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  • 📅 February and March 2024 are YE 46.2 in the RP.

OOC Battlefield Education: My Martial Arts Are Completely Interfering With My School Romantic Comedy

I am unsure how this has been going on for 'a few days' when I checked in before (and after) work and didn't see anything. And yeah, Gallant, it's not very cool for you to come in here and criticize me during this, when I had nothing to do with this, and was not consulted at any part of it.

In fact, I have specifically said multiple times to contact me in PMs if there was a problem during all of this. Instead of filling up the OOC thread, which I asked you not to do during the last argument.

Please do not let this spill out into the chat, or other areas. Don't grab random other people to try to settle this without just asking me first.

For now, this is on firm pause until I wake up and have time to look at it while properly wake. I will just randomly decide a winner and we can move on from there. I will delete posts if we need to start over.
 
I am unsure how this has been going on for 'a few days' when I checked in before (and after) work and didn't see anything. And yeah, Gallant, it's not very cool for you to come in here and criticize me during this, when I had nothing to do with this, and was not consulted at any part of it.

This and a couple other reactions confused me for a moment until I looked over my advice and realized that I'd worded certain things in a way last night that seems, to my morning self, to have been unnecessarily confrontational. Specifically, there was a line of text in one of my points that seemed to heap this all on the GM's.

I went back and edited some of the offending text to be more true to my intention. That sentence was removed, and the clarifying edit is in bold.

That said, I'm going to hop out of here now and scurry back to my own plot corner. Good luck. Have faith in each other.
 
There's a similarity between that edit and the one Edto made to the RP post. It added one term and left in all of the implications.

Lecturing everyone doesn't solve problems, either. The first step in solving a problem is finding the problem.

The problem here was not that we 'didn't work together', it was that Edto argued, complained, and tried to pressure the other players into letting Zoia do exactly what Edto wrote (save for one word, when the third basic rule of the roleplaying guidelines was brought up) instead of leaving Reynolds to, in Edto's words, resolve the dispute. In fact, we would have been better off if I didn't try to work with Edto, because that's what prompted the arguments. I'd have been better off going over his head. That's not good.

Forfeiting and leaving the RP 'solves these problems' like a hole in the head. Is that really what we need? It would have been simple to either reduce the post to something more like one turn's worth of actions, so that Gunhand and I would have more of a chance to play, if Edto'd either have preferred to not wait for Reynolds, or if Edto'd agreed with me that doing so would improve the RP.

It would have been simple to let Rei's intervention stand as another way to at least somewhat moderate how much Zoia was doing in one turn, instead of writing a huge post to argue with the other players that her intervention was impossible and wrong and unfair. At that point we should have already halted, because it was abundantly clear that we were not going to agree. Instead, Edto kept complaining and arguing, brought it elsewhere, and attempted to drum up support from people not in the plot, as if that could convince the other players that Zoia's action was right and Rei's action was wrong.

As usual, we could have avoided all this, but it's not because someone refused to communicate, this time, it's because someone chose to do it too much, with the intention of making everyone else--literally, everyone else involved!--back down and let him get his way before Reynolds knew what was going on.

Don't get me wrong, I'd have enjoyed this plot more if Zoia had less of a role in it, about as far as conceivable. I found out I didn't want to RP with her in the second JP with her; the third really nailed it home. But she's an integral part of the plot right now, and if she's suddenly removed, not only will half the story so far come down to an anticlimax, and several core aspects of the next arc be missing, it'll be obvious the choice was for OOC reasons.

It's easily possible to RP this without a vicious competition. The question is, who's willing? I had no intention of quitting the plot if Zoia won the fight, but so long as she continues to dominate everyone she interacts with to the point of looking like a reality warper, it does make me uncomfortable to the point where I'd want to leave. That's the IC issue. The OOC one comes because Edto also tries to dominate others OOC, using means up to and including trying to warp reality.
 
Alright. First off, I have deleted the last few posts in the main RP thread, to roll everything back a few steps. I am not sure I will actually be reopening the thread, but we'll see.

As someone who usually plays the DM, and is now a GM here, I have gotten used to losing. Most characters I make exist only to lose. Any wins they rack up are usually only there to establish them as a threat and/or get the PCs to have a reaction to them, to make their eventual victory later more memorable and satisfying. This has extended somewhat to most of the PCs I make, both here and elsewhere. Mitsuko has gotten injured every time she put on armor, for example. When this involves players fighting each other, I usually wind up volunteering to lose as well...someone has to, and as a frequent GM I understand that and will take the hit more often than most.

So, I took it for granted that we'd all just get along and work things out. I've been solely RPing here for the past four years or whatever, because I didn't have the time/proper hours to RP on real time things like MUSH or MUCK, where this type of combat between players happens more often. So I hadn't been in that sort of situation for a good while. This is probably all my fault, in the end, because I really should have just randomly decided the winner of each fight. I just thought I could trust everyone to figure things out calmly, which is again my mistake.

The base idea for this entire plot might not really be a good one, in the end. I was just brainstorming while working on the Martial Arts page, and things quickly got out of my control, and next thing you know I'm running a second plot. I didn't really think this through. I also originally thought two people from chat had volunteered to co-GM to take most of the load off of me, but I had misunderstood them, and wound up doing all the wiki work, plot setup, character approval and argument settling myself. Honestly, everything started because I wanted to write some cool background fluff for one NPC, which required doing the research that lead to the Martial Arts page, which started the conversation about this potential plot. Of course, the hilarious part is that the background fluff will never come up, and I'll never get to do anything cool with the character, because it's just an NPC there to facilitate RP for the players. So I did a whole bunch of work for nothing, and got myself saddled with this current problem in the process.

I wanted to make sure we had plenty of characters and players to start off with, so maybe I approved a few I shouldn't have. I pictured it as a high-energy anime action plot focused on super powered fighters, then allowed in several non-powered character, even one that specifically didn't really want to fight or get stronger. I wanted to have people training, sparring, and swapping styles and tips, then allowed in a character with natural weapons that was not interested in playing nice or learning any other way to fight. I asked for teachers and staff, then forgot to give them anything more interesting to do than watch the students.

Ed, you've continuously shown you simply can't help but get overly emotional about even the smallest thing. You came to an established site solely interested in wedging your own new species in as hard and fast as possible. I went out of my way to help you get set up here, and fought off a few other GMs to get you approved, and have done my best to get you and your species established here. And yet you've continuously yelled at me, complained to me, complained about me, argued with me, and tried to drag in every staff member you can find to get me in trouble. You've demanded more, more, more, and when I point this out or try to slow things down, you fly off the handle. It's been a really rough time for me, honestly, when all I wanted to do was help a new player out...because when I'd originally started, nobody had been interested in helping me do what I wanted to do, and I didn't want to sit back and let that happen to someone else. You can ask around, I've entertained some weird ideas and characters, and taken some odd ideas seriously, even when I knew the players had no clue what they were doing or were going to leave the site after a month or so. Sometimes some crazy stuff works out, though, like the Heartbreaker's resident android, which was a plot that took like five months to get started and get to the point where he could actually post.

This particular experiment isn't working out. Ed, you in particular are just not working out here. Again, I should have seen this coming, for all the reasons I have pointed out above. Your personality was a bad fit for combat between players, because you want your pet species to look good and you want to win and enjoy being in charge and fight to get your way. I also shouldn't have allowed a character that has zero desire to fit what I wanted to see in this plot, so that you can fall back on 'well my character would do this' or 'my character wants to win' in every situation. I just didn't think it would get this bad, but it's my fault in the end.

I was actually planning on introducing a new character and new plot wrinkle to try to help with this, but I think it's just a waste of time at this point. I don't think it's going to get better, because you don't particularly want it to get better...which would be fine if this was just Zoia killing my NPCs, but it doesn't really work with the plot as I've set it up. Which is my fault.

So, in conclusion, I'm doing two things. First I'm going to have to ask Ed to remove Zoia from the plot. It's just not working out. This does not affect any other Vekimen-related stuff that's currently going on, but yeah, I am rather irritated with you in general. I'm going to try to continue moving forward, though, and hope we can work together, but in this plot specifically it's not going to happen.

But that doesn't really matter so much, because the second thing is I'm keeping the main thread locked, and locking down the OOC thread after this post. I think I'm done here. If other people want to post a few more OVAs with your characters, go for it. If you want to play your characters in any upcoming holiday threads (I volunteered to help run one with Wes, since the Halloween one went well, but he never responded to me) then that's fine. If Ame or someone else wants to take over after we've taken a good, long break, then I'll consider handing it over. But for right now, I just can't take it anymore.
 
Okay, here's the general pitch. I suggest going ahead and reading the first post in the old OOC thread, and taking a glance at the wiki pages, to get an idea of what I'm talking about and how it should work. But this is what I'm considering for a second season.

With the Kuvexian War heating up, the Star Army of Yamatai needs a fresh wave of new soldiers, the likes of which haven't been seen since the end of the Second NMX War. They don't just need Neko, or even recruits that'd made it through boot camp or scored high on their technical exams. They need soldiers, specialist, leaders. They need Artists of combat. Martial Artists.

So, an experimental program has been launched. The princess created as a propaganda tool for this very war, Ketsurui Aiko has seen combat on the front line against Kuvexian forces. She's returned to Yamatai for debriefing and further training, along with some rest and relaxation. Not to mention a steady stream of public appearances to boost morale and share her story.

Along with the princess, a fresh wave of Neko and Younglings have arrived at Zenjinkaze Fighting High School. Hand selected from schools, homes and boot camps, these students have already demonstrated an aptitude for the martial arts, combat sports, firearms and the like. They are the top 1%, and they're here to become the top 0.1%. They'll officially enter the Star Army of Yamtai as squad leaders, commanders, captains. They need aces and experts to drive the average Neko forward, lead by example, and inspire their comrades to greatness. When (if) you graduate, you will be considered the Best of the Best.

But this isn't a race, a dash to the finish, with nothing but katas and combat skills drilled into impressionable young minds. They want empathy, logic, courage, discretion, and love. The children who train here will leave as fully formed adults, well rounded and not just ready to serve, but expected to excel. Within the last few years, a certain Martial Art has risen in popularity, or at least notoriety, and its unique blend of traditional Yamataian arts and philosophy with a Neko-specific fighting style that produces both ace Power Armor combatants and well read, duty-focused leaders has led to its selection for this training experiment. The students are all expected to learn this new style, with the various sub-styles catering to their individual strengths.
 
So are our characters limited to being a neko? I just want to make sure before I really get into making my character.
 
So, in summary, to join up: be a fresh Neko or Youngling. Be good at martial arts or something combat related. Be ready for school hijinks. Be ready to learn a fancy new martial art that you'll get to help grow on the wiki. Get the opportunity to enter another plot later, if you choose, with a badass higher ranking combat specialist with a lot of cool tricks.

I definitely want to welcome back @Ametheliana and @Gunhand4171 and @Ace if they want to rejoin with their characters from season one. Everything that happened before will be considered 'soft canon'. Since things didn't quite end right, and we've lost some players/characters/races/etc. from the wiki, it's not all 'hard canon' to this season. I will probably reuse all the same NPCs. So even though Forte was an older student that first year, and it's been a year between now and then, she's still just an older student there to bully people. As long as nobody has any problems with that?

If you want to join as a teacher or other employee, or someone else in Tsubomi who interacts with the school in some way? You can be any race, age, etc. I would like people to post rough ideas here, or contact me in PMs or through Discord. Once you have a basic idea, drop it in the character app area and I'll take a look and get you approved. If you need more help, I'm sure I can assist, or Ame knows her way around this pretty well, too.
 
So are our characters limited to being a neko? I just want to make sure before I really get into making my character.

We had a real issue last time with some people feeling underpowered due to playing a human or...other races...when compared to Neko. So I think having everyone play Neko will make it fair for everyone. It also fits in nicely with the story I want to tell and the elements of the SA world I want to push and explore.
 
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