Necroes

Magik Ther Was

Short answer: A class 1 would be someone like Ptolemy. Someone so strong they had a W.M.D. named after them.

Long answer: The classification system is based off of personal experience (i.e., experience from every owner of the sword) based off of the rings reaction to a large number of magic users. It works by detecting the magic they give off. The stronger the magic, the higher the class. However, the better a magic user is, the less their inexperience will interfere with their magic, so the more potent the magic they give off will be. A level 2, like strange, is someone who has a mastery of magic. Not a specific magic, mind, like our Russian friend, but magic in general.
To get to the upper classifications takes something not-human. Basically, you have to start making the jump from a person to a monster to become that powerful. There is one level above class 1, which is class O. Not Zero, mind, but O. As in 'Oh!,' the sudden declaration of clairvoyant understanding that precedes the phrase, "we're fucked." At that point, you've gone from 'was human, is now monster' to just... 'is a monster.'

Magik Ther Was

So... Smith was the only one who got upset that he was tricked into being forced to save the world?

Huh... gonna be shocking when everyone realizes that the 'special people' club has a normy in it...

<.<... I'm batman!

Magik Ther Was

Hot potato

Magik Ther Was

Looks like we've got one left...

Has anyone heard from Traitor, by the by?

Magik Ther Was

*sigh* Threatening the use of a super-weapon really does loose its charm when no one knows what it does.

And, hey, I was talking the whole time. Right up to the point everyone else stopped.... >.>

Magik Ther Was

Sooo... whose turn is it?

Magik Ther Was

I was wondering if anyone would actually try and leave. Makes things more interesting when people decide to try and explore all options available.

Abominations of the Underworld

As predicted. An utter failure.

Let this thread serve as a lesson to any GM who thinks it's a good idea to upset the players that have shown themselves capable and reliable participants, in favor of new players that bring nothing new to the game, for the sake of getting more participants.

I was upset that an idea for a character concept I had created, completely on my own, had been used by someone else. Not because I really cared someone else used it, but because of what was done to it.

The race I had created, had spent days thinking up back story for, and had wanted to reveal to the thread slowly over time... was completely over written by one new player, who did not even think to talk to me about the unique race I had introduced. Many of the things I had left intentionally vague about the race, his character sheet outright laid out as fact. All the planning I had put into it was wasted, ruined really, and I had not even been asked my opinion. The character wasn't even creative... it just filled in the gaps I left blank on purpose, and with hackneyed ideas at that. Its only other trait was to be like my character, but better... bigger, stronger, less obvious in a crowd... It's upsetting, really. Not only because he did it, but because the GM allowed him to, without discussing it with me before hand, even after I voiced my decent.

And when I voiced my decent? I was told off. The only explanation given for why this was allowed was the lowest and most idiotic card any GM can play. 'I am the GM.'

Tip for good GMs: Never say that to your players. It is Not a valid argument. At best, it's childish. At worst, it marks someone who should not be in charge of a game.

A good player does not need to be told who the GM is. That is obvious. Every aspect of what that fact means is apparent. You should never point it out, because it should never need to be pointed out.
It is also not a valid basis for an argument. Saying that you are making a decision because you are the GM is the same as saying you are deciding the outcome of a story because you are its author. Yes, you have that power. However, a good writer will never allow his personal feelings to get in the way of depicting a good narrative, so any decisions he makes about the story should be based on the story, and not on him being its writer. That how a writer portrays a story can change how it is portrayed is an incidental side-effect, not a justification for ruining a good story.
In the same way, making a decision because you are the GM, and not because it will benefit the role play, is also unacceptable behavior. If the reason you made that decision is for the benefit of the RP, then you should be able to explain how and why. If you can not, you should not be making that decision. Being the GM means you Have to make decisions about the RP, not that you Get to.

After all that, all I can say is this:

This does not make me happy. I am not joyful over how this turned out. This is not satisfying to me, it is saddening.
I did not want to see this happen to this RP. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in it, and I looked forward to where it might go. That it ended before it even really began is unfortunate in the extreme.
However, for all that I wanted to stay, I knew I had to leave. I could not take part in a group under a GM who acted in such a manner to one of her first and most consistent players.
When I said that this RP would be a failure, I did not mean it as a curse. It was an observation, based in experience. I did not mean it to be an insult, and a part of me is sad that I was right. However, looking back, I think it is for the best that this ended how it did. Fewer hurt feelings, and fewer hours spent on a story doomed to fail.

Magik Ther Was

I posted!

Tried to give an accurate depiction of Smith's understanding of the situation while remained cryptic enough for Strange to deliver a more full explanation.

If I failed, by all means, tell me. In graphic detail, with plenty of expletives, please and thank you.

Magik Ther Was

At first, Smith was stuck speechless, not by what had been said, but by the resulting inner conflict. Half of his brain wanted to laugh in the mage's face, while the other half wanted to unload a clip of lead into him and then walk away. If nothing else, the guy had broken several basic tenets of a standard business transaction, which meant working for him would be a no-go. For one, he hadn't named a monetary sum as payment. He'd instead mentioned a 'reward', of unknown value, without even a hint at what it really was. For two, he'd framed the job like it was some sort of holy crusade, and that sent up eight different kinds of warning flag. Working for fanatics was always a bad idea, and Smith had learned that the hard way. 'Fanatic' and 'lunatic' were synonyms, as far as Smith was concerned. Finally, he'd used magic to communicate with them, without an obvious reason. While Smith's trinkets kept his mind from being read, it was a one-way filter, and if nothing else, it made him extremely weary to even be around the guy, as people who used magic that nonchalantly put Smith on edge even more than Russians.

He was about to mention of all this, when he remembered something. Something very important, about something the mage had said. He'd mentioned the eleventh hour, and how things would change. Something about it had triggered a memory, and that meant a couple of seconds of Smith standing silent, trying to figure out what was so important about the eleventh hour. While his memories from the sword were flawless, they were still memories, and required a bit of effort to search through, as much as any person needed help drudging up old memories, but even more so because of the shear number of memories Smith had to drudge through.

Something was important about the eleventh hour, but not just because of the time. There was something else, something about the date. What day was it? Smith had seen the date, on the newspaper he was reading. He hadn't picked up on it at the time, but something about it had seemed important to him. That wasn't unusual, though, basically any given date had been important to one of the swords owners for one reason or another, but this suddenly seemed much more urgent, now that the eleventh hour had been mentioned. A certain mage, who had held the sword once, had been doing a study on magic, and how it seemed to slowly change over time, stretching the bounds of reality as it did so, until finally...

"You're... You're talking about the convergence, aren't you? That's what this is about." Smith didn't need an answer, he knew that's what it was. The dates all matched up perfectly with the research notes he remembered, everything falling in to place with the memory as it came rushing back to him, for the first time in this case. The research was old, so the chances were that the name of the event was off, but what it represented had been a cause of concern several hundred years ago, when mages had first started theorizing about it. Now, it seemed that it may finally be coming true, and if that were the case.

"Son of a-" And with that, Smith began a string of curses and fowl language that spanned centuries of history, speaking in tongues that hadn't been heard for centuries, using phrases that had lost their original meaning before anyone there's grandparents had been born, all the way to modern slang, touching on every language from English to ancient Egyptian, speaking in multiple dialects of each, with French and Russian both included at one point or three, and didn't stop until he was breathing too heavily to form words around gasps.

And after all of that, he still didn't feel that he had accurately depicted his level of frustration with how thoroughly boned they all were. If he'd had even the slightest hint of a notion that shoving his sword through the hick would fix his problem, he'd have aimed up and starting from the groin out of spite. The one event in all of predictable history he had taken drastic steps to avoid getting involved in, he had suddenly stepped right in the middle of, and all because he made a single slip and decided to check on a job on the exact wrong fucking day.

"Well, isn't this just freakin' peachy!" He continues after he can finally breath again, pointing a finger at the mage in suspenders. "You've got two minutes to convince me that putting a bullet in you will somehow make me more fucked than I already am, or I'm going to do it just for therapeutic reasons. And don't think I won't. Magic may be about to go wonky, but I've got enough time to activate the Ptolemian Gateway I've got strapped to my thigh, and you've just given me reason to believe that's a reasonable alternative." A Ptolemian Gateway, named after its creator, the Egyptian warlock Ptolemy, was a suicidal spell that sacrificed the life of the wielder at a moment's notice to summon a gate way that momentarily overlapped a thirty foot radius centered on the caster with complete void, simultaneously making any magical defense impossible while tearing everything in the area to shreds.

It was a powerful, complicated, and extremely dangerous spell that was well known among the experienced magical community. The secrets of its creation had been lost millennium ago, and only a few preconstructed versions still existed. Smith had been informed of their existence via the sword, and had actually managed to obtain one. It was presently locked up in a huge safe surrounded by guard spells in the basement of his underground bunker, completely inert and even partially damaged-not beyond repair, but beyond his ability to repair-and Smith knew all of this.

However, the Hick did not, and Smith had centuries of experience in how to run a bluff, and what magical items he did have were more than enough to keep even a level 2 from divining the truth through magic alone. Smith knew all of this, and was bagging on that fact to get a little more information before liquid fecal matter hit the proverbial rotisserie air-circulation apparatus.