Month: June 2005

Okay, her origin story is so lame that even I can’t take the time to dress it up with a straight face. Something about a California vintner father, an experimental (Crey? Why not?) fermentation system that she became trapped in, strange alteration of body chemistry that gave her both powers (Science origin, don’tcha know) and required an external droid assistant to monitor and stabilize said chemistry (and to whisper sweet nihilistic nothings in this little goth’s ear). Now she’s a hero with a ‘tude off in big Paragon City, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
(Wanted an origin that was something other than Magic. So I took Science — could’ve done Technology — and of course immediately ended up fighting Vahzilok all the time, dammit.)
That, and all sorts of wine-related puns apply. She’s robust. She’ll knock you on your ass. She’s young and harsh, but might mellow with age. Etc.
Her intent is — aside from scrapperly fun — to have someone I can run off and solo with in any spare non-Margie-around-to-duo-with time (and then not worry that I’m getting out of level balance with her or something). Though Margie notes that scrapper-scrapper duos are also fun …
Dunno if I’ll put her in the Consortium. She is definitely not the sort that would want a team name floating over her head, let alone something pompous-sounding like “Consortium of Justice.” Miss the channel chat, though. Maybe I’ll eventually get her into the Allies.
Assuming my interest in her, vs. all my other alts, is maintained …

I’ll assume you were new at this …

1. Communication is your friend.
2. Tell people before you invite them in.
3. After people join your team, greet them.
4. Set a mission. Talk about what we’re doing. Don’t just run there.
5. See #1. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
6. Keep the team together. Stay with the team.
7. Lead from the front. No reason why you should be the last person up the elevator (by a minute), or out of the mish (as same).
8. Remember #1? Yeah, try that one again.
9. If half the team quits after the first mish, that might be a sign that something’s wrong. Or maybe it’s a coincidence. But …
10. If you run across someone who quit your team, issuing another blind invite and doing a local tell, “Follow me,” is probably not going to do the trick.
11. RETURN TO 1

This has been a public service announcement …

Katherine made up another character on Guardian (Get it? We’re her guardians, so we play with her on Guardian? It was Margie’s clever idea), Storm Ice Girl, which is not very catchy, but pretty much describes what kind of Controller she is (Ice primary, Storm secondary). She loves to blow people away with the gust of wind …
She’s not adept at the mouse yet, which I man, but she handles the nav keys and the fire keys for the powers. Oh, and she bounces a lot.
And as long as she only wants to wear that Metal Witchblade Bikini in-game, I have no problem with it.
Meanwhile, I have, as Margie gleefully puts it, caught scrapperitis, characterized by the need to build and run scrappers. To that end, I’ve sadly dropped Suzy Atom (who was really an energy tanker I was trying to run as a scrapper), and built the goth “problem child” Lynn Calodo, a Dark/Invuln scrapper with a bad attitude.
Doyce, at least, will get the joke.
Pictures to follow.
LC is intended (for a while at least) to be an afternoon “solo” character, on those occasions between my getting home/off work with Kitten and Margie getting home. I don’t really have many other good solo characters — I think Scrappers lend themselves best to that, and OFFICER is still having power problems.
And, hell, I’ve fallen in love with the Dark Scrapper powers (but intentionally avoided the Dark/Regen and Dark/Dark pairings that Margie has already “staked out”). Kittenyboo is a Dark/SR, but I don’t play her that much, for obvious reasons.
We’ll see how she does.
UPDATE: Oh, so true …

One of the biggest challenges of the multi-alt world I play in is keeping up different character voices, particularly in the comm channel chatter. (It’s important on teams, too, but since Margie and I duo so much — subject for another thread — it’s a bit less so. I’m afraid we don’t get into that much roleplay with each other …)
Anyway, what I’ve noticed:

1. Quiet, reticent, and/or brooding characters are a lot of fun to write about (and tend, amazingly enough, to be what I write), but are a lot more difficult to play. This is true in F2F RPGs, of course, but it’s even more true when most RP comes about through conversation on the comm channels. If you don’t speak, you aren’t visible; that’s probably a rule for life, too. You need to find something to talk about. Which leads us to …
2. Humor is always good for a quick tell. Which is difficult if you’re playing a quiet, reticent, and/or brooding character, as noted above. So …
3. Come up with a character voice: something to talk about, visual distinctions of voice, and a sense of humor.

So, for my characters …

• Velvet: Jokes about most stuff, distinctive accent (or spelling, at least). Always chatty, and generally friendly, if a bit touchy at times. The easiest character I have to RP on the comms.
• Psi-clone: Speaks much more formally. Dry wit, and a love of wordplay. Always willing to blather at length. Second-easiest for me to play, assisted by the fact that he’s an exagerration (I hope) of myself, so I just have to ask what I would say if I were a hero.
• Torchielle: Friendly, but I don’t have her “voice” yet. Makes references to her family a lot. A fair amount of tentative stammering (“um”) to make her comms distinct. Not sure about her sense of humor, which is a problem. Need to play her more.
• Honeygun: Strong, sarcastic sense of humor. Pretty easy to play, though she seems to have been off the comms for a while …
• Truly Unstable: Fun and easy to play — just (a) act Daffy Duck crazy, and (b) mix contemporary slang with Rennfaire-like pronouncements. Toss in the occasional dark-and-angsty lament just for spice and to throw people off. Need to do more with him …
• OFFICER: Haven’t gotten on the comms yet with him. No sense of humor, but may start developing on. Problem is, there’s any number of “I am not human, but, like Data, am trying to learn how to behave like one” folks out there on the com lines, which makes him a lot less distinct of a character. Visually, though, since half his words are in all-CAPS, it may work. We’ll see. I’m not 100% happy with the power set at the moment, so he may be dropped some time soon.
• Sister Chinook: My problems with her last night provoked this post. I don’t have a good voice for her yet. She’s cynical and a bit sarcastic, but also one of those “quiet” characters. Since she’s Canadian, I need to remember to throw in an “eh?” here and there, for visual distinction. Or, if I can, spell some of my “-or” words as “-our”. Stuff like that.
• Suzy Atom: She was easy (announcement coming). Wide-eyed, enthusiastic naif, a combo Silver Age Supergirl (cough) with season 1 Mary Richards. Openly friendly, prone to saying “gee” a lot. Never long on enough to make that much of an impression, I fear (most of my RP with her was actually at the Consortium party).

One problem I have to watch is the non-verbal stuff. While I don’t keep my cross-dressing multi-alt gameplay a secret (see Google), I also don’t broadcast it, even in OOC comms. If people think my alts are run by completely different (and infrequently present) players, I’d be delighted, though it’s not worth to me a huge amount of effort make it so. To that end, though, I have to be careful about always using the same verbal tells between characters — like, “Heh.” Or how I flag OOC material. Or, it occurs to me, always giving an /em wave when I run across people.
(I also try to usually have a gap between when my character says hello/goodbye on the coalition chat and when Margie’s does.)
Actually, how you enter/leave the comms (or great/farewell other characters) is another signature. Velvet tends towards a “Howdy”/”Hey, kids, what’s shakin?” sort. PC tends toward more formality and jovial bonhomie (“Greetings, all. How goes the war?”). Others do more curt addressing folks by names — but, again, curtness is hard to pull off since it usually goes hand in hand with, well, not talking. And when you don’t talk, you’re not visible.
Anyway, enough blather of my own here. Just stray thoughts to put down.

Decided to go with the alts last night, so we dug out Sister Chinook and Toxic Sister and put them through their Level 10 paces.
Must … get … travel … powers … sooooooon …
Actually, it was hard going at first. Deaths. Many (or more than usual, even discounting the recent grey-bop-fest) deaths. Scrapper deaths are not uncommon. Controller deaths, not so much so.
SC seems a lot squishier than PC, even though both are controllers (with Empathy) with single-target focuses. Or maybe TS isn’t quite as shock-and-awe-inspiring as Amorpha (yet). Or maybe it was just the plethora of toxic vomit.
That began to turn-around mid-evening, as SC dinged to 10, and I contemplated my new power. I’d been planning on getting Resurrection (always popular at/in parties), but I did some quick flipping through my file folder on SC and …
… hmmmm … maybe …
Oh. Yeah. Shiver. Very broad cone, decent range, minimal endurance, quick recharge, serious opponent slowing.
Suddenly, folks are running away. Or charging me. Or fleeing TS’s spines. And suddenly the fire rate of the baddies goes way down.
And it stacks. Between the slows of my other ice attacks, and TS’s toxins, those folks were hitting whatever slow cap there was.
Much, much easier time of it. Still died once (squishy, close quarters, too many obstacles blocking my LoS and powers, Shiver in particular), but more than made up for it.
We went from struggling through Kings Row-level sewer mishes to street hunting around Steel Canyon. Felt much better by the end of the evening.

Introducing the one, the only, the dire portent of Things to Come …
Kitty Shoulder!
Designed by Katherine. Named by Katherine. Bubbler/Energy Defender.
She’s the one on the left.
She likes to jump.
Too. Much. Fun.
And where would she be without her boon companion, the black cat scrapper, Kittenyboo? (She was to be Princess Kittenyboo, but that exceeded the name length restrictinons.) Katherine helped design her, too. She’s the one on the right.
Too. Much. More. Fun.
Katherine plays KS on Margie’s lap. Margie does the navagating, Katherine does the blasting. And bouncing.
On Guardian, naturally.
There’s even role-play, as Kittenyboo doesn’t like to go into water — but Katherine protests that even though Kittenyboo is a cat, she doesn’t have to be played like a cat all the time. On the other hand, Shoulder Kitty is half cat (or so we are told), and likes to swim in deep water.
And so it begins …

Only had a brief time to run with Margie tonight — between a late business dinner and Champion crashing for several minutes, not much time to do anything.
So Velvet — vying to get over 23 so that she can do the Terra Volta thang, went soloing, slowly, slowly, slowly, waiting for an invite …
… and, after about 20 minutes of nada, she got an unsolicited invite, a Coalition-based request for help, and an SG-based request for help. When it rains …
Ended up with the Coalition one, helping Vangarde (LF) and WillO’Wisp (FP). We were 23, 25, and 27, so I SKed to Will (the higher), which meant I could do the Tanky thing without too much problem. Will, as an Ice Controller, could lock down most crowds anyway, which meant that Van’s blaster fire didn’t have to hit every time.
Worked out well, if later than expected — but all three of us dinged.
So now Velvet has to figure out her level 24 power. I’d originally slotted Stamina there, since she’s now chronically running out of end (particularly if she has both Temp Invuln and Unyielding running). But Doyce asked the other evening about her having Invincibility, which was slotted for 26 — but is a kick-ass power.
Hmmmm.
I replaced one DR in each of those two toggles with a EndRedux, and that helped a bit, but not enough. Even with Will’s various kinetic hoohahs, my End was pretty dicy most of the evening.
So, short of having some great revelation about how to do it differently (I do have a respec in my pocket, after all, and plenty of infl to replace DOs), I’ll probably stick with the original plan — Stamina at 24, Invincibility at 26. But that’ll be lovely when I get it …