Character Development Thread--Discussion

Don't worry. The cat comes back.

He always comes back.

And why Ms. Snow has taken to carrying a knife that de-powers anyone it shivs.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:10:14 PM by KillerClowns

It's not his powers...

So, cantina!

She means magic, methinks.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:12:32 PM by JHM

How does that even work? Does it just adapt to every single different ability ever? What if it's a cyborg? Or someone who is just naturally, really, strong? Does it remove the powers? Does it just put a shield around it? What happens once you remove the knife?

Magic? Magic is different in every universe. Why should it work for all of them? What if it's just a naturally given ability that is not seen as magic as in-universe? Like how Superman can fly and stuff? What if it's considered mutant powers, like the X-men?

edited 27th Apr '11 7:17:19 PM by MrAHR

So what, cantina?

Also, Sama'thra enters from the right wing. Don't try attacking her. She's an astral projection that exists on the spirit plane, but not on the physical one. It's complicated, so ask her.

I haven't really had the time to keep up to date with the thread as it's been a busy week. I apologize for this, I should have made the time to keep with this whole thing as I do legitimately like the idea and want to improve my writing and characterization.

I've also noticed that compared to the rest of you guys, my posts have been kinda sorta utter shit. One particularly egregious example even earning itself a place on the list of examples of how-not-to-post. Ouch. Hopefully I'll be taking steps to fix that. I'll also be trying to renew my commitment to this thread or, if that's impractical at this juncture as events have raced ahead in my absence, joining in the next one.

chichuahua0, I assume this new character is the first step in your plan for the endgame, correct?

edited 27th Apr '11 7:21:28 PM by Gault

A Disruptor Knife, upon entering a target, simply rewrites time and space around the target to follow a template found by the precursors — a template not unlike our own universe's laws of physics. Magic and superpowers that don't exist in our world simply cease to be possible. This has a potentially beneficial side effect of making the target magic immune as well; I hadn't actually considered that side effect of its operation until putting it to paper. Badass Normals would be unaffected, while cyborgs would take a hit proportion to their position on the Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness. The knives are a fragment of a weapon created by a civilization on par with the Time Lords, intended to destroy an Eldritch Abomination they inadvertently unchained (no prizes for guessing who) by literally re-writing the universe so it couldn't exist.

They lost, by the way.

[Laughs] Precursor tech is not something I am in the habit of explaining.

Yep, pretty much.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:31:08 PM by KillerClowns

But then that knife shouldn't exist at all, since it was created through means that would be impossible in our universe.

So... get stabbed, and Reality Ensues?

Fortunately Justin would be unaffected, since his powers lay in the Death Note, but Landras would be poofed out of existance. However, as stated in Beach House, trying to mess with the Shinigami would summon the wrath of the Shinigami King.

Ian Down? He would be normalized, but I don't know how he would be affected.

The Cyborg Association would get ticked off, and send a few of their high-ranking officers after her, ones who can dodge the knife with ease or kill her from long-range.

My other cyborg with an arm? Probably won't work, since he is pretty hard on the Mohs scale.

Be careful with Alice wielding that knife. One of my characters is a Reality Warper than can undo pheonomonon too. Using the knife on him would cause a paradox of sorts that would cause great disability, effectively ending the thread by destroying the setting.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:36:16 PM by chihuahua0

I believe another posited the idea that we should state in bold the location that our characters are interacting in at the top of the post, as well as maybe also what they are doing. Will this be used in the next thread? I think it's a good idea that would clear a lot of things up, but if it is to be used would the Thread Leader need to set down a limited amount of predefined 'areas' to interact in?

No. QQQQQ did not like that idea; she believes that we should know how to properly create a sense of place, since that is honestly a cheap way to do it.

I don't think it'd be a bad idea to have a link to a map or something in the opening post of the next thread, so everyone has more than a vague idea of the layout of the setting.

I find stating your location like it's a movie script an anti-creative idea. When you can describe the location for yourself in your description — the smells, the overwhelming height, etc. Simply telling it leaves nothing to the imagination. There should also be no given "objective layout" of the place — because the territory of the map has not been set in stone. We can expand outside; add a city to explore or a washroom in the back.

Besides that, I feel that there are no thread "leaders" — participants all have equal say in the story. Waiting for some "leader" to give you the okay discourages forging a path for yourself.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:45:03 PM by QQQQQ

I'm not really the leader, I'm the supervisor. I nudge things along, and keep things in order.

I would've made a map of sorts, but I decided to let you guys create the place a little. For example, the mirror house and the carnival games.

Good point. Not having it set out like that would sort of force you to do things with the environment instead wouldn't it? Lay it out and describe it more.

But there has sort of been one central coordinator for these threads hasn't there? For this one it was chihuahua0. I'm not saying there has to be a strict hierarchy, that would significantly dampen the emergent element in these threads, but looking at the job chichuahua0 did, I think this sort of thing is beneficial.

Yes, supervisor. That is what I meant.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:48:21 PM by Gault

I understand that having a leader would kind of hinder things a bit, but I felt sort of bad about doing/describing things in the thread without being sort of pushed by Chihuahua or the more experienced tropers. I didn't know that it wasn't the best idea to kill off a character, for example.

Yeah.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:48:49 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

So, how would the Reality Knife affect someone who wasn't human, in the sense that they were an entirely different sapient species?

Yeah. Having a sort of leader helps a lot. If I wasn't doing stuff like having Mary gather the characters together, they would've been just wandering the carnival, and it would end up like Beach House: Fading away. I tried to get the plot going there by having ROSANNA serving food, but it was too late.

Well, the Precursors could work with the thing without dying, and they weren't human at all. So I suppose the answer is that it'd give them a shove towards the harder end of the Mohs Scale Of Sci Fi Hardness, but otherwise leave them unaffected. It'd hurt a Kryptonian like hell, but a Klingon would only have to worry about the stab wound itself. (Keep in mind, this toy was meant for a low-magic universe — only humans and a specific sort of mage. Everything else is just extrapolation.)

edited 27th Apr '11 7:55:21 PM by KillerClowns

I always enjoyed the spontaneity of people influencing the story for themselves. I know what you mean when people start fading away if things start drawing out. It's like a laser beam losing coherence in distance..

But having one "leader" to make things happen.. I think people can take more initiative with their writing. Encourage them to form a vision of what sort of story will turn out, and see what happens as their respective visions collide to form something new, something unexpected.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:54:04 PM by QQQQQ

And I sort of tried to hold castle together by setting up a plot from the early pages with lots of secrets and a laboratory for the characters to discover. Everything else came about as a result of the characters grabbing onto the many secrets.

EDIT: God, now I'm getting ninja'd over here.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:54:44 PM by CrystalGlacia

See, I'm thinking of my setting, which is fantasy and has humans, lizardpeople, harpies, and some other mammalian species. None of them actively need magic to be the way they are, though.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:56:17 PM by LoniJay

Sort of like a Writing by the Seat of Your Pants Thirty Xanatos Pileup?

Lots of ninja out tonight.

edited 27th Apr '11 7:57:36 PM by animemetalhead

Crystal, that idea sounds particularly intriguing, almost like a Dungeonmaster. Set up an area, populate it with predefined content, then put the characters in it and see what they stumble in to that they will have to deal with. Have doors to unlock, items to use... And they'll be blind going in initially. Assuming nobody does an Ass Pull, this could make for some tricky situations. What do you guys think?

edited 27th Apr '11 8:00:02 PM by Gault