Verad

Happens quite a bit. Couldn't give you exact numbers because it's not as if we have a survey on this anyway. Possible reasons: Canonically, the housing wards are reserved for adventurers only. Players acknowledge this by having some adventure-related component to their FC, regardless of how well-developed that component may be. Despite regular protests to the contrary in LFRP posts, people enjoy tavern and slice-of-life RP more than they claim, but also like adventure and action and whatnot. FCs can handle both of those things in-house without having to go to other FCs where people are weird and strange. It's a fairly common anime trope for a story to be centered around a mundane business acting as a front for a more adventuresome business - Sakura Taisen comes to mind, among others - and this MMO is populated by a larger-than-normal amount of weebs. There's probably more, but that's what I can think of off the top of my head. The interesting part to me is not why people do this, but rather, what kind of stories can we make if we presume as a given that there really are that many restaurants-fronting-as-smuggling-rings-fronting-as-item-shops-fronting-as-magitek-design-firms in the setting?

Whatever you do, no plague events.

“Now who does that, I ask you?” said Corwin over the rim of his mug. “Who even conceives of such a thing?” “Very few. It’s not quite conceivable.” “Don’t know much about duskwight culture - not the wild ones, the cave clans - “ “Who does, really?” “And certainly, if a woman has to care for a child, and there’s no other alternatives, who could gainsay taking one along on her daily labors?” “Hardly anybody. It’s a sensible choice.” “I’d even go so far as to say, Miss Mason, and I’ll grant this is my being a bit radical, that taking one along on a bandit raid could be seen as being necessary.” “Children have to learn a trade. Best to start early.” “But even then. Even then! Who carries the child in the front?” “Nobody, of course.” “The back, now, that’s one thing. Child carried on the back? Safer, more secure. ‘S reasonable.” “Indeed so.” “But in the front? The front. Might as well strap it around your torso like a breastplate!” “An outrage.” “Well, Verad was fair sore when he saw that, Miss Mason, let me tell you. Most aggrieved. He’s at the Quiver dealing with the problem now. Not sure what they’re to do with an orphan grey as dark as that. The pale ones, you could dye their hair and call them wildwoods, but this one is nearly blue.“ “Corwin?” “Told him he ought leave it to the whim of the spirits, but such a look he gave me. Oh that face looks soft enough, but his tongue’s getting so sharp he doesn’t even need to use it. Takes after mother.” “Corwin, what, if anything, does this have to do with my crate?” Biddy Mason didn’t sound annoyed when she asked the question, nor did it show on her expression; even so, Corwin fell silent as if she’d bellowed the question. To the unfamiliar, the pretty little Midlander, slight as a sparrow and seeming no older than Verad (or so Corwin supposed, having never worked up the courage to ask the details) with her short brown hair decorated with braids and dimpled smile, seemed a better fit for the genteel life of the Gridanian well-to-do than her true profession. In some respects, this was entirely correct, as Miss Mason would never slit a man’s throat when she could have one of her four brothers or dozen cousins do it for her, and it was those connections which made her very well-prepared to coordinate the arrival of contraband across the borders of the Shroud. She set down her cup, still half-full of tea, and folded her hands together in her lap. “I do apologize for the interruption,” she said, “and I very much hope you’re able to make your brother see sense. But you came to speak about the cargo. You insisted that you could get it here safely. Have you done this?” Corwin choked off a curse, bowed his head and held up his hands. “Right, yes, well, ah - I was getting to that anyroad, yes. It’s just when we got hit, when we found this, er - well, I suppose he’s a foundling now, isn’t he? Wouldn’t know for sure if - “ “Mister Bellveil, sir.” Biddy smiled, tilting her head to the side in polite encouragement. The hearth in the Sleeping Boar was kept dim, an old habit from the Mason patriarch’s days, and Corwin was glad for it. Kept the sweat beading on his forehead from being noticeable. “Well, we sort’ve, ah, lost the shipment, Miss Mason. Not sure if the greys took it or if it was damaged when they hit the back caravan. Porters still taking inventory on that count. But it’s gone in any case. Could tell you that much at a glance.” He had to choke the words out while discreetly nudging his chair an ilm further away from the table, one carefully nudged leg at a time. “Is that so?” She spoke with the thoughtful air of a rhetorical question, glancing up to the ceiling while taking hold of her teacup once more. The conversation paused, leaving the sounds of a quiet tavern - a feebly crackling fire, the rasp of a too-well-used rag against mugs as one of Biddy’s brothers tended the bar, and the throb of Corwin’s pulse as he tried to calm himself, left marinating in his own worries. Practically speaking, Gridania had two sets of laws. There were the laws of the spirits, which everyone knew, even if they didn’t understand them: don’t hunt here, don’t harvest this tree, everyone can prevent forest fires. And then there were the laws of men, which were, in some ways, more esoteric and even more inexplicable because men dictated them: take this much tax from this business, don’t drink on these days, don’t beat your children unless they really have it coming, so on. While these laws did not always overlap, there was one point on which both codes were quite clear: don’t bring strange things into the Shroud. Yet they did not precisely overlap, because just as the spirits might keep a good man out of the forest yet allow a murderer free passage, so too might they forbid mundane things like seeds and certain kinds of pots while completely overlooking minor things like several tonze of drugs and firesand. So it was that Gridanian customs was a twofold affair in which most goods traveling into the Shroud were checked by both Hearer and Wailer alike to ensure that nobody, spirit or man, would be harmed. That was the system in its simplest, ideal form, of course, but while the laws of the spirits were hard to avoid, the laws of men could be skirted. A coin to Wailer in the right place and an item concealed in the right caravan, and the walls of the Hedge were not as stout as the locals might have hoped as a small trickle of contraband made its way into the forest. They would never match the open markets of Limsa and Ul’dah for size, but it was a profitable trickle all the same. And six moons ago, Corwin had received a letter from his brother at his home in the Silver Bazaar, telling him in all great excitement of how he had become a proper Quiverman at last. And the merchant had thought to himself, ah-hah. There’s a way to widen the stream a little. Biddy ended the silence with a light sip from her cup and a quick sigh, and Corwin straightened himself in his seat. “Well, I do suppose that’s the end of it then. I am very appreciative of your coming here to inform me, Mister Bellveil; your forthrightness does you credit. I think that ends matters, don’t you?” He frowned. That was milder than he had expected, but Miss Mason was mild even when having a man gutted for losing a shipment to the Wailers. Even so, there was none of the reproach he’d expected, and the half-dozen arguments he’d made on the way to the Boar about why he should be allowed to live were cast aside. “That’s, er, that’s it then?” “Mm!” She nodded, one braid bobbing atop her head. “I have little reason to be cross, do I? The Wailers do not have the crate, correct?” Corwin nodded. Whatever had happened to the cargo, it hadn’t been placed in Wailer custody for inventory of damages. “And they don’t know of the operation, correct?” Again, he nodded. As far as the forces of Gridania were aware, the entire business had been an operation, enthusiastically laid out by Verad, to trap a duskwight clan. Corwin had given him no reason to believe otherwise. “Then, since you were generous enough to use your own coin to fund the matter, I see no reason to treat it as anything other than a bit of bad luck and unfortunate planning, don’t you agree?” finished Biddy, offering an upturned palm. Corwin knew better than to take it. “You can take your recompense from the Wood Wailers, spend a few days in the forest, and return to the desert with your conscience clear.” He didn’t try to hide his sigh of relief, or worry about his shoulders slumping in front of Biddy. She was known not to mind bad manners in the actions of her associates - only bad results. “Right. Yeah, right, I’ll do that. I’ll - with the coin I get from what’s left . . . “ He trailed off, calculating. He might owe money to to some lenders in Ul’dah, people who could crack even Miss Mason’s pristine facade, in order to finance the next trip. “With some outside investing I should be ready to try again in four, maybe five moons?” She shook her head politely, but firmly. “No, I think not, Mister Bellveil. It was a fine idea, but something perhaps best left to other merchants, don’t you agree?” “I - what? No, no, Miss Mason, I understand the concern, but I’ve still got my brother, the Quiver would be keen to try again!” “Indeed they would - and with added men to ensure they succeed the second time. More security, more scrutiny, less chance of success. That would put us both at risk, Corwin, and mayhaps you are fine with that - “ She placed her hand against her chest. “I would be as well, of course, but my family, you see. They couldn’t bear the thought of seeing me in chains. I can’t imagine what they’d do to stop that.” She cast an adoring look towards her brother at the bar, who gave Biddy a cursory nod in response. Corwin briefly considered the rich inner life the man surely must have had while taking orders from Miss Mason, but discarded it as being unnecessary to his immediate and continued well-being. “Surely you understand, Mister Bellveil?” she continued. “As I said, bad luck and unfortunate planning, but I just don’t see the sense in taking the same risk twice. I do wish you the best, and if you do have any other opportunities for mutual profit, then I will be eager to hear from you again.” Biddy slid her teacup across the table for her brother to take it. “Will the evening crowd be coming soon?” she asked as it was collected. Corwin knew a signal when he heard one. Wouldn’t do for the Boar’s regular clientele to meet its irregular customers. “Right then. Thank you for your time, Miss Mason, and thank you for being, ah, understanding.” He received little but a polite, perhaps even a little warm, smile in return, before he turned to leave, a few coins on the table left behind for his drink. Outside, the winding paths to the Boar were visible in the soft glow of the city’s lamps, though a few cracks of orange in the overgrowth above the city suggested it was pnly twilight in the Shroud. Corwin gripped his upper arms in each hand, taking care to avoid looking too closely at the forest. Remembering the active presence of the spirits was one of the worst parts of returning to the city, and on bad days Corwin could feel his skin itch with the unstated judgment of the spirits. You do not belong here, the forest seemed to say. We allow you here, but you are not a part of this place. And we remember the wrong that you do. Two sets of laws in Gridania - spirits and men. All told, Corwin preferred only one set, and that written by men. They were easier to avoid; that was part of why he left for Thanalan. But at least he could appease the spirits with a trip to the conjurers and an appropriate tithe for their troubles. Once caught out, the laws of men were not so easily avoided. “Twelve take me, if it isn’t Corwin Bellveil!” Not the laws of men, nor the men who enforced them, it seemed. Corwin didn’t need to look down to recognize the voice, rough and rasping, full of a cheery, casual confidence that never actually seemed to match the words the man said. Corwin still heard it in his dreams from time to time; not the worst nightmares, which were reserved for his father and the forest itself, but some of the bad ones and a very few of the good. “Hearns.” Corwin kept his tone of voice relaxed, trying to attribute his pose to a chill in the air that wasn’t really there. “They let you slither out of the barracks to drink now?” “It’s only the recruits made to do that, Cor. A corporal in his spear? Bad form if he’s not drinkin’ with the people, y’know.” He grinned, the only part of his expression that was really clear. Corwin was an infrequent visitor to the Shroud since his departure, preferring to keep his business in the Silver Bazaar. When he did come to trade and to visit Verad, he kept clear of the Wailers, and clear of Hadrian Hearns in particular - not a difficult feat when the Spears patrolled the forest as much as they did. Every so often, however, he caught a glimpse of the man, seeming the same as he was in his youth, his dark hair loose and near his shoulders, his grin as shite-eating as ever, save for one point - he never took off the damn mask. Even now, Corwin was staring into the painted black circles of the half masks that were the Wailer’s trademarks. It was a pity, that. His eyes were some of his best features. “Didn’t expect to see you at the Boar - ‘fore the busy bells at that. You had business with the Ol’ Biddy?” He advanced up the steps towards Corwin, moving at an unhurried pace as if the man were no obstacle. “Something like that. Had to square up an account.” The last thing he wanted was to discuss the particulars with Hearns, but the man clucked his tongue and smiled as he drew a step too close. “Risky stuff, workin’ with the Ol’ Biddy, Cor.” “Riskier calling her that where she can hear, don’t you think?” Hearns only laughed. “It’s fine. Friend of the family, you could say. Cards with her cousins every other sennight or so.” Corwin glanced past him. The evening crowd Miss Mason had mentioned had yet to materialize - Wailers off-duty often moved in groups in case a grey needed a lesson taught, or tried to teach a lesson to the Wailers in return. So he was that kind of friend, then. “Well then.” Corwin forced a smile. “Lost some cargo for the inn on the way through the woods, was just keeping her apprised. Nothing interesting.” “Right, right,” The Wailer nodded in understanding. “That caravan attack. Damn shame. Swivin’ greys, right?” Hearns spat against the side of the staircase. “Clan’s been trouble for a while. Found some old caves near Lilystone, can’t seem to pin ‘em down. If I could just get one on a spear-tip. Glad you made it out. You and your brother.” He patted Corwin on the shoulder, squeezed just a moment too long. “So, you enjoy your visit. Let me know if you find something interesting. Or you need it. Either way.” Stepping past Corwin, Hearns pushed open the front doors of the Sleeping Boar with a bright and genuinely pleasant-sounding call of “Miss Mason, so good to see you!” Corwin didn’t hear any of the rest. He tried to hide the shiver in his spine and hurried down the steps. Verad. About time he checked in at home with his brother. That’d make a bad day better. [align=center]* * * [/align] It did not get better. “Godsdammit, you are not keeping that thing!” Verad made a harsh shushing noise. “Not so loud. He’s just been fed and if you spook him into crying it might all come up again, okay?” He turned away from Corwin, patting the bundled duskwight infant on the back with the clumsy enthusiasm of a young man who thought of the infant as being both fragile and explosive. “Don’t - “ Another look from Verad, and Corwin dropped his voice down to a hiss. “Don’t distract from this. You do not dare distract from this. You are not taking in some grey you found on the ground!” Verad’s house was an old one, and with only three rooms, a small one. It was therefore no stranger to angrily-whispered arguments. Three generations of Bellveils had hashed out their differences underneath their breath so as not to wake the children, a tradition in which Corwin himself had taken part in his arguments with his father, and which the brothers seemed intent on continuing now. “It’s just for the sennight!” Verad countered, bobbing the infant around in a rocking motion. “God’s Quiver said they’d not the space at the barracks and the orphanages weren’t all that friendly to the notion.” “Because it’s a grey. Might as well put a wild couerl in the orphanage. Wouldn’t be surprised if it ate one of the younger ones to survive if you did that. And I know you well enough to know damn well it won’t be a sennight!” “How do you know, hm? How are you so sure?” Corwin rolled his eyes, mouthing Verad’s words back to him in a sing-song falsetto before continuing. “You remember that wolf-pup when you were three? The one you found wounded?” “Yeah, of course.” “When did you finally bury it?” “When I was eleve - “ Verad flushed. “Look, it was abandoned!” Corwin gesticulated wildly in the infant’s direction. “So was that!” The baby managed to open its eyes enough to regard Corwin from over Verad’s shoulder. The look of mild-disdain from blue-green eyes, even at such a young age, felt unsettling and somehow personal. “Well, fine, not abandoned,” Corwin amended. “I get it. You shot the mother, you feel guilty, you think you can take it in. Think it’s as easy as that? You’re not even holding it right.” “What do you mean? I swaddled it and all.” Turning, Verad held out the baby at arm’s length for inspection. “This is wrong?” “Brat, I swaddled you when you weren’t even a summer old, and I swear to the Twelve I’ll swaddle you now if you don’t give it here. It’s swivin’ leg is sticking out, for one!” Making grabbing motions, Corwin took hold of the baby and laid it out on the table, unwrapping the blanket Verad had clumsily tied it in, grumbling all the while. “Don’t need knots, honestly,” he said once the grey was laid out face-up on the home’s sole table, before laying out the blanket in a diamond shape and re-wrapping the child. “First of all,” he said as he worked. “It’s still nursing. Don’t know about you, but there’s a lack of women in the house, and Nophica’s tits are good for worshipping but not for nursin’.” “I’ve a wet-nurse,” Verad said, his tone defensive as he hovered behind Corwin to observe his work. “My sergeant, his wife just had her first. He said she’d be agreeable, wouldn’t even charge.” “Taking a chance like that. Might not want a grey near her teats no matter what your sergeant says. Can’t say I’d blame her. That aside, you’ve the coin? On a new Quiverman’s pay? It’ll be tight.” “I can make it work, Cor. Really. I’ve been fine on my own so far.” “Surely, on father’s savings and mother’s keepsakes once she passed. Going to have a harder time on the coin the Quiver’ll give out to you.” Finishing his handiwork, Corwin stepped back and examined the child, now bundled so as to look appropriately grub-like. Verad had chosen a blue blanket, and the baby seemed to disappear into the color if it weren’t for the eyes. “After nursing it’ll be clothing and real food and schooling, and teaching it a trade, and that’s coin, coin, coin you do not have, and may not.” He looked across the main room, with its sparse furnishings. There were fewer than he recalled, and some spaces along the walls where dust was absent. “Do you even have a crib?” “I had thought a blanket and mother’s old dresser for now - “ Verad was cut off by Corwin’s short, mocking laugh. “Give him to the orphanages,” he said, passing the child back to Verad. “At least if they raise it, then people shan’t call you a fool when it gets caught pinching money. Or if they won’t take him, off to the forest. Call it the will of the elementals or somesuch. Mayhaps another clan or the spirits or, I don’t know, the Ixal will take him.” “What is wrong with you?” Verad was the first to push past the whispered level of volume and shout. “His mother died in front of us, and his clan isn’t coming back for him! Yes, fine, you’re right, it’ll be hard going, but I’m not exposing him in the damn woods! It was tough for father when he had you, and ma fell ill, but he still did the best he could - “ “He damn well did not!” Corwin slammed his palm on the table for emphasis, and that was noise enough. The grey made its displeasure known with a high, keening wail, and Corwin stepped away from the noise, his hands gripping his hair. “All right! Gods, all right - rock it to sleep and shut it up and we’ll deal with it in the morning. No, not like that, slower. Is your dresser set up?” Verad nodded, bustling out of the room and into the master bed with the infant in his arms. Its eyes opened enough to cast what Corwin was sure was an angry glare at him before leaving his sight. The distance didn’t help the screams much. He passed his eyes over the main room, trying to tune out the wails and Verad’s clumsy efforts at soothing. It had been eight years since he’d left the Shroud, four since father passed and he’d started making trips back into Gridania, one since the sickness had taken mother. In all of his trips, he had not spent more than a handful of moments inside, preferring to lodge at the city’s inns. The time made recalling the exact layout of the room difficult - he remembered the stove, still warm in its corner, the long central table where father would meet with his friends off-duty and drink. Cabinet with the tableware in its place, and if he opened it he was sure it’d be the same wooden plates and bowls from his grandfather’s time. Other things, though - there had been a few more chairs, hadn’t there? A clock? He was sure of a clock, the ticking was very clear in his memory. He could recall it in the background when he was arguing with father, filling the air when each caught their breath. He should have stayed at another inn, he thought, if only he had the coin. The memories weren’t worth the screaming. Or worth much in and of themselves. Minutes passed, and the grey’s cries softened and ceased. Verad returned to the main room with an exhausted expression, leaning against the frame of the door. Corwin raised his eyebrows and gave him an amused expression. “Now imagine that,” he said, “Most nights for three to four years.” This, more than any other argument, seemed to mortify his younger brother. “That long? Surely when they can walk they stop.” “Elezen age a bit slower, and as they get older they just find more things to scream about, really. But that’s not elezen specifically, that’s kids. Don’t really start being people until they’re eight summers or so.” Verad’s horrified expression gave Corwin the smallest bit of hope. But he shook his head to chase away the thought, and the hope died. “Even then, I can’t just leave him to the city. Besides, ma said I stopped really crying like that at . . . two summers, I think? Is that true?” “Yes, well, you were in a damned hurry to become a person compared to most children,” Corwin grumbled. Verad had been so well-behaved as a youth that their parents had checked him regularly for padjal horns. “Fine, not you, not the orphanage, just - some other family, all right? There’s some other damn fools’ll take in a grey, surely.” “The morning,” Verad chided. “We’ll talk it over then. Anything else we can talk about? Please? How’s Esmond?” “Fine enough. Minding the store back at the Bazaar, griping about the humidity on the shoreline, same as always. He’d have come along, but with the plan we had, and the ambush, he didn’t want to risk it.” He gestured to cabinet. “You’ve anything strong in there? Bring it here.” “Would’ve liked to meet him,” Verad said, fetching a bottle of nearly-full bourbon and a pair of tin cups. “Seems to keep you calmer.” “Of course he’d say that, he’s the one writes the letters.” Corwin was the first to pour, offering both a healthy measure of the stuff. “If he were on the raid he’d be talking about the silver lining in all the damages. Man fits the Bazaar, I’ll tell you that.” “Is there a silver lining? What’d the Wailers say about the damages?” Verad took a careful sip, and made a face, stifling a cough. “Come on, you can do better than that.” Corwin took a longer drink than his brother. “It’s not even that strong. But the damages.” He smacked his lips. “Some good, some bad. Most of the cargo’s ruined, so that’s a little bit less grain going north to Coerthas, less soil for the botanists, other such necessities. Most of the valuable goods were on the lead coach, so those’ll sell, but not in bulk. And the Ul’dah insurers won’t touch most Shroud caravans, on account of the Hedge. And then the lost drivers, and replacing the chocobos . . . “ He placed his cheek in his hand. “It’s a loss, but I’m not in the poorhouse yet. Few people I need to check with first.” “You could always move back. Esmond’s welcome too, of course.” Verad drank again, to the sound of more coughing. “Maybe with you, but the elementals might have other ideas. And the markets here aren’t so strong as they could be for the same reason.” “Still, you could come back. We could make a good go of it between the three of us. And it’d be easier to-” He said nothing, glancing over his shoulder into the bedroom, where the dresser’s middle shelf was open. “Suppose so. We’ll think about it.” He held out his cup. “But fill this again, and do the same for yourself.” [align=center]* * * [/align] Corwin was never jealous of his younger brother, not exactly. There was too much of a difference in age between them for him to resent Verad’s looks, or the ease with which he got on with others. Corwin had to talk and talk to get someone to listen, and often Verad just had to be in the right place and offer a smile at the right time. That was fine. They were different people, and Corwin’s way of things served him well in the desert, the way that Verad’s did here. No, there was no jealousy, but there was pity. He had a terrible tendency to see the best in things, but none of the strength to make the best of things happen. That’d been so with his family, and, he had no doubt, it would be so the further along he went in the Quiver. He revered the elementals, and couldn’t at all see how others might see them as harmful, how the stories about wildlings and kidnappings struck him as unbelievable. And Verad could see himself raising a grey and being a proper father to it - but there was no chance of him defending that grey from the rest of Gridania. Corwin was sure of it. And, most of all, he pitied Verad’s constitution. Corwin had his father’s build, and out of adolescence he’d had more than a few rounds with the Wailers that his father called friends, a hobby that had done him good in his few years in Limsa, where there was no such thing as a sober pirate. Verad, on the other hand, was built more like ma when she was healthy, and ma had never had more than a tipple before it hit her. So, three bells later, when night had long since fallen and Verad’s head lay against the table near an mostly-empty bottle of bourban, Corwin carefully slid his mug aside, rose from his seat, and crept into the bedroom. A few moments later, he tiptoed towards the front door more quietly than his heavy build would suggest, a bundle wrapped in a blue blanket tucked in the crook of his arm. He had to admit, Verad had done an excellent job calming the baby down. It slept soundly as he left the building. In better, later circumstances, he might well do a decent job of raising a child. It was a pity to waste that effort on a grey.

I mean that's all well and good if you're the sort of person who values realism in combat, but it doesn't mean much for somebody who's trying to emulate 1938 Robin Hood, most of Kung Fu Hustle, or large portions of Final Fantasy cutscene fights. You can see why the latter in particular might be a desired end-goal in this game for some of the playerbase, right?

Sasarna, where the hell have you been all my life.

Accordingly, how should they be dealt with? Spare no detail.

I mean, I am. I'm just doing it here. They're not totally separate entities.

I agree, and it's why I'm working on playtesting something different. In particular, the issue of resolving a roll can take up to 20 minutes as people go back and forth spending FP and invokes and things to get the best possible result on a roll. Part of that is explained by the written format; a roll might take five minutes at most in tabletop but because everything has to be written out, things last a fair bit longer. But a larger and unavoidable part is just how much modification can be done to a roll after it's made, but before it's resolved. To be clear, there are still mechanical things I really like about Fate, like Aspects. But the moment-to-moment rolls can be irritably long. My distaste for freeform conflict resolution has little to do with time - as my response above should show, even good rules systems can have time management issues. And it has little to do with god-moding, because as Chachan says, people can learn to minmax and abuse the system. I have lost count of the number of times I've had to step in because somebody was designing a Stunt that seemed more about punishing other players than modeling the character's abilities, and "whose Stunts are too powerful" is a constant topic of discussion in the Roll Eorzea LS and Discord. My distaste for it stems from two major concerns: first, after years of watching freeform RP devolve into OOC argument, I find that for many players it's about a competition between each other in the form of "Who has the best unbeatable logic construct." That was the worst in the Wild West days of Ayenee and Rhydin, when everybody was immune to various things or had some obscure weakness, but it still shows itself in long strings of nested attacks where players try to maneuver each other into unescapable situations with lots of if/then statements and such, or by setting the terms of what they consider to be "good" combat such that the other player's style is inherently worse. The complaints about people using "would" in RP posts? That word's prominence comes from all those nested statements. The other one is that I find freeform conflict resolution really predictable, and really boring because of it. Because of either a need for OOC resolution beforehand in the case of trusted players, or the "logic construct" problem above, it's usually pretty easy to see when a fight is going to break out, how it's going to be resolved, and what the after-effects will be. Giving up some agency to a randomizer, even one that's designed to represent accurate chances rather than fair ones, can lead to results that neither party expects.

Tabletop RPers say exactly the same thing and have the same problem. Everyone wants rules that "get out of the way" in some form or another.

I spend a great deal of time working on dice systems. I made a linkshell for it, converted the FATE tabletop system for use in-game (read: converted a 300-page document to something a sixth its size and added some notes on incorporating Jobs), and am tinkering with converting another system that will be more effective at using /random in-game to eliminate the need for an outside roller. I'm basically fine with character sheets because I want the complexity and interesting results that come from more detailed RPG systems while also getting the better writing and prose styles of freeform players. What I want from dice specifically are the same thing that OP has described - accurate assessments of character ability in resolving conflict. But what I also want is the capacity for dramatic upsets, which is where most people seem to stumble at the 'Why should a novice have a fair chance against an expert" conundrum. I agree they shouldn't have a fair chance, but if they don't have some chance at all of success, even as slim as 1%, then I don't see a point in rolling. FATE did a decent job at this by relying on a swingy roll system and by including a metamechanic that allowed characters to be more effective at a roll if it was important to their personal story development or plot hooks or what-have-you. What I'm working on now includes flat bonuses for characters over a certain level of ability when competing against characters below that. I'm also looking for mechanical means of resolving conflicts that lead to interesting decisions beyond "Roll, describe how the conflict ends.' That means thinking about levels of success and failure and restricting the ability of players to use the same ability indefinitely. As far as making character sheets, I look for systems that allow for a lot of flexibility in defining what your character can do. This is partly because very few roleplayers adhere strictly to the Class/Job system in the game such that it could be converted to a class system, and partly because most players aren't making a character for the system but rather converting an already-existing character to it, and freeform characters have been, in my experience, pretty broad. Can't begin to recall the number of times I've walked players through the issue of "I can't seem to include all the stuff I think is important about this character on this sheet" when working with Fate-14. The real problem with dice systems I've found are character advancement, especially when new players start using the system after many players have used it long-term. Many old dice guilds on AOL had the problem of a hierarchy forming from more "experienced" characters lording it over weaker ones, and so I try to avoid that when thinking about how to describe character advancement. So far, the ability to rewrite character stats at a slow pace over time has shown some success, but I think more can be done there. Ultimately, I look for systems that marry the best traits of tabetop roleplay with the more freeform desires of the playerbase, balancing the desire for interesting mechanics with the interests of players who just want to get on with it already. There's an actual Final Fantasy RPG system or two floating around the internet, but I wouldn't think of using them online because they're both too rules-heavy.

That being the case, here is some more practical advice for accommodating immersionist RPers: As other posters have noted above, write in third-person. This makes it easier to use the /emote command. Past or present-tense is largely a matter of preference. Avoid writing anything that could be construed as describing what your character thinks if the other character couldn't notice it. The common version of this is to avoid actions like "Niamh thinks Verad is being a jerk right now," because Verad isn't a mind-reader and couldn't possibly notice that - it's a statement made for the writer, not the character. At the more extreme end, some players dislike it when you write anything that could be considered interpretive: "Niamh clearly looks annoyed." Minimize OOC communication. Although there will inevitably be some communication for the sake of establishing your boundaries as players, you should avoid spending a lot of time chatting about the scene as it's happening. Watch out for "bleed" between the character's feelings and the player's feelings, especially if the player of another character gets flirtatious right after starting an IC romance with yours. Avoid getting mixed up in IC combat until you have a clearer sense of how the people you play with resolve conflicts.

Somebody already mentioned Method acting, and I think that's a useful comparison - not only because of the desired goal, but because, like Method acting, immersing in RP is romanticized to its own detriment, treated as a goal in and of itself While many people use the above-stated definition that it just means "being really engaged in the work," I have seen players in both tabletop and freeform define it as a kind of shared dream-state, describing the state in quasi-spiritual terms whereby they leave themselves behind and embody their character. At least one WoW RPer I know of insisted they were engaging in a totally different personality with different sets of emotions and beliefs when they were playing; I think they were fronting in a "It's what my character would do!" kind of way, but assuming good faith for the sake of argument, that's a sentiment I've seen expressed by a number of players over a period of years. I say it's romanticized because, again like Method acting, it is often seen as a more authentic and true form of play, despite being a state of being that is largely internal and not easily seen by others. The recent thread about pre-arranged romantic RP, wherein a number of players expressed their distaste for it because it didn't feel "organic," comes from a similar place. In both tabletop and freeform alike it leads to fights over what mechanics or RP etiquette are appropriate on the assumption that good examples of each allow for maximum immersion with a minimum of interruptions. It's for the above reasons that I don't use "immersed" to mean "engaged," and just say "engaged." If I like the play, but don't feel part of it (which is constantly), I just say that, to avoid confusion from a small-but-significant number of players who really will think I mean I felt like my character more so than usual. I can't answer some of the OP's questions accordingly, but I can say that "declaring you are immersed" in a play on an OOC level is for some, unnecessary, and for others a bit like faking an orgasm.

It just occurred to me there's a significant overlap between the posters saying that pre-planned RP feels hollow and forced in this thread, and the posters saying they have a right to respond to public RP without feeling the need to send a tell asking if it's okay in the other thread about public RP etiquette. How much of this is born from actual confusion over the thread topic itself instead of a general confusion that other people don't like immersive RP that much, and have reasons for doing so?

In this thread, RP Whole Foods. The best RP is fair-trade, free of pesticides and human rights abuses, and non-GMO. As for me, I like my RP processed, packed with unholy preservatives, and using monstrous randomizers that ruin everything and are built on the misery and labor of others. The goal of having natural and spontaneous creative outpourings that result from true and natural development between writers is meaningless to me, and I often find those results to be more predictable than if I had just pre-planned things or brought dice into the equation. There are a number of good OOC reasons why players would choose to engage in pre-planned romances, but since the question is focused on why people would post forum ads looking for pre-arranged romance instead of, say, pre-establishing one with a player the writer already knows and trusts, let's stick with that. And since other people have pointed out the "red flag" issue, let's skip that. Instead, frame these requests in the context of another type of thread we get with some frequency: "Why won't anybody RP with me when I walk up to them?" or its kissing cousin, "Why can't I get a storyline rolling beyond 'shallow' tavern RP?" For some people, this platonic ideal, this organic state of artisanal free-range cruelty-free romance hasn't happened, and for some it seems like it can't happen, because every time they try to do things "organically" they've failed or been ignored, and it's been that way for a long time. When people post these kinds of threads all they're really told is to keep hammering away at the problem. Some people accept this advice, and some decide to circumvent it and advertise what they're looking for. It seems unfair to disparage the choice when they may well have tried the alternative and not found it to be the immersive utopia it's cracked up to be, either because they couldn't get it at all, or because, as other people have already mentioned, it can get creepy in a hurry when it turns out their partner is looking to develop an organic OOC relationship as well, to the point of becoming outright abusive. And then there are people who don't really see any aesthetic value in the sentiment that it feels "natural" and "unpredictable" or whatever when the roleplay develops naturally. Certainly, it's great when you stumble upon a writer you didn't know before with whom you have a good rapport, and do so largely by coincidence. But as somebody who doesn't value "organic" RP1, that feels less like an ideal form of the hobby and more like a lucky act of networking. I don't romanticize it, or let it inform how I approach my roleplay. 1Those of you who know me reasonably well might ask "But Verad, one of the things you like doing is walking up to strangers and selling them garbage IC, how is that anything but organic roleplay?" The terrible secret: my character's sales-pitches are pretty much scripted at this point, and the responses of the players are pretty much predictable, following down one of about four different response tracks. It's as organic as Spam.

It is not, and that would be an appropriate reaction for the poster on this forum.

This is exactly what you are doing.

As always, there is a great deal of world-building and setting information that will be useful when subjecting roleplayers to future torments, packaged in a standard Final Fantasy storyline. 10/10. As a narrative element, Zenos was fine. Callback to a standard form of an FF nihilist villain in the same way that so many of the monsters are callbacks to previous games and 6 in particular. Does it only count as a callback if we like being reminded of it? Mechanically, Zenos was used in a way that corrected a problem I had with Heavensward's use of Thordan - he kicked our ass a lot. Thordan felt like a letdown because he was defeated immediately after his first appearance, an unfortunate consequence of the writers trying to keep the Knights of the Round reveal close to their chests. Zenos, on the other hand, is placed up-front and promptly smacks the player down, then does it again a second time for good measure. The character's emphasis on fostering hatred in his enemies to make them stronger offered a new perspective on Ilberd's plan at the end of 3.X and highlighted the futility of creating Shinryu; not only was it a misguided effort that would cause more destruction than it stopped, but it was one Ilberd's enemy actively desired and immediately appropriated for his own use. He was playing to Zenos' interests all along. Lyse is also fine in the mold of the earnest heroine who never really does anything but feels all her feelings very strongly kind of way. Pretty normal for a JRPG/anime war story as an audience surrogate/moral beacon meant to highlight the futility of war. The more "complicated" nature of Hien means little to me in contrast. There was never any chance in the story's structure that Doma would roll over and surrender, and Hien would actually offer his head. It just wasn't in the cards. He had very nice eyebrows though. I would be more comfortable with Gosetsu's survival if there hadn't been so many scenes in which he ruminated on the inevitability and acceptance of death and his past failings. Moving forward, I'm interested to see if the story will push the hatred/forgiveness angle represented in the dichotomy between Lyse and Zenos. Fordola's survival may be important to that theme, since a lot of Ala Mhigans are going to want her head. Hopefully, the writers will approach this a bit more artfully than they did in HW.

The problems with city guard role play like the Sekiseigumi are well documented and probably don't need to be repeated here without prompting. But bear them in mind when creating an FC built around this concept.

In truth, I am directly responsible for the growth of the ERP community in Balmung. You may direct your bemoans and discontent to me. You may call this implausible, but doesn't it feel better to have a scapegoat? So do it anyway.

I'll definitely miss the music, especially for end-of-dungeon bosses.

Within the boundaries of a game, you decide if you're comfortable with ludonarrative dissonance or not. If you are, then the complaints that are always raised regarding magical and healing-related inconsistencies don't matter.

In my experience, I saw that approach done not with amnesia, but with "My character is from Doma and your ways are strange and foreign to me." I wonder how that will change with Stormblood, if at all.

This is a highly subjective response. My suspension of disbelief is pretty flexible; if things don't work the way they're supposed to IRL, I remember I'm not IRL, and that my goal in RP isn't necessarily to simulate IRL. I suspect this is true for many other RPers, and that even those who value verisimilitude still have some level at which they are willing to overlook the unreal or the unrealistic for the sake of getting on with things or because the other player has a writing style interesting enough that they don't mind. Because (so the argument goes, as this is not mine), having a broken leg isn't part of a culture which stigmatizes (or, depending on circumstance, romanticizes) that particular ailment due to fictional portrayals thereof. I use mental illness specifically because of the frequency with which I've seen the cry of "do your research and portray this as realistically as possible" applied to mental illness as part of a kind of grassroots push to remove that stigma them through realistic but nevertheless sympathetic portrayals. It's all well and good if your complaint is "I need it to be realistic in order for me to enjoy the portrayal." Some people like pineapple on their pizza after all. However, that complaint is often extended beyond the realm of subjective taste by adding that a lack of realism is somehow immoral. In such a circumstance, I'd be more embarrassed to be dressed as a six foot tall blue-grey elf.

I use amnesia as a plotpoint for Verad in the sense that he has a long and storied history he doesn't remember with only a memoir full of outrageous lies and a hint of truth as a guideline. It's a convenient way to slot in storylines related to dumb adventures from his past as the mood strikes, and, his personality being what it is, lets me focus on RPing his actions in the present instead of focusing overmuch on his backstory. It's also a convenient way for players I trust to create adventures of their own, leading to one of the few times I've been genuinely surprised by something somebody else created in RP. Whether it's respectful or not to sufferers of amnesia isn't particularly relevant or interesting to me; I am pretty insensitive to the trend of only portraying issues like mental illness in highly-researched formats for the sake of didacticism. Knock yourself out if you care to do so, but the actual effect it will have on amnesia sufferers is minimal to nonexistent one way or the other.

Post-Mortem So here's what worked: Turns: The adopted system taken from Seasons worked really well, and I have to credit Halren Rhalsgard for coming up with the original. It was extremely useful for managing the actions of many people. I think I need to make adjustments for maximum number of turns a character can reasonably use at once, dispense with the Discussion action as being generally useless, and figure out some way to allow multiple people to work together on single actions that aren't important enough to be turned into Act events, but otherwise this was a great system and I highly recommend both the original and the modified version used in Merchant, Marine. Commodore Haelstyrmm: Man, people hated this guy, which was as intended. He did a number of useful things for me - he made the storyline more complicated than "re-establish Limsan sovereignty over these turncoats," he spat in the face of the "show don't tell" rule writers use to great effect (at no point did I ever show him engaging in wanton acts of physical cruelty, merely implied by reputation and OOC, with the sole exception of Osric's post involving the Black Spot), and he proved there's nothing RPers hate more than a sense of smug rudeness. Organizing Large Events: Normally Fate events run at about 4-6 players to help minimize the amount of OOC that has to be done. The scale of the big naval battle around Gloam, however, demanded more players and opening that event to such a size required me to adopt new organizational practices to accommodate everyone. After a rough first hour, everybody adapted quickly, and an event I was afraid might take two days was successfully ended before midnight my time. I highly recommend using smaller parties with OOC "Callers" for each player's actions, as was done for this event, not just for ship combat but mass combat. Trials: Back in my days of RP on WoW, I remember many a guild attempting to run some public trial, and I remember all of them being total embarrassments. Every character insisted on acting like they were the protagonist of the trial, replete with all the shocking twists common to Phoenix Wright games and old courtroom dramas. I was very interested in working with this not only to see if trials could be done more effectively but if they could have real weight without the pre-determined outcomes they tended to have in the many events I saw. The overall result of this was a success - the Morris Trial in particular was a high-stakes event with a lot of emotional investment on all sides, and the first event of a Trial, "An Impartial Martial," let all participants know that the conception of Limsan naval codes in this storyline was a kind of half-applied farce more reliant on the opinion of the captains than on the codes themselves. The final trial for Haelstyrmm's hearing was a bit worse, but even that had some variation in outcome (and was related to other reasons which will be discussed below. Theme: Well, I wanted a Limsan sea story that wasn't about Nym or Treasure Island/PotC-style piratical antics, and I certainly managed that much. Looking to the works of Melville and C.S. Forester proved a valuable resource for avoiding the standard tropes of buried treasure and pirate curses. The Immersabilis: Last year, shortly before the end of Crimes, my partners in crime in that story found me screaming "MAGITEK SUBMARINE" at them in various chat windows. It was too good an idea to pass up and entirely plausible given the nature of Garlemald and Garlean technology. It served as an excellent first point of focus in the story as the players and characters alike grappled with how to develop the technology to beat it. Here's what I think worked and maybe other people don't: The Warrior of Light: I will die on this hill and I don't care. I did not plan on including the WoL as an NPC, but once the circumstances made it sensible that they would arrive once players started dragging Scions into the circumstances, I thought it would be stranger not to include them. I also managed, in my view, to create the right means of including the WoL - as a heroic but ultimately passive figure that steps up when it seems all else has failed, and one so indistinct that nobody really quite recalls their appearance in any meaningful way. Saved me a lot of time on description, let me tell you that. Eamon Eglantine: At Fanfest last year, Edda picked my brain on the course of the plot and became curious as to whether she could work Eamon into it. We conspired to have him in the background quietly supplying the Gloam separatists as part of a deal with his Garlean connections. The hope was that the blowback from this would eventually affect his business and Edda by proximity, but circumstances kept arranging such that the character was able to skate by without much trouble, and most of the players found more immediately pressing things to do than investigate his connection to the plot. While his background contributions were important, I do feel bad that I couldn't include Edda more thoroughly than I did. Don't worry Edda! Your number will come up. Here's what I think didn't work: Not Enough Pirates: So when I made this storyline and the ship rules intended to accompany it, I had the notion that pirate players and pirate-themed FCs would join the storyline because it would let them actually do piratical things with their ship. This didn't happen - in part, I feel, because I reneged on the plot restriction described below. Thus, most of the players who joined with ships were generally Maelstrom loyalists whose ships were part of the auxiliary fleet command structure rather than being of a more piratical or privateering bent. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but that did lend to the more militaristic, legalistic theme the story eventually developed. Not Enough Coordination: Too many cooks would be another way to put this, but I don't want people to hear the song in their heads. Suffice it to say that many people underwent different plans which all faltered not because there was anything wrong with any one plan - I'm flexible, and most responses are feasible, if difficult. Rather, people kept getting sidetracked as to which plan they wanted to implement, which led to many abandoned actions halfway through. One thing I'll need to work on with Turns is player coordination to prevent players from burning through many turns on an idea they then abandon shortly after. Everybody Was Wanted: By the end of this storyline at least 2/3rds of the cast were wanted in Limsa for various crimes. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but it can be easy for that to dominate the plot when everybody has reason to distrust everybody else and a reason to sick the legal authorities upon them. Not Enough Co-DMs: In Crimes Against Nature, I was supported by Nihka and Spahro. They helped me with sideplots and main plot material alike. This didn't happen as much here. Spahro was unavailable for IRL reasons, and while Nihka was initially helpful, I didn't rely on her as much as I rightly should have. In larger storylines, I plan to correct this so it doesn't happen again. No Plot Limitation: This takes some explanation. I had originally planned on limiting this storyline so that new players could sign up without fighting for spots with more experienced Fate-14 players. However, I did that on the expectation that veterans had other plots they could play instead, and the linkshell's roster of storylines was at a low ebb; many were on hiatus or outright cancelled. Thus, there seemed to be no problem with removing the restriction. In hindsight, that was a mistake, because the other plots started up again weeks or months after. I feel I should have stuck to my guns, which would have prevented some of the other problems described above. Too Much OOC Communication: This is unusual to say, but bear with me. This was the first storyline where Roll Eorzea had a Discord. This meant the players were in more regular OOC contact than was the case in my past storylines. Not a problem in and of itself, but in a storyline where characters started turning and fighting each other, it led to a lot of OOC taunting that started out in a good-natured fashion but, as time proceeded, became more genuinely hostile and stressful. In future storylines, I will be finding some means of limiting OOC communications just to keep players from stressing each other out. What's Next? I'm done with Fate-14 for now. It's fine, it's fun, other people want to run things for it, and I have no further material I want to add to it. I am currently working on playtesting a system which does some things more effectively than Fate-14 - faster rolls, in-game roller - at the cost of some things other people like - such as Stunts - to see how well that fares in future storylines. To that end, the next thing is a closed storyline done for the sake of playtesting. Stay tuned for IC posts for Verad Bellveil Vs. The World.