Jig

The Bureau of Unconventional Crime

The group mingled for a few minutes after Smith's departure, taking in the grandiose Centre of Operations and making slightly maddening small-talk. Stuart's reaction was slightly muted if only because he had previously been shown the C.O, glorious though it was. As the relative 'expert' among them, he offered, managing not to grit his teeth, to boil the kettle in the kitchenette to the side and make the drinks. Rather than take an actual drinks order, he simply shouted over his shoulder across the huge room to each of the team in turn, asking them what they wanted. There was one primary cupboard, well-stocked by the BUC, and a slightly bizarre-looking stack of nine cupboards arranged artfully to the side like an installation piece. One for each member. The BUC had also kindly arranged, if slightly underwhelmingly following the top-of-the-range laptops, for each member to have a nice white mug with their name written on the side in inoffensive black lettering. Checking the correct drink was in the correctly-named recepticle, he turned to his own. The tea had been infusing for a few minutes, and he gave the bag one last vigorous stir before squeezing the teabag against the side of his own mug and flicking it expertly into the bin.

It had been a moment of disappointing tact that had him use his own respective mug; one of the few things he had bothered to bring in his suitcase had been his own cup, a proper teacup of colossal proportions, with the epithet 'He who must be obeyed' embossed on the side. While an accepted law of those offices flying under his flag in Westminster, he presumed it might be considered too aggressive a joke for a group of perfect strangers, or, worse, taken as literally as it was meant. It was his ninth cup of identical design. He had frequented eight different departments in his final role in Westminster and had his PA make it known that his tea was to be delivered to him in no other recepticle, and that nobody else was to use it. It was a running joke, that he encouraged, that each of those cups was The Chalice of Dread. The ninth Chalice of Dread was a replacement for the sixth, which had been thrust into the computer monitor of its resident department. It was an unfortunate incident in which the Secretary of State lost, in order, a memory stick containing the exclusive records of the UK's sex offenders, the screen of the aforementioned computer monitor, and, shortly after, his job. For his own part, Stuart lost his temper and, as a result, the sixth Chalice of Dread. Its replacement was bought, in an act of outstanding toadying, by the Defence Secretary's replacement. This was the one that Stuart had bought to America. His lips grazed the top of the capital 'S' of his name as he sipped his tea. It didn't taste right from a mug. Or perhaps his tea-fu was under par. Could go either way.

He joined the others for only a moment before a smartly-dressed young woman exited the lift. She looked slightly tired, to no great surprise at this late hour (they really did work all round the clock), but professional nonetheless. She addressed the group.

"Evening everybody," she said, "I'm Alice, from the IT department."

There was a rustle, which she pre-empted, "IT is a little different here. Most things are. You'll get used to it. Anyway, as new agents, I've had to do a bit of a spot-check on you all. We like to know everything, but, often, so do the people we're dealing with. Some of you," she looked proudly at Biermann, "Have done an excellent job of keeping a low-profile. Most of the rest of you worked for the state in one form or another. You, well, don't exist any more. You're still citizens, don't worry, but I could Google each and every one of you and you just won't be there. There's not one photo of any of you on the internet. Anywhere. Nix. Nada. Except Mr Front," her eyes lingered on Stuart, somehow glassy and steely at the same time, "As a non-US citizen, it has taken a little more effort to erase you, but we're nearly there. If you'd like to follow me for a moment."

Stuart shrugged, and followed her into one of the offices adjoined to the C.O. It wasn't the biggest, but was as plushly furnished as the rest of the floor and filled with leafy plants, whose sunlight-deprived existences were somewhat baffling. Alice shut the door, and locked it.

"These are soundproof, so, don't worry," she said, gesturing to the sofa nestled underneath a canopy of green. It faced an enormous display screen connected to the computer, at which Alice was furiously typing, the actual monitor obscured by her head, "I thought I'd deal with this privately, to spare you the embarrassment. It appears to have been quite the sorry saga."

"You could say that," Stuart bristled, his grip on the mug tightening slightly. A photograph of himself outside the courthouse loaded on the display screen.

"But the BUC is magnanimous, and Alice is a genious, and between us, Alice and the BUC are able to make all this go away. The online stuff, at least - and who keeps newspapers these days? In a couple of minutes, all of this will be gone."

Tabs were frantically loading in the browser, each an article from a different newspaper, and every one about Stuart. Many of them used the same grim photo.

"Everything?"

"Everything."

"That's not possible," he said, resolutely.

"What did I tell you about Alice being a genious?" she said, spinning round in the chair, "Each and every one of these articles, each and every grim photo of you online - all of those are going to vanish."

"What about government records? I worked for the bloody government," he said, "They keep track of these things."

Alice snorted in a particularly unladylike fashion, "Yeah, they owed us a favour. Besides, we know perfectly well that the information was safe. You took care of that yourself, as you know, Mr Front."

He shrugged, "You have to have a nuclear option in this game."

"Indeed you do," said the woman from IT, "And Mr Smith has told me to explain to you that we can go nuclear, too. Look, this stuff is shady, Mr Front. I'm not an expert on British law, but the way you work is shady by anybody's book. Phone-tapping, hacking, bribery, blackmail..." she telegraphed his protestation, "No, don't worry. We like shady. We do all that stuff ourselves and want the kind of people that knows how it goes."

Ah.

"We like people like you. We are people like you. And the thing is with people like us, is that we know what people like us are like, Mr Front. Even if we weren't the kind of people that can make people disappear, and I'm not saying that we are or that we aren't, or whether or not we rig trials, but even if we didn't do shady, we can drop the Stuart-bomb. There's enough dirt here to put you in jail for... well, I do IT, not maths. You get my point. There's more than one way to skin a Stuart, anyway."

"I trust that you won't," Stuart smiled with his mouth and gave a different expression with his eyes. She did not flinch.

"All I'm saying is, we know what you're like, and we'd like you to take your confidentiality form thingy seriously. Now, come here and let's delete you from the Matrix forever - apart from in our own records, of course. Put your hand on mine," Stuart gingerly approached her in the chair, and crouched slightly to be roughly her seated height. She booted a programme named 'Fairy Godmother'. The only things visible on-screen were two illustrations of a plump woman in a ball gown with a wand and a man in a suit that Stuart recognised as himself. These were situated either side of a big red button in the middle.

"One little click," said Alice, and together they clicked the big red button. The illustration of Stuart exploded - with slightly more gore than perhaps was necessary. Text dropped from the top of the monitor that read 'Stuart Anthony Front is gone forever'.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that," Alice nodded, "As I said, you're still on our records, so I can't really stop the others from looking you up if they want to. I suggest you make a good first impression."

She lead him back out into the main O.C and addressed the group again, "Right, I'm going to bed. Welcome to the BUC, everybody. I'm sure I'll see you again. From now, as Mr Smith will have told you, the only people with clearance to get to this floor are himself, Miss Hamill, and yourselves. Then again, I'm in the IT department. There's nothing we can't do," she paused on that note, "Sleep tight!"

And like that, she was gone. Stuart sipped his tea. It had gone slightly cold. His cheeks hurt, too. He had been doing a lot of smiling.

Reconstructing Guides

Honestly, I really don't know that a 'What is PbPRP?' is necessary. People that find this site will either already know, or will think it's perhaps about video games/LARPS and probably not be interested, and I can't imagine that those people that stumble across the site accidentally would go to the articles and guides section. Then again, perhaps it could be stickied somewhere really obvious if the administration think it's a good useful article. If you write it, I would, as you plan to, keep it short. Advanced theory will bombard a newcomer and, as I say, I think it's the least useful of the three articles.

Another idea for a simple guide, possibly inspired by the B!tch thread, might just be a 'do's and don't's'. Your guides are excellent and I'm personally very interested in the various theories behind RPing, but I'm a freak and I expect the people that might tend to read an in-depth article might perhaps have a greater interest in the ins-and-outs of RPing and, not to mince words, might be a better RPer as a result. However, a more simple guide of 'do's and don't's' might be more accessible to a greater number and might result in a more tangible improvement in the RPing of those that read it. A guide would be more advantageous than a pile-up thread like the B!tch thread because it can be more easily formatted and, frankly, doesn't meander off into bickering or more cordial debates. That said, you clearly do enjoy (or at least get some personal reward from) writing advanced theory guides, so if you don't fancy doing a 'do's and don't's' guide, I might give it a shot.

For the player guide, I definitely think the focus should be on character creation and post content. Perhaps you could note how a more interesting character can be made by making sure they have a personal conflict that, if not directly reflecting the overall conflict and themes of the RP, can be explored and developed through an RP, creating a character arc expected from every other traditional written artform with characters (and why should RPs be any different?). I'm not sure that notion is really present in players' consciousnesses. Also, what you call the action-reaction wheel (which I believe is what I less eloquently call the 'making-sure-your-post-doesn't-kill-the-flow-itivity') is definitely key, as killing the flow seems to be what kills RPs more than people spontaneously vanishing in my experience. I'm not sure player etiquette is the most important content to focus on. Either I need enlightening myself (in which case perhaps player etiquette is something I should brush up on!) or it just comes down to, like so many things, not behaving like a douchebag, which we should trust most people to know how to do.

I'm a crap GM, so I can't even speculate as to what might or might not be useful to know. xP

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

ASTA said GMs like these seem to be badly confused as to what their title truly entails, for their station is really only guaranteed true legitimacy so long as they have players that are willing to stick around for the ride. Typically, no one's going to persist in a thread when there's a shitlord on the loose in it, and I don't think a GM is really much of a GM when his or her thread has nothing to show for itself other than a cool breeze and some chirping crickets.

Doesn't this problem solve itself? The GM's word is law to those players in their RP, but if the GM behaves like a tit, there won't be any players to behave like a tit to?

Obviously being a tit is being a tit and should be discouraged at all times, but a GM's role, to me, is to present their idea and persuade others to come along for the ride. Ultimately, the core content is (usually) the GM's, and, as such, they have creative ownership over it. This means, surely, that they have the right to control, if they so choose, those things that affect their creation: the players, the players' characters, rules, gaming systems, plot directions, etc.

As you say, if a GM does this over-zealously, there won't be any players, and, thus, very little RP, so you'd think they'd learn not to. Then again, they do surely have the right to reject an addition to their RP that they don't like without even having to have reason or logic, and citing personal preference? That can, of course, be done in the polite form of:

I don't feel like it's right for this RP

rather than

It's a bad idea because X

Isn't it just basically about manners, at the end of the day?

The Bureau of Unconventional Crime

So, which characters are combat-trained? I'm guessing Daniel, Javier, Lexi and probably Alexander are at least acquainted with handguns and the basic principles of not getting curb-stomped, while Nathan and Stuart have nothing at all.

I'd certainly be interested to see Stuart ending up with some combat training, as somebody perhaps more likely than Nathan (who may obviously also come along for the ride if Lambda so wishes) to be involved in on-the-ground type stuff. Then again, either or both of them might well be 'mission control', if you like, providing information and strategy to the team remotely. In my head, Stuart was going to be involved in some on-the-ground espionage and, basically, hustling, with Lexi, though that seems unlikely given that he has been at least mildly high-profile in a Western country, so his face may be easily recognised - unless we can hand-wave that by having the BUC pull some strings to make that online information about him mysteriously disappear (something I'd quite like, personally, as it would free him up for more possible roles, though it's obviously up to you, Rax). If so, that's my next post sorted.

Incidentally, I did tweak Stuart a little prior to the IC but didn't bother mentioning it even slightly so he didn't make it to the character list in his current form. He's basically the same but more clearly laid-out and a little bit more of a tit. I should probably give him at least one redeeming feature but I might wait, if that's okay, until the idea springs to me in a context where I can mention it to bring it up.

Either way, the new sheet is here if anybody wants to check it out and if Rax wants to edit it into the character list. And, no, I can't get that penultimate bullet point to work. It really doesn't want to.

Click for Stuart

The Bureau of Unconventional Crime

I don't really know what to do from here so I'll hold fire for now.

The Bureau of Unconventional Crime

What's the plan from here? Is this sort of 'free time', as it were?
Also, what's everybody's policy on bunnying (ie: extremely minimum and passive godmoding)? I'm a big fan of it because it makes life easier but I know people worry that their characters might be mismanaged. For the record, feel free to bunny Stuart as much as you'd like, anyhoo.

PS: if I ever end up in an office, I want to end up in that one. Near where I live at uni, there's an office where people just write on the walls. It's amazing.

'Who' versus 'Whom' - a user's guide

This is an incredibly small aspect of the English language, and not a particualarly important one, but I see a few people messing it up, so I thought a nice little guide might come in handy on the off-chance it might be used. I almost don't expect this to get read, but I live in hope. :3

If in doubt, just use 'Who'.
The 'whom'/'who' thing is a tiny little thing, like Latin plurals, that, frankly, most people won't notice and even more won't care. The only real mistake you can make is to go for 'whom' and get it wrong. It looks like you're trying to get it right - and failing. Using 'who', even when technically incorrectly, is nowhere near so jarring. Apart from anything else, 'whom' can appear dated, especially because it can change word order.

So, what's the difference?

• 'Who' applies to a person/people that is the subject of the sentence


• 'Whom' applies to a person/people that is the object of the sentence

I appreciate that not everybody understands the terms 'subject' and 'object' in grammar - my understanding is pretty shallow, having basically reverse-engineered English while learning foreign languages.

To put it another way...

Whether you use 'who' or 'whom' depends on the relationship that word has with a verb. A verb is a doing or being word, and is the main action in the sentence. I've highlighted the verb in this sentence:

Jig greets the postman.

The verb is the action in this sentence. It is what's actually happening.

So, the subject and the object - who is who?

• The subject is the person/thing that is doing the verb


• The object is the person/thing that is having the verb done to them

Jig greets the postman.

In this sentence, Jig is the subject, because he is doing the greeting. By the same token, the postman is the object, because Jig is greeting him.

Now we know roughly what subjects and objects are, let's have another look at 'who' and 'whom'.

• 'Who' applies to a person/people that is the subject of the sentence


• 'Whom' applies to a person/people that is the object of the sentence

If, in the above sentence, Jig is the subject, then the word 'who' will apply to him.

Who greeted the postman? Jig greeted the postman.
Jig, who earlier greeted the postman, then went to the shops.

And the same applies to the postman, but using 'whom' instead, because he is the one being greeted.

Whom did Jig greet? Jig greeted the postman.
The postman, whom Jig earlier greeted, then went to deliver some post.

It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it, but it's very easy to accidentally get it wrong. You'll also notice that sentences with 'who' and 'whom' in them sometimes word themselves a little differently, as in the above examples.

Working it out
These are the three steps to getting it right.

• Work out to whom you're referring by 'who' or 'whom'


• Work out whether they are doing the verb or having it done to them


• If they're doing the verb, use 'who'. If they're having it done to them, use 'whom'

To be or not to be
Last thing: verbs derived from 'to be' (such as am, are, was, will be, have been) always take 'who', even when it seems illogical. Also note that if somebody is having an action done to them via the verb 'to be', 'to be' is the still the main verb, and so you should use who. For example:

The postman, who is being greeted.

Even though the main action seems to be 'being greeted', it's actually 'is'. This is because 'greeted' is technically an adjective (word describing a noun) in this sentence. I can't explain why without going into appalling levels of detail, so just remember that 'whom is' is always wrong. If you're using a form of 'to be', you always want to use 'who'.

Hopefully that's everything explained. As I say, I don't really expect this guide to get much use, but it's a mistake I do see, so maybe this will help one or two people out. If you have any questions, holla.

And don't forget - just use 'who' if you're not sure. Seriously. It's fine.

GM Dilemna - How do you guys deal with this?

Inuyasha said
I feel that if I outright reject them I will look like an asshole to the other players.

You're not in control of that part.

You're in control of whether or not that player joins your RP, and, to an extent, whether you decide to put up with them/help them out or not to have to. That's the decision you have to make.

Second Kestrel's point. Be specific about what that player is doing (or not doing) that makes them unsuitable. At least that way they have something to look at and try to work on if they want to.

Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

Dervish said
I actually have a legitimate one that's more of a gripe and a peeve than a complaint.It irks me when people put something along the lines of "With a twist!" in the title, because few things will discourage me from taking a look more than that. Sell your game based on it's merits, not how it tries to differentiate itself from other overly similar games with a cheap gimmick.

Unless there's a legitimate twist, though, surely? I've been RPing a while and GMed a few things, and I have spotted absolutely no pattern in what titles attract more views (on sites when thread views are visible) beyond thought-out proper titles relating to themes and plots tend to get less than vague descriptions like "We're on a submarine! With rhinos!"

The Bureau of Unconventional Crime

Free Faller said And best wishes to your family, Jig.

Ta. It's one of those annoying things that's stable but challenging. The most important part is that it's a challenging beginning to the happy version of events rather than a version that doesn't end so well.