Topic: Black Lagoon Anime/Manga based RPG (Revised, NC:H, action oriented)

[Sessha]

Alright! After a bit of a busy week, I finally got some revisions in for Ami's background. Feel free to read it on reply #27, if you'd like, but I warn you, it's a bit of a read. Sorry about that! Still, I think it does a better job at relaying her skills and a little bit about her favorable impression with societal outsiders, like the rest of the crew. I also modified her fighting capabilities to specify a bit of basic firearms practice, but she still doesn't shift as much of a warrior.

Speaking of, if you have any suggestions for a compact or semi-compact pistol for her, I'd appreciate it. I'm certainly willing to do a little research on my own, but I'm definitely not a gun aficionado, so I was hoping you might point me in the right directions. I was initially thinking a Glock 19, Glock 26, or Walter P99c, wanting to stick to 9mms for the most part, but I wouldn't really know if those were reasonable handguns to carry at this time, nor place in the world.

I have no issue with the name. I'd say Writersblockade has the greatest say, seeing as he's the boat's presumptive owner, but if he's cool with it, I am.

I can't speak for Sessha or Sorrow, but I certainly don't mind being a relative newcomer to this whole thing. I'm not sure about this being her first venture with the crew, but I don't see her having been a part of this life for all that long, maybe a year or two at the most. I can understand why you might be adverse to writing your character before he develops a certain attitude, but I actually think that would be pretty neat, at least for Ami. She's pretty empathic and somewhat innocent, by Roanapur standards, but everyone involved in that mess becomes tainted sooner or later. I actually think it could be fun to discover what kind of dark side she ends up harboring.

I'd be reluctant to start exactly the same way the original story did, just because we're already closing in on some parallels between them in our characters. I do like the abduction angle eventually, but probably not to start with. A simple package delivery might be ideal, something a faction wants delivered safely, even as an active force seeks to recover or destroy it. It's not terribly complicated, but if you're looking for an introductory venture, that might be ideal. That said, if you want to make it a little more complex, if could be that our employer doesn't have said package, and we have to retrieve it from someone else. To combined it with Sessha's idea, there might be a rival faction that desires it too, so it can be a triple threat game, between our deadlines, the rival crew, and the people we have to claim it from in the first place, assuming they won't hand it over willingly. Sounds like a freelance pirate job to me.

 To be honest almost EVERYONE Roanapur carries some type of firearm, though usually it's a semi-automatic pistol of some form or another. Benny, Rock, Shenhua and Sawyer the Chopper are about the only exceptions to that rule. Anyway while Glock is nice I've always been more of a fan of SIG Saur myself. That being said if you want my opinion on it why not go with a SIG P225. It's a compact weapon that only has an eight round magazine in it but it's a good gun. If this were a more modern times(like2015) I would be ditching the Glock 20 in favor of the SIG P220 chambered in 10mm Auto. It's the latest entry in the handgun market for SIG. 

 Now all that being said I wanted to add something that would be useful for boarding stuff. Would anyone be adverse to there being shotguns onboard in the small arms locker? Something like an Ithaca 37, Frenchi SPAS-12, MAG-7 or even an AA-12. Just to name a few. They are after all one of the best CQB weapons ever devised.

[Writersblockade]

Maybe the sig p226 carry or p228. I'm no fun but myself, but as a captain, I'd want her to have a small profile gun with stopping power. That way she just aims for the chest

[Neysha]

Rough Draft... how does this look? Basically I made her a kind of jack of all trades to fill in the needed gaps. Primarily she's the medic, but she has a lot of experience operating watercraft recently (though nothing like this patrol boat), some maintenance and mechanical knowledge, some firearms or combat knowledge, some survival knowledge and a fair bit of specialty when it comes to being a thief and grifter.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name:Leah Layleigh (real name Ashley Blais)
Age: Twenty Something???
Nationality: American (She considers herself a global citizen)
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual
Personality: Generally taciturn with strangers and wary in attitude. Despite speaking little and being generally unflappable, she doesn't have any personality or social behavior disorders. She's not even shy. She's just quiet with people she doesn't know. Handles stressful situations well and extremely adaptive to changing circumstances, lies constantly for nebulous and circumstantial reasons. Betrays strangers on a whim, exceptionally loyal to friends. Distrusts most forms of authority as her previous life paints her view of the world in very anti-authoritarian terms. Fairly nonplussed when it comes to ethics and social morals. Loves adventure and excitement and experiencing new things.
Appearance:
Leah is five foot four, and fairly muscular. Her natural hair color is brown but she dyed it blonde when arriving in Southeast Asia because it looked more exotic. She has dark brown doe eyes.
Weapon(s) of choice: Sig Sauer P228 9mm pistol and a Smith & Wesson Model 19 Revolver as her backups. Either an Ithaca 37 Pump Action Shotgun or an CAR-15 Carbine
Fighting style/tactics: Leah is best with weapons that can be considered sporting/hunting weapons as opposed to military style small arms. But she's familiar with most small arms in general due to the common traits shared with many of them. She has little formal military training or combat experience with their utilization.

Biography:Leah grew up in a ranch in Newton County, Arkansas with a large family whose primary business was farming marijuana and cooking delicious meth and other agribusiness pursuits. At an early age, Leah learned irresponsible survival and woodland skills including firearms use. Mostly however, she was involved in the family business of manufacturing methamphetamines but was canny enough not to get high on their own supply unlike some of her contemporaries in her extended family. It was apparent from her grades in elementary school that she was a bit brighter then your typical Newton County meth cooking white trash type and so there was an idea of having her pursue a career in the sciences, preferably chemistry or engineering, to help assist in upgrading the knowledge base and make more efficient the families operations. Sadly while she was in Junior High, the DEA enacted a sting operation that resulted in the arrests and capture of large numbers of her family after one of her immediate family members snitched on them. Due to her young age, she served six months in a juvenile detention facility and upon release, realized she couldn't return home and was dumped into foster care.

She was bounced around between numerous foster homes who typically took in kids and offered them the three hots and a cot type of benefit and little else. She immediately got distracted by such a listless and directionless life by boosting cars, pickpocketing people and burglarizing businesses, especially pharmacies and clinics. During her teenage years, she became more familiar with the craft that most thieves tended to have to excel in if they wanted to escape incarceration. Basic hands on skills such as utilizing shimmies, picking locks, taking apart car alarms, learning to hide and conceal items, as well as the more esoteric skills such as casing homes, businesses as well as situations and individuals as targets. During this time she was mentored by various other criminals, often do to the perception that her being underaged, female and White could be utilized for various beneficial means for any enterprising criminal.

For several years she was able to avoid law enforcement and managed to get her GED on time due to the fact she moved every few months. But as she entered a community college to pursue a career as a pharmacy technician it was derailed due to her previous drug offense related history. With no real career options available that she was interested in, eventually got certification in becoming a Veterinary Health Practitioner and practiced veterinary medicine for several months, before yet another sting operation revealed that she wasn't a licensed veterinarian from Liberty University, but a licensed veterinarian from the nation of Liberia. Finding her options in America drying up, Leah used her access to health and personal records to form several new cover identities and established corresponding documentation to obtain proofs of identity and residency. Then for relevant and certifiable job skills, she took several EMT courses before deciding to travel abroad. It was while crossing the border into Mexico that she ended up killing a human trafficker over a dispute on her future employment opportunities. (he wanted to abduct her for slavery purposes, which she was disinclined to go along with)

Traveling through Mexico, she didn't have an intended goal in mind but under her new cover identity and found employment with various tourism and event operators on a temp for hire basis which helped evade the long term need for local work permits. While the pay was low, but access to opportunities with people like her was almost boundless. While working on her Spanish, she worked in mostly tourist areas of Baja and even worked in support of various large scale events such the various off-road races and other events, where she found more lucrative employment as part of event and team support staff although the adrenaline junkie in her wishes she had more time behind the wheel of a heavily modified VW racer. She eventually made her way down the coast and found employment in various resorts and hotels in cities like Cancun as a part of resort/hotel medical staff where again low pay was the norm, but few suspected the American who was working for so cheap she might as well have been volunteering as being a criminal who used the free access she got to large amounts of resort and tourist areas to her own benefit. While the beach and infirmary lifestyle was captivating for a while, the adrenaline junkie in her yearned for something new and exciting.

Despite her increasing familiarity with Spanish, she decided not to settle here and moved to Belize where she hoped the language barrier would be far less. She soon found the small country to be a blessing far beyond easing over the language barrier. Much to her delight, she found the coastal communities literally swarming with foreign expats and retirees and lots of money. While that alone wasn't great, the fact that many of these older foreigners often had poorly secured boats and seaside bungalows or other lodging and accommodations was a benefit she couldn't pass up. Utilizing the fact she was employed in the EMS services was again another way she found an open door to access her targets and marks. The only limitation was a difficulty in finding a proper fence and laundering for her to actually profit off what she had earned. Due to the seasonal and heavy boating culture of expats in the area, she spent her time there enmeshing herself with some of the expats, befriending them and training on learning how to operate a range of civilian boat craft ranging from small boats with outboard motors to sailboats and even fishing yachts. Eventually the hidden side of her life was close to catching up to her, so she pulled a final heist which culminated in stealing the most common boat that could be found in the harbor, a small sport fishing boat that could be operated by one person.

Her departure was flawless in that law enforcement didn't even know about the robbery until the harbor master returned from vacation and realized the boat was missing more then a few days in a row without a word from the currently absentee owner. Unfortunately her local navigating skills meant a premature ending to her journey several hundred miles away as her vessel was caught on a bank of coral and she was forced to abandon her ship in the water and spend the better part of sixteen hours paddling an inflatable one person life raft to shore in calm waters. She found she had ended up in Colombia and figured it was as good as any place to reinvent herself and add more to her offshore financial nest egg. Spending the first few weeks setting up the apparatus of support she had now become accustomed to, after having done it three times before in the previous eighteen months, she spent her time in the health care industry, working first as a pharmaceutical and lab courier and embellishing her 'Baja Rally' experience to a fangirl degree. It was tough going driving in the often swirling streets of a Latin American city, but once she learned to navigate the streets, she got a job with the Colombian Red Cross as an EMS provider, mainly in driving ambulances and providing linguistic services for health care providers. Once again she used her background to grift mostly pharmaceuticals to supply in the black market.

It was also in Colombia that she learned a valuable lesson about being too helpful. Out of a fit of charity and selflessness, she volunteered with a Colombian National Police medcap mission into the interior of the country and worked for several weeks in fetid highland jungles and malarial swamps. The work she did there, treating both exotic diseases as well as grisly landmine injuries or gunshot wounds almost gave her a fresh perspective on life until one day, while as a passenger on a minibus during a routine shopping trip, it was stopped by left wing guerrillas and after finding out she was American, she was abducted for ransom. Her captivity was brief, as she rapidly enmeshed herself with her captors who, as they traversed through the jungle with several other captives towards their camp, still kept a wary eye on her and the others. Knowing escape would be nigh impossible if they reached their destination and knowing she was worthless as a hostage for a wide variety of reasons, she used an amateurish concoction of sap from the thorniest plants she could find, fecal matter and some plastic she pickpocked off one of the guerrillas, she poisoned the food that the guards and hostages ate communally while feigning a stomach ailment after having helped prepare the food. That night, everyone else was struck with seizures, vomiting and hallucinations. She promptly took the time to liberate one of her incapacitated captors of his weapon and bayoneted the first soldier to death, only to find the bayonet rather clumsy to work out of a spasming corpse. So she proceeded to beat the other soldiers to death with a shovel, finding it more expedient and in her case, rather thrilling. Then taking as much food, water and navigational aids that she could carry, she tried to make her way to safety, ditching the other hostages to their fate.

When she arrived in a mission on the edges of Northern Brazil, she was borderline feverish, shrunken to an almost decrepit form physically and had to be nursed to health over a period of weeks. Thanks to the isolation of her situation, she avoided too much scrutiny beyond telling her tale. After spending some time recovering at the mission, and taking an understandable break from criminality, she decided to volunteer her services as she made her way down the Amazon basin, typically working as a medic, translator and watercraft operator for various charities and medical missions that catered to the indigenous populations of the Amazon before arriving in areas of more economic activity such as agriculture and forestry. Despite the stringent work requirements in Brazil, due to the remoteness of locations here, she still found enough temporary medical work before finally catching a job as the medic and cook and deckhand aboard a logging ship traveling down the Amazon to the coast. This journey was both a legitimate, and illegitimate paycheck as she was also hired to escort an important package of herbal pharmaceutical compounds that were to be smuggled out of the country. She successfully completed her journey, and the smuggling package delivery. After settling more accounts in Belem, including tying off her finances in Colombia remotely, she decided to take a volunteer job with Doctors Without Borders, utilizing her 'experience' in Colombia and the Amazon as a strong selling point. She was hoping diving into charitable medical work was a cure for being an action and adventure junkie.

There was a brief layover in Nigeria, before she spent a majority of her fourth year abroad in the hellish (medically speaking) landscape of the West African countries of Liberia, and Sierra Leone. What she thought was bad in Colombia turned out to be possibly heavenly as far as Liberia and Sierra Leone was involved. She quickly grew tired of having to deal with amputees, tortured and mutilated captives and gang rape victims. It turned out that drowning in victims wasn't a cure for adventure, but merely something that pushed her back into her older, more established ways. When the United Nations and ECOMOG got involved in the conflict and a peace settlement was on the verge of being approached in both Sierra Leone and Liberia in the early nineties, she took full advantage of ditching her time with the Doctors Without Borders, after appropriating her own severance package and dabbled into gunrunning. Finding work as a translator for a unit of ECOMOG peacekeepers, she was able to function as the middlewoman between several militias sympathetic to her previous services as a medical worker so that when the militias disarmed, they would turn their weapons over to the unit of peacekeepers she was representing. After several shipping containers worth of weapons were collected, she contacted her contacts in Brazil about a tremendous job opportunity in getting large amounts of weapons for cheap. After brokering that deal, and making a serious chunk of change, she brokered several smaller smuggling deals, almost all of them involving weapons and munitions. Her good time however was ruined when South African based mercenary units hired by the government took over the 'disarmament' (ie gunrunning business) and she almost got a few bullets in the back of her head as payment.

Wanting to live so she could spend her ill gotten wealth and make even more, she hired herself out to local West Africans contracted by South American and Western European fisheries who used local fishermen to evade fisheries regulations all along the coast of West Africa. Working as a supervisor of various fishing vessels, it lasted only a few months before she was picked up by local law enforcements and arrested in Zaire. She escaped the local jail that night, before she could even think of a cheap way to bribe herself out of her predicament. Stealing a police boat, she tossed the tracker into the mouth of a local crocodile and burned her fuel until she ended up in Northern Angola. Delightfully, she found Angola was recovering from its own Civil War and disarmament process, only unlike in West Africa, the weapons were even bigger and more valuable. Posing once again as an English-Spanish (and to a lesser extent Portuguese) translator volunteering with the Angolan Red Cross while also passing intelligence relating to disarmament to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency and was able to travel the country largely on their dime. It was a short gig, mainly because her Portuguese was terrible so while the money was good, she eventually just took an all wheel drive vehicle and decided to trek across Southern Africa with yet another unknown destination in her future.

Following the uncertain road, she spent the next six months in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique literally working odd jobs but mostly indulging her true passion of being addicted to adventure. She dabbled in being a wilderness guide for tourists, often teaming up with local patsies for assistance and motor vehicles and found the corruption and lack of regulation in most of the game and tourist industry to work to her benefit in these jobs. She stuck around long enough to fulfill her bucket list of hunting local big game animals and getting stupid pictures taken with the corpses of animals she murdered. The true excitement she got was when a local law enforcement officer in Mozambique hired her based on her puffed up reputation to hunt down a group of poachers. The most fun she had since she arrived in Africa had occurred as she led a local posse across the veld, tracking them and then clumsily ambushing them in the middle of the night. Despite the chaotic running battle that occurred, it was considered a great success due to the number of bodies accumulated, a fair portion of whom were actual poachers! Humble to the end, she gave credit to her fellows in law enforcement but was still invited to an exclusive party at the local Governors mansion.

She took this opportunity to do what she normally did, depart the country with an even larger heist. She first switched the shipping labels on the taxidermy seized from the poachers, one fuel truck, a visit to the local druggist, dead dropped the details of the security of the mansion to local illegal huntsman collectives, cased the Governors mansion, and set her sights on the Governors most valuable possession, which happened to not be his loyalty and service to his constituents. By the next morning the mansion was on fire, the drunken inhabitants running screaming into the night as a mob of angry 'freedom fighters' hired by the local smuggling concerns assaulted the mansion. Within days, it was realized the Governors Yacht was missing, the safes emptied, and the Governors prized custom made Holland and Holland double rifle, worth more then a hundred thousand dollars, was missing. All of this was blamed on the 'Rebel' attack, as was Leah's mysterious disappearance. Leah's escape plans however were still defrayed. After making a brief stop in Zanzibar to refresh and reorganize her finances, she took it to Yemen, sold the yacht for far below its value and bought a far smaller boat which she used to bounce from port to port along the Indian Ocean. She tried her hand at fishing large game, but found it rather impossible to do without much experience.

Eventually she arrived in Thailand, just on the apex of her fourth year abroad. After selling that boat, she decided Thailand... finally, was a good place to cool her heels. She was hired by a wealthy Thai businessman to be an officer on his yacht as well as eye candy since there were few White females with her skill set available in Thailand. Initially she found the job fun, and spent the opportunity learning how to operate an even larger boat as well as taking the time to learn from some of her new shipmates the proper way to throw a kick and curious enough to her, a knee strike. Up to this point, she had trouble throwing a proper punch, not that she often needed to. Eventually though, the desire for adventure arose within her again and she quickly grew bored of being a minion for a decadent lifestyle and left that employer amicably as she became aware of the possible business opportunities in Roanapur. She decided to change herself up and for once in her life, didn't rob someone blind before departing.

Still in her twenties and having spent a fair time abroad, she arrived in Roanapur and after one glance, realized that this was probably the first place she could find legitimate illegitimate employment in a place that still somehow had a functional system of society not based on tribalism and warlordism, as the organized crime groups here seemed to keep everything far better in line. While for the most part, she operated alone, her major weakness was having to find and set up a network of fences, informants, launderers and contacts everytime she moved. Thus in Roanapur, while such things weren't in short supply, the competition turned out to be much more fierce. She couldn't get by being the cute White girl aid worker/medic anymore to open doors for her tradecraft. So instead she decided to find a job in the most lucrative business she had ever engaged in... smuggling.

[Daril]

Okay, so first off with the story set up:

Assuming he's okay with it, I really like the idea of Sessha's character being on her first job with the crew.  Part of the reason for this is because it sounds like she isn't exactly "cool as a cucumber" and I can see my character having reservations about her because of that (that could go double if she's a replacement for someone he considered highly reliable).  Might make for some interesting tension.

Ami I'd figured would be part of the crew already because she has an important role as the boat's mechanic.  However, the part in her revised profile with her getting kidnapped has been giving me some ideas.  It would require some changes to her history, but why not adapt that part into the initial story arc for the RPG?  Our crew frees her when they raid the ship she's being transported on to get something else, and bring her back to Roanapur not knowing what they're getting into (or possibly thinking they might get an unexpected bonus for freeing her).  They then have to deal with daddy's heavily armed mercenary rescue squad coming after them (possibly just because the mercs don't want someone else getting paid for their job).  Yeah, okay, it's a bit similar to the first canon story arc, but I think it might be an interesting way to start things off.

For the most part I think Neysha's profile works.

Weaponry wise, it seems like we're getting a lot of SiGs, Glocks, and H&Ks.  I was hoping for a bit more variety.  I don't want to just dictate what people choose, but there are a lot of suggestions I could make.

[Neysha]

We should probably think about creating an OOC/Character thread so that this thread doesn't become intimidating to new members. :)

And yeah, the only pistols I personally have much familiarity with are Sig and Glock models... and I like the former more so... yeah. I see my character using shotguns and more traditional hunting/battle rifles as opposed to SMG's and assault rifles respectively however. Shotgun wise, she'd probably use an Ithaca 37 since that was still common in the American Midwest and South in rural areas at the time and due to the connections of Roanapur with the Vietnam War when it comes to weapons, a lot of Ithaca 37 shotguns rebuilt or built for use in the Vietnam War are probably available in Roanapur. As for a battle rifle, I'm figuring she'd want to use a M1 Carbine or derivative thereof since she wants something lightweight and easy to handle and she still isn't terribly familiar with assault rifles like the M16/AR15 family. I'm thinking for her backstory maybe she has a pricey big game Holland and Holland Custom Made Double Rifle or something else equally fancy that she stole from some African bigwig before she fled the continent but its something she keeps in the case as opposed to hauling around.

EDIT:
I read the other bios (I avoided reading them before writing my own bio) and noticed Alex has some similarities in background in relation to my character, not just in general origins and beginnings, but in regards to there departures and traveling (namely Southern Africa) before arriving in Roanapur for business opportunities. Granted, our characters are still delightfully and dramatically different, but it's something that stood out to me.

[Daril]

I think they're probably different enough.  Were there other concepts you were considering?

As for the OOC/Character thread, I will set up threads for that in a little bit.  I want to get a few preliminary things sorted out here first though.  I'm not too worried about this thread intimidating new players because I think we're pretty maxed out at this point.  Six players is actually quite a few for a RPG that's supposed to be relatively fast moving.

[Neysha]

I think they're probably different enough.  Were there other concepts you were considering?

Oh no, I didn't mean it like that. I don't think their characters are similar at all really, just have common points of reference in their backgrounds.

I'm fine with my character concept if everyone else is.

[Sessha]

 It looks good to me as well.

[Neysha]

Yay our characters can totally be besties! :)

Both grew up in rural America and enjoyed hunting and outdoors activity while growing up.

Course while one character was honorably serving her country in the JROTC and Marines, the other was cooking meth, boosting cars and burglarizing businesses... cough. But our first kills did come as a result of sex crimes... though I doubt that would be a conversation piece between potential friends.  :p

But both our characters were in West and South Africa too,  so common point of interest there!  Though again,  honorable mercenary fighting savages like the RUF and its ilk versus American on the run posing somewhat nobly as an aid worker,  quite divergent lifestyles clearly.

So possibly friends, but also plenty of potential for antipathy as well! It'll be glorious!  :)

[Daril]

I may also bring my merc character Sara into things.  Though probably not as a proper, permanent member of the crew.  But someone who gets involved sometimes (and perhaps brings some trouble of her own).

Right now my priority for this RPG is getting feedback on the ideas I'd mentioned earlier (see the quoted text below).  I'm particularly wanting to hear from Sessha and Vex, but the rest of you are welcome to chime in as well.

Assuming he's okay with it, I really like the idea of Sessha's character being on her first job with the crew.  Part of the reason for this is because it sounds like she isn't exactly "cool as a cucumber" and I can see my character having reservations about her because of that (that could go double if she's a replacement for someone he considered highly reliable).  Might make for some interesting tension.

Ami I'd figured would be part of the crew already because she has an important role as the boat's mechanic.  However, the part in her revised profile with her getting kidnapped has been giving me some ideas.  It would require some changes to her history, but why not adapt that part into the initial story arc for the RPG?  Our crew frees her when they raid the ship she's being transported on to get something else, and bring her back to Roanapur not knowing what they're getting into (or possibly thinking they might get an unexpected bonus for freeing her).  They then have to deal with daddy's heavily armed mercenary rescue squad coming after them (possibly just because the mercs don't want someone else getting paid for their job).  Yeah, okay, it's a bit similar to the first canon story arc, but I think it might be an interesting way to start things off.

[Sessha]

 Personally speaking I would prefer to leave people's backstories out of the first mission. I'm a big fan of the keep it simple stupid style of thinking. Also as has been stated lets keep away from too many similarities between this game and the series. I think a simple currier job gone bad would be a good opening for us.

[Writersblockade]

Agreed. We don't have to go full throttle at once. Let's get a job in to be comfortable in our new skins, first

[Vex]

To be honest almost EVERYONE Roanapur carries some type of firearm, though usually it's a semi-automatic pistol of some form or another. Benny, Rock, Shenhua and Sawyer the Chopper are about the only exceptions to that rule. Anyway while Glock is nice I've always been more of a fan of SIG Saur myself. That being said if you want my opinion on it why not go with a SIG P225. It's a compact weapon that only has an eight round magazine in it but it's a good gun. If this were a more modern times(like2015) I would be ditching the Glock 20 in favor of the SIG P220 chambered in 10mm Auto. It's the latest entry in the handgun market for SIG. 

Oh, definitely! Even Rock admits at one point he thought it was stupid for him not to carry a gun himself, albeit in a moment of desperation. So, I was figuring Ami would learn the lesson early on. It was always in her sheet to carry one. I just never bothered to name a model until now. But, seeing as everyone has been pretty enthusiastic about specifics, I thought it appropriate for me to at least name Ami's personal weapon. I''ll definately take a look at the SIG list, seeing as both you and Writersblockade suggest it, but it seems Daril is of the opinon that we should have a little more diversity, so I'll see what I can find outside Glocks and SIG.

Rough Draft... how does this look? Basically I made her a kind of jack of all trades to fill in the needed gaps. Primarily she's the medic, but she has a lot of experience operating watercraft recently (though nothing like this patrol boat), some maintenance and mechanical knowledge, some firearms or combat knowledge, some survival knowledge and a fair bit of specialty when it comes to being a thief and grifter.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name:Leah Layleigh (real name Ashley Blais)
Age: Twenty Something???
Nationality: American (She considers herself a global citizen)
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual
Personality: Extremely nice, bubbly, easygoing. Handles stressful situations well and extremely adaptive to changing circumstances, lies constantly for nebulous and circumstantial reasons, mildly flirtatious with people and militaria objects. Betrays strangers on a whim, exceptionally loyal to friends. Possibly sometimes interpreted as amoral in ethics and nonsexual in orientation but still often surprises in both regards. Does not have multiple personality disorder but often acts in a manner that leads to that perception to the extent it doesn't really make a difference.
Appearance:
Leah is five foot four, and fairly muscular. Her natural hair color is brown but she dyed it blonde when arriving in Southeast Asia because it looked more exotic. She has dark brown doe eyes.
Weapon(s) of choice: She is most familiar with various forms of shotguns and rifles, Dual Sig-Sauer P229 Pistols (she no longer fires them akimbo after bad experiences), occasionally a pet raccoon, tarantula or mongoose
Fighting style/tactics:
-Leah's main skill base is a haphazard knowledge of medicine and medical skills. She has a background in veterinary medicine, pharmaceuticals, as well as hands on experience whilst acting like a medical professional in the Amazon and Southern Africa. For all intents and purposes, she roughly has similar knowledge as a trained medic but in addition has a familiarity with an impressive amount of medicines and drugs, as well as experience with more random or exotic forms of illnesses, sicknesses and ailments.
-Leah is skilled with long rifles and familiar generally with bolt action rifles and semiautomatic rifles, especially derived from hunting rifles. She is also familiar with using shotguns and handguns extensively as well. She is familiarizing herself more with assault rifles and carbines.
-Most of her firearms experience is hunting and recreational as opposed to in combat situations. While she has been in combat situations a fair amount, she couldn't be considered a specialist in that regard. She has more training and experience when it comes to hunting, tracking, woodland survival and esoteric skills like using bows, trapping and other similar skills. While experienced, she is not a specialist when it comes to survival as much as merely proficient.
-Leah is not formally trained in any martial arts beyond taking random martial arts classes during her teenage years and brawling with her siblings when she was even younger. Her most formal training was learning how to throw a proper kick and knee strike whilst working in Thailand.
-Leah has plenty of experience handling and concocting explosives, chemicals, poisons and toxic compounds.
-Leah has spent a large amount of time recently in operating all manners of watercraft despite not being particularly familiar with them before departing the United States. Most of her time in the Amazon was spent helping operate and maintain small boats, motorized and otherwise. She had similar experiences in Africa and was an officer on a private luxury yacht while in Thailand for a number of months.
-Leah has a general familiarity with motors, machines, vehicles, locks, and other similar machinery due to her background.
-Leah is an experienced thief and burglar. She is proficient in picking locks, breaking and entering, evading basic surveillance and alarm systems and similar requisite skills.

Biography:Leah grew up in a ranch in Newton County, Arkansas with a large family whose primary business was farming marijuana and cooking delicious meth and other agribusiness pursuits. At an early age, Leah learned irresponsible survival and woodland skills including firearms use. Mostly however, she was involved in the family business of manufacturing methamphetamines but was canny enough not to get high on their own supply unlike some of her contemporaries in her extended family. It was apparent from her grades in elementary school that she was a bit brighter then your typical Newton County meth cooking white trash type and so there was an idea of having her pursue a career in the sciences, preferably chemistry or engineering, to help assist in upgrading the knowledge base and make more efficient the families operations. Sadly while she was in Junior High, the DEA enacted a sting operation that resulted in the arrests and capture of large numbers of her family after one of her immediate family members snitched on them. Due to her young age, she served six months in a juvenile detention facility and upon release, realized she couldn't return home and was dumped into foster care.

She was bounced around between numerous foster homes who typically took in kids and offered them the three hots and a cot type of benefit and little else. She immediately got distracted by such a listless and directionless life by trying to boost cars, pickpocket people and burglarizing businesses, especially pharmacies and clinics. For several years she was able to avoid law enforcement and managed to get her GED on time. But as she entered a community college to pursue a career as a pharmacy technician it was derailed due to her previous drug offense related history. With no real career options available that she was interested in, eventually got certification in becoming a Veterinary Health Practitioner and practiced veterinary medicine for several months, before yet another sting operation revealed that she wasn't a licensed veterinarian from Liberty University, but a licensed veterinarian from the nation of Liberia. Finding her options in America drying up, Leah used her access to health and personal records to form several new cover identities (including her current Leah Layleigh one) and decided to travel abroad. It was while crossing the border into Mexico that she ended up killing a human trafficker over a dispute on her future employment opportunities. (he wanted to abduct her for slavery purposes, which she was disinclined to go along with)

Leah spent some time in Colombia doing black market pharmaceutical work before being taken hostage by a left wing guerrilla unit. She escaped after having managed to poison them en masse. She then journeyed through the Amazon posing as a Nurse Practitioner with Doctors Without Borders. Before she could be found out, she then took a ship from Argentina to West Africa. Finding she had a natural talent for grifting, she managed to fund herself haphazardly as she toured through West Africa as an aid worker, Southern Africa as a hunting/tour guide, unprofessional medical professional, watercraft operator, and more grifting and thieving. This all ended as mere moments before almost being arrested by Mozambican authorities after defrauding several wealthy locals out of ninety thousand dollars worth of equipment (in the form of a custom made Holland & Holland Double Rifle), ended up taking a flight to Southeast Asia. Using her time navigating, maintaining and operating small watercraft in the Amazon Basin, as well as in West and Southern Africa, she was hired by a wealthy Thai businessman to be an officer on his yacht as well as eye candy since there were few White females with her skill set available in Thailand. She quickly grew bored of being a minion for a decadent lifestyle and left that employer amicably as she became aware of the possible business opportunities in Roanapur.

I think she looks good, for the most part. I like thiefy-types, ones who are street savvy and rogue-like, and it certainly doesn't hurt to have someone around who's good at getting along with others (even if for manipulative ends). I like most of her background, especially her younger years, but it does seem a bit all over the place once she ends up leaving America. It mean, she's basically spanned the globe in a few shorts years, an impressive feat to do while so young, with little resources, and while spending enough time in each continent to pick up a new skill.

I understand you wanted to make a "Jack-Of-All-Trades" sort, but I do wonder if you broadened her skills a little too much. She's a medic, a con artist, a pickpocket, a lockpick, an explosives expert, a chemist, a drug manufacturer, a poisoner, a hunter, a tracker, a wilderness guide, a watercraft pilot, a driver, a solid marksman, an archer, a trapper, a mechanic, an amateur martial artist, and a security expert. That's an extremely diverse set of skills. Although I understand you're making a difference of degrees, that she's not really an "expert" in any specific field, but that hits a lot of areas, and realistically, you don't need a specialist for most problems. A dabbler will often do. So, it's makes me honestly feel she's the most useful member of the team in virtually any situation, and outshines the rest of the crew in every area aside their specialized field. It really takes the wind out of the sails for some of our specialists.

Now, most being combat specialists in a gun-play heavy game, I imagine that most can manage to show their strengths in their respective areas often enough, but as a more support character, I honestly have no idea why Ami's on board while she's around. After all, Leah's an experienced helmsman, a capable mechanic, a solid shot with a rifle, good with making deals, street smart, a survivalist, amongst a number of other talents that she possess. So, if she can handle Ami's job most of the time, and she's more useful in many other situations as well, I don't see why they'd even bother with Ami, who isn't a good fighter, isn't a good with people, has limited watercraft piloting experience (less than Leah, anyway), and outside her specialization, really offers the team little else aside niche situations. I get that Ami is a more capable mechanic, and has more experience with electronics and vehicles, but honestly, how often is the boat really gonna receive a crippling, disabling malfunction in the middle of missions that they couldn't handle with a little downtime? There's limited space on that boat, after all, and I imagine Cash isn't interested in splitting the profits any more than he has to, so why have a dedicated mechanic if someone he already has on board can fill in the role fairly regularly, and she's capable of handling other needs on top of that?

This isn't meant to be hate-filled rant, and I hope it doesn't come off that way. It's not like I hold a grudge over it or anything. It's just a question of logistics and sensibility. I think she's fine, for the most part. I just think she needs to focus her skill set a little more, and perhaps a slightly more mindful of not stepping on the niches her teammates.

Ami I'd figured would be part of the crew already because she has an important role as the boat's mechanic.  However, the part in her revised profile with her getting kidnapped has been giving me some ideas.  It would require some changes to her history, but why not adapt that part into the initial story arc for the RPG?  Our crew frees her when they raid the ship she's being transported on to get something else, and bring her back to Roanapur not knowing what they're getting into (or possibly thinking they might get an unexpected bonus for freeing her).  They then have to deal with daddy's heavily armed mercenary rescue squad coming after them (possibly just because the mercs don't want someone else getting paid for their job).  Yeah, okay, it's a bit similar to the first canon story arc, but I think it might be an interesting way to start things off.

It's not a bad idea, and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, if we could make sense out of it. Although, like you and others have said, it's rather close to the first arc of the original story. I think that situation might need some reworking, however. Namely, she needs a reason to turn her back on "Daddy", after he spent a small fortune trying to get her back. Remember, in the first arc, Rock initially wanted to get back to his boss, and only turns on the company after they basically accounted his life as an acceptable loss, in favor of reattaining the documents. In short, they betrayed him, setting him up to die, and was even poised to use his presumed death to further their ambitions. Unless Hyun-Ki Seong, Ami's father, somehow betrayed her and set her up to die, or did some equally horrible act, it wouldn't make sense for her to turn her back on him, and it wouldn't make sense for him to want to kill her, after he's spent so much to recover her, let alone raise her.

I did sorta toy with the idea that Hyun-Ki was a crime boss of a sort, and he certainly is a scrupulous, shady individual, but I stuck more with an "amoral corporate billionaire who influences the legal system to his favor" type than an outright crime-lord. Still willing to change it, if we need to, but even so, just because he would be a criminal doesn't mean he'd be after his daughter. Maybe she's running away from him after learning something disturbing he was involved with? At any rate, maybe we can shift some of her history to provide more of an angle to work with. As written, we might need to work with a different angle. Not against using Ami as a bit of weak position, as a hostage or what have you, but we just need to have it make sense. I rather like that most criminals and outlaws in Roanapur are sensible people, if just with rather loose values and often objectionable priorities.

Weaponry wise, it seems like we're getting a lot of SiGs, Glocks, and H&Ks.  I was hoping for a bit more variety.  I don't want to just dictate what people choose, but there are a lot of suggestions I could make.

Well, I did ask for suggestion, and that was open to you as well. So, do you have a suggestion for a compact or semi-compact handgun that would be ideal for civilian use? 

[Sessha]

 Well Vex if you want some suggestions on where to look there are plenty of other companies out there that make decent pistols. There's Colt, Beretta, Browning and Smith and Wesson just to name a few for you to look at. They all make a 9mm compact pistol you can look at.

 Though among the people here I have the most diverse set of guns. Mine range from companies like Barret, SAKO, Magnum Research, Glock and SIG.

[Neysha]

Ami doesn't need a pistol right away.  Hell if she's new we could make it a plot point that her getting of a pistol can be a minor plot point or character development thing (ie getting a gun means she somewhat accepts her new life on Roanapur, and other characters can talk with her about getting her first gun and have sane or ludicrous conversations with her and others about it.

Maybe our first mission is to intercept an arms shipment of modernized US weapons the US government or one of its allies are shipping to an aligned group for reasons. It doesn't even have to be covert. They use some intermediary to deliver the weapons and our group is hired to intercept. The details don't really matter to us regarding the why of the shipment,  only the other W questions.

The fun part comes in that we were expecting a shipment of say... late model M 16 rifles and hand grenades and body armor blah blah and that's what we're paid to deliver to our employer. But we also find in addition, either some M240's or a Mark 19 grenade launcher.

And our crew can have a vociferous discussion on what to do in regards to using those weapons.  Do we hand them over to our employer as a bonus find?  Do we leave it or ditch it? Do we sell it ourselves or keep them?  Blah blah blah...

[Daril]

While I can understand wanting to keep things simple initially, some of these ideas will only work if they're done right at the beginning of the RPG.

I think it's good to have one or two new crew members because we won't have to act like all our characters are already used to working together.  I particularly like the idea of Alex being a new hire because there are some things that I think might make my character nervous around her.  I will admit that's somewhat selfish on my part though -if Sessha really dislikes the idea of his character being a newcomer then we probably shouldn't go with it.

Yeah, there are some issues to work out with the idea for Ami.  What if she already wanted to get away from her dad, just... not by being kidnapped? The trick of course would be how to resolve the situation in a way that will allow her to join the crew.  Presumably Cash wouldn't allow her to join if that would endanger his chance of getting the reward for rescuing her.  But if she refuses to go home after the crew has already been paid, that might work.  BTW, it's really cliche, but what if she wants to get out of an arranged marriage with some guy she despises (or finds shady)?

It is a bit complicated, but I think it can work, and I think it's about the best of the story ideas we've got so far.

@Neysha -Okay, this is really bad of me since I already more or less passed your character, but I find myself inclined to agree with Vex's criticisms when I see them idenfitied so clearly.  It might be good to simplify your character's history.  My recommendation would be to concentrate on her getting involved in smuggling after she flees the states.

@Vex -I agree that Ami doesn't necessarily need a pistol immediately.  I also think it would be worth considering a full size model.  They tend to be easier to shoot well than the really small pistols, and Roanapur is the kind of city were concealment isn't quite so important.  BTW, I would suggest a Steyr GB for Ami.  Very high ammunition capacity, easy to load magazines, no manual safety, and its mechanically unusual, which I think might appeal to her.

[Sessha]

 Personally speaking I really like Ami's backstory as is. It fits more with the way her character is designed, plus as everyone in Roanpur has a story hers is special and remember that while Benny has become used to living life in Roanpur he's still not as hardened to life in the city as Revy or Dutch.

 Though I think her going with someone like Alex who likes bigger calibers would be interesting.

 Also you guys are forgetting one thing about Alex. She's a pretty cool customer most times, though there are certain triggers for her. Like for her it's dealing with rapists. She does not endure them at all.

[Neysha]

  BTW, it's really cliche, but what if she wants to get out of an arranged marriage with some guy she despises (or finds shady)?

Wealthy East Asian child in an arranged marriage as a cliche? That's about as cliche as a Navy Seal who can swim well. :p

@Neysha -Okay, this is really bad of me since I already more or less passed your character, but I find myself inclined to agree with Vex's criticisms when I see them idenfitied so clearly.   It might be good to simplify your character's history.  My recommendation would be to concentrate on her getting involved in smuggling after she flees the states.

IT IS BAD OF YOU AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. I kid. I kid. While I don't agree with any of Vex's criticisms and in fact found them bemusing to the point I just flat out ignored them, I do respect you Daril and the exceptional efforts you and the others have put into developing this RP so I'll abide by your decision and do a simplification of my character profile to better suite your request and Vex's sensibilities. Initially I wanted to engage in a point by point rebuttal of everyone of Vex's (IMHO baseless and meritless) points but deleting chunks and rewriting other chunks of a small biography actually is much easier to do then argue the point and gleefully excoriate someone and ultimately it was a rough draft after all.

Rewrote it and edited out most of the contentious bits.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Name:Leah Layleigh (real name Ashley Blais)
Age: Twenty Something???
Nationality: American
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual
Personality: Generally taciturn with strangers and wary in attitude. Despite speaking little and being generally unflappable, she doesn't have any personality or social behavior disorders. She's not even shy. She's just quiet with people she doesn't know. Handles stressful situations well and extremely adaptive to changing circumstances, lies constantly for nebulous and circumstantial reasons. Betrays strangers on a whim, exceptionally loyal to friends. Distrusts most forms of authority as her previous life paints her view of the world in very anti-authoritarian terms. Fairly nonplussed when it comes to ethics and social morals.
Appearance:
Leah is five foot four, and fairly muscular. Her natural hair color is brown but she dyed it blonde when arriving in Southeast Asia because it looked more exotic. She has dark brown doe eyes.
Weapon(s) of choice: Leah has a basic familiarity with various semiautomatic pistols and revolvers. Beyond knowing more of the best places to stab a person, she is not very good with other weapons.
Fighting style/tactics:
-Leah's main skill base is a haphazard knowledge of medicine and medical skills.
-Leah has a basic familiarity with operating watercraft.
-Leah has a basic familiarity with small scale smuggling operations.
-Leah has a basic familiarity with the culinary arts.

Biography:Leah grew up in a working poor community in Detroit, Michigan. Her father worked as a longshoreman before being injured on the job and being on disability. He later was self employed as a fishmonger. Her Mother was a delivery driver for a small transportation company. It was apparent from her grades in elementary school that she was a bit brighter then the average baseline and so there was an idea of having her being the first person in her family to go to college. Her mother and father were avid in pursuing fishing as a hobby and using the little money they had for recreation, often went on canoe or kayak based fishing trips. Unfortunately her future was derailed when her parents were caught in a sting operation by US Fish and Wildlife Service for illegally smuggling game into the country and was charged under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species after misidentifying several fish they caught in Canadian waters illegally that were endangered. The fines and legal fees quickly forced the family to sell most of their property and ultimately the prosecution was successful in pursuing a six year and ten year prison sentence for her mother and father when a five year sentence for conspiracy was tacked onto the initial charge.

With no extended family willing to take care of her financially, she was dumped into state foster care. She was bounced around between numerous foster homes who typically took in kids and offered them the three hots and a cot type of benefit and little else. She immediately got distracted by such a listless and directionless life by reading books on medicine and flirting with the idea of becoming a Doctor. However she spent most of her free time making clumsy attempts at petty crime, typically vandalism, buying and selling small quantities of drugs and theft which landed her in trouble with the law and juvenile detention throughout her life. Despite her hard upbringing, she eventually got her GED and pursued an education in community college to become a pharmacy technician. Her certification however was derailed due to her previous drug offense related history. With no real career options available that she was interested in, eventually got certification in becoming a Veterinary Health Practitioner and practiced veterinary medicine for several months, before yet another sting operation revealed that she wasn't a licensed veterinarian from Liberty University, but a licensed veterinarian from the nation of Liberia, having received the certification legitimately, but defrauding American law at the same time. Finding her options in America drying up, Leah used her access to health and personal records to form a new cover identity (Leah Layleigh) and decided to travel abroad. Her first stop was Roanapur.

Since arriving in Roanapur, she's worked as a butcher, a fishmonger, a fisherwoman, an unlicensed pharmacist, and as an unlicensed medical assistant for various clinics, hospitals and aid organization. Typically she uses her employment opportunities to skim off of inventory to resell particularly valuable items often overlooked, like miscounted pharmaceutical drugs, ignored medical equipment, and smuggling certain  parts of animals and plants to supply a knockoff 'traditional medicine' industry that thrives in the East Asian black markets. Her most favorite ongoing job was as a 'Marketing Sales Executive for a nearby large Asian owned pharmaceutical company where she sat in an office most of the day, shook hands with visitors, acted like the girlfriend of various executives and then occasionally studied intensely hard for brief moments in order to perform promotional marketing presentations for various people and groups. Due to a downturn economy in East Asia and office work drying up, she invested herself into the only other thing she was somewhat good at, which was smuggling.

[Daril]

Looking at the original profile again, it wasn't really all that bad.  While I appreciate your effort, you probably didn't need to revise her early history quite so much.  Simplifying her skillset and the later parts of her history a little would probably have been enough.  Did you prefer the original version?  Or would you prefer to stick with the new version now that you've done it up?

While I was genuinely a bit concerned about her having too many different skills, if I'm going to be completely honest I think part of it was also that I was hoping to make her a more obvious fit for the crew by emphasizing the smuggling part of her background more.

[Neysha]

Looking at the original profile again, it wasn't really all that bad.  While I appreciate your effort, you probably didn't need to revise her early history quite so much.  Simplifying her skillset and the later parts of her history a little would probably have been enough.  Did you prefer the original version?  Or would you prefer to stick with the new version now that you've done it up?

While I was genuinely a bit concerned about her having too many different skills, if I'm going to be completely honest I think part of it was also that I was hoping to make her a more obvious fit for the crew by emphasizing the smuggling part of her background more.

Well I revised the early history because she had accumulated a game breaking amount of dabbler level skills due to being a small time criminal, meth cooker and failed pharmacy student. And coming from a rural background. So in order to simplify her skill set, her background had to be decidedly less criminal and more urban because no matter how I tried to reconcile it, I just couldn't find a reasonable way of creating someone who didn't know anything dabblish about chemistry or thieving or poisons or hunting or firearms or other basic woodland skills if she did come from a rural background. So I moved her to the city.

Then I couldn't reconcile a character who didn't have diverse skills like... grifting, pickpocketing and burglarizing and lockpicking since most of that actually goes hand in hand with criminal behavior beyond small time/streel level stuff so I removed most of the small time criminal history in the teenage/young adult years as well so that for most of her life she was kinda typical in how she was raised, except she was familiar with boating but not so much as to threaten Ami's skillset so I made it mostly smaller (and non-motorized) boats. I kept the pharmacy tech thing because considering the other entry level parallel health field tracks, its the one I'm most familiar with personally and also least medical. (after all if she had significant medical skills, she could probably just be a medical worker in Roanapur... or anywhere) And the Veterinary thing is just amusing to me because it's so non-traditional when it comes to medical expertise.

So we have a character that knows medicine but not enough to ditch the smuggling company for a better check. She knows the extreme basics of watercraft but not enough to threaten Amy and due to her background, she has a basic familiarity with transportation as opposed to out and out smuggling because of her family history, which is what was requested in the first place. Basic medical expertise and some familiarity with watercraft. Everything else is kind of dressing to facilitate that.

[Daril]

Okay, if you were allowed to create a character from scratch with no requirements or restrictions, what sort of character would you create?

Secondly, between the two versions of your current character, which one do you actually prefer?

BTW, I think Ami's area of expertise is more maintaining machinery and electronics more than actually using a boat.

[Vex]

Ami doesn't need a pistol right away.  Hell if she's new we could make it a plot point that her getting of a pistol can be a minor plot point or character development thing (ie getting a gun means she somewhat accepts her new life on Roanapur, and other characters can talk with her about getting her first gun and have sane or ludicrous conversations with her and others about it.

I certainly don't mind this being the case, if it fits the story. If Ami ends up becoming a newcomer to Roanapur and as a new crew member of the Lucky Strike (or whatever we end up calling it), then that sounds like a reasonable thing to do. I'm not sure how much of a plot point it would make, but we can definately use it as a point of character development and interaction between the cast.

Yeah, there are some issues to work out with the idea for Ami.  What if she already wanted to get away from her dad, just... not by being kidnapped? The trick of course would be how to resolve the situation in a way that will allow her to join the crew.  Presumably Cash wouldn't allow her to join if that would endanger his chance of getting the reward for rescuing her.  But if she refuses to go home after the crew has already been paid, that might work.  BTW, it's really cliche, but what if she wants to get out of an arranged marriage with some guy she despises (or finds shady)?

It is a bit complicated, but I think it can work, and I think it's about the best of the story ideas we've got so far.

Heh. Well, an arranged marriage is rather cliche, but that's not always a bad thing, especially if we can throw a bit of an adult twist into it, in that way Black Lagoon does so well. Maybe said arrangement was part of a rather large transaction between a couple of influential and dangerous factions, and someone had a motive to make sure that the deal didn't go through, or to get said factions to turn on one another, with her would-be husband's side feeling that, by not producing the bride, they were acting in bad faith. And Ami did want to get away from her father. Maybe she even wanted to run away, and did at first, but things got a little complicated after that.

How to resolve the situation is the tricky part. I don't see a lot of options here that would enable Cash to keep the money, keep his reputation as a reliable business partner (important for his job), and let him leave with Ami. Do one or two of those things, sure, but not all three. I'm not sure how to do that with this scenario.

@Vex -I agree that Ami doesn't necessarily need a pistol immediately.  I also think it would be worth considering a full size model.  They tend to be easier to shoot well than the really small pistols, and Roanapur is the kind of city were concealment isn't quite so important.  BTW, I would suggest a Steyr GB for Ami.  Very high ammunition capacity, easy to load magazines, no manual safety, and its mechanically unusual, which I think might appeal to her.

I'm fine with that. Especially if we end up introducing her to the crew during the story, it only makes sense she doesn't have a hangun. And I'll even go back and edit the entry to clarify she doesn't have any weapons training. Learning how to use a gun could be a part of her character development as well. But, if we're going that route, then we don't need to assign her a weapon just yet. We'll let the characters decide what gun she ends up using, however that plays out.

IT IS BAD OF YOU AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. I kid. I kid. While I don't agree with any of Vex's criticisms and in fact found them bemusing to the point I just flat out ignored them, I do respect you Daril and the exceptional efforts you and the others have put into developing this RP so I'll abide by your decision and do a simplification of my character profile to better suite your request and Vex's sensibilities. Initially I wanted to engage in a point by point rebuttal of everyone of Vex's (IMHO baseless and meritless) points but deleting chunks and rewriting other chunks of a small biography actually is much easier to do then argue the point and gleefully excoriate someone and ultimately it was a rough draft after all.

Rewrote it and edited out most of the contentious bits.

Hmm...if you honestly thought that was the most contentious bits, then maybe I didn't do such a good job at explaining my point. My apologies for that.

If you feel like you want to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal, by all means. I like to think I can take criticism and have enough of a reasonable nature to admit I was wrong if it becomes clear that I was. If you like your original concept, it would probably be more straight-forward than to write around my criticisms or deleting chunks. Cause, honestly, I don't think the original character was bad. I said I liked it, and if I didn't get that across very well, I'm sorry. I rather liked much of her background before she left the States, and her "small-town crook" appeal.

Of course, you don't have to, if you like this new version better. Her story is more realistic, but it feels like the type I'd hear about for a criminal in a real-world game, rather than something Black Lagoon tends to appeal to. As such, I don't really feel it's a great fit. Her sudden arrival to Roanapur, a very much out of the way town most people don't know about, seems like a bit of an odd jump, but I'm not objecting to it. Just feels a little strange.

Looking at the original profile again, it wasn't really all that bad.  While I appreciate your effort, you probably didn't need to revise her early history quite so much.  Simplifying her skillset and the later parts of her history a little would probably have been enough.

I agree with Daril here, Neyesha. Her history was largely good, and I didn't have much of a problem with her range of skills. My comments weren't even that much of a criticism, more commentary. Yeah, I think she went to a lot of weird places and crisscrossed the globe several times in an unusually short period, but I really wouldn't much care about that, even if you stuck with it. Likewise, her skills were just a bit all over the place, and I felt it should be a little more focused. Maybe I worded it wrong, and if was, I apologize, but it wasn't really meant to be a particularly harsh criticism, certainly nothing to re-write your entire character for.

Ultimately, my concern can be boiled down to one dilemma. If Leah (the first version) was a part of the crew, why would Ami be? If you honestly don't feel like she can replace her role in the crew, by all means, feel free to tell me why. If your point seems more reasonable than my own, I'll drop my concern about it and we can run with it. I'm not looking to cause a problem. I just don't feel my point is as baseless as you state.

Well I revised the early history because she had accumulated a game breaking amount of dabbler level skills due to being a small time criminal, meth cooker and failed pharmacy student. And coming from a rural background. So in order to simplify her skill set, her background had to be decidedly less criminal and more urban because no matter how I tried to reconcile it, I just couldn't find a reasonable way of creating someone who didn't know anything dabblish about chemistry or thieving or poisons or hunting or firearms or other basic woodland skills if she did come from a rural background. So I moved her to the city.

Then I couldn't reconcile a character who didn't have diverse skills like... grifting, pickpocketing and burglarizing and lockpicking since most of that actually goes hand in hand with criminal behavior beyond small time/streel level stuff so I removed most of the small time criminal history in the teenage/young adult years as well so that for most of her life she was kinda typical in how she was raised, except she was familiar with boating but not so much as to threaten Ami's skillset so I made it mostly smaller (and non-motorized) boats. I kept the pharmacy tech thing because considering the other entry level parallel health field tracks, its the one I'm most familiar with personally and also least medical. (after all if she had significant medical skills, she could probably just be a medical worker in Roanapur... or anywhere) And the Veterinary thing is just amusing to me because it's so non-traditional when it comes to medical expertise.

So we have a character that knows medicine but not enough to ditch the smuggling company for a better check. She knows the extreme basics of watercraft but not enough to threaten Amy and due to her background, she has a basic familiarity with transportation as opposed to out and out smuggling because of her family history, which is what was requested in the first place. Basic medical expertise and some familiarity with watercraft. Everything else is kind of dressing to facilitate that.

You honestly thought that doing all that was simpler than explaining your point and sticking with something a little closer to the original? I mean, you're basically admitting that you wrote most of that so that you could get around my sensibilities. I'm not sure how you translated "focusing her skills a little more" to "eliminate her entire history and get rid of most her skills". Don't you think this is a rather large overreaction? Or was that that point?

If it's the latter, then it's a rather roundabout way of doing it, and for all the extra effort, really doesn't make much of an argument besides your willingness to take it to absurdity. Again, it'd be a lot more simple if you would just make a straight-forward point about it. I think you'll find our cast is much more reasonable, including me, to just take your objections for earnest.

[Daril]

I may be overreacting a little here, but I'd like to ask everyone to be very careful with their choice of words to ensure that this situation does not result in animosity that could be damaging to the RP.  Avoid criticizing the other party's actions as much as possible and lets just concentrate on addressing the issues.

Heh. Well, an arranged marriage is rather cliche, but that's not always a bad thing, especially if we can throw a bit of an adult twist into it, in that way Black Lagoon does so well. Maybe said arrangement was part of a rather large transaction between a couple of influential and dangerous factions, and someone had a motive to make sure that the deal didn't go through, or to get said factions to turn on one another, with her would-be husband's side feeling that, by not producing the bride, they were acting in bad faith. And Ami did want to get away from her father. Maybe she even wanted to run away, and did at first, but things got a little complicated after that.

How to resolve the situation is the tricky part. I don't see a lot of options here that would enable Cash to keep the money, keep his reputation as a reliable business partner (important for his job), and let him leave with Ami. Do one or two of those things, sure, but not all three. I'm not sure how to do that with this scenario.

I think for this to work Ami is going to need to stand up to her dad and say she's not going home with him.  I will admit it might be a bit questionable for Cash to employ her after accepting the reward for rescuing her.  So maybe she makes the break before Cash receives payment, daddy refuses to pay as a result (which the crew grudgingly accepts because they don't want to mess with a guy who hired heavily armed mercs) and Ami gets forced to help fix up the boat because of that?  (Been thinking the Lucky Strike could be in need of a bit of an overhaul at the beginning of the RPG -perhaps not all of her four engines are working, her electronics are glitchy, etc.)

[Neysha]

Okay, if you were allowed to create a character from scratch with no requirements or restrictions, what sort of character would you create?

I always had in mind of creating a career criminal as in someone who made their living via criminal activity that doesn't require shooting dudes and dudettes every other day. The thing with a lot of the Black Lagoon characters.... they are all involved in organized crime and criminal activity, but for the major characters, I wouldn't ever say any of them are 'criminals' first and foremost outside of people who are really good at shooting/killing other people. Dutch is ex-military. Balaikala is ex-military. Benny is a computer engineer. Chang is a former cop. And you have other guys...former guerrillas, hitmen, CIA agents, terrorists... but not just straight... criminals except minor characters who are often portrayed as kinda.... incompetent by comparison. (ie the Italian and Colombian gangs) Even with folks like Revy, obviously not ex-military but they're defined more as gunfighters as opposed to just a standard criminal or mobster or what have you.

When it was suggested by Sessha to have a medic, I though oh that'd be perfect. I was a pharmacy tech for a while. I can totally work this in. I'll make a badass pharmacy tech who functions as a medic. That was what was in my mind. So she cooked meth when she grew up. But most meth is grown up in superlabs, and you can find this stuff all over the dirt poor areas of the Midwest and South and Appalachia, often in rural depressed areas. And if you grow up in a rural area, you obviously have some woodland skills. You can hunt. You can shoot. You can go camping. And guess what, you can cook meth so you know stuff about chemistry and concoctions and what goes boom and what makes you sick. It's total Anarchist Cookbook stuff. So I worked off of that. And I still wanted her to be a criminal. So after the drug dealing days were over, she had to survive somehow. So she was a small time criminal. She stole. She robbed. She pickpocketed. And she lies, because that's what she does.

Okay now I got this hillbilly criminal but I totally forgot, she needs to be familiar with boats. Either she moves from Arkansas to more cliche Louisiana, or I have her gain those skills after she leaves the country. I was specifically inspired by several works. One was by the author Sam Sheridan, who spent much of his twenties doing odd jobs on merchant vessels, up to and including a luxury yacht and various sailboats etc in journies from Bahamas to Thailand. He learned Thai kickboxing, Western boxing, meditated with Buddhist monks, worked construction in Antarctica, became proficient at oil painting and was a forest fire fighter all before his early thirties. And he didn't start that journey until after Harvard.

Another inspiration was the story of a twelve thousand mile canoe trip taken back in 1980. A father and two sons literally paddled from Canada to the Amazon, over twelve thousand miles in two years. They encountered alligators, sharks, hurricanes, guerrillas, drug lords, primitive tribes and malaria. Some of the time, rather amorally, they got by through by grifting and BS'ing their way through trouble or in order to extract sympathy and charity from locals or to avoid trouble. What was unspoken is how these natives must've viewed these crazy White people and how a career criminal could take advantage of that. I remember Che Guevara's early years, working as a Doctor in the Amazon fresh out of medical school and was thinking, man... what if he became an asshole even earlier in life? :p

After that, it was just a linear trip to get to Roanapur. I figured having her travel down the Amazon would be the best route and then she can get across the Atlantic and do the same thing over in Africa. After reading Nick du Toit's book My Friend the Mercenary and other books about the conflicts both in West Africa, the Great Lakes Region and Southern Africa, and even the recent story of the dentist who was trophy hunting a lion in Zimbabwe (and earlier had done so with a damn rhino) got me thinking with all of the NGO's and aid groups and ineffectual governments and organizations there, it's a ripe place for a person like her to thrive by putting up the semi false front that she was a medical professional which explores the dichotomy of... helping people, because while she acts unethically, it doesn't mean she isn't sympathetic or empathic, but also contrasts that with the fact that deep down, she's still a fucking career criminal. Even if she's helping people legitimately, she can't help but steal Cipro from the Medicines Sans Frontieres medical cabinet because she can make a lot of money selling it. And underneath all of that, deep down, she's an adventure junkie. It's just not fun staying rooted in one place helping people. In fact, it can be downright depressing. Why stick around for that when you can just move on.

And eventually she moves onto Roanapur.

*coughs*

And that's about that.

Secondly, between the two versions of your current character, which one do you actually prefer?

First one. Second character just smells pretty boring, but it'd be a fun challenge to play either to be honest.

How to resolve the situation is the tricky part. I don't see a lot of options here that would enable Cash to keep the money, keep his reputation as a reliable business partner (important for his job), and let him leave with Ami. Do one or two of those things, sure, but not all three. I'm not sure how to do that with this scenario.

That sounds amazing to me because everything you just said would make for amazing story fodder and an engrossing first story. No need for a clean ending where everything ends up good for the smuggling company. Having to make choices in a range of good to bad options will be a great thing to explore and help develop the characters and move the plot along even more if we all as writers are willing to dive into this potential storyline.

Maybe I worded it wrong, and if was, I apologize, but it wasn't really meant to be a particularly harsh criticism, certainly nothing to re-write your entire character for.

Your intentions are largely irrelevant to me. A rewrite for the character became somewhat necessitated as a result of said commentary. *shrug* Again, I don't mind writing. I enjoy writing with a purpose in mind.

Ultimately, my concern can be boiled down to one dilemma. If Leah (the first version) was a part of the crew, why would Ami be? If you honestly don't feel like she can replace her role in the crew, by all means, feel free to tell me why. If your point has merit, I'll drop my concern about it and we can run with it. I'm not looking to cause a problem. I just don't feel my point is as baseless as you state.

Like I said when I posted my character originally, I checked the requirements and didn't really read the other bios. They needed a medic and a watercraft operator. Your concerns are baseless because watercraft operator isn't synonymous with mechanic and electrician and whatever engineering field she specializes in. Just because I can change the oil in my car doesn't mean I don't need a mechanic. And in the original anime from the first dozen or so episodes I read (never read the manga) Rock IMHO is almost useless and if it wasn't for plot fiat, would be even less useful. I mean Rock has some business and negotiating skills but in a four person operation, it's rather... exceptional that he's there, which is a major point of the series of course. Benny suffers from this to a degree as well but he has a diverse set of skills, much in line with your Ami character. But Ami has the benefit of having a far more interesting backstory and her background and skillset seems more focused on waterborne craft then Benny's computer engineering background. So I honestly find Ami's role being threatened as completely unfathomable to be honest.

You honestly thought that doing all that was simpler than explaining your point and sticking with something a little closer to the original? I mean, you're basically admitting that you wrote most of that so that you could get around my sensibilities. I'm not sure how you translated "focusing her skills a little more" to "eliminate her entire history and get rid of most her skills". Don't you think this is a rather large overreaction? Or was that that point?

If it's the latter, then it's a rather roundabout way of doing it, and for all the extra effort, really doesn't make much of an argument besides your willingness to take it to absurdity. Again, it'd be a lot more simple if you would just make a straight-forward point about it. I think you'll find our cast is much more reasonable, including me, to just take your objections for earnest.

When I rebuke arguments, I pretty much address every line with a couple paragraphs because I like to crush what I feel is baseless criticism with overwhelming force. For example, taking one line from your original commentary.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

I'm going to do some character comparisons. The first one is Walter Palmer fifty five year old Dentist from Minnesota that was recently outed for trophy hunting a beloved lion. The second one is going to be Sam Sheridan, a writer and his life experience up to the age of thirty, and Chris Kyle, a much lauded Navy SEAL sniper who was recently murdered and whose widow was screwed over Jesse Ventura in a court libel case recently. And we'll compare these characters to my master dabbler, Leah Layleigh.

She's a medic, an explosives expert, a chemist, a drug manufacturer, a poisoner

First off, a medic was required. But she's not an actually formally trained medic. She's actually had pharmaceutical training, and veterinary training and has largely actually been self taught or learned informally. I figure that gave her experience roughly equivalent to a medic (ie the four months a typical medic gets of dedicated medical training or EMT Basic training which is three weeks).

Saying she is a chemist drug manufacturer and poisoner is almost a contentless statement. She can cook meth using chemicals. She can create poisons... because she has a background in pharmaceuticals. A large amount of female murders were actually known for being very good poisoners. Creating poisons isn't a hard thing to do if you know how to cook meth and have pharmaceutical experience. Furthermore I never stated she was a formal chemist. It was mentioned that there was hope she could be when she was young that she could eventually go to college and be a chemist or chemical engineer or whatever because she was a smar tween, but it never happened.

Furthermore, she was never stated to be an explosives expert. She was familiar with explosives. In Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Colombine he interviews High School Working Class kids who can make pipe bombs (like the Colombine shooters) and nail bombs and knockoff forms of napalm. You can see the videos of people making homemade napalm on Youtube. She grew up cooking meth. She knows how to make things blow up and not blow up since many of the chemicals used in meth and cooking other drugs, can also be applied to the creating of homemade explosives. Now lets look at our three examples and soon how they rate compared to Leah:

Walter Palmer is a dentist who went to medical school and been in practice and refresher courses for most of his adult life. He is a superior medic. He is probably subpar in concocting poisons and drugs but he has as much book knowledge to do so, if not the applied knowledge. He knows more about chemistry. He probably knows little about explosives.

Sam Sheridan is a trained firefighter, athlete and wilderness EMT and so likely has nearly the same amount of knowledge in medicine as Leah but knows more then her in regards to nutrition and therapy etc, It's doubtful he knows much about poisons, explosives or drug manufacturing however.

Chris Kyle was a Navy SEAL. He knows battlefield medicine and actually knows more about mental trauma and talked about it extensively post service. He used his medic training on several occasions. He also has training in NBC warfare and has been schooled on it formally. He might not know how to create more effective poisons then Leah, but probably knows more about chemical weapons and biological weapons and recognizing them etc. And if sufficiently motivated, he probably could conjure up something jury rigged like a simple chlorine bomb. He obviously knows more about explosives. His only weakness is I don't think he coks meth.

Interesting contrast so far.

a con artist, a pickpocket, a lockpick, a security expert.

Being a pickpocket, lockpicker and "security expert" which I'm assuming means burglar, almost goes hand in hand. The only exception to this is a con artist (or the term I use grifter). But being a grifter is still fairly common with most criminal activity beyond the street level stuff of mugging, buglarizing, pocket crimes etc. So I don't see it as exceptional. I'm not sure where her being an expert came in. Disabling alarm systems and evading them was described as basic knowledge. Lets compare this to our three individuals.

Walter Palmer is clearly inferior in all categories, except he can allegedly con or bribe local officials to allow him to hunt lions. Or allegedly sexually harassing female receptionists.

Sam Sheridan seems like he'd be inferior to Leah but when it comes to grifting, because he's trained in drama and acting, he might actually be superior if sufficiently motivated. Furthermore, he references in his books that he learned how to pick locks and steal cars. So slightly inferior to Leah.

Chris Kyle probably can't pickpocket anyone, but Navy Seals are trained in lockpicking, breaking and entering, security systems and how to evade them. Furthermore Chris Kyle's specialization besides Seal training was in electronics. If anything, Chris Kyle might be a superior thief if he ever had the desire to be one in regards to things like burglary and breaking and entering. He's also decent at grifting. Navy Seals aren't as well trained as CIA Field Agents obviously, or even Green Berets, but tier one special operators are trained extensively to collect intelligence and gain confidence of locals etc, not so much spies or grifters as intelligence gatherers and interrogators and so forth.

a hunter, a tracker, a wilderness guide, an archer, a solid marksman, a trapper

Hunting, tracking, wilderness guiding, marksman(woman) and trapping almost all goes hand in hand that listing it individually is baseless. Alex is also a hunter and has military training and experience. Thus she therefore knows everything up here... except maybe archery which Leah is described as having a proficiency in. I don't know about you, but archery doesn't seem to be a very useful skill in this RP. I added it as window dressing for her rural background. How does she compare to the others though. And trapping is just making... traps... kind of shitty hunting. Depending on the nature of it, it might be considered unsportsmanlike.

Walter Palmer has hunted game across several continents and ranged from cougars, (the big cats, not older women), bears, elk, lions, rhinos and so much more etc etc. He probably has more experience hunting in North America and Africa then Leah. He is a superior hunter. He's probably also a superior archer as he's used both a crossbow and modern compound bow and killed large game with it. As marksman, they maybe equal, I have no idea. Trapping... again no idea. Wilderness guide... whatever that means... I guess Leah is superior due to her grifting skills.

Sam Sheridan. He's not a hunter or trapper or bowhunter or marksman AFAIK. However he has traveled the wilderness extensively and has been a forest fire fighter. His outdoorcraft is probably slightly below that of Leah.

Chris Kyle, due to his rural background, is easily a superior hunter, tracker, and due to being the most lethal sniper in history, obviously a superior marksman. He's probably a superior trapper as well. Beats Leah in all categories... often quite clearly.

So basically Leah barely edges out a dentist and a writer, and is schooled by the Navy Seal.

a watercraft pilot, a driver, a mechanic

These skills are so common, it is baseless. I think every character in this RP can drive a watercraft and drive a car and knows basic maintenance. She's lightly above the others in watercraft and mechanic crap... though I barely remember remarking on her being a mechanic. Lets compare her to the others.

Walter Palmer, if he's like the dentists I know, probably owns his own boat and takes it to one of the ten thousand lakes we have in our fine state every weekend he can. So he's a watercraft pilot, we'll assume. He obviously has a drivers license and can drive. No idea if he knows anything about machinery. If his hobby is boats or old cars, he might know a fair bit about mechanics. Either way, Leah is probably equal or slightly superior to him.

Sam Sheridan went to a Merchant Marine School, and spent many months sailing and boating . He too has a drivers license and maintains boats and thus has a great deal of mechanical knowledge. He's superior to Leah in every regard, clearly.

Chris Kyle is a Navy Seal. He knows watercraft and talks about operating them. He's also familiar with small engine repair and maintaining all manners of equipment including weapons, radios and other military equipment. He's also a pretty good driver. Clearly superior to Leah in every category.

an amateur martial artist,

I stated that Leah brawled with her siblings when she was young, took random martial arts classes (who hasn't) and not until recently, learned how to properly throw a knee and kick implying she didn't know how to do either before a few months ago. Whatever... let's compare....

Walter Palmer. I'm assuming he has no martial arts knowledge.

Sam Sheridan. Actual MMA fighter whose trained in multiple disciplines including Thai Kickboxing in Thailand, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Brazil, MMA in America and Boxing with former Olympians. He'll kick Leah's ass.

Chris Kyle... yeah... don't even need to say whose better here.

So after all that, we see in those categories... Leah is probably superior to the dentist, slightly inferior to the writer, and inferior to the Navy Seal sniper in the fields she's apparently proficient in.

How damning... but wait... there's more. While due to lack of knowledge I have no idea if Walter Palmer has anymore skills, we know Sam and Chris do. In addition to what was stated already we know Sam is proficient in the following: Business, Enviromental Sciences, Painting, Writing, Journalism, Firefighting, Carpentry, Construction work, athletics, sports medicine, arctic survival, philosophy, history, knife fighting, boxing, etc etc etc.

Chris Kyle meanwhile we know is proficient in the following: Electronics, radio operation and repair, counter-intelligence, interrogation, animal handling, horseback riding, underwater demolitions, rescue swimming, diving, salvage, videogaming (he was a gamer), writing, history, experienced in the rodeo, theology, night fighting, animal husbandry, knife fighting, sticking fighting, spotting, orienteering, small unit tactics etc etc etc.

And I just used the first three names I could think of. As I write this, I'm can just take a moment and see how she contrasts with someone like Les Stroud, or Sam Childers, or John Goddard, or Eric Rudolph, or Kinessa Johnson.

The moral of the story is that the first Leah Layleigh ain't hot shit. She's exactly as described. A jack of many trades.

Example over. So yes... it is honestly simpler. When I read your post, I immediately thought... I should do a line by line rebuttal but didn't want to waste the time or make myself appear mean spirited. Hence, deleting chunks and re-writing two paragraphs actually is (and was) much easier. Nothing facetious about it. Just a matter of practicality.

Though I do derive enjoyment from both back and forth discussions like these, I would prefer to explore the role play myself. Especially in regards to my suggestion for the actual first mission being the interception of a certain weapons shipment and meeting Ami being the incidental encounter. So the smuggling team gets the mission of intercepting an arms shipment of modernized US weapons the US government or one of its allies are shipping to an aligned group for reasons. It doesn't even have to be covert. They use some intermediary to deliver the weapons and our group is hired to intercept. The details don't really matter to us regarding the why of the shipment,  only the other W (Who, What, When, Where) questions. The fun part comes in that we were expecting a shipment of say... late model M 16 rifles and hand grenades and body armor blah blah and that's what we're paid to deliver to our employer. But we also find in addition, either some M240's or a Mark 19 grenade launcher.

And our crew can have a vociferous discussion on what to do in regards to using those weapons.  Do we hand them over to our employer as a bonus find?  Do we leave it or ditch it? Do we sell it ourselves or keep them?  Blah blah blah...

And it just so happens that Ami is on board this vessel and that can lead to the entirely other storyline as well of Ami being kidnapped and our team finding her.

[Daril]

The medic suggestion was from WritersBlockade, not Sessha, and from my perspective if was not a requirement.  Though from what I gather you actually really like the medic part?

I'd have preferred not to have required nautical experience either, but I'd already received two characters that don't appear to have much of a nautical background and I felt that a large portion of the crew should have such experience.