Hammersmith

Being all "I was there for killing a Primal" or "I killed a Primal" tred dangerous grounds. Most of the Primals have "canonical" points where they were summoned and beat down before the MSQ took place. Titan&Levi at Limsa and Ifrit down in Thanalan, specifically, get these kind of "They almost nuked a city last time" callouts. On the otherhand: You're in Final Fantasy and you have options! 1) You might have BEEN there at the canonical Primal slayings(Titan, Levi, and Ifrit have all RECENTLY shown up in the last 20+ years before the MSQ), and then you dug into Egi work with the Sons or something during scholarly pursuits. A career adventurer might well have been at Primal Slayings in the 7'th astral era, recently even, before the Calamity. This is a "Deepest Lore" approach, and there's nothing wrong with it. Hell, it's kind of solid, and fits the given history as we know it along with the basics of "How does an Egi work?" concepts. Just don't be Goku and be responsible for all primal slaying every wow I'm so powerful look at me, and you're fine. Keep it reasonable, keep it sane. 2) Your summons arn't Egi summons. Maybe you weave ether into constructs that act as spell channelers. Maybe you let your subconcious steer a magical construct or Homunculi. Maybe it's a magitec animatronic that you've been working on that spews fire and transforms (and rolls out?) into different primal 'shapes' to activate different devices inside it. This is the freeform approach that detatches from 'pure' lore and moves onto more plausible but less canonically 'true' methods of being a 'summoner' without being a Summoner. These are also neat, and often very creative! You're also in short spinning your own ways to make these things work, which means you need to make sure you're not spinning a God Mod powered char out of thin air, since you're making up your own lore for it. Just remember to Not Be a Dick and you'll be fine here.

srJYQESO34g A good mix of patiently dangerous.

The one night Hammer bartends for realsies, there's no fight. I take this failure as my own and apologize. :cry:

Hammer has an entire sack full of regrets and questionable life choices. He deals with it with anger, manipulation, maliciousness, and copious amounts of mood altering substances that keep him walking a fine line of functional and rolling to a berserk fury to share the feelings with everyone within arms reach of him. HkNTxVE1nl4

Hellsguard don't have true 'names' since they don't see themselves defined by their bloodline. They aren't their family, and they aren't carrying that on their shoulders. (Or, at least, the ones who set out from the Spine and into the world aren't) The few bits of Roe lore we have say they pick a set of words that are easy for Outlanders (Everyone else who doesn't speak the Totally Not Welsh Roe tounge), to pronounce. Some, as suggested by Curious Gorge, get -given- a name that's kind of like a nickname and that just sticks, becoming their name. Gorge, in particular, says his name has a 'funny story' behind it. As some people have Noted, Hammer is in the habit of calling people by 'Nicknames' and "Given" names rather than their actual names, because that's how he was brought up and the idea that people aren't always going by some 'contextual' name just never grocked with him. You can call someone like Hammersmith "Mr. Hammersmith", but that's not his last name. You're just putting it there because it's the second word in his presented/chosen name here in "Not the Spine" land. Works Like a last name, but there's never going to be a family line of Hammersmiths or the Hammersmith family. At best you'll end up with someone tacking on "Yannow, Hammersmith's kid" onto the end, to denote family alliegance which, as already pointed out, Hellsguard Roe don't put a lot of stock in. Mr/Miss/Mrs WORKS with Hellsguard names, but you're going to be calling people Mr. Gorge, Ms. Wind, Mr. Monkey, Mrs. Bloodsky. Not by an actual family moniker and it probably isn't any more or less formal to call them by the second part of the name. I imagine using both words of the name is more a respect/honorific/YOU PAY ATTENTION, since it's kind of like a kid getting called their entire First/Middle/Last name by their parent. It draws attention.

Except (and this is where it gets funky) ....conjurers were the ones to make things go boom/zap/whoosh/blamo and thaumaturges were the ones to set the balance of life and death. When the Battle Team at SE decided to add in Jobs, they retconned the old class mechanics, but the lore never really changed. (There were remnants in 1.0 that carried over, but then they did a massive skill retcon for 2.0 and later). So at least in FFXIV, White magics isn't end-all healy goodness while Black magic makes things go boom. ...despite them being treated that way by the battle team which punched the lore team in the jaw. And to our average farmer/city person/not-adventurer, calling magic "white", "black", "pink", "green" or any other color probably just sounds silly. They know conjury, thaumaturgy, arcanima and now astrology, I guess. Interesting! However, what I offered up was more a way around lore to get to how things are and often played. The chance to use White and Black titles with a social meaning without needing to know the more tricky understandings or have a char who needs to even know about it, kind of like what Freelance said: Most are just known as mages. Like I said. My own char's understanding of magic is so basic and based in superstition that "white" and "black" mages are still "assholes with magic"

I'm one of those people who doesn't like to bring mechanical things like soul crystals into actual RP. They're literally weird skill switchers and they only show up for Warrior of Light stuff. Don't see them anywhere else. With that said, how does this relate to White Mages? Assuming (Correctly) that we shouldn't dip our hands into Lore Lore Lore, and then just...kind of squish it into a shape it isn't, there's another option. There's a very common thread of "White" and "Black" magic being two schools of use. White for it's warding, healing, etc etc. Things like salt circles and herbalism are examples of RL things considered "White" magic, while setting people on fire and cursing them are "Black". Maybe the average adventurer knows better, but the average peasant doesn't. Magic is weird. Magic is scarey. Magic made their chocobo explode and set the barn on fire. Magic healed the burns. Burny magic is black and scarey. White magic makes the scars afterwards less severe. My char takes that kind of view. Someone says they're a "White Mage" ? He's going to assume you're more "fixer" than "fucker". Succor isn't something he knows about or frankly cares about. If you say you're a black mage? He expects explosions and aether fueled wrath. He doesn't know there used to be a whole of of terrible revolving around something specifically CALLED Black Mages. He just knows black magic's connotation is "And now you're screwed." It's a good medium place without needing to pull soulstones and ~forgotten lore only I possess~ into a story where it doesn't fit, but lets you keep the titles. You don't NEED succor to be a white mage, you don't need the secrets of the black to be a black mage. It can, and often is, as much attitude, to the common people.

Hammer within arms reach of Jad:

This is an old phenomenon and you have no obligation to give a shit about them or how they feel after they've made it clear they're not there to have fun, they're there to win. This is not an isolated thing. There will always be "That Guy" or "That group of guys" Or even "That Guild of Guys". IHJVolaC8pw Fuck em.

Location: Ishgarde Who may mention this: Non-Ishgardian import/export Merchants, Ishgardian native Rumor: A good deal of steel has been showing up in lowborn Ishgardian hands. Almost all the blades that have been seized are light, well crafted Falcions with no makers mark or stamp noting the origin forge, which marks them as black or grey market illegal imports. No bills of sale have been recovered. The examples that have been seized are too high a quality steel and craft to have been made in Ishgarde, where quality weaponry and steel is in short supply given the Dravinian siege. While many of these blades are seen worn on the hips of the unhappy in more socially unstable areas of the capital, some have been put to work by other poor families as chopping instruments to recover scrap wood and heating fuel in the wake of the recent attacks.

Character Fear? Purestrain mages. Hammer reads. He knows in passing how high-end magic has been, unilaterally, responsible for the ending of ages. Anyone claiming to be a pointy hatted wizard looking for power scares the shit out of him in a way backed by way too much evidence in the FF universe. How do they cope? Geek the wizard first is a thing Hammer actually abides by. Fight between a guy with a knife and a mage? Hammer's going to hit the mage first before putting a boot into the knife guy. He also does his best to make people actively afraid of magic as well, or at least respect it to a degree that it stops being job 1 and starts just being a tool instead of pure power seeking. This is the healthier of his two options, but it's no less scarring, given how he tends to enact it. Come to think of it he also likes putting non-magical power (Weapons, explosive, siege weaponry) in the hands of common non-magical people. He knows that easy-access 'power' leads to chaos, but he also figures you're going to need it against people who can say "Well I'll just drop a moon on them, neener neener." How do people respond to their fear? They get their own brand of fear. Either of Hammer, consequence, or history. Fear breeds fear and, frankly Hammer is both aware of this and -perfectly alright- with it. Do you think one day they could be cured of there fear? Maybe. That'd probably end badly for everyone involved given that Hammer already, publicly, muses that maybe things would have been better off if Dalamund had actually landed....or several had landed on most of the major population centers. Hammer without his inherent loathing for magic is someone who might well latch onto it and start looking for targets. Right now high end magic is where cowards go to do things they have no right to meddle in to fuck over honest people. If the world were suddenly target rich of mages and magic abusers, and Hammer had a button that would let him do a one man 6'th umbral Mage War calamity to wipe them out? There's a good chance he'd get over his fear to indulge his spite. If that doens't happen? No. It's a fear tempered by knowledge and superstition that's very personal. It'd require Hammer to become a mage and that's never happening. He's too old, too furious, and too set in what he 'knows' to make that kind of sudden turn into "Magic is the best and only option" path.

Hammer's 'learned' moves are a grab-bag from things front line grunts would have picked up. Give him a spear, he's going to fight really, really good alongside someone with a shield. Give him a sword and a shield, he's going to put a long knife in the hand that's got the shield mounted on it and use the targe/dirk/broadsword 3-hit combo of charging someone, slapping them with the shield to put them off balance, trying to shank them with a sword, and then trying to shank them with the knife coming out from the edge of his shield. Give him an axe and he becomes a dervish who uses the giant hunk of metal in his hands to turn his center of balance into an axis of whirling death and dirty fighting. Out of all the weapons the Great Axe from MRD has the least historical backing as a feasable weapon, which means it's also the one I have the most leeway with. It's where the golf swing comes from, it's where I get to use words like meteoric and catastrophic. It's a large, sweeping arc of death that weighs more than a lot of player chars and I do my best to convey it, even if there's no fire flying off the weapon or actual, yannow, whirlwinds. Mostly Hammer reads who he's fighting and then does his best to disrupt their style and play dirty. His biggest "moves" are improv adjustments mid fight to throw someone off balance. Make them think they know what's happening and then switch the action up on them while everything's still moving, Be that ripping someone's magitec arm off (because he knows the magnetic joints attaching it to the shoulder are faulty due to an earlier conversation) and beating the owner with it to the infamous Violent Golf, which is a mixture of surprise, momentum, and absolute violence, to coating someone in alchohol and setting them on fire with his cigar. If it's on hand, there's a chance he's going to use it to make you bleed and scream.

Descriptive more than grammatical control. Henry James is one of the foremost literary realists, and his sentences are grammatical torture. That's more the result of him trying to avoid ever suggesting a hint of anything like a third-party narrator describing events as they occur, though. Also of note: I'm not saying you're wrong or that the style you're describing deviates from a norm. I'm more suggesting that L. Realism is a easiest to access common denominator for people stepping into RP, which leads to it becoming the common thread of thematic. I mean, seriously, I love Prachett and he loves purple, footnotes, thought processes and violently strange narration. Half the fun of playing Hammersmith is his short, curt style punctuated with the strange and the surreal mixed in at times for a maximum punch on the sensibilities. EDIT: THIS IS ALSO OFF TOPIC SO I'M GOING TO ABANDON SUBJECT NOW. SOMEONE MAKE A THREAD ABOUT STYLISTIC TRENDS, PREFERENCES, AND AESTHETICS.

There's a reason this style sticks as a default. Purple prose takes a lot of time to write, and inflates an RP time of say, 30 minutes, to an hour to hours depending on how many people are getting fancy with their wording. Internal monologues are normally avoided because, well, RP is a group effort, a conversation in process, and you don't NORMALLY see what's going on inside someones head. You see their face, their body language, you hear their voice. You don't know that that bundle of flowers reminded our protagonist that he needs to visit his mother, she's been ill lately. The style is default BECAUSE it's practical and concise. It also has it's place, and YOU ARE FREE TO VIOLATE it, but keep in mind time constraints because this kind of writing and metaphysical engagement hooks more time onto the already length RP process. Edit: As you might tell, Extreme Length Typing Roleplay when I'm time constrained is a concern of mine. ;_;

The few. The proud, the huge. Team Roe: Best Team

People who RP to win, not to tell a story.

I already intended to, actually.

Weighing in on that "background" thing: I've been through a lot of RP venues, ranging from moderated chats, unmoderated chats, system enforced structures, MMO games as a framework with moderated rules (Small, small venue mind you) and now here on mass population MMO RP. Ultimately the only thing that's worked for me, through all of these is "Do what's fun, for me". In this setting? it means talking before initiating a fight. It means rolling with whatever someone says, even if it also means your char rolls their eyes and assumes they're dealing with a drunk or a delusional. It also means I'm watching the levels, somewhat, because I do have that 'are they vested in this or are they a throw-away with no consequence scenario' eye on it. I think consequence is part of the fun of RP and someone who's not going to invest in the game and a char probably needs to tone down the altaholism a bit, or get their feet a bit more as an RPer to play something that isn't quite so high pie in the sky. High concepts work, but boy howdy do they take a careful hand, and it's not something I want to see in a n00b walkup because that's deer in the headlights time for me). Alternatively someone who just rolls a new level 1 TCHING TCHING assassin/rich father/unbeatable older brother out of the hat whenever they want to deal with something isn't something I want to deal with personally. In short, a lot of RP background means I look for investment and here, so far, level is only part of that, kind of like what Gaspard said. But it IS something of a first blush gauge, and tells me what foot to lead with when exploring with a walkup.

This leads dark places, imo. For better or worse, the RP community on an MMO is going to be freeform, an extreme example thereof to boot. You can and will never be able to get everyone into one bag. Even if you did, you'd then need a volenteer staff to peer review each and every participant. In the end: Logistics is your first enemy here, one that you'll never overcome because at no point will SE enforce any "rule" for RP. We're lucky to get lore, frankly. Second you end up against the RPers themselves, who's viewpoints are like a bag of cats. Drop a question and each and every one of them will go their own direction with it, sometimes violently, sometimes fantastically. It's part of the fun, it's part of the horror. Learning to deal with both parts of that is part of being an Adult human being. tldr; It's not feasable, both from a logistics and an actual human involvement stand point.

Yeah, coming from a char-generation gated background, I can see how that'd be the view and approach. It's interesting to see how RP background affects the view on this as well!

So your view is every person needs to be taken into equal account regardless of level, lack of level, or action taken with this level/lack of level?

Counter point: Level 5 char comes up and starts picking a fight. I'm really interested in how much of a gauge people put the level thing as a measure of investment in the game/not trolling/not GokuSS5Weedlord666 since, above all else, that seems to be how people use it. And I can't say it's not (at least) somewhat accurate.

Hammersmith: Keep your disgusting happiness to yourself.

I volunteer as tribute. Hammer will also be bringing his money purse to find someone who's easy on the knuckles.