On Chatroom Usage and Discussion

Considering what happened earlier today (and on that note, which seems to be a growing trend here in the last months), and which the involved people will disclose to their discretion, I think a Little Reminder is due.

We are not a phone help desk chatroom!

Seriously, people. If you ask for an opinion on something and you don't get live, instant, Facebook like, Google +1 responses about it it doesn't mean something bad! Does it kill you to wait what, one day to gauge response from enough people? We are not a paid chatroom help desk service and we should not be being taked for granted and underevaluated as such. We are not here to give to obligue to instant gratification and instant response desires. If you want that, there's some bot (and non-bot >_>) chatrooms across the internet much better tailored to do that.

As Straw says in N-L, overraction is causing a lot of issues. And I'm betting 25% of the farm that part of the issue with overreaction is that it is a response to overassociation. We are a relatively closed group and we should take care to not take our own words, or lack of them, as a gospel about stuff that they're not about. That we don't instantly detect and let you know about a small spelling mistake in your RP post does not mean that we don't love you, that we are ignoring you, or that we don't give a f* about whatever you are doing or who do you choose to be or not be friends with. This is probably related to an echo chamber effect, but I'm not equipped to talk deeper about that.

So, people, grow a spine, hold your horses. The RP community is not going to die because it takes all of one day to some people to decide if they like the green color better than yellow, and that if they are to have a preference, which they have a right to not to. One day, I don't think it is asking too much.

re: Recaps and Stuff

From this Discussion post.

Ahem…

re: Sagas

I don't really understand why the GC would be part of the "Glitch Saga", but if, as the log indicates, the saga is indicative of how they brought the members of the J-Team together, I would propose J-Team Assemble as a potential name, as the saga codifies the J-Team in-universe as both a team and a concept. Yes, it is based off The Avengers. Yes, the end result is, in terms of per-universe function, a very good simile.

On PMD items being legalized

(ie.: this proposal)

I don't think they should for legalizzed battles (leagues, gym challenges, that kind of stuff). Basically for two reasons:

* from an OOU perspective it makes us as a characters-set more speshul... I mean, no matter how you slice it, how would anyone else *not* in the J-Team get a Sand Torc? It ends up giving us unfair advantage.
* there's no real in-universe reason why to make it work (unless Cynthia and a group of League officers have been travelling to PMD, bringing items in, examining them, validating them and distributing them, but allowing that opens various cans of worms).

Besides, it's not like we can't use them where it matters, ie.: interplayer battles (where this can be prearranged so that such items can be used) or save-the-world situations, where we are justified in throwing in all of our multiversal artillery.

The concern about using them in tournament battles would be essentially similar to what would happen if someone appeared before one of the Gym Leaders or E4 with a homemade Mewtwo-esque power suit for his Alakazam. The entire frame of legalized battles aims, partly, towards balance. Allowing multiversal items precisely to the group of potential fighters who already defeat glitches and team blanks on a regular basis would be just horribly broken.

Gym challenges is not that much of an issue, because you can just ask the GL in advance if you can use a special kind ogf item just like you would do a trainer battle, but you still have to remember that the GL getting to allow the item has to be justified, given there will be eg.: questions about its origin, medical effects, etc. So eg.: simply allowing some PMD items but excluding others doesn't work unless we can conceivably explain and justify in-universe how we got them.

On my situation

Well, it has been a good while since I wrote here...

Now, I know that there has been a recent push for getting RtAU back on track and at a positive moving speed and I want to thank Umbra for that. You know, trying to move stuff along. Which is good. Though, as luck has it, it comes precisely at a time where I won't be able to do much of anything, after three months of having been available to do stuff and just only mostly waiting for other people. So I can't catch a break.

Because this precisely comes at the point where I have been slowed to a halt.

For those wondering, my health took a sharp and dangerous decline in the last month, which is the reason for my even more reduced availability.. I'd rather not have this discussed further through the public channels though, please ask privately if you need more information.  I don't know when or how will I be able to resume a practical "marching" step of RP involvement. Right now my presence is mostly limited to short stays at the chatrooms as I welcome people to talk to about things so that I can stay sane.

With this, it'd be a good time for the people who need to know stuff about the Johto or Angela side of RtAU to ask the questions they need, because most of the large picture in these scenarios was already talked about and set some months ago (as far back as October if I'm not mistaken). Some ofher of my D!posts also deal with the overall plans, but there is a lot of room for moving plots around so long as the important milestones and motivations stay where they are.

Here is the overall plot of the Johto side of RtAU, please ask more if needed but don't expect immediate answer.

* Blackthorn is sided with the dragons. They were already training and assisting the local draconic population for the uprising and, if some Kanto posts are any indication, have been involved at it for quite a while. However, their level of involvement, such as link to the 7JD chain of command, is unclear as of yet. Heck, they might even be just bandwagonning on the whole thing.
* Goldenrod and the cities and towns in the peninsula will be isolated, though the timeframe for that is still a bit irky for me. Azalea, Greenfield, National Park, most likely Violet as well, Ruins of Alph and Union Cave. Wild mon populations will be forced to shuffle along the connecting roads for a while before the dragons can round up enough troops to make sure they can exile the locals to Elsewhere. A little plan involves turning the Pokéathlon Dome into a prisoner camp or torture facility.
* The Miltank Legion was supposed to be a thing. They are the big politial force being born in Johto (they did extend themselves pretyy far in PMD-B), they're ones who supposedly prevent the dragons from just circling around Ecruteak and invading the other side of Johto, be it W or E. Original idea was that they were to be rallied by Icelus, but dunno how is that going to work now.
* Ecruteak is mostly untouched but it's not like nothing happens there. With Crewe out of the development and no mention of the nascent Miltank Legion AFAIK, I'm drawing a blank on what will happen here. I presume Ho-Oh and Nix will be making act of presence eventually, but how or why I wouldn't know. Main plan was to turn it into a Blitz Evacuee Hub or even into a place to bring mons recovered from exiliation ops.

...Where would the dragons even be trying to exile the locals to anyway? They can't send away that many before running out of workforce, so I'm guessing the Johto Safari Zone and or Arborville are a thing.

The peninsula resistance begins in the National Park, this being the safest place close to "holy land" to start working from. The Nidos run the defense, but the actual government of orest lands eventually falls on mons migrating from the northern side of Johto. At this time most of the operations will be skirmishes to delay the dragons's attempts to exile the population as well as scare any mon who might have allied with them into rethinking the value of their lives.

At some point early in the rebellion the Owsla open ranks to other forest and city mons who want to join, as they'd be overrun otherwise. This allows the resistance to grow into a group capable of all stages of information gathering, analysis and response, and this is where players wanting to run city-oriented ops can finally jump in (be it Owsla or not, they just provide the means to reach into the cities). Presumably other less centralized forces would be accepting humons in their ranks already.

Eventually Vinollo and Rize are sent offscreen (meaning "until I write them about")  to spread the resistance in Alto Mare and Cherrygrove/Olivine (order is irrelevant ATM), so it stands to reason that conflict lasts longer or deeper in these places for a bit longer than in other areas.

I had the idea the three Gerbils would be popping around "randomly" and causing ruckus. Hey, randomness is not covered under "don't assist humans" statuses. They eventually get better wind of things and start assisting the Miltank Legion or the Owsla in a I was Just Passing Thru fashion. Or they can be doing anything else, really, but I do need at least one of them available to Train the Local Farmers.

Now, the more "hardcoded" part of the plan. At some point Blackthorn turns the tables, perhaps they bring in the Charizific Valley in for the ride or something, and they start pushing against the forestline and against the Miltank Legion. There's probably pressure from Kanto (nascent Indigo League?) as well. Or they manage to tie the Legendaries's paws tighter, or something. Anyway, they kinda make the plot-level jump from "talks about a thousand year reich, can't feed troops for a month" Wacky Nazis to "wipe enemies anywhere, anytime, regardless of defenses" MCU!Hydra. At this point the invasion turns more desperate with both sides going into stronger action.

Eventually the forest resistance mons start running out of resources so they decide to Storm the Castle aka the Dragon Paradise. Battle goes as badly as you might expect, then the forest mons challenge the Dragons to Combat by Champion, the Elders get smacked silly by a better-prepared Inka, so they bring the nearest loser they can find, tell him "you're in command now" and scram from the region Or Else. Nadia might or might not be involved in there. As part of the immediate outcome at least the Charizific dragons are allowed to return and Inka is exiled to what's left of PEFE HQ.

Don't know yet what the outcome will be in Alto Mare, (it'll end up being as much a political mess as it was in PMD-B or not). I'll go with the flow regarding it and anything west of and including Ecruteak.

Now... How is Eon involved in all this or not, I don't have details yet. I understand he's leaving to Unova at some point. A tight chain of command is not really needed I guess, but feel free to build here as you wish and I'll follow.

Questions?

EDIT

(Meta-wise, I don't have a set duration for all those events. With the way my life is going, I'm OK with RtAU being available until June. It's not like it'd delay anything. So please don't take it ill on me if at any question of how long will RtAU last my answer is more or less "as long as we can")

(More meta-wise, this entire plan relies on not playing the plot alone. This works only if I can eventually be ready with Tracer, Umbra, Crow and whoever else is joining in. Were this prove to be too life-draining, cumbersome or unwaitable for the involved people I'll just return to the Uprising Prevention miniarc, better fit for a oneshot-like thread)

Tangent and Every at least, support using threads for specific Other!plots instead, which looks a far better idea even than the index I think, assuming enough of the people who do write Other!stuff support it so that it can become stable. Looking back, no reason why we should be treating the Other!verse differently than we treat the OU and AU.

re: pre-Holonquest plans

Besides getting Sol un-disappeared, I don't really have anything planned here...

Sol the Espeon♀: <Awww... but I've been a nice company!>

…S-Sol? What are you doing here? And where are you?

Sol -:3faces: <It's a secret~ If you write more for me the other will *finally* know>

…I don't really have that much time nowadays. ¬¬

re: Holon

With regards to the whole Pokéform-δ stuff, I don't have any issues with it so long as it is done the right way. There is no way a character is going to obtain Delta form as soon as they put the Armband -because the Pokéform has not had soaked radiation consistently before - unless they go through a sort of Hulk-creating level of radiation, and this being about Hulk we all know how those tend to end up like.

On the other paw, getting stuck in Pokéform for long enough or in a sensitive enough state for radiation to kickstart the mutation is not only perfectly sensible, but somewhat expected to happen - it is more or less what the scientists would have to do with an already grown normal mon to trigger Deltaification anyway. Sensitive enough states can for example be an open wound that forces the body to absorb much energy from the environment to heal (this mostly depends on the mon), weakness similar to strong variants of influenza or other immunity-weakening illnesses, etc.

The point of the mon remaining a Delta or not (the shouldn't if they were already mature at mutation) is a separate issue I think. Here I care only that the decision is consistent - if somemon stays a Delta, then most likely everymon else (under similar circumstances) should.

re. Armbands

They're supposed to be special things. Not just random stuff that one finds around like one finds a Rare Candy lying around. We ought to be more careful and distinctive with them, meta-wise.

re: how fast Evolution is

Evolution takes time, in theory it is "long", but under a trainer it is not much time really. So long as the evolution is shown being worked towards to, it can be shortened enough in terms of onscreen time to relevant battles, training of the body and or going through certain relevant stages of live (such as mons that would have to learn to build some sort of coccon before evolving). I'd rather people don't evolve their mons too fast - they should get to live their childhoods, semantically speaking. But that's merely a matter of character development preference.

Of course quickness of evolution has to be balanced. There's not much point in everyone having Tyranitars all around. If Maekrite or Dintel were to fight a mon who is only six months old yet fully evolved, for example, I'd expect them to fare much better, and even to realistically win, in contrast with fighting a mon who has had their present shape and attacks for a long time, such as Jadis or Nadia. Experience with the body and the attacks, and all that.

On G6 moratorium

My overall opinion of the matter:

New Moves

* They are a mix of hard and easy, would be OK IMO, at least the ones that do not depend on new mechanics (such as Fairy Type, new equipped items, or a new battle convention like what Rotation was).
* New moves that rely on new mechanics would have to be discussed about.
* As for how to acquire dem moves, I'd say let's limit them to wild populations and tutoring where possible. It has the advantage that it does not become "oh lol I can just start using this new move", there has to be a in-universe explaining behind (and it has to be more effortful than "press CD on mon's head").

New Evolutions for Current Mons

* This affects representativeness because in this RP mons are full-fledged characters, so I'd say let's keep them fully blocked until the Kalos arc starts.
* Alternatively they could be allowed in a limited manner once the spoilerblock ends, but I'm not sure yet what kind of "limited" way would be manageable, I'm inclined towards one-per-player except for the amount of overlap of features that that could generate (just think of how this can affect our monotype trainers).

New Features in General

This whole thing reminds me of something. How are we explaining Fairy Type in-universe? I seem to recall there was the idea to bring the result of RtAU to be related to it, but dunno what happened to it.

Holon Tournament Proposal

Since tournaments in Holon are a thing and apparently they're working well, I'm trying to design a tournament. It's a small thing, intended for 8 competitors (NPCs or otherwise), and its primary objective meta-wise is to give a new battle scheme a try without having to muddle currently-running things or stuff of larger importance.

Now, this is pretty barebones so I'll explain the overall ideas and then will go deeper from there.

What kind of tournament is this?
It is a for-fun, no world-ending stakes battle tournament for teams of three or more, as in any ingame regulated facility, where battles are run via a scheme similar to games like Golden Sun.

Huh? What's the battle scheme like?
In case you have not played Golden Sun, what I am extracting from there is a simplified model based on the following four points:

* Battles are run as equinumber, using triples (or doubles for a 4-vs-4 setup).
* Battles of 3-vs-3 run exactly the same as ISO Standard triples, except switchout is not permitted.
* Battles of 6-vs-6 run in two "rows", back and front, of three each. Switchout is not permitted. The "front" row enters the battle first, and only once it is defeated as a whole the "back" row enters the battle to continue. The winning team is the first one to defeat the opponent's last row standing.
* Additionally, another possibility is a 4-vs-4 battle run in two rows of two each, with the same switching provisions as the above.

The following additional provisions are subject to change for purposes of making the battles smoother, fiercer, or whatever:

* Equipment: each Pokémon is free to equip an item. Items can not be repeated within the same "row":
** a Front Absol and a Back Purugly can both wear Blackglasses.
** A Back Salamence and a Back Zangoose can NOT both carry Life Orbs.
* In-battle Items: permitted so long as it's used sensibly (so no spamming Max Revives).
** Using an item "consumes" a turn in the sense that the Pokémon will not be able to defend from or counter moves immediately after the item is used.
* Offscreenness: if a two-rows battle between two different players drags for too long, they are free to timeskip so long as both players post their agreement to the result in a provable manner (most likely Discussion).

Will there be Djinns / Summons / Karma Houdini Alex in the battles?
No (how would we interpret Djinns anyway?). Sorry. Maybe next time when this system is better proved somehow. ;-)

What are the brackets?
To be decided when the tournament is run.

What are the prizes?
Nothing potentially world-ending. To be decided when the tournament is run. (if you want to propose prizes feel free to)

When will this be run?
Depending on interested parties, most likely in the first half of the upcoming week, or even starting on Sunday.

Questions?
Answers! Ask here, or in the chatroom. :p

Over a month I don't write one of those, but there have been a couple of subjects in Discussion and chatrooms that require my attention...

On Mechanics Changes due to [SPOILERS]

My opinion is that it is just a bit early to seriously worry anything about this - we're this short of hitting October. Anyway, I'm in general strongly opposed to Orwellian Retcons and other strategies similar to "what are you talking about, 2+2 has always been fish". We have a wide assortment of tools to deal with the changes when the time comes. and nothing so far has happened that pulls some of our cards out of the table, so to speak; so I'd say let's build this happening.

(On that note, regardless of strategy I'd prefer a non-retroactive change)

On Shadow Moves

It came to my attention today that there was talk about making some Shadow moves up in the chatroom. The rationale behind it is mostly that the Shadow moves are not really plenty. And it is a well-justified point given some that those moves are exclusive to Legendaries, and all of them in general offer no variants.

Now, there have been some suggestions such as lifting the Legendary exclusiveness of some Shadow moves, which I'd be totally in with since we're talking about Cipher. And since the current offer of Shadow moves presents little no tactical variance and the big selling point of Shadow moves is that they are SE against everything, it'd make some sense that new Shadow moves and variants are introduced - so long as it is kept balanced and it doesn't just become "let's have Shadow!Aerial Ace, Shadow!Metronome, Shadow!Iron Tail, Shadow!Charge Beam, ....".

The question, if we go this path, is which ones, how many and how do we balance them (in as much as a Shadow move can be balanced). It should not be "oh I'll just make this move up".

But before we go with creating new moves, anyone knowledgeable in XD saga can tell if there is any more indication in canon(s) of what other Shadow moves or similar elements we can use? I prefer to adapt something that is already there when available. I know for example the TCG has "Dark Pokémon" (not to be confused with Dark Type), but to my knowledge this does not extend to typing of moves, for example.

On my plans for Orre

Yeah, about that... Maekrite will be snagged, likely evolved against his will, then Shadowified. Sol and Ichtacya, together, they fight crime. That's more or less the gist of it. There are some details to be talked about, but I'm starting my participation in Orre right before the weekend. As for outside of Orre, I plan to have a lighter facet of my characters still showing up with some Python and Shahinne shenanigans, just in case it can mingle with something else.

Re Pseudo-Armbands Proposal

Namely this one and follow-up corrections.

The idea, as far as it is exposed, sounds like it is solidly planned, the more considering the "compatibility" and "implementation" issues that are being discussed ATM.

I am, on a personal level, strongly opposed to the proposal. The reason behind it has nothing to do with the implementation and more to do that we'd have to even do something like this at all. We already have the Armbands and we break normality enough with that, I think introducing a set of pseudo-armbands done via science (or SCIENCE!!!) would actually make things worse.

See, the first and largest problem is that Armbands are a mystical thing that it was expected there were few enough of, and they have well-defined use cases - but armbands done with science means the element of reproducibility is introduced.

There is no longer any reason not to have an armband or why anyone couldn't have one, both in-character and meta. That more or less leads to a situation where the RP world, or at least that part of it where the focus of our story stays, becomes essentially what the winning!RtAU future is about. (And unfortunately for us the focus matters, since not many of us bother to write what happens to the world beyond two degrees of separation of our characters)

I feel this is an RP about Pokémon Trainers doing trainers stuff. Granted, some of the stuff is not exactly your everyday normal stuff (we can get driver licenses by battling obscure deskmans, we can talk to our Pokémon one to one, and some of us have Dialga on Speed Dial) but for the most part none of those things, at least in the original timeline, are at the normality-breaking level that "suddenly anyone can be mons, for any reason" is. Trainers are Trainers doing Trainers stuff and the Pokémon are Pokémon doing Pokémon stuff. I think we should aim to preserve enough of a level of normality that the name of the RP actually holds some value. It's not like we can't have transformations - with characters like Crewe we have done some awesomeness - but those should be special cases, not the norm, and we should not facilitate becoming the norm. Honestly, if we want to main an RP set in a different premise we could just easily start a PMD-esque, Big City or similar RP.

So again, while I think the idea is solid enough that it can be run, I disapprove of it for the time being as I feel we are already opening enough cans of worms. I'd hope to see what in-character and meta boundaries are going to be placed on its implementation. Right now my only proposal is that, this coming from basically a Mad Scientist and for a very specific purpose, we let these pseudo-armbands run in a conveniently unlimited manner for an arc or two and then it just stops.

Re Fairy Type and such

ie.: This D!post regarding the FAIRIES!!!!1111!!!yone.

I'm mostly fine with the solution so long as it's not just something that happens - there has to be something that makes it an involved or on-screen matter. Like, the whole idea of the Legendaries filling the required papers and all. Then, RP!Silent's interns throw a tantrum / flip a table because of all the extra work that suddenly they have to do for some reason.

A question that I have not seen answered before and that it is relevant if we want Xerneas to do the unsealing: what the heck was Xerneas's type *before* the cosmic (re)retcon? And how does it affects its ability to perform such retcon?

Also I would like it very much, as I have posted a couple of times before, if there was some degree of involvement or acknowledgement of the events in RtAU in the cosmic retcon that opens up the Fairy Type. The draconic uprising is, after all, the perfect well-justified excuse in-multiverse to bring dragons down a notch, considering they've just engaged genocide. It could also become a (small but counted) factor on the fact that we do manage to turn the tables in the current timeline, as, well, there were no Fairy types in the PMD-B timeline.

(And before you ask, in case it wasn't clear enough before: I am TOTALLY IN with RP!Denzel Crocker going nuts over the discovery of FAIRIES!!!!!!111!!yone)

EDIT: May I request that RP!Eltenios has a minor involvement in the RtAU side of things unsealing the type? Like, getting the Legendaries an important document to sign or something. He's a courier, after all.

On the Actual Plan™

(now that it was posted)

So that's essentially what happens during the games. If we're going by Fairy mons have always been around but the Fairy type hasn't, then yeah, using it this way solves a lot of issues.

Re the Gym Leader, I don't see why we can take an approach to the Retcon like what we did when Cyrus forked the timelines. As in, once the Cosmic Retcon takes place, it effects the timline slightly before the retcon actually takes place (yeah, relative terms because a cosmic retcon can, by nature, also affect time). So as the retcon hits the Fairy type would have been, as a type, (have been made retroactively) available for long enough in the past that there's be a sanctioned Gym running it and... perhaps not much else.

How long would that be? As long as we need, once we need to have a time set (ie.: if something like "but my grandfather also was a Fairy Gym leader"). As far as I know, we don't have to yet.

(That also solves possible issues with Fairy mons doing stuff now left hanging, in case there was any issue like that, but this is merely an accessory benefit)

Re RtAU, if we go with the awakening being 'verse-dependent yeah that also solves most things. I could reroute a stray plotline I had right before the arc started that way, so no effort is wasted.

Re Klefki, I've said it before: Klefki are cute and deserve the love. I don't oppose the idea of it being the first mon that we "identify" as being "oh, so this is what a Fairy type is like". I don't think that means we can't meet other Fairy mons beforehand - after all we have them in our teams now - it just means they'll become a question-marks thing untiñ we meet the Klefki, right?