One x One The Edge of Living

[HeyGayzelle]

Alright, so something about my updating schedule; I do my best to aim for at least once per day. I can't give you any concrete answers besides that; sometimes I take a day to respond, sometimes I get hit with inspiration and take like fifteen minutes. It all depends. There's no pressure on my end for you to throw up x amount of posts in so long so don't worry if my speed is somewhat... alarming.

Got it. I'm pretty much the same way, so no worries there. I should probably be able to put out at least a solid post or two in a day, but occasionally I might just be busy or hit a mental block or whatever and may miss a day. Alternatively, sometimes I also know exactly what I want to write and I'll just put it out there while it's fresh in my mind.


I may check in here or there to get a loose feel of the posting schedule or check the status, but seeing as this is a more cerebral sort of RP that might benefit from a slower pace, I won't get needy or anything.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

So an update; the funeral is this Saturday. If I'm slow with any responses, that's probably why. Apologizes.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Damn, I'm extremely sorry to hear that. Don't worry about me though, take as much time as you need.


And like I mentioned before, not sure where my word count will float around on average, but I'll try to keep it reasonably substantial.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

That's fine by me. My usual standard is, like I said (I think?), something that I can respond to. I don't particularly care about length and I don't need purple prose crammed in to make it seem longer.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

@FloatingAroundSpace


So I've mulled over my next post a bit, but I'm sort of drawing a blank. I kind of foresee my post feeling redundant at best and pointless at worst seeing as a response consisting of my (less significant) character essentially mirroring the same actions thing might undermine a sense of closure. Closing with some descriptive scenery probably wouldn't cut it either seeing as that's fairly well-tread ground in this scene already.


Admittedly, I think my writing hit some dry spots during some of the slower moments, but I think the scene had a pretty good atmosphere to it.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

I was thinking that we could transition to the next event, perhaps a patrol give wrong or a threat that requires these people to step outside the walls for the first time in forever and face the harshness beyond.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

I could probably work with something like that. Do you have a general sense of how large of a scene shift you want this to be in terms of time and place?


Also I figure even without an actual dice system, maybe we could use dice as a pacing mechanism for combat scenes. Like, we declare some target number and we roll a dice before each post and use the number of each roll to interpret how well whichever side we’re writing for does that post. And then we add together each side's rolls and whichever side hits the target number first wins. It’s not very robust, but it might provide some helpful guidance and maintain a sense of uncertainty in these moments. I find that scenes involving intense conflict and danger like that can be harder to RP effectively when done totally freeform. In a film or book or what have you, a lot of the tension would be derived from the fact that the viewer/reader has no influence over the situation, but an RP can’t really utilize that constraint to generate suspense.


I have some work to do, so my availability might be sort of spotty throughout the morning, but I imagine I should be able to get something up today.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

I personally do not have anything specific in mind. I think the opening convo was open ended enough that it was any day of any time. Place would still be the outer ring and perhaps beyond the wall.


Never tried dice mechanics in an RP before so you'll have to walk me through exactly how to do it but I like the idea.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Cool. I'm not an experienced dice RPer either, but I think I have enough of a grasp on some basic systems to break them down and make it straightforward. My first idea is pretty simple and has no real strategy or skill or anything, but there are a couple of ways to handle it and I'll have to think about it a little bit. But in the meantime I should at least be able to set the scene for the encounter in text. Any specific ideas about the details of the encounter itself? I was thinking maybe having a group of guards be lured into an ambush by an outer slum gang or some rebels or something. Maybe a situation where the guards have a severe terrain disadvantage and are outnumbered (possibly trapped in an alley outnumbered by attackers on the rooftops), but the guards have far better equipment and training Narratively, it could be a good opportunity to show off the differences between the higher-end, militarized equipment of the guards and other authority figures use along with the improvised and scavenged weapons that people in the slums use. Though perhaps the slum dwellers have a trump card like some highly skilled wasteland mercenary fighting on their behalf (maybe one who takes gear from the slain guards as payment).


I don't have any intention of plugging all these dice rules and making this RP into something it isn't, but at most I might take a cue or two from this tiny 4-page RPG called Risus just because I understand how to use it as an extremely simple and generic framework for modeling any kind of conflict, regardless of whether it's between characters, or aspects of the environment, etc, and you can also decide whether the conflicts should be resolved immediately or over an extended period. The only details we really need are which aspects are being put in conflict with one another (it could be a factory's fire suppression system against a fire, or Isamu's cynicism against a rookie's naive idealism) and whether or not the conflict should be evenly matched or slanted in one person's favor. It lends itself pretty well to on-the-fly stuff and it really wouldn't take anything to implement it in an ad-hoc situation where it might be interesting to leave it a bit up to fate. There wouldn't even be any need to understand the system on your end, if necessary. I could handle all the dice rolls and just provide a general interpretation of the direction the conflict is going in.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

I like that idea. A small insurgent group perhaps manages to get their hands on a few weapons and traps the guards within an enclosed area to attack them. Perhaps someone from the inner rings that wants to gain more power decides to aid the insurgent group by providing weapons to them through smuggling and they manage to gain an upper hand as a result? The person who wants power wants perhaps someone in charge of the guards and of placing people in certain guard positions fired and their cover is incompetency and potentially letting these weapons through. That way, the person trying to gain more power can name someone loyal to them to gain an upper hand.


I think dice rolls would be good for action scenes, like you said above, and ones that have a certain element of randomness like an ambush or a firefight where neither side has the clear upperhand. Simpler things, like perhaps a guard running into two or three angry commoners, wouldn't need it since it's slightly obvious which way things are probably going to go.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Alright, well I think I can draft up a basic encounter fitting that profile. Not sure how long the basic intro will be, but I'll have some ideas for a few mid-fight surprises even if they don't show up the first post. Statistically, evenly-matched conflicts using the stock Risus rules are pretty biased in favor of the party that takes the early advantage, but I could easily ignore one of the rules to set the scene for a conflict that remains tightly matched until the very end. Does one of those sound preferable over the other in terms of the type of dramatic statement you'd like this scene to make?


And yeah, the system has rules for quickly resolving small, trivial challenges like that, but like you said, I'm only really planning on doing rolls in situations where the uncertainty could be dramatically interesting. Like if some naive rookie tries to tell Isamu a stupid joke and you know exactly how you want her to respond, then just go for it. But if the uncertainty of not knowing how she might respond sounds appealing, then you could just say "let's roll on it" and you could get a ballpark measurement of how favorable or unfavorable her response is. But this is a very loose system where we still have the last say over what the stakes of a given conflict are. This encounter is only going to be a fight to the death because we've decided on that. Losing an argument, for example, doesn't need to mean that your character needs to be persuaded by their opposition, the other person could just have the last say, or your character loses their composure, or just decides continuing isn't worth it, or what have you. The system is still pretty "freeform" in that sense.


I don't foresee using this system in a highly extensive fashion, but I personally might benefit from a little bit of direction in moments of conflict or uncertainty by letting the dice do some of the talking.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

Unfortunately, I have little to no idea on what the rules of dice are or how they would affect the situation. I would think it would be interesting to have the guards initially have the upper hand until the insurgents haul out a larger and more powerful weapon.


For me, I tend to just simply go with the flow or plan in OOC. I don't for see using a dice roll personally for any character interactions, only for battles and fights and altercations that involve a lot more than just a few people talking at each other. Pure RNG isn't my friend (too many pet sites that relied on RNG have murdered it for me).

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Yeah, I totally get it. I'm trying to find that line between too much and too little randomization myself, but I think I have a decent grasp on when it's in good taste or not. Sometimes it can be good for interpreting positive and negative consequences that happen on a gradient. Like even if a factory fire doesn't completely burn the place down, some dice rolls can provide hypothetical info about the extent of the damage and casualties. I sometimes have issues pulling those sorts of details out of thin air when I'm trying to focus on other aspects of the storytelling. But yeah, at the very least this should suffice for very clear physical conflicts like combat where elevating the sense of risk is helpful.


Alright, well I think I have an idea of how I should roll on this encounter and I'll get to that at some point today along with writing up the new scene, just need to take care of some things beforehand. I'll probably do the dice throws in this OoC tab, so apologies if it blows up your alerts. I figure for the purposes of this encounter, we'll sort of take it turn by turn where I roll for each of our sides and the results tell us the general tide of the fight for that exchange. The encounter should wrap up in 5-7 sets of posts.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Got the scene change post up. It's a little dry, but I have some ideas for later. Going to start doing the dice rolls. Conflicts can be handled with varying degrees of detail with these rules, but I'm going to make this one really basic since it's our first shot at it.


Outer Rim Ambushers (5)


vs.


Outer Rim Security Detachments #570 & #314 (5)


[dice]24622[/dice]


[dice]24624[/dice]

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Alright, so the guards took this round and things go a bit more favorably for them. The element of surprise might have unsettled them initially, but they managed to mostly protect themselves against the ambusher's initial barrage and their strike in response will claim some casualties. The fight still has quite a ways to go though.


Feel free to RP this interpretation however you like though. I intentionally left the size and composition of the group ambiguous so you'll have some room to narrate casualties and deaths without there being consistency or suspension of disbelief issues. So don't take the fact that the attackers didn't "win" this round as meaning that their initial barrage can't be rather brutal.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

Cool, though just to be clear, your post ends without any action taking place, like fighting and firing? I'm guessing we'll both be semi-controlling each group, or are you controlling the detachments and I controlling the ambushers?

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Yeah, I figured we would each write "on behalf" of one of the groups, so to speak. No need to avoid writing the reactions of enemy combatants insofar as it helps the atmosphere or flow of the scene, but I figure each of us should primarily narrate the decisive actions of one side to make the scene ebb and flow a bit. The entirety of each turn doesn't necessarily need to consist entirely of straight up killing each other, just aspects that would turn the tide of the fight in favor of one group over the other. Like I might have my team deploy some kind of shielding device on my turn to represent how they took the advantage. A turn where your team takes the advantage could involve that being deactivated or destroyed using a method of your choosing along with other negative consequences against my side. I don't really have any solid rules aside from roughly using the dice rolls to interpret the tide of battle and maintain a sense of uncertainty.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Doing the next rolls. It's hypothetically possible that this encounter could run more than 5-7 turns, but it's statistically unlikely. I can truncate it no problem if it starts to run too long though.


[dice]24651[/dice]


[dice]24652[/dice]


Looks like the guards take this round again. But like I said, feel free to narrate it in whichever way you find interesting.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Next rolls coming up.


[dice]24660[/dice]


[dice]24661[/dice]


Looks like the ambushers take the advantage and make a push.

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

Well, at least they're getting somewhere.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

True. I'm thinking for future rolls, I might spec out the groups/forces/whatever in conflict with slightly different stat spreads representing the advantageous aspects of each group based on the situation. I just wanted to do it simple this time and keep them completely symmetrical seeing as it's our first encounter with dice. Risus just lets you write in your own trait descriptions (called cliches), so I could give the groups spreads like:


Outer Rim Security Detachments #570 & #314


- Riot Equipment & Training (3)


- Battle-Hardened Nerves (2)


Outer Rim Ambushers


- Improvised Weaponry (1)


- Overwhelming Numbers and Unrelenting Hatred Fostered by a Lifetime of Desperation and Need (4)


So there can be a bit of asymmetry while still keeping the groups reasonably balanced. Having some of the dice pools represent abstract things like desire, motivation, etc. can sometimes be helpful for gleaning the thematic underpinnings of a conflict while still painting a very visually non-specific image of what's actually taking place.


Also I think I'm going to use the abbreviation SCC (Sovereign City of Chicago) as a general acronym for the city and administration. Does that sound alright?

 

[FloatingAroundSpace]

SCC sounds fine by me.


"Overwhelming Numbers and Unrelenting Hatred Fostered by a Lifetime of Desperation and Need" is a fantastic group stat by the way. Nice work.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Cool, well I'll run with that acronym as a go-to for the time being.


Also thanks. Risus is a dirt simple system with little real tactical depth, so getting creative with descriptions and using those to loosely shape the narrative is the real way to have fun with the system. A system that tells me that Riot Training & Equipment will probably protect you from Improvised Weaponry, but not Overwhelming Numbers and Unrelenting Hatred Fostered by a Lifetime of Desperation and Need is way more exciting to me than a system which tells me that my incendiary bullets deal 5 points of damage.

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Rolling round 3.


[dice]24669[/dice]


Ambushers keep the advantage. We could have the turn after this one decide the encounter if we feel like wrapping it up, or we could keep going to 4 or 5 if you want it to run longer.


Edit: Crap, I accidentally cut out the second dice roll when doing the edit. My side rolled a 15. Do you want me to roll again or just take my word on that?

 

[HeyGayzelle]

Next dice rolls. We could wrap it up here if you want a conclusion to the scene or make it best of 4/5.


[dice]24690[/dice]


[dice]24691[/dice]


And it looks like the attackers win.