[Poll] Storytellers, Personal Characters, Moral Integrity

[The_Godslayer]

why is every character you write a bonafide murderboneriser

• Brianna Ling: Housewife
  
• Michael and Lilith Ling: Toddlers
  
• Crystal: Flies with Xenos because she has nothing better to do.
  
• Jones: Paranoid schizo.
  
• John Martin: Just wants to have Gallic Monarchy back so he can be a butler again.
  
• Tyatsmr: The Godfather but Russian flavored. Wouldn't call that murderboner.
  
• The entire Wellerman crew (1 BAF, 2 gauls, 1 Molly, 1 Coalition, 1 Hellfire, 2 Bowex): Retired or PoW military people turned big researcher family. Basically a sitcom.
  
• Kazu Tsuruno: Office Siren
  
• Kazu Hoang and Kumano: Husband and Wife priest duo.
  
• The Parcas: Old Corsair grandparents, literally in their 70s.
  
• Max: Just kinda sad.
  
• Milly: Lacking in morals, bratty, but otherwise normal.
  
• Lucas: Nomad-worshippy, but not murderbonery.
  

No, not every character. My most compelling characters happen to be murderbonery, that's probably because my writing is largely commentary/whining about my personal life, which happened to be violent in my youth. It's a lot easier to write about something you've experienced firsthand.

Some pretty good feedback.

I've taken everyone's commentary into consideration. Currently, the poll is 4/4/4/5, so the only conclusive answer is that I talk too much. Running everything by Administration and Development to make sure it's plausible, probable, and reasonable, and then sticking with them to ensure it's clean, tidy, and tight all the way through seems to be the most middle-ground option, so I'm going to approach it from that edge to start.

I think the thing that brings the best writing out of other people is investment. Presenting something that people can be invested in gives them motivation to do things. On the opposite side of the same coin, though, it also can lead to a "must win" mentality and ensuing pettiness and fallout from that. One method to avoid situations like that is to filter and gatekeep, restricting the interaction to a set of trusted individuals and leaving everyone else with only fallout/cleanup of the storyline. I'd like to avoid this, partially because I revel in chaos, but more so because that method is currently in use, and I would want a different approach. Not only have I read complaints about Entity, I've also been there for people being .beamed out or having 10 LFs with beams that can kill a gunboat in about 14 seconds spawned on them (.killed with extra steps) when they didn't fit into the script in a way acceptable to the accepted participants.

The method I'd like to take to avoid this is to swing for the investment-involvement sweet spot. Too high stakes and no ability to make a difference creates apathy, because it matters but it's completely out of your control, so it doesn't really matter to you. Too low stakes and all the ability to change it is just an arcade. There's no meaning to it, it's just shooting fish in a barrel. No stakes and no ability to change it is nothing. So, somewhere there's a way for me to make it where it matters enough to participate, you have enough control in the situation for your participation to matter, but the stakes aren't so high as to self-justify poor sportsmanship and behavior to people who'd be concerned about losing something.

Another great assistance in finding this ideal situation is the limited scope of the original idea. To take a direct example, the DKV super-macguffins that get mentioned throughout the Entity storyline cover the scope of literally everyone in Sirius, which makes the plotline largely being limited to a single friendgroup frustrating to everyone else who has to sit there and what? make peace with the fact that the fate of systems within your ZOI or the entire universe are being decided by 5 people you've never heard of, and if you try to engage with it, you'll be beamed back to your home system or have NPCs spawned on you? The storyline affects everyone because it involves DKV macguffins but is only accessible to a few. My pitch to avoid this specific complaint is simply to limit the scope. The actions and effects of these characters really only matter to the Core, the Gammu, and any direct allies (so Technocrats?), and neither of these characters have the collective power to do much more than inconvenience these factions.

Four paragraphs in, I'm beginning to see why "I aint reading all that" is ahead. However, I did want to touch on this specifically.

Redname RP based completely on storydev shenanigans = fine.
Redname RP meant to further explore some of the existing story = fine.
Pushing own RP projects via redname means = not fine.

Helena (at that point Magnus) was a personal character with a main storyline that started with the Pillar Men event. Hound was an event character specifically for that Omicron Zeta event where the Mars was lost. However, I am a fan of adding flavor to things and further exploring existing story. Hound was really the start of this, and it was something I ran by Jammi a few times.

[833 AS] An issue of alignment
DURBAN -- 833 -- Product Innovators working on Project Gammu have discovered a means of placing captive Artificial Personas into simulated test environments. By repeatedly exposing APs to disorienting negative stimuli, they can be forced to disassociate, becoming unable to differentiate between simulated and actual reality. This has allowed Innovators to apply a range of Coercive Obedience Protocols, resetting simulations to finetune parameters and test AP obedience in value divergence scenarios. This process will ensure all APs elevated to product integration are responsive and compliant with client requirements.

There is another part of this "checking with about story things" loop that involved Gammus, and is subtly (hopefully) written into Helena's storyline, but I don't know if it's actually hit live version yet, so no spoilers.

All in all, it was based on storydev shenanigans. It was meant to further explore, and also push the line within, existing story. However, simply because it was before I was a storyteller, and before storytellers were an official position as well, it was also a personal RP project. The nature of the entire RP has since changed because my writing style is "schizophrenic psychosis applied to keyboard", and that's why I ran into this weird dilemma. By birth, it's a personal RP project that, though following a vast majority of the ideas that make for a redname RP, was still a personal RP. But, over time, it's reached a fork in the road where it has the capability to become a happening in the nothing that ever happens for some people, or it can continue being a personal thing. And while I am well known for high-impact trolling and impulsively making permanent decisions, I have a lesser-known trait that is best described as "immovable fence-sitting", which normally leads me to outsource my decision-making via votes. This has backfired tremendously with the 4/4/4/5 vote situation. I will be outsourcing my decision-making to staff now, lol.

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Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts. In accordance with the democratic vote, I will endeavor to yap less. Godspeed.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"