Well, having a creature who can create a few rain clouds in an isolated area (be it with magic or some kind of technology) is not quite the same as some aquatic monster who was powerful enough to send the entire island underwater.

The whole idea of a monster who could sink an entire island wouldn't be all that fun in any case, especially for all those poor, unfortunate humans who'd be sent to the bottom of the ocean and any monster who can't swim/has an aversion to water.

But a monster who could make it rain a little (and I say a little--it doesn't have to mean causing monsoons or floods or anything like that)? Personally, I don't see much problem with that. IRL, our fellow humans apparently already have the means to do it artificially (experiments to create artificial precipitation such as rain or snow have been conducted since at least the early 1900's, and the method has been used in China, Australia, Southern Wales, the U.S. and possibly other places as well) with certain chemicals using either generators, rockets or airplanes in a process that is called 'cloud seeding' (there may be other methods, but that's the only one I found so far).

The monsters of Shokushu may not have access to planes, rockets, or generators, but many can use magic (which may be used to create the same effect) and some of them can fly...and there are also those alien creatures who may have the scientific knowledge to pull it off using magical and/or scientific/technological means.

Of course there are certain things that would likely be needed to take into consideration, such as weather conditions, topographical conditions, wind direction and velocity, and stuff like that...

But it could still be done, right?

Fair enough, but let me stretch the metaphor a little farther. If I'm going 5-10 miles over the speed limit and I'm not in a residential neighborhood or a school zone, the cop who sees me likely won't give me a ticket. That's because, while it's the police's job to enforce laws, most recognize that the purpose of the laws is the maintenance of public safety, and they have the privilege of making judgment calls as to whether a violation is a genuine threat. Similarly I'd presume that, while the direct purpose of the forum rules are to maintain a sense of continuity, the underlying motivation is to insure that everyone here enjoys themselves.



<3 A little hyperbolic, dontcha think?

I think the (clear! ) distinction here is that a character like that would cripple the potential for any other characters to play in the same setting as him. It forces other players to either fundamentally change the way they play their characters (as corpses!), or outright ignore him.

Instead say, for instance, I play a scene with a rain storm as a backdrop. Maybe it's to set mood, or to get my girl nice and muddy, but in terms of the big pucture, it's a cosmetic change. And while, in terms of the setting, rainfall is an abnormality, it doesn't fundamentally override the themes of the game. It's plausible although not necessarily probable that at some unspecified point in the Shokushu semester there was or appeared to be rainfall within the proximity of the scene for perhaps an hour or so. There are any number of circumstances that could be used to explain it (a malfunction with NICE equipment, an environmental experiment, solar flares (heh), the peripheral effects of a monster's area hallucination), that, if left ambiguous, don't intrude on the setting details that are rightly the jurisdiction of the moderators. More importantly, it doesn't intrude on any other player's ability to continue to roleplay in a shared setting. They don't need to play their characters in the course of the rainstorm or even recognize that it happened. In the scheme of things it's a minor and brief aberration from the day-to-day that doesn't undermine the setting altogether. It's a freak occurance that's forgotten the next day.

Getting back to the topic of a weather controlling monster, I think, as always, it's an issue of restraint. Sure, it's a power that could be exploited, but so could telepathy, magic, hallucinations or any number of other powers that already exist in the setting. Sure, if the player suddenly sinks the tropical paradise of Shokushu into perpetual monsoon season, that would be unacceptable, but I don't see how the ocassional thunderstorm isolated to a small area or rare freak weather patterns would undermine the wonderful little setting we've staked down here.



Oh, come now. I'm as much a fan of continuity as the next girl. I'm a pop-cult geek. I've read comic books since I was a little girl, and as a result, that love for continuity has just been bred into me. I'd love to see more ongoing plotlines and in character social structure around this place. It delights me when I see the name of a passing NPC or off-hand event from one scene mentioned in another with an entirely different character. When I saw that Minerva used the name of a city I'd used in an ADD scene for one of her own, it made my day.

But the truth is, there will be discrepancy between threads. It's just unavoidable given the volume of scenes being played and the number of characters coming and going. One player's description of the school pool might differ just a little bit from another player's description in a different scene. There might be separate scenes that both involve the European History professor but give her different names. If we can foster a stronger sense of a shared setting, these sorts of discontinuites will be less frequent, but I don't think little blips on the radar like that are worth worrying over. The rules are there for a reason, but I think there's reason to be judicious. If some minor violations are broken in the name of making a scene better, I don't see any reason to crack down on it, just so long as it doesn't impede anyone else's capacity to play or grieviously contradict the setting.

Of course, it's ultimately your call. I've just got a big mouth and a fondness for playing Devil's advocate.

Well I tried to answer by being rational. And I tried to answer by being silly. So now I'll answer by being short. Any such minor weather change as you mention is better achieved by a monster using a well-established technique such as hallucination to make a student THINK it is raining.