under attack.” She turned to the citizen. “You have our thanks. Come by the barracks later and you shall receive a small tribute. But for now, get off the streets before you get caught up in all this.”

Very punctually, six guards approached, looking ready for a fight… for revenge. All one had to do to provoke the wrath of every guard in the city was to kill one of their own. She nodded at the gathered guards. “Double time, back to the barracks. We have an assassin to deal with. Move!” she barked, leading her men through the streets at a quick jog, a normally tiring exercise in the sweltering heat. However, discomfort could wait.

The argonian would die.

Blade has approximately 15 minutes before reinforcements show up.

The reinforcements drawn from the riot-quelling guards has weakened their force, although many of the rioters are quelled.

Word of the murders of the guards at both the prison and the barracks has drawn unwanted attention from the populace and the city’s forces. It has boosted the morale of the uprising and its supporters with the consequence of the uprising losing some of its reputation from the neutral population.

Player characters allowed to tell the story versus only GM is allowed to tell the story

Typically in my games, I keep things structured so that I'm the one primarily introducing story elements, setting the scene, and controlling the actions and dialog of major NPCs. However, I like my players to have a fair deal of freedom so I tend to encourage them to make up and interact with minor inconsequential NPCs (as in, they can't overly affect the plot) and largely deal with their own fight scenes, unless it's against a major character. If I trust a player enough and know they're a good roleplayer who is more interested in telling a story rather than treating it like a game to win, then I even let them have more agency in how they do things and even deciding how a scene plays out. For instance, a player in one of my games killed a named NPC that I had created without consulting me about what he was hoping to do (and usually if somebody has story-related ideas they want to try, I just ask they run it by me first to make sure it's okay) and it was a fantastic and pretty chilling post that did a lot for demonstrating his character's development. I trust his judgement and ability as a player because I've known him for two years and he's always been very reliable. I like to get to that stage with players where they can do things that contribute to the story without me needing to control everything. I rather just tell the story with everyone else and kick things into motion when they need to.

I find it's usually detrimental to a game to add too many tabletop/ video game elements to it unless it's specifically a tabletop game. If people are more worried about stats or their equipment and being able to win, for a lack of a better term, you get really inconsistent writing and people who are afraid to take chances. If you have a character that's shooting at an enemy, I should be able to trust you to know if your character was capable of hitting the enemy or if the enemy would have logically made it to cover. The less I have to worry about micromanaging little systems and every tiny action that happens, the more I can focus on telling a story that the players enjoy and keep it moving at a pretty acceptable pace.

If you get bogged down in the small details and I as a GM have to rule on every action taken, then it takes FOREVER to get through a simple scene and players lose interest. Let's go back to our shootout example from the last paragraph, imagine you have say 5 players in this fight and a bunch of NPCs. Now imagine every time a player describes themselves as doing an action and the GM had to rule on whether or not it worked and write the reactions of each NPC, a gunfight that would have taken like two minutes in real time ends up taking 20 posts to get through and a half a month (or more). Doing things like that is counter-productive and kind of insulting to players, and I am sure it's a huge reason why a lot of games end up failing. If people don't feel invested in the story and are being babysat, they're not going to stick around.

In the hypothetical action scene I set up, it's much better to let players decide if their actions worked or not and you as a GM react with any remaining NPCs that aren't addressed. The only time you should have to step in in this situation is if you think a player's being rather unfair and handling things in an unbelievable manner (such as killing 7 enemies while running around in the open, shooting from the hip and having them piss themselves at his bravado or something without any consequence) or if you believe something is amiss that should be changed, like let's say one of the bad guys throws a grenade, and player defeats the grenade by throwing a backpack over it, believing that it would absorb the denotation without hurting anyone. You explain in the OOC that the grenade would tear through the backpack and the shrapnel would kill anyone within 25 feet, the player edits and carries on. The player didn't know how powerful a grenade actually was, having been raised on Call of Duty logic, and now knows that he needs to find a better solution to dealing with the grenade. While some GMs (Hi Brovo!) are ruthless and would totally punish the player for making a stupid mistake by having Private Ignorance totally get pulped by the detonation in a subsequent post because that's how they like to run their games (and there's certainly a great appeal to them. :D Best reads ever.), a fair deal of GMs probably would rather point out to an otherwise solid player about a potentially fatal mistake because they tend to run their stories more along the lines of a novel where if player deaths happen, it's usually story-related and not an instance of shit luck. It's an exaggerated example, but it should kind of give you an idea of where a GM needs to step in to deal with the details.

Ultimately, how someone GMs is up to them and their own style, be it a micromanager or a devil-may-care attitude, a ruthless rogue-like facilitator of death verses cultivating long-term character arcs. Just keep in mind the more you try to control every aspect of a game, the sooner it's going to unravel.

Mass Effect: Wanted

Hank said
I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts so far. Looks like an interesting band of characters! Let's hope we all get along.

Who are you and what have you done with Hank? Haha.

Glad you're enjoying it! So far everyone's a fantastic bunch of writers. We keep at this pace and we'll be through introductions in no time!