tutorial An Overly Long Post Talking About Lore, Canon, and Headcanon (TM)

[McSpazz]

2 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

This was an interesting read. With all of it in consideration, I have a question to ask.

I have a redside toon who would normally be the leader of a large organized evil organization comparable to Arachnos or the Council in terms of resources. Minions and other relevant assets would be confined to AE material for obvious reasons, but what I want to know is how to roleplay such an "evil overlord" character without violating points 5 (respect to canon material) and 9 (respect to others' headcanons) too hard?

Great question! You can TOTALLY do this, but there are a few considerations you need to move forward.

1. 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.
2. 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?"
3. 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!

[Crystal Dragon]

2 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

This was an interesting read. With all of it in consideration, I have a question to ask.

I have a redside toon who would normally be the leader of a large organized evil organization comparable to Arachnos or the Council in terms of resources. Minions and other relevant assets would be confined to AE material for obvious reasons, but what I want to know is how to roleplay such an "evil overlord" character without violating points 5 (respect to canon material) and 9 (respect to others' headcanons) too hard?

We've recently had a few groups kick this off on rocket boots, to frame it in perspective. What I would recommend is starting small with open world RP, some took to boasting about unbelievably impossible acts in spaces that are known to be locked down/well secured by the city authorities, whereas AE missions would make this much more believable if you lead teams/groups in missions to run through the story bit. Framing it within the world elements is perhaps the most difficult challenge for roleplaying a villain of this scale of concept, but it is very much possible if you are willing to commit time to spreading rumor, creating news reports, and other details that can help solidify the concept with a solid backing. But that's just my two cents offering for assisting on this. To be frank, jumping in deep and calling the character as some kind of overlord will put a lot of players off that had been around in the game world a while, starting small helps build up the belief in the claim to infamy as your characters development takes shape and gives a lot of leeway for further story to tie into the concept and broaden the perspective scope to a much larger scale.

[Vic Raiden]

22 minutes ago, McSpazz said:

Great question! You can TOTALLY do this, but there are a few considerations you need to move forward.

1. 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.
2. 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?"
3. 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!

1. Here I can say that Axel Shade, the villain in question, has indeed been laying low because he considers wanton terrorism practiced by so many other villains to be a waste of resources unless it can serve a higher goal. He's just building up forces for his grand plan.
2. Sure, he could have been outsourcing some of his technology to factions like Nemesis or the Council, but again, he doesn't really think wreaking havoc in the city is worth it yet.
3.  I went for Breakout as that character's tutorial, so I can handwave it as him having lost access to much of his organization after he was busted and put in the Zig.

[Crystal Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Vic Raiden said:

1. Here I can say that Axel Shade, the villain in question, has indeed been laying low because he considers wanton terrorism practiced by so many other villains to be a waste of resources unless it can serve a higher goal. He's just building up forces for his grand plan.
2. Sure, he could have been outsourcing some of his technology to factions like Nemesis or the Council, but again, he doesn't really think wreaking havoc in the city is worth it yet.
3.  I went for Breakout as that character's tutorial, so I can handwave it as him having lost access to much of his organization after he was busted and put in the Zig.

That's a fantastic start! Stick with that path, you got yourself a good roll there to run with.

[Vic Raiden]

To further it, I'm working on an AE arc where the players can get to infiltrate one of his fortresses and bust his evil plan. Unlikely that Shade himself would be present in the base, though, he'd rather leave it to one of his top generals.

[Crystal Dragon]

1 minute ago, Vic Raiden said:

To further it, I'm working on an AE arc where the players can get to infiltrate one of his fortresses and bust his evil plan. Unlikely that Shade himself would be present in the base, though, he'd rather leave it to one of his top generals.

Something further to add to this, as a suggestion. Look into the community members that focus on redside the most, Kataklysm, Dusk, to name a few globals I know that run underground networks IC wise that could play into this concept and maybe even provide information IC that could help broaden the scope further.

[Vic Raiden]

53 minutes ago, Crystal Dragon said:

We've recently had a few groups kick this off on rocket boots, to frame it in perspective. What I would recommend is starting small with open world RP, some took to boasting about unbelievably impossible acts in spaces that are known to be locked down/well secured by the city authorities, whereas AE missions would make this much more believable if you lead teams/groups in missions to run through the story bit. Framing it within the world elements is perhaps the most difficult challenge for roleplaying a villain of this scale of concept, but it is very much possible if you are willing to commit time to spreading rumor, creating news reports, and other details that can help solidify the concept with a solid backing. But that's just my two cents offering for assisting on this. To be frank, jumping in deep and calling the character as some kind of overlord will put a lot of players off that had been around in the game world a while, starting small helps build up the belief in the claim to infamy as your characters development takes shape and gives a lot of leeway for further story to tie into the concept and broaden the perspective scope to a much larger scale.

If I may ask... What advice do you have on spreading the knowledge of my organization? I can hardly find any fellow redsiders anywhere, so just telling them stories is going to be hard. But I guess uploading my custom enemy group to the forums for fellow players to use however they see fit could help.

[chase]

33 minutes ago, Vic Raiden said:

If I may ask... What advice do you have on spreading the knowledge of my organization? I can hardly find any fellow redsiders anywhere, so just telling them stories is going to be hard. But I guess uploading my custom enemy group to the forums for fellow players to use however they see fit could help.

Give interested parties breadcrumbs they can follow.   You mentioned the forums (a great start) but consider creating an organization over at https://fbsa.homecoming.wiki/ describing what should be publicly known.   Include a link to that in your sig here and your bio in-game, so curious people can get it even if they miss your forum post about it.   Include rumors and "hooks" that people could use to slip it in to their own narrative- ways that people might have crossed paths with the organization in some minor ways in the past.   When you really "launch" all that, be prepared to play often on that character in ways that emphasize your presence.   It's hard to infect others with enough interest in your own content if they discover it only to find you're never around.   It'll need some handling at the start before it has a chance to take a life of its own.

[Vic Raiden]

Thanks. I'll see what I can do.

[Vic Raiden]

Excuse the double post.

 

So, ultimately, I decided to focus on playing a former evil overlord. One who used to be a big deal some time ago (say, the 1980s or 1990s) before he was ultimately defeated and imprisoned in the Zig. So now he broke out, wants to rebuild his evil empire and exact revenge on Longbow and/or the hero responsible for busting him in the first place... and has every right to be infuriated that nobody remembers him anymore.

 

How does that sound?

[Crystal Dragon]

2 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

Excuse the double post.

 

So, ultimately, I decided to focus on playing a former evil overlord. One who used to be a big deal some time ago (say, the 1980s or 1990s) before he was ultimately defeated and imprisoned in the Zig. So now he broke out, wants to rebuild his evil empire and exact revenge on Longbow and/or the hero responsible for busting him in the first place... and has every right to be infuriated that nobody remembers him anymore.

 

How does that sound?

That's actually pretty solid!

[Vic Raiden]

Bumping this a little since it was brought up in the thread about being jaded.

 

So, how the Grandville is one supposed to refer to playable content ICly if there's the world's general MMORPG-y eternal stasis to take into account?

[McSpazz]

2 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

Bumping this a little since it was brought up in the thread about being jaded.

 

So, how the Grandville is one supposed to refer to playable content ICly if there's the world's general MMORPG-y eternal stasis to take into account?

 

It's probably one of the harder arcs to do, to be honest. It's not every day Grandville gets stormed head on, let alone someone takes down Lord Recluse. The same can be said about running his strike force to take down so many high profile heroes.

One option is to make it all some kind of simulation or you assaulting another dimension for some reason. Separate what you are doing from the main cannon in some way.

The second is to add additional story beats to the arc as you go through. Maybe there's something that's lowering the power of the big players. Maybe you aren't actually defeating them so much as you're distracting them. For the big arcs like Liberty and Recluse, you have to really flex your creative juices to find good ways of making sense of what's happening. It really depends on the context of why you're running them. Basically, if you can accomplish the same goal by running a custom AE arc, you should consider it.

[Vic Raiden]

"Grandville" in this case was just uttered as a substitute for Hell in "how the hell". I didn't refer to any particular arc or anything. It was just a general question about how I should talk about story arcs and TFs/SFs I completed when I want to bring them up in character, which you already partially answered and I thank you for that.

Edited March 29 by Vic Raiden

[chase]

I'm going to switch and play devil's advocate:

 

Should Event Progression (Lore) Even Matter?  

Why do we have to assume that ANY of the world-changing events that we encounter in the game have already occurred?  

 I rarely encounter many people in-game that claim to be the sole actor responsible for arresting Dr. V or taking down Countess Crey FOR GOOD.  I've not found someone who claims they have Vanessa DeVore's mask in their rogue's gallery while she rots away in the zig.  Few have the arrogance to claim that the events of a story arc was theirs and theirs alone, because in an MMO we all know that down that path madness lies, as we all often could lay claim to those events.   It's a death-knell to collaborative storytelling, not a path forward.

So does it REALLY matter whether it even happened or how much time has transpired?  There's Vaz or Carnies or Crey or oh-so-many other baddies still around after every event... yeah we can argue they escaped or released on a technicality, but the frequency of those events would make a laughingstock of the whole law enforcement system and really lend ammunition (heh) to the vigilante's "No prisoners" argument.   

And "it happened once and everyone else is just experiencing a simulation of it.. for training or testing purposes" to justify the shared experience? That's...  just... no.   I can't begin to deal with that hot mess right now.  

Instead, what if we played at a baseline of "this is the world as we see it today" and the specific TF or storyarc events are "what's yet to come."  For those of us who have encountered them, we keep it vague- if we make it part of our story at all.

For collaborative storytelling to work, we DO need a baseline "shared illusion" of the world our characters occupy.  Yes, we can handwave away many incompatibilities, but there's a natural tendency to want to "get the facts straight" early so the need for handwaving is limited.   So yes, many people spend a lot of time chronicling all the story points and plot developments to present the world "as it exists today" with all the events of the game having already taken place.

But - at the risk of diminishing the herculean effort of the chroniclers- should that even be our frame of reference?

What's more reasonable:  

• Expecting every new player (and veteran player that hasn't seen everything*) to craft a backstory that accurately reflects every plot point and world development and time progression that ever occured in all of the task forces and story arcs, so they can RP in the world that a well-seasoned level 50 encountered.

OR

• Expecting a level 50 (who's seen all these developments- AND knew the world that existed before those developments)  to use the lore immediately available to them all as a common baseline.  

Anyone invited to join the game today can't really be blamed for assuming that the destruction of Galaxy city is a very real and very recent event, with the city still struggling to help, house, and feed relocatee's, and those dispossessed easily fuel the rise of street gangs like hellions and skulls.   Do we really need to re-educate them that the events they're seeing occurred mid-September 2011, with the release of Issue 21, 13 years ago and is all ancient history so they should rethink how their character ties into the world?  That early-teen orphaned survivor of the destruction would have been at best a toddler then.   Dr Vaz has been imprisoned for oh-so-many years and his wasting disease is a distant memory.    Any Lost that might remain are stragglers, as the cure has been around for over a decade.   

Even veteran players can't be expected to know everything, with all the many paths to level 50.  I may have no reason to know that Vanessa DeVore is ultimately separated from her mask and imprisoned in the zig (um... spoilers? 🙂 ) but everyone that sets foot in the higher-level zones will see the carnies still hard at work, presumably doing Vanessa's bidding. 

 

Which would seem to be a more reasonable "lore" to build a narrative from?

Who's better equipped to adapt to fit the encounter- the newb, or the one that's seen it all?

Which one adds more flexibility for a game world that will change very little over the next five years?  Do we want events we encounter "now" to be rigidly tied to a past?

What will we do with our veterans of the first rikti war when they all hit retirement age?  (Seriously asking for Chase Arcanum- he was 30-ish when that war started and  his retirement fund took a nosedive after a bad tip on the demonic blood market.  It's never recovered.)

 

[Vic Raiden]

See, another problem is that due to the aforementioned MMOness, the "now" is all around the place. Depending on which NPC you ask, the Praetorian War either hasn't broken out yet, is well underway in the background, or has been over for so long that everyone had already managed to profit from it - and all of that is true at the same time. Then there's Statesman and Sister Psyche, who have always been dead until you play the SSA where they die, and even then they somehow manage to still be alive when you're doing the Underground Trial and the Faultline arcs, respectively.

 

Good luck making sense out of any of that. Things pile up so much that one may eventually start losing track of what has or hasn't canonically happened yet... which, of course, makes it harder to actually cement one's characters as existing within the setting.

Edited March 29 by Vic Raiden

[McSpazz]

1 hour ago, Vic Raiden said:

See, another problem is that due to the aforementioned MMOness, the "now" is all around the place. Depending on which NPC you ask, the Praetorian War either hasn't broken out yet, is well underway in the background, or has been over for so long that everyone had already managed to profit from it - and all of that is true at the same time. Then there's Statesman and Sister Psyche, who have always been dead until you play the SSA where they die, and even then they somehow manage to still be alive when you're doing the Underground Trial and the Faultline arcs, respectively.

 

2 hours ago, chase said:

Anyone invited to join the game today can't really be blamed for assuming that the destruction of Galaxy city is a very real and very recent event, with the city still struggling to help, house, and feed relocatee's, and those dispossessed easily fuel the rise of street gangs like hellions and skulls.   Do we really need to re-educate them that the events they're seeing occurred mid-September 2011, with the release of Issue 21, 13 years ago and is all ancient history so they should rethink how their character ties into the world?  That early-teen orphaned survivor of the destruction would have been at best a toddler then.   Dr Vaz has been imprisoned for oh-so-many years and his wasting disease is a distant memory.    Any Lost that might remain are stragglers, as the cure has been around for over a decade.   

Until new lore is made, a lot of MMOness lore considerations requires a great deal of twisting to make sense. Some cases, like, Dr. Vaz, are far harder to work with because content about his operation kind of end abruptly. However, most people don't realize that, by the lore's most strict interpretation, he is no longer a threat. Hell, I didn't even know that until Chase mentioned it.

Mismatches in how NPC's speak of the timeline is, unfortunately, more of a consequence of Paragon's later storylines. While there are some things early on (like Dr. Vaz) that can cause some confusion, their later storylines often introduced finality to threats that continued to exist in earlier content. The Praetorian War is one example, but there's also Dark Astoria and, even more potentially surprising, the Council. After the New Praetorian arc concludes, their organization is effectively put onto its death bed.

Some other things can be worked around with some clever writing. The destruction of Galaxy City might have been 13 years ago, but perhaps the ramifications of it are still ongoing, Perhaps the areas of the city directly on the other side of the War Walls have to deal with Shivan attacks once in a while (not unlike the Rikti). Likewise, even though a cure for the Lost was created, the Rikti, the ones making the Lost to begin with, have no reason to stop making more Lost. Adapting the Cure to new iterations of the Lost mutation could very well be a constant struggle.

But all of this is, of course, headcannon. Trying to balance all of this out can be an extreme pain, but some MMO's are harder than others. Final Fantasy XIV and its ever advancing timeline comes to mind.

The best you can do is figure out what explanation is the least intrusive and run with it.

[Vic Raiden]

Okay, so things happened, and we're not supposed to be the ones responsible because MMO... So who do we credit for them? Or how do we talk about our involvement, if it even makes sense? Because at this moment it seems like completely made-up RP scenarios are the only things worth talking about ICly without making big contradictions.

[Vic Raiden]

On the other hand, yeah, gotta be creative with getting at least the simpler things straight. Remnants of Vahzilok's organization can easily still be around - even if in disarray - while the Lost are likely created at such pace that it's gonna take a real lot of effort to cure them all, no matter if the cure exists or not.

 

A bit harder to explain things like, say, Arachnos troops conducting excavations in Faultline even though the psychochronometron, the device they came there for in the first place, no longer exists. Or Council forces on Striga Isle acting like they own the place even long after the base's destruction in the Provost Marchand storyline.

[McSpazz]

15 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

Okay, so things happened, and we're not supposed to be the ones responsible because MMO... So who do we credit for them? Or how do we talk about our involvement, if it even makes sense? Because at this moment it seems like completely made-up RP scenarios are the only things worth talking about ICly without making big contradictions.

It's generally kosher to say you were involved but not necessarily responsible. Some things, such as TF's or even some of the story arcs you mentioned in your second post, could reasonably require a support team for the main team to do their thing. Nobody really needs to know who was responsible for most events, really. Just look at major busts of criminals that happens in the real world. The arresting officers are rarely made widely known. It's the criminal that got caught that's all over the news.

 

12 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

On the other hand, yeah, gotta be creative with getting at least the simpler things straight. Remnants of Vahzilok's organization can easily still be around - even if in disarray - while the Lost are likely created at such pace that it's gonna take a real lot of effort to cure them all, no matter if the cure exists or not.

 

A bit harder to explain things like, say, Arachnos troops conducting excavations in Faultline even though the psychochronometron, the device they came there for in the first place, no longer exists. Or Council forces on Striga Isle acting like they own the place even long after the base's destruction in the Provost Marchand storyline.

Exactly right. You do have to get a little creative. Basic, common sense explanations usually work the best. Especially if there could be multiple reasons for things to be as they are.

For example, Vahzilok's organization was made up of very dedicated individuals. Countless madmen just as dedicated to his cause as he was. While the organization as a whole might not have its figurehead, many would continue his work. Your thoughts on the Lost is a great example as well.

 

As for the other things? Arachnos might not be actively excavating in Faultline anymore, but they have every reason to maintain outposts there. After the amount of money sunk into securing those positions, keeping those bases operating as forward outposts goes without saying.

The Council is much more difficult to explain. The organization has been SEVERELY crippled by the outcome of that storyline which leaves their activity around Paragon more than questionable. The only surefire explanation is that they are potentially imploding in slow motion, but irregularities like this are far harder to explain away. Most people seem to just ignore it and pretend they're just as they always were. Not ideal, but until we get a better resolution, it's the most expedient.