Xaxl

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
first of all i haven't even picked where i will be on the galaxy map so for all you know i could be at the complete other end of the galaxy away from you, so you just have to wait until the OOC is up before we know if i am even within good traveling distance of your faction.

You've succeeded in missing the point dramatically.

I'm telling you that you can do pirates if you want to, and that there isn't anything about this RP stopping you from doing that, but if you are you should do them logically (like my example of Redspace's pirate problem).

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said i want to have fun rather than just be my own little bubble which is boring in my opinion

Nobody has to stay in their own little bubble! Nobody said that! What I have been saying is that a massive underground crime network isn't feasible because we aren't that interconnected! We are all planning to contact other civs and interact and have characters that go on adventures with each other, though!

Yog Sothoth said also there will probably NPC factions since none of our factions will take up the entire galaxy so most of my pillaging and plundering will be done against NPCs for the start of the rp.

I will reiterate that the GM has stated we will cover a small section of the galactic south consisting of no more than 10,000 stars. As far as I know, there are zero plans for NPCs. This will be a player-driven RP.

Yog Sothoth said
you seem to think my faction is weak, trust me when i say it's not, just wait and see when i finish my faction sheet.

Nobody cares how many big numbers you throw down on your sheet. What we care about is writing an interesting, engaging, and fun story between each other. Playing a big badass warmonger that exists solely to piss other people off is not going to make your popular, especially when it flies in the face of all logic.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Like look

Redspace has a shitload of pirates in its territory, and they survive just fine, because they're all independent and don't have a central organization that can be targeted. But by making a "pirate empire" that spans multiple civilizations, you are setting yourself up as a massive target.

If you really want to be pirates, scale them down and pick a player to cooperate with so that you can exist within their space.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
no need, i would rather just pillage and plunder, or trade if there is a large profit to be had.

And by invading/pillaging other factions with an organized military force you are inviting yourself to be completely wiped out as an aggressively xenophobic warmonger.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
still the reluctance to share culture hints that the factions have some form of xenophobia and that usually doesn't turn out good when it comes to alliances. regardless, my faction will still be pillaging and plundering planets. hell they don't mind people from other civilizations joining their crews because it means a little more freedom for those poor souls who have to live in those uptight civilizations with their self-righteous morality, my faction believes in taking what you want, when you want.

You're inventing reasons where they aren't there.

Our nations are insular communities because they are designed as self-contained units which can be plonked down like bubbles anywhere on the map. There are vast physical and bureaucratic distances separating everyone. If we'd designed our factions for a setting more like Star Wars, where everyone has assimilated more or less evenly, then you'd have an argument. But our species are concentrated in specific bubbles and regardless of outlook that precludes close cultural association; military and economic support is still perfectly feasible, but you're not going to be able to send an Alkay spy into Graal space.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
Did you read my post? I said that my faction's size right now is not final. Also if you guys are insular and not very connected then that makes pillaging and plundering not too hard since there wouldn't be any alliances. Also my faction will trade if it makes a good profit.

Insular societies =/= no alliances.

What we are saying is that species and cultural contamination is not likely to be strong enough in this setting to warrant a collective criminal underground. Political and military alliances are in no way held back by the same factors, though.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
There is no list of faction sizes so I waiting until a list is given before I give my faction its proper size. Ether way my faction is still an empire of pirates and will rob anything with value, so the underworld aspect may not play out the way I want it to but there will plenty of people to pillage and plunder.

So you're a warmonger? Because at the scale you're talking about, you're going to get stomped for that, hard. You're another nation attacking pillaging others; that's a lot harder to cover up than small independent raiders.

Orbitum - SciFi Space - OOC

mattmanganon said
So long as I get to actually RP in this, i'm not particularly bothered who the GM is... Unless it's one of those Douchebag RPers like TheVirginian... I'll warn you all, he was on the old forum, if he ever shows up, NEVER try to RP with him. He tries to take control of the RP, and then when he doesn't get his way, he calls everyone "Terrible RPer's" deletes all his posts, then leaves... Don't bother with him, you will regret doing otherwise.

If we're badmouthing people, I've heard that Theo has a terrible attention span. I mean, hell, they started an RP themselves a few days ago. OOC went up, sheets came in and got approved... and then nothing. Not a trace of them.

Probably not the most reliable GM.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
Your faction sounds like it doesn't have too much freedom and individual choice. Also this a galaxy we're talking about so it is highly possible for there to be a galactic crime syndicate, and I think it would offer a lot of interesting aspects to the rp.

It being a galaxy (which is questionable as the GM has said that at maximum all our combined civs will cover about 10,000 stars) has nothing to do with the liklihood of there being an organized inter-faction underground.

For something like that to be plausible you need two things: high inter-connectivity and more or less unregulated civilian access to spaceflight.

The first point fails, because even basing it solely off of the current completed sheets, factions are trending towards being fairly insular; they exist as largely self-contained bubbles of one or a few close-knit species united under a larger political body, with areas of empty space between each other. Sure, within Redspace or Graal or individual Yul worlds you could probably find a criminal underground network, but it would be exclusive to those locations and have no functional reach beyond them.

I mean, this is the same reason that spies aren't very plausible in this sort of setting; individuals or organizations from one faction are going to be very obviously foreign if they interact with other societies. A Graal could never infiltrate Redspace because Graal are rare and stand out and would be subject to automatic scrutiny.

The second point is also likely to fail due to a lack of the first element.

In a setting like, say, Star Wars, where species can generally be found anywhere and there aren't many factions, sure, underground crime ring works. In something like this? It's rather unlikely.

The War of the Great Kingdoms (A Sci-Fi NRP)

Yog Sothoth said
Well then I meant galactic underworld, and in my opinion if you have empires and civilizations that can cross the galaxy then naturally you would have crime syndicates. Criminals do not follow norms like lawful citizens do so regardless of how isolated you are, there is always the possibility of criminals who will use galactic space travel to make profits

The sheer number of hoops that criminals of one species/civilization would have to jump through to make a profit off of an alien one is mind boggling. It'd be easier to just stick within their comfortable environment.

I mean, criminal enterprise thrives on deniability. Its hard to keep a low profile when you literally look completely different from the guys you're trying to do business with.