re: Omniband

Taking replies from Bit's quote and exposition.

I pretty much agree with the entirely of the ideas re: how to bring up GRANDPA MAX™, as well as the listing of Pokémon the Omniband can not grant TF of. I think the idea of bringing up a Type:Null Pokéform for [KEVIN ANALOGUE], if any, can work and fit pretty well if we can find a justification that is workable and - more specifically - if we find the character something important to do with it.

(My "broad strokes" proposal is that the Type:Null Pokéform for [KEVIN ANALOGUE] could be a vehicle to give a Type:Null to a universe that doesn't have any, as [KEVIN ANALOGUE] would comprise the starting sample. That would give something both abstract and "heroic" to do with a Type:Null without actually using the Legendary, and it could be a means to have a Type:Null created out of good intention and good science rather than more egoistical experimentation, but we'd have to check how to do it from an in-universe perspective in the affected universe because we'd have to be dealing with stuff like Pokémon cloning. inb4 Or a helpful Mew)

Doing stuff with the Omniband in a manner involved in the Main Plot I guess could be okay; I am still however going to be concerned with the device itself lasting more than whatever its immediate required narrative impact is, but it does allow us to space and adjust things better than a media arc would do, true thing.

re: AAAAHHHLIMITAH POWERRRR!!!!!! Infinite Energy

aka http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?di … 1335#33372

...Admittedly I am going to say I kind of... assumed that that was a sort of already the case. It only makes some sense considering that things like Infinite Energy and Mega Evolution could somehow be linked...

On a more mechanical sense I'd expect that humans are able to produce, but (for the most part) not store, Infinite Energy even if in such a small quantity. Moreover since the energy humans use or produce is not filtered by things such as types (eg.: draconic energy potentially bouncing off or interacting in near-inert ways with Fairy types), it would be easier for humans to produce Infinite Energy than it is for Pokémon; it0s just that the resulting energy is too little to do something with it unless it is instant use, like when triggering a ME.

But yeah, overall I'd say humans should be able to produce trace amounts of IE.

re: Vampires

aka: this proposal and the conversation following.

While I have given some input before on the matter, it has been quite disorderly due to IRL getting on the way. So I'm gonna repeat some points.

I am, in general, fine with the idea if applied in an also in general sense. It just feels like it is the kind of thing that can perfectly go well if other as-well-common things like weremons have been able to been adapted. I'm not like, eager to have vampires in the RP, but I don't think that's because they can't work or that they don't fit. My concerns are more mechanical in nature, I guess that's kind of usual.

Brief of concerns:

* I agree with logical extension of concept. Vampires as life-drainers make lots of sense when we have lots of other things that interact with a concept of life energy, even if that is still a bit more abtract than I would like.

That said, I would rather keep it at the threshold of a logical extension and not overdevelop the concept to the point it takes a definition of its own (we'd know because, I think, it would feel like "a completely different thing that we call vampirism because we lack a better name"). In particular, it needs to remain tied to the nature of Pokémon in the sense that this needs to take place in a Pokémon world (though  of note I would not say it has to be related to Pokémon themselves specifically; it could very well have come to be something related to eg.: the Bittercold if it had been developed from a completely different angle).

* I do have the concern of if the whole Vampire thing does have to be Aura-related specifically? In particular because Infinite Energy, a different facet, is also mentioned. I would rather keep tabs on Aura feature creep while we still can, and I don't see a leading reason why vampirism would have to be tied to Aura *and* IE versus other forms of life energy. Though I also have the "reverse" concern that having it tied to only IE would likely be worse, as it is already a much less defined concept.

* I am totally okay with thralls not being a thing because of both my own personal concerns regarding stuff like overwriting personality / identity as well as the issues that kind of thing would bring up within the playerbase. Also, would rather vampires not sparkle; the effect of them being very gay and very pose-prone should be enough.

(Plus, to be fair, on a matter of practicality, them sparkling would kind of defeat the stealth needed to attack their victims, but that's a whole different issue)

* Agree with Jojoposing, I guess that's kind of a given. (How is that even portrayed in writing btw? Asking here the players with more experience with the stuff :p )

* what happens to victims? The thing with vampirism described as draining the life energy of things is that, well, live things probs need their life energy to live. Also there's the whole farming of humans / mons as stock for lifefood which is already a concern of its own. We probably need to hash out what would happen to both PC and NPC victims before we start liberally having stuff happen to them.

In particular, there needs to be a cure and or some form of resistance / immunity. And whether a character is inflicted to vampirism or not should not be forced IMO.

One thing that does come to mind would be that in the least the more mechanical or inorganic Pokémon should be either immune to the effects of vampirism (but can still have their life energy drained off them since IE is a thing) or have an intrinsic trait related to their inorganicness that makes it very difficult for vampires to track them down or take them down.

Another idea that comes to mind regarding that is whether vampires can drain life energy from a Substitute, since I don't think we have a that well defined idea of how Substitute operates but it has to at least be good enough to fool an attacker and or taking their hits on its own, which means it needs to have some sort of level of automation or at least lifelike response and decision-making. Meaning they are kind of... one time ambulatory life energy tanks :p

* Regarding the victims there's also the issue of what happens to the attackers. Since their situation does involve either attacking Pokémon to consume them, or attacking humans outside of the range allowed in a Pokémon battle, I am going to guess that Vampires' activities and probably their very existence is considered to be Fair Game™ / not protected by The Vow's terms? Among other things, simply because the above ideas of "consuming" plus their viral / contagion element would place any Vampire at the same position of a Manslayer / Vow Breaker.

Some of those points are already partially addressed at chat discussion, but I would like a more formalized definition of capabilities, thresholds and narrative consequences thereof.

In an almost tangential manner, the whole idea of Infinite Energy being used to rejuvenate and lengthen one's lifespan does bring up an interesting twist on things... Infinite Energy-based beauty treatments. I mean, if Vampires exist and they eventually are or were examinated scientifically, a development like ths is likely to come out. In particular since we have decided that humans can produce minute amounts of the stuff.

On yet another matter, the Vampires proposal also brings up an addendum proposal for a Ghost-type Leech Life-like move. Quoting from the D!post itself:

My personal thoughts are since this would be kind of the "defining" move of life leeching, it should feel like it is more dangerous but also more readily accessible. Giga Drain level of stuff is a bit too strong for my tastes (better to have a different, "Dementor Kiss" like signature move with stronger mechanics but kept as signature IMO). I would say that the more "generic" life leech move should have mechanics closer to Mega Drain but with the added effect of something like, say, an increased Critical chance, or an increased recovery ratio. I agree it should be a contact move, but I don't really have a good idea if it should be Phys or Spec.

That way, a more Signature-esque move could be designed with stronger and stricter mechanics, I am thinking something like a Giga Drain but with 85-90 BP at the cost of a somewhat lower recovery ratio (35-45%?).

But overall, any generics that make a Leech Life-like move feel more general and not too overdone would be nice. In particular I think it needs to be not powerful enough but at the same dangerous or risky enough for the target, that it evokes the idea of a slow but sure "death" (well, faint).

That would be my take on the leech life-like move issue.

And those would be my ideas on the current vampirism-related ideas general.

Thoughts?

re: Robots

(Since that was finally brought up)

Like I've said before in chatroom, my position is that robots, in and of itself, is not the issue. There are a number of subyacent issues, Tangent for example mentions scope, for me it's mostly (de-)adaptability and scale. And, as my usual position is, that it should always be Pokémon on the forefront - and I don't mean simply the fights.

But perhaps it is worth to examine a bit the history of why these things are a problem. See, the conversation about the growing focus on things like robots or space has been going on for a while already, it's not like the position about them switched from positive to negative just now, but I guess only now it was that it built up enough of a weight to actually become an issue that has to be discussed. I'm sure someone will come up and explain the Tale of 49, as well as other Big Tales of Derailment that we have faced; needless to say, they have left a sour taste in our mouths regarding how far is going too far when allowing this RP to kinda try and be about anything.

Since this is a matter that required a good amount of talking that that might actually lead me to write an Essay in the future to complement Every's Essay, I think I will just focus on the points that I consider driving.

* This should be an RP primarily about a Pokémon world. That does not mean we can not have robots and virtual maids (the canon has both, mind; cyborgs I'm not sure), but it means the design of all those things has to consider that the world itself runs on Pokémon. For example a good call would be having the "remote bodies" of sorts that can be run by a Porygon, or a scifantasy golem companion using Golett design as a base (they are canonically artificial after all). A bad call would have this technology be uplifted to the point that it completely surpasses Pokémon, such as being undetectable to undistinguishable to them. That has a meaning and impact on some of the things I mention below.

* One of the problems that has been seen regarding the overall ideas of robots and space stuff is the problem of tone. And with this I don't mean "grimdark" or "owww the edge", but rather tone as in "sounding like a Pokémon thing" when discussing it - including such things as the issues that would come from discussing a Skynet (something that actually took place in the chatroom, and was not distinguishable as a "joke" because it was never pointed to be such in an RP discussion topical channel - which is yet another subject I'll have to plant my foot on later) or "overshilling" some of the robot things to the point of making them sound like they'd solve every problem and surpass Pokémon in any criticism that is brought up.

* There is an actual more on-metal (snerk) thing about tone that others can discuss better than me, I think. It has to do with what things such plots should be able to achieve.

* Another problem is scale and the applicability it has.  Here it has more to do with how much the subject matter injects or impacts on other things or stretches attention in the RP. Space Ampharos, for example, are a thing IN SPACE and can totally be a thing and it works, but one of the big reasons why it works is because they don't really inject on other (space or not) related things on the RP or weigh them down. Things dealing with Space Ampharos do not have such a grand scale that it would feel like everything from the atmosphere upwards could be impacted by them. With or without Space Ampharos the RP remains largely the same, which is something I'll discuss under de-adaptability.

* Another reason why Space Ampharos work: they are just a silly thing that does not need to depend on particular rules of the universe because they barely impact anything. They are not hard science or hard fantasy (at some points they almost don't even qualify for low fantasy). Trying to import hard scifantasy things into the RP causes problem when one wants to follow them with the same degree of scifi-hardiness, because the world we have simply does not work like that. Now, that does not mean a blanket going for the opposite: one of the big things the 49 case was was, precisely, extremely low scifi. But "hard" is much harder to adapt with tone, hence the name. And it has good reasons to.

* And now, de-adaptability. A term I just coined up (I hope), and basically is the converse of adaptability: how easily can we filter out something that was brought into the RP without damaging the events and plots it was brought for. It is, for me, one of the big tests to run when deciding on the ability to import a media arc and it essentially relates to the idea that once that plot line ends, the RP has to be able to return to normal function with the things that were brought up not necessarily disappeared, but at least certainly faded into the background in an unobstructive manner.

For example: making infiltration robot technology serialized to the level that it could be available to the general public, for example, would completely break the inmersion in a world that can not ignore this development: it breaks everything. Keys has such a thing going on for example with an universal Monese translator and, being aware of these issues, it was designed in very specific ways: it was to be a PEFE test, run-on during the RP, carried out in the background, and not ever producing a satisfying in-universe result until we ever deem it appropriate, but still being able to produce good enough intermediate results that it can be used as a side thing in plots.

In the past for example I rejected some plots about mons who would go to regions and infiltrate the wild colonies there precisely because it would have broken stuff I have for the Goldenrod colony in irreconciliable ways. So that's a good litmus test.

* Which brings me to an issue about most both soft and hard scifi: serialization. If a breaking technological advancement can be mass-produced, then it breaks immersion to try and return to the RP as it was overall-normal before it. Like I said above, it could not be ignored. It is basically about technologies that, were they available, would change everything. So design of the idea has to consider not only how to avoid it becoming a problem in the future, it also has to solve the issue of why was it not already a problem in the past. It is one of the reasons the Pokefutures backstory plot goes as it does, which basically leaves us the various hooks with "we have to deal with this formerly *confined* Pokefutures remnant".

Now, I'm leaving those subjects mostly for the discussion that is going to have to be had. As for the matter at hand:

* This world is a Pokémon world, meaning Zeerust is in order. We have 1600s-tier farms a couple days walk from the high-tech drone-driven city of LaRousse, and that's canon. Raising a blanket moratorium of any kind on robot stuff is counterproductive from that and some other angles.

* Robots and cyborgs themselves is not the issue; stretching their capabilities and importance so as to eclipse or replace other things in a work that is not a hard scifi Space / Michael Bay thing, is.

* More than limiting the abilities the robots / androids / etc can have, which is something I had the understanding that it is something was already overall going well, what interests me is limiting the influence the robots can have past their arc. In particular the inflitration kind. As per the various points above: once the arc ends, the world needs to return to being able to run under the idea that this is not a Gattaca or Michael Bay Transforers dystopia.

* If we want to go with limiting the robots / androids / whatever, the key idea I'm for in is since they are built for infiltration, they share the weaknesses of what they are trying to imitate (where possible). A big point for me is that infiltration robots can not be completely or largely undistinguishable by creatures as varied in sensory ability as Pokémon -and even then, remember this is a world where 10 year old children are sent out to the world with Everything Sensors-. I for one would have a very hard time believing that all of Roc (hypersensing bird), Zecora (psychic), Foudre (feline vision), Maekrite (good hearing) and Pandinus (chemosensitivity) would not be able to sense something wrong with the guy back at the corner.

Other thoughts on the matter would likely come later.

re: Signups (2)

@Tangent: Merely providing a link to the Essays does not prove access, merely availability (and from a technical standpoint not even that). I can search for the page in google for example and just copypaste the link, without ever actually visiting the page. Moreover, I could save the link and publish it in a public pastebin for everyone who wants to sign in to access.

It's not the best thing to take as a measure for reading and not much else either, but at least it is a task we can simplify, I think the suggestions so far about moving the codewords to the end might make the most sense.

re: Status

I usually don't do this but.

Some of you might have noticed I am less present in the chatrooms than usual and that I'm not showing up in Discord as of late either. There's a good reason for that.

Winter has been stressful, needing me to wake up earlier and get back home later due to weather. Work has been stressful now that I am moved to another position to hold the fort in Backend while the company is "undergoing some re-structuration" (yeah, you can freely guess what is that codeword for). So I don't have that much "spare" time at work either. Chronic treatment has not been stressful, in fact it brings good results and it's much welcome, but it is still noticeably tiring. Home is tired because of all of the above.

Alas I don't have a solar-powered fluffy ball of paws, overlording and anti-stress.

Anyway, I've chosen to cut down on the amount of things I'm focusing at a time so that I can survive this winter more productively. There's writing contests, company re-structuration and a number of other things I have to deal with and I can't, for the time being, multitask as well as I used to. I'm still available over tropi.us IM if needed, and if pointed to at things I can go take a look later, but for the time being most of my presence in the chatrooms will be limited to administrative matters.

And or sharing cat pictures and memes. That's the kind of things that helps be less stressed.

Battle Bond

As in this post

In general terms I feel adding (to a move that doesn't have) or removing a secondary effect as a modification would be OK but I still want to know what the move in question is and the changes proposed, since we seem to want to examine this in a case by case basis anyway.  In broad scope, basically mirroring what Bit says.

Since these kinds of changes are per-specimen rather than a broad scope mechanics change, two factors that I will also consider are that:

1.- as with other per-specimen specifics like say Shadow Pokémon, their usage in Gym Battles / league battles, as well as inter-player battles, is restricted to previous public agreement between the parts (in the case of gym leaders, that mostly means in-universe agreement or some sort of license).
2.- as per usual, the modification is first checked for balance OOU, but I guess that's a given. It'll also help document what characters have what specific variations.