We Are All Pokemon Trainers Discussion

Nah, Gabrielle vanished a while ago. She's gone for good.

Rachel's a Birdkeeper.

A birdkeeper, eh? Cool!

Alright, so we discussed a few important points if the other chat to help try to curb the amount of drama the chat has been receiving lately. The major points we have decided on are as follows:

• Regarding RL Issues: If anyone is having trouble for any reasons in real life, be it stress from work, college or whatever, it is advised that you discuss it in the WAAPTERS Need Love chatroom rather than in the main one to help prevent unnecessary drama from those who feel that they do not want to take part, or cannot help in any meaningful way.
  • Keep in mind that there are no publicly available logs for this room, so you can speak your mind without fear of incurring wrath from curious log browsers (Although it would be best to check for lurkers first).

• Regarding the PMD arc: Although several people have already made plans for a side arc, the "A-plot" is still woefully undeveloped at this point in time. While there are a few ideas floating around (mainly involving Pokémon tribes and a war between them that we get caught between), there is still much work needed to be done before this arc can be started.
  • To that end, if you have any ideas for potential directions this arc can go in, bring them up in the chat, but remember to post any potential ideas here in the discussion thread so that players can easily review them without having to trawl through the logs. This also goes for any arc ideas or major plans in general.

That's all for the time being. Keep it real, peoplemons.

edited 16th Jan '12 2:10:50 PM by Luke924

Luke, it might help if you specify which is the A-plot.

Though both plots seem incredibly incomplete to me.

The A plot is the plot for the group that will be staying on the PMD continent.

B Plot is the one for those that are going across the ocean to get to Pokepan.

Also a reminder of a particular agreement we reached in the private chatroom: let's not (even try to) start the AU plots until we have decided well on the individual posts and possible linkings for both scenarios. Guys, you know you can count with the worldbuilders in the group, as much as RL and other matters allow.

On a different but related matter, it seems I'll be available for a long session of character development sometime near Tue 10, as I have to stay pretty much the entirely of that day available online due to another matters I am pursuing.

Umbra: As I said in chat, my biggest problem is that we've really done the Brainwashed and Crazy and related plots a lot, and it's kinda bumming me out.

He could possibly have another motivation, more anti-villainish.

On Nox Giratina plans:

To be honest, I'm still pretty iffy about it. The AU gave us more than our share in what regards to corrupted Legendaries and whatever, really. One would think that after so many problems being possesed, captured or corrupted, they'd either have learnt to secure themselves, or simply manage to become inaccessible.

And when the villains that are not a conveniently overpowered Legendary are still a conveniently superpowered mage/robot/pirate/ninja/zombie, well, it starts becoming very tiring when one tries to develop for those. Effects related to the Sliding Scale of Villain Threat (where I get the impression we've been stuck as The End of the World as We Know It for a good while, even for minor villains), start to come into effect too strongly.

Now, all this said, there's also one immediate "hold on" on this suggestion that I would hold in a meta sense: I had thought we had reached a meta agreement to try and not have the Legendaries that involved in our shenanigans? Even with a certain Mew's presence we've been doing pretty well in Hoenn. We should try to come up with... well, less "superpowered X" to fight against.

I mean, there are so many "forces to be defeated" we could be facing that don't need to be glorified numbers in the Pokédex... I once suggested taxes as a "force" for Hoenn, and while not as "Pokémon-y" as some would like, I still think it makes for a good baseline of setting development to come up with more sensible "things to be defeated".

Now, if Giratina was to try something anyway and we woukd have Nox Giratina happen somehow, ideally not in the nearby (RL) future, there is one thing that think would give us a good spin to try without needing to necessarily plan for a Boss Battle Finale. The Pokédex says that Giratina was banished for "its violence", yet the myths also suggest that it was Giratina who warned the Human With The Sword. In my opinion at least (and I admit here I'm taking a page of my own headcanon) it would make sense if Giratina was acting not as the Big Bad or anything obviously evil, but simply as a sort of post-war Cosmic Keystone - acting to balance out the score after whichever scenario backstory, and thus it is more a mechanism to be shut down than an enemy to be defeated, plotwise. Heck, we could even get to play the "evil" party of the Hostage for MacGuffin scenario without detriment.

However to deal with this idea and see how workable it is I'd need more details on when in term of both timelines would Nox Giratina be rebelling.

Just a reminder: An Anti-J Team is still a possibility for Arc villains.

Don't forget that the RP's versions of Giratina are (to some extent) a little weird.

Anti-J Team, or Nega-J Team?

edited 7th Jan '12 6:42:24 PM by BadWolf21

Silly Wolf. A Nega-J-Team would just hang out with us for drinks. o3o

Really, Every? A Scott Pilgrim reference? -brofist- Nice.

^_^

...Alright. Here's my altered plan:

Nox Giratina is actually Giratina the THIRD, who is AU!Umbra after Ascending to a Higher Plane of Existence thanks to the other two, who need help maintaining the various alternate universes. As a Cosmic Keystone like Silent mentioned, he ends up helping the J-team against whatever villain shows up, where the others are more secretive. He's more interested in directly helping because unlike the others, he realizes the connection between the J-team and himself.

...If you disapprove of this one, (which, I must admit, is likely), I have two suggestions. One, tell me how you would personally make it work, so I can incorporate those ideas. However, if you find the whole thing completely unworkable, just ask about my plan B.

edited 7th Jan '12 6:59:59 PM by Umbramatic

Anti-Rex? I could use my original character design for him!

I don't even have anything to contribute to this discussion, I just wanted to congratulate Every on the Scott Pilgrim reference.
Well played, son. -Salutes-

^_^

Y thank u.

Ok, Guys?

I'm Really not Happy with what has been going on the past few days. At ALL. At this point, I'm Seriously considering dropping this RP,(and I mean seriously, not "Pretending to leave to get people to shut up" ) because it's draining the fun out, and I already have like 5 other RP's to be in.

Look, Long story short, I WANT THIS SITUATION FIXED. Before we lose more people, or scare away new members. If it means shutting down the RP for a while, Fine. If it means closing the chat room, fine. If we have to remove a few members, fine.

We're all old enough to know how to act, civil, so PLEASE.

Don't leave, Star.

But I agree. We should do something more serious to address these issues.

The trope you are looking for is not Batman Gambit but Lysistrata Gambit.

As for "fixing the situation", we do what we can but I want to remind people of two things: 1.- we are still too socially immature to use the chatroom adequately. 2.- even with the solutions we do execute and have executed, don't expect things to change overnight. Machines change with the snap of a finger. Humans and their issues don't.

Of course, (1) does not mean I'm advocating closing the chatroom - on the contrary. Perhaps it should be more open, but at the same more constrained. As someone else explained in discussion, the chatroom tends to be funnier when we are talking non-Pokémon things as well. Having the venting chatroom as an aside helps. That is also where (2) kicks in.

As a further comment, I'd say we have already paid a high price from this whole issue and that the talk that has stemmed from some RPers having left is a sign we're heading in the right direction, in terms of crisis management. YMMV can vary on that of course, I'm mostly saying "between someone leaving and us getting an alarm, or nothing happening and us still arguing in circles, I prefer the first".

Speaking about stemming, a couple of issues have come up at the private chatroom that I honestly think we should pay attention. They stem from a belief that a group of us, more or less the PEFEers, have some entitlement over the RP, just because we contribute worldbuild it. I've received more than one comment, even via PM, that "you hog the RP". Look, I'm gonna put this bluntly: you are no longer a Forum Game. You have "a world to live in". You have continuity now, and with that come consequences.

One of those consequences is that we have to either discard our previous history or live with it. When we tried to help live with it, we got flak about, example, the whole splitting PMD stuff that, go figure, Anom put us through (though to his credit, it was because he tried to help solve, just too late, a matter about the PMD that was grossly cast aside) and that has resulted in part of the recent discussion. Similarly with the matter of the end of the AU as a "verse".

But we're not trying to constrain people, we're trying to stretch possible avenues that make sense and cause us less issues in the future. Yeah, we might fail at that just like anyone, but we're doing it. If you don't, because you can't or won't, please remember you can still ask for help. I've tried to be as open as I can for character development and that kind of stuff. Tangent did wonders for the kickstarting of the TM/TA plot and he seems to be good for kickstarting stuff Tracer is a machine of generating NPCs for when we need them. But also at the same time accept that we have changed. Tagg reminds me that "Retconning RP events just because you don't like something is NOT cool", for example, with a justified level of annoyance.

But some of the reaction on this matter of style is making very hard to feel like contributing on our end as well. In particular when a longpost happens and it is met with a much less than cordial reaction from people who announce to the four winds that they won't even make the token effort of reading them. It doesn't have to be like, "right now" you know? But those posts have material, and also have continuity. Going beyond the show of disrespect, it makes us get less connected to each other, made worse because then we have to be hesitant about who to propose plots to, eventually always having to fall back to the same possé. Honestly, people act like that with our plots and then they wonder why Luke only wants to interact only with about two of us? Heck, I've been trying to interact with more people and barely managed to achieve something because everytime I reach somewhere, I might as well find a signpost that reads "the plot here is over, there's no reason to explore further, talk or let alone come back to town, ever". I feel more and more like having to RP alone, every. single. time. And R Ping alone is not R Ping. It's writing a fanfic.

So there are issues to solve there as well.

There is also the matter of ungratefulness and bluntness in fingerpointing, as well as some other associated issues, that I get when I read PMs like "you are hogging the RP" (see above) or "you chase Anom out of the chatroom and you should feel bad" (wut). I should have responded to such things two pages ago, but I'm gonna wait further until a better point in time comes; however, I'm leaving one thing for the record — anything related to Anom leaving is not dependant on us "chasing" him, if you want to call it that; he is in a condition where whatever we do or don't do he'll interpret as an attack to his persona.

Now on more meta news.

I'm compiling the log of the private discussion for yesterday, to send to those involved. As a transparency measure, I'll also be sending it to those who ask for it (via PM) if they were involved or talked about in the conversation, and wait until talking with the others before replying to any other requests.

Also... Since Tangent is not here tomorrow, it will be my turn moderating. Please be patient. 😫

And finally, I have to report that Crewe has apparently left the RP for good. She made no more official announcement than one line in the chatroom, so it can be kind of easy to miss, but if it is true, well, it is also here now.

edited 8th Jan '12 1:33:31 AM by SilentReverence

Bravo Silent

The fact that this needs aplause is rather appalling if you ask me. But this shit really needs to be addressed.

Personally, I don't mind reading the long posts. I've even made a few of my own. Of course, not to the extent of Silent, Tracer, Fool, or even some of Crewe's.

I try to give at least a token effort on the longposts, but the thing is, my time is often at a premium. I try to be here when I can, but more often than not, I'm quickly checking between classes, just so I don't have to spend my whole evening catching up on a day (which isn't as much of a problem recently, unfortunately).

I understand the effort that gets put into them (having made one rather recently myself, although not anywhere near the longest, by either amount of page space, or character count), but sometimes, it's not the best way to tell the story, and it's difficult to get through. For example, Silent, all of your marathon posts have multiple sections. It would be a lot easier to handle them (at least for me, but I have a feeling I'm not alone) if you broke them up, and just waited for someone else to post after you to put up another section. Facing a lot of moderately sized posts is easier to deal with than facing one or two mammoth sized posts that have the same content. Does it make sense? No, it's still the same amount of material. But for some reason, it's not as scary to deal with.

I actually haven't read the most recent Silent longpost partly because Silent's plots tend to not involve RP!Star at all, and when I'm attempting to skim, it's really hard to sit and read something that long that will very little effect on my Rp-ing. I will eventually go back and read it, though.

There's also the "Longpost Competitions" that seem to be happening in the chat. It sorta feels like well, bragging.