Hammersmith

Spotting someone who has their RP game on point in a crowd is like spotting a leopard printed Unicorn. Man does it get your attention when it happens. I can fabricate an excuse to have my char crash into nearly any RP? But ultimately, however cool a char might be, if they arn't running on somewhat similar social structures and rules of engagement at the time, that might not work out. The downside is someone like that also often has a tonne of attention already directed in their general direction. Getting Sempai's attention is -hard-. So I like to fire testing shots first before crashing through walls. Find the edges of the social circle this strange mythical beast is running in and feel out the borders, see who they've surrounded themself with. Sometimes there's -more unicorns- in that crowd because quality attracts, to some degree (not always) quality. And man, that's tough. But it works! I've made decent amounts of contacts with Cool Peoples this way. It's way easier to just pine from afar but, most of the time, when I've had the eventual motivation to try it and crawl out of my Fortress of Turtletude, it turns out good! I've only had it turn into a shit-can once or twice and it was -very easy to drop them like a rock-.

Have opinions. Not about yourself, not about other people. Have opinions about places and things in the setting. Bring them out when that Opinion is relevant. Have a stance to speak from, don't Just Be In the Moment. Have a background that has specific things that can be dragged out when they're relevant. Research what you're talking about before your open your mouth on it. Experience is deferred to if you even -sound- like you know what you're talking about. You don't even need a clip-board. You can often get away with just wikipedia and the ability to reasonably apply what you're learning to what your char has gone through. Have ties with other people. Have ties to events in other people's lives. Have events in your experiences that have a direct correlation with other people and their own opinions. You don't need to be grim, you don't need to be dark. But no one will know there's a reason unless you let the reasons out, even in small doses. No one's going to care about the carried weight unless you let them in to do it. Use your experience to let people into the story.

Said it before, saying it again: Concepts that have a "quirky special gimmik!" that has no bearing on the RP other than to make something stand out are bad concepts. If it's not adding to the char, it's pointless fluff and muddies the story in ways that make it hard to interact with the char, and to treat them as a whole person during the course of RP ( If several key points of your existence have no actual point you'rr less a robot and more a mannequin, which makes the concept the RP equivalent of a brick wall. UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO INVEST IN THE CONCEPT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY NOT BOTHER. That said: This sort of concept can work! Transhumanism is a nasty concept that can break the sense of self and the mental complications that come after that makes for a REAL interesting story. Everything from Star trek's Data to Ghost in the Shell are good examples of dealing with a man-machine border, asked for or not, and what that does to the idea of what makes you 'human'. Read up on the idea. Just don't make "lol I'm a robot desu"

This is not an excuse to be something stupid or abuse in RP. No char can make choices. No char exists in a vacuum as an autonomous agent. "My char did it you can't judge me for the actions sorry I shit in your punchbowl" is not a reason. It's an excuse for shitty action you have complete control over avoiding, and it should be avoided. Don't be That Guy. Don't use your char as a disruptive and destructive force in a community. If you think your char would be like this? Rethink having that char. If you think your char would do something that would make the game unfun for others and yourself? You have control over not doing it. It's as simple as not pressing enter.

You can carry a knife and still trust everyone. Carry it in your mouth. Every time you open it, We await the sharpening noise of worship. Cry out into the darkness The sermon that doesn’t cease: You cannot be abandoned. You can only be released. — Church of the Broken Axe Handle, by Derrick Brown "What I think about weddings." Something stumbled through the scrub of the Shroud's forest. It was headed for a rock outcropping, some monolithic remnant of Dalmud's fall that had embedded itself in the forest's flesh and stayed as a splinter of rock in a world of wood and loam and ancient forest. It didn't belong. Neither did the giant that was climbing it's side. "Oh come on now. You loved them. You just hate the idea someone else might make it out alive out of one." "The fuck do yez know?" There was a fire lit at the top of the minature mountain's plateu top. A campsite the Roe had been tending to for weeks now. Outside the constant buzz of the Company house. Solitude. "Enough. Envy always was your worst drive." "Worst an best. The fuck do they know." A grunt got the giant over the ledge. Another grunt hauled up a pack with a bottle on it's side. "Enough to pin stripes on you" "Command. Fuckin nightmare." A third grunt got the lumbering roe to his feet and towards the fire burning outside an empty tent. Smoke, sparks, and dull gold light dancing on the flat, smooth, dragon kissed stone. "This kind of thinking for you in trouble a long while back." "Alla them got the same damn surprised fuckin look on their face every time comes up. Gets old bein a fuckin monkey." Hammer settled down next to the fire to pull various clay jars, glass vials, and alchohol bottles from the pack. One stayed rolling in the palm of his hand. One with a stinking, black liquid that looked more like syrup than it did something to be consumed. There was only a fourth of a draught left in the thing. "Well you should stop looking like an old gorilla." "Hard do that. Gotten good attit." He started working at the cork. "You get stared at because the rest of them don't have a problem with it. Like those two dear sweet boys on the alter. Or that other couple. You were soused at that wedding as well. Bet you can't even remember their faces." "That wis the point." The pop of the bottle opening echoed into the night as the giant settled in to stare east over the desert of green that was the top of the shroud's canopy. "Both your fellow Ruperts have someone else to slide against in the quiet and whisper at. Green one has someone they trust to toss secret meanings with. The Dancer found a new partner to be shy with. That Lord you're signed on with is secure in knowing his place, just not with anyone taking it. Even that pink horned one has a better grip on how to drift in that bloody dance of trust. They've hit a few walls but at least they're honest about drinking to forget their fuckups. Even the Void Eater seems happy with the one they decided to trust. Or at least secure in knowing what's coming." A toast of a black bottle to a black horizon. "So where that leave me, other than pissed about weddings? Eh? Other than about t'fall asleep in front o'a fire inna dark?" "...you wouldn't." A laugh into the emptyness. "Hah! Sure would. Least then I'd be talkin sommat I trust." "It's thinking like that got you shot six times in the chest, you know. Thinking like that made you end up alone. No family, no nothing. Thinking like that let the Apprentice out the nest and the world empty, leaving you waiting to do quiet in a hut out in the middle of the gods forsaken ends of an island." And a sigh to follow. "Yeah that didn't go so grand didit?" "I don't know. You got over it." A hand tossing wood into a fire to drive the void away high in the Shroud's umbral silence. "Moon droppi'll do that." "And drove you looking for something a little more hmm?" Feeding flames to highlight a wolfish smile floating in the shadows holding that ugly black bottle. "Maybe. Maybe. Still allowed be pissed at weddings though eh?" "Worse things to want to pass out after." Another toast to a horizon starting to burn with it's own banishing brightness. "Aye then. Here's to need. Here's t'ae tryin remember it. N'hatin every tick o'the clock doin it." "You're going to die alone and sobbing, old man." A giant drinking the syrupy, black bottle dry. "Here's hoping." "Here's hoping not." A blood red tongue searching for the last drops in the glass walls. "Here's hopin one way or no...ther." A heavy body falling backwards onto the stone. "Idiot." And the sound of snoring rolling over the sunrise in the Shroud. Another day breaking.

Yess, yessssss, good. TAKE NO PRISONERS, HAMMER! Time to break all those rules about not engaging in Thuggery Ham was told to keep up with. Every. Last. One of them. han3AfjH210

Sorry Smallfry. Couldn't hear you all the way down in wee people land. : D

While there's only like, half a foot between Max Slider Roe Male and Max Slider Highlander Male, the Roe ends up gaining like a foot in width up and beyond the highlander. That's a LOT of body mass and extra model. Male Roes are built like brick shit houses.

In REAL GRITTY RP TIMEz, instant healing bugs the shit out of me. It's a sloppy 'instant' solution to what should be a serious problem. It's a lazy coincidence solution. Which is fine in SOME CASES. But it removes impact, consequence, and strugger from stuff that needs weight. Otherwise people would never die, ever, or ever get crippled, or hurt, or be sick. These problems exist, it stands to reason that healing does not (most of the time) work like that. In combat that's Not Grindstone? Dulling pain, aetheric shields, stopping bleeding, forcing shallow cuts to scar over quickly, those sorts of things are cool, and combat-medicy. It remains flashy without making it a regenerating limb syndrome or, gods help up, Pheonix Down Death Solutions. A good shield or bleed staunch is the difference between bleeding out or getting shot in the head. Getting an energy rush during an extended skirmish is, legitimately, game changing. It makes Healers Active Support players in a combat situation and it's -awesome-.

Feel like there's also a tendency for queer women to play Roe; as an aside from the "hurr durr meathead" stereotype. So perhaps if folk see too few roe they don't know any queer ladies or ultratough guys. I edited the post I made because a huge part of that scene isn't a safe queer gender space at all. It's a lot of men looking to get their creepy rocks off. The Quicksand makes that real easy to validate.

One of the problems Roe have is their "Race Backgrounds" are either "Piratical fucker" or "Literal Mountain Man" So you come from a race of rum sodden raiders, or huge redneck ogres from the spine. This is an oversimplification (The Hellsguard tradition of kicking kids out/sending them out into the world has HUGE opportunities, and the Seawolves OWN Limsa) But when it comes down to it, the Roe are the least Kawaii race in the game and the game is played by a mass of formless, loathesome weeaboo. You'll see roe, but they get shelved into the HUGE HUGE HUGE meathead area of RP accordingly by most when played seriously. Or filthy and normally quite disgusting fetish bait with horse-schlongs hidden behind max tit-slider settings. There's very few "I play roe because I like Roe Lore" players. Run for your life.

Hammer needs a Chaucer. Yesss.

Ishgarde: War profiteer and arms dealer. No evidence to arrest, due in part to it being agreed that extracting Hammersmith from anywhere by force would have an extremely poor cost benefit ratio. Ala Mhigo: The War Machine expert the Destroyer Temple tried to get killed as a tunnel sapper. Gridania: Unwelcome. Something about forest fires and Angering Elementals. Ul'dah: The Sgt. who used to handle all of the siege equipment repairs and logistics for the Immortal Flames. Tried to retire, failed because SOMEONE DROPPED A MOON ON WHERE HE RETIRED TO, spends his days hurting people at the Grindstone and causing trouble for everyone in arms reach as a Paragon of 'Angry Old Man' these days. Limsa: Arms dealer, war profiteer, and banned from most of the taverns except the one the Blacksmith's guild members use as a stomping ground. Revnant's Toll: Hammer has been seen riding shotgun on several caravans over the course of -decades- through this part of the world. Known merchant dealing mostly in weapons, exotic exports, and and less than reputable luxury consumables. General Knowledge: Furious sellsword with a lack of morals and even fewer reservations about acting on that lack.

Critting harder than a BLM as a WAR

The two trend towards being one and the same. Those that have tend to be of a specific group, and to their best to keep a specific group in power. You can see this all through history from the Mayflower families in the Northeast to the abuse of the Irish in the turn of the century, to the MASSIVE AND ENDMIC racial divide in America right now that's shown up in everything from subtle cultural highjacking and exploitation to creations of segregation of races by home loan denials. Those that have, keep having, and will defend that structure. Classism and racism are two tools used by the same people for the same end. "We're rich. Keep out." There's lots of other tools involved in this kind of social fuckery, that Beef touches on. Because by fuck does it keep them in power. It's one of the reasons the MSQ is so dangerous to Ishgarde and why I was surprised we didn't get a Bolsheveck revolution after one of the Revelations. I still think that could happen in some of the coming patches, if shit gets bad.

This is mostly my point, though: Look at what those people wielding power have done. With the exception of Cid (who ain't done jack when it comes to anything power-y, dude just invents awesome stuff) everyone else you named is a bad guy. The sorts of people that the normie army would rally against to try and kill. The sort of people that go down as horrible villains. And this is before we get age and myth turning this stuff into Lu Bu tier storytelling. If it was as common as we treat it that Random Adventurer #73 could just suddenly develop the ability to treat NPCs like, well, NPCS, then there'd be a crisis on our hands. It could make a neat story; People without power will fear those who do, especially once Superpowers come onto the scene. To invoke the size discrepancy stuff: If you're a tiny hyur woman who's suddenly suplexing Demon Train, the people around you are going to notice, and they are going to be terrified. /think think think They arn't all Bad Guys. Lousioux is a noted hero, the Twelvesguard is neigh mythical in becoming some of the Warriors of Light, the Padjals manage the Black Shroud and Gridania's relationship with the elements. But you are absolutely right. Common mankind should be scared of shit of this stuff, regardless. It's why there's freecompanies, it's why there's Grand Companies and guild. They separate the chaff out looking for greatness, to some degree (though some idiots just happen into it, looking at you Biggs and Wedge.)

"Aw hell Naul" works good for Hammer stomes

This actually leads me to wonder why we haven't had super villains yet. If the level of power is really so drastic when jumping from "normal" Eorzeans to "special" Eorzeans, are we really to believe that no one has ever gone full Doctor Doom yet? The fall of Ala Mhigo displaced huge swaths of desperate, angry people. Not a one of them came into their gifts and decided to take it out on Ul'dah? Or the Empire? If there really are people out there capable of decimating platoons how come we don't have record of these terrifying supermen laying waste to the population? There's not a chance that the Monetarists would be content just sitting around waiting for someone they've financially ruined to develop mega-strength and come hunting them. Makes me curious if we're all getting it "wrong" and the overall level of power is just a game mechanic to make the WoL looks awesome. We do, kinda. A lot of the mythos in FF actually tracks people like that. Like the Zodiac Braves. Ironeater was a Zodiac and Mythril Heart from the WAR quest, notably, were said to rip the arms off behemoths and destroy formations of 'normie' soldiers. They're out there. Part of me more wonders if the shift from "Aw shit, it's THAT motherfucker. We should get the hell out before we all die" to "This guy was legendary and Dr. Doomy" is the sort of thing time instills into a telling of something. As for Dr. Doom? Crystal Tower has lots of that sort of thing. We don't know MUCH about the Allegan empire, but they had the potential for that sort of thing, and it even -actually happened- in terms of Big Evil Plan Time. (I'm looking at you Dalamud) Looking at the 6'th age we -just left- you have an empire bringing a literal moon down on a continent, a dude that turned into a pheonix and helped BLOW UP THE MOON, "godly intervention" to save the Twelvesblade, Padjals, The Ultima Fucking Weapon, Cid the Incredible Deus Ex Machina, city states slaying Primals, secret goblin organizations raising God Machines, Ancient Wyrms returning, people becoming literal Gods Among Men and, of course, Our Favorite Ascians Back in the Fray. There's a LOT of legendary stuff happening. There IS A LOT OF POWER floating around in FF. The question is more "why are we not doing that" and the answer is, almost universally "Because blowing the planet up kind of makes the game unplayable for other people". RPers can't control all other RPers. We will never have a full sized server-wide plot or Dr. Doom or Darkseid, or the like, and we as RPers will never have a unified pantheon of acknowledged heroes. Because no one is telling out story for us, we're doing it ourselves, with others, but ultimately self guided. Which means restraint and compromise. Which means less Dr. Doom and more street-level personal stuff.

WAR about to pull a boss:

You have such a charming way of putting things in perspective. But I see what you are saying and I think I agree. He wouldn't necessarily be evil in the way of killing everyone, but still doing his own thing without worry for right or wrong. You could do this, sure. Ultimately a lot of what the story of Power is the conviction to use it and not be changed with it, or not to use it, or be completely be consumed by it. I think throwing away the Conviction part of the DRK concept is a bad idea, much like saying you're playing a WAR and then being a complete pacifist is a surefire route to mental dissonance. So if you do this kind of thing? What's the drive. Why is being Selfish the proper Conviction to Use Power? What pressure keeps you in that facet, what makes that a push that keeps you as a DRK instead of say: A mob boss or a gang leader? What requires the DRK part of that? Are you going to "clean" up the underworld under your leadership? Are you going to wipe out all other gangs and settle things in the violent parts of the city so you can do your whatever-work uninterrupted? What makes criminal, or just selfish, a concept that works with DRK? Why bother with DRK at all when you could just be playing: A Criminal, or A Mob Boss, or A Theif. You haven't given us any info beyond "Gonna be selfish", which means it CAN happen, but that's no indicator of if it's a Good Idea or not. It's got a lot of potential for "Square hole round peg" syndrome unless you work with the core thematics of DRK which end up being: What drives the emotion that makes Selfish And Profiting Yourself The Correct Path For Everyone Else as well. Why does everyone else need to bend knee? Why is that a Right everyone else could be put to death for?

Well that sets that. Hammer'll show up for the Harbringers. Once I pass around the idea that might change champions, depending on if they want their company champion to be a lumbering blood covered maniac or not.

I'm interested but I'm also not going to front 200k so I can enter solo. Which means I'd be all over this if the pricing were different. As is I have to ask my FC for permission, come up with 200k (I am not a rich man), and from there lose that 200k because RNGsus is an unkind and wrathful god. In short the cost for 'glory' is steep here for those of us who are in FCs and but just want to punch people in the face regardless of Glory. I'll enter if Hammer can come in under independent. Otherwise I doubt I'll be able to scrape the money for it, much less get my FC to just hand me a tidy sum like that.