chase

I do agree to an extent. Even on the RP-preferred server, you'll meet many people that do not have interest in roleplaying, and even people with the roleplay flag enabled may not be interested in roleplaying at that particular moment, so it can be challenging for an established RP clique to know when someone's interested in joining their current conversation. It's a very awkward spot for both groups, with both risking being ignored, receiving some form of rejection, or just being manipulated by malicious sorts. That's a big chance to take. So... I don't really blame the cliques for being insular and wary of outsiders. I don't blame the people that feel too jaded to try to find new RP communities. It's safer than dealing with rejection. Still, I don't think these communities are all "we have our 5 regulars, who cares about the rest?"- or I hope they're not, and I do not think we as a roleplaying community should be satisfied with a "I've got my X regular friends to RP with, who cares about the rest?" Roleplaying is a creative art of acting, storytelling, self-expression, improvisation, and often introspection and empathy. It's something that should be encouraged and fostered and developed over time. That can't happen if we all keep to ourselves. I don't want people stepping out of their safe zones- that's unfair to ask of anyone, particularly for what's to be a recreational activity. I want to see those safe zones expanded.

Fully understandable. RL work has me hammered. Although I won't lie, this thread did inspire me to start re-imagining a Praetorian clockwork Mk-IV victoria-series fanmodded with catgirl accessories by one of Tabby's stalkers that utilizes this clockwork speech. Codename [TAB]-E

Boot to the head! I was thinking about that skit when I wrote it.

Welcome home, Shy Punk. As you're probably guessing by the traffic on the forum, the Roleplaying forum itself isn't as active as I would have expected, based on the original game forums. Don't get discouraged. Many people organize, post events, etc, in discords- City of Roleplay is one of the most active I've found. There's listings of RP supergroups, events, and players seeking connections. Although I find activity under atlas park and Pocket D, on the discord you'll often find almost-daily announcements for various events- often DJ's at specific supergroup bases/ player nightclubs. (If you're not familiar with the base codes, you can now enter a person's supergroup base with the appropriate base code, leading many people to build locations that others can use for roleplay- from nightclubs to city blocks to orbital battlestations to a nice zen garden. There is also an IC supergroup recruitment faire within a month (IIRC) that can help with introductions to many great roleplaying factions. Keep an eye out for more on that.

A "broker" type character. They deal in magical antiquities, obscure objects of alien origin, high-tech confiscated off imprisoned villains, nanoviral genetic splicers combined with a growing gene inventory. They're not the master of any of it, but they know how to get it and they know the right people to then customize it to a particular client. Probably a defender, the powers are the various tools they keep on hand that can enhance their allies in-battle- at least for the short-term. A showcase, perhaps... or... for the more nefarious salesman... "first one's free, but there's more where that came from."

Now, I'm not a lawyer and don't mean to appear pretending to be one, but many of our lawmakers are not lawyers and it shows. I focused on copyright (not trademark) this way because due to all the fuzziness in copyright law it's not as inapplicable as you may originally think. Registered marks in trade (and defending them) are a big part of that, but copyright isn't as easily shunted away as "reproducing a specific protected work as it originally appeared." The fuzziness (and the changes have occurred since the original Marvel vs Cryptic case) was the point. I didn't intend to diminish the importance of tradmark in the original (and ongoing) debate. Whether for trademark reasons or copyright concerns, I do support the framework that the city council has decided will best balance our city's stability and our community members' self-expression. As an example: Prior to STAR ATHLETICA, L.L.C. v. VARSITY BRANDS, INC., ( 2017 ) it was generally considered that copyright could not be applied to clothing, as it was in its core a "functional item" (outside of the obvious things like screenprinting copyrighted works onto a t-shirt). This case clarified that certain design elements in attire can be unique and expressive enough to be protected under copyright. If you're assuming this is a pretty high bar, check out the images here that were used in that decision. Look at them and ask yourself if the Ms. Marvel swoosh would be similarly protected under that standard, regardless of trademark. Since this is all color lines and cuts, could the distinctive cuts in a sometimes-marginally-covering superheroine's outfit alone create a copyrightable work? Now this currently relates to comic culture is usually through the cosplay world, as cosplay (while "fair use" would reasonably still apply for self-made elements, the for-profit costume makers had long hoped that the "clothing is a functional item" would apply to them even though... let's be honest... many of those costumes are notoriously nonfunctional 😄. Without it, for-profit costume creation is a 'just hope they don't want to bother' industry. You could raise questions regarding "virtual costuming" in games, though... could be a designer's decision to model his cheerleader-character skins off of styles they cribbed from a cheerleading competition, could be the appearance of a character's outfit that previously only appeared in print. None of that is necessarly hard-decided, but it introduced a ton of fuzziness. That case could also imply that the normal trend (trademark a hero logo and apply that to clothing for merchandising) isn't the only way forward. Another Example: People often talk about the trademark claim and then claim that copyright refers to exactly reproducing a specific work of art. (Digitally reproducing the third panel of page seven of issue 35 is a copyright violation. Digitally reproducing the registered trademarked batman logo is trademark) but this is far more fuzzy than people think. But look at movies. Heaven forbid we ever have superhero movies to worry about. Movies do fall under copyright law. So do the component objects- the script, the individual cameral stills, and much of the unique design. Uniquely designed movie props are likewise individually-eligible creations that are eligible for copyright protection. Obi-wan's lightsaber may have been cobbled together from a sink knob, browning machine gun booster, rifle grenade, and a part from a Rolls-Royce jet engine, but it became a unique sculpted work as eligible for copyright protection as any other sculpted work. The SOUND of the lightsaber can be a copyrighted audio piece. Now, it's important to stress this: the idea of an energy sword isn't copyrighted, but the specific representation of that lightsaber can be. It doesn't matter what angle you portray that unsanctioned obi-wan lightsaber you're still violating that creative work if you digitally reproduce it. You don't have to be reproducing a particular frame or following a copyrighted script, the object itself is eligible for copyright protection. And in that context, the superhero's costume in that movie is a protected work under copyright (technically a derivative works of another copyrighted work, but still holding unique expressive elements of their own that have their own protection). If you (accurately) represented them in a medium like a game, it wouldn't matter if you were reproducing a moment in that film. that unique work would matter -------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, just my 2c. If you'd like to avoid spamming others on this and just DM me, I'm really interested in hearing anyone's take on this. Not a lawyer, but find the whole field fascinating.

It isn't a hard rule in any way, shape or form, but unfortunately, some people can end up generic'd this way. (CORRECTION, see. above) ---- The funny thing here is that unlike others that do fear Marvel stomping on us, I'm becoming a believer that the fact that we DON'T have a financial base to protect us makes Marvel unlikely to take action against us, and you touched on precisely why. I still don't disagree with any GM action to protect themselves, but there's this big murky area of what can and cannot be considered within the scope of a copyrighted work, and the big guys profit most over maintaining that ambiguity. They can't let something go all the way to a ruling. They want a settlement- and a settlement that will at least pay their lawyers' bills. A judgment in their favor could be disastrous for them because that sets precedent. Let's start with the argument that APPEARANCES ALONE that we make in the costume creator can violate their own creative claims to such a likeness in a different field (comics/movies/etc). The game provides the parts for this appearance, so the game alone can be considered at fault for giving clients the ability to assemble them in bad ways. Setting such a precedent would then suggest that our UNIQUE creations in this medium are original enough and fixed enough to have those same protections. Should Marvel ever create a new character or an alternative look bearing such a likeness, *they* violated *that* work. Imagine the costly work for every new character (or alternate character appearance) that Marvel would have to do to avoid lawsuits. It would be crippling. They wouldn't want that ruling- they'd want a more narrowly-defined ruling that used some combination of appearance and text description/name. That would give them the freedom to reproduce a particular look without worrying that it might be too close to a deviantart image from 2007. BUT, the game doesn't create those parts-- the player does- so the player would likely need to be a party in the suit. Things don't go good for organizations that sue their fans, so it's done mostly in the most egregious (and/or profitable) situations. Now, keep in mind that I'm talking COPYRIGHT here. The courts largely rule that clothing alone cannot be copyrighted, but only in 2017 ruled elements or specific patterns that are unique or iconic enough might have copyright protections. The Superman S or the Batman logo would likely fall under that, but not generic coloration of tights and cape. The spider logo on the chest? Mmmm... keep in mind that there were other superheroes from other publishers that had this design BEFORE spider-man did. You see that with a lot of marvel's properties. Muscled green guy with purple pants? There's many green-skinned characters out there and the green/purple color combination was very popular for many different printing reasons so is hardly unique. Even something as iconic as Wolverine's retractable claws predates wolverine. To REALLY be a violation of their work, far more would be needed than just that. Then we have TRADEMARK- This is different- a different set of laws for a different purpose. Many superheroes' appearances have been registered as a mark of trade- something that's supposed to be unique enough in likeness that it's recognized for a particular brand in particular field(s). Many, if not most heroes name and likeness trademarked. There's a whole convoluted process you've got to do to protect and maintain your trademark-- too much to discuss here- but in one way, the comic companies may have been their own worst enemy for trademark dilution- their constant alternate-appearances. Trademarks don't usually change too much- think the nike swoosh or the major fanfare with a pepsi logo. Then look at superheroes and the bajillion spider man variants- what elements truly define the common mark of trade? Wolverine may be in yellow/blue, yellow/brown, leather jacket and jeans, white suit, and oh so many other variants. At some point, an argument can be made that they've so "diluted" the mark's recognizability that it's too broad for protection. For IP as big as Marvel, that's a decision they cannot risk. They'd rather rattle their sabres and take a settlement, but that requires you to sue someone with cash to spare. Again, none of this is to argue that Homecoming should not be doing their due diligence and generic'ing some players' fun. The ambiguity of the law (and their shallower pockets) still require it for their survival.

I currently roleplay "lite"- short walk-up encouters with little long-term impact. My availability in-game is too short. My availability to reliably RP outside of games (on discord and the forums) is far greater. I'll probably engage in more roleplay / round-robin storytelling there if I see interest. Anecdotally, Krimson's observation resonates with me. It FEELS like my characters have less RP walkup success when I have "no ERP" in the bio. That could just be the lenses of disappointment affecting the view, though. I've always felt that one of CoH's greatest strengths (the great support for alt-aholism) works against strong, persistent-story RP with friends. When other games encourage you to play one character for months on end, you develop a consistent face, with a consistent group, and better get the threads of a consistent story over time. If I try that here, there's less chance that the players' characters I RP'd with yesterday will be available to play tomorrow. The PLAYER might be online, but on a totally different alt in a totally different SG. (Alt-aholism DOES work good for short, themed events, though. I can quickly roll up a new character with a new look specificially to support a new event and its theme, but then that character is often shelved right after the event is done).

☹️ I totally understand and hate that this is how it turned out for you.

How Do You Initiate a Roleplaying Encounter? How do you break into the circle- the apparent clique of players and performers at a particular space and time if you don't know any of them. That was one of the topics that stuck with me at the Roleplaying workshop... probably in part because I sometimes feel so bad at it... as I expect many others have, as well, particularly given the interest it sparked at the workshop. So, let's talk about it. My Credentials. AKA: What makes me such an authority? I don't have any regular RP friends. My schedule's too sporadic to foster them, so my RP tends to be one-off encounters an gone. That means that rather than have a group of people I know that I can just ENGAGE WITH as soon as I log in, I'm almost always starting fresh, and more often than not I fail to successfully "hook" into an existing circle before my brief window of time is up. But... I keep trying. I've tried oh-so-many-ways over the years. I still come away empty-handed quite a lot despite all those various attempts. I still sometimes wonder why I bother as I log off realizing I'll never get those three hours wasted back. I'm really raising your confidence in this topic, eh? Point is: I've tried. A lot. For many years. And I still struggle. So I'm not an expert. Few of us are. I'm mostly hoping that other posters to this thread will give me the "eureka moment" I've been looking for in the past 30-odd years. This isn't failure, It's fishing. Let's get it out of the way first- establishing a new RP circle is HARD. You're not doing it wrong. No matter how eloquent you are or well thought your approach or compelling your story, when you're alone and trying to make contact into a scene, SO MANY obstacles lie in your way. The target(s) you approach may be AFK or focused on a private chat, or some supergroup channel drama. They may have their chat filter mod set to lower range than you and not even see your emotes. In a very busy area, your emote may scroll off the screen in mere moments, going unnoticed. It's easy to feel rejected and neglected or just feel plain ignored. The characters LOOK LIKE they're just standing there, right next to you, after all. All the body cues you would expect indicate they'd be there and be ready to engage with you. You wouldn't be blamed to feel a little... well... foolish as you slink away unsuccessful or get flustered as you awkwardly double-down with another attempt. Don't. Initiating roleplay solo is like fishing. Fishermen can have perfect lures and a perfect cast in all the right conditions and still have to cast over and over and over before you get a nibble. Anglers may cast and wait many times before they're ever successful-- and sometimes even the things that they do cast need to just be released. Cast again and be patient. I've waited a long time trying to learn patience. It's not my strong point. The longer I'm left silent with my thoughts the more self-doubt creeps in, the more I re-examine everything I tried that failed, the more anxious I become about screwing up the next encounter, and the stronger the urge is just to run off and do something else that doesn't make me feel so foolish. Stay Strong. Don't be like me. Seriously, the world already has one of me, and my wife often tells me that's one too many as it is. That's enough pep talk. Now, HOW do you initiate roleplay? Approach the Player before the Character Sometimes, you luck into a situation where it just makes sense to walk up to a total stranger and talk directly to them. Oftentimes it doesn't, and just because that player is logged in and standing there, it doesn't mean it's a convenient moment for them to engage with you as you'd want. The most direct option is to send a tell. I've never had a hostile response to a "Hi, are you free for walkup RP or busy?". I've got no response, I've got a polite turn aways, "sorry, but dealing with SG drama atm." and I've even gotten rainchecks ("now's not good, but I can ping you when it is"), but never anyone upset by it. Tells aren't the only way to tell other players that you're open to engaging in Roleplay, and implying your availability through performance has the benefit of letting others sample your style: Here, our CHARACTER hasn't approached anyone else's characters, but they've entered the scene - or more accurately, we've announced our characters' availability to others in the scene. That emote can serve as an introduction, provide cues to others or -most importantly- alert others to an active roleplayer in their midst who's open to approach. Plan for a few emotes for the scene as things change and post them as people come and go. And to leave no question to your intent, you can always accompany this emote with a post to LFG, an OOC or LFRP channel, or even the CoH RP discords. "Tabby is sitting under the atlas statue having lunch, open to walkup RP" Read the Room. When you enter an area with active RP, what's the current topic and tone? If this was an arranged event, what was it intended for? What are the conversations that are currently going on? How would your current character approach this? How can you emote in such a way that both hints at something distinct to your character but fits the current narrative. Sometimes we're so eager to portray OUR character, to express OUR story, or exert OUR presence that we ignore the context we're meeting under. We come across as a scene stealer instead of a scene participant. On the other hand, though, if we're too neutral in our response- too "generic," we've offered very little of our own for others to hook into. I'm habitually a paragraph writer, but these responses are very time-sensitive if they're going to be successful. The more you write, the more you risk your response will be lost as the conversation proceeds. Balance detail and creativity with expedience. Read Biographies Many people write bio's in a way to share information that the general public may have about the hero. That's an invitation to use that knowledge rather than have to roleplay learning that knowledge about them. They may have a reputation. They may be celebrities. They may share a common foe or have an FBSA record that you might have accessed at some time in the past. The possibilities abound. Don't make undue assumptions, but using parts of this while soliciting engagement can show respect and consideration into their user story. Make a Scene Someone I knew calls this "solo roleplay" which feels contradictory. On one extreme, there are elaborate AFK scripts intended to entertain an audience in the style of the late great Ascendant. People stumbling upon these often stick around for the whole performance. Some /tell you about their appreciation, and those people become future RP prospects. It doesn't have to be that elaborate.. RP'ing a telephone call can reveal a great deal about yourself to your immediate audience. Subvocalize elements of a texting conversation. Have a one-way conversation with a spectral (or imaginary) being that only you see. Have your mastermind henchmen banter among one another or with you. When you do this, be mindful of channel spam. Roleplay can be more difficult for some if the chat window moves too quickly. Your goal is to build a structure that people want to engage within, not contribute to the chaos that drives people away. Reciprocate Perhaps most importantly, keep an eye out for others that may be struggling to break in to a roleplaying scene. Respond to LFRP announcements. Make time for them. Acknowledge them. Even if you can't help them break through, small elements can mean a lot. In an approach similar to my above examples, Tabby ate the whole sandwich before getting a RP nibble- a player getting ready to log out emoted back as she was leaving, "you...um, got some sauce... on your whiskers, right there." One of the other players then engaged with Tabby more directly and made the evening quite fun, but to be honest, if it had been nothing but that little farewell acknowledgement that evening, I'd have considered it time well spent. Now that you've wrangled through my mini-novella of random thoughts, wise roleplayers, share your own thoughts on engaging in RP with strangers. I'll be taking notes.

I don't intend to discourage anybody from participating in this thread (I want the company!) but I've found much more roleplay group activity and information in discords. City of Roleplay, in particular, serves as a great resource and a good launching point to the wider discord community. https://discord.com/invite/WKxkJjbfvz

far better than I'd imagined.

thanks, both. don't have photoshop anymore and am beyond rusty, but now that I have CoH and Demorecord back, - and your kind encouragement- might see what's possible with today's (free) tools. I do remember those Marvel Guides very well, Darklord. Would love to see that art too. and yes, I feel your pain regarding the challenges of securing the perfect name. Sometimes (oftentimes, for me) the concept so meshes with the name that you REALLY can't imagine them under any other variant.

All the same questions, though I assumed the "commissioned comic pages" meant you commissioned someone to do the pages. Quite a bit of talent there, regardless. I doubt my budget could afford such skill and the best I could ever manage was heavily-photoshopped-screenshots.

Welcome home. I wouldn't worry too much about the time progression- in fact, I'd encourage you not to. It does make a certain sense for things like "How long after the Rikti War did the events of Galaxy City (and the new tutorial) occur? or...When did statesman die?" and some kind of consensus may be needed for consistent mutual storytelling. it may be hard for some to reconcile the storylines of a young adult "my parents met during the first rikti invasion" with a young adult "my parents died during the first rikti invasion" after all. I'm far more into the "things work best when you don't dwell on the details." camp. It's the Comic Book norm, after all. The comics are full of characters that seem to jump from babies to teen versions that last for decades before entering vaguely-young-adult for decades to come... usually until some "old man X" comic is called for or once too many iterations of "teenage sidekicks" have grown up to keep ignoring it. Then they're in the vague "very fit for their age" adult phase, without a grey hair... at least until an "old man X" version is required, where they're 70-90-10,000 years old. I was just a little scarred by criticism from the "rigid progression of time" RP camp back in the day- to the point that many of my characters are not continuations of my original characters from back on live. I retcon reimagine variants of the ones I RP. My "parents died during the rikti war" characters are all now "died in a rikti raid" (presumably still legitimately ongoing) or far more loosely tied to the lore than they originally were. That makes me always curious how others handle it.

I'd say "oftentimes." It can also be used in RP to tie in a physical aspect to a "hack." Getting other players to "get inside, find these three devices, and .. [something simple, like-hold down the button for 15 seconds while it's plugged in, so it resets to factory defaults] can be a strangely viable way to gain a toehold into a system in today's smart-device era. I'll also share an investigation that's old enough the NDA no longer applies: Incident: A Major US school district- tens of thousands of students. records leaked, website defaced, mail archives dumped, more. Root Cause: When new software was installed, the software was to "inherit" all the login rules of the central system, including its restrictions on what the password may be if they were set correctly. The head of IT tested that by making an account "admin" and password of.. you guessed it, "password." When it went through, he knew things weren't working right and made corrections, but he NEVER deleted that account... which had been granted full admin rights (to EVERYTHING). The most incredible part- that account sat dormant- never a login- for FOUR YEARS. Students logged in to a form at least 4x a day that, if they'd have tried those credentials, would have let them in. It was even accessible OFFSITE, so anyone could have discovered it from home too, but it took FOUR YEARS from the time of creation to the first actual login attempt. FOUR YEARS. This launched a whole side-investigation just to be sure that account ACCESS was logging correctly and couldn't be overwritten to hide tracks. FOUR YEARS! Tens of thousands of users... multiple times a day... ... What's wrong with kids noowadays? (to be fair, this was over a decade ago, so... maybe kids nowadays are better 😄 )

Have you fleshed out the creature / alien race beyone what's shown here in any of your related character lore? I always like to see the strong tie-in to the Rikti War and iconic personae like Galaxy Girl. It's something I'd often tried to do with my original characters- to some success and some failure. The original (albiet vague) lore for the Midnighters vs their reintroduction required quite a bit of retconning of my main, Chase Arcanum, for example. For that matter, do you play your character as if that much time has passed? I find both people that use "comic-book-style time dilation" to compress timelines, so that the Rikti invasion isn't so far in the past, and I've seen people tie time progression rater rigidly to the real world dates. I think that's what mostly killed my effort to tie character stories so tightly to the world events- when I encounter strict date-keepers, its tough to reconcile those hard-set-dates with the slower character development of someone with little RP time. I like to play heroes that are new to their powers/responsibilities and still muddling their way through the challenges of life as a hero and/or leading, and that doesn't mesh well with someone whose timeline should make them a 20+year hardened veteran.

...HOW DID MY DIARY GET ONLINE?

Great points. Folk should also keep in mind how their power creep may affect the players they often team with. Power imbalances among teammates can be very good narrative material done right but can also lead to considerable inter-player conflict-- ESPECIALLY if you have 'transfer-able powers' (blessing "buffs", an antimatter armory, an unlimited credit line, a personal army of minions) that can pull a character beyond the player's vision.

https://fbsa.homecoming.wiki/ is my personal go-to. Along with character bio's, you can post supergroup histories, your own contributions to the places or organizations in the City of Heroes universe, and an area to post stories.

0.0 >.> <.< .... well, if you were going to write my biography, just say so.

I noticed that as well-and it does so in rather odd ways (as an example, when you doublespace it seems to add &nbsp; but doesn't update the character count until after you save, reducing the number of characters you have considerably over time.) The question would be- assuming this is a real html engine- what version of what browser would have been incorporated to handle html around the time of the city's launch- and could it be updated? There are games with in-engine web browsers so it's certainly possible. They've unfortunately been used to create things like "lag-grenades", doxxing incidents, and just general harassment, too. It would have to be very locked-down in function and keeping it up to date may be problematic- you could eliminate the upkeep if you could call your OS's default browser up in a frame, but you'd likely lose some ability to lock things down. Certainly an interesting path to take. Until then, I'll plug for people to link to the FBSA DATABASE in their bio's. Relatively short URL, easy to get started, unlimited length.

There was once a java utility that attempted to take advantage of CoH's ragdoll physics and demorecord to allow you to generate any pose you'd like in the utility, then export it into /demo positional data for screenshots. I THINK original author was Leandro, but that's just a vague memory at this point. IIRC, it was very alpha, had some issues with the arms last I'd used it, but was still very promising- opening up a lot more expressions for those of us that made screenshot comics.

this attachment worked. thank you. The original attachment in this thread still errors out.

the text attachment isn't available for me, though I'd love to check it out. I'd always imagined that, if roleplaying a clockwork with such a limited element of expression, I'd accompany it with a lot of emotes, as if to emphasize that they're trying hard to express past the limit of their dialogue... a kind of struggling to express what feels almost trapped inside.