Let me start by saying my intention is not to be mean, put you down, and/or chase you away from the site. I'm just going to be brutally honest, and if you still want to stay and try to work through everything then fantastic. You're excited and eager to RP and we can always use new blood, but we have standards around here hence how involved my reviews have been. I have literally spent several hours on this application, time I could have spent on other things (and I've been very busy this past week) so let me be clear that I'm not just blowing you off. I genuinely care about the RP on this site.
The above, warning is because of your latest RP sample. It's bad, worse than your original which wasn't very good. The only thing this one has going for it is that it's longer and it actually has something to do with your character's history to help illuminate one chapter of it. I was hoping your previous RP sample was just a fluke because as I believe you said, it's hard to write without a prompt. I went back to the Verse (Watch as I Soar) to review some of your older posts and unfortunately I saw many of the same issues there.
Looking at your listed RP history, those posts are the extent of your forum based RP. The rest is all from D&D and that's exactly what your posts here remind me off. All though there are common elements between the two, D&D style roleplay and text based roleplay are VERY different.
I would characterize D&D roleplay as short response, self-centered response, present tense, focused on action and dialogue, etc. Conversely, forum RP typically involves longer responses, responses that not only indicate what your character is doing but their perceptions of all other characters and events around them, are written in the past tense, typically are more focused on description and thoughts than action and dialogue, etc.
You say you've read numerous threads on this site so I hope you will have some understanding about what I'm talking about. Your original RP sample was the perfect example of what not to do. You tried to use past tense, but you slipped between the two. You had grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Your post was incredibly short, maybe five sentences. The DoS rules state "One sentence replies and even one paragraph replies are not acceptable except in the rarest of circumstances." Looking back at your old Verse posts, one paragraph replies were the norm rather than the exception.
Your RP was heavily self-center if I recall, all about how Vlad is this badass mofo and provided very little about the environment around him. And over the course of those five sentences Vlad came in and kicked ass and was gone. Now, your current RP sample is certainly longer but it has just about all of the same issues. You rely almost entirely on dialogue to push the story, throughout the whole thing Vlad is the shining hero, and you rush through the entire court martial.
To put it another way, you write as if this is a screenplay rather than a book. More importantly, your writing is cocky for lack of a better word. And I don't just mean that Vlad is a cocky character but as you write him it's abundantly clear that everything is going to go perfectly for Vlad because he is the hero and life is always fair. A trial scene where your character is without a doubt guilty and likely facing execution should have a little more tension in it.
Again, I being harsh but I'm also being honest. If you can accept what I'm saying, are willing to really work hard to fix this app and improve your RP in general, and after all of this if you still think that this kind of RP is actually something you'd like to do, then fine. We want more members and we're willing to help a less experience writer, but I don't want to mislead you about what it's going to take or what the end result is going to be.
To your current RP sample specifically, when I suggested a court martial, I meant for it to be added into your backstory, not for it to be used as an RP sample (you actually failed to modify your backstory to include any mention of it). As a general rule, you should not RP about something you know little about. The first exception is if you use very general terms and do a little research so you kind of know what you're talking about. The second is if the topic is something everyone knows very little about (e.g. futuristic starship engines) in which case you can probably bullshit your way through it.
I'm not only an admin of this site, but I'm also in my final year of law school and have applied to the Judge Advocate General Corps so I think I have a bit of insight to provide here. A court martial/civilian trial is not the kind of thing you can just bullshit your way through, nor did you describe it in very general terms. (A general way would have been something like "Vlad presented his case as best as he could, providing witnesses and documents to the court along with a heartfelt plea for mercy and a determination to see Liao's actions brought to justice." Instead you used very specific dialogue and description of actions which infinitely increased your chances of saying something wrong.)
Your roleplay is not at all how a trial works, not even a TV trial (I suggest
My Cousin Vinny as a fairly accurate depiction). If only cases could be tried so quickly and results could be achieved like that. For reference, I once wrote a court martial thread for RP. It was
23 typed pages. Those pages included just about zero description of the court room, characters, or the actions they took. It was all dialogue. It was also only a snipet of the trial, I believe portions of only four witnesses. There was a judgment as a matter of law ending the trial early before any closing arguments, I opened medias is res so there were no opening statements, I cut out numerous witnesses, there were no sidebars or instructions from the judge, etc. If I had written a full trial, it could easily have been hundreds of pages of pure dialogue. A capital court martial is not last five minutes with only two large paragraphs of dialogue.
First of all, you would never be allowed to defend yourself so easily. Everyone would object to it, especially when it is such a surprise action as the trial is beginning rather than something determined in pretrial (which is extensive). The judge would be deeply concerned that Vlad was making a huge mistake and would have more than a "meh" attitude about it. It may seem dramatic and interesting, but
pro se trials are never a good idea. The fact that Vlad is likely to lose his life makes it all the more serious to the point that the judge might deny his request no matter what argument he makes and whether or not the prosecution objects just because it is not in his best interest to defend himself. There is a saying that "a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client". It's just a very stupid thing to do.
Second, you follow absolutely no procedure, and trials are all about procedure. You don't just walk in and start talking to the judge, handing him stuff, and making arguments. All this procedure is one of the reasons they gave you an attorney. You could easily give the attorney all those killer documents so he can present them properly and then he can call Vlad to the stand to give killer testimony against Liao, and possibly Vald can make his own statement at the end. A good lawyer will work with a client like Vlad so that all of that can get out. Only in a rare exception will be better off without one (e.g. the lawyer is an incompetent idiot in which case he shouldn't be a lawyer, the lawyer doesn't care or is corrupt and wants you to lose, or somehow a guy who has trouble speaking in public and making an argument became a lawyer). More likely than not, the attorney will fiercely fight for you, he will be skilled at public speaking and great at argument, he will know all the tricks of the trade and legal maneuvers that you wouldn't know, and he'd have experience in dozens of trials where as this would be Vlad's first rodeo.
More important than that, Vlad talks for about two minutes and that's the end of the trial. The thing about trials is that they are based on an adversarial system and they typically last for days if not weeks for serious crimes. There are two sides to every story and the other side must have an opportunity to present its case (and according to procedure they would present their entire case BEFORE Vlad ever got a chance to give his). You have the judge make a decision without allowing anyone else to say anything, and he is given no time to personally deliberate the matter either. Also, you just have Vlad speaking and such argument is NOT evidence and the documents he hands over are never entered into evidence so the judge's decision is officially based on absolutely nothing.
The "facts" of Vlad's case are also poor. First, a Battalion has a bout 1000 men in it, not 20,000. That many men would be a Division or a Corps in which case Liao would be a high ranking general to command it. Second, if Vlad is holding a list of the 18,400 men and their injuries you realize he must be holding hundreds of pages of documents, right? You specifically say that Vlad waits for the judge to read it. How long did he wait for the judge to read over all those hundreds of pages? Third, what is the significance of this evidence? You mean to tell me that Liao's commanders didn't notice that he lost 18,400 men in that last attack? How do the casualty reports get to lowly sergeant Vlad instead of high command? Do they think Liao just asked for thousands of replacement soldiers for no reason? The statistics are a matter of record that the army will be well aware of. It's the manner of Liao's command that should be questioned, not the numbers. And what kind of enemy position could easily have been knocked out with artillery (and why a force of 20,000 men have no heavy weaponry is beyond me) but manages to mow down nearly 20,000 soldiers?
Getting away from the trial for a moment and turning toward the Vlad-Liao relationship, why does Liao need to command so many men? The only reason I see is so Vlad is a bigger hero for standing up to him and bringing him down. But the larger the atrocity, the more unbelievable it is. It would be much easier to believe that Liao commands a company of about 100 men and 80 of them died in a foolish assault. That many men killed could easily be overlooked by the higher ups, the type of target they assault could be explained away as something that should have been hit by artillery instead of being charged but Liao would need to call it in and didn't want to wait. And perhaps most significantly, it's actually believable that a lowly sergeant would be arguing with his company commander where as it is hard to believe that a colonel or general (as Liao would need to be if he commanded a battalion as you say or as division or corps like the numbers say) would even be approachable by a lowly sergeant. Standing up for 80 guys that you personally knew is no less heroic than standing up for 18,000 names of a hundred pieces of paper. Vlad isn't going to get featured on the evening news, but it still speaks to his character and THAT is what's important in RP.
Back to the trial, the most outrageous part is that somehow a trial where Vlad is the defendant results in Liao being punished. Have you ever heard in a TV drama "the witness is not on trial" or anything like that? Well you can't be found guilty and punished when you're not on trial. Evidence that comes up in one investigation and trial can be used in a later proceeding, but we don't try people in batches or call out random citizens in the audience of the court and randomly give them punishments. (See the ending to
A Few Good Men for a court martial scene in which someone in the courtroom is implicated as the truly guilty party. Everyone now knows he has done it because he admitted it on the record (unlike Liao who would still be able to put on a defense because he hadn't admitted anything like in the above reference movie) and yet he is still merely arrested and led out of the courtroom to have his own trial at some later date.)
If it wasn't insane enough that Vlad was able to present his case and the prosecution wasn't even able to speak against him, it's even more insane that Liao never even got a chance to put on a defense. And the punishment of being "sent to work in the offices" is not what would be handed down. If he truly was found guilty of such criminal negligence or manslaughter or whatever he is charged with, he might end up being the one before a firing squad. Having your career trashed and getting shifted to a desk job is the kind of underhanded punishment that wouldn't come through the legal system. In such a case, Liao would never be brought up on charges, but merely the result of Vlad's trial would cast a shadow on him and his superiors would transfer him and issue such an informal punishment. If this trial somehow did happen, then it would be easily reversed on appeal and everything would be undone.
Put quite simply, if you think that is how the legal system works then you are sorely mistaken. And if you really know so little about something, you should not choose it as a subject for a RP post. My earlier suggestion was for you to include something about a court martial in your backstory where there could be a general summary, not to take every single thing I suggested and then cram it all together into a six paragraph RP.
From an RP perspective, the sample is not interesting. Vlad is a caricature hero just as Liao is the mustache twirling villain. It's cringe worthy and generally an unbelievable story even setting aside the military and legal inaccuracies. Again, you are writing more like this is a D&D campaign where Vlad the Impaler comes in swinging and kicking ass and we all have a good time sitting around with our friends joking about what just happened and how we should do this again next weekend. That is not what we're going for here. We're trying to write compelling stories that one might re-read as if they were a good book rather than just having a good time with a bunch of quick back-and-forths with our heroes easily defeating everything in their path.
As to the rest of your application:
1) You changed his birthplace in his backstory but it's either a typo or some new place I'm unaware of. You also include the description in the next sentence about it being the coldest planet in the 'Verse which presumably applies to St. Albans and not to Anton. There can't be
two coldest planets in the 'Verse and also, Anton isn't even a planet.
2) The Father thing is still not really acceptable, and the more it gets chopped up and rewritten the worse the story flows. Reading it in the best possible light, Vlad finds his dad now just nine days after he is killed. Yes, nine is a lot less than a month but if I didn't impress this upon you earlier, let me be perfectly clear now. Bodies decay VERY fast. Bodies start turning pale and blue only 30 minutes after death. By the 24 hour mark bodies are really decomposing. They stink, and the faces become hard to recognize (all the more so when the person was shot pointblank in the head). Only three days after death the body will be bloated, leaking fluid, etc. It's really nasty and not the kind of stuff you see on TV.
Nine days is certainly more reasonable than 30 days, but it is still going to be a mess when it comes to ID which is fine so long as you actually mention it in your backstory instead of blowing it off like I haven't brought it up as an issue on several reviews. Something as simple as "Vlad's heart skipped a beat as he realized it was a body, and somehow he knew even though he couldn't recognize the remains. After a few moments he noticed the silver watch, a family heirloom, around the corpse's bloated wrist and then he knew. It was his father." would answer this problem better than simply changing the number of days back and forth.
What is harder to justify and explain away are the other points I've brought up related to this. Again, nine days is better, but it's still a long time for NO ONE to notice this decaying body along the side of the road that is stinking, has flies all over it, had a line of vultures and wolves tearing it apart, etc. He's only a few miles outside of a city and as close to the city as he is to his own home (which actually isn't all too far away from the city). Do you mean to tell me that Vlad is the only person using this road in all that time? Is it a road that goes nowhere but to the old Kelchkoff residence?
If the body is so decomposed as it must be, then why is Vlad looking around for a killer? There is no killer lurking around if the body is that far gone. It would be painfully obvious to anyone actually looking at the body. Or do you simply mean he is looking around for clues left behind. If that's the case, please actually say that in your writing because as it is you say he is looking for the killer as if he's hiding behind a nearby bush or there is a miraculously undisturbed nine day old trail of footprints leading ten miles back into the city and directly to the killer's apartment.
And I didn't bring this up before, but why the hell is his father dead here of all places? Did his dad walk SIX HOURS from his house in the country to his job in the city? Why didn't he have a car or some other means of transportation so he doesn't have a twelve hour commute to and from work? If he worked in the city then why does the family live so far away? If someone wanted to kill him related to his work in the city then why did they wait three hours to do it instead of doing it earlier in his long walk? If they did it farther out to avoid being caught by the authorities then why did they leave the body lying there right beside the road for anyone to find? It just doesn't make sense.
3) Why does Vlad run from the bar when asked about his age? Is it illegal for a minor to eat breakfast in a bar on this world? Why does he fear possible legal repercussions for such a minor offense if a man can be murdered in cold blood along the side of the road and no one even notices or cares?
4) My earlier comment about not receiving special training in knife fighting and hand-to-hand combat in basic training was not an invitation to write your basic training as a special hand-to-hand course. Knife fighting is not high on the list of military priorities, especially for a "crash course" where they are trying to rush these recruits to the front in a desperate war. If you're close enough to use a knife in combat then you're too close, and even if you stab someone then his buddy is going to shoot you. The saying "don't bring a knife to a gun fight" is as appropriate on a battlefield as it is in a bar if not more so.
To be certain, I asked a veteran of the US Army how much training he received in hand-to-hand and knife combat. The answer was "almost none." My father also served for 23 years and the closet he ever got to knife combat was when he accidentally stabbed himself in the hand while trying to pry frozen food apart.
5) How was Vlad ever recognized for his smithing skill in the military? As far as we know, Vlad was an infantryman in a front line unit during a war. Where would he ever get a chance to demonstrate his skills to others? He'd be too busy huddling in a foxhole to be customizing weapons. The fact that he's in a front line unit taking 80% casualties also leads one to believe that there is no armory to check weapons into and to work on them even if he they did know about his skills. Even if he was so good, his skills were recognized, there were opportunities for a smith to maintain some kind of armory, his poor relationship with his commanders would just about guarantee that they didn't give him any special responsibilities or positions where he could smith.
6) After I asked for more in your personality section it actually got shorter.
7) We don't need another gunsmith on the Peerless. Frankly, I wouldn't have even thought we would need one gunsmith. We certainly don't need two of them. We also have a demolitions expert who assists in the armory so technically we'd be getting a third guy in there to work. We don't need it. As much as I want to give people opportunities, I'm not hiring people onto my ship if such a recruitment makes absolutely no sense. Sorry.
As for the limited piloting and mechanical skills Vlad has? We already have FOUR mechanics and two technical experts that might be considered subclasses of mechanic. And there are maybe five other crew members that could maybe pick up a wrench if needed due to their histories. We also have FOUR pilots plus a pilot in training and plenty of other people who have been on ships for a long time and might know the basics of flying.
Now, I've spent several hours on just the above reply and I've spent many hours before that reviewing this app. I started this post saying that I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to be honest. The short version is that your RP sample needs to be redone and your backstory is such a mess that it probably needs to be redone as well. If you have your sights set on the Peerless then you might need to change up your skills as well.
My suggestion:
1) Write your RP sample about something that you really know IRL. Look at what other people write about. It ranges from the mundane to the adventurous. Lasky wrote about talking with is uncle over breakfast and Vitale's is about taking out the garbage at a Chinese restaurant. Charlotte's is about a flashback memory of her mother in a museum while presently out on a mission. Mine (Roger's) is about the aftermath of a shootout. Jericho's is about waking up early and going into the kitchen. It does not have to be exciting so long as it tells a story, and in fact the less exciting ones are probably the better ones because they focus more on the character than on action.
2) Forget making Vlad a gunsmith and maybe tone down his other skills as well. If you just want Vlad to be a drifter RPing with whoever on this site or you're hoping for us to get more members and start another ship, then you can stay as you want him. But, if you want to get on the Peerless, as I mentioned above, I do not need nor want another gunsmith. I could, however, always use another shooter. Focus on Vlad as the dutiful soldier who spent some time as a merc. Take out all the side stuff and focus on how he's great in a firefight and is a pretty decent brawler/knife fighter as well (not because he was specially trained in the army but because he's a gorram fighter and it's what he has been practicing on long flights rather than weaponsmithing).
3) Contemplate rewriting large sections of his backstory instead of just inserting little changes here and there. Little changes muddle up the overall story and make it fall apart for starters. More importantly, the changes that need to be made are so significant, little changes likely will never fix them.
The thing about his dad's death has gone through so many changes, I don't know if you'll ever get it to a point where I think it is believable. I see two easy ways to completely rewrite it. 1) Forget the part where he has been missing for weeks, Vlad drops out of school and needs to get a job to support his mother, etc. Have Vlad just out walking for some other reason (maybe mom yelled at him because she's mad dad is late getting home for dinner). Then Vlad goes out into the night and as he walks he finds his father's
car off on the side of the road. When he approaches he sees that his father was shot in the head (possibly by a passenger or someone flagging him down or whatever), and he'd only been dead a short while so most of our problems about a dead body lying there are gone.
2) The authorities eventually find the body after his dad is missing for a few weeks (and Vlad has nothing to do with it). It takes a few weeks because the Anton mafia or whatever dumped him somewhere that isn't the side of the road and the remains were only just now uncovered by chance. Vlad is an emotional mess and runs away, maybe to the city to try and find answers from whoever his dad worked for but ends up getting a job on a ship instead.
Option 1 makes the entire story much more believable. Option 2 is even more believable. It cuts Vlad out of the discovery though, but what real purpose does being the one to find the body provide if over the next 20 years Vlad never actually finds any leads about the killer? All you really need from this is #1 Dad is dead, #2 I'm curious about what he really did and why he was killed, #3 I need to make a living and support mom even though I'm only 15 so I drop out of school, and #4 I'm kind of an emotional mess so I seek work off world. You don't get to grieve in the early morning for hours like before, but that wasn't exactly important.
Next, the Liao issue in the war should probably be scaled down by a factor of 200 like I suggested much further up. Liao is a company commander, a captain, and that explains why his little unit of 100 men could take such heavy losses and escape notice and how he could possibly take such losses in the first place. Then, have the court martial be merely a general overview in the backstory rather than the RP sample. Vlad was brought up on insubordination during a time of war, a crime punishable by death. During his court martial he presented evidence of Liao's actions which prompted his insubordination. Although moved by his argument, Vlad is indeed guilty, but they merely dishonorably discharge him. The evidence is not sufficient to bring Liao up on charges, but he is soon after transferred out of the unit to a desk job until the war ends and he is asked to resign his commission. It's not as news worthy but it is no less heroic, and it's a bittersweet victory for Vlad.
If you choose to stay and do the revisions, I wish you the best of luck and hopefully we can put together a really great character with a strong backstory that makes sense and skills the Peerless needs. From there we can work on improving your RP posts.
If you think it's too much work, you just aren't interest in this kind of RP, or you hate me because I've ripped your app apart then I also wish you good luck wherever you go. Forum RP is niche part of the internet and it's not for everyone.
