What's new
Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 October and November 2024 are YE 46.8 in the RP.

OOC Eucharis Discussion

And now the Rixikor are storming the building before ever arriving at it. Because people keep deleting and editing their posts and nobody really cares about actually reading what anyone else has written. We're all just contributing filler to Hanako fanfiction, in the end.

I'm sorry everyone, I think I'm going to take that 'instantly disappear' suggestion and just roll on out. Nothing I ever say is going to matter as much as Hanako, random civilians or new characters who only stick around for a few months. I was happy and excited for like a few hours a day or so ago, and then it was back to business as usual. I've been holding back and trying to be composed, but I'm really ready to have that giant, messy, loud breakdown and profanity laden rant that everyone else on this site gets to have. But I'm still too polite and reserved to even go that far. So I guess you can just imagine me screaming and typing in all caps. I'll just quietly wrap things up while my head feels like it wants to split open.

I guess the Rixxikor kill Mitsuko when they burst into the Lighthouse, since it looks like she was just left behind at the entrance by the person she set the whole trip up with, and nobody else there really cares to bring her along or anything. So that's wrapped up nice and tidy.

Have fun, Wes.
 
Hey, Reynolds, come on now. This has all just been kinda twisted by people posting at different times. Sometimes it just takes starting a little back in time with your posts to play catch up. I didn't forget about you, it's just that we had to make some kind of a movement upwards to even find out if there was a shuttle or not. The place needed to be checked out, and quickly.

You're a good RPer. Your posts do get read and appreciated, even if sometimes intended responses just get carried away with the plot train... If you really feel like you just aren't having fun anymore then nobody can stop you, but I did want to get our characters involved further when the time was actually practical.
 
Woah now, @Reynolds, please don't make a rash decision like that. You're suffering the same issue as Wes now, assuming such terrible things are afoot with a conspiracy against your character and/or yourself. Nothing could be further from the truth... Polygon is right, we are just moving the action forward because that's what is seems Wes wants to do, and in the end this is his space opera movie plotline. Calling it "Hanako fanfiction" is doing the Eucharis a great disservice, especially from someone who has been here for so long of a ride. Did you ever consider that the stickler for details mindset in this case maybe is working against you and your enjoyment of things?

I think everyone just needs to relax and roll with the punches. This sort of thing is not the end of the world. Just like life, nothing ever is going to be perfect. We have the power to edit our posts for a reason, you know. :)
 
Wes said:
I tried to make the plot more exciting by introducing some real risks and now we're stuck with the consequences...By contacting SAINT, @Rizzo has ruined my plot plans and Hanako's career. The adventure is effectively over now. Instead of getting to sneak in and rescue the Eucharis, the Star Army will go do it for us, while Hanako gets forced to retire for losing the ship.

Because of the issues above, I think this will be the last mission of the Eucharis plot, so please start making plans for your character to join another RP plot or start your own. It was a good run, but everything has to end. Star Army's not a novel where one person writes everything and it makes sense...we all have to deal with the unpredictable actions of other people's characters.

Forgive me for not making a post for the canyon side of things but I'm really angry right now and I am struggling to be motivated to post at all.
Click to expand...

Sometimes, you really worry me @Wes . I know this is a bit late, but I think you should relax a little and listen to Zack - he's right.

At the very moment that It happened, you might have only foreseen the end of the plot and everything, but things are never, ever black and white. There's always lots of gray you can use to your advantage. You gotta slow down and see the big picture. It was, and still is, a massive opportunity for you. Good and great things can be had out of this. Even if things don't go well in the plot, and what happened to the Eucharis is found out, it's more than possible that Hanako simply be demoted to Taisa or even Chusa. That means she gets to go out into the field more often with her girls, right? You've said before that you were feeling restricted by her rank, and this is the best opportunity you've had yet to do something about it. You said yourself that you want real risks and consequences, and this is it - don't shy away from it now that it's finally here. The uncertainty; its supposed to be a thrill, a rush of excitement as much as it is scary.

In the end of the day, you already know Hanako and the crew are going to be fine; it's really just a matter of how fine they'll be.

I also point out that it would be very strange for SAINT to not know about this sooner or later - it makes them look less than competent at their jobs, and you've been pushing to have them shown as being good at what they do.

@Reynolds - hey, don't take it too hard. Slow down a bit and take a breath before you come do a decision. Despite what's happening, look at what some of the others are saying - they're going to miss you if you leave. Ignoring what's happened with the plot, ask yourself if you're going to miss RPing with them or not. Hiccups in the plot aside, have you had fun RPing your character interacting with theirs? If the answer is yes, then they're going to have less fun with you gone, and you're not going to have any more fun with them either.

Just slow down and consider things.
 
Did you know that the name Hanako appears about 40 times on the plot history page? That's more mentions than every other name on the page combined. The only names that ever appear more than once are NPCs played by Wes. And Sune.

That's the kind of stuff I notice when I slow down and take time to consider things. But apparently I have a mental disorder that causes me to do things like read wiki pages before I post, according to 'what some of the others are saying'. So things I notice probably aren't that important.
 
No, what you do notice is important, but rather than focus on something that's mostly out of your own hands, I would suggest paying attention to the more practical things on hand too. You already noticed something wrong, and raised a complaint, so the next thing to do is balance the scales and see what's heavier. Again, are you having more fun than not here in the Eucharis? That's the all-important question.
 
Also keep in mind, Wes and by extension, Hanako, has been on the Eucharis since its inception 8 years ago. This is much longer than anyone else has been in the plot. So it stands to reason that Hanako will be mentioned more often in the plots history since the character has been in the plot considerably more than anyone else.

Also look at it this way too. When you read the history of the starship Enterprise, who is mentioned the majority of the time when a character is mentioned in conjunction with that ship? Captain Kirk, always. The Enterprise was his ship. The Eucharis is Hanako's ship. I have no issue with this.

Addressing concerns above, not everyone gets mentioned in all posts. It happens. Natsumi is the ships XO and she doesnt. You have to either assume your character followed along and continue with that assumption in mind, or write in a bit of catch up stating your character followed along in your next post. Unless it is definativly stated your character was left at the door, it is not a givin.

I think people need to step back and have some fruit or something and calm down.
 
Oh! Almost forgot!

Wes, I'm loving Hanako being involved so much in this mission. I think its great youre jumping in here and having her in the thick of it with the rest of us rather than hanging back on the bridge. From my perspective this has been very refreshing and awesome!! I think this is great for you to stretch your player muscles and have more fun yourself :D

I think this is a good rout to go. I am glad youre taking it and hope you continue to do so!

I'd also say, don't be afraid of Hanako getting her hands dirty and getting in a bit of trouble. Think of my analogy in my post above, If Hanako is like Admiral Kirk, this could be her Star Trek II - IV story ark. Lookat those for inspiration and comfort. Kirk and crew sacrifice everything and break all the rules (steal a ship, sabotage another, violate command orders, assault fleet personnel) to save their friend and then the world. Choosing to do what was write, not what was in the rules. And in the end, when kirk should have been stripped of rank, dismissed the service and tossed in prison, guess what? Yes he got punushed, demoted from admiral to captain, and put back in the job he did best and was happiest doing. Oh noes! :)

Kirk was feeling useless, constrained by his rank as an admiral. The demotion was the best thing for him. I get a feeling you feel like that with Hanako right now. This might be a good thing for her too. Anyways. She could always get promoted again if you go this way ;)
 
@Gunsight1 I totally stand by what I said earlier in this thread about the analogies to the Star Trek arc... that f Hanako is like Wes's Kirk, then what is stopping us from re-enacting our own version of that epic movie tale? It's a proven formula for turning rebellion into an ultimate display of loyalty and it works!

Rizzo's action retconn notwithstanding, there is a HUGE load of untapped dramatic potential right here in plain view getting all muddied up by nitpicking and personal vendettas. It really makes me sad. There is a place for everyone in this design if you could just move past these issues.
 
Even if things don't go well in the plot, and what happened to the Eucharis is found out, it's more than possible that Hanako simply be demoted to Taisa or even Chusa. That means she gets to go out into the field more often with her girls, right?
Click to expand...
I strongly felt like Yui would rather "ask" Hanako (as in the kind of asking where you don't have a choice in the answer) to retire and leave the military than invite the public gossip that would result from Hanako being demoted, and when I said "The Eucharis has been stolen! If command finds out, Hanako could lose everything!" I meant that, it wasn't just hype. I was putting my character's fate in the hands of her crew because she trusts them and I trust my players, who are amazing. Even when, although very upset, I was willing to accept the consequences and lose Hanako (as a military character), it's my players who have helped me fix this issue too, so I didn't have to.

Gunsight1 said:
Oh! Almost forgot!

Wes, I'm loving Hanako being involved so much in this mission. I think its great youre jumping in here and having her in the thick of it with the rest of us rather than hanging back on the bridge. From my perspective this has been very refreshing and awesome!! I think this is great for you to stretch your player muscles and have more fun yourself :D

I think this is a good rout to go. I am glad youre taking it and hope you continue to do so!

I'd also say, don't be afraid of Hanako getting her hands dirty and getting in a bit of trouble. Think of my analogy in my post above, If Hanako is like Admiral Kirk, this could be her Star Trek II - IV story ark. Lookat those for inspiration and comfort. Kirk and crew sacrifice everything and break all the rules (steal a ship, sabotage another, violate command orders, assault fleet personnel) to save their friend and then the world. Choosing to do what was write, not what was in the rules. And in the end, when kirk should have been stripped of rank, dismissed the service and tossed in prison, guess what? Yes he got punushed, demoted from admiral to captain, and put back in the job he did best and was happiest doing. Oh noes! :)

Kirk was feeling useless, constrained by his rank as an admiral. The demotion was the best thing for him. I get a feeling you feel like that with Hanako right now. This might be a good thing for her too. Anyways. She could always get promoted again if you go this way
Click to expand...
Hanako's not the same personality type as Star Trek's captain Kirk, though. She doesn't want a demotion and it would make her feel like a total failure (think of it from the Japanese-style-angle where "saving face" is a major cultural value). Nor is Hanako the type who breaks the rules or goes against command (at least, she's far less likely to).

Reynolds said:
And now the Rixikor are storming the building before ever arriving at it. Because people keep deleting and editing their posts and nobody really cares about actually reading what anyone else has written. We're all just contributing filler to Hanako fanfiction, in the end.

I'm sorry everyone, I think I'm going to take that 'instantly disappear' suggestion and just roll on out. Nothing I ever say is going to matter as much as Hanako, random civilians or new characters who only stick around for a few months. I was happy and excited for like a few hours a day or so ago, and then it was back to business as usual. I've been holding back and trying to be composed, but I'm really ready to have that giant, messy, loud breakdown and profanity laden rant that everyone else on this site gets to have. But I'm still too polite and reserved to even go that far. So I guess you can just imagine me screaming and typing in all caps. I'll just quietly wrap things up while my head feels like it wants to split open.

I guess the Rixxikor kill Mitsuko when they burst into the Lighthouse, since it looks like she was just left behind at the entrance by the person she set the whole trip up with, and nobody else there really cares to bring her along or anything. So that's wrapped up nice and tidy.

Have fun, Wes.
Click to expand...
@Reynolds: Maybe it would be better to just ask people to use this editing power to include your character if you feel she's left out. I just made an assumption she would be tagging along with Umeshu and Tsuguka when they went in, because the plot is moving along so briskly.

Reynolds said:
Did you know that the name Hanako appears about 40 times on the plot history page? That's more mentions than every other name on the page combined. The only names that ever appear more than once are NPCs played by Wes. And Sune.
Click to expand...
Of course it does. The history is written like a TROM of some World War 2 ship. From the historian's perspective, the names of regular crew members are of little interest. It's mainly about where the ship is and what it's doing. The captain and occasionally an XO or some other crew member may get a mention but they're not what the ship's history article is about. That's why the history is on the ship's page and not the plot's page.
 
I will say, though, that Reynolds brings up a good point. I think we're all guilty of skipping over posts. I sure am, and I've been trying to change since I went back over Post-Mission 24 and realized I missed Wes' post where the new NPC tech greeted Jackson.

I guess it's human nature to skip over information we find irrelevant.
 
I think it's a case of character priorities, too, through.

Like, I haven't even addressed the Suites issue in-character, because they are kinda busy getting besieged at the moment. Doesn't mean I forgot, or didn't read his post, it's just that it would flow badly to have Tsuguka grilling him over being a possible spy, and then leap directly into fighting side-by-side before they have had a chance to really talk about it. The Rixxikor certainly wouldn't wait for them to stop and have a chat, so it just has to be something that falls by the wayside until it makes sense to tackle it.

Sorry if that sounds a little vainglorious, seeing as I did just spurge a massive post within which Tsuguka barely interacted with anyone else. But she is the only professional grunt, and it was kind of her job to leap into the fray first and all, something that I very rarely let her do.

If other people think that was really rash, self absorbed, or even out of character, seriously, just say so. I read other people's posts to an almost obsessive degree, and if things don't feel like they are meshing, that is definitely a failure of communication which can be tackled. Sometimes we only need to reach out to the other players a little.
 
Last edited:
If every post I've made for two weeks has been in an effort to make a change to the plot, and when that change finally happens Wes just gets everyone to delete their posts and redo everything to remove the change he didn't like, what is the point? Why should I bother?

This whole thing will just wind up being summarized as "Hanako's ship was stolen but Hanako and her crew tracked and recovered Hanako's ship and returned on the Eucharis to Hanako's World." That's not going to change no matter what we post. It was already decided before the mission even started.
 
@Reynolds After the ups and downs we had this week, nobody wants to see you bringing this sort of negativity in the OOC thread so please stop.

There's some truth in that we expect the players to win this (as opposed to dying and being eaten by Rixxikor) because we're the protagonists of the story. But the fact that I was so set on sticking to the internal reality of the universe that I would have had Hanako get forced out of the military to go along with the latest plot developments entirely disproves that the outcome is set in stone.

I don't claim to be the best GM on Star Army. I know that I'm not. I've seen people who are better at me at long, complex story arcs, or being creative, or making every player feel like a star. I do the best I can, though, and if my plot is not giving you what you're looking for, maybe it would help to try putting Mitsuko under another Star Army GM. If you got beef with Hanako or the way she's RPed, then the plot with Hanako as the captain is probably not the ideal plot for you. You seem unhappy here so maybe shop around for something that will make you happier.
 
I'm sorry that the result of my post was dramatically different but that truely was the objective he wanted to achieve. He doesn't follow the rules to begin with so when ordered to not do something he's supposed to do he will gladly not do it. Candon doesn't just report problems, he provides solutions. There was the problem of someone finding out what was happening on UX-1, he called someone to filter out any information he didn't like. That is what he intended for, he doesn't want more ships to come because then the crews of the backup ships find out and then word gets back to families and then to friends. Next thing you know there are more attacks from criminals that think they can score an SAOY ship and citizens begin to wonder if their actually safe. As a person who's gone as far as becoming an outlaw for the protection of the YSE he's familiar with going to extremes. That's why he's the hardest character I've ever written, I'm sure that's what made his intentions unclear. Sometimes even I don't know what he's going to do. If you'd like to try using him as a tool please go for it, I won't meta game or godmode, just be advised that I can't guarantee any specific action. I love IC drama, Mitsuko might not make it to legendary status but maybe we could do something to inject a little drama just to keep things fresh?
 
I think a lot of this ties back into the 'credible enemy' argument that has gone around on SARP a few times without much in the way of a resolution. Namely, how do we make bad guys feel threatening and fun to play with? That might be a better conversation for another thread on SARP, so I'm going to narrow down my response a bit.

@Reynolds : I love seeing someone play a supply neko, and I think you're character is great, but I feel like I get stuck waiting on you to respond when I have Wazu interact with her in person. Maybe once we get to an appropriate point Wazu can go through her by text message to get some equipment shipped to the Eucharis? That way they could still talk and you could write out nice bit posts without anyone having to wait on anyone else.

I also have an @Reynolds regarding the History of the Eucharis on the wiki. Wes is writing it, so it makes sense that he just puts things in there from his perspective. Maybe the players could start taking turns writing history articles for the Eucharis plot page? That could break up the shatnering of the history.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top