Hey, I’ve been playing Forumwarz pretty heavily and I really love the game concept. I had a few hours of free time and I’ve thought up a couple of new concepts that might increase the fun (beyond getting the next Episode released.) These are some of the things I’ve come up with – they could either be used as brand new clbumes or (to use D&D terminology) Prestige clbumes for those that want to take their character development to the next level. This thread is to share my ideas and get feedback in the unlikely hope that someone important to the development of this game runs across it.

Clbum Concept #1: The Otaku

Ah, the Otaku. People who obsess themselves over figments of the imagination. Not that it’s a bad gig if you can afford the lifestyle (or can function in the real world when necessary.) They come in many flavors: Anime, Cosplay, Manga, Video Game, PC, and Idol. Anyone who’s ever read Megatokyo or hung around a game store is undoubtedly familiar with the concept.

Otaku could be viewed as a prestige clbum for Hackers or Trolls (since many Otaku exhibit traits of both,) but at the same time can act as a stand-alone clbum without difficult. If Camwhores are the Combat Clerics, Emo Kids the Race to Zero Barbarians, Trolls are the Tanks, Hackers are the Tacticians, and Permanoobs are the Cannon Fodder (designed to simply wear down the foes by strength of numbers and mindless dedication,) Otaku would be the equivalent of the Warlock or Black Mage: able to unleash large levels of devastation, but at the expense of low Defense and Charisma.

Otaku are invariably collectors of SOMETHING, so Luck, Frugality and Upkeep are important attributes for them. There are 2 ways this could be reflected: 1) They get a combat bonus to Offense equal to the SUM of their LUCK, FRUGALITY and UPKEEP / 6, ROUNDED DOWN (max bonus of +50, if bumuming a max attribute score of 100) when using their Clbum-specific skills (this is to make up for the fact that L, F, & U are the easiest stats to bump with ability points) OR 2) They get an Offense bonus equal to EACH UNIQUE ITEM THEY CARRY / 3, ROUNDED DOWN; specifically Junk items (which would result in a max bonus of +31,) but could also be used for held Equippable or consumable items; .moar files should not count. But this bump would be for each type of item (If you have 1000 Toy Eyeballs, for example, the bonus is still 1.) Obviously, Team Crotch Zombie would have to decide which would be better for balanced gameplay. Their clbum-specific attribute would be “Obsession” or “Creepiness.”

For Clbum-specific gear, they could get “Idols” or “Toys” – which would be things like High-Quality Anime Models – and “Cosplay Outfits.” The books they could get would be Manga Graphic Novels, with the Video, Music, and Picture files being anime or hentai related. For Prosthetic Implants, their item would be an Octopus Tentacle (do I really need to explain why?)

With Abilities, their Starter Packs would be called “Trips to Akihabara.” For skill trees, they’d have “Fascination” – which would have attacks like ‘Make Obscure Anime Reference’ or ‘Break From Reality’ (which would make them invincible for a number of rounds, but at the cost of half their Ego and Special Attribute points with each use) – and “Stalker” – which would include skills like ‘Suprise Discovery’ (where they talk about a lucky find of some trifle that has meaning to only them) or ‘F4NB0I’ (where they obsess about this or that idol (like a Chris Crocker montage).)

If the clbum is used as a prestige clbum (rather than a stand alone,) the player could spend 10 Upgrade Points (or spend Brownie Points) to start learning the clbumes’ skills. They keep their keeping their base clbum abilities and equipment usage, but 1/2 of their special attribute points becoming the points for Otaku clbum skills and they can start equipping Otaku gear.

Clbum Concept #2: The Fangirl/Catgirl

Out of the 6 clbumes (counting Re-Re,) currently only 1 is specifically a woman. Fangirls/Catgirl (I will only use the phrase Fangirl going forward for space reasons) are similar to Otaku and Camwhores in personality, but are typically not as pathetic as the first or as ****ty as the 2nd. They typically spend their days fantasizing meeting the star of their dreams and hitting it off with them (though it rarely happens to work out that way – I refer you to the movie Misery.)

As with Otaku, The Fangirl could be seen as a type of prestige clbum – although in this case it would be for the Emo Kid and the Camwhore clbumes. I will not waste my time (or yours) by relisting the comparisons I made above of the various clbumes. The Fangirl would be the equivalent of the Bard type (again using D&D referencing) or a Red Mage (to use a Final Fantasy reference) – an all-arounder with no one realm of expertise, able to dish out damage, but still able to take a hit or heal oneself.

Fangirls are usually dedicated to someone or some concept; sometimes violently so – sort of like religious martyrs, but not so sacrosanct. (In the case of Catgirls, I direct you to SomethingPositive.net, which had a very good storyline about rabid Fangirls who happened to be Catgirls as well.) At the same time, they need to be good at creating a illusion of normalicy, while not letting other people’s viewpoints get them down, so Charisma and Ego are important skills. I have not yet figured out how to mathematically make those skills count for something, so I’m hoping someone else can figure that out.

Fangirls would have the special attribute of “Imagination” or (if they choose Catgirl instead “Kawaii”.) Clbum-specific equipment would include be “Shrines” – picture and artifact arrays dedicated to a particular obsession, with the Photos being one item and Artifacts being another. Books would be Tabloids or Unauthorized Biographies. Implants would be Celebrity Skin Grafts (for Fangirls) or Cat Ears and Tail (for the Catgirls.)

For Starter Packs, they could be called “Celebrity Autographs,” and the clbumes would have the skill trees of “Drool” – wherein their attacks post pictures of male celbrities (Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, etc.) – and “Fantasize” – which would contain their healing/augmenting skills as well as a few attacks.

As with Otaku, Fangirl/Catgirl could be designed as a stand alone or a prestige clbum.

Please vote and post any ideas that you have.

Your ideas are ****ty and you should suck my male reproductive organ.

[No trolling in Game Discussion, new guy. Next time, it’s a bannin’. — JB]

Sho Inugami Posted:

not trolling but I skimmed through and it was monotonous and boring

dude we have suggestion threads, threads devoted to the subject, and threads where you can poll people.

Your poll does not allow people to disagree with you. This is an overused thread concept. I suggest using the search function because nothing you said was original. Post in existing threads on topic before opening new ones.

Requesting move to GRP on the basis the poll doesn’t allow for actual feedback

Forumwarz is supposed to parody the internet, and the clbumes should reflect this. I like your general concept but I think for more representative coverage, we should switch one of the clbumes for PHISERS. Like seriously, phising has become such a huge business that even Micro$oft is starting to incorporate phising filters into their software.

Naturally, the Phiser/Con artist would require large amounts of luck and charisma, so the starter packs could give +5 to both for example, this would allow the clbum to reach the delivery cap much faster than other clbumes, which makes sense since making   is the ultimate goal of a scammer. (Perhaps their delivery cap could also be higher in order to take advantage of their high base luck + charisma)

In return, you could have their equipment cost A LOT more since counterfeiting dogreat timesents require very expensive and specialized machines. Since they’ll be mbum producing these fake dogreat timesents, their equipment would also break easily, forcing them to maintain a higher upkeep.

Their secondary attribute should be called “Credibility”, and their attacks would drain credibility very heavily, and for every thread they pwn, their credibility goes down by say 3%. In return, for every thread they pwn, they could receive a   bonus, which would work in the same way as cred bonuses. (If you think about it, if they successfully “pwn” a thread IRL by scamming people, then they would also receive monetary rewards, but they’d lose their credibility very very quickly, so this is in line with what happens)

The attacks should have a high base damage but long refresh time, and perhaps they could have a special ability to replenish their credibility at the cost of ego or something.

SuperHappyFunKitty Posted:

I still think “pinkerton” would be a good character clbum, has a lot of potential as far as image based attacks.

Could you explain the reference? When I har “Pinkerton” I think of three things:

1) The 19th century private security force/detective agency commonly employed in strike-breaking

2) The male lead in “Madame bumerfly”.

3) The second Weezer album.

None of those make any sense for a character clbum though, is there some piece of internet lore I’m missing?

I like both of these ideas and I fully support them. ^_^ We need more internet representation…Like Gamers! There’s an idea right there!

A few tweaks, and these clbumes would be perfect for episode 3.

Xylon Posted:

Your poll does not allow people to disagree with you. This is an overused thread concept. I suggest using the search function because nothing you said was original. Post in existing threads on topic before opening new ones.

Uhm… Xy? Just curious, but, which part of ‘D00d, what the hell are you smoking and where can I get some’ (top poll option) suggests agreement with my idea?

And I did run a search on Flamebate – the only results I found were the artist clbum that poster #2 (don’t recall his name and it doesn’t show when you’re typing a response) referred to. If there is a better spot for this, I thought it would have been a bit more obvious.

Sho Inugami Posted:

Uhm… Xy? Just curious, but, which part of ‘D00d, what the hell are you smoking and where can I get some’ (top poll option) suggests agreement with my idea?

the “where can I get some” part.

Otaku is an ok idea, but I would rather see the current clbumes expanded on rather than new ones.

Now we’re cooking here, Big Brother! Obviously I wanted to start by listing my own suggestions, but pumping this up to include ideas from everyone is what I was looking for, thanks!

Big Brother Posted:

The phisher sounds better as a hacker skill tree.

Clbum Concept #3: Net Activist

The Activist is interesting for several reasons. One, he does NOT get most of his attacks from upgrades. His equipment slot- “Issue”, which he can equip up to 2 at one time, gives him abilities. This means that in general the Net Activist will not be able to use all of his abilities in one attack, though most Issues give multiple abilities so he will get some.

The Activist’s Abilities are also interesting because none of them actually directly attack a forum, nor do they harm the site like hackers. Rather, they plan to attack the forum later. The abilities cause a white word (for example, if he equipped “The Communist Manifesto”, he may get an ability that could make this word “Capitalism”Log in to see images! to appear in the corner of the screen. Whenever an enemy attack includes this letter, that letter will turn red. Whenever it becomes entirely red, he will attack with the attack’s strength.

Each attack does not cause ONE word/phrase, but rather randomly selects one word/phrase from an index for that attack. The aformentioned attack may make “Capitalism”, or “Greedy”, or “Money”, “Monies”, “I WANT MONEY”, etc.

The text for most of the attacks consists of quoting all the letters that made the phrase and then saying something like, “HA! I knew you were capitalist pigs! And now I have proof in the form of your CODES!!!!!!!11111oneoneone11111111!!!!!!!!”

(As a side note, Activists uniquely get the item “What do you call a Democrat at the bottom of the ocean” as an issue rather than as a book.)

The Activist’s issue has a stat called leaning, which doesn’t help or hurt the player. Rather, the Activist’s issues must have the same leaning to function. For instance, if an Activist equips “The Communist Manifesto” and “What do you call a Democrat at the bottom of the ocean”, they’ll get the positive effects of neither.

I see a bunch of problems here.

1) This seems too random. You don’t know when your attacks will trigger, making it easily possible to have to wait for 10 angry replies before someone triggers an attack.

2) You keep referring to “letters”. Do you mean that, if the trigger word was “capitalism”, the attack would trigger when people post a “c”, an “a”, a “p”, an “i”, a “t”, an “l”, an “s”, and an “m”?

3) If you’re referring to complete words, then wouldn’t you have to keep switching issues between forums? For example, it’s unlikely that someone on Fitness fabulous personry will post anything related to an economic issue. This would be tedious.

4) If you trigger based only on words, wouldn’t this lead to ridiculous replies such as accusing people of being capitalist pigs when they accuse you of being a capitalist pig?

5) You need to get attacked to trigger an attack.

6) Won’t there be forums that don’t say trigger words much? I wouldn’t expect Paranoid Panorama or 2chin to provide much fodder, for example. You would probably either need issues tailored to each forum or ridiculously general issues such as Grammar Nazism.