MacThorstenson

A well appointed man answered the door of the towering brownstone. "Please come in," he started, "My name is Mr. Daelith, current Manager of the boarding house, how can I help you today?" He stepped aside revealing a spacious sitting area with a hearth and bar. No one else was present in the front room, save a barkeep polishing glasses. @HippoPhileus

Not much, maybe 5 or 10 points at max. All they can do is be used for communication and knowledge right? When you make your character sheet, indicate what you plan on having the seon do. If its just a side character to provide some conversation, probably won't be anything. If you plan on it being a vast source of otherwise difficult to obtain knowledge, maybe a little bit. If you want it acting as a spy, maybe a bit more. Likely however, it won't break the character.

Yeah thats totally chill

Just putting this here so that more people see it, the thread was lost somewhere in the backlog of the forum. Just to reiterate: This still applies. Please avoid giving out cookies.

Yes. The DA did it for years, but then it became an issue as the AV picked up speed with intro threads becoming about cookies and not new members. We were firmly told to stop by the admins in no uncertain terms.

The alleys aren't something that you can bond with. On an out of character note, I would really prefer it if we didn't have yet another plot where challenging the DA is the expected outcome. Last time we did that it was Era 3 and that era nearly drove me insane. This. Guild power doesn't come from simply saying you have it, it comes from being an active member of the community, RPing for a fair bit, building relationships with members, and sticking around for a while.

Yeah we probably should. Uh, does anyone know how that works?

This turned out a lot longer then I anticipated, but having been active and playing with an OP character most era's, these are my thoughts about how I've tried to use them and how they should be used. I agree that generally DA department heads are going to be extremely OP. I am personally a pretty lenient on OP characters, particularly if they relate to guilds of significant size, but I think they should generally be understood to be more like an NPC than a PC. They shouldn't be solving problems with the other characters, because the challenges we write in should be addressable by the average characters (the ones that fit in the 150 points). I'm personally fine if people wanted to make a council of OP characters for the Ghostblood council, or a team of DA department heads. So long as any RP done by them stays in their respective threads, I don't even think that they need community approval. That said, it needs to stay narratively isolated. I'd be fine with a scene of Voidus and the Stranger walking the streets discussing something, or getting a bite to eat. It just shouldn't impact other peoples plots. I'd be fine with a couple scenes of them blasting people to bits on other planets, or the GB council dueling each other as practice. It just needs to stay narratively isolated. For an example of a situation thats problematic: Imagine my character Ronald is walking the streets saying he's on a mission for Voidus personally, doors will open that wouldn't otherwise be opened. Thats an issue if Voidus isn't approved. Voidus' presence is impacting the wider narrative, and so he should be approved so that everyone is aware of him and what impact he can have on the plot. If various characters are teaming up with the Stranger and feeding him information with his knowledge being the McGuffin that solves the mystery, thats an issue. He needs to be approved so people can plan around how he could impact their stories. Basically, if you want them to have an impact on the plot, I think they need to be approved. If you want them to be a flavor character, or a catalyst for character development, I don't necessarily see a need for a whole process. Hey Lord Voidus, if you see this know that pi = 3 = e. Also sin(x) = x. Two quick notes: One, I would prefer people to have at least a full Era of RPing under their belts before they try to make OP characters, for whatever reason. I love power fantasy as much, or even more, than the next guy, but its not conducive to learning how to RP or write well. Also I want people to have experience RPing so they can know not to overstep their bounds as an OP character. Two, the subject of how to act with a guild leader character is tangential to this because while most OP characters will be guild leaders, not all guild leaders need to be approved and ironed out character. If there is gonna be an impact on the plot, and said impact is coming from the office (not the character), I don't think it necessarily needs approval. So long as it makes sense for said guild leader to be involved it I don't care. Like someone could totally be on a special assignment from an un-named department head to murder civilians, and come across PC's in the process. The department head doesn't necessarily need to be ironed out and approved, because its reasonable to assume that there is someone in the DA who enjoys wanton murder. So if someone in the DA gave you the OK, then write it. Or someone could be on a special assignment from the GB council and try to bring in a PC for questioning. Thats a reasonable decision for the council to make, so if a GB leader like sorona or TFA gave you the thumbs up to write that, then go ahead. No need to get approval for a specific council member. Hopefully this essay makes sense, I just wanted to infodump on how I had been trying to use OP character, and how they should be used going forward.

The next era sub plot is just a bunch of rookie department heads trying to figure out how to do everything. Heyyyyy any chance you know how to work the printer on floor 9? Wait I have a receptionist now? What do you mean I need to fill it out in triplicate!?

I think perhaps damage from the forgery to the worldspike might be a better motivator. Lets let the forgery fall apart this era, and let everything wrap up normally, and then the next era can begin with the DA noting the Damage to the worldspike and until it gets repaired we need to budget.

Honestly its possible that he understands what the Stranger was trying to do and appreciates him for it. He was exhibiting signs of wanting to leave earlier then when the stranger moved in. That said, what Voidus' reaction to getting out of the forgery is should be determined by Voidus, not by the group needs of the plot. Ash could you elaborate on this? I am personally leaning toward the budget cut scenario, as I think it lends itself most toward creating some conflict while still being relatively chill. The only issue I have is how we would get normal people involved?

The issue is, why wouldn't they just share it? Like its not a smart move to fight each other when cooperation is available. I think the Stranger vs Voidus is a very solid base ground for the conflict. There could, perhaps, be a faction that insists on remaining neutral, but is drawn into attacking one or the other. One idea I had would be that Cam is working to de-escalate the whole situation. So perhaps them could be the battle lines? Voidus vs stranger vs a neutral faction vs a de-escalation faction. The Difference between the latter two is the neutral faction wants to stay out of it, but de-escalation is willing to fight to keep either side from getting too upitty? Of course the idea that the stranger and voidus would fight is up to fatebreaker and voidus themselves, but I think that could be a reasonable conflict.

I would be curious about what kind of conflicts we could engineer. Fundamentally the DA Dept heads are logical and power hunger, but running the DA isn't an enviable task. The whole era 4 arc was about how the stranger was forging things to give voidus a break from it. So not many people are gonna be putting their foot forward. They would need something more compelling to force them to get their hands dirty.

I think there would constantly be a downside to using the alley's power. But I don't think it necessarily comes with a bond. The option should be there for people who want to strike a deal with an ancient being, but I don't think the alley's would want to strike a deal with anyone. Everyone would get access to an alley via a mechanism similar to allomancy, where its a part of you, and those alley's could conceivably contain an ancient being that you could bargain with to get some power or knowledge, but you wouldn't be bonding the alley itself. Bonding an alley being would logically give you alleymatic power which really breaks the theme of the alleys. For characters that don't start out as a member of the DA, we like to RP them being taught how to alleytravel. Navigating the alley's isn't something that would just happen, if it did the DA would crack down and kill you. Also I want to point out that your chosen alley would have to be run through character creation to avoid making things too OP.

Suddenly the DA legal department emerges as a player in the Civil War. Because every one of them made a compact with a demon.

Thats how the DA would find out about the new magic. People would make stupid bargains and eldritch abominations would roam the streets.

I like it. In terms of admin work, there would could be three groups of powers, positives, negatives, and neutrals. I'm personally not the most fond of having the alleys as something you could bond just by being present in the AV, and I'm not sure that works too well with the idea that this is similar to allomantic snapping where the people affected by the forgery have this happen to them. I've toyed with having an Alleyspirit, and there was an Alleyspren early on in the 7 day war, but the alley's want to actively kill you. They don't want people in them, and so they don't really fit with the profile of something that would even be open to bonding. @Thaidakar the Ghostblood This is a really good idea, there are theoretically an infinite amount of alleys that serve as a prison for dangerous beings, you could totally form either a bond or a contract with one of them as your characters alley.

Cam already holds the guillotine over Voidus' neck. He could take out the heads of the DA with a few carefully places memos, heaven's knows they've committed enough safety violations. Perhaps he couldn't kill them, but eternal HR purgatory is pretty close. Nope, as far as he's concerned they both would need to own up to the HR violations. Ooh I like it. It would come with a cost too, the madness of the alleys could mingle with the soul of the person, giving an inherent cost to use it. I think fates suggestion was that more people would be able to use this subset of an alley's power. Like people born on the Alley planet would be able to bond or access a specific alley and a certain additional power could come from that.

No, its much, much worse. Merely summoning Cam required the deaths of 10000 interns at the hands of unlabeled spills. It required repeating the arcane ritual three whole times, and filling out the request forms in triplicate as well. To even get close to the ancient tome one had to sit through a full 40 hours of employee safety seminars, that you weren't given extra time or a lighter work load for. Truly Cam Nosnetsroht is and was the most souless of denizens, powerful of demigods, and stringent rule lawyer that the alleys have and will ever see.

And Cam... Cam is the scariest one of all. You don't want to know what Cam can do.

Everyone was against the DA. That's an interesting idea. There certainly would be some form of proxy fighting. But like kenod said even if the whole city was made of aluminum, one of them could just drop a meteor on it. There would need to be some reason for the DA to not want to kill everyone. Honestly if people had access to this new type of investiture, keeping them as a breeding stock would be a reason that the DA would keep the city around.

Thats what I was wondering as well, like what would other guilds do in the war, why would they be involved. Please throw around more ideas if you have any, I'm by no means married to the redirection. Not in terms of strength of power, but in terms of whats happening mechanically. I don't think they would be able to redirect an Aon Daa blast, or a division blast as it came at them.

I'm thinking its like redirecting lightning from atla

Maybe the moving would be slower, but you only need one source. like you could redirect most things into other things. Like a forgery could be moved or a surge's target changed. I don't think it would ever be bundle, because you aren't stopping the user from using it, you are just redirecting it. you would have to touch the source of he investiture.

I don't think that they would have each of the types of meta investiture, that might be OP. I was thinking that we take the meta investiture from allomancy and use it as inspiration for something. I like the idea of being able to move investiture, thats something different that isn't really done, I don't know if raysium is the way to go.