Lugubrious

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

So..... I've been hit with an interest in things RWBY lately, and I was wondering if I could be placed on the waiting list for this.

@Scarifar

So..... I've been hit with an interest in things RWBY lately, and I was wondering if I could be placed on the waiting list for this.

@Scarifar

I'm afraid we don't have a waiting list and are not accepting more members unless someone sees fit to make a case good enough to change my mind.

The driving idea behind this limitation is that, having so many people already, everything is fairly difficult to manage even from a player perspective. This is more keenly felt in RWBY RPs because the four-player dynamic means that practically everything takes communication and planning.

Pokemon: New World

Thanks for your excitement everyone!!!

Pokemon that don't evolve were already intended to be second tier, not top tier. That was in a previous update. Just look at the Pokemon>tiers section. I just forgot to change the ranks section to reflect this. I'll do this as soon as I'm home from work tonight.

@Balthazar007

Oh! Good stuff.

Phoenix Wing (A Fairy Tail RP-Always Open, Open)

It'll happen soon, now that Raijin has posted.

I ruined the 2,500 post mark to say this.

Pokemon: New World

A brazen chime rang out as Olivie pulled open the door to Electrode Eatery. Not having expected such a noise from a restaurant, she paused for a moment, and dutifully her Bidoof sauntered right in. With a shrug the nineteen-year-old followed her Pokemon in. Immediately she became aware of the place's unique atmosphere. The warm yellow light, radiating from lamps and electronic braziers reminded her of bowling or pool halls she'd visited in the past, and just as it had then it gave off the impression of organic liveliness unmarred the manufactured feeling produced by glaring white ceiling lights. A decidedly wooden décor, combined with a frequent color scheme of red, white, and black, combined to produce an aura of vibrant maturity. Standing behind the front desk, the employee on staff fit the bill: a totally jacked, bronze-skinned hulk of a man in modified sailor's attire. He seemed to Olivie to be straight out of a comic book.

Right away the brawny dude noticed her, and he crossed his arms. “Welcome to Electrode Eatery, little miss!” he pronounced in an intense base. “We ain't your everyday diner. Li'l squirts get to snack in Pichu Park across the streak. So, trainer,”[/color] He leaned over the counter, staring Olivie in the eye. “How tough are ya?”

Tilting her head slightly, and pressing her knuckles against her chin in though, Olivie arrived at her answer. ”How tough am I? I work ten hours a day.”

A substantial harumph greeted this claim. “Yeah?” he scoffed. “So?”

Olivie tossed her hair. ”As a waitress in a family diner.”

Instantly the large fellow's eyebrows shot up. His hand slipped behind the counter and pressed a button. To his left, the waist-high gate into the restaurant proper flew open. “Right this way,” he told her, and Olivie strolled triumphantly through.

She walked ahead of her Bidoof, selecting a booth against the back wall. On the outside edge of the booth, there appeared to be a circular cushion on the floor. A button on the wall, according to its accompanying note, would raise the cushion for a small Pokemon to eat at table level. Though she only grunted, inwardly the brunette counted herself impressed that a fast food joint would go to such lengths to cater to Pokemon. When she pressed the button, the seat slowly ascended, and the Bidoof leaped on before it got too high. At this time of night, when the last traces of the sun had vanished and the pink-orange heavens drifted away into dreamland, Electrode Eatery was pretty much dead but still open. For that, Olivie counted herself lucky, as a waitress was on hand to supply a menu immediately. Without much hesitation, she placed an order for a cheeseburger, but found herself at an awkward loss when it came to getting something for her new friend. The waitress, a spectacles-wearing woman who introduced herself as a long-time Pokemon enthusiast and volunteer at Central City's local shelter, happily spilled her guts about the typical Bidoof diet. As it turned out, leafy greens would suit the little guy just fine, but the Eatery also happened to have some plant shoots left over from chopping up the next day's vegetables that could be added into the Bidoof's salad for only a small increase in price. Figuring a bond with her buddy to be worth it, Olivie agreed, her sour demeanor replaced by nothing more acerbic than succinctness. After all, when one worked in the food industry, one got to know very well just how badly the personnel had it; none of them needed an ornery customer to deal with. Very soon the food arrived, and together the pair chowed down.

The cheeseburger, prepared on the grill, was well-done and not very greasy. Somehow the store got away with using good cheese, which was more expensive than the cruddy generic cheese, and Olivie appreciated it immensely. Meanwhile, her Bidoof devoured his salad with aplomb. Since his little mouth could only fit so much at once, though, he still had about a fourth to go by the time Olivie was wiping the last trace of burger juice off her lip with the back of her hand. It struck her out of the blue that she had yet to give the Bidoof a name. At a loss, she took a close look at the creature from head to toe and before long the answer jumped out at her. ”Buck,” she said aloud, ”For your buckteeth. And 'cause you're a sturdy young buck. We're gonna go far, you and me.” Whether he understood or not, Buck chittered in response. Glad to be alone, Olivie let herself crack a small smile before she sipped her halfsweet tea.

Pokemon: New World

@lugubrious I agree with @zarkun about the fact that it works quite well for this system. Yes there are bad pokemon, but that's true for all evolution lines, not just the non-evolving lines. I think the main reason the non-evolving pokemon are in that category's 'cuz they're technically fully-grown by that form, and if you make some assumptions about the whole "strong wills" concept it makes sense.

@Dusksong

You're quite right about the plurality of bad pokes. But, since there's zero difference in the form of a non-evolving poke's from the time it's one week old to thirty years old, I don't know how well the 'fully-grown' argument works out. Stage one pokes are always the babies and stage three the fully-grown adults, but non-evos have to be babies, juveniles, and adults, all confined to the same form. From what I know, at least, there are way more pokes typically thought of as very good that are stage threes of evolving lines than non-evolving Pokemon; the non-evos that do typically have some gimmick, like one ridiculously exaggerated stat, an amazing ability, or a Mega evolution.

It's not really a big deal, in the end, but as Zarkun said I can pretty much guarantee that nobody at all is going to reach the Expert trainer level in this RP. With just our starting pokes, that's twenty feature-length battles to evolve just one poke to stage three. With an earning of one trainer point per post, in order to catch fifty Pokemon you need 49 more Pokeballs minimum which requires 245 trainer points, or 245 posts. With that in mind, the chance of ever getting a non-evolving poke is pretty low.

Balth, I urge you to not take this as criticism. I know what I signed on for, and if I wasn't okay with this, I wouldn't have joined.

Edit: I do know that organizations can be used to speed up the trainer point process. THat said, in order to evolve ten pokemon to final form, which in the best case scenario means that all are two-stage Pokemon that will only take 10 battles each, that's still 90 battles. This, too, is not counting for boosters such as rare candies or evolutionary stones, though I expect those to be rare. It also might be unfair of me to say that 245 posts is a pretty unlikely achievement for each player, as well, but in addition that that being more posts than Dusksong has made so far on RPGuild, it is also -I think- more than the lifespan of quite a few RPs.

Pokemon: New World

Yo, @Balthazar007, I have a suggestion that I think is worth considering. In the OP, there's this:

Expert Perks: You can now evolve Pokemon to their third stage, as well as catch them already in this form. You can now also catch Pokemon that don't evolve

Personally, I think it would make a lot more sense if non-legendary, non-mythical Pokemon that didn't evolve were put into the tier-two slot of Pokemon, the kind that you can catch with a Great Ball. On the whole, Pokemon of this category aren't super great. There are some competitive stars out there like Skarmory, Kangaskan, Heracross, Klefki, but for each one of those, there's a Farfetch'd, Zangoose, Dunsparce, Stunfisk, and Sudowoodo. They're better than the vast majority of tier-1s and on the whole worse than tier-3s. Having to wait until I've caught fifty Pokemon and fully evolved ten of them to have the ability to catch trash Pokemon like Farfetch'd, Corsola, Delibird, Basculin, Plusle/Minun, Luvdisc, Spina, Torkoal, and Stantler seems a bit odd.

Anyone else feel the same way? To be completely transparent, a main reason why I'm asking is that a gimmick pertaining towards Audino makes me feel as if it would be a great partner for enhancing Olivie's character.

The Three Realms War [A DMC, Bayonetta and Darksiders RP]

Mad World

@zarkun@lazo@kapuchu

The more substantial weight of Wrath on the happenstance platform of vines caused the entire tangle to bounce perilously, but Souta was grateful for the help. Even a direct blow to the head, mitigated by the lack of resistance it found when the victim teleported away, did not discourage the car-sized creeps for long. Initially Souta's fighting instincts served him well enough, but as it quickly became clear that the fight would not be decided at a rate even resembling fast, he transitioned into a more restrained, defensive style. He kept his warhammer constantly in motion to avoid leaving any openings, making sure that his means of survival did not stray too far from him at any time. With a Nephilim beside him, he could take some focus off protecting his back, but he could not afford to relent for even one second lest the combined pressure of both squadrons of spiders take him down. Two or even three at a time, the creatures would warp forward to attack, but even as they vanished and reappeared the predictability of their fighting style meant that Souta never found cause to panic. All the same, and though his training with his favorite weapon maximized the efficiency of his movement, he felt himself growing fatigued. An intense trip through the Hanging Jungle prior to the fight didn't exactly leave him topped off in terms of energy.

The next moment, he both felt and heard something that set his hairs on end, and he could not help but look up. Several meters straight above his battleground, two spiders had teleported into empty air and slammed together. A smirk attempted to emerge on Souta's face out of contempt for the stupid things, but in the space of two seconds a dozen more spiders converged on the exact same spot, locking legs to effectively create a living wrecking ball that now plummeted his way—death from above.

Souta released a yell that he hoped would draw Wrath's attention to this little problem as two skeletons manifested beside him. They caught him as he made himself into a sitting position and worked together to bodily hurl him away from the vine intersection, just in time to escape the enormous, vile clump. He, hearing the clacking mandibles and horrific hissing noises of spiders leaping out to follow him, made no bones about calling on his Walking Armory style to summon a Trawler hook in his off hand. Its length wrapped around a vine nearby, and the man's inertia allowed him to swing out of harm's way for now. Unfortunately, the extreme slant of the vine to which he had adhered did not permit the chain loop to hold for long, and the grip began to slide. The sensation of losing his purchase scared Souta badly, eliciting a panicked bellow, and a skeleton popped into existence hanging from the slanted vine. With blood pounding in his heart and head like the many impacts of a hammer on metal, Souta stretched out his hammer toward the ghostly apparition, which grabbed it just in time and yanked weapon and smith alike toward safety. Using the Trawler, Souta managed to pull himself onto the vines top to slide down it rather than suspended from it. At the first opportunity, he pushed off from the surface to tumble onto a net of fibrous, steely plant matter stretching between vines. Not a second after the smith determined that this place provided very poor footing, a half-dozen spiders showed themselves in his field of vision, dutifully warping between vines to land not twenty feet away from their prey. Souta looked around; the others might have been several hundred feet above him, give or take.

One intrepid spider made its move, teleporting into melee range. Calling upon his weapon's charge technique, Souta slid across the net, his warhammer's spike extended to penetrate the monster's tiny head. When it came, the voice of Panoptos almost threw off his aim. ”Having trouble, human?” he asked cheerfully, watching the weapon slide through the spider's tender carapace and reduce its head to mush. The knowledge that these spiders couldn't shrug off slicing or stabbing attacks as easily as blunt-force strikes interested Souta deeply. The distraction provided by the Watcher did not.

”Can't you see I'm busy here?” Even as the one arachnid's corpse slipped away, two more appeared to take its place, one on either side of Souta. With speed powered by fire he whirled to strike at each one, knowing that if he telegraphed a move or overswung even a little, his life could be squandered.

Gliding around, Panoptos clasped his spindly fingers together. The spiders appeared to shy away from him. ”I always find that interviews under pressure are the most fascinating. So, by the looks of it, you've realized that using crushing attacks isn't working. That's a decent start. Basic of basics against agile foes, of course, but who's keeping score, am I right?” So saying, the watcher whipped out a pad of note paper from his ethereal body and scrawled upon it with an inky forefinger. ”Anyway, it looks like you haven't picked up on the trick yet,” he idly mentioned, not looking up from his project with the majority of his eyes. In response, Souta lashed out with his Trawler, not at a spider, but straight up. Not a moment to soon, he zipped toward a higher area, and the remaining spiders converged on the location he'd been just a second before all at once. Tsking, Panoptos whooshed after him, and found Souta clinging to a thick vine. ”Do I have to spell it out for you?” he asked, pointing a ghostly wisp up to the general area where the others were fighting, from which a steady rain of bug and bug parts were falling. ”The little girl didn't figure it out either. Sadly she wasn't as resourceful as you, but there's hopes of weeding you out yet!”

Souta glared at him as he pulled himself up. ”Shut the f*** up! Thinking's pretty hard when you've got a prick babbling on in your ear!” With a wounded look, Panoptos vanished, quite unwilling to render any more of his generous aid to the ungrateful brat. Somehow, the spiders had yet to find him here, so he stared up at the higher battlefield. He couldn't really see anyone aside from Fenn, whose distinctive size and near-constant accompanying blaze of fire made him easy to see, but he could see the vines rippling vigorously from all the action. How can these wackos keep fighting when the whole place is so wobbly? All of the vines are so tangled up, I can feel the vibrations from here. He glanced at the vine he stood on, silently glad that the mottled surface of the thing provided enough friction to make the chances of randomly slipping off pretty slim. From the looks of it, all of the really thick vines had such a texture; only the slimmer ones could be slid on as he did earlier. The undulations in the great web of vines got him thinking, though. The spiders still haven't found me, but they're making a beeline for the others. Now that I think about it, spiders in real life- he caught himself. Spiders on earth come out of hiding when they feel something struggling in their web. He snapped his fingers. ”That's it! Except, it's useless. I got lucky getting away, but no way all the spiders attacking the others will just give up if they somehow stop moving. There's gotta be something I can do...” His mind drifted to the 'horrors' mentioned by Panoptos earlier that also resided in the Hanging Jungle. How awful would be be if one of those happened along? Then again, Souta mused, the presence of a big fish would probably scare off all the little fish. Perhaps fighting with one large monster would be preferable, after all!

Gears turned, slowly at first. Souta came to realize that a big enough vibration, one suggesting of an absolutely huge creature, might be for the spiders a warning alarm rather than a dinner bell. With his weapons, though, he couldn't come near to generating enough force. Then again...

Souta directed his gaze at a vine several hundred feet away, which he estimated to be the largest one he'd seen yet. About as wide as an average two-way, two-lane avenue, it would have been great to walk across if it didn't hang at a 70-degree angle. Still, countless thousands of vines branched off of it. Wondering whether he might be able to stir something up after all, Souta banished Escre and called on Maelstrom. He barely had to take aim, but take aim he did, and one after another he unleashed a fusillade of fused fire spikes at the huge vine. As he predicted, the usually volatile spikes stuck into the flexible, fibrous surface of the vine rather than instantly detonating, and the smith took full advantage of the potentially infinite ammunition that characterized his gun to go wild. Souta made sure to adjust his aim slightly after each shot to ensure that the spikes didn't land too close, and over the course of about sixty seconds he plugged about as many of the suckers into the surface. Meanwhile, the weapon's recoil didn't provide enough force to vibrate his own line any more than the wind did, and despite the noise no spiders came his way. Genius, he thought, grinning, as he fired. I'm a genius! So when the spiders teleported away, they weren't just preventing damage, but relocating so as to confirm their prey's location via vibrations. When Souta felt his weapon starting to give out, he held his hands steady and prepared to fire two final shots in quick succession, with the goal being to start a chain reaction and really rock the boat.

Unbeknownst to him, not every spider had lost track of him. A particularly astute specimen, tracking small irregularities in vine vibrations, was closing in on the oblivious man's position.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

who doesn't like luke o-o;

@NarayanK

Pokemon: New World

@Lugubrious And there we are. I was thinking it was odd, but funny as well. Thanks! And please do be one--I often miss details haha

@Dusksong

Can do. By the way, this need not be the end of Leisy and Olivie's interaction. Olivie will definitely not stay mad at Leisy.

Pokemon: New World

Hate to be a stickler for accuracy, @Dusksong, but...

”Lead the way, kid. Name's Olivie. Don't wear it out.”