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In 『BLANK PAGE』 Manga Slice of Life RP → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
Discord Link


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Premise  
Premise

You ever meet anyone who’s never read a copy of Shonen Spirit? It might aimed at hyperactive kids but there’s a reason it’s the country’s most popular manga anthology; go out on the street and you can see housewives picking up an issue on a trip to a convenience store or salarymen on the subway reading one they’ve hidden underneath pages from a financial newspaper. Even if you don’t read it you can’t escape the franchises that were born from it, they’ve been made into anime, toys, merchandise, games, stage plays, even theme parks. That’s the way it’s been for decades now and for most people under fifty, manga from Shonen Spirit isn’t just part of pop culture, it’s part of their childhood, tied to nostalgic memories. It’s gone international, too; thanks to international licensing people all around the world from the Americas to Europe have come to know and love series from Shonen Spirit, to the point that creators from all over the world have dreams of joining the team at the magazine.

The public laps up the drama within the pages of Shonen Spirit, but few know about the drama that happens behind the scenes. Even during it’s best years the people behind it could only be described as eccentric and poorly organized, now things are even stranger. Sales have been dropping after their most popular title just ended it’s long run, and pressure from the corporate leadership is not letting up. The magazine is hungry for new talent, eager to see if anyone can meet their high expectations. One thing that is still true is how the staff get along. Shonen Spirit and the other manga periodicals published under it’s umbrella not a place of bland corporate dogma, it operates like a family, a big, screwed-up family, but a family nonetheless. From the artists to editors to the marketers to the accountants, they’re all along for the ride, wherever it may go.



A Brief History Lesson

Shonen Spirit is going through an interesting time these days. Circulation peaked in the early 90s, and while that golden era ended, it left the magazine on solid ground. They didn't have the string of hits that they had from the 90s, the days when every kid was buying an issue on the way to school, but they did have one monster, one manga that became a pop culture phenomenon. Martial Journey lasted for 22 years and broke sales record after sales record, carrying the magazine even when other series failed to get the same momentum. The finale was the highest selling issue in the fifty year history of Shonen Spirit. The only problem is what is finding a path for the magazine in a post-Martial Journey world. There have been sales slumps before, like the infamously bad period in the 70s, but times are different. Shonen Spirit was started by a small, family run, publishing company called Torishima Publications, and they didn't care much about how much money their manga magazines made as long as it was more than they cost to run. In the 90s Torishima got bought by a electronics company that went on a buying spree, and just a few years ago that electronics company was absorbed by AmertiTel, a giant multinational media telecom conglomerate, always on the hunt for new pieces to add to it's empire. There's been little change to how the place is run at the daily level, but every quarter new financial goals come, and the feeling is sinking in that any freedom the management has now is conditioned on meeting these strict goals.

The heart of Shonen Spirit is an office building deep in the Chuo ward of Tokyo. It houses the offices of Shonen Spirit and two other manga publications under the same umbrella. Shojo Weekly targets a different audience than Shonen Spirit, and has never enjoyed the same level of success, struggling to maintain the third place position among Shojo magazines. It's showing some growth lately as they've done strong on the digital end and international licensing, outpaces larger rivals in those area even if print circulation isn't as impressive. The other magazine is weirder than it's siblings. Monthly Comic Ace came about when several floundering magazines aimed at adult men and women were combined into one umbrella. Despite the word monthly in the title, it actually comes out every week, but the manga in it are still on a monthly schedule. The series in it rotate out depending on which week of the month it is, it remains to be seen if this experiment will hurt or help reader retention. The office itself has space for permanent staff, as well as open desks for occasional visitors, like artists that want to do some work outside the house. The employees work hard to put out a good product, you can see people in the office at all hours. Everyone has a different view on what it takes to succeed, what kind of character you need to make great art, but there's one thing everyone at Shonen Spirit can a appreciate, and that is determination.

Orientation









OOC

Rules
1. Be kind to everyone. If you have a dispute, work it out in a civil way.
2. Keep in mind the slice of life feel. There'll comedic antics but this is still supposed to be the real world, and make characters that fit with that
3. Be part of a group. Try to work with people to make the RP happen, give people the opportunity to decide where the plot goes. Also, if you end up leaving the RP, it's all fine, just let us know if you can.

Character sheet format is on the Character tab
In 『BLANK PAGE』 Manga Magazine Slice of Life → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Interest Checks
@Fiber How is the ooc coming along?


Thank you for the continued interest! Most of the OOC is done, final edits should be coming soon, so keep watching this thread. I should have it posted this week.
In 『BLANK PAGE』 Manga Magazine Slice of Life → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Interest Checks
Thank you guys for the interest! I'll be working on an OOC over the next few days.
In 『BLANK PAGE』 Manga Magazine Slice of Life → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Interest Checks

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Premise  
Premise

You ever meet anyone who’s never read a copy of Shonen Spirit? It might aimed at hyperactive kids but there’s a reason it’s the country’s most popular manga anthology; go out on the street and you can see housewives picking up an issue on a trip to a convenience store or salarymen on the subway reading one they’ve hidden underneath pages from a financial newspaper. Even if you don’t read it you can’t escape the franchises that were born from it, they’ve been made into anime, toys, merchandise, games, stage plays, even theme parks. That’s the way it’s been for decades now and for most people under fifty, manga from Shonen Spirit isn’t just part of pop culture, it’s part of their childhood, tied to nostalgic memories. It’s gone international, too; thanks to international licensing people all around the world from the Americas to Europe have come to know and love series from Shonen Spirit, to the point that creators from all over the world have dreams of joining the team at the magazine.

The public laps up the drama within the pages of Shonen Spirit, but few know about the drama that happens behind the scenes. Even during it’s best years the people behind it could only be described as eccentric and poorly organized, now things are even stranger. Sales have been dropping after their most popular title just ended it’s long run, and pressure from the corporate leadership is not letting up. The magazine is hungry for new talent, eager to see if anyone can meet their high expectations. One thing that is still true is how the staff get along. Shonen Spirit and the other manga periodicals published under it’s umbrella not a place of bland corporate dogma, it operates like a family, a big, screwed-up family, but a family nonetheless. From the artists to editors to the marketers to the accountants, they’re all along for the ride, wherever it may go.

OOC Information


The concept for this is a slice of life RP about a manga magazine. It’ll focus more on character interaction and hijinks, any plot stuff is just there in case people are looking for some additional inspiration. I’m hoping for a variety of characters, there’s a lot of potential roles at the magazine, related periodicals, and characters who are in that circle. It’s going to be set in Japan but characters from any country are welcome, the magazine’s parent company is a multinational conglomerate. If this gets some interest I’ll make an OOC for this RP.
In The Worst Writing Advice → 4 yrs ago Forum: Roleplaying Discussion


I’m going to say that my least favorite writing advice is anything that falls into the category of an absolute rule that is given without an explanation. The worst of this usually comes from people trying to give advice for business or academic writing, whether it’s the omnipresent “NEVER USE PASSIVE VOICE” or the comical, crackpot theories of the E-Prime crowd. I will defend the value of rules in writing, but in writing rules are things to notice, ways a writer can train themselves to be more aware. They aren’t any good on their own without an intention behind them; writing can serve so many different functions no rule could apply to every single piece of prose. What is universally valuable to a writer is a well-honed intuition, to think deeply about writing and care about the even the smallest aspects of it; through that the writer gains more tools for whatever goal they choose.

To illustrate a frequent rule and try to give it context, I’ll talk about using said to tag dialog. The use of said is an example of a deliberate choice which is not flashy but is respected even among the most highbrow literary circles today. If someone went to Iowa Writer’s Workshop, the closest thing American Literature has to a factory for acclaimed authors, and submitted a story that was otherwise conventional but avoided using said, I guarantee that the instructor and fellow writers would look at them like they had three heads. Said is a word that is so common even in literary fiction because its ubiquity makes it invisible, it lets readers focus on the words around it. The more you move away from said the more you break the flow, and while some avant-garde writers like Donald Barthelme make stories that are intentionally difficult to parse, the audience for that kind of fiction is limited, even in MFA programs. More importantly, it makes it difficult to focus on other aspects of the prose. Like everything, this used to be different; in earlier times avoiding said became something that writers took to comical lengths, with JI Rodale even publishing “The Said Book”, listing words that worked as alternative ways of tagging dialog. There’s a reason “The Said Book” is now only mentioned as a punchline.

A second line of thought that I dislike is the idea that taking writing quality seriously is something only reserved for some ivory tower elite. It’s even worse when people hold up examples of great writers with simple styles as proof of this rule, reasoning that because George Orwell wrote sentences that were clear and readable he must’ve chosen a path far removed from dense writers like Tolstoy or experimenters like Samuel Beckett. Orwell was a man who took his craft seriously. He wrote an essay about why he wrote, the first sentence of which reads “From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. “ He talked at length about the conscious choices he made when writing, most famously in Politics and the English Language, but the concern he has over language and its impact on the reader’s minds in constant, you can see it in 1984 when that work talks about Newspeak and its role in enforcing tyranny. Orwell would write for three hours every night even when he held a full-time job, revised drafts to obsessive degree, and kept everything close to his chest until he had gone over it many, many times. Even when he was starting out and writing unremarkable poetry, he had the same seriousness to his process. I’m not advising everyone copy him (I wouldn’t want anyone else dying at the age of 46), but to suggest he wasn’t someone who looked at writing as a serious art form is absolutely false. Hemingway, the only writer of the 20th century more famous for a sparse style of prose than Orwell, had a famous quote about why he wrote the way he did, said in response to William Faulkner’s claim that he lacked courage because he had “never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary.” Hemingway said

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use. “

Lastly, I’d like to talk about the role of editors and their influence on the writing process. Editors aren’t schoolteachers or parole officers, assigned to writers to correct bad habits and fashion them into a more respectable person. They are intermediaries, chosen for their discernment and to act as a gatekeeper before a wider release. Editors are chosen either by the writer or by the publisher, and in each case their employer has placed an immense amount of trust in them, often chosen them specifically because they know that editor can see exactly what the publisher or the writer is aiming to achieve. Most often serious, irreconcilable disagreements between the writer and the editor are a case of bad match; either between the editor and the writer or the writer and the rest of the publisher’s output. The solution to that isn’t to declare one party right or wrong, it’s to try and see if both can find better matches elsewhere. Rewrites and corrections can be a powerful thing when people actively seek them out; Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver’s editor, famously edited his stories so heavily that Carver’s signature style owes almost as much to him as it does to Carver. If a writer’s intentions aren’t aligned with an editor's, the whole process becomes awkward. If JD Salinger came back from the dead and rewrote something I'd written I would be impressed, and the end result would doubtlessly be better than my original, but ultimately I would be left feeling unsatisfied, because I don't want to write like JD Salinger (Borges is welcome any time though).

The subject of feedback has deep links with the practice of editing. Feedback is not the same thing as soliciting suggested changes. At its core, it is giving them more data, more context, and more insight from a source other than their own perspective. Think of it like a pilot in airplane high above the clouds on a dark night. They can’t get much from their eyes, but thanks to instruments like the altimeter, the airspeed gauge, and navigational aids, they can get where they are going safely. Just like the pilot, the writer decides what to adjust, checks in again, and through that process maintains their course. Modern planes have autopilot systems, that will not only gather feedback but actually complete some of the work for them, but engaging or disengaging them is a conscious decision of the pilot. When we offer feedback we must always respect the role of giving information, and be aware of when the writer wants to solve a problem themselves and when they want to see the specific solutions others have in mind. As Ursula LeGuin said:

“Even if you’re sure you see just how it ought to be changed, this story belongs to its author, not to you”

Some of the most important feedback an author can get is about the broad strokes of a work. We can obsess over individual sentences or paragraphs, but it’s always in pursuit of a greater goal, of triggering some emotion or conveying some theme. That is the kind of thing that benefits a lot from hearing other voices. Not to get into epistemology, but we’re all flawed human beings, one thing we're very good at it is providing subjective experiences and one thing we're pretty bad at providing an objective point of view. Even when we try, we'll get far more of the first than of the second.
In Our Final Nights: A World of Darkness Roleplay → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay
@Ruby and @Tanderbolt

North of Vernon and south of Interstate 10 was an area in a state of transition. There were warehouses and freight rail by the river that called back to the old days of heavy industry, but mixed among them was a growing mass of more artistic venues, exercises in creative reuse of old spaces. It was a little disappointing in Grace's mind, automation and globalization had reduced the need for that heavy infrastructure, but there was a distinct lack of gratitude for it from what she saw. Instead of trying to be more productive and make bolder discoveries than the last generation, mankind was driving itself to distraction. It was deserted at this time of night, even what productive industry was left remained idle, and without any real residential areas to speak of, the streets were eerily quiet.

She sat in her Tesla as the autopilot drove it around a semi-random path consisting of blocks near but not adjacent to her actual target. A so-called Hackerspace in a converted loft, one that they had flagged as the recipient of interesting traffic. Inquiry into it's finances and ownership revealed a level of opaqueness that removed the possibility of it being used for innocent purposes. Once the FBI had that awful data breach (caused, as always, by human error) and the traffic pattern analysis results came back, this shot up to the very top of the list of places to be investigated. The first stage was typical, a disposable agent in the guise of a cable repairman would enter the premises. Less typical was Grace's presence, using the time to detect signals that less enlightened might miss, and setting up the kinds of surveillance apparatus that required deep knowledge of forbidden hypertechnology. It was boring work, just circling while watching the agent on one screen and a massive stream of data on the other, but at least the rest of the comms were quiet for once.

Eva Mendoza sat in the back of the bar; black denim jacket, pastel pink CALVIN KLEIN teeshirt that clung to her body tight enough to reveal the outline of a black lace bra in vague detail, the jeans she wore were light blue with holes ripped in the left thigh, heeled black boots tied tight. She sipped on a mix of blood and alcohol, yet it did nothing for her, the blood not her type, and the alcohol stunted by the buzz in the back of her head. It was a chorus of voices, each one singular and separate, the echoes cascading through the ages until it met another voice with it's own life and aura, until the two mixed and sang in chorus as two parts of a whole, continuining on until a third joined, a fourth, a fifth, and it never really stopped until it got to Eva's own voice inside her own head.

But it started with him. And as she sat in the back of the LA dive bar in a section of town that was once industrial and now just what remained of the industry, she found herself fixating on the first voice. On the earliest glimpse of tone and voice. She was supposed to be listening to the Brujah barking a story of the LA race riots, and the Kindred civil war they covered. She wasn't. She had lived through it; not Ms. Mendoza, but Eva herself. That none of the Kindred in the bar understood that the 5th Generation Kindred behind the Free State, the City, and the art it was known for was slumped in a back booth listening to the pitch and tone of Caine's own voice was symbolic of their situation.

They had no idea what the ancient past was about to reap.

Something cut through the symphony of voices; distant and low, then closer, higher, and closer and higher until it came like a shrill scream of blood and magic that stabbed into her consciousness like a hot dagger. Her eyes closed tight, a quick inhale of pain and a desperate shifting in her seat lasted all of three seconds. But it was enough to catch the attention of the Brujah next to her: Jenna Cross, Thin-Blooded "leader." For all the talk about how Cross was a leader of the youngest in the Night, Eva just didn't see it. It was a pretty story, and it had no small part to Smiling Jack telling it every chance he got, but it just wasn't true. Not really.

"Everything okay, Eva?"

Her throat cleared in a suppressed cough, and Eva's head shook, dark hair behind pulled back and tight as a technique to focus and pull her mind out of the haze of the blood magic and into the Discipline of Auspex. Some small part of her looked at Cross, nodded, and offered a crooked smile. "Yeah. I need fresh air."

"Not that you breath it."

The smile only grew more crooked, "The ironies in unlife make it all worth it." She was up and out of the bar quickly, most sets of eyes brushing across her as she slipped out. Moving was a matter of walking around the back of the bar, where there was nothing but a small parking lot that had be reduced to part time junkyard. A quick hop on the metal hood of an old Ford sedan, and a quicker jump into the air landed those black heeled boots noiselessly on top of the roof of the small metal recycling operation behind the bar. From there it was a matter of blurs.

She didn't care about the man stepping inside the offices built within the old warehouse. There were server racks, but there were no servers. There were desks and pole mounts for various monitors; yet there were no monitors and there was nothing on or within the desks. It was empty. Moving around the block, however, and her mind's eye caught the real culprit. A Tesla? In this part of Los Angeles? That didn't seem right to Eva. At best you'd get a cheap sports car like a Dodge Charger, or a Ford Mustang. Something plastic and cheap to produce with a shit interior but enough of an engine to justify the purchase.

But a Tesla? Here?

They'd be better off with something with a little more vintage. Eva preferred the classics, her jet black 1963 Shelby Cobra 260ci her favorite automotive child. There was no "autopilot", and yet at the same time...there was no interfering with something as simple as a wire chassis connected ignition and the lightweight 260ci V-8 engine it connected to. Catching the Tesla wasn't a problem, a matter of movement so fast nothing was going to catch the sight of her. Killing the Tesla was a matter of her "secure" phone and the right Mateo made and tested app. One button, and the car's engine died, the car coming to a slow lifeless roll. The second button was the radio; loud, sudden, a random Tejano radio station.

A second. That's what it took. It would take Grace almost half a minute to stare at the vehicle's display and gauges. For her turn the radio off, and for the car to restart. By then Eva had gotten good and comfortable in the back seat, on the passenger side. "Hello, Grace. Do you know what a Generation is for a vampire?"

Car problems happened with prototype systems like autopilot, that was the entire reason they weren't ready for release. Grace went with the restart and diagnostic protocols, thinking to herself that at least it would give them more data. In the middle of it Grace sensed something that was too fast for her to comprehend what it was, just that something happened. It felt like being witness to an explosion, something that tested the limits of human comprehension. She stopped the restart process and went to the SCRAM switch as it was called, but it was too slow, Eva had already started speaking. Grace decided it was better to talk with someone who, while not an ally, was at least non-hostile was better than hoping that that particular system was still working well enough to get herself away from here. She did her best to pretend all was normal, and said

"I know it by inference, though I lack firsthand knowledge. To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you here, Eva?"

"The end of the world as we all know it."

"That is something more serious than artistic matters. So that's why you're coming to someone whose job it is to maintain the world as we know it. Now, exactly what is it that I should be aware of?"

All hints of any smile vanished. "I'm not your enemy." She said it slower than she said anything else, and there was a twist in her tone, almost like the hint of an ancient accent. "There are elements of your Union that are starting to see the threat, but they won't fully open their eyes until the worst begins. By then it will be too late. So when I find you hunting the 'Digital Draculas' that I now fund and support, I have to decide what to do with you."

Silence followed for what seemed a minor eternity of a dozen seconds, until that voice finally returned from the darkness of the backseat in the form a sigh, "We started with Caine, the first generation. The second generation, his 'children', were usurped by the third generation. The fourth generation remains in more numbers than most would suspect, but it's the third generation that can warp reality to their liking. You can drop sun after sun after mystic powered nuclear sun on them and it won't matter. Oh, sure, if you get to them early your Union might drop one. You might not. But by that point...how many millions have died? We control the politics of the world. We can tank economies, governments, and induce mass chaos at such a scale that the world may never recover."

The second sigh was heavier, deeper, "I want your help. I believe I can help save the world. I believe I can help prevent the end, or as we know it; Gehenna. But I need time to parse the data, to make sense of all the puzzle pieces and put it together. The Inquisition, your Union, other Kindred...these are distractions. You don't have to believe me, of course. I'm sure it sounds like a madness. I helped create California as it is today with my sire, the one I destroyed. We created Hollywood together. They say I'm more human than a vampire like me has any right to be. That there must be something wrong with me."

Her tone lightened, almost like she tried to smile again, "I believe that's what is, ultimately, right with me. So I would like your help. If you're not too busy trying to track down rogue mages and Kindred behaving badly, let alone the techno-blood magic Kindred I supported to ultimately assist me save the world."

"Are you familiar with Bayes' Theorem, Eva? If you are, I apologize that this little explanation of my reasoning process will sound redundant. I have a running tally of the probability of different events, and as I receive new information I adjust these probabilities, all while assessing the reliability of this new information. This scenario you describe is a perplexing one; I have little information other than your word, and I have no solid estimate as to how accurate it may be. However, the sheer impact of a negative outcome means it is worthy of concern." Grace took a pause, trying to read the atmosphere in her car. It was tense, tiring to be here right now.

"Now, there are many places we can start. While I'm keen to here what exactly your long term plan is, if there are more immediate matters we can settle, such as who such as the scope of our intelligence operations, that would also be a productive use of time. Even if you just want to have a chat about what you've been up to I'm willing to listen, because it sounds like you've been quite busy."

"Do you want to see it for yourself?"

Grace was surprised, it took a moment to figure out what Eva was alluding to. She calmed herself down, place some trust in the safeguards in place, and said

"Yes, I would. I believe I'm equipped for that sort of mental collaboration."

"Getting the shadow truths of the future will always cost you your past, Margaret." Eva's eyes closed behind thick, dark, lashes. Long white frosted fingernails reached out as Eva leaned just forward, a simple frozen touch on the back of Grace's neck. Eva's blood stirred as it burned through the Discipline of Auspex, and opened the Pandora's Box of what was inside Eva's mind to the mage. Not a full stream, but only the short clips and phrases that the mage could endure in one moment stretched infinite.

Grace’s eyes went wide out of reflex, the images bypassed her optical nerve and went straight into the cortex. It was one she knew she had seen before but had no recollection of where, a disturbing bit of source amnesia. The figure of a charred corpse that lumbered and moved like a man, no eyes but a mouth that howled with hunger, sharp fangs visible as it’s gaping maw trembled. It stepped over a field of corpses, all radiating with a pain that even death had not ended, reality itself becoming deranged, illusion devouring the real world. Black soot fell from the clouds around along with raindrops, choking the air and covering all in ash. As the scene darkened from the fallout a column of light engulfed it, the intensity of the sun focused ten thousand times on one spot. All was bright, all was silent, except one familiar voice, one that only Grace knew. It was the one who came to her in dreams, the one who only called himself Claude, and all he said was three words, “This is why”

After the light there were new images, ones she had never seen before. She saw the earth from high above, miles above the surface, soaring over the darkened earth. Below there were no lights, no civilization, as though she was seeing the distant past. Out of the darkness a flash of light came and then an orange sphere of fire, lighting up the surroundings enough that Grace could see the geography, scale it, even estimate the yield. It was in the kiloton range, and as she saw it another nuclear blast went off, then a dozen more, so many that they covered every bit of land in her field of view. They were like a brick of firecrackers set off, turning night into day, and never relenting. Then her view shifted, moving faster, five thousand miles per second, circling the earth so fast that all appeared as a blur but even then she could see more nuclear fire engulfing every corner of the earth. It paused for a moment and she counted the yield, megaton after megaton of man’s most hateful weapons, punctuated with one that yield over a hundred megatons, a fireball so large the shockwaves of it prevented it from touching the earth. At the final moment of her vision it moved again to the ground, to the very center of it, where there stood one man with unkempt hair, fury in his eyes, and unmistakable sharp fangs. He stood there untarnished and immovable, not one hair on his head damaged by the onslaught.

When Eva leaned forward again, it was with her hands in her lap, and her lips close to Grace's ear as her voice reduced to a near whisper, "How's your probabilities looking now, Agent?"

It was moments like these that Grace felt the effects the dosing regimen most strongly. The chemicals did many things, they prevented fatigue even after sleepless nights, they reduced bouts of anger to mild annoyances to allow for clear decision making, and in moments like these they were supposed to control the effects of stress and trauma. There was a lot it could do, slow the heart rate down to a perfectly stable and normal rate, enhance the clarity of memories, even work with the vocal tone to make it all sound just as calm and dull as it would be in normal circumstances. What it couldn't was really change the thoughts in her head, actually hold it together when it was all falling apart. All it did was help her put on a strong face, keep the same tone of voice and measured speech pattern she always had. Grace said

"Well, to put it in technical terms, I find myself making a rather large adjustment to the Kurtosis of my previous model of risk posed by vampires. To be more blunt, I made a mistake, I committed the oldest error in induction. The same one that we make when we say a swan can never be black because no man has yet seen a black swan, the same one a cow makes when it expects food from the farmer on the day it has finally matured enough to be sent to the slaughterhouse. Do you have plan? Even if you don't, I have some other questions."

Eva laughed as she leaned her body back into the backseat of the Tesla. "Yeah, survive, and try to get Los Angeles under some kind of control between wanna-be Princes, Barons, and the Inquisition. That way I can focus on what I need to do next, what 'we' need to do next."

Behind her dark sunglasses, Grace rolled her eyes. She should've predicted that the plan would begin with consolidating power, but if that succeeded at least it would make things simpler in the future. She said
"I can keep my operations out your affairs for the time being, but that requires information sharing, and I don't consider a data breach on the employer of my current cover identity the sort of information sharing that will lead to a productive relationship. Because of the nature of this, I'm prepared to be more open than I have been in the past, even about matters my superiors would prefer I do not discuss."

"Your 'superiors' won't have a Union left if you don't, I'm afraid." The tone in which she gave the warning bordered on playful. It wasn't a threat, the tone made that perfectly clear, "Process and decide what you want to do with what you now know. You've got my phone number. Reach out and I'll come find you. Good luck."

"One last thing. I know you showed me images, but I heard words too, and I recognized the voice. It's one I've heard before in my dreams, not all the time but often enough, and when I listen to it I feel like it's a part of me even when it's telling me things I don't know. I learned a lot through the traditional ways of studying, whether it's books or neural downloads, but what I get from this is not just knowledge, but understanding. I'm not the only one who is like this. This phenomenon is common, possibly univsersal among enlightened personnel, we've named it, even found a way to measure it, but discussing it is still taboo. It's eerily similar to the what reality deviants write about and call "the avatar", something that all of them have, also. In fact, both our sources and theirs have found that it's something even mundane people have, the only difference is it's a silent, sleeping version of the same energy. This is a lot of preface for something I don't discuss, but it's to say one thing. I know when it tells me something, I should listen, and it told me three words: 'This is why'.

"I did warn you about the cost of shadow truths, Mage; your past. You will have to reconcile that with what you think you know, to find out what you actually know. Like I said...good luck."
In Roleplaying Outside of the Box → 4 yrs ago Forum: Roleplaying Discussion
Like any medium, roleplays have conventions, commonalities we see across works. These arise naturally, and they exist for a reason, but to let them all stand as immutable laws limits what the medium can do. I made this thread as an open forum for talking about whatever weird, convention-breaking or experimental RP concepts that are hard to talk about elsewhere. I want to hear from you, not just what you think about the ideas I've outlined here, but about your own ideas.

Interesting things happen when people question them, when they explore beyond them, and that spirit can create some amazing new works (and also some truly awful ones). In the spirit of that exploration, I made a list of ideas for breaking common roleplay conventions, and some thoughts about what could be gained by employing them. This list is focused on Group play by post RPs, parts of it may be applicable to other methodologies, but the norms tabletop or 1x1 roleplays are different, some of these are less uncommon or even part of the default conduct in those. Few of these are original, possibly none of them are, but they are all what I would describe as rare occurrences. Like anyone, I’m still learning about roleplaying and approaches to it, and what I have written here I owe to what I’ve seen others do. Think of this as a resource and a way to start a conversation, for interested GMs and players to read through and think about if any of these are worth using. Some of the ideas complement each other and can be combined in interesting ways, although using all of them would require a very brave GM if it is even possible to do so. Out of this list, some are probably bad ideas, most are difficult to implement, but I hope that they are all ideas worth discussing nonetheless.

1. Flashbacks
This is a basic storytelling technique common in almost every medium, yet rare to see in a roleplay. When I’ve seen them, they are limited in scope. Single character, short-lived flashbacks that don’t qualify as a complete scene or even a complete post are the norm. Even these are rare. There are so many possibilities, from using flashbacks to make intro posts jump straight into the action to brief looks into characters past to deepen their backstory.

2. Flashforwards
More specialized than its better known cousin, this is where the narrative jumps ahead to shown a seen that takes place after whatever is the narrative present. Not very flexible, and it can create continuity headaches or impose harsh where the story will go, but it has its benefits. For one thing, it’s a wonderful way to build tension and introduce mystery. Unlike flashbacks, this is more of a GM tool, but if characters have some kind of preplanned direction then there is more opportunity to use them.

3. Asymmetric Information
By this I mean secrets shared between only the GM and some players. I’ve seen limited versions of this, usually player initiated rather than something the GM added to the roleplay. They could be things given out by the GM, things players create and then share with the GM, or a collaboration between the GM and the player, such as a the GM asking players to create a secret with particular guidelines. Other examples could be players creating their character with secret part of their backstory that only the GM knows, a coming plot twist that only some are privy to, or a Rashomon-style story where everyone only possesses part of the truth.

4. Pre-planned Character Arcs
Players dedicate a lot of words in a character sheet to who their characters are, and most spend a lot of time thinking about where they want to see the character go; yet these plans remain private by default. In addition to just sharing more, I wonder how GMs can work to make this information public, whether through adding space on the character sheets, or having making time to hold discussions with players before the roleplay formally starts. If the information is more visible, I think it can have a positive effect and foster further collaboration and ideas between participants in the roleplay.

5. Predefined Roles
Character creation is all but inseparable from roleplaying, but not all characters are created from nothing. On other websites and in times past I’ve seen a trend where the GM defines several characters for players to claim, giving each character a roughly paragraph long description that the player will then turn into a full character sheet later. That approach is rather limiting, what may have more potential is shorter descriptions, no longer than one sentence, that focus on their role in the story or the archetype they embody, such as “idealistic young hero” or “grizzled mentor to the rest of the cast”. I know many players begin the character creation process by taking inspiration from some archetype, this is a way of acknowledging that and incorporating it directly.

6. Randomization
This is a topic I’ve seen discussed before, and one that might be controversial because it can have a dramatic impact on a player’s agency and ability to define their character. GMs can use randomization to affect things like character traits, relationships between characters, or plot events. It’s excellent for throwing curveballs that everyone has to react to, but it must be used in a way that doesn’t destroy the ability to plot and plan; a story is more than a series of random events. There’s also the old tabletop tradition of using randomization to determine the success or failure of something, which has value if you are going for that atmosphere.

7. Shared Characters
I understand why PCs are tied to a specific player, but a story is not only limited to player characters. NPCs are a common feature in roleplays, but it’s rare that they have involved role, many roleplays treat them like a necessary evil, minimizing their role as much as possible. Even when they are used and allowed to have actual characterization and a role, they are often “owned” by the GM or a particular player. There’s an opportunity here to treat NPCs like a community resource, having multiple players use them and add to them over time. Deeper NPCs become part of the world and allow for new avenues of storytelling. An even stranger variant is rotating control of a character, often called the Troupe system. One of the most popular examples is Ars Magica is a tabletop RPG where people alternate between controlling a magician they created and their non-magical comrades, some of these are shared communally.

8. Oppositional PCs
I define this as grouping PCs into different groups that are opposed or at least not allied with each other. Basically any roleplay where the villains are player controlled will do this be default, but the common way of doing it places more focus on the protagonists, villains are often a secondary role. An approach that is seldom taken is to give multiple; oppositional groups equal focus and numbers, which pairs well with a morally grey conflict. Throw in some incentive for the groups to hide their plans from the others, and the drama practically writes itself. One potential problem I can see is if this drama spills into OOC fighting; that is something we all want to avoid.

9. Aggressive Timeskips
What I mean by this is that significant events happened during timeskips, things that will be referred to later, but those scenes aren’t given a full post. They could have a summary post, like “Alice and Bob spent the night drinking at the bar and reminiscing over old flames. Stephen went to see Jeremy about a loan but couldn’t find where he was that night”. With this you can skip over stuff people don’t want to write, allowing them to get on with the stuff they do, move past a section that is stalling out, or give players flexibility to incorporate something into the story without needing to devote a full scene to it.

10. Asynchronous Posting
A big phrase, but what I mean is multiple scenes taking place at the same time, each scene having several posts, and neither waiting on the other to finish. This is common enough in roleplays that don’t have strict post orders but I wonder if it could be pushed further. Even scenes that take place at different times could be intermingled without too much difficulty as long as the characters and effects of them are self-contained and don’t cause problems for the other scenes. At its core, this is another one of those ideas that breaks the old assumption that all in a thread are in a strict chronological order. If used well, it could help players stay involved and run their own storyline without creating bottlenecks.

11. Abstract Player Characters
This is players controlling something more abstract than a single person. Nation roleplays do this already, but I wonder if there are applications outside of it, where players are expected to create a group of characters that are linked and under their control. More experimental settings could give players control of something that doesn’t qualify as a “person” in the normal sense. Will someone make a roleplay in the vein of Being John Malkovich or Inside Out, where people play different aspects of a person’s psyche? The tabletop RPG Wraith: The Oblivion gives every player character a “shadow”, the negative, self-destructive part of their psyche that they have to overcome, which is controlled by another player in the group. It’s a strange approach but it leads to interesting places, places that a normal roleplay might never go.

12. Collective Plotting
This means that the overarching plotline(s) of the roleplay is planned far ahead by the players in collaboration, rather than just the given by the GM or made up on the fly. I’m all for giving players freedom, but roleplays are fragile things, they are prone to dying young and no one likes that. One of the best ways to keep them going is to keep enthusiasm up, and if everyone knows where it’s going and plays a role in shaping that future, they’ll feel more involved. It also gives players a way to contribute in a new way without going full sandbox, letting them influence upcoming events rather than just react to them.

13. Collective Worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is a part of roleplaying; it’s even become a buzzword used to attract players. Nation roleplays almost always do a lot of it, but when it is done outside of those, it’s rare for players to have a real impact on the world. Even in Advanced roleplays, most player contributions to worldbuilding take the form of minor details and parts of the background, the cornerstones of the world are something the GM defines.

14. Point of View Experiments
I know why roleplays default to variants of close third person, and I’m sure we all have at least one experience with an annoying first person roleplay. Where I think there is untapped potential is using other voices to achieve another feel for certain sections, whether it’s going with a distant omniscient for scene setting and describing long reaching impacts, using an NPC to show another angle of a scene, or even employing a framing device like writing a post as an in-universe document such as a newspaper article or a personal letter.

15. Chapter Marks
This is another idea related to pre-planning. This is when the roleplay’s plot structure is divided into several parts, and this is known and discussed with the players. What marks these parts is up to the GM, although significant events are a natural choice for bookending chapters. This idea is about giving players visibility into the overall structure of the roleplay, letting them know where they are at a given moment and what they are heading towards. It should be noted that the GM does not need to tell the players the subjects of each chapter if they want it to be a surprise, they can simply be vague and use them as a way to mark progress.

16. Predefined Events
This is where the GM tells the players ahead of time that a certain event will happen, letting them plan and work towards this. Obviously, some kind of communication is common, but the place where I see this has potential is when it’s applied to very large events, the earth-shaking ones, the ones that will change everything in a roleplay. There’s a lot of potential for character growth and plotting in working around these, to thinking how a character will change when they pass that point of no return.

17. Time Tracking
Many roleplays keep track of in-universe time, but few actively exploit that. It can be cumbersome, but one of the greatest ways to control the tension in a story is by playing with how scarce time is for the characters, when things are relaxed time is abundant, but in climactic moments characters must fight for every second, they are make hard choices about what to do with the time they have.

18. Parallel Storytelling
Character interaction is the foundation of roleplaying, so it seems strange to suggest a storytelling method like this. Parallel plotlines are ones that never actually meet, the events may have indirect impacts on the others and be referenced, but direct interaction does not occur. Running a fully parallel roleplay would be a bizarre experience, but intentionally placing groups of characters in a roleplay into parallel plotlines is something rarely discussed. A common approach is dividing by location or time period. There are more exotic variants used in some works, such as having a past storyline framed as a retelling by characters in the middle of the present storyline; some even play with it by suggesting that the past storyline may not be an entirely accurate retelling and using that ambiguity to set up later events.

19. Blank-slate Roleplay
Weird name, but I didn’t know what else to call it. This is when the roleplay starts by just describing a genre or themes but leaving the other parts to be planned out as the roleplay gathers players, like what the plot will be, where it will go, and what the setting is like. It’s a lot of work up front and would require a lot of discussion, but the end result might be worth it. It’s a different approach, focusing on the process and an incomplete but shared idea instead of coming out with a fully formed product.

20. Endings
Some of the other topics I’ve talked about are obscure, infrequently discussed. This one is not; it’s one of the most common conundrums of roleplaying. Few have met someone who has been a roleplay that actually reached a planned ending; even fewer have had the experience of being in one, even once across their entire roleplaying history. I can’t offer any guaranteed solution. All I can do is speculate. While endings are rare, I doubt that thoughts about the end are. I think most GMs and players think about the end at some point in a given roleplay, this is what makes the angst over never seeing it so strong. When we talk about endings with others we almost feel foolish for discussing them, as if they are don’t belong in roleplays. To that all I can say is that if roleplays are just another form of stories, then this instinct is mistaken. We tell stories knowing that they have endings, and that a good story has an appropriate ending. Incomplete stories can indeed be beautiful, but they always leave a longing in us, a burning desire to see the author's vision in full form.
In Sentaku → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The place they found themselves was a gap in the trees, an opening large enough to give them room to maneuver. Kotetsu was at the edge of it, close enough to see all of the enemies. Eiji, the one with the back flips gave him a look, the kind that said “I bet I can take you”. Kotetsu shook his head and clenched his fists tight, not raising them yet, that would be giving Eiji too much acknowledgement. If he could win the mental game and get Eiji to stop thinking straight before the first blow was even thrown, it’d be that much easier. Eiji answered with a back flip that landed him in the exact same spot as before, just a way of showing off, not even threatening enough to qualify as a real feint. Kotetsu kept his feet planted and raised one hand towards Eiji, keeping a bend in it to let him strike quickly if he needed to.

Eiji really liked cartwheels, almost as much as he liked backflips. He did a one-handed one, then a no-handed one as he circled a permeter around Kotestu, getting a little closer with each jump. The Eiji passed by a tree and the aerial kicks started. First he kicked off a tree to launch himself closer to Kotetsu, then he punctuated his flight with more flourishes and little strikes in each direction around him, hacking down tree limbs from the canopy with each one. Eiji came at Kotetsu like a buzzsaw, with fast rotation on an overhead kick. Kotetsu’s outstretch hand parried the blow and then Eiji landed on the ground with a roll, where he let loose with more spinning kicks. He shifted between using his hands, his feet, even his heads as the base during his kicking combo, looking like a top spinning out of control and his reflective gear glimmering like a disco ball. None of them landed because Kotetsu stuck to the fundamentals of his footwork and controlled the distance, keeping each one just out of range.

Now Eiji was frustrated and jumped to his feet with a one-handed spinning maneuver. He feinted a kick and launched a jumping punch which bounced of Kotetsu’s blocking hands, then followed with a spinning backfist that Kotetsu caught.

They traded hands, parrying and catching blows until Eiji got both on Kotetu’s wrist and went for a wristlock, which was so poorly applied it amused Kotetsu to see where that would go. Eiji held it for a moment, trying to wrench it in a way that wouldn’t have worked even if someone didn’t have bones as strong as Kotetsu’s. To add some flavor to his escape, Kotetsu did a forward flip to break out of it, landing face to face with Eiji, who stood there dumbstruck. Kotetsu blasted him with an elbow to the face.

When the elbow hit Kotetsu felt Eiji’s head rotate much further than he was used to after hitting someone with that kind of blow. With his concentration he saw the ninja’s face distort like a puddle of water some just stepped in, waves going up and down. Eiji’s legs had all the strength of deflated balloons and the sound he made upon hitting the ground was a deep thud. Kotetsu might allow himself a little smirk after a victory, this time he was surprised at how it went. He poked Eiji’s uncocnsious body with his foot; the way he went down made Kotetsu wonder if he had killed him. Still not satisfied, Kotetsu bent down low enough to grab an arm and check his pulse, not getting too low to avoid leaving himself vulnerable. After that he was convinced Eiji would live through this, and hopefully work on developing a more balanced skillset in the future.
In Our Final Nights: A World of Darkness Roleplay → 4 yrs ago Forum: Advanced Roleplay

Two words that came to Grace’s mind when she thought about Los Angeles: wasted potential. So much open land and such an inviting climate had created a sprawling modern metropolis, but one full of disorder and romantic delusions. For all the gifts it had given the world it’s flaws confronted her every day, the unmanageable traffic, the endless small municipalities adding up to an ungovernable whole, the vast areas in need of urban renewal, and the ever encroaching threat of disorder that lied beneath the surface of politics and governance. Like the rest of the Technocracy, she compared it unfavorably with Irvine, one of their midcentury projects and a great success by most measures, planned in exacting detail by a corporation under their control before even a single brick was laid, and still the nexus of their power in the region in the present day. Irvine was where her home was, a Spartan affair inside a gated community, equipped with more security measures than furnishings. She spent little time there, her duties seldom gave her uninterrupted down time, and Grace was not overly fond of that house in any case.

Power in Los Angeles had a unique structure: every time a new circle entered it only seemed to add complexity and more layers, never fully displace any of those that had come before it. Before she was a field operative, Grace was a historian, and she knew about their various instruments they had tried to use to impose additional controls and how all of them ran into obstacles. The Army Corps of Engineers, defense spending, the Aerospace Industry, junk bonds, capital inflows from Asia, personal computers all were useful tools, but none ever gave them a total victory. What it gave was more things to discuss, more ideas to attempt, and more subjects for conference calls like the one she found herself in right now.

“So that covers how it went with Hastings. He’s been good lately, easier to deal with than the headcase who makes me wish Twitter never existed, in spite of all of the value we’ve gotten out of it and our work with him.”

Arvind said over the phone. He technically was stationed in Los Angeles, but found every excuse to be away that he could. He could find plenty to occupy himself around San Francisco or San Diego, but every so often he got into a jurisdictional fight and had to retreat back with his tail between his legs.

Brett was the next to speak
“To give you a quick download, from the ten thousand foot view it’s all in line with projections. Now, if you drill down you’ll see there’s a lot of moving parts but even our timetables can’t accommodate all of them, it’s like trying to boil the ocean.”

That was a sign Brett didn’t really want to talk about what was going on. Grace had morbid curiosity, but wouldn’t dare ask him directly. They were already at odds over several things (one proposed assassination target was a recurring sticking point), and had arrived at their posts by opposite means. Grace had been given her position as a great test, while Brett had fallen back down from a higher post. His signature achievements had been in finance, but like many Syndicate veterans, his schemes had a habit of blowing up in his face after a few years. The Technocracy’s policies were unwavering, and he could count himself lucky that demotion was his only punishment, even if he spent his days hoping to reach the heights of the 80s again.

“Reach out to me and we can circle back around to any action items later, after all this is just a stand up, I can’t touch base about every conceivable thing that could have any impact. You know we’re all one team here, and an easy win for any of us is an easy win for all of us!”

His words were even less charming once one learned that he used technological assistance to choose them. Choe had lambasted him publicly for it once when she’d been in town surveying the damage from the financial crisis; people teased him about in the small ways they could without running afoul of policies encouraging workplace harmony.

After that it was Grace’s turn
“Little threat activity to report at present, a report on that recent bout of factional warfare is approaching completion. Project Arbor is going well, I believe my next phase will focus on securing JPL. It’s been quite a challenge for us in the past, Parsons did so much damage that it lingers to this day, long after his elimination. I’m optimistic about our prospects at present.”

Finally, Ray spoke.
“Very good. The meeting is adjourned”

He said in his heavy Spanish accent. He was old, too old to make the trip to the front lines without health risks, spending his days in a realm beyond, but despite his age he never bothered to lose his accent. It was by choice, when he spoke through a willing proxy on earth he could take on any voice, but speaking that way reminded him who he was, and reminded everyone who they were speaking to, and what he was in charge of. That certainly helped get his point across when his taciturn phrases didn’t .

Grace’s Tesla pulled out of the empty parking garage and cruised through the pristine streets of downtown, the not-yet-public self driving mode allowing her to focus on other matters. There was always more data to review, more leads to pursue, and even with her enhancements and wakefulness drugs it could overwhelm her. The key to all of the colorful charts and streaming lines of text was proper focus, recognition of the signal from the noise, and that was something Grace excelled at. Inside it all there was conversation she made sure to give proper time to, her exchange with her subordinate Julie.




After that, Grace focused on the road. She had an appointment to make that night. She didn't know if the subject of her appointment would be expecting her, but that was just part of standard operating procedure. Assume nothing, question everything.
In The Entertainers (Retro SoL; Always Accepting) → 4 yrs ago Forum: Casual Roleplay
The moment when drops of beer splattered on his magazine was the moment Louis knew he was done here. There were other places around to grab dinner on a Friday night where he had less odds of getting punched in the face. Even if part of him did want to watch things go down, growing up in Detroit had taught him that hanging around fights was a bad habit to get into. He gave Robin some money to close out his tab and got up from his seat to stretch his legs and look around the pit for a little bit before leaving. Bennett was busy with other matters at the moment, and Louis could always leave a voicemail for him if he wanted to get in touch later.

He took a look at the Jukebox only to see someone was already at it, and that she was already becoming the center of attention. Louis didn’t know Brandy, but she had a presence about her. Not exactly regal, but this was Oceanside, the place could be a museum of grit and grime; the Pit would be it’s centerpiece. If Bigby was the old king ruling over the place, then Brandy was the closest thing to Oceanside’s own princess, young, adventurous, and highly sought-after. This definitely wasn’t the place for fairy tale romances either, and Louis stopped by only to see how long the song had left on the Jukebox. He thought about putting something else on but didn’t want to ruin the vibe, and just decided that it was best to get out of here. There was some business to finish at home, some unfinished songs and a voicemail from a guy name Brett that he had to return. Whoever Brett was, he wasn’t very fortcoming about his background, but he thought that Louis’ equipment rental business could go somewhere and was looking to possibly invest. Sure, Louis was skeptical, but he also knew how cool it would be to get his hands on one of those new Kurzweil keyboards. As he left the Pit Louis realized he left his magazine and the business card he’d been using as a bookmark on the countertop, the business card with the ugly design that he used before he made separate ones for musical gigs and his rental business. That one was a bit of mess with all of the stuff on it, but at least it was thorough.
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