Ben has both sent thoughts and empathy and he is still not fully trained, so some of his thought may leak out. This is why I've been posting bits of his inner thinking.

Please feel free to either ignore, or use parts or all of it.

I post inner thoughts because almost every piece of fiction does. The ones where you just see what the person does things and what they say are a special genre and usually (for me) very dull. I want characters that feel real, that engage. For instance I am loving Ben and Sitas right now. (I like other people's just saying that the characters who have feels and emotions that are expressed are more like the normal fiction I read)


The price of that is that I have to be careful, and have to accept people reacting to it

I've tried the other way: no emotions, no internal stuff, and even I didn't love my character

Mind you in movies we don't need it. Movies have a much higher bandwidth

@ben
Tried that. About 1/3 of the players love it, 1/3 put up with it and 1/3 hate it. It's s all about the player group you are with

Mine don't want free-form. They want die. When they write the post they want to know what they are writing

I don't want to write 'I tried to hit him' three in a row. If I know the defence, roll the die, work out the damage then I can put far more I to the post. For big bads those numbers are hidden but for minions I let them go wild

The story reads far better if the person rolls 31 on their torg die, works out it was 20 result points of damage against an Ord and says what happens. Compared to 'I tried to hit him'. Same when you roll a 2 and miss, and then spend a possibility. Or don't spend it

So I do a hybrid. Anyone can roll die. If they don't I do it for them

@general
Deleted previous post. I shouldn't try and put brakes on a nice rp conversation

Just because the GM make the rolls doesn't make the game diceless.

The game I am running is a D20 version and it is not diceless or freeform but the players are focused on the action not the mechanics.

I let all player post their intended action (initiative is irrelevant at the time) and then make a summary post detailing the order and outcome of all actions.

So far it's been working well for both me and the players but I haven't tried it with a RL group sitting next to me.

I think you didn't see (or at least didn't comment on)the bit about 'knowing what to write. I did get your not diceleas, but the writing reads the same. When you can't work out the results of your intention you can only write your intention. Thus the writers posts have much less variety

But if it works for you and your players go with it. I play in one games that have been running 6 years on rpol now, so very stable, and the posts are one liners. We all enjoy the game. So it would absolutely work there
This message was last edited by the player at 17:04, Mon 22 June 2020.

This is just an unrelated tangent and has nothing whatsoever to do with your metaphor, Sapphire, but does anyone else remember when the Mythbusters tried herding cats?  They decided that indeed, it's really hard, but I thought they just needed to get to know the cats.  Like, we have three cats, and I can get them all in a room in just a couple minutes.  (I tried it, just to see.)  One of them will actually come when we call his name.  He won't hurry.  He's actually the reason it takes a couple minutes.  But he will wander over.  The other two like to play -- if I crumble up a piece of paper and chuck it in one takes off like a rocket and will follow that paper pretty much anywhere, and the other will follow if I pick up their string-on-a-stick type toy and start waving it around.

Herding cats is totally doable, you just have to treat them as individuals.


I also wanted to say that I agree with this, but also agreed with your earlier post... I can't keep up with our current pace.  It's not a problem for me - Koharu is quiet, so I don't really need to.  And I know games here often start out with everyone super excited and posting all day long and almost always settle down to something more reasonable after a few weeks, so as long as we do that eventually, I'll be fine.

But posting rates can be an important thing on RPoL so it probably is fair to note that if most of us want to keep going at a multiple-posts-a-day-each rate I would probably do better to step out before I drag things down.  (Which, I'm sad to say, I've seen happen.  I didn't mean to, of course!  But once things get into like combat or something, or a scene that actually focuses on that character, one slow player can seriously disrupt the flow of a fast-moving game and I don't want to do that again.)

In reply to Koharu Saito (msg # 96):

I think the posting rate will settle down. As for my own character, the conversation just happened to take a turn to get me to speak up about a few things. Dying sister motivation? Check. Hints of dark secrets? Check. After that . . . Eh. Yeah, I’m pretty much good after that. :)

What Sita said.

Once per day is a good rate for me, I can try more but most of the days it would be hard.

Another question for the GM,

We are three months into the invasion, how much is known about Cosms axioms, stella's and the effect of removing them?

Is it common knowledge what in the core rule book about realities, mix, pure and dominant zones?

And that's it for me. All the introductory exposition my character should need for a very, very long time. The posting rate should cool down substantially for me, from here on out. :)

I expect approximately 1 post per day.

In reply to Apeiros (msg # 101):

And as soon as I finish handing out cards, and Gavin has a chance to post, I will do final checks  on character sheets and we'll be off!

BtB, If a character is noted as a quiet type, I will not expect constant updates.

In general, in Rounds I will expect more frequent (hopefully not more than 2 days between each player's action). Outside of rounds, I am happy to let RP go on as long as it is entertaining everyone. I don't see a need to put time limits on those posts.

When Matthew is not talking he is very obviously thinking.  Sometimes putting lots of thought into what to say.  He's a big listener too.

My goal is to post no less than once per day.

I have been informed that at least one of our members is ill.

I do not expect most people to post when unwell. For me, that is when I have the most opportunity (like today), but I understand not everyone has my mindset.

I hope everyone feels better soon.

Me too.

Pierre raised an interesting point: didn't want to clutter up the thread with the subplots

We could do this sort of thing by PM, but it's nice to have threads so that other people can join in. Could we have a thread for chatting about magic if that's possible? That way we can just RP in that discussion. Other people that don't do magic, but might want to learn what it is and so on can take part. It doesn't get in the way of the main action I don't think
This message was last edited by the player at 08:35, Wed 24 June 2020.

I agree with not cluttering up the main thread with subplots.

As for Sita's sister: with characters having mentioned what they may have done to line up help, like Saito's plane or Pierre's cures, I think that should be enough for Apeiros to decide what to do with any of it or not later. We can assume that Sita and those characters are talking over any options while off-screen.

I would love for Sita to talk over magic with Sapphire, and maybe learn some proper magic from her. Even if there's not a separate thread for it, we can assume off-screen that Sita is talking to Sapphire about it as much as possible, if Sapphire is willing.

If so, I think it might help make Sita more useful. I don't think her medical skill will be all that necessary to the group, given that someone else already has healing magic; and I don't think her Occult skill will be all that helpful either, not with easy-cast magic available. Occult magic takes a really long time to use; you have to jump through a lot of difficult hoops throughout the process; and then after all that you end up endangering your soul on top of everything else. Being able to just whip out a lightning bolt on something would be a relief! (And probably more helpful) :)

I tell people 'occult is the most powerful skill in the game, but also almost the hardest to use'. I can see if we are going against an Evil Big Bad, that spending a couple of scenes preparing for it could be good. I'd be all for that.

I'd be happy to talk magic and teach. Come and join me in the tree house and we can chat about it :)

Matthew too would be into discussing magic.

And I also consider Occult to be one of the most powerful skills in the game.  And the most dangerous to the wielder.  I never got the chance to play it though.  Nor run a game with a character with it.

Sorry, all. I will try to catch up. Work has been really busy the last couple of days, some tabletop-real-life stuff happened on Sunday that's been causing lots of discussion and crap, so I'm behind.

Plus you all posted a lot and I kind of gave up on keeping up while other things were going on, lol.

How much do we know about the whole meta-mechanic behind TORG? the stellas and the fact people get transformed or disconnected?

We are at day 90 to the invasion and my understanding that those thing were pretty much unknown at the time?

That's a good question Ben. My rationale for what I said is


I doubt if we know anything about Stellae or the mechanics or the invasion, or how to save the transformed... unless we have been briefed. I was going with just the 'obvious in your face' stuff. People spontaneously combusting or changing into dwarves is pretty 'in your face'.

Oh... and I don't think you freaked Sapphire out. I wrote:


I think that's the opposite of freaking out
This message was last edited by the player at 19:42, Thu 25 June 2020.

Thanks :)

If I recall correctly, for people to vanish they need to be drained and then the stella need to be removed.

I don't think this early in the war there was any successful stella removal (except the Russian but I am not sure if it counts as it was pre-emplacement as far as I recall.

As for freaking Sap, I know Ben wasn't the cause but Ben was not sure it wasn't what he said, yes she made a whole explanation about Pierre weaponized arm but still Ben feel he had a share in that (incorrectly of course).

In reply to Ben Altman (msg # 114):

All it takes for a Reality Death is for a drained (Transformed) person to transform again without being refilled. Enough evacuees have exploded for the effect to be common knowledge. The actual reality mechanics behind it are still mostly unknown. However, Earth's Resident Expert, Dr. Hatchi-Mara-Two, was palling around with Tolwyn; and Ardinay still has some of Uthorion's memories on this subject and Drakakanis is still trying to get her to, "come to the dark side."  And Tolwyn & Ardinay did send Sapphire (against her will, I believe) here, so she has been breifed on some of the basics...if she chooses to share.

I did re-read the book again on this after your comment. Thanks by the way: it's very hard to know if 'something you know and play is a house rule or a real rule'.

The way 'we play it' (i.e. in the games of the small community of players I am part of), we have the fiery explosions immediately. (We didn't know this was a 'house rule'). I think (having re-read the rules) 'as written' it takes some time for the person to transform again. They will become disconnected very quickly, but then transform using the same tables as normal.

Personally I still like the 'immediate fiery death' because it forces the governments to tell the invaded places 'don't flee'. They have had bus loads of refugees explode, and they don't want that again! This answers my players questions 'why don't we just evacuate everyone we care about'.

I like what the GM said too. The Gaunt Man would especially like the constant fear of rescued people wondering 'is it today I explode'?

@Against her will
Only until my Queen ordered me to volunteer! At that point of course I volunteered.