TEAM B!

[Morzone]

That description just sends us back to square one though... by definition a team is a bunch of different people coming together for a common goal. Just saying "A bunch of people allying" Doesn't actually describe anything about the group. The grunt plan has a base in the mainstream games (The actual grunts from the actual teams) So it gives us a face and appearance, but its not so strict that we can't be creative with it. There obviously wasn't an inter-team grunt alliance, so we can pioneer our own ideas in that respect.

Essentially we're the Pokemon version of Spartacus' army. All the rejects and front-line fighters no one really cared for coming together to show we're not as insignificant as everyone once thought.

Or if you prefer, it's like in Strike/Union movies where the low working class rebel and show that the big money makers wouldn't be able to do anything without them.

[Neo Emolga]

That description just sends us back to square one though... by definition a team is a bunch of different people coming together for a common goal. Just saying "A bunch of people allying" Doesn't actually describe anything about the group. The grunt plan has a base in the mainstream games (The actual grunts from the actual teams) So it gives us a face and appearance, but its not so strict that we can't be creative with it. There obviously wasn't an inter-team grunt alliance, so we can pioneer our own ideas in that respect.

Essentially we're the Pokemon version of Spartacus' army. All the rejects and front-line fighters no one really cared for coming together to show we're not as insignificant as everyone once thought.

Or if you prefer, it's like in Strike/Union movies where the low working class rebel and show that the big money makers wouldn't be able to do anything without them.

Well, I've been thinking it over some more and we definitely can't use the grunts from the mainstream games. Not only to the goals of Team Aqua and Team Magma conflict, but the others don't translate well into an RP where everyone's a Pokémon. Team Plasma's strategy of trying to get everyone to release their Pokémon wouldn't work for this. Team Rocket would just have to be a band of thieves since they wouldn't be able to steal Pokémon. Or they'd be kidnapping them instead. The other thing is you'd have to establish reason as to why the grunts left their previous organization to join this one. Did they fail or were they kicked and now they joined this band of outcasts? Everyone would have to come up with a story as to how and why that happened. The other thing is I'd have to establish origin base for all those teams in the RP as well. I'd die a little inside struggling and trying to figure out just how to make that possible without it going all weird.

I was really bending more toward Death's Spook's idea of us coming from different walks of life and being specialists in our own special things, but coming together as one for a common cause. Problem with both of these ideas is they're abstract and they don't have any theme to it. How would you put this into a form you can visualize? What would you use to represent the team? That's something we need at the moment. The other thing is now that we're banding together, what is the goal? What would we strive to do and what would likely happen if we won? The other thing is in the RP, teams will actually be more on the wealthier side than on the low-income working class. I honestly don't think asking to start off with a financial disadvantage instead is a good idea. Besides asking to have some crippling disability, that's probably the second worst thing you could have going for you in that context.

Here's how I'd try to retranslate this into a Pokémon context.

Let's go with normal-type Pokémon instead. So many people overlook them. And yet, bam, they're capable of amazing things. In many cases they can be underdogs but when used right, they're amazing and show everyone just how capable they are even though they can't harness the elements as well as some other Pokémon can or don't have the kinds of psychic powers others do. But even if you're a Pokémon that has a second typing of something besides normal, there's still this sense of unity and belonging in relying on your skills more than your types or what elements you can harness.

In the RP context, our weaponry and tactics consist of things we build as a result of our handicrafts. If you want a sense of working class, we build a ton of things with our hands/paws/fins. Very blue collar. We're technicians, welders, engineers, mechanics, inventors, craftsmen, mechanists, and things like that, and because of that, our technology and weaponry is more beefed up because we're the artisans when it comes to things like that. We've lived lives that depended on us usually not having that go-to element of fire, electricity, or water or something like that, so we've come up with other ways to work around it and even rise up against those that do.

[Death's Spook]

Let's go with normal-type Pokémon instead. So many people overlook them. And yet, bam, they're capable of amazing things. In many cases they can be underdogs but when used right, they're amazing and show everyone just how capable they are even though they can't harness the elements as well as some other Pokémon can or don't have the kinds of psychic powers others do. But even if you're a Pokémon that has a second typing of something besides normal, there's still this sense of unity and belonging in relying on your skills more than your types or what elements you can harness.

In the RP context, our weaponry and tactics consist of things we build as a result of our handicrafts. If you want a sense of working class, we build a ton of things with our hands/paws/fins. Very blue collar. We're technicians, welders, engineers, mechanics, inventors, craftsmen, mechanists, and things like that, and because of that, our technology and weaponry is more beefed up because we're the artisans when it comes to things like that. We've lived lives that depended on us usually not having that go-to element of fire, electricity, or water or something like that, so we've come up with other ways to work around it and even rise up against those that do.

I think limiting what Pokemon we can have by type is needlessly restrictive, especially since both Morzone and I (the main RPers other than possibly Scytherwolf) each have characters designed and none of them are normal type. We were actually discussing the problem over Skype, and we came up with something sufficiently thematic while not being so restrictive as to be unfun:

Basically, we're all traitors.

For one reason or another, every single one of our characters has committed some kind of betrayal or something similar. Socially, we're all outcast: no one wants to trust us, and we're pretty much the only people who wouldn't want to immediately cut off each others' heads. Whether it's a noblewoman who killed her father, a warrior who betrayed a cult, or a berserker who flipped out at a really wrong time, everyone has skeletons both in the closet and out in the open. This even lets us keep a financial advantage if we're a bit unscrupulous about it, and lets people of all sorts of backgrounds unite because the alternative to hanging together is hanging separately.

[Neo Emolga]

I think limiting what Pokemon we can have by type is needlessly restrictive, especially since both Morzone and I (the main RPers other than possibly Scytherwolf) each have characters designed and none of them are normal type. We were actually discussing the problem over Skype, and we came up with something sufficiently thematic while not being so restrictive as to be unfun:

Basically, we're all traitors.

For one reason or another, every single one of our characters has committed some kind of betrayal or something similar. Socially, we're all outcast: no one wants to trust us, and we're pretty much the only people who wouldn't want to immediately cut off each others' heads. Whether it's a noblewoman who killed her father, a warrior who betrayed a cult, or a berserker who flipped out at a really wrong time, everyone has skeletons both in the closet and out in the open. This even lets us keep a financial advantage if we're a bit unscrupulous about it, and lets people of all sorts of backgrounds unite because the alternative to hanging together is hanging separately.

Hmm, this is true, probably better not to limit ourselves after all. As for the idea behind the team, rebels in the truest sense seems pretty good to form a group of exiles and outcasts that have banded together. Some of us could be criminals, traffickers, smugglers, and anyone else that has done something deemed to be illegal.

The big question now is... what to call ourselves?

[Morzone]

It should be something with "rebel" in it. I honestly keep thinking of the song "rebel Yell" when I imagine the team. Like "rebel nation" or something similar.

Or maybe I'm just throwing out random ideas now

Something like "The exilelites" ? Exile and Elite put together. Since we're exiles who banded together to make it big.

[Morzone]

It should be something with "rebel" in it. I honestly keep thinking of the song "rebel Yell" when I imagine the team. Like "rebel nation" or something similar.

Or maybe I'm just throwing out random ideas now

Something like "The exilelites" ? Exile and Elite put together. Since we're exiles who banded together to make it big.

[Neo Emolga]

Death's Spook mentioned "The Unspoken" to me in an earlier VM. I think something along that or "The Unspoken Exiles" would be pretty sweet.

"Exilelites" just doesn't really grow on me, sorry. Someone could read that as "Exile Lites" or "Exil Elites" as they try to break down the word to get to it's inner meaning. I'll admit I kind of read it as "Exile Lites" at first as I didn't know what it was supposed to be until I continued reading.

[Morzone]

I'm not surprised, really. "exilites" was something I thought up on the spot anyway.

I'm not really sure about "Unspoken." It makes it sound like we're trying to stay silent and out of the way or something. Something a little louder/bolder would be better for a competition like this.

[Death's Spook]

I don't know about Team Name, but I propose that, in the RP, the territory we have should be called The Outskirts. Basically, the worst slums and factory territory with air smoggy and things like that, where the most downtrodden people lived. In summary, a place where even a band of traitors could be seen as a group to rally around. Income would be generated by the fact that, given that we control a number of dirty bit important factories, the prices of the goods sold by said factories would have significantly up. In conjunction with with significant... resource liberation on the part of our group, and we'd be financially well off like the other two teams and the Black Lotus.

[Neo Emolga]

I don't know about Team Name, but I propose that, in the RP, the territory we have should be called The Outskirts. Basically, the worst slums and factory territory with air smoggy and things like that, where the most downtrodden people lived. In summary, a place where even a band of traitors could be seen as a group to rally around. Income would be generated by the fact that, given that we control a number of dirty bit important factories, the prices of the goods sold by said factories would have significantly up. In conjunction with with significant... resource liberation on the part of our group, and we'd be financially well off like the other two teams and the Black Lotus.

Yep, Black Lotus would hate us for taking away a bunch of their more important industrial areas and cutting off a vast supply of factory supply routes. In terms of weapons and machines, a lot of them could be makeshift and they might look very much like the ones in Mad Max: Fury Road and Borderlands. Brutish, rugged, heavy war machines with lots of armor and weaponry, but still very effective even they they would look very crude and brutal. Meanwhile, the outside surrounding landscape of our area could very much be like the desert and badlands setting with those heavy industrial sectors that have now pledged loyalty to the team cause. Beyond Black Lotus, Gracidea Order would hate us for being a pollution and metallic cesspool of industry.

A team name with something to do with metal, raiders, ravagers, or something like that would fit quite well. Boneyard Gang, Dreadnought Legion, Steel Scavengers, Ravager Brotherhood, or anything along those lines sound perfectly badass. And I would happily make many dark, metallic-themed banners and stuff like that for this beastly war machine. >:D