Villains, calendars, and the next couple months of plot [15 Aug 2014|02:37am] Answer to a question no one asked: yes, there will be an event calendar. Second answer to a question you may have asked after reading the last one: it's under construction because we need your help first. (Do I sound like a sweepstakes voiceover yet? No? Okay cool.) Basically, what we'd like to do with the gamewide plot is mash Dark Reign up with the Sinister Six, and we want to do it by creating player-controlled villains! It was an idea that Carla threw out and we absolutely loved it. Our official rules say "no, you can't play villains", and that's still true -- for the main game. The framework for played villains is going to be like so: » Each player will be allowed one played villain. » Only players considered active will be allowed to play a villain. Players who disappear for weeks at a time without hiatus notices or who consistently race for activity near the check without some other circumstance will not be allowed a villain until they've become more active in general. Our villains need to be reliable for the good guys, because that's their purpose in the game, more or less. » Each villain will be a "dark" counterpart to an in-game character. That character must belong to another player for maximum playability. Counterparts and players won't be assigned; you're all grown up enough to work it out amongst yourselves. » Characters with an evil counterpart should probably be either a superhero or some kind of crimefighter. (ex. Vic Altman is a great option. Annabel Nelson, not so much.) » Villains will not be held to any sort of activity standard. The nature of villains is that they can be used as is necessary for the plot (or just for fun). They're allowed to flounce off and disappear, or spend all their time between blow ups eating Cheetos and playing Skyrim if that's what does it for them. That said, because there are no activity standards for them, their status in the game is up to mod discretion; if we feel like you can't handle them anymore for whatever reason, we'll write them out of the game. We don't really anticipate this happening with the group that we have. Reasons for taking them away would be something like consistently dropping plots or threads with them or trying too hard to make your villain excusable or heroic. A sympathetic villain is fine, but if that gets in the way of the bad guys serving their purpose -- which is to be a foil for the good guys to fight against and ultimately defeat -- then we'll ask you to give them up in favor of a more appropriate concept. » However! There are fewer restrictions on villain superpowers, specifically because they have to stand up to multiple heroes without instantly losing. » Any major action taken by a villain must be run past a mod. Punting weiner dogs is fine. Punting politicians needs a green light. » Our new Sinister Six will be sponsored by the Machinist xanatos_gambit, whose journal is currently under construction. Although mod-controlled by Jo, he doesn't count as a member of the team. As a character and a plot device, the Machinist is authorized to be our deus ex machina should we ever need him to be. » Villains won't have access to avalon_net. They will, however, have their own network community as set up by Alice, avalon_villains (as well as avalon_comm and avalon_logs). It is unhackable by any good guys, and can serve as 100% safe communication between our antagonists where they can plan their evil, brag about their new boss, or even get into some personal drama among them. » Villains will get their own journals and PBs. Because our baddies will have a lot of freedom, we need you to get creative! Introducing each new one is going to be an event in and of itself, which is why we're doing this before assembling the calendar; we want to get an idea of what you guys are doing so we can plan things around the villains' debuts. Bad guys can still be part of the game before their debut or induction into the Sinister Six. Hell, we encourage it if you're worming them into other events or other characters' lives before they're officially recruited. We're trying not to come into this with any strict guidelines because you guys are smart as hell and we don't want to stifle your ~creativity~. This is all still really new, so there's nothing about it on the mod journal until the ducks are in a row and we're ready to let potential players see it. There's nothing that says the Sinister Six can't expand if and when we get more players and more interest, but since any new players will have to be here for about a month before they're eligible anyway, it's something we can deal with if and when it comes up. At the moment, the only dibs that have been called are Enver Gjokaj for the Machinist, and Natalie Dormer as Kait's Alice, her Luka-equivalent tech genius. If this goes well and there's more interest in villains in general, we may very well decide to raise the character limit and make them real, official full-time characters. Since their net access would be limited to their own network, they're a little separated from the pack and we'd feel justified adding character slots to allow people to play in what amounts to a parallel game that shares the log and communications comms. The reason we're not doing that now is that the bad guys are still special things, and we want to make sure they'll get a minimum amount of attention before we make big changes like that. 39 comments add one

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