Young Writers Society

Post was great! I'll have a post up soon... Like later today, hopefully.

Okay, I posted -AGAIN- to give a demo of Maeva's powers.

Is she too OP? Personally I don't think so - Laurel had her by the neck, so she was close. She was angry, and therefore susceptible.

I thought it was fine, but we'll have to see what everyone else thought.

I'm going to confess... All this time I've thought Blackthorne was male. I don't know why, since it specifies in the CP. I am so annoyed with myself.

@Desdemona --> Read this: On Godmod in its entirety.

I am...at an enormous loss understanding participants in this storybook and the balance between tangible strengths and tangible weaknesses. I will use Laurel for an example because she's had more screen time than others at this point.

In the first act, she had her throat choked out, trudged through briars and mud, and was drop-kicked by someone she trusted. Tangible weaknesses that fit with her admission of frailty. She also, as much as I hate this concept, was influenced into fighting Branwen when she had a clear advantage.

Flip that. She escaped a dragon through evasive maneuvers, warmed the trust of Branwen, who was vehemently unsure about joining the magicians, and wrangled the unbalanced dark out of the bushes, essentially demanding her authority as a magician to have the witch put in her place.

In none of this will you find her intruding the bodies or minds or souls of other characters without the consent of their writers in order to get character A out of a sticky spot just to show off their power.

Maeva just doesn't work in the state she is right now. You didn't heed Omnom's words about balancing, so I don't trust what will come later.

I see where Lumi is coming from with Maeva's power being much too powerful, and I agree that it needs serious reworking. I also agree that kind control on other people's characters should be treated like killing them off, and require permission. I would suggest deleting or reworking the last post.

@Lumi what exactly do you suggest we do with this power? Removing it completely would be difficult, assuming it has already been present in several posts. If you wish for it to have more limitations, what limitations are you looking for.

If we are looking for limitations and are okay with reworking a lot of the recent posts, we could make the mind control only work on Wyverns.

And if all else fails, then I guess we will just have to remove the mind control factor. @Desdemona, if we need to remove it, I'd be willing to PM you to talk further about other magic options. We mentioned that Maeva has a scary ability, so switching her to a generic magic class would be illogical. I believe that she should retain her dark class magic, but have a feared yet less powerful ability that couldn't affect humans.

Hopefully we can reach a solution that everyone is satisfied with.

The way I wrote the control over Laurel and Branwen was that fervor was inspired in the both of them, and that's the maximum I believe should be allowed on humankind. The inspiration of limited emotions for a limited time with varying degrees of success.

Under no circumstance should she be able to inhabit the soul of another person, or else she would be in Kyoah's dungeon immediately just by Laurel and Dya's testimony.

So I suggest that Des comes up with a list of battle-relevant inspirations that she can project in her comrades in the same way rallying cries or battle auras work. On Wyverns, though, allow that devastating ability be mind control--again to varying degrees of success.

Yes, I agree with that. I apologize for being unable to offer better solutions... I've never run a storybook where participants chose powers for their characters, so this has never been an issue.

Lemme catch up on the posts before I give my full thoughts on the whole mind control situation.

Regarding soul stealing: NEVER use it on a playable character or an important NPC without asking the group before you do so, since that kills people and is a big no-no to do without someone's permission. I'd say it's something to use only when fighting grunts/disposable armies, and even then I'm sure your character is gonna lose the trust of many people since you have something so strong.

Although, having it not kill someone is also an option, and one I'm much happier with ^^

^I was leaning towards it not killing the victim. And yes, anything that affects another participant's character for a long period of time without their permission is a violation in rules.

You really didn't understand what I was trying to do.

Maeva didn't force anyone to fight. She was trying to stop the fight because why fight eachother and harm eachother when you're about to do something so outrageously dangerous?

You totally misunderstood me, and turned my idea upside down.

In any case, I've decided to quit.

You're already very biased against me and probably just won't let me keep my power. Maeva doesn't use her powers unless necessary - and if some brute of a chick is choking her to death for trying to stop a fight, she'll use it. In addition to that, there was no lasting effect done. All she did was make her let go of her throat and stop people from fighting.

@Desdemona We aren't biased against you... We're just trying to balance things out and keep everyone satisfied. I apologize if you felt that we were, but I assure you that neither I nor anyone else in this storybook was against you or your character. In the end, I think that this all came to a misunderstanding and would like to have a chance at fixing the issues. However, I'm not going to try and convince you to stay, since you seem set on leaving. Farewell.

That is what I've been trying to do too!

I've invented limitations, stuck with them, and even asked for opinions so I could improve myself, but all I get is an accusation of godmodding.

@Desdemona sad to see you go

but

I'm not sure who you're saying is biased, nor if they're biased against you. Having caught up with the posts, I'd say the apprehension to the mind control was warranted. @Lumi was right to say that someone with the ability to force three of the most powerful magicians in the land to stop something is strong indeed, and overly so.

Then, possessing someone's mind and body, again, a powerful magician, overriding their thoughts with your own is once again, too powerful.

We're not being biased against you, we're concerned that a power is simply too strong to be fun to write for anyone besides you. What you did with stopping the fighting goes against collaborative writing, and I'll use an example of the do's and don't's of improv.

When doing improv, the one thing you should never do is say "no." You say "yes, and" or some variation of that. You have to keep ideas going and not shut them down.

What you did was shut an entire scene down with no way of rebuttal from the other three writers. Say, for example, if your character had come in trying to convince them to stop the fight, and they realized that she was using her powers to aid in the convincing, that'd not entirely shut the scene down, but allow mistrust and a re-direction of how the scene was supposed to go.

Mind control, when it is how strong you have it, is just like killing off a character without their permission. It forces the control of a character from their writer to another writer.

We're willing to work with the power right here and now. Personally, I'm not seeing you being flexible with the power. The first thing you did was accuse someone of being bias and then quitting. If you truly are wanting to work with the power, and with us, you wouldn't leave.

I'm still willing to work with you, and to Storybook with you, and I, for one, am not being biased at all against you, nor is anyone else.

Wait, what did Branwen do? Link me to the post?