Post by Avalikia on Mar 13, 2016 21:35:54 GMT -5
Factions
With a whole prison city to fight over, many factions may form. A faction is a group of people who are actively fighting over territory in Arkham City. It's possible to be a faction of one. But not all prisoners in Arkham City are in a faction - if all they have is their own little hideout and couldn't care less about who controls which part of Arkham City, then they are not in a faction. If you want your character to start a new faction, you simply need to tell me.
Each faction claims a portion of Arkham City - you can see who controls which area by looking at the map.
Luck Points
First of all, for the record, let me state that this forum does not have a minimum word count requirement so don't mistake this for that. If you made it through the application process, we assume that you write well enough. All RP posts count as RP posts for activity. However, for each RP post over 400 words, all characters earn 1 Luck Point. Luck Points help a faction inside Arkham City in their fights against other factions.
(Note: The little tool that appears below your post as you're writing that tells you your word count is a useful tool, but it sometimes mistakes coding for words even though it shouldn't. The tool I'll be using to measure the word count of posts is 'smarter' and never counts coding. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you're trying to make sure that your post is over 400 words - although I would argue that since most RP posts on the forum are much longer than this, you shouldn't have to worry about whether or not your coding is being counted. The only reason why there's a word count involved in this at all is to set some sort of a standard to discourage shortposting for the sake of points.)
Of course, if you're not in Arkham City, fighting for dominance, or even if you're in Arkham City but you're not attempting to control a piece of it yourself, then Luck Points are useless to you. You can, however, give your Luck Points to the faction of your choice - and that will help that faction. A character who does not earn very many Luck Points themselves may nevertheless find themselves winning the day if they can get the right characters on their side - it's not always the most powerful one who wins, it's the one who can convince the right people to fight on their side.
By default you are giving all of your luck points to what I'm calling the 'NPC mini-gang' faction. That's not a real faction, but you'll see them on the map - this area is dominated by small NPC gangs instead of one of the larger factions. These gangs are dangerous only to relatively weak characters.
If you want to change what you're doing with your Luck Points, let me know - preferably via PM, or else I'm likely to forget. There are a couple of rules if you have multiple characters: Luck Points are earned per character, not per player, and if you have more than one character you cannot have any two characters giving their Luck Points to the same faction (except for the NPC mini-gang faction). So if one of your characters is already giving their Luck Points to the Hello Kitty Mask gang, your other character can't.
What do Luck Points do? Well, they give a faction good luck. For example, if Mr. Mob Boss shares a border with Little Orphan Annie, but Little Orphan Annie gets a lot more Luck Points than Mr. Mob Boss during a week, she'll probably gain ground while Mr. Mob Boss loses some. Exactly what happens to the borders is something I've developed a formula for that's more complicated than I'd like to explain, but it compares Luck Points earned and borders will gradually change according to Luck Points earned both in a particular week and over time. And I simply indicate how the borders have changed - it's up to Mr. Mob Boss and Little Orphan Annie to figure out why that is ICly. Perhaps Little Orphan Annie was so adorable that NPC Burly Biker Dude decided to help her, while Mr. Mob Boss's men all got infected by the plague. Luck is not always on the side of the one who looks like they have the best chances, after all.
Luck Points cannot be saved up - they're used up each week however you've told me that you'd like them to be used. I will be updating the borders for the factions each weekend - I'll attempt to do so on time, but even if I'm late I'll be calculating everything based on midnight between Saturday and Sunday in my timezone (Mountain Time). Borders changes are gradual, even if one player posts a lot a couple weeks in a row and another skips a week or two, ground may be lost but the latter person won't lose everything all at once. Note that unless you've decided that your thread is officially occurring at a different time, the boundaries during a thread are the boundaries as they were during the week that the thread started - maps of Arkham City from previous weeks will be kept for reference if you ever need to look back at them.
A Final Word About Points
Now, I realize that because you're here and not somewhere playing D&D, it may rub you a least a little the wrong way to have to deal with any sort of a point system. However, this point system is not here to restrict you - it's here to help you. If, for example, you want your character to have a huge chunk of Arkham City under their control, it's too easy and boring if you just decide that they do - in fact other players might start arguing about whether or not it's realistic for you to have that much turf. But how do you decide how much is realistic? When two similar mob bosses are each trying to raise a small prison army and then go at it, and both players want to win, how do you decide who is winning?
The point system is here to add some structure to this, not get in your way. In fact, I'm honestly not going to be policing how the characters are roleplaying when it comes to territory unless someone complains that you're being unfair about it. And as always, if you have any questions, ideas, or concerned, feel free to let me know.
Need More Info?
I've written a sort of field guide to Arkham City covering everything from the types of people you can find living there, how one can enter and leave, what it's like inside, and what the people outside of Arkham City do. You can find it here, though I warn you that it's rather... verbose.
With a whole prison city to fight over, many factions may form. A faction is a group of people who are actively fighting over territory in Arkham City. It's possible to be a faction of one. But not all prisoners in Arkham City are in a faction - if all they have is their own little hideout and couldn't care less about who controls which part of Arkham City, then they are not in a faction. If you want your character to start a new faction, you simply need to tell me.
Each faction claims a portion of Arkham City - you can see who controls which area by looking at the map.
Luck Points
First of all, for the record, let me state that this forum does not have a minimum word count requirement so don't mistake this for that. If you made it through the application process, we assume that you write well enough. All RP posts count as RP posts for activity. However, for each RP post over 400 words, all characters earn 1 Luck Point. Luck Points help a faction inside Arkham City in their fights against other factions.
(Note: The little tool that appears below your post as you're writing that tells you your word count is a useful tool, but it sometimes mistakes coding for words even though it shouldn't. The tool I'll be using to measure the word count of posts is 'smarter' and never counts coding. This is a good thing to keep in mind if you're trying to make sure that your post is over 400 words - although I would argue that since most RP posts on the forum are much longer than this, you shouldn't have to worry about whether or not your coding is being counted. The only reason why there's a word count involved in this at all is to set some sort of a standard to discourage shortposting for the sake of points.)
Of course, if you're not in Arkham City, fighting for dominance, or even if you're in Arkham City but you're not attempting to control a piece of it yourself, then Luck Points are useless to you. You can, however, give your Luck Points to the faction of your choice - and that will help that faction. A character who does not earn very many Luck Points themselves may nevertheless find themselves winning the day if they can get the right characters on their side - it's not always the most powerful one who wins, it's the one who can convince the right people to fight on their side.
By default you are giving all of your luck points to what I'm calling the 'NPC mini-gang' faction. That's not a real faction, but you'll see them on the map - this area is dominated by small NPC gangs instead of one of the larger factions. These gangs are dangerous only to relatively weak characters.
If you want to change what you're doing with your Luck Points, let me know - preferably via PM, or else I'm likely to forget. There are a couple of rules if you have multiple characters: Luck Points are earned per character, not per player, and if you have more than one character you cannot have any two characters giving their Luck Points to the same faction (except for the NPC mini-gang faction). So if one of your characters is already giving their Luck Points to the Hello Kitty Mask gang, your other character can't.
What do Luck Points do? Well, they give a faction good luck. For example, if Mr. Mob Boss shares a border with Little Orphan Annie, but Little Orphan Annie gets a lot more Luck Points than Mr. Mob Boss during a week, she'll probably gain ground while Mr. Mob Boss loses some. Exactly what happens to the borders is something I've developed a formula for that's more complicated than I'd like to explain, but it compares Luck Points earned and borders will gradually change according to Luck Points earned both in a particular week and over time. And I simply indicate how the borders have changed - it's up to Mr. Mob Boss and Little Orphan Annie to figure out why that is ICly. Perhaps Little Orphan Annie was so adorable that NPC Burly Biker Dude decided to help her, while Mr. Mob Boss's men all got infected by the plague. Luck is not always on the side of the one who looks like they have the best chances, after all.
Luck Points cannot be saved up - they're used up each week however you've told me that you'd like them to be used. I will be updating the borders for the factions each weekend - I'll attempt to do so on time, but even if I'm late I'll be calculating everything based on midnight between Saturday and Sunday in my timezone (Mountain Time). Borders changes are gradual, even if one player posts a lot a couple weeks in a row and another skips a week or two, ground may be lost but the latter person won't lose everything all at once. Note that unless you've decided that your thread is officially occurring at a different time, the boundaries during a thread are the boundaries as they were during the week that the thread started - maps of Arkham City from previous weeks will be kept for reference if you ever need to look back at them.
A Final Word About Points
Now, I realize that because you're here and not somewhere playing D&D, it may rub you a least a little the wrong way to have to deal with any sort of a point system. However, this point system is not here to restrict you - it's here to help you. If, for example, you want your character to have a huge chunk of Arkham City under their control, it's too easy and boring if you just decide that they do - in fact other players might start arguing about whether or not it's realistic for you to have that much turf. But how do you decide how much is realistic? When two similar mob bosses are each trying to raise a small prison army and then go at it, and both players want to win, how do you decide who is winning?
The point system is here to add some structure to this, not get in your way. In fact, I'm honestly not going to be policing how the characters are roleplaying when it comes to territory unless someone complains that you're being unfair about it. And as always, if you have any questions, ideas, or concerned, feel free to let me know.
Need More Info?
I've written a sort of field guide to Arkham City covering everything from the types of people you can find living there, how one can enter and leave, what it's like inside, and what the people outside of Arkham City do. You can find it here, though I warn you that it's rather... verbose.