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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 26, 2016 11:19:17 GMT
Greetings, Heroes and Villains alike, and welcome to Villainy and Virtue!
New members bringing fresh faces to the world of Heartania are always going to be welcomed with open arms, but unfortunately the scope of V&V, as well as the depth of its foundations, can be daunting and difficult to get a grasp of as someone coming into the RP at this point. There's a lot going on in our little world, and we totally understand that you're not going to know the entire history of V&V coming in. However, in order to fit your character(s) into the story smoothly, I've written up this handy guide so you won't be coming in completely blind!
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That's clamtastic!
Posts: 505
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 3:58:35 GMT
WHAT IS VILLAINY AND VIRTUE? (INTRODUCTION)
Villainy and Virtue, or V&V for short, is a medium-scale superhero roleplay inspired by Detective Comics and other comic-book universes. Set mostly within the near-futuristic city of Heartania, V&V's plot is driven by the actions of characters fighting against one another or cooperating to achieve their goals. Write as a valiant superhero, a menacing evil mastermind, a marauding mercenary or any other character you can imagine, and make your mark on a world of good vs evil.
However, before posting please create your character and submit them for the GMs to judge in the application thread over here. And, if you want to discuss the RP and ask questions of other users, the out-of-character thread is over here.
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That's clamtastic!
Posts: 505
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 3:59:06 GMT
THE YEAR IS 2063... (BACKGROUND & MAIN PLOT)
Heartania is a city torn by war between heroes and villains. Ever since superhumans first surfaced around 50 years ago, these people with abnormal abilities have gathered in the city, seeking glory, ambition, wealth, or simply the chance to do what's right. However, in the last few months, something has been stirring within the city; a threat like none in recent history is ready to strike. Marshal Maleficus, a shadowy being buried in mystery, has appeared in Heartania, and with him a wave of disappearances that suggest a large-scale operation by the supervillain. Citizens have been going missing in staggering numbers for three months, never to be seen again except for rare, cryptid-like sightings. When a missing person is seen, they are never the same as they were before - blank expressions, milky white eyes, lack of awareness of the world around them; and sometimes, cybernetic implants that make them as dangerous as they are enigmatic.
Seeing an opportunity to revel in this chaos, other villains have begun stirring up their own brands of trouble alongside Maleficus. Notable among these are the Ravagers, a gang of psychopathic femme fatales responsible for repeated terror attacks on the city led by the mass murderer known as Reaver. With complete independence from any leads and a thirst for total anarchy, the Ravagers continue to elude every attempt to bring them to justice.
In this wave of despair, one beacon of hope stands against the darkness: The Tower, a recently opened institution that coordinates the efforts of the city's heroes. Administered by the legendary hero Argent Mind, The Tower fights against villainy in every form it takes, from petty crime to world-threatening supervillains. However, with the sudden spike in malign activity, the still-fledgling Tower has its resources spread thin...
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That's clamtastic!
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 3:59:48 GMT
SO WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR? (STORY ARCS)
In the latter half of the year 2063, battle after battle has plagued Heartania. Here are some of the more impactful events that occured within the RP:
THE MELTDOWN As Marshal Maleficus revealed his plan to turn a large portion of Heartania's polation into cyborg soldiers known as Morphs, a new evil appeared alongside the villain. A being calling itself Yowgmoth, with ability to inject itself into any technology, threatened to destroy the city by causing a meltdown in the nearby nuclear power plant. With Maleficus' morph army slowing the newborn Tower's operatives down, Yowgmoth was very nearly successful - it was only thanks to a last-ditch effort by a small group of heroes that the crisis was averted.
Special Note: An alternate outcome of the nuclear meltdown arc is the basis of Iniquity and Integrity, our spin-off alternate universe RP, which will soon intertwine with the main RP in the upcoming arc 'Paradox'. If you're looking for a world with less going on (and therefore easier to settle into), but with the drawback of less active posting and weaker background, then perhaps a start in I&I could be better than in the main RP. THE MAYOR SHOOTING As the city sits in tentative safety after the meltdown was prevented, a shocking event rattles the citizens once again; Mayor Soto, while giving a blic speech on the state of the city, was shot and critically wounded by an unknown assailant. The sniping led to a city-wide manhunt that culminated in a confrontation with the Shadow Fixer, a cyborg with a twisted sense of justice.
With the Shadow Fixer's capture, Heartania was introduced to a new threat: multiple villains fighting on multiple fronts, and a city of civilians caught in the crossfire. Although the hunt for the assassin was a relatively small event, the ramifications of this crisis set a precedent for constant, deadly danger in the city. CITY IN CHAOSWith an opportunity for chaos presenting itself, the newly formed Ravagers took the chance to strike. While the Tower was distracted with the custody of the Shadow Fixer, Reaver and her associates turned Heartania upside-down with a series of precisely coordinated strikes: first, a large-scale prison break that unleashed hundreds of dangerous criminals onto the city streets; then bombings at several key locations, including the bridge to the city's airport and the largest hospital. Finally, a direct assassination on the city's governing Council, murdering most of the citizens' leaders. With the entire city plummeting out of control fast, The Tower desperately held the justice, and, in a pyrrhic victory that just barely hung in the balance, drove the Ravagers off and prevented total disaster, if only temporarily.
THE STADIUM FIGHTThe first arc to take the story outside the confines of Heartania, the stadium fight was a clash of good vs evil that took place in the Capital City, home of the High Council that directs Heartania's government remotely. When the High Council t out a warrant for Argent Mind's arrest, newly-instated High Chancellor of Heartania Jonathan Kramer devised a plot with his own inner circle and a squad of Tower heroes to clear Argent's name. Sneaking into the High Council's archives under the cover of a hearing that called Starlass as a witness for Argent's predicament, Kramer and his team struck the High Council's systems and erased any accusations against the hero. However, Reaver, seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, arrived a moment too late to interrupt. Attacking Kramer, Reaver drove the visitors to a nearby defunct stadium, where a legendary battle took place.
INSURGENCY
Once the rumours about Kramer's involvement in the stadium fight began to circulate, an ambitious leader-among-men, Acchilleus Libertas, saw his chance to stage a coup against the High Chancellor. Gathering an army of concerned citizens angry at the Chancellor for his various mistakes during his short term in office, Acchilleus led a terroristic attack on the Citadel, Kramer's headquarters, inciting a small civil war. In a bloody massacre on the bridge that led to the Citadel's gates, Acchilleus' insurgents were defeated, but at heavy cost to Kramer's side. With several major figures in Heartania's blic eye laying dead, including the leaders of both armies, the city struggles to recover after its heaviest blow to date. INFILTRATIONThe current story arc, Infiltration takes place shortly after the aftermath of Insurgency's final battle. In an attempt to cause more damage from the inside of the Tower, Marshal Maleficus, now revealed as Rhys Jones (the estranged brother of Argent Mind) has appeared as his former, more human self, using the Shadow Fixer as a scapegoat, naming him the true Maleficus.
While Maleficus gets closer and closer to one of the city's leading heroes, his greatest creation to date is busy destroying the other. An android doppelganger of Starlass, Project Supernova, has been unleashed with one objective: deface the retation of, then destroy, the woman it was modeled after.
Should Maleficus' latest plot succeed, two of the greatest living heroes Heartania has to offer will be vanquished. Can the Tower unearth and t a stop to his plans before it's too late?
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That's clamtastic!
Posts: 505
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 4:00:51 GMT
SO HOW DO I JOIN IN? (CHARACTER APPLICATION)Special Note: Most of the application process is already outlined in the character application thread over here. This part of the guide is just going to summarise it and give you a bit of extra info. Applying for a character in Villainy and Virtue is a simple and straightforward process. All you have to do is fill out our application template and submit it to app thread, then wait for GM approval. Once that's done, you're free to bring your character into the world of Heartania! The template can be found on the character app thread, but for reference here's another copy: Name: Alias: Gender: Age: Alignment: Specialisations: Physical Description: Personality Description: Backstory: Other: Submit your app as a new post by filling in each of these fields. Here's a few notes about filling in an application. Alias: Your character's alter-ego, be it a superhero moniker, a villainous persona or just a nickname from the blic. Not required, since many characters go by their real names. Alignment: Good, Neutral, or Evil. This is to give us an idea of your character's morality, but is not set in stone; your character's actions through the course of the RP can certainly have an impact on their alignment, perhaps even changing it. Specialisations: Superpowers, talents, and skills. Every character gets two, unless organised in a very special case with the GMs (99% of the time we'll say no, especially if you're a new member and therefore unknown to us, so for your first character it's probably not worth asking. For ideas for specs, have a look at the Superpower Wiki, or just draw some inspiration from your favourite comic-book heroes. However, remember that just because a power exists in another media doesn't mean we won't consider it unbalanced here.
Backstory: Just a little information is needed about how your characters came to be involved in the world of Villainy and Virtue is fine. You can go as in-depth as you like, but it's not totally necessary. Characters without reasonable amounts of backstory will not be accepted, however - it's far easier for everybody here if we know a little bit about the characters we're writing with.
Once you've filled out the template, post it to the thread and wait for a GM to reply. Once we've seen it we'll discuss it between us then get back to you with the outcome - this could take a few hours or a few days, depending on the time of posting.
If we do not accept the application, don't be too crestfallen. We'll always tell you exactly why we thought it wasn't suitable, and there's no reason you can't submit it again with a few tweaks. If you need a hand getting something up to the level we're looking for, feel free to talk to a GM or even an experienced member about it.
Once your application is accepted, you're ready to post!
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That's clamtastic!
Posts: 505
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 4:01:16 GMT
HOW DO I MAKE MY POSTS FIT IN? (POST FORMAT & ETIQUETTE)Whenever you join a new RP, it can be a little nerve-wracking to think you could accidentally break every established etiquette the members have with your first post. Here in V&V we're not strict about any particular post lengths, detail, or anything like that, so you'll be fine so long as you t in the effort.
To help you settle in, here's a few tips on how our posts usually look:
- First and foremost, use proper English grammar. We're not going to ban you for using the wrong "your", but if your posts aren't easily readable you're going to have a problem - not necessarily with the GMs, but it's only natural that if other members can't read your posts, they're not going to be able to get involved. Sentence structure, nctuation and spelling should all be to a level where a fluent English speaker can get through it without difficulty.
- Third-Person POV. It's going to awkward if you bring in a character and write about them in the first person. There's no rule against it, and again you won't get a warning or anything, but when everybody else is posting in the third=person you don't want to be that one guy who stands out. Also, since V&V encourages posters having multiple characters, using the third-person will just help everyone to distinguished who each post is about.
- Make it clear who the subject of your post is. V&V is a character-driven roleplay that encourages posters to have several active characters at once to keep the world wide. As such, if you've got several actives and don't make it obvious which is appearing in your posts, we're all going to get confused. Many posters use labels at the top of their posts to clearly show the character's name, but this is not completely necessary. Of course, the exception to this is posts where the subject is deliberately kept unknown. There's no need to give away your mysteries by telling everybody who an enigmatic figure is anyway.
- Include enough detail for other characters to have room to respond. Dialogue and action sequences often fall into the pattern on "Character A says this", "Character B responds with this". While it gets the job done, rely functional back-and-forths like this are not at all compelling to read, or to respond to. Whenever you can, try to embellish your posts with that little bit extra, to give a sense of this encounter actually happening in the world, rather than in a vacuum. As a general rule, when another member is tting effort into having one of their characters interact with yours, it's only polite that you try to match it. If they've bolstered their dialogue with two or three sentences about their character's body language, try at the very to least match that.
- Follow the rules on metagaming, power-playing and godmoding. Any experienced roleplayer already knows how these three rules work, and if you're new to RPing, the rules document available here outlines each of them as well. I won't go into too much detail, but as a quick rehash:
Metagaming is your character knowing things that they shouldn't, including using out-of-character knowledge to help them in-character. Just because someone said their character was hiding behind yours doesn't mean you can immediately have yours be aware of their presence without good reason.
Power-playing is controlling another member's character without their express permission. Never assume that another character walks with yours, or says a particular thing, or lets yours touch them. If you're looking for a particular response, try to incite in in-character or contact the poster OOC about it.
Godmoding is generally using the fact that this is a written narrative to your character's advantage. Plot armour, for example, ensures that all characters are able to survive danger unless their poster agrees otherwise, but excessive use to the point where a character is essentially invincible will get on the nerves of everybody, and maybe even drive them to the point where they won't want to interact with your character anymore.
Basically, if you don't do any of these three things, you'll find you have a much more enjoying experience in any RP, both in-character and during out-of-character exchanges. Please note that all three of these actions are against Virtue Forum and V&V rules, and can lead to warning or even a ban after repeat offenses.
As long as you keep to these tips you should find it really easy to get along with everybody in the community, and avoid incidents. Other than that, how you post is completely up to you!
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That's clamtastic!
Posts: 505
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Post by VirtueNco on Oct 27, 2016 4:01:34 GMT
WHAT IF I HAVE SOMETHING ELSE I WANT TO KNOW? (GETTING HELP)Villainy and Virtue has a wide range of resources available to anyone who wants to know more about the RP. You just need to know where to look! If you want information about the RP and its characters, the Virtue Wiki is a good place to start. It's not complete, but it has a good amount of info filled in. Got a question that the wiki doesn't answer? That's what the OOC Discussion Thread is for! Post there and someone should be able to get back to fairly quickly. If you want to ask a question that needs to be kept confidential from other users for whatever reason (maybe a secret story arc you're planning), or if you want to enquire about V&V's rules, feel free to send a private message to a GM. Villainy and Virtue currently has four GMs: AlexJ, Adam, iCaramelBird, and myself ( NathanielCoran). All of us are always happy to answer any questions that members have. If you have a problem with another user's posts or actions, or you think they're breaking the rules of either V&V or Virtue Forum itself, use the 'Report Post' function found under the cog menu at the top of every post, or message a GM. We'll always keep you anonymous if your report leads to GM action, unless you ask us otherwise.
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