Plotholes, usually.

Subject: Plotholes, usually.
Author: Calista
Posted on: 2013-03-30 19:44:00 UTC

Recruitment options:
--Character comes from an unpublished fic or role-playing game, and is sent to HQ by the author. The character usually doesn't know this and it's just a plot hole. A semi-fic blip is a character from an unpublished fic.
--Recruited from badfic. Sometimes there are salvageable characters in badfic, including bad RP. If they've got enough of a personality, you can recruit.
--A former fanbrat from an OFU. I'm not aware of a D&D-based OFU, but there could be one.
--Dropped through a plothole or wandered through a door from World One (or even specifically hired for the job via a Want ad).
--A professor transferred from an OFU.
--A teenager who grew up in the Nursery.
--Very occasionally, rescued from goodfic after death. Agent Stormsong was rescued this way, just before death, with a Simulation Generator used to create the corpse to keep the fic intact. Characters from goodfic can have problems relating to their experiences in the fic--a sort of PTSD that gives them "flashbacks" to what should have happened. FicPsych can help, but there's no cure.

So there are a lot of options. If you have an RP character you want to use, and they're not too powerful to be an agent, they could certainly become one.

Though--for very powerful but non-Sue characters, there is the option of ESAS, which is the department that handles high-power-level continua. If you have to take care of a Sue or slashwraith in a continuum that's populated by gods, superheroes, giant robots, or the like, ESAS is the department that takes that on. Though it can be quite comical to see a team of regular agents try to figure out how to deal with a fic where they're in way over their head, power-wise. ESAS does have the drawback of being actually limited to high-powered fics, unless you can write an interesting story with high-powered agents in a low-powered world. Could be done, I guess. Danger of glitter, though.

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A Couple Things by Karen on 2013-03-30 06:29:00 UTC Reply

Meaning I have exactly two questions.

1.) What is the PPC's stance on role-playing games, and gear from role-playing games? I've been reading some webcomics with very blatant DnD bases lately, and wondered if any of the things from RPG games could possibly be in the possession of an Agent? Going off of that, what's the PPC's position on sporking badfics taken from RPGs? I recall reading Drizzt do'Urden was a canon Sue, and his universe is based on DnD, so I'm guessing there's some sort of guideline there?

2.) The Steampunk AU version of the PPC, the one on Twisted Skein. I read through it all recently and am very interested. Where might I learn more about it?

Not quite D&D, but... by Data Junkie on 2013-03-31 08:04:00 UTC Reply

I have a character who is from the Shadowrun universe, and brought all of his gear into the PPC with him (Most of which, aside from maybe the armored jacket and the rather obvious cybernetic arm, will likely never see real use, especially not in a mission), as well as knowledge of his particular version of the future.

For those not aware, Shadowrun is basically Earth, roughly 60 years in the future, and with corporations ruling almost everything. Well, plus magic. So, for example, for him something like Harry Potter is classic children's fantasy, much the way the Chronicles of Narnia are for us. His knowledge of videogames is largely incorrect, because most of today's games are either part of history which no one really touches outside of maybe a "history of gaming" class at some university, or they're part of a series that's still ongoing, like say Zelda or Sonic, but most of the canon he knows for those is stuff that hasn't happened yet, and may never happen. Legend of Zelda: Lamentations of the Flame Princess may never happen, for example. (In fact, I'd be surprised if it did, since that's currently the title of a D&D adventure module, minus the "Legend of Zelda" bit.) He knows a lot about film history and "classic" comics, but he thinks about movie and comics from today much like we would think of stuff from the 60s.

As for fics based on RPGs, almost any RPG will have canon characters. Games popular enough, like D&D and Shadowrun and World of Darkness, tend to also have novels based on the game settings, which give you an idea of what the canon characters are like. Even if there are no canon characters in the story, if you know the world well enough, you should still be able to spot traits that are Sueish, or non-canonical. Elves in Shadowrun? Sure! Immortal Elves in Shadowrun? I'm side-eyeing you pretty hard unless they're an established canon character. Elves of any stripe in World of Darkness? No sir, not on my watch. Similarly, demons in D&D or World of Darkness? Sure! Real demons in Shadowrun? Uh, no, not likely. Guns in Shadowrun or World of Darkness? Absolutely, it'd be odd not to see guns in fact. Guns in D&D? It better be like a blunderbuss, and even then they're extremely rare.

Interesting. by Karen on 2013-04-01 01:28:00 UTC Reply

That character from Shadowrun in particular.

As for the rest, I like your point on the novels. They do help set baselines, especially with what's plausible for the world.

*pops up out of lurkerdom to answer* by Cassie on 2013-03-30 11:46:00 UTC Reply

We have at least one PPC Agent from a D&D-verse - the same as Drizzt Do'Urden, in fact, the Forgotten Realms. He is Mazarun Zothyrr, a drow from Menzoberranzan and quite possibly a contemporary of Drizzt. He belongs to Rilwen Shadowflame (the Boarder, not the Agent). He's not overpowered by any stretch of the imagination; he's partly trained as a wizard, but mostly a fighter, so he's limited to spells like Ray of Clumsiness and Endure Elements - nothing remotely superpowerful, but enough to give the edge in a fight. It certainly hasn't left him blasting through missions so easily they've become boring.

Regarding gear from RPGs, I'm pretty sure more than one Agent has got themselves some Bags of Holding, to carry loot if nothing else. I'd figure that as long as it's not an easy "I win" button, any gear's fine.

And sporking badfics... it sort of depends how well you know the RPG in question. If it allows for crazy feats of endurance/combat/magic etc., you can't really use those as a reason to spork. You'd have to go more on whether or not the fics are keeping people in character. For example, say it's a fic about Drizzt set during the earlier books, where his surfacer friends are alive. You could have Drizzt being the extremely talented and superpowered (and Sue-y) warrior he is, but if he's getting fluffywuffy with an OC and not even stopping to think about Catti-brie, or otherwise angsting about the evils of sex (legitimately, given one of his early sights of it was a ten-foot-tall demon and a drow priestess getting funky in the middle of an orgy) then he's Out Of Character and the canon needs resetting at once.

And I've given you way more info than you probably needed. ^^;; My fingers run away with me when I get to talk about D&D. Hope this helps though!
Re: The TCDA. by Huinesoron on 2013-03-30 11:17:00 UTC Reply

Well... there's no more to learn! The four stories here, and the Pistons of the Plot Continuum collection, are everything that has so far been written about the TCDA/Steampunk PPC. So the only way to learn more about it is for someone to write more...

hS

Write more, you say... by Karen on 2013-03-31 00:54:00 UTC Reply

*slowly looks over at Huinesoron*

D&D gear is a definite possibility. by Calista on 2013-03-30 07:52:00 UTC Reply

Agent Unger is from a D&D-based continuum.

I'm pretty sure I've seen minor magic items, like the Bag of Holding, floating around HQ as well. Some D&D items and spells may be quite interesting if added to a mission.

One caution, though: D&D quickly becomes a very high-powered universe--Drizzt, for example, is not even a particularly powerful character if he's statted up, and everything he does in even the flashiest battle scenes is totally possible for a D&D character of mid-level.

So, despite the allure of being able to put up a Prismatic Wall or decapitate a Sue with a +2 Vorpal weapon, it is probably best to stick to minor items and low-level magic, the sort which adds story possibilities and strategic options instead of sheer power. A simple "Grease" spell or a Hand of the Mage would be interesting things for agents to have, and a Hat of Disguise would be a good makeshift replacement for some functions of the DORKS.

Most role-playing games have some sort of canon which can spark badfic and deserve protection.

As far as I'm concerned, I think it'd be cool to see some more D&D stuff in the PPC. There's some interesting potential there. Just grab your D&D books and flip through them, see what jumps out at you.

Unger by Miah on 2013-04-03 05:09:00 UTC Reply

Woot! Someone remembers him! *Does happy dance*

Origins of Unger:

He specifically is a half-elf barbarian, purely for the ridiculousness of that. When he arrived, he couldn't read, and it took him a long time to learn. He is also afraid of the "magical" drain hole in showers and baths. He owns a Quiver of Ehlonna which holds javelins. He comes from a tribe of half-elves in the far, cold north, and he was on a sort of walkabout to prove his manhood. In his infinite (about 6, I can't remember his exact stats now) Wisdom, he decided to attack a camp full of bugbears and goblins all by himself, which went about as well as can be expected. He fell through a plot hole /just/ before they tried to eat him. He landed on a table in the Cafeteria, and spent a short stint in FicPsych acclimating (being tamed). During which time he tried to set fire to something 62 times. (How I came up with him as a character is that I was playing around with Hero Machine 3, and made this picture, which I liked a lot and decided to to come up with a name and background for. We were playing family DnD sessions at the time, so I rolled him up as a level 3 or 4 character--to keep him from being too powerful. He is also 21, which is at or near the minimum age for half-elves, so figured it was equivalent to about 15 for humans. Then we never used him in the game, so I moved him off to the PPC)

Agent Miah also has a backpack of holding, which she is extremely vague on the origins of, but she was rescued from a semi-fic blip and then worked as an Internet Avatar for several years before getting a job with the PPC.

Oooh by Karen on 2013-04-03 23:20:00 UTC Reply

This Unger guy sounds interesting. Are there missions with him?

They're right at the bottom of his Wikia page. by Outhra on 2013-04-03 23:31:00 UTC Reply

Knock yourself out. Figuratively, of course.

On the subject of DnD by Nue Houjuu on 2013-03-30 14:19:00 UTC Reply

Do the DnD-based Agents get here after they die, or were they specifically made for this purpose?

It would be interesting to see someone pull off a character death-scene to transition into the PPC.

Plotholes, usually. by Calista on 2013-03-30 19:44:00 UTC Reply

Recruitment options:
--Character comes from an unpublished fic or role-playing game, and is sent to HQ by the author. The character usually doesn't know this and it's just a plot hole. A semi-fic blip is a character from an unpublished fic.
--Recruited from badfic. Sometimes there are salvageable characters in badfic, including bad RP. If they've got enough of a personality, you can recruit.
--A former fanbrat from an OFU. I'm not aware of a D&D-based OFU, but there could be one.
--Dropped through a plothole or wandered through a door from World One (or even specifically hired for the job via a Want ad).
--A professor transferred from an OFU.
--A teenager who grew up in the Nursery.
--Very occasionally, rescued from goodfic after death. Agent Stormsong was rescued this way, just before death, with a Simulation Generator used to create the corpse to keep the fic intact. Characters from goodfic can have problems relating to their experiences in the fic--a sort of PTSD that gives them "flashbacks" to what should have happened. FicPsych can help, but there's no cure.

So there are a lot of options. If you have an RP character you want to use, and they're not too powerful to be an agent, they could certainly become one.

Though--for very powerful but non-Sue characters, there is the option of ESAS, which is the department that handles high-power-level continua. If you have to take care of a Sue or slashwraith in a continuum that's populated by gods, superheroes, giant robots, or the like, ESAS is the department that takes that on. Though it can be quite comical to see a team of regular agents try to figure out how to deal with a fic where they're in way over their head, power-wise. ESAS does have the drawback of being actually limited to high-powered fics, unless you can write an interesting story with high-powered agents in a low-powered world. Could be done, I guess. Danger of glitter, though.
Oh, that could be interesting. by Outhra on 2013-03-30 17:33:00 UTC Reply

Since the usual method for introducing an agent is "they fell through a plothole", this could be an interesting new spin on the finding-HQ scenario.
So far as I know, nobody's caused entry into HQ through death, probably because doing so would just spawn a problem for Medical.
Ooh, idea! There's a high-level psionic ability that can resurrect anyone the user knows, even if their original body was destroyed (I forget what it was called). If the user was distracted, maybe the botched power could reconstitute the body, but fail to bring it to the location of the caster, and the confused space-time matrix would dump it in a null zone, i.e. HQ. The DnD native would be confused, out of both his home dimension and time period, and potentially psychotic from the transit. A perfect recruit.
Just an idea. I don't know if it could stand up to scrutiny, but I thought it made sense, by DnD logic at least.

I had this scenario in my head for some time. by Nue Houjuu on 2013-03-31 05:47:00 UTC Reply

In summary it could go like this, for a DnD based agent on death:

>Character is in room fighting Big Bad (or something that causes near death)
>Character is struck down, forced to roll saving throws (for the non DnD players, it's 'roll to stabilize yourself or get up and continue fighting')
>Presumably, rest of party is also struck down, and Big Bad is surviving.
>Big Bad kills all remaining party members, including said character.
>Character wakes up somewhere in HQ, (with whatever they had before death?) battered, but not dead. (1 HP or so?)
>Character realizes that the Great Dice has somehow sent him here.

Or something. Oh, and cue the usual confusion.

That sounds interesting by Karen on 2013-04-01 01:23:00 UTC Reply

One thing that rather intrigues me with this is that, in my meager experience with DnD, the characters are the sum of their players' desires and roleplaying. What if the player wasn't very good at roleplaying before the character "crossed over," as it were? How would that affect the character?

I imagine that it would be similar to what happens to bits. by Outhra on 2013-04-01 04:14:00 UTC Reply

A character is defined by their surroundings and experiences, and since PCs, especially poorly role-played PCs, are essentially puppets for the players the way that bits are puppets for Sues or plot advancements, they'd experience a psychological crisis rooted in the same cause: they need to develop a personality as an individual.

If the character was too meta during their quest, or if their player was too heavy on the pop culture references, the character would have a mix of World One knowledge with the knowledge of their home world and canon, and likewise, if the player was really heavily into the role-playing aspect but didn't do it properly, the character would be stunted psychologically, with knowledge of their home canon but with little ability to operate outside it. If they entered the PPC, they'd both need a stay with the Psychs, the first guy to develop a stable identity, and the second to be able to develop his ability to make new mental connections and operate in new scenarios that have nothing to do with shouting catch-phrases and waiting for his Daily abilities to recharge. Both would also need mental training to allow for more independent thought.

Nue Houjuu's mention of the Great Dice in another comment made me think about something else: DnD characters are essentially operated by dice rolls, game mechanics, and feats, and the particularly meta players even treat their characters as having knowledge of these functions, but how would those functions adjust into the PPC continuum? Since it's based on real-styled physics for much of the time, most of the probability manipulation that a DnD character requires is either nullified by default or brought into question. What would a sword with, for example, a +2 to hit do in real-world physics? How would saving throws work? Would a PC's ability to resist magic or poison become completely random as he was cut off from the dice that formerly powered his entire existence? Outside the original continuum, these become relevant questions. If he always succeeds at the dice rolls, he becomes a Suvian, if he always fails, he dies quickly, and if the results are random, he'd have no idea what to expect in a given situation, and would have to formulate plans and life choices as if he had no abilities at all, because he'd never know if they'd actually work.

These are actually pretty interesting problems. Maybe a DnD-based character would come up with these questions on his own as he's learning to think for himself, and prompt a change in the formerly-arrogant persona of 97% of DnD characters as he decides how he's going to deal with the uncertainties. Will he find out for himself? Will he play it safe and try to operate as a standard humanoid? Will he take risks and bank on his powers working when they need to? Maybe not even he'd know at the start.

Now I really wanna see this happen by Karen on 2013-04-01 04:38:00 UTC Reply

Haha someone should make a DnD based character just to see what happens. I'd love to see how things work out.

I would, but I think I'd have to wait for permission first. (nm) by Nue Houjuu on 2013-04-01 06:16:00 UTC Reply

I eagerly await your Permission! (nm) by Karen on 2013-04-02 05:00:00 UTC Reply

Hmm! by Karen on 2013-03-31 00:53:00 UTC Reply

That sounds like a really fun idea.

I can just imagine the DnD player being all confused, and having to have everything explained to them...and would it be accurate for them to think in game terms, like having to roll dice for an attack and such?

Man now I really want that to happen sometime...

Well, as far as the roleplaying question goes... by KittyNoodles on 2013-03-30 07:12:00 UTC Reply

Not sure what the rule is, but one of my agents - Veralyn - is from the World of Warcraft continuum, so pretty much all of her gear that isn't related to the PPC is from her home continuum.

Also her partner may or may not have stolen the first set of armor she had from another blood elf, so there's that, too.