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As promised, the Tales continue. Bit of a cliffhanger this time isn't it?
Read the update here: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/tales-tcpd-trial
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Poor Topaz. Talk about being set up as the fall guy.
On a (probably) mostly unrelated note, I always think it's rather weird when people get emotional about testifying - unless it's a personal matter, of course. To me that sends the signal that the person has something to hide. Why become nervous or upset when relaying what one saw or didn't see? Those are just facts. 'course I can understand being nervous is Hoss is asking the questions. Sounds like he could just as easily throw an entirely library at a person as he could "the book".
Come to think of it, I wonder if Hoss charges extra for protecting his clients? He probably ruins more suits that way.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Nice! Superpowered trial where the bad guys show up to keep things colorful. Very entertaining. Made me smile.
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The big question: Is Topaz their client, or was that just what Tarot was told? And were they told to announce it like that?
Next question: If Topaz isn't their client, how good are the restraints he's in, and what powers does he still have available to him without his foci?
Gherrenfur may have some natural (or maybe supernatural or Meta-) Vargr abilities, and the Commissioner has his martial Arts training... How many others in that room have any effective way to resist? Will Hoss help Tarot, or try to stop them from kidnapping his client?
The suspense is building quite nicely!
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This also seems like a good adventure hook. Inside the Courthouse, the no-weapons policy (and suppressors?) are holding the heroes' powers down to just their tertiary abilities. Tarot attacking from the outside seemingly have their full powers. Do the heroes fight them here, or wait to track them down later?
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
The instant Tarot declared they'd showed up to "secure" Topaz and claimed he was their client, for me alarm bells started clanging that sounded like "FRAME JOB."
Why? Because they didn't need to destroy an ornate courtroom to do this. The only advantage to doing it right now amounts to a combination of character assassination AND guilt by association.
Very very By The (comic) Book story, however I love the fact that "justice" is MESSY such that you've got all kinds of competing agendas and motivations going on all over the place, such that no one is "squeaky clean" and the answers aren't a foregone conclusion.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I've been lurking the forums of other games to try to get a sense of what people like and don't like about games, and one thing I see oft-lamented is the lack of good storytelling and engaging narrative.
I don't think we'll have that problem :).
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
So. The chief of police is a dog. OK, so the canine dept has an advancement program. good. German Shepards have been needing a break for ages now. McGruff found new Life in the City of Titans.
JUST KIDDING! Good story so far. I like how a criminal group specializes in jailbreaks. That is not a niche you find anyone specializing in. El Chapo could have used them.
Now I'm looking forward to interacting with Gherrenfur. "Come on Black Falcon! Throw me a bone here! Let me in on what the...NO! I meant that figuratively! (hey, thats a ham bone)...Shut up! Whats the lowdown on the Kingpin? (smart alecy heroes, Grrrr)"
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Yep, that's another strength of the story arc approach. If everything is focused around quest hubs with a handful of NPCs who hand out quests, there can't be any cohesiveness. To put it another way, even the best writers can't keep fed-ex quests interesting. At best the "story" seems to be that this particular town / random safari camp in an extremely dangerous area / fortress has some problem and the story is completed by completing the quests. McCarpenter has received his nails, McCook has received his meat, McRandomDude's cider has been liberated. Congratulations, the town is safe! Time to move on the the next "story"!
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Hoo mali mali! Plenty pilikia comin' down!
[h3]-- Mewkychan =^.^=m mew![/h3]
Overall a very good read indeed. I only groaned once... another Atlas 33 reference that of course had nothing to do with the storyline. But you come to expect this as obligatory standard fare from this bunch. I pinched my nose and read on.
Um, 'Atlas 33' is fully ensconced in the Lore. So, that's not a gratuitous reference, but something that has meaning. They were heroes.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Hoss's clothing expenses are probably as bad as Luke Cage's back when he bought those yellow silk shirts in bulk. (Hoss has a Hulk-style build, so he has to get 'em custom made too.)
---Dave
Gameplay Design, plus pitching in here and there on Art, Lore, Composition, Hijinx, etc.
As Fireheart said, we've embedded Atlas 33 into the lore. Means something entirely different of course, but we know what the homage is. Atlas 33 refers to those who died defending Titan City during Hurricane Atlas.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
I picked that up. Its a great read. Waiting for the next installment.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
See [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/cot-micro-fan-comic-hurricane-atlas]Tiger's fan comic[/url]. The Atlas Thirty-three aren't the ones at the dedication of the memorial at the end, they're represented back on the sixth page. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Where is page 3??
Ohhh come on you can't leave us hanging like this...
Grrrrrr
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
Ummm Let me guess...defended with torches right because the power was out from the hurricane? And by issuing "calls to action" because that is what they were called back in the day?
P.S. I give up. It's your lore and you can embed what you want. I still think you go overboard with these types of references and you employ them at every opportunity (appropriate or not). To me, these are the "Dark Ages" of your lore story. But it's obviously not my call. And I did enjoy the rest of it immensely.
Took some digging, but here's some context for your opinion. If that's still your level of sarcasm after reading it, well, you certainly are entitled to your opinion, but I think our lore team did a pretty good job of it.
By the way - besides for the forum badge and this example we're talking about now, what are all these other references? I'm honestly unaware of them, and I've been posting the updates for a year now.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/648915
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
I like this very, very much! With 21 Trump cards in the Tarot, this should prove longstanding fun :D
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)
I like this very, very much! With 21 Trump cards in the Tarot, this should prove longstanding fun :D
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)
This was kinda meh, it made me think Titan City's police force is supposed to be like Paragon's, no corruption. While nice in RL, don't want to see that in the game. :p
"It's a lot better than it was in the 90's" is very different from no corruption. This still leaves the door wide open of individual police or even whole units to be corrupt at any level.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
The 90's in Titan City were a lot like Chicago in the gangster era. Zeng was basically comparing the current, normal level with an era where the police were almost useless. Lots of room for occasional problem personnel in-between the two :)
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
There was never a such thing as "Police Force" that was not corrupt, but enough on historical fact.. The canonical fact that there are player-made non-heroes dictates that they need a place to feel welcome in game too. If you want to be a cop but don't follow the rules you shouldn't feel like a complete anomaly to the lore.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
To be clear, the TCPD is just like modern real-world police. There are those that are crystal clean to a fault, there are those that are corrupt beyond belief, and every shade between. The reference in the story was just as Shadow explained. There was a period, before Hurricane Atlas, where the TCPD was more corrupt than not. Since then, it has been cleaned up substantially. It is impossible to have a perfect police force, because we are dealing with human beings and human motives; most everyone has their price.
It is our intent to make it possible for as many backgrounds to fit as possible, including a cop that doesn't follow the rules. Obviously, we cannot accommodate [i]every[/i] possible background, but we are leaving as many angles open as we can without sacrificing the lore. There's room for RPers and non-RP alike (yes, there are some of those, and sometimes they still want to know about the city they're living in).
Yes, there are some homages built into the lore. That is merely a reflection of the community's origin. However, they have been created in such a way that they have a meaning that stands on their own, not requiring people to know where they come from to understand the lore. Yes, some of them are very prominent in the lore, such as the Atlas 33 (those who fought against the villain Cumulus Rex to free the city from the enormous hurricane that he had managed to gain control of). There are others that are much more subtle, and have not yet been mentioned in anything that has been published; we are saving those for Easter Eggs, for those that wish to find them.
I am glad that you enjoyed the story, even though you believe that there is a gratuitous use of homages. Our intent is that you can all gain something from the stories that we post, should you desire to read them. Some people just don't want to know about the lore ahead of time, some people need something to whet their appetites, and some are in the middle, just enjoying a good story.
We hope that everyone continues to enjoy the stories and other updates that we provide. We do listen to the feedback. Sometimes it won't have an effect on the immediate material, sometimes it will; we may not even tell you if it does at all (but some people [i]may[/i] be able to notice it). For those that desire to learn the lore strictly by playing the game, we have that covered in such a way as to not bore the people that learned it through these updates.
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Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I have to admit, I got a chuckle on how the 90's were referred to as the 'Dark Ages'. It's a clever homage to the infamous dark age of comics when everything was gritty.
Also, I think it's healthy for the setting to have shades of grey, when it comes to organizations like the TCPD to have corruption in the ranks. It gives the 'rough around the edges, hard boiled' characters as place for them. It gives the vigilante hero an antagonist to fight against (if the police were squeaky clean, then it would be a lot harder for them to justify themselves). It also give the villain characters some allies.
The police are human, and we have a Mafia in the form of the Black Rose. SOMEBODY's going to have been bought all right. Several someones. In fact, I think previous Tales focusing on the Black Rose may have straight out said as much.
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[center][color=#ff0000]Interior Map Lead and UI Designer[/color][/center]
Not to step on ConundrumOfFurballs' tail or anything, but here's what this makes me think.
Some people CAN'T be bought.
Some people CAN be bought.
And some people will do everything they can to STAY bought.
Notice that the above works in both (all?) directions. Whether it's a belief/adherence to the almighty dollar (or IGC) or to Justice or Villainy or even simply being "I only care about ME!" ... the above are the same. There are police officers who can be "bought" and there are police officers who are motivated to "stay bought" ... but that's not true of all of them. Not everyone is corrupt(ed), just like not everyone is pure.
The same also applies to Villainous Factions. Some of them can be "bought" to become informants, and some of those informants would be very interested in "staying bought" by other Factions ... whether those factions be rivals in crime or whether they be "law & order" types. There is such a thing as Going Undercover. Any organization large enough is going to have moles, intrigue and espionage going on within it.
It's almost a trope of its own, the Crooked Cop, and you also have the reverse, the Mobster Gone Straight. So it isn't (and shouldn't!) be as simplistic as merely White Hats vs Black Hats. There's a lot more complexity available than that ... and I expect City of Titans to reflect that.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Ohhh, i wonder if we'll see stories about TCPD getting new transfers and Immediately going under cover, so most of the TCPD won't know who it is, so can't rat him/her out? :)
No stepping at all, because that's pretty much the same thing that I said:
Where the price is a very specific circumstance. For some, it's threatening a loved one, for some it's money, and some simply don't have one.
We have all the shades of the grayscale in the lore, and we expect that the PCs to reflect the spectrum just as thoroughly.
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Conundrum of Furballs
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team, Staff Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]