McSpazz

WARNING: THIS POST WILL BE DISCUSSING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DARK AND OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE TOPICS IN ROLEPLAY! VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED GOING FORWARD. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE ANY TRAUMAS THAT COULD BE TRIGGERED BY A BROAD DISCUSSION OF DARK TOPICS, PROCEED WITH CAUTION Okay, now with that out of the way, HI! It's Spazzy again! I've wanted to make a write-up discussing how to handle roleplay tackling more mature and darker themes for a while, but I wanted to get more write-ups under my belt to ensure I could approach it with the respect it deserves. Unlike my other write-ups where I generally try to avoid injecting too much of my personal opinions or provide explicit instructions on the right and wrong ways to roleplay, this one is going to be a little bit different. While I am not going to demand you heed me on this, following what I have written here almost directly ties back to what I believe to be at the very core of any successful roleplay: consent and communication. Unlike most roleplay, a failure in either of those can not just lead to an unfun experience or drama but can actively lead to someone involved reliving trauma or otherwise have reason to get personally offended. If you agree with my post talking about consent and communication, you should probably agree with the explicit prescriptions I am making here. As stated at the top, viewer discretion is advised. While I will be holding to the rules of the forums, I will be mentioning topics that can upset all the same. Also, while not all dark and heavy themes will require the extreme level of care mentioned here, I am going to be focused on outlining how to handle far more severe topics as it's generally easy to wind back protections than implement them after the fact. If we're all onboard, let's proceed. Fiction is a great way for writers to explore often horrific concepts in a safe manner. Sometimes it's an exploration of their own trauma or their frustrations with the world. In a roleplay setting, extreme effort should be taken to not just ensure that everyone involved is comfortable with what's happening but also that what you are representing is being done with caution. 1. Getting Our Definitions in Order Before we go forward, we should talk about what we're even talking about in future sections. There are two forms of roleplay we are going to be concerning ourselves with. Mature roleplay (sometimes called MRP) and Dark Roleplay. Mature roleplay often covers the darker side of the setting the world is in. Topics can include explicit depictions of war, PTSD, trauma, stark depictions of mental illness, etc. To try and illustrate the difference, while a standard roleplay session might include mentions of war or even a depiction of it (ie: battles played out as seen in Star Wars), mature roleplay will hold far fewer punches and not whitewash the experience (ie: the Omaha Beach scene of Saving Private Ryan). While normal roleplay can cover terrible subjects, MRP aims to try and not just give a more realistic depiction but also enable participants to give realistic reactions. Dark Roleplay is a bit harder to define. Not only is it not universally called Dark Roleplay, but it is itself an offshoot of MRP which can lead to confusion. While Mature Roleplay goes into darker subjects and explores potentially traumatic scenarios, Dark Roleplay generally holds no punches, depicts every aspect of a dark topic, and sometimes even relishes in it. The best way, I feel, to underline the difference is from the context of the horror genre. Horror, as a genre, often dives into really dark subjects and is frequently used to explore the darker side of the human experience. However, it's very clear that the movie Child's Play, a story that contains a great deal of violence, heavily differs from the Hostel series which is not just extremely graphic but also almost fixates on the spectacle. 2. The Ultimate Points of Caution No matter if you are doing MRP or Dark RP, if at any point you believe a topic is bound to come up that is known to often tie into IRL trauma or PTSD, you MUST provide a trigger and/or content warning. This is not optional. A blanket trigger warning is better than nothing, but if you know there will be mention of a something that could trigger someone's PTSD, mentioning from the top that it will come up can mean the difference between either someone having the time to ready themselves or just not attending and later on having someone suddenly leave the event or have an episode for everyone to see. If you don't care about upsetting other people, at least recognize that someone becoming upset that they were not warned ahead of time could completely derail an event. There are also some things, mainly things that come up in Dark RP, that you really shouldn't do to begin with. If not because there is nothing to gain from playing them out, because others will perceive you playing them out as a black mark on your character. While the most common form of Dark RP that fits this description would be explicitly playing out a sexual assault, it's not impossible to find other subjects that would be highly suspect to fully play out in a roleplay. More importantly, as far as roleplaying in City of Heroes goes, playing out some of these darker subjects to their bitter end can legitimately be against the ToS and, should it be discovered, could lead to severe penalties. Next, a strong reminder that nobody you roleplay with is your therapist. You should never use roleplaying in an MMO as a form of therapy without a therapist's explicit recommendation and, if you do, everyone involved should be aware that is what is happening. In addition, you should only accept someone's request to help with this form of therapy if you are very confident in your abilities to not just roleplay but also communicate every step of the way. MRP might be a route to go about processing your trauma, but it's not one that should be approached blindly. Also, remember the ToS and Code of Conduct. While the mods are aware of what a roleplayer is and are therefore more understanding of the stuff you post while in character, posting overly mature content in a public area (like Pocket D or your description) or even partaking in extreme content in private (like a base) can still land you in hot water. If you are in doubt on if the story you want to portray is acceptable, consider doing it outside of the game such as in a private discord. You have to get pretty extreme to get punished for what you post in a private setting, but it is still worth considering before proceeding. Lastly, and somewhat tied into the above note, remember that there are children playing this game. Yes, it's an ancient formally defunct MMO that most tweens and teens probably aren't rushing to play, but they do exist. Many people who grew up on City went on to have kids and have been keen to share their love of the game to their own children. If you intend to do roleplay that you would hesitate to do with a stranger's kids, you should pause and make sure everyone is of the appropriate age (whatever that might be). Many groups, regardless of MMO's, will often put a hard requirement of members being at least 18 years old for this reason. 3. Know Why You Are Doing It While injecting tough subjects into roleplay can make them far more poignant, it can also come off as a very weak attempt to try and make your story feel more important with little purpose. Edgy for the sake of edgy is generally just going to get you eye rolls. So, when using dark subjects for your character, there are two things you should consider. The first is figuring out how it impacts your character and why that dark subject in particular cannot be accomplished by another method. For example, if you wanted to explore a character that has PTSD in general, you don't have to make them the victim of excessive torture to get that result. In contrast, if you wanted to have a character that specifically explored the consequences of using torture, it would be more appropriate. The reason why you should only utilize these dark themes when they serve a purpose is because, more often than not, these dark elements do not exist within a vacuum. There are people who have survived war, have been violently assaulted, struggle with abuse, etc. They aren't just a stat modifier or a fun fact. It's something real people have gone through. That's not to say you can't use these traits and identities. If you are going to do it, you should do it with intent and purpose. 4. How to Prepare It To start, the standards apply. Research, research, research! Just like any other character, if you aren't personally familiar with some trait your character has, you should research it! It goes a bit deeper than just having a general understanding of a topic like you might normally settle on. If you are going to go into darker territory, however, figuring out explicitly how this impacts your character, how they feel about it, and how it has shaped them ahead of time can prevent things getting messy in the future. For example, a character who was forcibly mutated against their will and suffers PTSD as a result could easily have pretty heavy associations to sexual assault. If you are intending to have that implication, spending some time to consider the implications and consequences on your character can help ensure that anyone interacting with your character who have personally experienced SA don't feel as if their own experience has been cheapened. You should also consider who you plan on making your audience. The darker the subject and the more explicit you are going to be, the less likely you should make the character be intended for a general audience and instead only for a select friend group. 5. Using Your Description As I said earlier, you should only step into the realm of MRP if you're certain everyone else involved is onboard. Obviously, that's not something you can do through a character description or with someone you have literally just met. Remember what I said earlier: the difference between standard RP and MRP is, more often than not, the level of detail. Going back to our comparison of Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan, here's an example of how war could be mentioned in a description in two ways. RP MRP While I kind of went to an extreme here, it was mostly to point out that the MRP description could still exist alongside the first without being expressly stated within the description. By leaving details about a character that can fall into MRP, you can ensure that the only people you reveal that aspect of the character to are those you interact with directly and can get a sense of if they would be okay with it. One thing to note is that, if that dark aspect of your character is core to who they are, you should have some kind of indication of the angle your character is taking. Adding an MRP tag in your description can accomplish this, but so can ensuring that your description's vibe, overall, maintains a general 'vibe' of what they are like without being explicit about what it entails. If people aren't interested in the tone of your character's description that avoids being explicit, they probably wouldn't be interested in the explicit description either. 6. Running the Story The absolute first thing you should do is make sure everyone understands what's coming and is okay with it. If someone that wanted to come to your event suddenly realizes, at any point, that they can't handle it? Either give them a means to overcome the situation quickly or let them bow out. Always, always, always have an escape route for stories that are too hot to handle for players be it IC or OOC. If you don't care about the emotional care of your players, at least recognize that doing this ensures that anyone that cannot handle your story any longer feels no obligation to force themself to continue. On the flipside, don't just agree to an event you know will trigger you. I know you probably don't want to get left out, but it's seriously not worth it. If and when you are triggered, you'll derail the event and cause a fuss. If you thought you could handle it but later find yourself unable to, don't stay silent just because you don't want to cause a scene. Send a private message to whoever is running the event and tell them where you're at emotionally. Maybe you just need a moment to collect yourself, maybe the event needs to stop, maybe you just need to extract yourself from it. Regardless, forcing yourself to endure is more likely to lead to more problems than offer resolution. 7. Aftercare If you suspect someone involved in the event had any issues, reach out and offer a shoulder. While much of the time you'll likely not have anyone need to talk about it, it's better safe than sorry. Your focus here should be reassuring whoever is upset and hear out why they are upset. If they are simply handling their reaction to the event, just be someone they can talk to. If they're upset because of how you handled the event, hear them out and decide for yourself if what they are saying is a reasonable complaint that you should consider for future events. This will more than likely be more necessary for very heavy topics like abuse or PTSD, but it could come up for other things as well. Note that responding to player feedback might come up long after the event is run. Don't get offended if someone comes to you at any point with negative feedback. There is almost always room for improvement and, if your method of displaying some dark theme wasn't quite accurate to the reality of things, it's always worth adjusting the presentation for a later event. Sometimes, despite every attempt, someone attends an event that they shouldn't have and they won't be open enough about their upset to discuss this with you. It'll be bottled up and it won't be some time later that they make this an issue. If you find yourself the one upset long after the event and never made your upset known, remember this: while your feelings are valid, you should have spoken sooner. Whoever was running the event could not adjust things to fit your needs without knowing it was needed and they could not address your concerns if you never made them. It's better late than never, but getting angry that your concerns were never respected when nobody knew they existed to begin with. Give whoever you find at fault some benefit of the doubt and try to work with them to prevent this from becoming a problem in the future. If you find yourself the one on the other side of the above drama, remember this: Just because they never spoke, just because they remained quiet, that doesn't mean they can't feel upset. Try and work with them once you find out things are not peachy and learn what went wrong so you can at least address it in the future. If they refuse to cooperate and work with you, you certainly cannot force them. Let them come to you when they're ready to talk. 8. Final Considerations Some steps here can be skipped if you know everyone very well or have run events like this in the past. However, you should never close yourself off to criticism for heavy themes or someone's expression of upset. These subjects are considered "mature" or "dark" for a reason. If you aren't mature enough to express empathy to those engaging with these subjects, you probably weren't mature enough to try and lead these events or even participate to begin with. When referring to the events of the roleplay later on, you can refer to section 5. While it spoke on how to use darker elements in a character description, this also can apply to talking to someone in the present about it ICly. Focus on the facts, don't feel required to give express details unless requested. Lastly, after EVERYTHING I have just covered, be sure to ask yourself just how dark, gritty, and explicit your concept needs to be. More often than not, the more extreme depictions of events and topics I have written this for won't be what's on the table...but all of this should definitely be on your mind if you stick to a story that delves into the darkest aspects of humanity. If you don't have to go that dark, ask yourself why you need to. This is part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

It's also worth pointing out that different personalities, both that of the character and of the player, can heavily influence how easily you can weave between groups. It's, more often than not, not even within your control and can even vary depending on the community you are in. I've had friends that were basically ignored by one MMO's community while in another they were basically a celebrity. Also, if you're going to steal my schtick, I'm going to include you in my master list. So there. 😛

That doesn't fix the problem. That prevents it from occurring at all. A fix would be preventing this from occurring when a respec is done.

The way of activating this bug is super niche, but here we go. I had fly and hover active on an Arachnos Widow veet. At level 24, I was forced to level up and respec. Upon completing the respect while no powers were active, my character was flying. I saw this happen once before after a respec, but I "fixed" it by turning fly on and off before I could nab screenshots to show it actually happening. So my best guess as to the actual trigger is respecing while fly is active.

Just as it says on the tin. The base item is "side mounted" currently. In case it isn't obvious what the problem is, the metal on the bottom of the camera is the hinge the camera on top looks up and down with.

Well said! Sometimes hacking can be as simple as "they didn't change the default password from 1111". It's not always hackerman.

That's part of why I have a whole list made of all of the tutorials I've done. You can find the link at the bottom of the original post. Considering the purpose of these posts, I don't consider it necroing. There's a certain level of minion acquisition that can become a problem. The best rule of thumb I can think of for your scenario is to ask yourself this: If my character has X number of minions and they just threw every minion they had at a problem, how many scenarios would that not solve. For example, if you had 10 minions and you sent them to take over Ghost Widow's tower, they'd probably fail. If you had 10000 minions and threw them at Mercy Island, you could probably take over the entire island. At that point, there would be few "standard" scenarios where your character could be involved and not be able to just summon their entire army to force a problem fixed.

And then half way through they discover that a different programming language actually has a library of functions that do everything that they need and, using that, they can have the program done in a day. They then set their computer on fire.

Correct! For our purposes, "power" translates to anything that a character can use in response to something happening in the story. Power, very generally speaking, translates to a character's ability to influence if not solve a problem. While simply physical power alone being maxed out can lead to a character being overpowered, it's not the only way a character can hog the spotlight.

Oh boy! Here we go again! Another tangent! As I promised in my post on hacking, I'm going to talk some about programming. What it is, what it isn't, and how you can best represent it in your roleplay. As a reminder, while I have a degree in computer science, this is all fiction and intended as a fun thing to do. If you don't want to take my opinions here to heart, you certainly don't have to! 1. What is Programming? At the core of programming is logic. A series of statements that yield a result. Not only do you need a logical step by step means of reaching your goal, but you also need to phrase it in a way that makes sense to the language you are writing in. While general principles of logic and an understanding of how a computer works on the back end is always important, every programming language has its own quirks and syntax that can complicate implementation. It is very important to remember, however, that not all programming languages are created equal. Some are only good for very specific tasks (like SQL) while others are better for web development (like CSS or .NET) and others still are useful for a ton of different applications but simply knowing how to program in that language isn't going to make you able to understand all of those different applications (like Python, Java, or every variant of C) The hardest part of programming isn't necessarily making the code itself. The two big things that end up taking up most of a coder's time is going to be debugging (fixing problems in the code) and keeping up maintainability. That second one is really important because even if code you write now works, if it isn't flexible or you have to spend 15 minutes every time you open it to even understand what's going on, the future time you'll be spending trying to make future stuff work with your old stuff will make your head spin. Just as an example, it's widely known that the code of City of Heroes is really messy. This is, in large part, because not much time was put into touching up old code to make use of new tools or keeping track of what is dependent on what. Part of the reason that it took so long to expand bases to what they are now is because even the guy that originally developed it couldn't remember how it worked when the original dev team tracked him down for advice. Even poking the original base code could make the entire thing fall apart. I've heard numerous stories of the wild and crazy things that have been found under the hood of the game which is, in part, why I am always so impressed with how far they've come in making sense of it all and cleaning it up. 2. What You Should Focus On Somewhat amusingly, the actual process of coding is kind of the opposite of hacking. The process itself, from an outsider's perspective, is kind of boring unless it's intentionally being presented for the purpose of entertainment. Trying to write out your character actively programming something would basically be them staring at a computer screen for hours on end as they try to figure out why an array index works properly when a variable is saved within a function but not when it's passed in as an argument and...yeah, you get my point. Not only can it get very technical, but most of the actual coding can be fairly dull to get out. That being said, outside of the end result, I'd say there's three things you should focus on when presenting your character when they're in the process of coding something. First, research! While it's a bit of a meme that, after college, most of the programming you'll do will be in the form of copying code you find online...it's not entirely far off from the truth. Back in the day, before the internet, the only easy resource you had were peers where you studied/worked and books. My dad used to have a small library of textbooks that he'd refer to for technical information when he got stuck on something. These days, collaboration is a huge aspect. While nobody is about to share the entirety of their code, it's not at all uncommon for programmers to post snippets of what they're stuck on and ask for advice. There are people who spend their free time doing nothing but helping people on stuff like this in places like Stack Overflow or GitHub. If you ever needed a hook for your dork of a character to be recognized like some kind of celebrity without being too hamfisted, being a well known contributor on websites like these could be a legitimate outlet. Second, FAILURE! Don't just make your character's code work. Have moments where bugs show up or where some unexpected result occurs. Not only does it add a layer of fallibility and realism to your character, but it can lead to fun moments in roleplay where things don't go right in fun and interesting ways. What's more, having your character have to take the time to understand how the software in that weird alien technology works can add time between events to allow for things to happen between acquisition and utilization. Third and, most importantly, however, you should always... 3. Evolve, Modify, and Adapt! Yes, this last point gets its very own section. There are few industries where the need to adapt and evolve is as important as software development. As time goes on, programming standards change, operating systems get updated, and services are dropped from support. For one thing, nothing just works "out of the box". It might appear that way to the person using it, but literally any hardware you use to interface with a computer has some kind of software telling the computer what it is and how to use it. Yes, even your mouse probably has some drivers. Not only can drivers that either do not or cannot properly be read by a system lead to things not functioning as intended, but maliciously designed drivers can fool a computer into fooling a computer into thinking something is working as advertised when it isn't actually doing that at all. One of the best, most relatable examples of this are fake SSDs you can buy off of Amazon. Going even beyond that, as the programming languages and operating systems hardware runs on change, so too does the list of no longer functional hardware or even other software that used to be able to run on them. While an obvious example that might come to mind are old programs that were intended to run on Windows 95 being thrown at Windows 11, even the code within a programming language can stop working with other bits of code from the same programming language that was written more recently. A lot of this has to do not just with the addition of new features but also the deprecation of old features. Because of this, if a driver never gets an update as time goes on, it can stop working as well if at all. More importantly, just because your character knows one programming language doesn't necessarily mean they know them all. Sure, knowing how to program in C will help you a lot when programming in C++, but C# is far closer to Java and will only help with Python after you learn Python's syntax. That doesn't just mean your character needs to spend time learning other languages when trying to allow systems to communicate with one another, that also means that they'll need to study up when dealing with some kind of exotic system they don't frequently work with. You might have made a fleet of robots, but that doesn't mean your character is fluent in whatever insane programming language the Rikti use. Plus, much like a spoken language, that also means your character will likely have at best a few languages they're good with, plenty they're familiar with, and numerous languages they know nothing about. If you don't think it would make sense for your character to be fluent in every single Romantic language, it probably wouldn't make sense for them to have every language remotely similar to C++ down to a science. So what does this mean for your character? Put simply, never consider a project "finished" in the same sense you'd consider a puzzle finished. Just because your character's robot is complete doesn't mean you can't still have them commenting on code they're working on or some new development that's thrown them for a loop. Even an entirely custom system requires software to allow it to communicate with other systems. The more custom your computer is, be it in a case or in a robot, the more coding you'll be doing. 4. Why Make This at All? Well, for a similar reason I made that entire post talking about hacking. A lot of people that make programmers often don't really explore the concept. Either their character knows how to code as a pretense to allow them to have robots or they stop interacting with that aspect of their character after all of their current projects are "complete" and there's nothing new in the works. My main goal here is to try and encourage everyone who plays a nerdy character that uses programming to fight (or cause) crime to go out of their comfort zone and play around with that side of their character more. This is tangentially part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

EEEY! It's been a busy end and start of the year for me, but I plan on getting this started soon!! For those new to Homecoming...WELCOME BACK! If there was ever a time to restart the workshop, now's the time. Starting February, I will be hosting a workshop on Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday from 5:30 PM EST until 10:00 PM EST latest! I'm going to edit the first post with a bit more of an introduction as to who I am and what this is all about because we have had such a huge influx of new people. See you next month!

HI! IT'S ME! SPAZZ! I have been summoned!!! As @Crystal Dragon said, we're very invested in roleplaying. I have legitimately written an entire write-up lecture series here on the forums! It started out kind'a small and between the in game workshops and the on forum write-ups it's just kind of become its whole thing. If anyone needs advice on getting started with roleplaying, even outside of City of Heroes, we always try and make ourselves available. Okay, enough waxing my own ego. The questions! My experience has been overall positive! How positive depends on what time period we're talking about, but I certainly didn't go on break because of the people I encountered here. Overall, as far as MMO roleplay communities goes, it's really solid. It's not perfect, of course. Cliche behavior isn't super uncommon and, while not nearly as bad as it was on SCoRE, there is a bit of a small town effect where rumors and gossip can spread unhindered. Still, it's definitely a community I'd encourage people new to MMO roleplay to try getting into. How open people are to people new to roleplay kind of depends on the setting. More closed off SG groups tend to be more critical of flawed roleplay than less organized groups, but's kind of true for every setting. Most roleplayers in Everlasting seem to be more excited to see new ideas being played around with with fresh, new players. I'd say the bigger hole that exists within Everlasting's openness to new roleplayers is less an intentional dislike but more so an assumption of skill. As City of Heroes is an old game that was officially shut down over 10 years ago, most of the people coming here to roleplay are probably going to have at least some experience. The unwritten rules that people just assume everyone else knows can catch people off guard. You can check out my write-up series linked waaaay back above for very detailed breakdowns of what goes into roleplay and what considerations there are. As I said, I'm also always open to helping new people get set-up, so just drop me a DM! One of the more interesting roleplay stories I recently got involved with was a full on trial of a super hero. I was one of the jury members and the event organizers actually went out of their way to make it really feel like a real court case. It even had a bit of an interesting twist where we had to find the defendant not guilty on something despite everyone knowing he was probably guilty. Because, you know. In criminal court, probably isn't good enough. I'm also running a long ongoing event involving an alien race that people can interact with which is just starting to really take off. That's one of the best things about storytelling in City of Heroes, honestly. Because it's so well based in comic books, the possible stories you can tell is almost endless. It depends on what you mean by "something you'd change." If you're talking gameplay wise, I'd probably add some kind of mechanical boost to encourage people to roleplay. Though, that's only really useful for roleplayers and is kind of a pipe dream🤣. If you mean within the community, I'd probably want more people to disconnect their perception of how dangerous various aspects of the world can be from their character's mechanical advantage. I think I ranted about this somewhere in my write-up series, but City of Heroes is a patchwork of content and what was once end game was never adjusted to match what the new standards of end game are. If the game tells you something is top tier dangerous but you find no challenge fighting it with your 5 billion inf fully incarnated out build, maybe you should be more leaning towards the former than the latter to determine how seriously your character takes it. But that's a real...me thing. Obviously can't nor would I want to force that on everyone.

As I said in my OP, you can directly modify costume files via something like notepad++ as the costume file is basically a JSON array. The issue is that it's a lot of extra steps for something that should probably be just a few steps in game.

While much has been made in my other posts about power levels and interacting with other characters, the area where this can become extremely complicated is when characters actually start to fight one another. This can be done a number of ways and finding what works best not just for you but whatever sort of group you belong to ahead of time can prevent a lot of headaches. With that in mind, let's just dive right in! Chapter 1: Freeform System: This is arguably the most common form of combat you'll find in MMO roleplay. No real rules or regulations: JUST DO IT! Players take turns writing posts just like any other roleplay scenario. The primary difference is that instead of using your words to have your character use words, you are using your words for violence. So how do you do this reasonably? Well, first, everyone needs to accept that SOMEBODY is going to lose. If it's acceptable to end in a draw, great! Otherwise, you need to pause for a moment to determine either the overall outcome or figure out whatever metric you are using to determine victory. Just be wary of saying, "may the best writer win," as that can effectively turn into a small arms race where each person is trying to one up the other in ways they normally wouldn't. Second, be willing to actually take hits. This doesn't necessarily mean every other shot taken at you is a potentially lethal one, but adding some kind of failure state into the other's attack failing can be a nice tradeoff for successfully avoiding their blow. For example, if someone swung a blade at my character, perhaps they dodge but are thrown off balance, forcing them into a roll and having to spend a moment getting back into position. A lot of this is about give and take. If your character never takes any of the swings they throw, why should they do the same for you? Unless both parties agree to a draw, you have to be willing to accept somebody is going to lose. It could be you, and that's okay. It's about the event, not the outcome. Third, don't just view this as a moment where your character is trying to beat up someone else. Remember: Of the methods you could use, this provides you the absolute most freedom to be your bad self. Show off what your character is capable of! Show them using their head and using on the fly strategies. React with more than just grunts and growls. Fourth, if you trust the other people involved, leaving posts open ended in some capacity even beyond leaving open if you hit or not can give other players more opportunities to write in extra flourishes with their reactions. And, finally, remember that all of the above applies not just to fighting other players but also enemies. When there are no players to potentially upset, it can be very tempting to just forgo everything I just said and turn your foe into paste. While satisfying, it's often not the most narratively interesting route to go down. If the means you are beating up the baddies wouldn't be a fun read if you were beating up another player's character, chances are it's not going to be as interesting for everyone else involved to just watch you beat up cardboard cutouts of your NPC nemesis. While all methods here should be considered, you should always be prepared to utilize this method even in a short brawl that only lasts a few posts. Even if you don't like the drawbacks that come with it, few things can kill the mood as quickly as having to pause some random unplanned scene because you're interacting with someone new and aren't ready to go with the flow. Pros: The biggest benefit of doing it this way is that it, theoretically, moves at the same speed as the roleplay normally would. No need to pause to check rules or roll dice. It also gives players far more freedom as to what actions and reactions best fit their character's skill level. If your character should be able to do something based on their skillset or backstory, they just can. Your limitations are, in a sense, your imagination and what doesn't intrude on other people's space. You can be as flashy or restrained as you'd like. Cons: The biggest struggle with this method is pretty similar to roleplaying in an MMO environment as a whole: there's nothing that says a dog can't play basketball. Well, in a less joking manner, there's nothing keeping fights balanced. Even if we presume that everyone is playing by the metaphorical book with no metagaming, godmodding, or the like, it's not hard for fights to turn into, "and so I dodged it." Extreme victories or failures on an action by action basis are often far rarer. If you want your awesome heroically timed punch to land on another character thus foiling their plan, that other player needs to be willing to take that punch. This can become a huge issue if both players are dead set on their character winning that fight. They might be willing to take a few punches, but losing? That's going to be a harder pill to swallow. Chapter 2: I CAST MAGIC MISSILE (Dice and/or Mechanics) System: Ensuring a degree of randomness to an encounter can ensure that not only is the victor undefined, but the events of what is to come are entirely unknown. That can both be exciting and far more interesting from a narrative perspective. That is if you have the time to do it. First, (I think) you should only use complex systems with advancement and character sheets if you are going to be playing with the same group of people with minimal drop outs and new players dropping in. If you're dealing with something like a guild/super group/clan/whatever that frequently tries to recruit new players, keep your system as simple as possible without advancement. Focus less on balance and more so on accurately representing characters with added randomness. Second, use the in game dice roller. Homecoming has added the command /roll d# that lets you roll dice in-game. No more having to try and work around a d6, we have ALL of the dice now! Speaking of, if at all possible, try and keep dice rolling to an absolute minimum. Every pause to check stats, roll dice, and determine the degree of success might be slim on their own but they easily add up. Third, don't require dice rolls for every simple action if a character's concept is tied into it. If someone is jumping up a series of crates, simply acknowledging they have the background to do so easily is enough. You can still require a hacker to make a roll to get into a system, but asking them to roll to safely extract data could be a potentially needless hindrance. Lastly, don't make this the ONLY way you handle roleplay events. As I said, using established mechanics can sometimes scare away new people from participating. Having this be a secondary way of interacting with the group can help ease people into how you run things and be more willing to try out your mechanics based method. This can be exceedingly difficult to pull off in a way that makes everyone happy, but careful implementation can be well worth the effort. Pros: Unlike other methods of doing combat styled roleplay, using dice and even defined mechanics can add a great degree of variety to your play. Simply picking open a door could turn into a moment of struggle for your character. Heck, it could just outright fail and force you to find another way in. The same applies to combat. This method also forces players to more carefully consider what their character most excels in which can open the door for more players to shine in any given encounter. Using some kind of system also can be a heavy deterrent against abuse. If someone's various skills are limited by the results of a roll of the dice, it means that it becomes far harder to write your character into being the absolute center of attention without any risk. It's pretty hard to godmod when there are express rules put into place that prevent it. Cons: While randomness is a benefit to this, not having rules to handle a character's skill set can make a dice's outcome head scratching. If a character's entire concept is super speed and they keep on rolling 1's and 4's on a D20 whenever they try and dodge, it's going to become more than a little frustrating. Adding modifiers to a roll to help offset that can remove this issue entirely, but without guidelines you can re-introduce some issues with freeform combat and get characters that just aren't overly bad at anything. While introducing mechanics and rules can remove both extreme randomness and unbalanced characters, the issue at play is time. In order to pull this off, individuals need to take time out of their lives to learn your rules and build character sheets. While that time might be temporary, systems that aim to make things fair tend to have more considerations which can just reduce the number of people that want to engage at all. Even after all of that, however, in the actual roleplay, you still have to pause between each person's turn to roll dice, get the result, and translate that result into the action with a high probability that, at some point, someone is going to need to pause to double check the rules. There's a reason tabletop games can run for hours at a time and still accomplish very little at the end of a session. Which brings us to balancing. From the start, you'll have people wanting to introduce characters but finding that the limitations of whatever system you end up using don't allow them to fully represent the concept they likely came up with before they even knew your set-up existed. While less likely for lightweight rules, it becomes more and more likely the harder you work to keep everyone on the same level. What's worse is that any introduction of mechanics that allow you to improve a character's stats will inevitably mean that new players or players that just don't have as much free time will always, no matter their concept, fall behind the rest. Chapter 3: Break Out the PVP System: This is probably the most straightforward method there is. When a fight breaks out, everyone piles into the PVP arena and goes hog. No dice rolls, no time spent writing out posts, just good old fashion button mashing. This method is the easiest of all methods as well as the fastest with the most clear cut results, but it can often reward players' victories for the wrong reasons. Under the hood of any RPG is a bunch of random number calculations. In fact, some games like Baulder's Gate are literally just D&D that does all of the rolls and calculations for you. The same is true for City of Heroes albeit with different rules and systems. To pull this off, be sure that your opponent is on the same playing field as you. Unless you know for certain otherwise, it's not fair to challenge/demand another player to settle an IC dispute with PVP if you believe that there is absolutely no possibility of them winning. Someone with a fully decked out fully slotted incarnate challenging someone who just hit 50 an hour ago without any set bonuses is very likely going to dramatically favor the latter if the arena isn't configured correctly. It's a very bad look to challenge someone to a PvP resolution when basically everyone present is more than aware the outcome is already settled. Next, consider using PvP as more of a benchmark of what happens than the be all, end all. Recapping the peaks of the fight and making what was otherwise a one sided fight far closer ICly can be a decent way of preventing the loser from looking totally hapless. Heck, you could even just make it a draw and use the outcome of the fight to figure out who's worse off. Lastly, as hinted at before, remember that the PvP arena has a ton of options you can configure that can really even the odds. Everything from disabling set bonuses to limiting what types of inspirations can be used and how many. If you want to get into PVP RP, understanding how PVP can be configured is a very important step. I don't PVP at all, so I'm definitely not the person to ask for help if you want a more detailed if not more fair outline of how to go about PvP RP. There's actually a fairly rich PVP community in Everlasting, so if you enjoy PvP as a concept, don't let me discourage you from trying it out. Pros: While swinging your axe at someone might take a minute or two to write out and even longer to suss out the results for if using dice, PVP resolves that quandary in seconds. Combine powers and you have yourself a fight! You can even intertwine roleplay discussion into it! What can take hours to accomplish in roleplay can be settled in ten minutes in the arena. Even better, you can't really godmod when you're not the one writing out the action. You can't really use any kind of commonly used tactic in text based roleplay to force the story to go your way. It means that if you're having to handle a conflict between two characters and you don't necessarily trust the other player to write responsibly, you can go about resolving it in a definitive way. You set the terms for the engagement, enter the arena, and the best fighter can win. Also, if you happen to be a fan of PvP to begin with, this can provide additional layers of entertainment to your roleplay experience you would otherwise not be getting. Cons: The first issue is pretty dependent on how important game mechanics are to the way characters should be represented and understood. As I brought up in my write-up on figuring out power levels, in game mechanics can generally be a horrible measure of a character's strength. Everyone has a different amount of time they can invest in a game and it's entirely possible to purposefully make a character concept centered around a powerset combo that hits the meta (meaning the strategy that performs better than others) perfectly. It's not at all unheard of for people looking to "win" at roleplay to make characters perfected for PVP and then demand every conflict be resolved in the PVP arena. Why? Because they know they'll win. Even if there are a small number of people who can actually functionally complete, my experience is that roleplayers don't generally tend to not build or invest a ton of time into PVP. For every one person that can go toe to toe with one of these PVP centric characters, there are dozens more who can't. Theoretically, you don't even need to overly build a character for PvP. While the number of people that abuse the fact that most RPers don't participate in PvP is relatively small, the fact that it's a method of exploiting roleplay at all leads many to entirely discount the practice entirely. If you find yourself enjoying this style of RP combat, you're going to find the number of people willing to participate in it to be mixed. What's more, game combat is generally more limited than what can be accomplished with actually just writing it out. There's certainly going to be emotions or reactions left out between every strike and dodge. You also can't really replicate fighting dirty or using interesting tactics to overcome your foe's overwhelming strength. This issue falls away somewhat if you use PVP only to determine the winner, but that could potentially limit people's initiative to come up with ideas if the ultimate winner was still being decided. Chapter 4: What to Do When The Methods Conflict Sometimes, people are going to have hard no's on what kinds of conflict resolution they engage in and sometimes people are only interested in one method because they know how to cheese or cheat it. So what do you do when that kind of thing happens? First, as a pre-emptive measure, don't just understand what kind of methods you're willing to participate in! Also understand what kind of methods your RP partners are okay with doing. This is less important in more casual settings, but it can become imperative if you are participating or even leading a story arc that will be dipping into non-PVE mechanical conflict. Second, if players involved in the conflict cannot go in with the understanding that someone is going to lose? Pre-arranged or otherwise? Those players aren't really prepared to handle this kind of RP to begin with. As harsh as that is, a roleplay where someone has to be dragged to a conclusion that is arrived at fairly but is not what they prefer isn't really the kind of person that is going to enjoy this kind of roleplay unless they always come out on top. It's fine to be competitive and really push for a victory, but we're all here to have fun. We're trying to tell a fun story here and utilizing any number of nasty behaviors to force a conclusion to force a victory for any one side is definitely not that. Most importantly though, and I cannot stress this enough: Do not shame other roleplayers for refusing to utilize your preferred method of combat roleplay!!!! If someone makes it clear from the offset that their preferences clash against yours, you can just not engage or start an IC conflict with them. There's nothing to be gained by blasting them OOCly for their stance or by dragging the disagreement into the IC space like some kind of drama llama. Respect people's preferences and don't create needless OOC drama. Worst case scenario, you can always just agree to disagree and do the fight off screen or just walk away. Nobody is or should be forcing you to interact with someone and, sometimes, it's better to just disengage. Chapter 5: Conclusion I won't lie that my bias was on full display on this one. In an MMO setting, I personally prefer a more freeform system. However, I did try to provide plenty of pros and cons for all three and, if nothing else, you can use this as a starting point to determine what you prefer yourself. At the end of the day, just do whatever is fun for you and try to surround yourself with others that feel the same way. This is part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

Yeah, I actually realized that last night when I was lying in bed. Would basically change the original suggestion from requiring two interface changes and a new file type to a single interface and a minor backend change in how the file is read.

Let me give you a scenario: Your character started out as a weakling. After some hard work, heaps of eggs, and way too much time in the gym, and now they're an absolute hunk. You'd want to change your character scales, of course! However, you might not want to change all ten of your outfits into something new. Making the scales all match throughout your costumes can be a pain to do, though. Currently, the best option is to save all of your costumes, open up a text editor like notepad++, open the new costume file, copy the scales, open each of the old costume files, copy the scales to the old costume files, hop back in game, then hop between each costume and load each newly modified costume file. I suggest we cut out a few of those steps by allowing you to directly save body scales not unlike how you can save power customizations of your primary/secondary individually or everything in one go. From a UI perspective, you'd have something like this... I obviously don't know the madness that is the CoH codebase, but here's how I'm imagining this play out from an overview perspective: When you save the scales, it creates a .scales file only contains scales data (Everything from CostumeFilePrefix to but not including the skin color). When you load, it will only apply the scales data. It defaults to showing .costume files with a button that can toggle it to instead show .scales files. The end result is that, if you want to transfer the scales from one costume to another, you never have to leave the game or guesstimate. There might be more elegant solutions, but that's just what I thought of.

I appreciate it! I plan on running this solo for the first month or two but if I got other people involved we could theoretically run it more than once a month.

When I was hosting the workshops, yes, I was using /LFG. The reason it doesn't say when or where it is going on is because I have not yet determined a start date. I'm focusing on changing up how I do things and I'll start after I get that sorted.

HI! IT'S ME! SPAZZY! I've been on break from the game for well over a year and one of the things I've been interested in doing on my return was resuming the roleplay workshops I hosted for a while. For those that don't know, I would host workshops aimed to giving roleplayers new or alternate insights on how to go about roleplay and the pitfalls you could end up in. The end goal is to try and help the overall community improve which should, in theory, help everyone have a better time. While I am leading this, I am not without fault. This is just as much for me as it is for you! Now that a year has passed, I've been thinking of how I want to do them as to improve on multiple fronts. Workshops will be once a month instead of bi-monthly to give me more time to decompress and reassess how to present things. Instead of specific topics I lecture on, I'd like to instead focus each workshop on a more broad topic and let the people attending lead where the discussion goes. Host at least once workshop per month entirely focused on utilizing mechanics specific to City of Heroes to enrich the experience (bindings, emotes, points on the RP culture in Everlasting, etc). Utilize the tutorials I have already or have yet to write on the forums for long form content that cannot be easily broken down in an in person meeting. Try and give more positive examples of things you should do rather than things you shouldn't do. Current workshop topics I have in mind: Starting Roleplay (With strangers or with friends) Integrating Mechanics (City of Heroes unique features that can add to your experience) Doing Arcs (How to make it more than just about you) Consent and Communication (Probably the most essential...I know I made a write-up for this on the forums, but this is a biggie.) There are a few challenges or things I want to do but I'm not specifically sure on how to go about which is why I'm making the announcement I'm resuming even before I have a set start date. I'd love to do a workshop where two players roleplay and, once in a while, we pause for observations or comments on what's being done. As much as I've wanted to do hands on sessions where people break up into groups and roleplay among themselves, I feel like my attention would get too spread out. While having two people demonstrate is great in theory, I'd need to figure out a good theme or prompt topic to get the ball rolling for whoever volunteers. Some of the feedback I've gotten on the workshops has been second hand from people who were for whatever reason not comfortable giving me criticism. Totally understand, but that doesn't help me very much. I'm trying to decide on a good anonymous way of getting feedback. My initial instinct is Google Forms but I'd like to know if anyone has any better ideas. I'd really like to know what general subjects people would like to see done in game and in person and what subjects people want full on write ups like I have done in the past. If anyone is just finding out about my efforts with this, know that I am TOTALLY in favor of adding well done tutorials made by other people to that linked list. It's a resource, not a resume. Thanks for reading, folks! Here's hoping the next run of workshops is even better than the last! Edit: OH WOW! So....Homecoming is now official and we got a TON of new people. That means there's even MORE people that have no idea who I am or what the Roleplay Workshop is. Allow me to introduce myself! I'm McSpazz! I've been playing City of Heroes on and off for...jeez, a good chunk of my life. I was even in the super secret SCoRE server back in the day. For all of this time, I've been very invested in roleplay. Some time ago, I joined in on a tabletop game and found that despite my many years of experience, I was really struggling to do...well, anything. It was then I not only discovered the many unwritten rules that differ between tabletop games and MMO's, but realized how useful a class could be. Sure enough, fast forward, and @Crystal Dragon approached me to help her run roleplaying workshops that was intended to help reinforce healthy behavior in roleplay and give people the tools they needed to succeed. While they are no longer as involved in the workshops, they have (apparently) been of great help to many players and I am keen on resuming them after a long hiatus! They aren't just for new players. In hosting these, I've come to not just find the words to put to unspoken rules I already knew but found ways to improve my own writing and interactions with others. I don't want you to think I'm some kind of expert that knows the right way to roleplay. I'm just a guy that knows his stuff and wants to offer ideas to others to improve their RP and maybe learn some things along the way myself. If you prefer a written format rather than a hands-on workshop, I recommend my overly long post series! I always love seeing people posting below and will happily answer any questions that are posted in them. Anyhow, Workshops resume this coming February! Welcome Home! -Spazzy

HEY! IT'S ME! SPAZZY! Yeah, yeah, it's been a while, but I was thinking about it and I realized that of my tutorials, this was probably one of the most major gaps I have in my posts that roleplayers regularly encounter. In character relationships can come in many forms. From business to friendship to down right lovers. It might initially seem odd that I am dedicating an entire post to breaking this down, but there are some points here that need to be addressed that many don't consider. 1. Okay, but really, why this section? Relationships are hard. Period. No matter how intimate, human beings tend to be very complicated creatures that are not easy to predict. The same, for better or worse, applies to the characters we write. While a lot around this subject goes back into consent and communicating with others, I'm going to get more specific here. In character relationships can complicate things in many ways and, even if things are reiterated, it's important we cover everything. 2. THIS IS FICTIONAL!!! I have brought this up in other posts, but I REALLY need to lean into this here because it is an unfortunate reoccurring problem as far as in character relationships go. Just because two characters are very intimate with one another, that doesn't mean the player behind the character is into you. While this is definitely obvious to those of you who identify as men, the women who are reading this without a doubt have encountered at least one person who took an in character relationship and translated that into real life affection. I am positive that this has gone in many different ways (let us not presume that cis men are the only creepers in the universe), but the emphasis is going here because, unfortunately, it is often the source of the issue. This goes beyond romantic interest, of course. In fact, it even goes the other way around. Just because two characters hate one another, that doesn't mean the player has a problem with you. If anything, entering a situation with that in mind can create just such an outcome. Keep in mind, I am not speaking on player to player relationships here. I know people who started their relationships based off of in character partnerships. Sometimes that is indeed a thing that can happen. However, the in character and out of character bonds forged are, indeed, quite separate. If you start developing feelings for a player of another character, it is extremely important that you ask yourself how much interaction you've had with this person outside of roleplay itself. Developing feelings for a player based on your interactions with their characters is as likely to fail as developing feelings for an actor based on their performance of their character in a play. 3. The World Continues to Exist Just because your character isn't going on regular outings or dates with another doesn't mean it isn't happening. One of the worst traps someone can fall into is presuming that because something never occurred on screen, it must have never occurred at all. This is, oddly enough, especially common when considering the relationship between two characters. This applies just as much to a situation where one person is rarely ever online as it does to one where someone is on other characters. Characters most definitely interact off camera and in ways that neither players consider. I know this can be a little odd to consider, but remember that the vast majority of scenes written by roleplayers are ones that are interesting. There are aspects of existence with a platonic or romantic partner that just cannot be translated in a way that's entertaining. We mainly play out scenes that are interesting to ourselves as players. It's unlikely you're going to play out a movie night where both players are actively watching the movie alongside the characters and roleplaying out their reactions down to simple cuddling because... Well. It's not as interesting as the movie. From our perspective at least. Much of the interaction people have with one another tends to be incidental. Not every conversation is a "scene" and not every romantic gesture is going to be written in stone. This even applies to friendships. I have seen situations where someone has taken a break from a game, come back, and everyone reacts to their characters as if they just went completely MIA. This is often despite the fact that the player has been available via something like Discord if something like that was relevant. While this is less of an issue for friendships, I have definitely seen situations where someone took a hiatus and their character's significant other's player just decided that meant the other's characters had dropped off the face of the earth and acted accordingly. Just, you know, without looking into it first. We cannot exist to perpetuate our characters lives as if they were our own. This applies in every way you can imagine. If an absence becomes an issue, the players need to discuss it. While exceptions can be made for situations where a player legitimately just stops logging on and can't be contacted, you shouldn't just write in things that don't exist because of your own perception of what is happening within the story. If you have an issue with how often that character is available for roleplay, that's an OOC issue. Not an IC issue to be played out as if they were actually just vanishing from the face of the earth whenever their god puppet master has to go work a 9 to 5. If a player has truly just gone completely MIA, is not responding to any messages, has removed themselves from spaces you share, and is just overall unavailable? Then you can start considering finding an escape plan without their input. Common courtesy cuts both ways. 4. Take Your Time Here's an interesting fact: it has been scientifically proven that relationships forged exclusively over the internet tend to move faster than a person would usually progress a relationship. It has been far less scientifically proven that in character relationships, regardless of what stripes it might take, often move the same way. I can definitely speak from experience on both points and while I'm not your real dad, I will still step in and say that you shouldn't JUST go on vibes as far as how fast an in character relationship is going. While real relationships can also start too fast, this is all fictional and it's pretty rare for the players to make things go too quickly intentionally. I'm not going to give a specific period of time you should aim for, but you should go slow enough to ensure mutually as players that the chemistry that exists isn't actually as shallow as a Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Who slashfic. Worst case scenario, the characters will have more points in their mutual history you can build off of. 5. Don't JUST End it Of all of the points I've brought up as far as in character relationships go, this is probably the one thing I hope everyone walks away integrating into your roleplay going forward. As much as I have mentioned communication in previous installments, it's always extremely tragic to see people fail to just talk when it comes to ending things. We can get very invested in our characters and the relationships they forge. While one of your characters suddenly losing a friend or partner is nowhere near as bad as it actually happening to you, it can still really mess someone up. If you don't think an IC relationship, romantic or otherwise, is working out? You should talk to the other player about it. If both players are onboard, or at least understand what's happening, it's far easier for all parties to write around it without some aspect of it turning into an absolute cluster. The most common scenario where this occurs is when one player takes an extended leave of absence from the game. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen people take a break and come back to discover that their character's boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with them off camera and are now dating someone else. We are in the digital age, people. Use your words. While this section talks about "endings", this same logic also applies to situations that effectively or literally kill off a character. If you are removing a character from play, especially by violent means, you should communicate with any players who's characters are very intimately involved with your own. Yes, it is entirely possible to do this without giving away all of the major spoilers. 6. Conclusion In short: COMMUNICATE! I'm going to add more sections as I think of them more than likely, but, in a bit of irony, the best way of maintaining healthy in character relationships is by maintaining healthy out of character communication. If there are any elements of in character relationships you think I should touch on, comment about it below and I'll add yet another hunk of text to this. This is part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

Great question! You can TOTALLY do this, but there are a few considerations you need to move forward. Why might someone not have heard about your character's organization? This one is very important because, at the very least to start, nobody is going to know about your organization unless you tell them OOC that it does. One thing you mentioned is that you are matched on resources which is a great starting point since that is far easier to work with than infamy. If you establish a reason why your character has flown under the radar, it would go a long way to both not step on any toes of the established canon as well as not demand others react to your character as if they were on par with Lord Recluse. Figure out not just what your character's goals are but also determine what kind of timeline their operational history is. Just as an example, perhaps up until recently you were outsourcing your minions or keeping the employ of your minions secret so that they couldn't be linked back to you. This kind of ties into #1, but this is more so "why are they revealing themselves NOW?" Going forward, your biggest concern is going to be restraining your character from utilizing all of the resources at their disposal to fix every problem. Having a small army at your disposal can be just as effective as your individual character being extremely powerful. Determine what your character's limitations are as well as their organization. Figuring out what they can and can't accomplish at a moment's notice ahead of time can help avoid situations where you're forced to come up with something at the spur of the moment. Hope that helps!

Firstly, I want to be clear that I am aiming my advice not JUST to City of Heroes roleplay but MMO roleplay as a whole. While my examples are often based in City of Heroes, I want what I provide to be useful in more than just one setting. Second, I think you might be missing some of the points I was trying to make in my previous reply. I agree that bringing a character not built for a Master TF run to a Master TF run is irresponsible, but that really has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. You are correct that a character needs to be able to perform their tasks when running the in game content. If you want to be a valuable member of your team when running game content, your character should be mechanically able to run it. But we aren't talking about running in game content. There are things that would be entirely feasible for a character to have or to do in the CoH universe but are not something you can actually back-up with in game mechanics. Do rich characters need to have a ton of Inf in order to roleplaying being rich? Does someone who's character has an amazing hideout need to be an amazing basebuilder and actually build the hideout? If someone is a fire/fire blaster and they write that their character is highly resistant to fire need to be able to run a firefarm to justify the trait? Is a level 50 fully built staff/willpower brute who's concept is literally "I'm a janitor" stronger than your character because they can beat you in PvP? I would argue no on all counts. You are ENTIRELY correct that you have every right to opt out of any situation you don't like, but we are once again falling back to our ultimate disagreement as to how much roleplaying in an MMO differs from a freeform forum based roleplay. In my opinion, the game's mechanics help inform a roleplay and are a tool to be used. There is nothing about the actual mechanics of the game that make utilizing every aspect of them an absolute requirement. Just wanted to clarify that wealthy characters are not necessarily a bad thing. Like much of what was listed, how you utilize a concept is often what separates it from a cool idea or a head ache. From the sounds if it, you had a really cool thing going for you! 🙂

And sorry for the double post, but I did forget to address this. Even if I were to grant that magic can theoretically fix anything, I think even to you it would be a stretch to say that a magic character could know all of the magic that would be required to fix all solutions. Even then, your own solution to this metaphorical problem had a major caveat. Not only does the magic require a potentially disadvantageous timeframe to cast, but they now have a major complication they need to consider. It's not even a solution as much as it is a patch for an ongoing problem. When I say "they always have a solution", I don't just mean that they are always capable but ALSO that it just outright fixes the problem. It would be like if someone's character had super space cancer and then another character just proclaimed that they can fix it. It's not just that the character had a fix for a super rare and unusual problem that has never been a subject of any prior RP or conversation (in this example), but the fact that their character has presented they have the perfect solution means that it wouldn't make sense for that character to turn it down because the player doesn't think it's as fun of a story. They're forced to try and find some reason this perfect solution doesn't work at which point the person that displays this kind of behavior steps in not long after to immediately be the solution yet again.

Not a bad question! To be very frank, roleplay is greater than the sum of where it is played. This here is the cornerstone of my disagreement as to your complaint. Here's the fact of the matter, Kito. You are just RPing online in text. In MMO roleplay, you have no true control over the world. You only have control over your own character and what others allow you to control. You have no universal mechanic that the devs have offered from on high for the roleplayers to play around with. The only difference between a forum based freeform text roleplay and MMO roleplay is the medium. The game's mechanics only apply if you demand that they do. Part of the appeal of MMO roleplay is that it's a visual medium. Having an RP take place in some kind of environment can heavily simplify how much a person needs to write out. You don't need to describe the world as heavily. Even in situations where you are playing theater of the mind and playing in a totally empty room, simply having character models that can emote and visibly move from one location to another can dramatically speed up actions. This is the reason why (from my experience) people that started roleplay in MMO's struggle to write as detailed of a post as someone coming from a forum background where as someone from a forum background can end up finding themselves slowing everyone else down in a more rapid posting environment like an MMO. And, you know, having a video game attached to your medium so you can do something other than recreate Second Life is a big bonus too. But there's one other consideration you should keep in mind as to my thought process here. You, my friend, are limiting yourself for no other reason than the game exists. The very limitations of the medium are making you forget that roleplay is a narrative experience. I have been in several tabletop games and one thing that stood out to me is how a difference in philosophy changed what the game was really about. For example, in one of my first D&D groups, the people leading the game were very mechanic driven and were all about min-maxing. In fact, most of the content they put out actively rewarded emphasizing in combat utility over out of combat utility. The end result was that while there was definitely storytelling and roleplay happening, it was more like the game was on a fixed rail with a little bit of wiggle room. It didn't matter that I found a cool spell that let me ask a literal room what had happened in it because there was never a situation where we had to utilize roleplay in a way that could change our course of action. Roleplay was the filler for the actual content. Meanwhile, in a more recent Shadowrun game I was in, there was a far greater emphasis on roleplay. In fact, over the many months the game ran, we were only in at most five situations where we had to concern ourselves with combat. Our decisions mattered, what we told the DM we wanted to do was what we were doing, and the roleplay actively determined what we did and the consequences there of. Our rolls and stats mattered, sure, but our decisions mattered far more. Don't get me wrong. Mechanics did matter to a degree. If I roleplayed a character as having a horrible score with intelligence but still acting as if they were totes super smart, I'd kind of be shooting myself in the foot. But what made the second far more enjoyable to me as a roleplayer was that I was helping create a narrative and not simply working around a pre-assembled game. I was spending more time considering what my team's next action should be over which skill I should pick up to better improve our ability to operate in combat. But, as I said earlier, there is no universal rulebook on how to roleplay in an MMO. There's no D&D styled player handbook for this. If anything, taken as it is, an MMO without active roleplaying is far closer to the first tabletop group I mentioned. You are formulating a character around the mechanics you are given and not the narrative of the game world itself. It's like Overlord said... It's true that someone roleplaying a character in a way that is COMPLETELY opposed to how the character actually mechanically operates can destroy everyone's suspension of disbelief. It's like I said earlier with acting as if a character with a low INT score was smart but constantly not having that pan out over the span of the game. But as Overlord said, if we treat mechanics as being important in constructing the narrative too strictly, you end up with...well, basically all of the problems listed above. But wait! There's more! Even if we totally ignore the issues of power creep, how well slotted you are (which can also be restricted to how much time you have IRL to play), all of it...you also end up with another issue. I bring this up in another write-up I did (I forget which), but another big reason mechanics can be a huge source of confusion is actually because it can actually make the game lore itself extremely confusing. Just to start out with, your character level isn't your power level. It's your security or threat level. It's a representation of the level of threat you are known to be able to handle. If we look at character level as an explanation of power level instead of simply a way pencil pushers push you into a different box, a lot of things within the game start making far less sense. Why is your superman character having to fight just as hard against a bunch of civilians driven insane by psychic waves and are wielding primarily improvised weapons as they might against Rularuu's minions? If Snakes are a low threat that are only physically dangerous enough for people below level 10 to worry about, why does the group also exist in an almost identical manner as a level 50 group? Why are the Council a threat from mid level all the way to end game? Hell, you fight Longbow from level 1 to level 50 red side and the only thing that changes are that the bosses get swapped around. There's no difference between a Longbow soldier wielding an assault rifle at level 1 and level 50 in the game's actual narrative. The only thing that changes is the game mechanically has to make them higher level because it is a game. And then you get to factors like powerset revamps or introductions. Is my sonic character less of a singer now that there is a powerset built around singing? Did a regen character become ICly less powerful when regen was nerfed back in the day? Is the water powerset simply water or is it acceptable to recolor it red to make it blood? You yourself brought up multiple builds for the same character. Why is the level 20 build of a character weaker than the level 50 version of that character? All of these questions are going to be considered not from a mechanical perspective but from a narrative perspective. You aren't going to go from Wolverine to Wolverine-Lite ICly just because the devs decided your powerset was too strong. You aren't going to push up your glasses and actually somebody because they are trying to show a power as being something that it isn't mechanically. An argument over if a character's energy shield would deflect a bullet or not because the forcefield powerset works off of defense and the energy aura set works off of resistance is more than likely just going to make everyone angry and kind of misses the overall intention of having the shield to begin with. Basically, to try and sum up this long as hell ramble, the core of my argument against using mechanics is that we ignore game elements that are not conducive to a good narrative/roleplay experience all of the time. Why would we start doing that with power levels?

You're definitely not wrong on...well, any of this. I'm even going to add a quote of it at the end of my original post for people to read. I especially related to your second to last paragraph because I myself have, at some point in my life as a roleplayer, done many of the things that I myself tell people to avoid doing. That includes starting drama over stupid bullshit, talking behind people's backs, laughing at someone else's expense, whatever. I think recognizing when a mistake we are the victim of is something we ourselves could find ourselves doing could go a long way in helping promote asking ourselves to look at it from an outsider's perspective.