Poor Stranded Aces - OOC

[Usandru]

... The longer this game lasts, the more it becomes clear that we're apparently on the road to Dis-Function Junction.

EDIT

Right, Virtue and Vice.

Claire's Vice is Combat Aversion. She thinks that all disputes can be settled peacefully, or at least with resorting to violence. In actual combat, she may panic and end up missing, or freezing up at inopportune times. Outside of combat, she'll try to defuse situations that look like they're leading up to a physical conflict. She is willing to fight in defense of her own life and those of others though.

Her Virtue though, that's harder to define. I kind of want to do something with making people's lives better via her inventions and innovations. What do you guys think?

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Virtue: Solving Practical Problems.

Whenever Claire is faced with an obvious practical problem, usually an engineering one, and intervenes to solve it for the benefit of others, she fulfils her Virtue.

A suggestion, at least.

 

[shaderic]

Wow, kinky. So I take it that's a yes?

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From a certain point of view, I suppose.

From another, it's leaving people you've got a grudge against in an incredibly embarrassing situation, then taking pictures for blackmail purposes.

But to answer the question, Claire can dig both screwdrivers and ratchets, but tends to find ratchets more appealing most of the time.

Virtue: Solving Practical Problems.

Whenever Claire is faced with an obvious practical problem, usually an engineering one, and intervenes to solve it for the benefit of others, she fulfils her Virtue.

A suggestion, at least.

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Works for me~

 

[Usandru]

Moar Mechanics

Connections
Bond between people. Everyone can have some sort of relation to someone else, but most of the time these are somewhat superficial. A connection is more powerful, more meaningful. It has an emotional intensity that makes it both powerful and a weakness for others to prey on.

Connections matter whenever you do something with them. Put it at risk, strengthen it, mayhaps simply revel in it. When you meaningfully interact with your connection, you can gain some or all of these benefits:
Bonuses to your actions.
"Character" Points
Changes to your Connection(s)

Note, the benefits are not linked to what is being done with the connection. A complete rejection of the connection can still grant all three of those benefits. Betrayal of a connection is a completely valid method of interacting with it meaningfully. In fact, it is so powerful that it might provide a greater magnitude of benefits than anything else!

Now, bonuses to your actions is pretty simple. You do a thing, and I make your outcome better. Character points are somewhat like plus or minus points. They might count towards some sort of XP meter, and they can be spent to do stuff like "and suddenly a new person appears!", "your friend arrived in the nick of time!", "the villain has developed a personal interest in you!", "the villain has developed a personal interest in that person over there", and the like. You can basically spend them to tweak or nudge NPCs into actions, or to bring them into relevance. It needs to meet a plausibility check, of course, and it's not all powerful, but this is basically what it does.

Changes to your connection(s) is basically switching out what kind of connection it is, or how strong it is.

A connection is essentially written like: Gladyn ["I enjoy playing with puppy-like people." - "She saved my life!"] Random Adorable NPC.

The quoted text closest to a character name is the "content" of the connection. Basically what it means to that character. These can be hilariously mismatched, but there needs to be something on both ends. An unrequited connection is not, in fact, really a connection. You can play to both contents though. Playing to your own will tend to be "stronger", but in the above example, Gladyn engaging with the NPCs perception of her as her saviour and doing something with that which is meaningful would count as interacting with the connection.

I haven't decided on what connection strength means yet, so unless you have suggestions, it will wait to be implemented.

Also, you may establish one connection with any character you have actually interacted with during the game (no off-screen NPCs for now), be they the Rider Leader, Chaniir, Hye or one of the other PCs. I'll approve NPC connections, and you'll have to negotiate with each other for PC [-] PC connections.

More connections will grow in-play.

 

[Happerry]

Anyone have any suggestions for my Virtue and Vice? I can't seem to think of anything good.

 

[Usandru]

Anyone have any suggestions for my Virtue and Vice? I can't seem to think of anything good.

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I'll bump you to the top of my "plan out stuff with players" queue in that case. Not sure when I'll get around to it though, so yeah, keep working on it. Help each other out!

In fact, anyone that suggests a Virtue or Vice for another player which they like enough to use and which isn't vetoed by me will get a plus point!

 

[Jemnite]

I'll bump you to the top of my "plan out stuff with players" queue in that case. Not sure when I'll get around to it though, so yeah, keep working on it. Help each other out!

In fact, anyone that suggests a Virtue or Vice for another player which they like enough to use and which isn't vetoed by me will get a plus point!

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As a frequent purveyor of Spacebattles' fine BROB subforms, I am dutybound to immediately lunge for promised rewards of mysterious and unspecified natures. Thus, behold! My best attempt at interpreting other people's characters.

Warning: These may be totally off the mark. I'm not good at judging characters.

Mattias:
Virtue: Efficiency. Mattias aspires to do everything with maximum efficiency. Other people waste time or energy because they wonder about unnecessary things. Mattias doesn't. He is calm competent, and he does the best damn job anyone has ever seen. You want results? Call Mattias.

Vice: Lack of empathy. Frankly, Mattias doesn't give a shit about you, if you aren't one of his allies. For all he cares, you can have like seven kids, a loving wife, be planning to retire the next day, and have three apprentices who look up to your every word, but if you get in his way, you're dead.

Gladyn:
Virtue: Curiosity. Everything, and absolutely everything can be improved. Advancements can be made, inventions can be developed. You can change the world through enough effort. You can revolutionize everything.

Vice: Detachment from humanity. Everyone's a test subject. Bodies are only so much meat and flesh. Minds, now that's what important. And Gladyn possibly has the best mind of all known trans-dimensional space.

Theodore:
Virtue: Responsibility. Theodore takes care of his crew, his ship, his enterprise. If you have a problem, come to Theodore. As long as he has an obligation to you, he'll work his best to fix it.

Vice: Maybe something around being nonconfrontational, or lacking aggressiveness? I haven't seen enough to Theodore's flaws so far.

Namlos:
Virtue: Friendliness, I guess. Namlos is always willing to help a good buddy out. Plus, he's the talkative sort, ready to engage in in conversation and give his opinion.

Vice: Crude! Lewd! Vulgar! I-I can't believe the sort of stuff this guy says!

 

[Althaea]

As a frequent purveyor of Spacebattles' fine BROB subforms, I am dutybound to immediately lunge for promised rewards of mysterious and unspecified natures. Thus, behold! My best attempt at interpreting other people's characters.

Warning: These may be totally off the mark. I'm not good at judging characters.

Click to shrink...

Well, you almost got Namlos' Vice right. Though you mistook yourself somewhat on certain fundamentals of it, you were pretty close. I haven't decided on what his Virtue will end up being yet, but I'm pretty sure you're completely off the mark there. Sorry.

The reason he's always so friendly is actually related more to his Vice than it is to his Virtue. The positive side of the traits that are the source of his Vice, you could say. That Vice being, essentially, that he always speaks exactly what's on his mind, no matter how appropriate it would be to do so - as we have just seen. (I almost got the first Minus point in the game. If only I'd come up with this a little bit sooner...)

So if he's wondering about something, he'll ask about that something. If he thinks badly of someone, he'll say so. If he's been made to attend the funeral of something he didn't like, he'll probably completely ruin the entire event. On the flip-side, he's friendly because he's generally a rather cheerful, if somewhat oblivious fellow. Which is something we've also seen, yeah.

 

[Happerry]

As a frequent purveyor of Spacebattles' fine BROB subforms, I am dutybound to immediately lunge for promised rewards of mysterious and unspecified natures. Thus, behold! My best attempt at interpreting other people's characters.

Warning: These may be totally off the mark. I'm not good at judging characters.

Mattias:
Virtue: Efficiency. Mattias aspires to do everything with maximum efficiency. Other people waste time or energy because they wonder about unnecessary things. Mattias doesn't. He is calm, competent, and he does the best damn job anyone has ever seen. You want results? Call Mattias.

Vice: Lack of empathy. Frankly, Mattias doesn't give a shit about you, if you aren't one of his allies. For all he cares, you can have like seven kids, a loving wife, be planning to retire the next day, and have three apprentices who look up to your every word, but if you get in his way, you're dead.

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I like the virtue, but the flaw is.. wrong. It's not that Mattias doesn't care. He does care. He's also a professional combat vet. If he can get through something without killing anyone, he'd prefer to take that option. He's seen too many times when that option wasn't taken to desire otherwise.

That doesn't mean that when someone else refuses to use that option that he isn't willing to demonstrate that not taking that option is a stupid idea.

 

[Usandru]

Mattias:
Virtue: Efficiency. Mattias aspires to do everything with maximum efficiency. Other people waste time or energy because they wonder about unnecessary things. Mattias doesn't. He is calm competent, and he does the best damn job anyone has ever seen. You want results? Call Mattias.

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This one is on the right track, but needs to be more specific. Perhaps if he sets aside something else to be efficient. Efficiency is just desirable, there needs to be a sacrifice for it to be virtuous.

Theodore:
Virtue: Responsibility. Theodore takes care of his crew, his ship, his enterprise. If you have a problem, come to Theodore. As long as he has an obligation to you, he'll work his best to fix it.

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This only applies if it means "taking responsibility and then taking action". Walk the walk, in other words.

Vice: Maybe something around being nonconfrontational, or lacking aggressiveness? I haven't seen enough to Theodore's flaws so far.

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I really don't like passive Virtues/Vices, so it'd need to at least bait action from someone else, or lead to taking non-optimal actions, not simply letting actions pass by.

Regardless, activity [3<3<3

Jemnite gets 1 (one) character point as a bonus for simply writing stuff! This amazing bonus might be available to the rest of you if you hurry up and offer ideas for the remaining players before they select on their own! Act now!

Moar mechanical goodness!

<b]Pillars[/b]
Identity, motivation, belief, essence. A pillar is what defines you. Unlike Virtue/Vice, which is behaviour, or connections, which are how you relate to others and interact with them, pillars are considerably less dynamic as a rule.

Each character has three pillars. Each pillar is described by a simple description, "I seek vengeance for my family", "I want to become king", "I am king", "I am a pacifist", "I am a knight", "I am a master swordsman".

When a character acts in accordance or defiance of their pillar, they gain bonuses to their actions, commensurate with the strength of the pillar.

When a character acts in defiance of their pillar, or something happens that makes them doubt or feel uncertain about the pillar, they gain a point of doubt attached to that pillar.

The strength of the Pillar is determined by confidence in it. Confidence is gained by reaffirming your conviction or identity in a pillar where you have accumulated doubt. This act lets you convert doubt into confidence, commensurate with the amount of doubt and the strength of the affirmation.

However doubt can also shatter your foundation. If enough doubt is accumulated, the foundation of the pillar shatters, and it becomes broken.

A broken pillar is a terrible wound, but it is also a source of power. While you have a broken pillar, all actions are boosted commensurate with the level of pillar that was broken as you act with almost fevered intensity. However you are vulnerable to the words of others, and may find your pillar replaced by one defined by someone else. You additionally gain doubt at double the normal rate, and if you accumulate enough doubt to break the pillar again, someone else defines a new pillar for you. Anyone who induces doubt in you may also change your content of a connection.

If all your pillars break, your character temporarily becomes an NPC, trapped in the throes of despair and anxiety. After a short while, they will regain a lonely pillar and be returned to player control.

You are allowed to begin play with up to a single broken pillar. If you can, please say what it used to be, but it is permissible to have one with no content.

You have 5 points to accumulate across your three pillars. 0 means broken. 4 is a burning conviction comparable to obsession.

 

[shaderic]

To be perfectly honest Usandru, I think you might be overdoing it with the Pillars.

Generally, it's best if things stay simple as they can, and adding Pillars, when there's already Virtues and Vices, seems like it might be a bit much.

Mostly though, what makes me uneasy is that you can lose control of your pillars. And that complete loss of them isn't quite death, but it means losing your character, and when you get them back they more than likely won't be the same. As a system for simulating character growth and evolution over time, it's quite brilliant. But speaking as a player, few things unsettle me quite as much as the thought of losing control of my character.

 

[Usandru]

To be perfectly honest Usandru, I think you might be overdoing it with the Pillars.

Generally, it's best if things stay simple as they can, and adding Pillars, when there's already Virtues and Vices, seems like it might be a bit much.

Mostly though, what makes me uneasy is that you can lose control of your pillars. And that complete loss of them isn't quite death, but it means losing your character, and when you get them back they more than likely won't be the same. As a system for simulating character growth and evolution over time, it's quite brilliant. But speaking as a player, few things unsettle me quite as much as the thought of losing control of my character.

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That's a real and valid fear. Which is why it is also set up to be nearly impossible unless you consent to it.

The trick is that you can always design a "safe" pillar. It won't grow much, but you won't risk losing it either. So your character, even at the lowest of the low, will always have at least that one thing to cling to. And, well, you have three pillars. In a sense that's like having three different HP bars, each immune to what would damage the other two. Currently I'm also looking at minimum 5 to 10 doubt to break a pillar, which should be nearly impossible to get in one single scene. I mean, there is a case, but that too basically demands the player to walk right into it, and with a high level, low stability pillar at that.

Meanwhile, you can always strive to sublimate the doubt into confidence if you accumulate any.

So yes, in theory the system can deprive players of agency, in a somewhat more disturbing way than simply dying, but the way I envision it, and the way I'll adjust it if it even looks like it might take away agency without the player wanting it, I'm pretty confident in stating that your worries won't come to pass unless you think that actually it would be incredibly cool for Claire to lose all her pillars and see what I do with that. And even if you don't want that, you should be able to play around with a single pillar fairly safely and see how it goes.

If the cessation of control over you connections worries you too, well, in that case I'll just say that you're never obligated to act as your pillars suggest. Mechanically heavily incentivized yes, but I will never actively penalize acting as the player wants. Also, it should be fairly simple to reassert control of connections once the pillar is restored.

Another thing entirely is that you cannot accumulate doubt from the same thing repeatedly. There needs to be a meaningful distinction between the events that grant doubt, and it won't refresh until a level change happens for that pillar (either up, or broken).

Still, if this isn't enough, let's keep talking about it. I want to implement something at least like pillars, but it doesn't have to be exactly this.

 

[Althaea]

Personally, I don't really have a problem with the system of pillars. It grants a more passive counterpart to the "Virtues/Vice" systems, which we clearly need given how many suggestions (both here and over Skype) I've seen that are more suitable as these Pillars than they were as either Virtues or Vices. Things like "determination" or other such generic things still can't be used, but rather, Pillars are the cornerstones upon which a character's personality and existence is built around.

It incentivizes strong characterization by granting bonuses by sticking to a character's personality, even if that would otherwise be a bad idea. It's very good plot-fuel, I feel.

Loss of agency is, as noted, a rather unlikely event unless one deliberately goes for it. Almost by definition, an event that creates doubt for or breaks one Pillar is unlikely to do the same to another. The exception might be if you had a 4/1/0 build, in which case fairly little effort would be needed to break that second Pillar, and which could happen if it was somehow tangentially related to the first Pillar, assuming you're placed in a scenario where the first Pillar is close to breaking (where the second is not) after which suddenly both are simultaneously threatened.

So even if you have the most vulnerable Pillars possible, it's not very likely. And I don't imagine most characters here have Pillars like that - a Pillar with a value 4 is the kind of thing that completely and utterly defines a character's nature to the exclusion of all other things, and while I haven't seen everyone else's character sheets, I've seen a couple of other people's, and they don't seem to provide the fuel for Pillars that strong.

 

[Usandru]

I've been thinking more about Aces mechanics and player agency.

The crux of it is that you literally can't lose under normal circumstances. Your inherent advantages are effectively insurmountable, and while there are special conditions and situations that could turn the tables, the threat of physical harm or material loss is essentially nil. You can only be threatened by proxy, by investing yourselves in parts of Cere. Hye is your friend, sorta, now and thus threats to her and her home are relevant to you. And you have a general "do-gooder" streak which compels you somewhat do "doing something".

But practically speaking you just need to get access to a bunch of libraries, look for hints of something that could be a Lost Logia, find it, and deal with it. As long as you stick to that, you basically automatically succeed.

Even if things do escalate, you're not actually very threatened until armies are mobilized against you, and you still have planetary teleportation, and theoretically orbital superiority, so again you just win. Claire has starship engineering x2, she can make KKVs. You just need the Clear Skies free and then you have superweapons. The amount of raw power at your disposal is absurd. You just need to reach out and use it.

And I'm actually fine with that. But I still want to mechanically have some way to model consequences, to have something that you can glide towards and be afraid. Right now, you could kill millions of people through orbital bombardment and there wouldn't actually be any real consequences aside from those you roleplay out yourselves. That dissatisfies me, somehow. There should be something if you do big things.

And so I look at agency.

The new mechanics are generally built around carrots to make you play your characters for SHINIES and benefits, and that's fundamentally where I want my base mechanics to be. You're not forced to do anything, but you'll generally want to, because all the awesome stuff is there.

However the bigger something is, the more I want to make it a trade rather than a carrot. Pillars are already there. You trade stability for power. You give up a little bit of your agency, granting me a tool to influence your character, and in exchange you gain access to one of the most significant advantages of the system. It is mechanically advantageous to have a broken pillar. Your character advancement speeds up if you have a broken pillar, because you accumulate more doubt. And you need to write character arcs to do it, cycling through doubt and affirmation.

It shouldn't be forced upon you. It won't be forced upon you. You need to have fun after all. Instead, I'll just tempt you. I'll set up mechanics that grant you advantages, grant you power, grant you what you want to achieve, in exchange for binding you closer to the world, for giving up your agency bit by bit. You can always take it back, if you cut ties. If you abandon what it gave you.

And, well, with pillars, most of you would break one if you KKV'd a city. At the very least that instinctively feels more right to me!

I'll reiterate though. These are all new mechanics I am pulling out my ass. If something isn't working well, why, then we just change it! If something isn't fun for any of you, just tell me, and we'll figure something out!

Also, just in case you ever want to actually reach the market, I want you to finish up conversations and then post me Actions for arriving there, as you were instructed to do in the first post of the Great Market thread.

 

[Althaea]

*pokey*

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*pokey*

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Guys.

Guuuuys.

I think it'd be very nice if we could try and keep things at at least one update a week. Right now, we all need to post our Actions and everyone else already has done so~

So please, even if it's just a generic "I go along with Hye-chan" or "I babysit Namlos and Agatha (because Sankt Kaiser knows someone has to" post your actions at your earliest convenience~!

 

[Duzzit]

*Sharp poke*

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"Damn it happery, you had one job!"

 

[Happerry]

"And what job was that?"

 

[GretelOstrich]

"And what job was that?"

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To post your actions so we can continue. =V

 

[Happerry]

"Huh, I thought I did do that. I'll edit to make that more clear."

 

[Usandru]

When I ask for Actions, I generally want them in the following format

[IC Blahblahblah]
 
ACTIONS
-Action1
-Action2
...
-ActionN

It prevents ambiguities, and means I don't have to interpret your posts for what you actually want to do, when the next GM post might cover several hours - or days, or weeks, or months! - of in-game time.

 

[Usandru]

Aces has been updated. You are now in individual scenes, aside from Duzzit and Happerry who are still sharing. Future updates will respond to individuals, though if someone gets too far ahead, they're going to have to wait eventually as the rest catch up.

Remember, if you take actions, put them in the format noted. Otherwise I'll bug you for them and that slows things down. So. Actions, actions, actions! Remember them! Use them!

 

[Althaea]

Jesus Christ, I rolled another 1.

Out of a set of five rolls, true, but still.

 

[Duzzit]

BATSIGNAL!

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Oi, Sunshine! We missed an update thanks to your participation .

 

[shaderic]

Right, so I should apologize.

I've just started a class, and that's murdering most/all of my free time and sapping me creatively right now. Hopefully, I should be able to scrape something together by tomorrow night, but I can't really make promises.

 

[Usandru]

If you can manage a post every other week we should be able to keep some reasonable momentum, so it should be fine. Even if you did every week, I'm not sure I would update that fast.

If you do post, I'll try and see about getting the next batch done Monday.

 

[Usandru]

@shaderic @Duzzit @MightyDwarf @Jemnite @Happerry @alguLoD

Gentlepersons! The copied thread is now fully operational. All future Aces updates and materials will go in this thread (and the RPOL, of course).

Next GM update is indefinitely delayed on account of DARK SOULS 2, exam preparation and Steins;Gate. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I may get off my ass faster if all of you post though? Maybe? :3

Also, get your stuff from SB PMs somewhere else. Like your RPOL character sheets.