Voidus

"Not necessarily." The DA figure said, a small flash of white teeth hinting at his secretive grin as he began to confer with the DA lawyers.

"Technically we decided that it's legal as long as you don't break any other laws. Which is not necessarily the same as having consent and being nonlethal." A hooded figure from the DA grumbled.

Just know that we won't judge you no matter which you pick. *Prepares disintegration ray*

"If only." Laurelai replied slyly, one corner of her mouth curling up in a smile. "I hear people like that have a preference to remain anonymous while they're out and about. Finding them may be difficult. I've overhead that they tend to be the ones who find you." Well we should probably drop the games soon anyway. She thought wryly. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment as Lita ordered herself another drink. Laurelai directed a surge on Investiture inwards, towards her Identity, changing that which had already happened back to its normal state. She felt the years of experience interacting with people fading away, her usual nervousness began to take hold once more, her experience with accents and languages faded, replaced with in-depth studies of the intricacies of Investiture and its relationships between systems, and her more recently acquired knowledge of Hemalurgy returned with it. She also felt once more the rush of Investiture as her Bane made itself known once more, but other than a feeling of lethargy and tiredness she didn't notice anything else. Her head tilted back down, no longer held in the lofty expression of a noblewoman and her gaze drifted more directly towards Lita, no longer disguising her glance. As she spoke her accent shifted again, no longer either Scadrian or noble, she adopted the drawling, mish-mash of accents that was unique to the Alleycity, though with a slightly more Alethi inflection than most carried. "So. Hypothetically if we were to find such a person, what would we discuss? People who look for the Dark Alley usually have ambitions beyond simply acquiring a paycheck."

1. A specific example of what? Characters flitting between multiple plots? I think it'd be harder to find an example of a character who didn't do that. Some people are particularly good at tying the multiple plots they take part in together and having recurring issues across them, but a number of characters just basically show up when interesting things are happening, maybe engage in a brief fight then go find another interesting thing that is happening. 2. A growing player base mostly, we just have too many players, many of whom have multiple characters. 4. Yes indeed, that's generally what has been assumed by sides. Anything on the same hemisphere is going to be too easy to access to be meaningfully separated in any way. 5. It's not particularly relevant, I'm just one person. But for the record I prefer keeping things in one subforum when it's the same player base and the same general concept in a related universe. The same reason all the Reckoner RP threads are in the same subforum, we didn't separate them out just because some locations didn't have frequent crossover with the others. If an rp collapses it's usually too late to fix it. Like the Reckoners RP it might get rebooted a year down the line but once you lose momentum trust me when I say it's incredibly difficult to get it back. This isn't a problem that needs moderator action, that's why this is a community discussion and not a moderation declaration. This is an ongoing discussion that has received support from enough people that I think it needs to be considered. I'm calling out things that I see developing ahead of time, we've had a very sudden, very large influx of characters and players this era and based on personal experience I think that issues are going to crop up. I also think these issues already occur to some extent as mentioned, just because something has always been done that way doesn't mean that's the best way. Characters are limited by their choices, that's how story works. So yes you're blocking them from doing some things, because they're doing other things instead. Characters can't be in all places at all times doing all things or story has no tension, meaning or purpose. Now I know that some people don't RP for the story as much as the combat stuff but I think that a majority of players have at least some interest in it. Spoilers for multiple movies and books below, none are too recent though:

No you're not the one's that don't count. Bean already mentioned last page that they voted in error, there is one other who isn't guild affiliated as well. Counting yours as official. So unless I've miscalculated anything, vote stands at 6-5 in favour of legalizing Hemalurgy and I don't believe there are any more votes to cast.

1. Character complexity becomes too diverse, there are a number of characters who are sort-of involved in most major plots concurrently. This creates both temporal confusion (What order do these interactions happen in) and also a more complex backstory but the various parts of the backstory aren't really linked and don't really form complex relationships with other characters. Personally I'd really appreciate having more deep and detailed character relationships. There are a couple of these kinds of relationships that have begun to grow recently but in general character relationships are static because characters move around too much and aren't consist with their goals or who they're working with to meet those goals. 2. Interference just isn't the term I'd use. If we want to keep diverse settings then interference is an issue, but as of yet the other side of the world is the only setting that could really interfere with things. Complexity does increase from thread-hoping but overcrowding doesn't really. 3. Mac answered this about as well as I can, just because something isn't constantly affecting the Alleyverse doesn't mean it should be separated and kept at arms length. 4. Again, as mentioned. But ultimately, any setting needs space to take place, so the less space available the less settings you can have. Basically the other side of the world doesn't offer substantially more space or separation than the Alleycity side does so it doesn't offer any meaningful benefit as a location for multiple settings. You can separate one side of the world from the other, which means you could have one isolated setting there, but if you create more than one then while those settings would be isolated from the Alleycity they wouldn't be isolated from each other. 5. Suggest whatever you want, I will cut off the idea that we can just create infinite subforums because it's not as easy as that, but that's a technical limitation it has nothing to do with my preferences. If people want these to exist but be in the regular RP forum then that is what will happen. The Alleyverse is community-driven. Creation of settings would be monitored initially and potentially be restricted ongoing, I agree that creating a bunch of settings and not using them would be a waste, but they likely wouldn't get enough community approval to be created if they were just going to be throw away so hopefully a moot point. The problem isn't necessarily plausibility but structural integrity of the RP, I've seen RPs collapse because everything became too complex and overcrowded and it just devolved into a mess, and I'd rather that didn't happen to the Alleyverse. Also as mentioned above, I think the frequent thread-hopping is inhibiting character growth and the formation of relationships. Consequences aren't the same as a punishment, arguably the entire point of RP is the exploration of consequences of actions. Characters become interesting by the choices they make, if choices have no consequence then they are meaningless and thus not very interesting. Characters can't be everywhere at all times so where do they choose to be? And why? Character limits are likely going to be way too hard to keep track of.

That's fine, but just as an fyi, unless the actual death blow is of natural causes then all normal High Epic abilities still apply. So if you age a healer to 90 years old then shoot them in the head they'll still heal from the wound, they'd just still be 90 years old

5-5 Deadlock at the moment, excluding non-official votes. Only remaining member is @I think I am here. EDIT: For full transparency, this was true at the time of post, the visible results were 6-7 in favour of the 'Noes' 1 non-valid vote for the ayes 2 non-valid votes for the noes

The rule itself isn't up for debate, but there is a grey region around it. I'd say that if you're not talking about addictive drugs then that's probably fine, the preference would probably just be to downplay it when possible and not make it a big focus. (eg. don't describe rooms full of old needles on the floor, or go into detail about the process of injection, etc.)

Mod ruling, this is an issue with site rules not personal preference.

I'm going to be a little stretched out for a while so not sure when I'll be able to formally allocate points to this but at a glance I think this could get through, though it may need some additional weaknesses. One question though, you stated that the aging power couldn't be used to age people to death and aren't permanent changes but then stated that they could kill High Epics because they aren't immune to aging, so which is it?

It means there would be a time gap before they could return to other threads potentially, if the other threads were in a different setting. If this is due to pacing issues or something then some potential retconning can occur, this is more designed to prevent characters who just want to be involved in every plot from jumping around by adding consequences to choices. (Which is after all what gives choices meaning) This isn't about interference as much as it is complexity and overcrowding. That's exactly the point we disagree on, simply stating it again isn't going to be super convincing. I've laid out the reasons why I think it would be beneficial, if you disagree with any specific points please mention them. The fact that it's not separated nicely into individual sub-regions. The same reason I don't think we can have all of these settings on the Alleycity side of the world. We won't be creating more subforums, there's too much admin work required for that and a bunch more complexity around roles and responsibilities. (I'd have to moderate all of them, then make suggestions of local mods for all of them, then handle any absences or departures by asking for replacement mods) If any of the other settings got large enough to justify it then it might be possible. Agreed, minimal transfer is preferred but I'd like to leave it a little open for character growth and as mentioned not everyone is going to feel like they fit in every setting so they may need to change after exploring the setting and their character a bit more. I'd rather avoid stories based around drug usage, this seems way too likely to make the RP inappropriate for hosting on 17S. Some vague allusions or off screen stuff might be ok but not making an actual mechanic for it in the RP.

I will say, one of my original thoughts that inspired this line of thinking was because you had a number of people supporting a sci-fi planet, just not enough for a majority, this would be a way for a minority of players to have a setting that was a little contentious with the majority but still linked to the RP. I'm also proposing absolute limits of temporal displacement that can't be overcome. People can't flit from one thread to another because it's literally impossible, and just like if they tried to do anything else that's impossible, the mods would step in if needed and establish that a post was retconned due to implausibility.

Ah, the sad little creatures mind must have broken. Metronome thought to himself. The stress of realizing the mistake he'd made must have rattled him to his core. Metronome nodded sagely. He could forgive the man this time, meeting Metronome in person was an experience to shake the very soul of a lesser being, some acted out in strange ways. This one had even tried to remind Metronome that it was late, he must have been completely out of his mind when he said that. "It is all well, child. I shall leave you here for today to ponder my words, when you have come to your senses once more then perhaps I shall find you." Not that I'd be likely to remember such an insignificant being. But if he believes that I've forgiven him then he may snap out of whatever madness has taken him a little faster. Metronome leaned in a little, grinning as he did so. "Oh, and just so you know. It's five fourty-six." But leaving him with a touch of fear is best to keep this memorable. And with this final, chilling revelation, Metronome turned about, heading away from the training grounds, and no doubt leaving the man he'd spoken to quivering in fear at the awesome power he held.

As mentioned the problem I would have with the other side of the world is two fold: Separation and Scale. It's not large enough to really support more than one or two additional settings so it can't necessarily scale too well in either quantity or variety. It's not fully separated, as I mentioned there are a number of ways anyone could get across and given that some of those ways can work for anyone with no effective cost they can just be handwaved by people without much difficulty. We've already had people travel to the other side and back. It does sound like a few people want to at least try it out so I'll be adopting Kenod's suggestion, I'll speak with the other mods and we'll see about creating a couple of test threads.

Not immediately deterred then? Well that's the best that can be hoped for usually. Laurelai gratefully received a new drink, swirling it around in the glass but not drinking any more. "Well I suppose sorting the fact from the fiction can indeed be difficult." She said, nodding in agreeance with Lita. "But knowing the right people can help. Rumours flying around the streets are rarely reliable, but those who travel in somewhat loftier circles occasionally catch a glimpse of something a little more reliable." She seems interesting anyway, might be best to keep an eye on her for now anyway. "But then again, who's to say whether even that information may be false. Really only someone who's a member could say for sure."

Both actually, as mentioned above I don't think the other side of the world can fill the same requirements. I also don't think that it's intrinsically better to have one than multiple, that is in essence the entire source of the debate. Assuming that one world is better than multiple to prove that one world is better than multiple is ultimately circular. The main goal of this would be to create several, simplified settings instead of one giant mess. The only change to Alleycity and nearby regions is that occasionally people might vanish to other universes. They wouldn't be able to bring anything back with them that wasn't already a part of the Alleycity setting. A large number of people have already expressed a preference for some setting variety in the Alleyverse, eg. multiple different technological levels. When these settings can have characters, ideas and items flowing freely back and forth this can create a lot of complexity. 'Ok so I wanted to play in the 'wild west' section of the Alleyverse but apparently there's a guy with a plasma machine gun here? Why?' 'Oh he bought it in sci-fi Alleyverse then Elsecalled over here.' Keeping them separated would give us some higher overarching complexity but to the player in the setting it becomes far less complex, you only need to worry about the canon and lore of the setting you choose to engage with. What I want to avoid is going all dictator mod and deleting or merging threads to try to simplify everything, I don't think it's likely to work and it also flies completely in the face of FFRP. We did try to suggest plot simplification at the end of the last era but it hasn't gone too great. The other problem though is character creep. We have enough characters now that it can be really difficult to actually be aware of all of them. Which again, wouldn't really matter if they were all functionally separated, you would only need to know about the characters that share plots with you. Ultimately the Alleyverse is already a crossroads for different universes, I'm mostly suggesting that we explore those possibilities a little more, and restrict travel at that scale.

Differences of opinion I suppose, I'd consider multiple universes to be simplifying complexity at the player level, with only a small increase to organisational complexity. It'd also be more easily expandable. If we just shifted half of all active characters and plots to the other side of the world I think we'd just make both of them more complicated, as opposed to spreading things out. If it's entirely isolated then it functionally is another universe, if we want to make a bunch of those instead then that's fine, but my point is I think that just calling them other universes is more honest with ourselves. Either way I'll put some polls up soon, I think I've said everything I wanted to say but hopefully other people can put forward their points too.

Exactly, that's why I'd prefer having travel involving inherent consequences. Time loss is an easy one, if you leave one universe you're going to lose time before you can come back to it. Practically this is likely to mean that a character can't arrive back in Alleycity in the same era that they left it, thus maintaining the individual complexities of each isolated instance until an era reset happens anyway. Functionally, yes. But then you could argue that the same is true of the other side of the world. It's a separate RP with crossover elements. In the same way that each of the locations in the Reckoners RP was it's own, separate RP, this would be multiple different RPs that just take place in the same continuum. Saves having to garner players, pitch the idea and get a subforum and moderators for other RPs though. I'd rather not get into a big thing about it, it's somewhat meta and it hasn't influenced anything thus far so the only thing that's been harmed is my brain trying to hold contradictory ideas. But the point is that there are a bunch of things that were just added to the lore for the story, without gaining community awareness and approval. Which is fine if it's completely isolated, but it isn't, so now there are things that have been added to cannon that can influence the rest of the RP that not everyone may be aware of. That adds to the complexity of what players need to know on both sides of the world, whereas if it was isolated then people who didn't want to participate in the plot wouldn't need to know about any of the additional lore and people who only wanted to participate in that plot wouldn't really need to know that much about what's going on in Alleycity.

Multiple universes would make the entire, overarching supersystem more complicated, but with the benefit that any individual plotline or setting could become far, far less complicated. Fewer characters, fewer crossovers, less required reading to understand what is going on. So while our very frequent posters who enjoy having multiple characters will have a bit of added complexity, newer characters can easily slot in without needing to know the entire overarching structure of every plot, character and location. It's essentially a localised reset of everything, all characters start on the same page 'where the heck are we and what do we do now?', story can develop organically, newer fantastical settings can be introduced without detracting from or influencing other plots, we could experiment with other forms of story telling or different structures. (Could set one of the worlds up to be resource rich and have guilds fight a wargame over who gets to control it) The primary reason I don't want things to occur in the same world and just physically isolated locations is that that adds to the overall complexity while not really reducing the local complexity. There's a bunch of worldbuilding that happened for the other side of the world that I had no oversight on, stuff that has already been canonized there which completely contradicts pre-existing canon for the wider Alleyverse. At the moment it hasn't really back-influenced anything but there's no reason it couldn't, people can travel to and from the other side of the world without any meaningful difficulties. Windrunners can fly, Elantrians can teleport, denizens can Alleytravel, Elsecallers can teleport, etc. Anyone who has arrived in the Alleyverse has some means of long distance, instantaneous travel open to them. Separating things out such that one cannot interfere with the other in any meaningful way allows us to create isolated sections which can operate completely independently of the larger complexities of the entire multiverse. As things stand now I need to keep reading the other side of the world even though I have no intention of participating, in case something that happens there impacts something over here. Separation allows players to engage with the RP at any level of complexity that they're comfortable with.

A spy? More interesting than I'd thought. Laurelai continued to give Lita a friendly smile as she thought the woman's words over. Was that her I felt watching me when I entered? Or something else still? A brief shudder was sent up her spine as she felt some unseen presence observing her yet again. But was it just her imagination? "An interesting skillset." Laurelai said as she drained the last of her glass. "But I'm sure you can find someone who appreciates it, there's all sorts of opportunities for someone in that line of work." I wonder if I should try recruiting her, not sure how we're doing in intelligence work lately. Well I suppose it wouldn't hurt to send a letter to Mac. "Some of the larger guilds are apparently trying to set up a government. Might be able to get some work there. Or there's the Dark Alley, depending on what sorts of ethical standards you hold to." Laurelai ordered another drink, watching Lita carefully out of the corner of her eyes for her reaction.

What's my name?!? WHAT'S MY NAME!? This little cretin doesn't even know that much!? Is this world so underdeveloped that not even that has been preached here yet? Or worse still, could he be ignorant of my identity entirely? Can he not even feel the waves of terror and majesty that I radiate? Metronome's eyes briefly widened in surprise and outrage before settling into a pitying expression. This poor world. To be so ignorant, so feeble that they couldn't even discern that much. "Take heed and remember this moment well." Metronome began, puffing his chest out and spreading his arms in a grandiose gesture. "For I am METRONOME!" The word hung in the air, echoing around as the training grounds were vacated of others.

"Lovely to meet you Lita dear." Laurelai said as she slowly surveyed the room once more. "Of course sometimes duty can be a little burdensome, but let it never be said that I would shirk it. Sometimes I just need to take a little break." She gave a small chuckle as her gaze settled on Lita once more. I should have worn something a little fancier than this. I could still change it i suppose but then that might be a tad obvious. She took another sip as she examined the other woman. Well, might as well try to dig out a little more. "Now you said you were looking for work? What kind of work were you interested in?" @ZincAboutIt