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It's BEAUTIFUL. Just make sure that only the trophy gets eaten, OK?
edited 22nd Jan '12 4:08:33 PM by Umbramatic
Contact Me!There's DS's plan, dunno how "interventing" it is. Worst case scenario I can prepare Foreign!mence...
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?So, due to some stuff that I've done that confirms me as a huge jerk hasn't gone over so well, I'm going to leave the chat/RP for a few days, maybe longer, if things don't go according to plan when I move home on Thursday.
Until then, however, you can contact me either through:
- Messaging me through Pidgin, I keep it running all the time and will notice if you're trying to talk to me.
Or...
I'll also be checking the log and the thread to make sure I don't miss anything, so you won't have to recap for me or anything.
I'm also taking a break from the chatroom for a couple of days, so will ignore stuff going on there unless called in for ontopic discussion. The Pidginers can contact me easily, the others can PM I guess.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?
Sorry to hear that. :(
In other news... There were a few things that I wanted to discuss about...
Hoenn
First off. I think that it would probably be nice if we figured out what on earth is going to be happening in the rest of the Hoenn arc... I mean we have had the following events proposed at different points:
- Shenanigans stealing PR trophy
- Perfect Aqua attacking Lilycove
- Kim's Mindscape
- Visiting rest of Hoenn's Towns
- And Then Vyvyan Was a Rayquaza
- Team Aqua and Team Magma going at each other's throats
- Reveal of Charon
- Charon attempting to extort Hoenn via threat of artificially induced natural disasters
- Make or Break Finale attempting to stop a supervolcano along with Big and Little Weather Trios
... But no real chronology to tie it together... Seeing as we're kinda in "coast" mode in Hoenn right now, this is probably something that should be figured out... And FAST.
Storytelling
One of the major pitfalls that I've noticed with WAAPT's past arcs is that we seem to have an issue coming up with ways to wrap broader arcs around a premise other than some variation of "Save the Region/World/Universe" and "Stop Team/Empire/Organization XIII Evil." And... Well... To be blunt... It's wearing a little thin. Seeing as our two biggest attempts to make an arc outside of this mold (GC + OI) had major complaints about organization and execution, I guess what I'd like is to hear some suggested ideas for different ways to structure future broader arcs that would give us ways to tell a story without falling back onto the same basic premise that's been reskinned like 8 times while still remaining enjoyable to play in.
Thanks for your time and consideration, folks.
edited 23rd Jan '12 10:55:07 AM by TracerBullet
- Cure the Littlest Cancer Patient?
- Explore / strengthen human presence in the untamed region?
- Get two populations / cultures closer together? (à-la-Verdanturf Tunnel, only perhaps not as literal)
- Help one of our own pursue/achieve the dream of becoming the first Dark-type Gym specialist / having a normal, non-baleful polymorphed girlfriend / clearing the image of XYZ "murderous" or "untrainable" mon / demonstrate to his father he's not worthless?
I mean, really, there's a lot of things that can be done in several layers from short to long term, what I've listed is just four random templates out of many. But of course if a proposal is going to be met with "no because we'd have to worldbuild" or "no because there's no actual antagonist" or "no because there's Slice of Life" in it, then we will always be thrown back at Square One.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?![]()
That's exactly the problem, though...
I like fighting bad guys, not idly chatting about life while having the occasional Pokemon battle. Well, I don't like it as a whole arc to itself. I'm an escapist: I like R Ping feats of awesomeness, not everyday life.
If we could find a ballance, though, I'd go with that.
edited 23rd Jan '12 2:04:00 PM by Umbramatic
Contact Me!We're not saying (hopefully) that you can't have feats of awesomeness and save the world, Umbra. Tracer is saying, as it has been said before, that doing that every day, for every plot, well, wears thin. We ought to have an alternative as well. There's also the problem if having to scale villain threat to the point where it is eventually impossible to have a sideplot that escapes the Save The X drive.
Besides, you'll get to save the world pretty soon already, arc-wise. For all the "let's take it slowly" and "let's downplay Legendaries" talk that there was at a moment, somehow we are going yet again to Save The Region for the Hoenn finale, with not one but two whole sets of Legendaries and a pretty good assortment of villains around, including but not limited to essentially splinter cells of Aqua, Magma, Ozone, Glacier and Galactic.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?(I know I'm supposed to be under a self-imposed exile right now, but I just wanted to add my two cents here.)
Following up on Tracer and Silent's points, there seems to be a common consensus that a "Not Save X" plot means that we wouldn't have anything to do, which is simply not true.
The mentality to this seems to come from the failures of the Gold Conference and Orange Islands arcs, which are the only two arcs in WAAPT so far that have not revolved around defeating Glitch Pokémon/Evil Team/Scolermis/Whatever. However, these arcs did not fail BECAUSE they weren't about "Save/Defeat X", but rather because they were poorly planned, or the intent of the arc was not clearly communicated.
Due to this, most people would rather stick to the current model of "Save/Defeat X" rather than take the risk of running another plot like this and risking certain disaster, which is understandable. Besides, why try to fix what isn't broken?
The problem is, though, that the "Save/Defeat X" model IS broken.
I recall during the Hoenn arcs planning stages that the power levels of certain characters Pokémon (Mine, Tagg's and DS', amoungst others) needed to be taken into account to ensure that we simply just didn't curb-stomp team Magma/Aqua/Ozone/Glacier/Banana and end things before they even get started.
And while we did eventually circumnavigate this issue by making Neo Team Magma/Aqua legitimate operations, the fact of the matter is; if you need to go out of the way to ensure that your villains aren't credible threats without nerfing the heroes of passing around the idiot ball, then there's probably something wrong there.
The beauty of a more mundane plot is that they can't simply be solved by throwing all your Pokémon at it. While that doesn't mean that you should never attempt to solve problems with a Pokémon battle (I myself would more tan welcome more friendly battles in-RP), problems like this encourage more inventive solutions, which, as a whole, would probably be much more fun that taking part in a twenty on one boss fight where people spam moves until the boss nearly kills everyone only to be defeated at the last moment by an outside force.
I'm not saying that we can never "Save X" again. It's just that we really could give it a break for a while to encourage more creativity. After all, R Ps are supposed to provide experiences that a video game or something couldn't otherwise meaningfully replicate. Because, to be fair, if I wanted to save the world with an epic battle of sort, I'd go and play Skyrim or something.
I'm with Umbra.
I'm cool with not saving the world everyday, though I certainly prefer it over mundane plots, but I want to do something.
And I like plots that have an internal force that drives the plot, and brings everyone together to solve the same goal, while leaving room for people to branch out and do their own subplots if they want to. But not a plot that's just a collection of subplots, even one that has a common endgoal—that, to me, is not fun at all, and I'm not taking part in one of those arcs.
Victory! Honor! Destiny! Mutton!Crewe: I actually had an idea for PMD. It was somewhat peculiar, though. It would mostly be doing some random silly missions, but I think I could infuse my other idea with it if I decide to use it.
In that case, some of the missions amongst the random ones would have an odd connection and similar theme between them, with more and more of an overlapping plot between those missions developing over time before culminating as a full event. It's kinda hard to explain.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
x(However many to Umbra)
I never suggested that we made an arc where fighting baddies didn't happen. Just one where it wasn't the central premise of the arc or would otherwise lead to some sort of "make or break" scenario for a good chunk of the world. Seeing as we've done that in:
- Sinnoh
- Unova
- Oblivia (although a superweapon is probably a lower order of magnitude threat-wise)
- An Alternate Universe
- The Orange Islands (albeit not as the central focus of the plot)
And we're set to do that in Hoenn and Sinnoh again in the near future... I don't mind having bad guys to whale upon, but I'd like to see more novel applications for it than we've had IRP so far. (ex. Fighting baddies to reclaim Mac Guffins, something like that.)
edited 23rd Jan '12 1:36:17 PM by TracerBullet
I know randomness without plot isn't as fun for you, but I was hoping I could make them funny missions. Like:
"Please deliver Oran Berry! I'm starving!
blah blah blah client stuff
Oran Forest F3"
edited 23rd Jan '12 1:44:59 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Eh, I guess some dungeon crawling is okay, so long as it's handled well.
Though it really requires a GM to give information about the floors. R Ping exploration without a GM doesn't work well.
Victory! Honor! Destiny! Mutton!Thanks for explaining, guys. I think I understand better. I DO think a balance would be ideal, and I like Tracer's idea of fighting baddies creatively.
Contact Me!But even random Boss Battles can be made more than "Throw whatever at the boss until we decide it should die".
You can:
a) Use the buddy system, and have players team up and play each others opponents (works best with more than one boss at a time, such as something like, say, the Delta finale)
b) Use PO! Have one person make a team of the boss, and the other make a team of whoever fighting it, and actually play out the battle to see when the boss would die.
Victory! Honor! Destiny! Mutton!

I like that idea.
edited 22nd Jan '12 3:33:06 PM by strawberryflavored