character creation guidelines

[fizzy]

character creation guidelines There are a few rules which until now have been passed around by word of mouth on plurk, but seeing as we're getting new people joining from plurks which aren't mine and Maria's it's a little worrying that people might not understand what we're about here. So with that in mind here are a few guidelines on what to have in mind when creating an Operative for the storyline!

ON ASSIGNING A CITY A POWER Unless the Order is really new (say from a comparatively less developed country) then the chances are that your character would not be the first to have that city as a title – in fact, some of the older Orders will have cities and powers that have been passed from operative to operative for hundreds of years. As such, it's good to bear in mind that the player isn't just choosing a power that goes well for the character they have in mind, and that if other people want to play operatives with that power from other periods of time then they will have to work with whatever power you chose for that city. There are examples of powers changing and city titles being reshuffled during times of great conflict (a revolution, for example) but for the most part a city and its power will stay the same. The big exception to this is of course cities that have powers that rely on technology – such as technopathy. In this instance, the precedent with Cambridge (for example) is that before the advent of computer-based technology the Cambridge power was mechanical understanding and before (and all the way back until the founding of the Cambridge role) it was omniscience. The basis for the change was that omniscient understanding was too great a power for one operative to have and it was changed to keep abreast of the modern world. Basically, players need to understand that when they create these characters they are also setting a precedent for other operatives to have that power with that city name. So choose wisely! ON CHOOSING THE RIGHT POWER - CAPITALS The unwritten rule is that a capital city operative cannot possess any of the 'big three' powers for the obvious reason that this would be giving the leader of an Order way too much control! The big three are as follows: TELEPATHY – although telepaths used to be very involved in the vetting of potential operatives this has fallen by the wayside in modern Orders in favour of technopathic CRB checks and a gruelling interview process. Still, a telepath is a powerful enough operative to be considered a poor choice for a capital city. MNEMOKINESIS – along with the power bestower (see below), each Order's resident mnemokinetic is responsible for neutralising any and all retiring operatives. Together, the mnemokinetic and the power manipulator have an important job that needs to act seperately from the head of the Order and as such there can be no crossover. POWER BESTOWAL – see above. The fourth power that a head of Order cannot have is anything that's based on immortality – the main reason being that they would then be in office for far too long, which is just a bad idea. A little added longevity is fine (ie. A power that incorporates some kind of energy absorption) as an operative still wouldn't necessarily use all of that added time. ON CHOOSING THE RIGHT POWER – OTHER OPERATIVES The thing to bear in mind (as well as all of the above!) is that this isn't X-Men – don't assign a power based on that character's personality. Each power needs to serve a practical purpose – after all, the main idea in giving these people these fantastic powers is so that they can use them in the day to day running of a country. Each power needs to be able to lend itself to helping in some way – for example, the British technopathic operative Cambridge uses his technopathy to monitor the Ministry of Defence and the telepathic operative Oxford uses his power to do the same for the Prime Minister's office. That's not to say that all opeatives need to have a hand in government – there are plenty of other areas such as judiciary and the armed forces that operatives can keep tabs on. Furthermore, some operatives may exist for the sole purpose of going out on Order missions to other countries – for example, supersoldiers are prime candidates to go in to conflicts around the world for prisoner extraction. Basically, try to think of practical purposes for why that city should have that power. An operative with the control of animals, for example, isn't really going to help when it comes to running a Illuminati-style secret society. The only powers that are really off limits are those that cross too far in to another operative's jurisdiction or infringe too much on other operatives' ability to control their power. For example, power negation or amplification would not be allowed – nor would power borrowing (a la X-Men's Rogue). Power mimicry on a low level (ie. Needing to be in physical contact with the operative and not being able to take the power away with them) would be acceptable as long as there is good justification. If in doubt, see Maria or Shaz. ON CHARACTER TYPES Operatives go through a long and rigorous selection process and as they are being involved in the running of a nation they should all be fairly responsible character types. Exceptions may be made with operatives who are a bit new (Langley, for example, has been in the Order for less than six months and is struggling to control his telepathy). When coming up with your character think of it as like the CIA or the Secret Service: nobody is going to make it past selection if they're too young or inexperienced, or clearly don't have the ability to actually do their job to a high standard. New recruits would not be under the age of 25 and will all be fairly well-educated – or failing that, have a decent amount of world experience. Operatives are expected to be well-balanced enough – no arch-villain type characters please - It's to be expected that all operatives would have some kind of basic combat training, with those that are more likely to go in to conflict zones undergoing a more rigorous six-month advanced combat training. ON HOW TO PLAY First thing's first – this is not a game! Maria and I aren't mods as such – we just came up with the Order idea and seeing as it's suddenly gotten so popular we thought we had to organise it a bit so people didn't start contradicting each other. But yeah, this isn't a game! It's just a framework of ideas. We provide the background and direction and now it's up to you guys to make what you will with it. If you are familiar with playing with OCs in RP then this is just another verse. It's not even as advanced as a PSL as we (Maria and I) don't really have a plot for you all to play around with. We've been playing with our Order characters for over a year now and as brilliant as it is to see so many people interested in our verse we don't want to turn it in to anything as organised as a game. If you pick up a character you are more than welcome to put them in any memes and open posts you like - but we will not be posting specific things to keep this storyline going! This is just a verse that we have established; it's up to you to do what you like with your characters now. All that we ask if that you tell us when you make a character (ie. Submit them for the taken table) as every operative that is created has a huge impact in the structure of each Order – not only in its current state, but in its past and its potential future. That said, we do have a comm for posting order-specific memes and posts – ordershenanigans! This is run by players for players and can be used to your hearts content for as much crack or whatever as you like. A final note! If you do decide that you want to develop your character more and perhaps take them in to a game then please please please tell Maria and Shaz. Not only can we help but we'd also like to know if our ideas are being put out there in to wider RP situations. LJRP has never been particularly great with OCs and we'd feel pretty terrible if someone took an Order character in to a game and then people started slating them for not having a good world concept or something. Several Order operatives have been apped in to games (and are still in them) and we've all worked really hard to get our backgrounds all interlinked and cohesive so we'd love to work with you guys if you want to app your characters somewhere. That, and we'd like to stalk. If you're interested in seeing what kind of things we have been looking for in Order operative apps for games, see here: LINCOLN for Bete Noire CAMBRIDGE for Bete Noire rule 63!CAMBRIDGE for Ataraxion OXFORD for Ataraxion DURHAM WIP for Bete Noire Please leave any questions in the comments below!

Comments

[autonomise]

I'm glad that you posted this and glad to see that I was on the right track! I'm just going to run what I had in mind by you guys if that's alright?

Riga is the third most historic city in Europe according to the EU but has almost consistently been occupied. It's for this reason that I picked adaptation as the ability of Riga because Riga is constantly having to adapt and survive in changing circumstances.

My idea for Marina is the following:
Marina was ten when the revolution broke out. She was recorded actively engaging in it by the news and became, for a moment anyway, the face of the coup. It's been a long time since then, and her nationalistic sentiments haven't faded. At 30 she's working on her PhD in political science and has been an actively engaged with the politics of Riga and Latvia in general. At least, she was working on her PhD before she was approached about taking over the position in the Order. They approached her because of her nationalistic zeal and political savvy, as well as her warm persona, something appreciated in Latvian society. They wanted someone proud of Riga and they got one. Unfortunately, economics isn't her strong suite and Riga was economically in trouble before her. It's not much better now and she knows it.

[fizzy]

I think she sounds brilliant! Perfectly fine by me. :')

[democratic]

For Athens I was thinking a limited form of telepathy, by way of passively absorbing and retaining knowledge but inability to read thoughts; along the lines of Prodigy from New X-Men. Consdering Athens is a capital, would this be allowable?

[fizzy]

I am totally fine with the mechanics of the power - it's not too much like telepathy, so that's fine - as long as it's restricted just to knowledge and not to things like inner thoughts/monologues/feelings/etc.!

[democratic]

Yep yep! Just wanted to make double sure, keep toes free of being stepped on. c: Thank you!

[gobias]

Is there any sort of maximum age limit in terms of operatives?

[capital]

As long as said operative were still able to perform their duty to the Order (and use their power effectively) then there is no maximum age limit!

[fizzy]

...unless you're talking about characters with ageless/quasi-immortal powers? In which case we may need to talk it out.

[hyannis]

Just wanted to run what I was thinking for Hyannis by you.

My thought was that the Hyannis position was created after the string of assassinations in the 60s (JFK, Bobby Kennedy, MLK Jr., etc.) and is therefore named Hyannis after the Kennedy family's estate there. The Hyannis operative's job is to basically prevent any further assassination attempts on the President by scanning crowds' minds for thoughts of bad intent, etc. whenever the President makes a public appearance. The operative would therefore be placed in or around the Secret Service. My guy would be the third or fourth person to take the Hyannis position.

That sound kosher?

[fizzy]

SORRY FOR TAKING AGES TO GET BACK TO YOU but yes that sounds pretty cool, as long as it doesn't verge too much in to telepath territory! But seeing as I also play the US telepath I can pretty much officially say I'm cool with it on that side as well. GO FOR IT.

[hyannis]

Yeah, no, his sole schtick would be "is there anybody thinking about killing the president? no? ok." or "yes? TAKE THEM DOWN!" etc. Not gonna use telepathy for anything else. It's just weird to phrase it as... bad-thought-detection...

...I dunno it's 3am for some reason why am I awake?

[daedalean]

hello hello!!!!!!!!! um so to try to avoid being too repetitive, how about a form of memory manipulation that's limited to prior knowledge (as in like, distortion using what someone already knows). it'd work for confusing memories and derailing them, but it wouldn't allow full on wiping or replacement.

[somerset]

hang on let me strap my mod hat in to place

(it's got a heck of a lot of buckles)

okay so I think this could potentially work! Thing is, memory manipulation is such a huge underpinning element of so much of the Order - mnemokinesis is one of the Big Three powers, ie. one of the three core powers/operatives that have the biggest influence on how an Order runs. If you think about the shelf life of an operative you can see why: a recruit is brought in, gifted with all this crazy knowledge about how the world is secretly a fucked up dictatorship, given a crazy ass power, used for a couple of years and then completely wiped of everything they know about the Order and their amazing adventures and shit. So like, memory manipulation is an important key part of Order self-regulation.

I think for t here to be another memory-based power within an Order that isn't the official mnemokinetic then there would have to be a fun reason. For example... well, mnemokinetics in the past have always been a bit of a dodgy link (traitorous bastards, some of them /eyes them) and maybe having another memory-based operative could almost be like... idk, a failsafe? Or maybe at some point there was some kind of Terrible Catastrophic Incident in history that required the creation of another memory operative, like, say, idk - there was some kind of leak of information and civilians were finding out or some shit and they needed a second memory person to help neutralise shit!!

IDK I AM JUST THROWING OUT IDEAS i say we can make this work if we come up with something cool to justify it!#
also let's get Koke in here because I presume this is for the US order and iirc she plays the mnemokinetic

[daedalean]

OH MAN yes i am totally game to come up with a justification if you are and if koke's okay with it, otherwise i can try to come up with something else entirely!!

the leak of info/neutralization would work really well with what i was thinking if that's a route we can go. i was thinking of having him be active in the 30s/40s, so there's loads of history to work with there with WWII and military/political control and propaganda, which might make it easier to justify a "back-up" than it would in a quieter political era.

but yes koke!!!!!!! weigh in if you want me to step off your turf i will absolutely do that!

[dissociate]

viciously protects turf!!

no uh my only reservations is that this kind of thing would have an impact in how people see the wiper role and how baltimore would view it himself, which is kind of a big thing because he has totally reinvented himself and his identity around the role (by being a massive weirdo but anyway). I feel like a failsafe position would undermine some of the gross and depressing responsibility while also adding in an aspect of doubt re: why there has to be a failsafe role at all. which is really interesting as a concept, especially when it doesn't exist in any of the orders! but isn't something I had in mind when I developed baltimore.

that said I do not want to be the wall blocking you out of creating your character in the order, especially when I don't exactly roll him out very often, so I can try to shake things over and we can hash something out

[daedalean]

that is 500% legit i will just pp you to discuss!! i don't want to make you rewrite your character so i'll work around you

[somerset]

GOOD THOUGHTS thank you koke!!

gross + depressing responsibility is something that i do love about mnemokinetics (/looks fondly at own gross and depressing collection) so maybe... rather than retcon another memory power in, maybe if there is going to be another memory related US operative maybe it could actually be a brand new thing, like there could actually be some plot to create the need and then Baltimore could have to deal with that... idk maybe some kind of US order drama who knows?