chase

Tabby's spent the past 4 years in an all-girls boarding school... the type for behavioral adjustment that the rich send their out of cotnrol brats too (Tabby was "sponsored") Her relationship with roommates- and many girls her age could be considered... catty... at best. "Insane" Mary Zane was the exception- more of an arch-nemesis there. She is REALLY looking forward to having her own place... She's also broke, desperate, probably didn't read the lease agreement thoroughly in her desperation to catch that little caveat, and that's perfectly consistent with the way her life goes. Do it.

Perfect. I'd name-dropped Flambeaux mostly because she's so attention-seeking, she seemed a perfect foil for someone that gets all the attention Flambeaux craves, and wants NONE OF IT.

Thanks, I just like seeing where the story goes. I'm open to anything aside from a romantic arc. My wife has a character that'll someday be Tabby's match, but Tabby has some growing to do first. Tabby's current mindset is that any human male that's attracted cross species to catgirls is a freak with a capital F, and she can point to hundreds of internet posts to back that claim. As for catguys.... She's totally not into furries.

The Christie Apartments (Tabby) A diminutive form that could almost be mistaken for a child steps off the 6th floor landing. Wearing an oversized hoodie that practically came down to her knees, baggy pants a dozen sizes too large and sunglasses far too bigger for her face, one could be forgiven for mistaking the wearer for the victim of a shrink ray. Only the visbly-furry fingertips holding a cellphone and whiskered cheeks would lead one to suspect otherwise. "Yeah, it's Tabitha. I found the place. This isn't gonna work." ... "Well, I thought when you said free housing for my kind, I was hoping you meant maybe desperate college students or heck, even a halfway house for wayard catgirls... yeah, I woulda hated that a whole lot but I'll admit it'd be more accurate than this. I was just reading the lease agreement- this is for registered HEROES. With powers and fighting crime and...and..." ... "Registering was a requirement of my probation, not..." She shambled down the hall in obvious discomfort, like a person waking on the beach after an afternoon with no sunscreen. She'd occasionally pause to look at one room number, then another. "I really don't think breaking up a mugging by falling into it from a fire escape qualifies." ... "It shouldn't matter who was rescued." ... "No, that doesn't count either. " ... "Yes, I've seen the fight footage... half the damn internet has by now... " ... "ok, more than half. Please stop bringing up that stupid mash-up with the pizza and everything. It doesn't look heroic, it looks" ... "well, I was gonna say suggestive, but thanks for not holding back judgement. tell me how you really feel..." ... "Why can't someone in hollywood sue to have THAT taken down... its friggin humiliating. The "i'll have what she's having" thing is so overdone." ... "and that... let's let it drop, please." ... "Look, This isn't me. We've been over this. All I want is to work off my community service, find a way to fix this... condition... and have a normal college life." ... "Well, I shouldn't HAVE to. NORMAL. COLLEGE. STUDENT. Getting a bajillion memes made from your pictures - UNWANTED and UNSANCTIONED memes, mind you, shouldn't justify special extra "celebrity student safety" fees." ... "Totally not my fault." ... "Ok, THAT... I can see. But I shouldn't be the one paying ... even if I could, and I can't. That explosion took everything. I didn't have much to begin with, but what I have now I'm either wearing or carrying. Six ramen noodle cups, two tuna pouches, a laptop with a half-melted screen, my phone, and my old school uniform. Fire won't even destroy that damn thing." ... "Well, that's why I'm here. " ... "No. Unfurnished. Floor's better for my back anyway." ... "I do appreciate it, but... I'm really feeling like an impostor here. " ... "Switching topics." ... "Switchng." ... "SWITCHING!" Waitwhat? No switch back. No, my community service was supposed to be in the hall of records- out of the public eye, right?" ... "No, I don't care if you can get credit through that. Rewind this conversation, listen again. I'M. NOT. A. HERO." ... "Hold on, I'm at the door now. Look I'll just show up at the hall as usu..." Fumbling through all the creases and folds for pockets proved too much. First her backpack fell off her shoulder, then sleeves over her hands, and her phone and sunglasses slipped lose, resulting several epic seconds of batting them around before catching the phone and letting the glasses skitter several doors down the hall. During the mess, several small gray-black nuggets shot away with one rolling under the door across the hall. "Hold on, I lost a finger." She put down her backpack and started taking inventory. Three fingertips now ended in inch-long retractable claws. the rest were wore black jellybean-like caps that could almost appear like normal fingertips. "No, I'm not on drugs. My knuckle caps. The gel caps for my claws. Yeah, popped right off again. Gimme a second to fish it back..." ... "What? BANNED? By wh..." ... "It was a SCRATCH. Well, technically several, but it was reflex. He touched me." She'd given up on tracking the lost gel cap or the keys and just furiously paced the hall, tripping over the hem of her buky disguise increasingly more often. Her tail had worked itself free and was not thrashing with fury. ... "Yeah, he patted me on the head, but that's still unwanted touching." ... "If it's reflex for him, it's reflex for me, dammit. It's not like he needed stitches or anything." ... "So lemme get this straight. No more "special" community service projects, but I can run around the city fighting crime, like some caped crusader? I'm under 4 ft and not even 50 lbs. How do you think that's gonna work out." ... "No, I haven't been doing fine so far. I've haven't done ANYTHING so far, I just stumble into trouble and gett credit when it resolves itself." ... "Well, what about the "public eye" part of this? I'm trying to keep a low profile until I get better..." ... "Seriously? You just assume I have night vision because of the feliform, don't you?" ... "Well, yeah, but it's still rude to assume." ... "Yeah, I can hold. Tell her still owes me $50. Really, " The phone was already playing the on-hold musak- some synth/retro style instrimental of the new Lady Mercury ear-worm. She really hoped her probation officer would convey that last message to her other caller. "If Flambeau stiffs me, there goes next week's food budget." Tabitha leaned back and slid to the floor, banging her head back against the door in frustration before realizing that it wasn't her door. She scrambled back to her room number, fished for the keys, and was about to enter her room when she remembered the last remaining fingertip. Looking both ways to be sure nobody was around, she knelt at the door across the hall and forced her cheek to the floor trying to look underneath. Just as she glimpsed the damnable black blob her hoodie slid over her head, blocking her view. She let out a resigned sigh. "Typical"

Thanks for setting this up. Kinda rusty at this, so was waiting to see someone else post, set the tone, etc, but finally decided to post it. First post may be kinda long & a bit goofy for this format (sorry). I'd imagined making phone conversations with Tabby's P.O. into macro-ed in-game chatter in tribute to Ascendant once, but seemed to work a bit for her intro here. Some BG info on Tabby from her "internet infamy" - she has a "following" on the net, but more of the troll-type than follower. You may have seen the memes, "Spay and neuter your catgirl" was quite popular, as was the "hang in there" pic taken when she almost didn't make that cross-building leap. Think of any cat meme, and there's probably a catgirl meme variant with her image on it. Make one up and I'll even play along. - The "tastes like victory" video clip (heavily edited clips of her eating a pizza, fighting council, and saying the title phrase, coupled with the infamous "I'll have what she's having" meme hit "Gangnam Style" numbers. The pizza joint represented in the clip even capitalized in on the meme, changing its box art to include a cartoon catgirl saying the title phrase. Tabby has NOT seen it yet. - There's even a "tabby tracker" subsite on the "naughty neko" fansite that gives out weekly pizza coupon codes for the best pic uploaded. - she's working off community service hours with a caseworker, and those with access to police records will know they ranged from many MANY multiple vehicle offenses to vandalism and desecration of a church to the near death of a police officer (later dropped). Those without access to police records can still find tons of forums speculating on what she did to get "locked in juvie" for 4 whole years... many of them much more colorful. -

Some folk on Freedom had an event that challenged the notion of "gimped builds." We made our own strangest contradictory builds and ran through the gauntlet in random PUGs. My wife's contribution was Retinal Burns, a fire/fire blaster that slotted no accuracy and avoided ranged attacks wherever possible (this was pre-fire-scrapper). Mine was Major HMO- an empath defender with very little empathy. Major HMO is an empathy defender, but much like his namesake, he has very misguided priorities. In fact, it should be quick to note that the Major has only two powers from his primary set. The rest, unfortunately, aren’t covered by your plan. Major HMO is instead focused on keeping clients… err… foes… at a safe distance by maximizing the energy blast set's knockback powers wherever possible. Rather than attempting to provide the best healing services, he just wants you to stay away from anything that can harm you. From the pool powers, I've taken flight because, as the slowest travel power, his response rate again reflects the organization he represents. The fitness primary pool was also a must- as preventive care is much more cost-effective than reactive treatment. ...And of course, no Major HMO would be complete without a strong dose of evasive measures and the investment in the concealment pool guarantees that no matter who comes looking, only those with an appointment- or a referral- will see him.

My idea wasn't nearly as ambitious. I was just thinking of identifying certain unique maps that might exist in AE that would be good Roleplaying venues... What would REALLY make such a system would be a way to make the AE author kinda a mini-localized GM-- be able to assume NPC forms in their own game or spawn additional foes (no XP, of course, the abuse would be nightmarish). It'd make AE somewhat closer to GM'd adventures in Neverwinter Nights... ir a kind of a instanced StoryTeller mode from late SWG.

It seems most webcomics hold out hope of going print someday and adhere to the typical comic book format. After reading Scott McCloud's Understanding / Making / Reinventing Comics trilogy, I experimented with a more PC-screen-friendly format once upon a time, but it doesn't translate well to mobile and from what I've read, that is one of the largest viewing demographics reported by most webcomic software. I *did* have to zoom out on my wide-screen laptop to assure I had enough of the frame appearing at once to follow along- it expanded well to fit, but the vertical spacing had things a bit too cut off, but that was a minor tweak that anyone viewing a standard comic-book-formatted comic is familiar with.

I like it. I'd done something similar for tabby's origin story in Champions (she kept a fictional 'netjournal' ) but in this iteration, she's keeping a much more subdued social media presence and lower profile in general. but I've got another character fresh in Paragon City from China and she'd be perfect for this kind of sharing.

Looks sharp and rather bold step. I half expected a screenshot comic (nothing wrong with those, but the lack of facial expression was always a challenge for me in stories I wanted to tell... my (lack of) photoshop skills made trying to draw them on go hilariously awry, and you can only do so much with creative camera angles. Great formatting choice too- The columnar approach translates very well to phones in vertical format. Don't see that very often.

The INF sink always was a big reason for the 10% fee. The game's inf scaling as you level has always been a bit excessive and the devs needed some way (largely unsuccessful) to curb it a bit. I was more amazed at how well it DID work with the out-of-control MUDFlation we had. Sure, by the end, we had many alts sitting at the 2billion inf cap and they had to start introducing alternate currencies with new releases (vanguard merits, for example) but it was rather tame compared to other mud economic disasters.

Got my vote

I'd always enjoyed reading/lurking Whitmoore Apartments and similar threads. Never had much opportunity to reliably participate in them, but enjoyed reading them.

Reconsider Post them for at least what the NPC vendors pay... 5,000 for uncommon, 10,000 for rare for level 50's. That should be your floor. People "sweep the floors"-- they set up stacks of wentworths' bids for all uncommon's at something low, like 100-1000. Once they have full stack, they sell them to an NPC vendor when you get full stacks. A lowbie can make a few million a day with minimal effort. At extremely high levels (or when competing bidders drive up the value) you can find your time better spent elsewhere. You're still helping the lowbie... in a way... but not the way you intend. Now, that price won't stop the person that wants to monopolize that recipe (buy everything at 10,000, re-list them at 100,0000) but it does mean that they don't have a win-win (they won't be able to sell excess to the NPC's for profit), and at the rate these things drop, if you recover the stock that's normally lost to floor-sweeping, it takes a LOT more investment to grab everything and maintain the monopoly. Same goes for the people that try to "help" with giving away salvage cheap . Odds are that you're actually helping the monopolizer with your low sales. Many resource-monopolizers have bids out for the same low stock that they're then bumping up to ridiculous levels, so by offering your stuff TOO low, you're just giving them more stuff to sell at extremely high profit margins. If you want to help drive down costs, offer your stuff at maybe 2/3 that going price. That's most likely too high for the monopolizer's bids to replenish their stock, so your salvage is more likely to go to someone NEEDING a bit of a bargain, and if enough people do it, that becomes the new dominant rate, leaving the monopolizer with only two choices: buy up ever-more-expensive salvage to sell at ever-smaller margins or pull their stock and re-list it at the lower going price.

I like this too. It even made sense in the original game. I recall conflicting elements in the Talos / Dark Astoria area (plaques and other lore) that seemed to make the most sense only IF you were looking into the past through a shattered mirror pieced back together... or just like there may be many divergent futures from this point of time, there may be many pasts converging at any time... The one concession I've made is several high-school/college-age characters that were originally intended to have lived through the trauma of the Rikti war (usually growing up in Baumton). I still want them to be in that age-range, but the game time's been moved on. Many of those are being re-imagined as Galaxy City teens, since it's a more recent "big disaster."

I do find the Bio to be a good place to add info you might overhear- the fame/notoriety of someone that you may encounter before ever meeting them, much like how we may learn a bit from someone from observation or third parties well before meeting them. Sometimes you don't need introductions. I have to confess, though, that I've used name as something of a trap sometimes. particularly for Tabby. She's a catgirl with tabby markings. the name seems perfectly fitting, but she's Tabitha. TA-BI-THUH, dammit. "Tabby" is too much like the name given to a cat. "Tabby" is what "fans" on the 'net are determined to call her. You know the site... the one dedicated to feliform femme fatales that made her pics into a very viral meme. She HATES it... and hates that fanbase as well... long story*.. and she tends to automatically associate anyone calling her that as being part of THAT online community. (*if you REALLY want to send her on a NSFW profanity-laden tirade call her "lolcatgirl". Just say'in)

I think that "unbalancing" would only last a few weeks, at most, as many folks I've seen playing in the short amount of time I've been logged into the game. I saw folks advertising for level 30 missions already. Its more in other ways you imbalance things. I had 6 characters at the influence cap, all of them fully IO'd out with some frighteningly expensive IO's. I import that character back once, respec and hand off the expensive stuff to friends. Delete. Import again. Rinse. repeat. Any effort to "resume" previous characters is going to need a controlled and planned system to assure the fairest and most balanced solution for all participants. This rushed environment we're in right now isn't the best place to plan that out.

use tequila. (http://patch.savecoh.com/tequila.exe ) It will download the game and then provide you with the link to launch the SCORE. If you already have tequila, you may need to download and install the latest copy (I had to)

Good point. My suggestion would be to constrain everyone down to maybe 3 character slots during the first week of release, then roll out more later on. That'd give most people a decent chance at claiming their most cherished identities while keeping the squatters at bay.

/salute liberty.

It may be a temp server that'll eventually be wiped. It may be in perpetual hugged-to-death mode, but I have nothing but praise to everyone involved in this resurrection. CoH was the game that my wife and I used to keep in touch when work had me offsite more than at home. It was a source of so much creativity and inspiration, of finding so many great people. I haven't been able to recapture that feeling from any other game since the shutdown. Thanks you.