Mirandae

The Spirits Within

Congratulations to Ozerath for the 100th post.

#Blackwell, you are all good on your character sheet.

#Insatiable, no problem! Back to the drawing board.

#Ozerath, all good on the sheet.

#Sixsmith, all good except Jinxed. I like it, but you have to specify what the imps do in the form of X, Y, and Z. These are the things that they will look for and do when they are unleashed, if those things are not available, they do nothing. Or, if you want, you can create a number of actions for the imp, for example, 1-10, and then when Roy uses this spirit, I can roll three or four dice on my end to see which things the 'imps' do. This way, you can have some powerful stuff in there, but it will be at the mercy of the die. It's your choice.

The Spirits Within

Rockette said
I now want to go water-sliding in a drainpipe, dammit.Another thing to add onto my bucket list.

Haha, I felt the same way when I first saw the gif.

Blackwell said
At what age did our characters enlist? Seeing as they just graduated basic at 21, I imagined they started at 19 or 20. I had more intended her mother to move at around 16 or so. This is me going heavily off assumption though.

Hmm, I was under the impression that I wrote that somewhere. Apparently not. Since I have everything in my head, I sometimes get confused as to what I have written down and where. The characters started much earlier than that, just shortly after Sam died, at the age of eight/nine. I think I mention this in the first in-character post, which is why I though I had written it down somewhere! However, it does not mean that all characters applied for dormitory rooms right away, at that age. Olivia did, but only because her aunt did not move away from Helston, which is quite far away from the Academy. The case might be different for other characters.

Sixsmith said
I edited a bit prior to possible help it relate to plot a bit better. Kinda of tie in the spirits to possibly the forest and trees, mainly nature itself in particular. Manifest them into general creatures you'd think of as mischievous, but remain kind of earth bound, if that makes sense. I can elaborate on that further, if need be. As well, I'll change the Limit Break around a bit, maybe tie it in better with his spirits.

Take your time and notify me when you are finished with your revisions.

The Spirits Within

Archangel89 said
I added an image from my phone so I don't know if it worked or not

It did, but you have to put the link betwixt [img] code.

---

First—and for all of you—understand that my nitpickery derives from my inability to be specific in any and all information that I write. It is also partially due to the amount of people applying to the roleplay. As I comment on your writings, I always attempt to adjust my own in order to eliminate inconsistencies and obscurity. Please oversee my shortcomings, as I am sincerely trying my best to give you an awesome experience with this roleplay. My comprehension of the English language is not great enough to word a sentence that could immaculately describe my appreciation for your enthusiasm and devotion so far.

Ex & Sixsmith
I’m quite amazed at the volume you two have managed to create in such limited time. However, never underestimate the power of conciseness and brevity. I might be biased, as I do sport one of William Strunk’s most sacred rules—“omit needless words”—in my signature, but a lot of what you have written can be compressed.

Ex

Personality and biography and all that there is good.

Most of the information pertaining to the segmental vitillgo disease is needless information. I understand that it can help the rest of us to visualize the condition from which Emily suffers, but the paragraph and the note are too extensive. For example, it would be enough to say that Emily’s “hair grows in light blonde, almost white, in some places and black in others. To make it look less patchy, she has accustomed a routine of dying it to make it appear more consistent—blonde on top, black underneath.” Moreover, while this disease might exist in the world, I am not sure if they have a proper name for it yet or if they even know how it works—it is such a specific condition. The point is this: describe it with your own words. Skip the official name for the disease and skip the doc hammer note. I do not doubt your ability to portray something like this correctly.

The limit break is too broad, and it also sounds akin to something an end-game antagonist would possess, not a young cadet from a military academy. I understand the gist of it, and I do not want you to change it, but it must be more clear and specific. Think in terms of ‘this is when it happens and only during these circumstances’ and ‘this is what happens and on its own cannot create more of what happens.’ For example, ‘the Wrath’ has too many effects. Those that I recommend that you remove or turn into the main gist are: “water turns to ash,” “air turns into blood” (?), and the warping of buildings. The pustules and tentacles thing is cool (I’m a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft), the ‘real-space’ bubble is okay and logical if the tentacles attack anything, but if you want the mutating of living creatures, you are going to have to choose between that and the tentacles. The madness/hallucination aspect is also something that you are going to have to either discard or choose as the main gist. You can cut the third paragraph (save it for the in-character when Emily uses this ability.) The last paragraph is best saved for the in-character as well, but if you really want it in the character sheet, then that is alright.

Your spirit ideas are great, but they do not fit into the lore. This is my fault, so do not blame yourself. I have not been specific in my descriptions of how spirits work, but I will explain it here: The spirits in this game are to some extent based on Kami from the Japanese religion Shinto. They are also largely based on animism. The general rule is that the spirits derive from nature and the elements of the world. There are several things that can be considered elements: fire, earth, air, water, ice, lightning, light, dark, gravity, and time. Some of these are more ambiguous than others, but they do not derive from concepts such emotions, imagination, or immaterial things. So, you can ask yourself this: “what kind of physical embodiment did my spirits possess before they fled to possess Emily?” If you cannot answer this question, then the idea of the spirit/ability is taboo. I deigned it this way in order to eliminate the presence of obscure and overpowered magic. However, there are exceptions of course. One could ask: “what physical embodiments did spirits of air, time, gravity, light, and dark have?” Probably none, but these are nonetheless elements of the world. Imagine a gust of air that sporadically travels the world. It does not have a physical form, but we can sense its presence and effect on the things around us. The same can be said for the other immaterial elements. But, what you can do is to in a logical manner describe the origin of a spirit. For example, Parasite Infestation, this spirit could have previously possessed some poisonous insect or creature. Spirits are very much alive and sentient; they learn and absorb the things they find appealing, so it is possible that the spirit adapted the properties of that poisonous insect. However, when the spirit cannot replicate and manifest the material being of that insect in the same way it can with material elements such as fire or lightning.

In the end, these are just fancy descriptions of “you can do this, but not this.” But the point is that I have set up a few limits to what you can do, and I have to follow this limits. So, with this in mind, you are going to have to redesign some of your ideas to make them fit into the lore. Send me a private message and I will help you with this.

Sixsmith

Roy being ‘manipulative’ was interesting. Without getting too personal, I’m quite manipulative in real life. I know, I’m horrible.

The spirits/limit break ideas suffer from the same problems as Ex’s does. Read the comments that I wrote for Ex. This does not necessarily mean scrap and make new ones. Make them fit into the lore, if you cannot, redesign. If you want to, send me a private message and we will work on this together.

Unimportant side-note: your ideas are quite similar to Ex. Feels like you two have worked together on this!—both choosing very immaterial and cosmic-like concepts.

@Blackwell, the military academy has dormitories, so she could have gotten a room there. Edit: I'll look over your sheet and comment in my next post.

Speaking of character relations, I found a gif that I thought would perfectly describe the characters' relations on a day off: Some kids water-sliding in a drainpipe. It has a very swag culture-vibe, but whatever.

The Spirits Within

Ex said
A quick question about limit breaks: Is it preferable that, if the attack would generally hurt in its radius, people friendly to the attacker be protected? Or, is it better if the limit break hurts everything equally?

You are free to deign the specifics of how your character's limit break works. There are no preferences.

Adorabadass said
Why thank you, Prisk.And come to think of it, will our limit breaks change at all as we accrue new spirits? Does it depend on the limit break in question, based on how one's spirits affect their limit break? I can imagine it changing for Freddy if he gets more spirits, since it's basically, "Roid raging and having my spirits roid rage too."

I have no plans for the limit breaks to change during the story at this time, but that might change—who knows.

The Spirits Within

Welcome to Ex and Sixsmith is in order.

Ozerath said
Good to hear, both on spear count and the IC progress. Thael is pretty much complete, barring some minor peaks. I've made a few updates if you want to check back.

See if you can describe or find a picture for Thael's shield.

You have to clearly state, in-character, when your Limit Break buffs everyone else. It should have a visual appearance, so think about how you are going to describe that.

"While I Draw Breath" must have some kind of drawback when Thael is pushing the limits. Perhaps some of his other abilities are disabled, as those spirits focus their attention on the spirits that form this ability—the spirits are, perhaps, assisting each other with this ability.

Other than that, things look real solid.

Adorabadass said
I bolded my headers. :P

Excellent

Edit: those are some nice ideas for character relations!

Archangel89 said
Prisk I have finished my character...it is now awaiting your thoughts.

This looks really nice and clear. See if you can find an image for Aaron, but if you deliberately chose not to have one, then that is fine. You can always expand on things if you want to, while you wait for everyone else and the in-character to begin.

The Spirits Within

We were discussing systems without dice, but dice-games can work quite well with play-by-post roleplaying. It seems to work for the guys over at the Tabletop forum, but enough about that stuff.

Ex, there are currently ten people who are planning a character, working on one, or have completed one. However, there will not be ten people in the roleplay, and I want to give everyone who is interested a chance to submit a character, so go ahead and post your ideas.

Oz, it's a team effort... or, rather, as the leader of the group, it is my job to make sure that you guys kick ass (!), so Olivia will most likely retrieve your spear.

For Everyone
#The first in-character post is written, so this roleplay can start the very second that the cast is set.

#Try to complete your character within a week of this post. I do not want this to be one of those roleplays where you have to wait a month or two for the story to begin.

#My character is nearing completion, which means that the character depository-thread will soon follow. When you have been accepted, I will ask you to post your character in that thread. If you are not accepted, I will send you a private message and state why, and we can have a discussion if you want to.

The Spirits Within

We are not going to use a system for this roleplay, as I did not advertise it.

But, I think it's an interesting topic, because there is such a strong divide between people who like it and those who do not, so hearing people's thoughts are on the matter is always educational. I developed a casual system for a Magic: The Gathering roleplay, way back, that I based the first version of The Spirits Within's combat system on. The gist of the system was for it to be a decent bridge between text-based roleplay and tabletop, very streamlined and non-intrusive.

For example, there were a set number of 'character actions' for all characters, which were issued with 'action points.'This was just an anti-godmodding feature, that is, to prevent someone from killing everything in one post. One of the actions was "attack," which did a static amount of 'physical damage,' but the point was to roleplay it as several attacks back and forth between you and your enemy, block and misses, acrobatic moves, whatever—just as you would describe it in text-based combat, but you would be able to back all of your writing up with numbers in the background.

Then there was a static 'health pool' to indicate when and where a character would die. This part of text-based roleplaying is impossible to determine without ambiguity. I urged people to interpret different health values according to their own character, so what 20 health meant to character A did not have to mean the same to character B. it all depends on gender, body type, and those other obscure text-based things.

However, as Everblight said, the problem with this would be the extent of difference in magical abilities. But, I already stated that 'very specific' magical effects would not be very useful in combat situations. And 'status effects' such as being confused or whatever is easy to implement mechanics for. However, my biggest problem with the system, or any system, is that it becomes boring after a while unless you have a considerable amount of character customization in the form of traits, items, and whatever else, which was a nightmare to create and sucked the meaning out of 'simplicity.'

So, I never used the system.

The Spirits Within

Looks awesome, Adora. However, can you put the section headers in bold? Makes it easier to distinguish things.

I have an open question to everyone:

How do you guys feel about non-dice combat systems? I had one for the original version of this roleplay, a coupe of months ago, but it wasn't very well developed and some people were distraught about 'numbers' and stuff. However, I often feel that descriptions of abilities, how much damage someone can suffer, and other such things become so relative without some kind of number to indicate a definite. Am I alone in this? A system like this would have low value numbers, static numbers, and function as a 'background' thing to normal combat descriptions, to which are accustomed. So, it isn't really a 'tabletop' game. I've been thinking about this since some people struggle with creating their own spirits—I struggled myself.

What is your stance on this?

The Spirits Within

This is going to be nostalgia heaven, then, Rockette!

That sounds great, Insatiable! For Olivia I've developed an obsessional attachment to Sam. It has a specific function in the story that will hopefully provide a good twist.

Edit: cleaned up the ooc-text and layout.

The Spirits Within

That looks fantastic and indeed more accurate to what I'd imagine spirits would look like.