The Town (roleplay)

"Anyways, hello new folks! I promise I shall protect your soul from these vultures, that Town may own it solely! - DeBunny, The Town's resident Cute thing."

The Town is a (mostly) fantasy freeform Play By Post Game with origins at the Giant in the Playground forums. It started when a werewolf and a Half-Dragon had a feud that climaxed in an arena fight, which led an enterprising cat to make some money off selling dolls and making a Milk Bar, not to mention ascending to godhood. Make sense so far? No? Good; most of the longtime Townies don't really get it either. The Town has since developed into many stories and plots, so many, in fact, that there are doubts that anyone knows all of them.

After a while and due to some disagreements between Townies and technical difficulties with the Giant in the Playground, the Town was split into two different sites, most commonly called New Town, where many people emigrated, and Old Town, where those stayed who didn't want to abandon GitP due to various reasons. In either case, it's devilishly difficult to join the town at this point without stick-to-it-ivness.

New Town also created three other Sub-Towns: Modern Town; which has more of a Modern motif; Sci-Fi Town, which has a Sci-Fi motif, and The Hamlet, which is a lower-power Western-style setting. The Hamlet has since been abandoned.

In recent times, the improving servers of GitP have lead to New Town being nearly abandoned as people returned to Old Town - and, especially, to the "Acronymia" universe...

Both worlds are now one and the same, is known as a world called "the nexus". This is basically a world where everything is possible, and where people can come from any universe, fictional or real. A concept known as the "omniverse" is sometimes invoked, referring to the infinite expanse of every possible universe that ever was/is/will be/can be/could be/would have been/might be/should be/sorta is/et cetera. The Nexus is sometimes said to be an omniversal crossroads.

Not to be confused with the 2010 film of the same name.

The Nexus provides examples of:
 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer - Used many times, even serving as the home of a freakish serial killer.
 * Anachronism Stew - Blatant and proud of it.
 * Apocalypse Maiden - Carrie was, as a Blightwalker... not exactly this. Her presence was unsettling to nature and her hands would kill plants and burn flesh.
 * Author Appeal - Lots.
 * Beans and stuff such as dapper clothing, NiceHats (especially top hats), scars, fingerless gloves, psychological brokenness, mental disorders, catgirls, and a sort of "current stuff" category that changes with whatever Beans is influenced by at the time...
 * iElf and Gothic Lolita style clothing, unusual hair colours, and long hair. And a lot of Beans's stuff.
 * Durp and general Mad Scientist/Supers tropes, played straight and played with alike.
 * Quinsar may have a thing for military stuff---which is justified, seeing as Quinny has genuine firsthand knowledge of it.
 * Ax Crazy - Almost everyone has at least one PC like this particularly Nevrmore.
 * Thryza wears this trope like a pair of favorite jeans. As does The Many.
 * Badass Labcoat - Many of Town's scientists are this, notable examples being Mad Scientists Chris Wogal (and his evil father) and Vocusta M'quaxi (who is a Hot Mad Undead Scientist).
 * Beginners Luck - PCs tend to be at their most powerful when first introduced.
 * There are exceptions - BR powered up significantly over time due to the threat of Draken.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment - Beans's musical plots are sort of this in relation to the rest of the universe.
 * Brain Bleach - Tobias. BR. Lust potion. 'Nuff said.
 * The crackfics that Beans once prompted people to imagine are even more so. Tobias/Carrie. Vocusta ANYONE/Greo. (Greo is a sort of silly demonic blob of goo that noms things.)
 * Broken Bird - Din, to a point that she refused to be raised again when she was killed. She was raised anyway.
 * Carrie, again and again.
 * Canon Dis Continuity - Taken to the logical extreme; everyone has their own view of the town and hardly any are consistent with one another.
 * The ACROverse is rather more consistent, fortunately.
 * Censor Box - In the Town's case, the Censor Box is a curtain that appears whenever characters have sex
 * City of Adventure
 * Clock Punk and Steampunk - Tiberius Bernard Anderson. The Artificer, Bitch!
 * Creator Provincialism - FireFox's Vulpania, Quinsar's Verethonia, Beans's Faeve, ChasTheMage's Britannia (not that one), et cetera.
 * Cloudcuckoolander - Among many...
 * Pesty is nearly a patron saint of this trope, along with being Grant's Genki Wife and a Strange Girl and Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny and... let's face it, Pesty is a relatively tropey character.
 * Death Is Cheap - Unless it ain't.
 * Deus Angst Machina - Many PCs have more then their fair share of angst.
 * Deus Sex Machina - Faye.
 * Angela. Ye gawds, Angela... her followers, the Angelicans, extend this.
 * Pixie used to do this a lot.
 * Carrie used to be this.
 * Beans took a look at his characters one day and said, "Well, shiver me shamrocks. Most of my characters are lesbians, emotionally scarred, and/or wacky." In self-parody, he created Carrie's followers called the Sable Guides, who are lesbian emo ditzes.
 * Dysfunction Junction - The Wogal family (and Vocusta, who's a close family friend) fits this quite well.
 * Eldritch Abomination - Draken. As well as Zee, Dyna, Avatar, and sorta Pesty, though they're generally nice. The Arch-Dadaist might be a less-nice one.
 * Emotionless Girl - Umbrella-Chan.
 * Everything Is an iPod In The Future - EDENCORP's look is very much this.
 * Fan Girl - ValdisRequiem.
 * Fantastic Racism - XENOS is this taken to the extremes. Alas, they exist no more.
 * Fetish Fuel - And how!
 * Five Five Five - (every phone number in Modern and Sci-Fi Town)
 * Fun With Acronyms - KNAVES, XENOS, GUFIPOLICE, CONARTIST, TAANPC, AMEN, PEACE, HATS, HALO, GLoG, WATCHTOWER, NO, etc.
 * Geographic Flexibility - Everything in the Town is only a few seconds' walk from Trog's.
 * The same seems to apply to the Dancing Fox Inn.
 * More to the point, distances between point A and point B are determined by the needs of the plot.
 * A God Am I - Most of the Town's many gods started as mortals. Effectively exemplified (and also subverted) in the Gent's backstory and current status, respectively.
 * Gorn - Some of the more intense posts fall to this level.
 * The Grim Reaper - Carrie (that is, Carrion the New Death Inaugurated) except sort of not. She is a death goddess, but a really, really nice one. She nurses "newlydead" babies at her own breast if their mothers aren't around, and enjoys helping souls get to their afterlives.
 * Gun Fu - Yamako Katsuragi's favorite fighting style with some Wuxia mixed in.
 * Half Human Hybrid
 * Hates Being Touched - Among others, Magtok and Margaret. Poor haptophobes.
 * Hot Amazon - Well, Hot valkyrie, actually, but Aesa and Vera.
 * Karma Houdini - Many players feel a little too attached to their villains and so they often get away without the punishment they deserve.
 * Alternately, some players give their villains Joker Immunity. Examples: Sszinyon, Jaric.
 * Lady of War - Din is among them.
 * Large Ham - All over the place. Chris, Rapakanesh, Magtok, Pesty...
 * Les Yay - Lesbians are EVERYWHERE. You can't spit without hitting one. Gay guys, on the other hand, are not so numerous.
 * Bi the Way would seem to apply even more. Exhibit A: Mercedes. (And Ari and Patty and Alice and Carrie...)
 * Little Miss Badass - Thryza seems to have been one in her youth.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Magical Land
 * Mama Bear - Most mothers in Town tend to be this. The fathers aren't all that different. Especially Tobias.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast - Carrie's full name was Carrion Mc Kaura (that's a negative-ish word [carrion is essentially roadkill] and two hard K sounds)... but later, after marrying Chris, she became Carrion Grimm. However, Carrie's not evil at all.
 * Neutral Good - All of iElf's non-evil characters, especially Din. Also, Carrion at times.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed - far more PCs than you'd think.
 * Nobody Poops - Actually, this has been averted at times. Usually whenever one needs it to happen.
 * Such as when, after becoming human, ex-devil Abigale bemoaned humanity's need to use the bathroom.
 * Physical God - Loads of them.
 * Play By Post Games
 * Psychopomp - Among others, the Psychopomp Pantheon Confederacy; its members are Cruelty, Anger, Despair, Psychosis, and Joy. (who died, was reincarnated as Carrie, and then Carrie became a death goddess, and then exploded, and is sort of half-Joy now.)
 * Reality Subtext - Din has a lot of this. offten also happens if a player is banned, or leaves.
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter - played straight with DeBunny, Mini-Maph, Atreyu the Masked Llama and Deadly the Raccoon, and subverted with District.
 * Rule of Cool
 * Rule of Funny
 * Surprisingly after the above Rule Thirty Four is averted by the infamous black curtains.
 * Soul Jar - Destro, being a lich.
 * Strange Girl - Pesty is a bit of this.
 * Strawman Political - The Nightwatchman embodies the liberal form while KNAVES takes the fascist form. Alas, they're gone...
 * Strong As They Need to Be - A Roleplay approach used by some players, scaling abilities to the situation.
 * Sweet Polly Oliver - Thryza sort of does this a lot. Her previous outfit was a man's three-piece suit that looked like it was stolen from the set of Public Enemies. Not a Bifauxnen due to not actually looking like a dude.
 * Walking the Earth
 * Walking Wasteland - Carrie was this.
 * The Woobie - Woobiedom is bestowed upon various characters at various times for various reasons. Some are built to be Woobies.
 * Carrie. She was cursed to harm everything her hands touched, and her parents were killed for it. She lived on the run, was nearly raped, was captured by hobgoblins as a living battery, then made it to HALO. There, she had oodles of relationship trouble, ended up being manipulated by an evil half-goddess, killed herself, came back as a death goddess, broke up with her lover, but got married to her! Yay! And then DIVORCE. Then she got hammered and slept with Chris (A dude?!) and PREGNANCY. However, since the two of them fell in in love and got engaged with the blessing of Carrie's ex-wife, she's getting better.
 * Raril. His player (who this troper personally knows) screws him around with an amazing amount of glee, and the end result is that you really just wanna hug him.
 * Summer, the catgirl who was recently freed from slavery, is this.
 * Din... just Din. Bushrager (the player ) recently stated that he'd love to giver her a hug every time something happens to her.
 * The World Tree - Yggdrasil repurposed for the "Zero Hour" plot as a five mile high tree that is responsible for absorbing souls of the recently deceased and renewing them into fresh ones to be re-entered into the lifestream.
 * Yamato Nadeshiko - A few. Din is a good example as she listens to what her adoptive family has to say, and is loyal to them, but also will not let them come to any harm.
 * You All Meet in An Inn - Trog's 'nuff said.
 * and also the Dancing Fox Inn.