Avatar of Opposition
  • Last Seen: 8 mos ago
  • Joined: 10 yrs ago
  • Posts: 832 (0.24 / day)
  • VMs: 1
  • Username history
    1. Opposition 5 yrs ago
    2. โ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆโ–ˆ 10 yrs ago
  • Latest 10 profile visitors:

Status

Recent Statuses

2 yrs ago
Current New collab released and an update on the future of Futility! New players always welcome. roleplayerguild.com/topics/…
2 yrs ago
Finally some new Futility content is up! Two more collabs are underway/finishing up. We're writing longer-form content for this finale scene, so keep eyes out! Cyberpunks rise up.
2 yrs ago
Two or three 10-35 pages of Futility Collabs are coming, I promise. The time is nigh.
1 like
3 yrs ago
Guild Cyberpunk gang currently popping off
2 likes
3 yrs ago
Slowly, Futility rises from the ashes. Very soon, I hope, we'll be able to wrap up this next round of scenes, but that's like 3-4 posts out at least. The hustle does not stop.
1 like

Bio

<<<โ„๐”ผ๐•ƒ๐•ƒ๐•† ๐•Ž๐•†โ„๐•ƒ๐”ป...>>>

>>>๐”ธ๐•ฃ๐•ฅ๐•š๐•—๐•š๐•”๐•š๐•’๐• ๐•€๐•Ÿ๐•ฅ๐•–๐•๐•๐•š๐•˜๐•–๐•Ÿ๐•”๐•– ๐•Œ๐•Ÿ๐•š๐•ฅ: ๐•†โ„™โ„™๐•†๐•Š๐•€๐•‹๐•€๐•†โ„•
>>>
>>> "๐•€ ๐•’๐•ž ๐•’ ๐•”๐• ๐•ž๐•ก๐•ฆ๐•ฅ๐•–๐•ฃ"
>


I am a writer and poet aiming to create surrealistic and abstract imagery in my work. I also greatly enjoy worldbuilding, roleplaying, and collaborative writing in general. I also work as a writing advisor, so I enjoy working with, critiquing, and supporting writing in most of its forms. If you would like to work with me with any piece of prose or poetry, let me know. If you have roleplay concepts, questions, or ideas I'd be happy to listen. For those that enjoy the projects I GM, contact me as necessary. PM at your will.

Contact me on Discord at Opposition#4407.

<<<โ„‚๐•ฆ๐•ฃ๐•ฃ๐•–๐•Ÿ๐•ฅ โ„๐• ๐•๐•–๐•ก๐•๐•’๐•ช๐•ค...>>>


The Last Embers --- Tatiana Leviatan : The Black Shepherd Summoner




๐”ฝ๐•ฆ๐•ฅ๐•š๐•๐•š๐•ฅ๐•ช: ๐•‹๐•™๐•– ๐”พ๐•ฃ๐•–๐•’t ๐”พ๐•’๐•ž๐•–


Dare you stand against Titans in a Great Game?
Enter the ๐”พ๐•’๐•ž๐•–. Move your piece

Most Recent Posts

I'm leaning towards a medic character and thinking of making him a student who was booted from medical school before finishing (maybe drugs, maybe cheating, have not yet decided), hasn't been able to get any work since, has been struggling to keep up with paying fees and is largely disowned by his parents. Has the right skillset and nothing to lose. Sound ok? If not I'm still confident of the medical idea, maybe a Vet as an origin instead.

A medically-based character is certainly sound if that's what you'd like. I think a veterinarian might give you a bit of extra room to work with as you will be more of an improvisational medic and that might do well to fit the theme. Try what you think will work best, though, and we can work from there.

@OppositionOh hey, missed the interest check but I really dig this idea. I'm toying with a few ideas at the moment, but I'm leaning towards a wannabe stage actress who can take on different "parts" to help the team out, be it hiding in plain sight as a new intern, pretending to be an exec from the home office, or just bullshitting someone long enough for the others to come up with a plan of action. Kind of a mix between the bait/distraction and a scout/plant.

This could work quite well. The 'wannabe actress' identity might make for some very interesting dynamics and interactions whilst trying to show off her skills. Feel free to explore those roles throughout your sheet and pick what works best.
Fancy seeing you here, @Opposition. First of all, my idea is... somewhat similar to Oren, I guess... so if you're opposed to that I might just struggle. However, you have me thoroughly intrigued, so I'd probably take a shot anyway.

My idea is very, very barebones rn, given that I've only just discovered this, but it's basically centred around a young guy who has been shunted around his whole life, and the role he fills is the Cat Burglar. Sound good?

Good to see you are interested. I like the idea, though I'd encourage you to think a bit more abstractly in regards to the origin and basis of the role. I'm aiming to have each role be something based more on a facet of mundane life that wouldn't be considered part of the quintessential team for any covert ops squad. That isn't to say you can't have a similar set of skills, though.

Currently working on a bartender character right now. Probably gonna finish the concept by the end of this week.

I'm looking forward to it! Let me know if you've got any questions.

@Opposition I might make an ex-construction worker/project manager who then learns about the beauty of controlled demolitions. The Demolitionist.

Or maybe a bartender looking for a break, good with his hands, does magic on the side, maybe a little sleight of hand and misdirection.

I can imagine either of these ideas going well as both manage to pull their skills from everyday work in particular manners. Feel free to explore either.

Meanwhile, I'm going to make a former war reporter and make them into the hacker or the distraction.


That's quite a unique idea. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.




I have finished the example sheet, though I am leaving the concepts behind it a bit vague so that they may be changed to work around other characters. That should give a basic idea behind what the sheet should look like, though I imagine the prompt is mostly self-explanatory. If you guys have any questions, I am at the ready!


Diana Lotus


@Opposition

You have no idea how desperately I want to be chauffeur again.....

But anyway, Iโ€™m brainstorming now. Probably gonna ditch a concept Inwas working on and start with a new one.

EDIT: God, now, I'm going in circles.


I enjoyed the previous incarnation quite a bit as well! Rest in peace Futility attempt 1. Let me know if I can assist in any way.
Oh, I'm one-hundred percent interested in this. I'd be down to play either an investigator or CCF member. Both roles seem to have a lot of potential
Opposition has a lot of meaning to me on multiple fronts. For one, I'm a fan of the word by itself. "Opposition" isn't a commonly used word, but when it is used it context, it implies a duality. There's you, and there's the opposition; the obstacle; the opponent. In a sense, the use of the word almost implies a loss of identity in your opposition. When the word "opposition" is used, you take away the name, the face, or the identity of your adversary, referring to it only as something that opposes you.

It reminds me a lot of Taoist philosophy, or at the very least what little I know of old Taoist philosophy. That which opposes youโ€” your "opposition"โ€” is just as integral a part of you as that which you are. Only when we pay attention to the duality, the fullness and the emptiness, of ourselves are we whole... If that makes any sense...

The name Opposition came to me in a very odd way. When I was very young, my older brother would play video games and I would just sit and watch. Occasionally, though, he'd let me play, and because of how much I grew to enjoy those moments I remember them vividly. Essentially, Opposition was the name of an extra profile he'd added on Star Wars Battlefront 2, and I used it when we played together. I never really knew what it meant back then, but I liked the sound of it.
That part's a lot less deep, but it still makes me smile to think about how deep the name's origin goes.
๐•ธ๐–ž ๐•ฟ๐–๐–”๐–š๐–Œ๐–๐–™๐–˜ ๐–”๐–“ ๐–™๐–๐–Š ๐•ฎ๐–š๐–—๐–—๐–Š๐–“๐–™ ๐•ฏ๐–Ž๐–˜๐–ˆ๐–š๐–˜๐–˜๐–Ž๐–”๐–“

I find myself thinking about this predicament of maintaining a playerbase quite a bit. I do agree with @Moroseโ€™s idea that the unique style of every GM contributes greatly to how well their roleplays seem to do in the long run and how many players are attracted to their ideas. If you look at your past Guild GMs you can usually identify the elements that made up their style. I did this myself and often noticed that some things that stick out are whether or not a GM uses Discord and how they run their discord, and how they interact with players even before conversations of the story arise. This means that even in the interest check stage, thereโ€™s a lot you can do to ensure interest of possible players. Iโ€™ve taken to ensuring that my playersโ€™ questions are answered in a timely manner, that they know they can ask any further questions, and that they are free to provide constructive ideas to the areas where the story still needs to be developed where questions may emerge. Allowing contribution from the start of things allows players to become more invested in your ideas.

Once you have your player base, I find that there are three ideas to keep in mind: challenge, encourage, and correct. I'll elaborate a little bit on each of these:

Challenge - It's super easy as a GM to go 'well, I've got this awesome group, now I can just coast.' Hell, I'm a lazy person by nature so I totally get that urge. However, if you aren't challenging your roleplayers to grow as players and writers, then they aren't going to enjoy things. It's like if you let them easily overcome every obstacle - no one wants to read a story like that! So maybe for you, the answer is to come up with more complex problems as the storyline goes on and maybe allow your roleplayers to take a little more control. In my the Gifted RP, I actually am letting roleplayers portray the villains in the story and it's been amazing so far. It certainly has challenged them and I know it's challenging me as a GM.

Encourage - I do drop likes on posts, especially if I know someone is having a rough patch in real life or on the guild, as I know seeing a notification that I got a like or something puts a little spring in my step. I'll make comments in our discord chat saying things like "omg Max [the character] is a dumpster fire but damn it, he gives me life. Loved the post!!" I try my best to encourage other people to do things as well. If a post makes you feel, say something! It encourages everyone to keep on writing, as well as lets you know when you've done something well.

Now, I've also developed a system of well.... blatant bribery at times. Blue and I will give out rewards for noticing little easter eggs or posting quickly, such as reroll cards (if they ask for a dice roll and don't like the result, we'll reroll it for them) or extension cards (to give them more time to post). I've recently been making trading cards of all of the active characters and I've been giving them out to people as roleplays reach milestones (i.e. 100, 200, 300, 400 posts and arc completions). I'm working on developing a game that can be played with the cards, but people love collecting the cards of their own characters and it definitely encourages them.

Correct - This isn't the fun one. You have to apply the rules to your longstanding members just as harshly as you would for a newcomer. Everyone has to be treated equally and even if they've been playing with you for a while, people will make mistakes. It's your job as the GM to make sure that no one is above the rules - not even yourself - as otherwise, it's easy for a culture of favoritism to spawn.

These are great ideas, and I think your three main points here offer a lot of insight into what GMs think about. Each of them has a place in creating the unique signature a GM offers to their players. People attach to your roleplays for a reason after all. If we can identify how we use mechanics that contribute to these three factors, then we can usually find out what people are looking for in our roleplays both on a personal level and on a more general level.

Challenge is definitely a difficult thing to maintain throughout a roleplay as a lot goes into maintaining it. Thereโ€™s a certain balance you have to create that creates difficulty and challenge for your players so that their goals grow ever more developed and greater as the roleplay ramps up, while also allowing for players to achieve goals regularly so as to avoid a roleplay that is stagnant with a plot that never moves along. This can be done in a number of ways, and goals can be vastly different on a case-by-case basis for roleplays. Sometimes, your players are looking to defeat the next villain in the overarching story, but sometimes they are just looking to develop a piece of their character to create a dynamic person of them. It then falls upon the GM to create the challenge in a unique way for every player. Each player doesnโ€™t want to end up being in the same place doing the same thing at all times after all.

I think its also important to spotlight your playersโ€™ characters in their specific challenges as well. Because of the vast array of diversity in any roleplayโ€™s cast, each player will find that there is a place their character is naturally drawn to in any given setting. I tried to put this to action in my recent roleplay Futility: the Great Game. Having a racer character amongst the cast that was specifically designed to be the teamโ€™s driver, he was a bit more out of place in gunfights and political intrigue. That made his character no less integral however. Identifying what the player was looking for in his own characterโ€™s development, I offered the opportunity for situations where his car and chase-scene-esque talents would come in handy. In short, we really just need to learn to cater to the players that are developing the roleplay right alongside us as GMs.

Encouragement takes many forms, and forum-based reactions certainly have a place among GMs. Alongside the self-validation that we all hide when we receive reactions that people are interested in our writing, itโ€™s also a great way to keep players updated with the fact that their posts are getting read. As harmless as that may seem, I believe it is important for the roleplayers to know where I am at in keeping up with their posts. I also tend to try and comment on any new post that arises in a timely manner. This can help keep players thinking about what theyโ€™re going to do next and what they can expect from the GMโ€™s end before they prepare their next post.

Iโ€™ve been a fan of the more subtle ways you can reward players for active and continued participation in the past. This mostly came in the form of more detailed lore and the possibility to go even deeper into scenes than would not have been otherwise possible if everyone else was ready to move along. In my newest roleplay, ๐•ฎ๐–”๐–Ž๐–“๐–˜, Iโ€™m actually planning something a lot more blatant and akin to @Moroseโ€™s own idea using a mechanic Iโ€™m calling SECRETS. This involves players being able to find or receive files from important characters or in important places that will contain advantageous bits of lore that will come into play in the storyโ€™s future. While itโ€™s basically the same thing that I previously described, I believe the concrete and visible nature of the rewarded information will have a more powerful impact on keeping player interest. It is always fun to be more involved in a storyline, and the use of this unique element allows players to be better prepared for and more invested in where the storyline is heading.

Enforcing rules certainly something I struggle with as I personally have found the laid-back style of long-term GMing to be more favorable. Every GM is going to have to draw lines somewhere. That sucks, but there are ways you can go about it to maintain interest and look upon the system of keeping a roleplay going as less of a rules-based system and more of an accommodation system. If a player forgets to post because theyโ€™ve lost interest in the roleplay, thatโ€™s a lot different than someone being unable to post because of some struggles in real life or a stint of absence. I try to solve this problem in my own roleplays by allowing players the option to have me treat their character as a momentary NPC if they find themselves unable to carry on for a period of time but still want to remain involved in the roleplay.

Allowing players to take a more backseat role when they are unable to invest themselves as much as others shouldnโ€™t always be a bad thing. Iโ€™m going to have to bring up my new roleplay ๐•ฎ๐–”๐–Ž๐–“๐–˜ again, because this was another aspect of running a roleplay Iโ€™d seen when previously GMing that I wanted to put into action in my newest attempt at GMing. The roleplay all takes place with a base settingโ€” a safehouse for the group where they will be interacting outside of the greater โ€˜missionsโ€™ of the story. When players find themselves busier or less able to invest themselves in the roleplay, they will be able to keep their character at the safehouse and attend to manners of character development at a pace that wonโ€™t keep other players waiting. Iโ€™m excited to see how effective this mechanic may be.

I have rather limited experience with trying to recruit players into an already running roleplay, but I suppose what Iโ€™ve noticed is that supplying a transition into the cast is rather important. Since any additional players that might not have been around at the beginning of your roleplay werenโ€™t right alongside everyone else (and Iโ€™ve come to believe that you shouldnโ€™t try and force them to have been there in the past), they need to have their own unique goals for joining up with the rest of the cast and working alongside them. This can manifest as a scene unique to the new players that bestows on them the motivations and information necessary to find a place in the already established crew.

I think itโ€™s important to mention that while new players should be able to influence the plot and interact with the greater world just as the main characters did, it may also help to create a unique role for the new players that allows them to be different from the main cast. Just as the old players have valuable information and experiences that they can bring into the plot, new players need to be given their own array of experiences that they can use to fulfill a new role in the story. This can be difficult as it can be tricky to create a new role that isnโ€™t fulfilled by the present and can still be relevant to the story. That boils down to the job of the GM to make their roleplay morph and change to encompass all its players.



I hope my discourse may help some of you. Iโ€™d love to hear what others might think of the ideas Iโ€™ve posed here. This is just my unique perspective, and I fulfill a certain niche on the Guild with my style just as all other GMs end up doing. Identifying your own style and tropes can really help you develop a story in a way that works for you and the people that you draw in, though. Also, thank you very much @RPGN for the shout-out to ๐•ฎ๐–”๐–Ž๐–“๐–˜. The OOC has just been put up and we'd love to have any and all interest parties involved!


โ€”๐•บ๐–•๐–•๐–”๐–˜๐–Ž๐–™๐–Ž๐–”๐–“


BTW ill be away for all of next week, fully returning on Sunday. I haven't read through the whoel thing yet, but I glimpsed the CS and it does take me a while to make a character. Point is, (1) i'm asking when you're expecting for this to begin approving applications? and (2) when is the predicted cut off if there is one?


I hadn't had a strict date in mind. Once the sheets start to come in, I'll have to converse with each of you to get your SECRET to you, so that may take a moment. At the very least, I imagine we'll take around a week to get to that point. It will take even longer than that before we get fully through the first round of posts. If you'd like to create a character and you're a little late to the start, that should be fine. I'll aim to get a better estimate of start time as the sheets start to come in and I realize what kind of cast size we're looking at.
I hope that helps!
CAST OF CHARACTERS



A C T I V E


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D E C E A S E D


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And we're live!

You can find the OOC here! There's plenty of new information and mechanics that have been added and updated, so I urge you to read through again. Let's get started!
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