Voidus

To Brandon Sanderson? Very easily, they both exist in the same world To one of his magic systems? Reckoners has an undefined limit to abilities (Thus meaning there's a possibility that there's an Epic whose power is to animate WH40K minis into life sized soldiers), and also takes place on an alternate version of earth meaning WH40K would be an established piece of culture, and also has parallel worlds, one of which may just be the universe of WH40K.

Given where I usually use my laptop, all RPs that I'm in are recliner RPGs

I should point out that due to Reckoners, pretty much every conceivable superpower is technically a part of a Brandon Sanderson magic system

It's actually default for me, I have to manually click something when I want it to show I edited it, so I'm mostly using my laziness powers. Or not using them. I'm not sure how laziness powers work.

Restrictions are always good but that doesn't have to mean a rigid system of rules, I'm not trying to say that either is intrinsically better but having free-form combat is perfectly possible with a very small ruleset. (In Reckoners the rules were basically, don't kill PCs without permission, don't do things that defy sense) Players will naturally arbitrate over what happens in combat unless you have a large number of very precise rules (Which is borderline impossible for something as broad as the entire cosmere powersets) so personally I prefer just letting it be narrative combat without having to keep track of numbers, it also helps allow for more natural reactions to things. Take 5e D&D combat, how realistic is it that an unarmoured human could take 20 goblin arrows and still be perfectly fine? Or that they're perfectly fine and able to fight at perfect capacity while they're at 1 hp after having just been hit by the breath attack of a colossal elder dragon, then a stray rock hits their head and they're unconscious/dead? Narratively you can arbitrarily add things like status conditions where they make sense even if they're not explicit in the rules. Dragon just breathed fire all over you? Probably not going to be able to see perfectly well and snipe things from 600 feet away for a while because you've got really bad sunspots in your eyes/your eyes are burned from their sockets. Got an arrow lodged in your ankle? Probably not going to be running at full speed til you heal up. Again all of this is personal opinion so feel free to ignore me or seriously disagree.

I would definitely agree with that too, there should be a clear distinction between a character and a player, you might get really annoyed at a character because they keep thwarting all of your awesome plans or they just killed your favourite character but you should not let that carry over into your feelings about that characters player, if anything it reflects well of the player that they were able to create a character that evokes such an emotional reaction. The opposite can be a problem too, where a player lets their character just be a proxy of themselves, always attacking the characters of a player they don't like or agree with, using meta-game knowledge to their advantage, etc.

What follow are just some of my thoughts on the nature of free-form roleplaying, character design and how to have fun with fights, I am by no means an absolute authority on the subject but the Reckoners RP went for several years in this format so I think broadly speaking I can outline what I found worked and what didn't during that time. 1. Trust the other players and communicate with them, it may take a while before you all share the same understanding of how your RP should operate, but trust that other players are also just trying to have a good time for the most part, if you feel like someones characters actions are unrealistic, talk about it. I'd suggest avoiding dropping some kind of official GM or mediator on all conflicts like this because as a player having one source of authority just say 'No, you're not allowed to do that' is somewhat stifling and doesn't give you a good play experience, hearing from multiple other players that your actions are breaking the immersion of the game or causing discomfort is still saddening sometimes but it at least promotes the sensation that the primary goal of the RP is the enjoyment of the group as a whole. This flows into combat as well, if character 1. is hiding in a building, rifle drawn and takes a shot at an unaware character 2, player 2 can't just say 'I dodge' because that makes no sense and most players would probably agree on that. However player 1 also should have talked to player 2 about killing off their character, seeing if they were ok with it and if they weren't discuss what options they have. Maybe character 1 tries to take the shot but they in turn get ambushed by another PC or NPC, maybe they take the shot but miss any vital spots, character 2 slinks off to fight another day. Maybe they deliberately don't kill character 2 and instead they try to capture them now. If you feel like another PC is doing something that is likely to cause your character to try to kill them, let that player know ahead of time and you can maybe retcon some of that decision so they're not in mortal peril. 2. OP characters are fine, but usually not very interesting. My personal experience that I'd like to showcase this with are two of my characters from one of the Reckoners RPs, Soulcaster had the power to pull the consciousness of anyone, human or Epic, into an Astral plane of his creation and control, pretty much instantly incapacitating any other character if he wanted to. Metronome had the power to accurately know what the time was. That's it. I found Metronome vastly more interesting to play as, because if I wanted Soulcaster to actually get in combat with anyone then that combat would last all of about half a second. That being said an OP character has it's own type of interactions that you can't get with a moderately or non-powered character, maybe your OP character is a fight junkie and is constantly annoyed by the fact that no one can actually fight them on equal terms. They'd go out of their way to avoid fights because they know they'll just end up getting disappointed. Which brings me to... 3. Non-combat encounters are usually more interesting than combat. Combat seems like it should be very interesting, and when you think about your character design your first thought is probably going to be about how you can make their combat interesting or better, but combat will probably be one of the less interesting encounters you have, combat will probably start becoming stale for any character of a limited powerset, you'll figure out the best way to use your powers, then do that every time with some small changes depending on who you're fighting or what your environment is like. But non-combat interactions can be almost infinitely varied and provide far more interesting ways to utilize both your powers and your characters personality, steelpushing a coin at the speed of light into someone skull sounds cool, but when you do it against the 100th opponent it starts getting a bit stale. Trying to subtly move around a person while talking to them in order to get into the exact right position to steelpush a small statue of a cat off the table without them noticing because your character has an incredibly strong fear of both cats and miniature figurines is both novel and potentially more challenging. 4. PCs dying should not be game-ending. If a player character dies either as part of an PvP or some other interaction, that player needs to be able to continue to play, either creating a new character or have some method to revive their existing character. This both prevents the game from feeling like a tournament where the goal is to kill all other characters to win, and also means that players are likelier to be fairer in their assessment of their own characters ability to survive something because worst case, they create a new character. 5. Your character is not their powers. Designing the powers for your character should be one of the least-important parts of their character. Those powers may have some large impacts on their personality such as a Hemalurgist who despises the death that had to happen for them to gain their powers, but that's still somewhat one-dimensional. Who are they without their powers? Design their personality first and then consider how those powers might alter the rest of their personality. The powers that your character has are not nearly so interesting as who they are without those powers, or how their personality influences their use of those powers. *More stuff to come later, this post got bigger than I originally intended

As a suggestion I'd say give people the trust that they won't break rules, if a particular person or group continue to act poorly or violate rules then try speaking to them first, otherwise it can destroy the feel a bit if your super secret group has some overseer who can see what you're talking about all the time.

From my experiences with the Reckoners RP I think freeform RPing works fine when you can trust the players, make it clear to newcomers that the point of the RP isn't to 'win' anything, your character isn't supposed to be the coolest most awesome character, they're supposed to be an interesting story you want to tell with other players' help. We rarely had to rely on the game master for any thread because we communally discussed things and retconned anything that seemed like it was breaking the game too much. We had characters of all power levels coexisting, so long as you made it clear that if your completely non-powered human went and pissed off the resident high epic then they would probably get burned to a crisp.

Anyone have a link? I might post it in the OP for the DA.

I haven't kept an eye on the intro threads recently but it does become a problem sometimes when someones introduction to the forum is just 10 different people shouting incomprehensible things about whether or not you should take a cookie. Can be a bit off putting for newcomers.

1. Why were there so many people that joined the DA and then switched or were unloyal? Why did they join? Because we have cookies. And Science. Why did they switch? I think they probably spiked out the part of their soul that all sentient creatures possess which makes them love cookies. But hey if they think it's possible to find a non-hemalurgic cookie anywhere in the universe, they're free to believe that. I'll just be sitting in a dark alley somewhere laughing evilly*. 2. Why do you oppose or support the DA or foin the LA? (Not propaganda about why it exists, why you believe in it.) I'm kind of obligated to support it 3. When did you choose to join the fight for any side or switch sides? In the beginning. 4. Why be so closed door on your dealings within the LA/TUBA? N/A 5. To the people that switched, why did you switch sides? N/A *34th sub occular bindpoint with a spike of the metal which must not be known, taken from the body of an evil emperor/empress for anyone who was curious side effects may iinclude a compulsion to monologue before killing anyone.

Pretty sure Rubix just set it to negative whatever I was at the time, not sure if it's still anywhere back end. I do still have a screencap though

I don't believe I'd survive removing enough spikes to bring myself down to only 5 abilities so I guess I'll pass.

My old RS username was Shadow_00002 As for Voidus I'm not actually sure when or how I came to it, but it's been my gamertag and my username in most places for a fairly long time now.

Another programmer here (We seem to have quite a few), I started at an entry level position as a technology help desk operator and then just started automating stuff and writing small scripts to help people, got noticed by someone in another team and they let me know when a position in their team opened up. My suggestion for any who are looking for work is to never be afraid to apply, even if you think you don't quite have the skills or experience for a role, you never know what's on your CV that might jump out at someone reading it.

Influential members of the community or those who have made outstanding contributions towards hemalurgic research may also join the Alleys, making sales is one good way to show your worth to the Alleys but there are others. In light of your attempts, I would like to welcome you to the Alleys. If you'd like to join our counterintelligence division you'll need to speak to @MacThorstenson

In light of his service to the Alleys, I would like to thank our new head of Counterintelligence, @MacThorstenson We have some bakers working on a celebratory cake but they're having trouble getting the batter to rise along the 13th dimension, we appreciate your patience while we locate some spikes of dimensionSight to assist them in their efforts.

We have one, it'll be in the welcome pack for new lurkers, listed under appendix H (future victims)

We relatively closely approximated a bell curve Great work @Cognizantastic!

Or the scream of an eldritch horror beyond human comprehension, birthed from a dimension of chaos and darkness.We only have one of the smaller infinities of them and R&D have them booked out. I want to test this theory on acoustic resonance and Connection.

Judging strictly from writing ability it's probably the weakest of the cosmere books but story and character wise I think it holds up well with Stormlight, definitely recommend getting it if you get the chance.

Well if you ever meet someone in a dark alley trying to offer you cookies that's probably me... actually could be Fatrebreaker, this may be harder than I thought.

Waiting for someone to gaze into it so I can gaze back.

Didn't someone start using that place as storage for our spare intelligence spikes? Last I heard the penguins had build a giant death star like construction.