I'll stick to being normal too, I just want nonsensical options like Rib of Introspection available. Though I've been thinking of giving Stracciatella an attribute...
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?Just cause you have the attribute doesn't mean you have to do anything about it. If there is a 1 in 5000 chance of possessing an attribute, there's a high chance some NPC who will never accomplish anything relating to our plots would be one such person. He/She'll just never find out about it, will be none the wiser, and incur no consequences from such.
There is no night without dawn. The sun is always sure to rise.I just wanted to apologize for some of the things I said last night, both here and in the chat. This especially goes to Silent, Every, and Meddler.
Contact Me!Discussion on collective Power Levels in the RP and how to have some sort of serious threat instead of curbstomping every boss: Here
to about the time of this post. Just dropping a link cause I don't want the needed discussion post to be forgotten, and I suck at summaries…
For those who find it too much of a hassle:
- The fact a select few of the group are ex-regional champs, thus more powerful than average trainers, cripples the sense of severity in most boss battles.
- This breaks the concept of what a boss is really supposed to be, a challenge with a level higher than the norm in the arc.
- The prospect of having a character die in battle does give possibility for resurrection, it is time-consuming and leads to Death Is Cheap.
- Anything involving death may end up going past our range of Lighter and Softer that we've been trying to keep recently.
- Mooks are getting regarded even less due to the above.
- Something about a Save Point in the Evil Arc.
- Power Creep, Power Seep should exist only as a last resort.
- We've essentially phased out the usage of healing items on-screen.
...Yeah, I think that's all that was addressed.
There is no night without dawn. The sun is always sure to rise.A couple of personal thoughts on the matter of the Distribution of Ninjutsu:
Right now, we have a simply egregious disparity both in power level and in power capacity. Characters like Tagg and Fool can sun-incinerate areas as large as a city, summon Legendaries for a FATALITY, or create whole mons out of thin air, apparently. When not running a tournament policy that can be homologated to "your mon has a maximum HP of 400", there's simply not fighting something like that; but when fighting within a tournament policy, we won't be able to do much against individual level differences either because for our mons to be able to pull that level of stuff, they have to be quite powerful. On the other hand, it does make putting higher bounds on hax opponent power level easier, even if at the cost of making the ensuing battles highly predictable (not boring though).
Fortunately, we do not need a Power Creep, Power Seep (yet), we do not (for the moment) need a deleveling nor any of such things. And personally I would be against a deleveling because there is pretty much no way to hammer that in "fairly". What we do need is to actually, you know, take damage in battle and suffer the consequences. Have to use, or fail to use, the Medicine section of our item bags for something.
Of course we don't want our mons to die, and I definitively won't be asking for that (unless it helps the plot or whatever), but there is a wide assortment of Next Best Things we can use. For example, I can't remember the last time one of our mons took enough damage to be knocked out of commission for half an Arc while he goes to surgery, then rehabilitation program, then therapy or whatever. And none of our mons has performed an actually sacrificial Heroic Sacrifice ever since the AU, they are all just reduced to "I step in front of you and use Protect". All in all, we simply do not need to essentially FLAWLESS VICTORY our way into antagonist ranks.
But all this comes down to a deeper issue, one that prevents options like those actually factoring, an issue with the RP playerbase mindset that makes them "bet against the market" of character and plot development. This is the issue of Tunnel Vision, and I think it merits further, deeper discussion when enough of us can meet.
And yes, I know the universe hates me and all those who live south of the Equator. And I also know that Tracer logged in about as soon as I left. Thank you, Universe. <_<
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?There is another potential solution to the overpoweredness problem, which also ties into the "Save/Defeat X" issue. For the most part, most of the problems in this RP are mostly solved by having a fight with whoever is causing the problem. And in those cases, people like Tagg and Fool are the best ones to try and solve them due to their sheer power.
But, we could easily solve that by putting us into situations where brute force isn't the solution, which would also save us from having to de-power anyone. Sure, Tagg may have a Team of Champion Level mons, Aura powers, and the ability to summon Groudon and Dialga to help him, but is any of that really going to help him if he needs to take part in a Pokémon Musical in order to win The Macguffin of Plot Advancement?
Just something to consider.
I did have an idea for a boss that appears as if the only solution is brute force, but brute force does nothing, and the only way to defeat it is to actually use your brain and find its weakness.
So everyone pounds it (because that's what they're used to doing) and just assumes the boss hasn't taken enough damage to go down, the people that aren't practically super powered have to watch it and think about how to beat it. Maybe it takes more than one fight to hammer into our brains that just hitting it won't make it go down?
I also had an idea for an actually sacrificial (not like, dead sacrificial, but seriously injured, yeah) Heroic Sacrifice for later on, but that's just me and my own characters.
Please note that this isn't me trying to make a "Defeat X" plot work without a Damage-Sponge Boss (though I guess it could be); it's more my attempt to mock our reliance on them, in that we try to treat it like one (because, well, that's what we've been doing) and fail miserably.
edited 15th Mar '12 1:17:34 PM by Crewe
Victory! Honor! Destiny! Mutton!Talking about Boss Battles, there is something that I should have reminded us all yesterday or so, but between heatwaves and RL I'm not in a condition to go much deep into.
Long story short: Tagg had planned some specifics for the Boss Battle at the Sinnoh Pokémon League. He had mentioned at some point he wanted to do something there, but his plot was shortcircuited while he was nomming. There are various factors to account for here. It is true that he should have announced his intentions before going nomming, since we are supposed to (as per his own advice) "assume nothing". It is also true that he is the GM of the IK arc and thus if you want to inject a plotline or an event in Sinnoh that has particular relevance, you should at some point ask Tagg about it so as to not break anything.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?I figured that I ought to mention that I have a doctor's appointment at 4 PM EST, so I probably won't be back until 5 PM at the earliest.
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.A heads up on some issues.
It's half March and, between real life, lack of player initiative and other issues, Kanjoh arc has been going as slow as one post every 6 pages, not to mention definitively not going on at the intended internal pacing.
So I'll take the weekend to prepare some changes. First of all, I'm assuming the arc is simply not going to be done by late March, so arrangements would have to be done, call for an assistant GM for the most-of-April part of the arc. This means, of course, that the arc will extend up to early May.
I'll also need to know which players are actually committed to it, because as nice as it is to have a relatively freeform arc, I'm deadlocked if I can not know who is actually in and I can't trust them to actually take part in moving things. It says a lot that the only player who actually reads dedicated in the meta, no offense to the others, is Tracer, but that means zero to me if, no offense to Tracer, he'll be posting once every 10 days and be essentially disconnected from the arc otherwise.
So tomorrow and Sunday I'll be more focused on meta than on the RP proper so that hopefully the RP proper can march correctly afterwards.
Remember that the arc has objectives, goalposts and events. It's not a "no plot" arc, nor a wasteland for people who can't do IK (which, honestly, is how some of you have made me feel). In this arc we are supposed to explore and connect, but also be going around and doing what the Pokémon Trainers do — spreading good all around. In particular given the in-universe reputation of the J-Team (which we have to work on so that we don't have meta issues).
Nite.
Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?O hai!
My name is Wacky Pancake, and I'm a troper over at Tv Tropes! Of course, that's not the reason I'm here, as everybody around is.
If you've been on the chat as of late, you've probably seen me derping around, pretending to be a giant Quagsire, drinking Starlyjuice, and shooting people. Of course this is not true, but I wish it was
.
The real reason I am here is that, after waiting for a little while, I've finally decided to make clear that yes, I'm interested in this RP. I'm probably not going to start right now, but just letting you know.
...
Ain't we gonna have a welcome party or somethin'?
"I like girls, but now, it's about justice."

I'll stick to being "normal".
There is no night without dawn. The sun is always sure to rise.