Character Prioritization

This might be a little premature considering how little interest there seems to be in reviving the RPG at the moment, but I wanted to bring it up anyway.

I'm considering playing a couple of new characters from a recent TV series I'm a fan of. Problem is, I've already got four characters in this particular RPG (most of them carryovers from the old board), and I kind of feel I have a responsibility not to simply abandon them just because some newer ones strike my fancy.

Edit: I removed part of this post that talked about two of the characters I'd like to try playing since I now have a second post that talks about those two characters as well as two others.

So what do you guys think? Should I try out some new characters? Or concentrate my attention on the ones I'm already playing? Or mix it up a bit -maybe concentrate on the characters from both groups that have the most potential?

I figured it might help if I provided a little more info on some of the new characters I'm thinking of playing. They're all major characters from that Total Eclipse anime I've been so enamored with lately. BTW, I’m not sure any of you were very interested in watching the show, but if you were you might want to hold off reading these since they contain spoilers.

Yuuya Bridges

At the risk of coming across as a bit politically incorrect, one of Yuuya's main advantages is that he's a guy, and could help correct the serious (approximately 3:1) gender imbalance among the student characters in this RPG. On the other hand, some aspects of his character might not translate well into the setting of this RPG. A major part of his storyline in Total Eclipse is coming to terms with his half-Japanese heritage, which he rejected after having to grow up in rather backwards part of the US where he was ostracized because his Japanese father left his American mother. Without that, he's more or less your typical hotshot with an attitude problem, and I've already got Alto for the hotshot with an attitude problem role. Though Yuuya is arguably much more sociable than Alto (who often acts rather aloof).

Yui Takamura

In Total Eclipse, Yui is the Japanese liaison officer for the American-assisted XFJ development program. Her family are hereditary vassals of the shogun, making her an elite in the Japan of TE's alternate earth. She starts off rather nationalistic (at least in the novel version) but eventually becomes very committed to the multinational XFJ project. Naturally this aspect of her character doesn't work overly well in the RPG setting –she’d pretty much be reduced to an ojou-sama from a wealthy family or something. However in the anime adaptation of TE she’s also the sole survivor of a unit of minimally trained cadets that was pressed into service to defend Kyoto. And she was also pretty hard on Yuuya in part because even if she didn’t like his attitude, she did recognise him as a pilot with a lot of potential. So for Mithril Academy I could see her as a student squad leader who survived an incident that killed several other cadets and is very harsh on her squad because she thinks that’s the only way they’ll learn how to survive. The one big problem with this idea is of course that having several students killed in a recent incident would likely have caused major problems for the academy.

Cryska Barchenowa and Inia Sestina

In Total Eclipse, Cryska and Inia are known as the “Scarlet Twins” and are considered very formidable mech pilots. They’re also secretly by-products/survivors of Alternative III, an unsuccessful Soviet led project that aimed to communicate with the invading BETA using artificially created humans with ESP. They’d probably be a little easier to adapt to the RPG if it had kept the telepathic powers of the whispered, but I could probably make them work by having them understand each other well and giving Inia (the younger and more powerful of the two in TE canon) a high EQ. I might play these two as transfer students joining Amalgam if I played them in the RPG. I figure the two have potential because Inia wouldn’t care much about inter-house rivalries when deciding who she wants to be friends with (she's rather child like in some respects), but on the other hand Cryska cares far more about such things and is very protective of Inia, so she’s likely to be hostile and suspicious towards any Jindai students Inia makes friends with, at least initially.

Any thoughts? I probably wouldn’t play all of these characters, though I might have some of them replace some of my current characters if the other players are okay with it (most likely some of the girls from Canaan).

I just did some rearranging of things, some rebooting, whatever you decide, just make sure it's what you definitely want to do. Don't make decisions based on what may or may not be best for the RP or anything like that. Play what you definitely WANT to play.

All right, thanks. I think I do want to give some of these newer characters a shot, so I guess I'd better get cracking on their character profiles. Though there are probably a few things I should run past you to see how they fit in to the larger world of the academy. (For instance, does the transfer student thing with Inia and Cryska even work in this universe? It implies there are other schools with a similar curriculum, after all!)

Yeah, transfers probably doesn't work as well, since the school is rather specific and unique...

Are there no similar Academies in other countries? Perhaps Inia and Cryska came to Mithril Academy because it offered good training in a specific area (possibly black technology related, though Inia not being able to be whispered in this verse makes it work a bit less well). Or maybe one of the academies is involved in some kind of joint research program with Mithril and Inia and Cryska are there as part of it? Or what about Nozh (that child soldier training program Sousuke was put through). Does that still exist in this verse? Perhaps they're graduates/survivors/escapees of that.

The whole transfer student from another Academy thing could kind of work for Yui as well, as it might allow her to keep the "sole survivor of a cadet squad that was wiped out on a mission" aspect of her character. Though being Japanese, she'd presumably have transferred from a Japanese institution, which could complicate things a bit.

If there are other Academies of this type, they probably don't do transfers like that... for one, it's a boarding school, and with all the waivers that would have to be signed, the school pretty much is their guardian now, so there's no real NEED to transfer. If for whatever reason they can't be at their old school, they have to go through the whole approval process to get into it and do the whole process, and while their academic courses might be higher level, the school would have to start them at the basics for any of the specialty/combat stuff to ensure they learn things their way and to be sure they're at the level they should be.

Nozh would still exist, but I'd think VERY carefully about using it... Remember, they're completely brainwashed as kids. You don't just... escape it, and you don't graduate it... you get turned into a puppet. And the longer you're there, the more controlled you are, especially the younger you started. Sousuke got out because it was either join the Mujaheddin or die, and the one thing he always went by was the last words his mother ever said to him, an order to LIVE. Everything he chose had to do with survival. It wasn't a real choice.

Actually in Yui's case, I think I've got a decent excuse for her to transfer in from another similar academy. If she's the sole survivor of a group of cadets that was wiped out on a mission, her former academy may have been forced to shut down.

Of course, there's the issue of getting her up to speed on her specializations, but since she's got her academics and catching up on her specialization is mainly a matter of learning the Mithril way of doing things, I wonder if she might be able to go through some intensive retraining and get slotted into second year partway through rather than being knocked from third year all the way back to the start of first. Possibly there could be a small group of students from her old academy in a similar position if you think that would be too much effort on the Academy's part to accommodate a single student.

Of course she couldn't be a squad leader that way, but I can hopefully find other ways for her newfound harsh attitude to make it difficult for her to make friends initially.

Even with all that going on, Any students coming in from elsewhere would be knocked down to the starting levels. There are NO other schools like the academy, which is why the students and teachers are so diverse. Even if we were to go by technicalities like age, because of his altered history, Kurz is in with the first year students, even though he's old enough to be in the second or first year group.

And even if you broke it down by skill alone, then there would be no reason for Sousuke or Kurz to be there if we did things like that, and that wouldn't make for interesting play. They would HAVE to go through the acceptance process, and then just deal with being in the first year group.

Your characters need to be planned accordingly if you want them to be in the academy section. They can either have had their original past slightly altered, so that they have been at the school for long enough to reflect their ages more accurately, or they will be grouped in with the first years.

Figuring out how to adapt these characters to fit the setting is what I'm trying to do here.

One of you is telling me "If there are other Academies of this type" the other is saying there are "are NO other schools like the academy." Which one is it? I can probably make Yui having had to retake first year due to coming from another academy that closed down work (actually that might allow her to play the hardass leader role I thought she was well suited for by the time she's in second year) but having her friends and fellow cadets killed off one by one during their first battle was something that had a pretty major effect on her. And if that can't have happened at Mithril Academy and can't have happened at a different academy she attended previously, that may be more or less the end of it with her.

On the other hand I'd already been thinking of getting rid of the transfer aspect with the Scarlet Twins. Doing so does present some challenges for what I plan to do with them, but hopefully they're not insurmountable. (The main thing is that with the small size of Mithril Academy, you'd expect them to be recognised even by students in other houses by second year. And Inia would probably have had a chance to develop friendships with students outside Amalgam (which her big sister wouldn't approve of) already.)

Apparently I shouldn't have left out the word 'even'...as in EVEN if there are other schools... And I do believe I said multiple times that the school is unique, that rather rules out the possibility of others like it.

It was a little more than that... outlining the entire procedure that a student from another such academy would have to go through if there were a need for them to change schools rather implied that was an option.

Misha wrote:If there are other Academies of this type, they probably don't do transfers like that... for one, it's a boarding school, and with all the waivers that would have to be signed, the school pretty much is their guardian now, so there's no real NEED to transfer. If for whatever reason they can't be at their old school, they have to go through the whole approval process to get into it and do the whole process, and while their academic courses might be higher level, the school would have to start them at the basics for any of the specialty/combat stuff to ensure they learn things their way and to be sure they're at the level they should be.

Sorry, I don't normally like to make other people feel bad by shoving their mistakes in their faces like this, but I am a bit put out that an option I was led to believe I had was apparently never an option to begin with, particularly when eliminating that option means a character concept I'd been working on is no longer viable.

I was saying the theoretical and detailing why it wasn't feasible. I'm on my phone so getting detailed is not an option for me right now which is why my message was short and only addressing one point. I shouldn't have to spell things out like this.

I can understand the part about mobile devices making it difficult to formulate a proper response. However I think its a bit unreasonable to expect me to interpret one statement about how the academy probably wouldn't do transfers because its "rather unique and specialized" early in the discussion as meaning "there are no other academies of this type period," particularly when you start talking about things in the sense of "if there are other academies" later on. I consider how I interpreted things to be pretty natural and reasonable under the circumstances.

I don't really want to get into a blame pinning game here, but I was pretty upset about having what seemed to be an opportunity to do something I really wanted to do presented and then taken away.

I'd also like to ask why the idea that Yui previously attended a similar academy until something tragic happened and it had to shut down is so impermissible, particularly if I'm willing to have had her do Mithril's curriculum from the beginning after starting over.

Okay look, sorry if you maybe got the wrong idea somewhere along the way, but the fact of the matter is, that we based the academy off of the typical rules and regulations of real military based academies. Military academies don't really have affiliations with other schools, because the kids attending either succeed and obey the rules, or they leave. There's no transferring to other locations, nor is there sending more 'troubled' or 'rowdy' students to other schools, because if they can't make it there, then it's more than likely the kid's are seen as a lost cause.

For the most part, the kids attending the academy are there because it literally was the last place they could go. For Sousuke and Kurz, as an example, their altered histories to make it seem as if the academy was the last place either of them could try and look to be more normal, while still retaining aspects of what had become daily life for them. Kaname's father sent her there cause he...well, he's a dick and thought she could use the discipline and didn't really look as far as he should have into the school. Tessa and Leonard got specialized scholarships because even without their Whispered powers, both of them are recognized geniuses, and wanted to put their brains toward something different. If you can find a similar way to send your characters to the academy, then it's fine that they be there.

You had concerns about the older sibling, if she's that much older, then the academy would likely offer something of a placement test for the more academic part of the schooling, but she would still be put into the beginning levels of the combat training for the sake of her new student status. She would have to be taught the Mithril way of doing things, and there's no saying she couldn't learn something new in the process. Understand that the school can only make so many concessions for a few students, as it then wouldn't be fair to the rest of the school if they were to get special treatment. It'd be like saying that because she's older, she automatically gets to be with others her own age, and that wouldn't make sense since there had been no such concessions made for Kurz, who is old enough to be in with the First Class rather than Third or Fourth. Granted he is smart enough in most areas of the academics to be up there, but because of his altered timeline, he was placed in with the first years to make up for everything missed.

Hopefully this made things clearer this time.

MikaMika wrote:Okay look, sorry if you maybe got the wrong idea somewhere along the way, but the fact of the matter is, that we based the academy off of the typical rules and regulations of real military based academies. Military academies don't really have affiliations with other schools, because the kids attending either succeed and obey the rules, or they leave. There's no transferring to other locations, nor is there sending more 'troubled' or 'rowdy' students to other schools, because if they can't make it there, then it's more than likely the kid's are seen as a lost cause.

For the most part, the kids attending the academy are there because it literally was the last place they could go. For Sousuke and Kurz, as an example, their altered histories to make it seem as if the academy was the last place either of them could try and look to be more normal, while still retaining aspects of what had become daily life for them. Kaname's father sent her there cause he...well, he's a dick and thought she could use the discipline and didn't really look as far as he should have into the school. Tessa and Leonard got specialized scholarships because even without their Whispered powers, both of them are recognized geniuses, and wanted to put their brains toward something different. If you can find a similar way to send your characters to the academy, then it's fine that they be there.

You had concerns about the older sibling, if she's that much older, then the academy would likely offer something of a placement test for the more academic part of the schooling, but she would still be put into the beginning levels of the combat training for the sake of her new student status. She would have to be taught the Mithril way of doing things, and there's no saying she couldn't learn something new in the process. Understand that the school can only make so many concessions for a few students, as it then wouldn't be fair to the rest of the school if they were to get special treatment. It'd be like saying that because she's older, she automatically gets to be with others her own age, and that wouldn't make sense since there had been no such concessions made for Kurz, who is old enough to be in with the First Class rather than Third or Fourth. Granted he is smart enough in most areas of the academics to be up there, but because of his altered timeline, he was placed in with the first years to make up for everything missed.

Hopefully this made things clearer this time.

I think there's some misunderstandings here. (And I'll admit some of its on my side.)

I've more or less dropped the idea of Cryska and Inia (the ones who treat each other as sisters) as transfer students at this point, although I do plan to play them as regular students. What I am focusing on right now is the idea that Yui came to Mithril after her previous academy was forced to close due to some of its cadets being killed on a mission that turned into a nightmare. And Yui is someone who survived that nightmare. She is not a rowdy troublemaker. In fact, she's even more studious and diligent and focused then she used to be. The part of her that she buried because of that nightmare was the friendly, more easygoing part of her personality. She probably isn't very interested in socializing, and the fact that she's likely to be harshly critical of any screw ups or laxity on the part of fellow cadets (particularly if she's in the leadership stream and ends up with her own squad) isn't likely to help matters much. That's the part of her I'm thinking is going to make other students dislike her initially.

And yes, she would have started over from first year after entering Mithril.

Now, is there a reason why that won't work?

Honestly man, I just told you a way to make your twins work if you really wanted them. The only extra work that you would have had to do would be to say they probably wandered around for a while before learning of the academy and applying. As for the other chick, if she is starting out as a first year anyway, then there's no reason to treat her as a transfer of any kind, because all first years are coming from points around the world, and it's a moot point if she's starting there at the same time as the other first year students anyway.

Uh, I said I planned to play the "twins" as regular students, it was the transfer student part I was planning to drop with them. Sorry if I said that in an unclear way.

As for Yui, she's not technically a transfer student as she started from year one. However she did attend a similar academy previously until it was forced to shut down. If that's fine, then great, but the way you put things it sounded like it was a problem for another similar academy to have existed.

The reason for the part about another Academy in Yui's background is because of that nightmare mission that killed her friends and fellow cadets. Having students killed on a mission would have been a huge problem for Mithril, which is why I started considering the idea of Yui having attended a different school previously.

Why does she HAVE to be a transfer student? Why could she not have lost a team - even if an amateur one - in another context? It's not like she'd be the first with combat experience outside of the academy.

How else is a seventeen year old Japanese ojou-sama type going to have ended up as a combatant on a real battlefield otherwise? Japan isn't facing invasion from aliens who have been at war with humanity for three decades in this verse.

If you can't figure out some kind of altered history to make her have combat experience elsewhere, then she's not likely to work. Part of the reason the Academy is the way it is, is because it is the only one of its kind. That's why the student body is so culturally diverse. If it wasn't, most of the people there just WOULDN'T be there. They'd be at other schools. But there are no 'other' schools to be at, which is why they're here.

In general, I've tried to alter my characters to work with your rules and judgements even if I don't necessarily agree with them. In this case however I've pushed things about as far as I can without losing my grasp on either the character or what I'd been planning to do with her.

I also don't think the premise of the RPG would fall apart just because there happened to be one or two other similar academies out there. Especially if Mithril Academy is now the only one in operation and has been for at least two years.

As always I'm going to have to live with your final decision on this one, but could you please give me a little leeway here? I've tried to come up with ideas to make this work, but its gotten to the point where this is basically make it or break it for what I've had planned for this character.

What's making us so frustrated tabby, is that you've been repeating everything we've said to you, then asking why it can't happen, or why we won't let it. We've told you this whole time that as long as you can just alter things to get them to the academy, then it's fine, I've even told you how you can do it and make it work. FMP is full of teenage mercenaries with extraordinary pasts, filled with combat experience, and the only thing we've done with the academy, is change one slight detail that allows them to get there.

I say again, if Yui is starting with the other first years, then she's not a transfer student. She's just a first year, and the only thing that you need to focus on is how she may have heard of the academy after that tragedy to get her there. That's it. As long as you can do that for any of your characters, then they should be fine.

Is the transfer student part what's the problem right now? I thought the problem had moved into different territory...

The current problem seems to be that even if Yui isn't a transfer student because she applied to Mithril directly and started their programs from the start, her past tragedy happened while she was enrolled at a similar institution. And the problem with that is that even if that institution had to close down because of what happened (meaning Yui was no longer a student there) it still means that an institution similar to Mithril Academy existed.

Am I wrong in thinking that's the crux of the current problem? It seems to be what Misha has a problem with.

The problem is that we've given leeway too often in too many other respects (including the former RP as well) and that we've had to practically write the altered histories or practically create it for many characters (NOT just you, I'd like to mention, so you don't think I'm picking on you here, because I'm not) and it's just that enough is enough. It might be something small and stupid to you, but to us, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. We're done making concessions and changing things, it's time to put the foot down and enforce the verse as it is.