X-Men Utopia MUX

[Prototart]

this basically is all my fault so yeah I'll be happy to help

[Collective]

Did I see you talking about throwing FASERIP into the mix? Because I'm pretty sure it would be an Amazing (50) fit for an X-Men game.

[Lithium]

@collective FASERIP is awesome, but how do you do OC's with it? Random rolls? Converting it to a point system?

[Collective]

@lithium There are several point-based versions of the tabletop's character generation available. Or just let people pick what they want, with an understanding that staff might veto it.

The lovely thing about FASERIP is that it gives a baseline for what a character can do that allows instant comparisons with famous FCs.

We can look at the rules and see that Captain America has, for example, Rm (30) Strength and Am (50) Fighting (before his crazy level of martial arts talents that give him +1 shift for just about everything).

If somebody apps a character who is the equal or better than the big name FCs in every category, that's a bit of an alarm bell, for instance.

[Ghost]

Any wiki mavens out there?

I'll reach out to you in PMs later, ZombieG.

[Bobotron]

@collective
I think FASERIP got mentioned and there was more push for MHRPG (the Cortex one), which has a similar modeling ability as well.

[ixokai]

@bobotron said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

@collective
I think FASERIP got mentioned and there was more push for MHRPG (the Cortex one), which has a similar modeling ability as well.

I'm curious how superheros get quantified into stats. They're so... wildcard, they can do anything. I've seen some systems (Champions?) that try to quantify any sort of power into a point thing and while those are cool, even it fell short on the one game I used it on.

I'm not suggesting it can't be done, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it.

On m1963, for example, my OC mutant is a gravity manipulator. His power, essentially, is to touch something and determine a) what is 'down', and b) how strong (or weak) 'down' is.

With this he can do some crazy things. Run on walls, throw cars at people, fly, lift things that are way heavier then he should be able to lift ('down' is 'up' at 10% of 1G, for example).

I can't quite imagine how to frame that on a game with stats.

[Bobotron]

@ixokai

Well, with MHRP, you'd have your power quantified as dice to roll. You'd pose, say, 'Attempting to grab Wolverine by the arm, the Great Gravitator reaches out with his gravity-control power against the feisty, hairy mutant, trying to increase the gravity to slow him down and halt his chase of Great Gravitator's allies' Then you roll appropriate dice, and Wolverine rolls opposite. If you get more total, you get your reasonable outcome. 'Despite his mutant abilities and enhanced reflexes, Logan snarls out an expletive, followed by a 'bub' as gravity pulls him to a near-standstill' and deal some Stress to Wolverine, making him closer to being out of the fight (completely immobilized, KOed due to gravity drawing all the blood from his brain, etc.)

It's essentially a 'yes/no' or 'pass/fail' to the normal posing methods on a hero MU*.

ETA: I misread. You quantify the power as a power level, from d6 at a 'basic' level, to d8 as an expert/enhanced , d10 as master/superhuman and d12 as godlike.

[bored]

It definitely gets hard once you move outside the realm of 'X is this strong, this tough, and this good at fite'

It's part of the reason why I think it would be interesting to see a game that limited the lulzy reality manipulators and other god tier chars and stuck to the ones with more clearly identifiable, compact powersets. Given a lot of reaction here, though, that might well do better as a purely OC game, given the 'need' to have certain FCs available even when they're demonstrably 'broken' in the sense of trying to have a game where people can all participate.

[Prototart]

@ixokai said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I'm curious how superheros get quantified into stats. They're so... wildcard, they can do anything. I've seen some systems (Champions?) that try to quantify any sort of power into a point thing and while those are cool, even it fell short on the one game I used it on.

When it's an OC place and you're building chars with that system usually it works fine cus you're creating them with that system in mind

But with FCs, I dunno, I've never seen it work and tbh I can't really remember a game that used system stuff that really went anywhere (tho again I was gone forever)

I like traits - like, yeah, the whole "it shows you know the char well enough to place them" thing was bullshit and "well just keep making them more and more complicated and detailed that'll work" just made shit worse by running off anybody who didn't want to write three pages for a single power but traits aren't bad as an idea and I think there's a happy medium between "Can you fight Hulk? Didn't think so!" and "(detailed analysis of stepping discs as folds in space time created with zero point energy)"

[ixokai]

@prototart said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I think there's a happy medium between "Can you fight Hulk? Didn't think so!" and "(detailed analysis of stepping discs as folds in space time created with zero point energy)"

Wait, someone on a traits game asked for how powers WORKED? Man, that way leads to madness. It works because comics.

That's you exaggerating for comedic effect... right?

Traits, imho, should make it understandable what is possible and what isn't, without having to go into a lot of detail.

[Prototart]

I absolutely remember places where you pretty much were expected to come up with bs reasons as to how your powers worked rather than just what they did, yeah

[ZombieGenesis]

I remember the games that required thousands upon thousands of words on even the most simply powered characters. I always found it to be an exercise of self-indulgence (either on the staff side, look how elitist we are, or on the player's end, look how much I can write on my favorite character!) Either way I never once thought it helped keep bad players out of the game. I can, however, remember countless instances where RP scenes broke down into bickering about how a power or ability was worded (or was not worded). Essay style traits, in my opinion, do nothing but prolong character generation.

I like using RPG systems because they work. You can the same info from essay style traits at a glance, saving a ton of time both in character generation and in play. Marvel Heroic is about as basic as you can get (though I personally prefer FASERIP) and I think will work fairly well for what I'm looking for.

Of course mine is just one opinion.

[GamerNGeek]

FASERIP is available for free on the web. One could post every bit of relevant information on the news/wiki and not have to worry about copyright.

Marvel Heroic is not only NOT free, but is no longer sold or available since Margaret Weis let the license lapse.

One of these is the clearly superior choice for doing an internet game with people who don't want to spend money.

[Lithium]

FASERIP actually quantifies comics really rather well, there are ways you could do it, the only part of FASERIP that doesn't really work, is it's impossible for villains or anti-heroes to advance or develop stunts without the GM saying 'Have some villain points'.

[ZombieGenesis]

I used a variant of FASERIP on a Masters of the Universe game that was modified just a bit. Karma was constant and could be spent during scenes as normal and just replenished in between scenes. We also largely did away with the chart options and just said you gain points for decent successes. A single point for yellow and two points for red. You could use those points for various things like increasing the effect attribute (so that someone with an AM Strength could actually hurt someone with an AM Invulnerability) or creating stunts for powers or what not. We felt it worked really well but there was just 5 of us.

[The Tree of Woe]

@zombiegenesis said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I remember the games that required thousands upon thousands of words on even the most simply powered characters. I always found it to be an exercise of self-indulgence (either on the staff side, look how elitist we are, or on the player's end, look how much I can write on my favorite character!) Either way I never once thought it helped keep bad players out of the game. I can, however, remember countless instances where RP scenes broke down into bickering about how a power or ability was worded (or was not worded). Essay style traits, in my opinion, do nothing but prolong character generation.
I like using RPG systems because they work. You can the same info from essay style traits at a glance, saving a ton of time both in character generation and in play. Marvel Heroic is about as basic as you can get (though I personally prefer FASERIP) and I think will work fairly well for what I'm looking for.
Of course mine is just one opinion.

I feel like having pertinent character details up on a wiki (along with links to more in-depth backgrounds) and a character sheet is a superior choice to a written app. The 'application' should be a player talking to staff about the character and what they want to do with them and then getting the nod. Staff working with an OC to work out their background and build their sheet is essentially the same as reviewing an app anyway.

[Prototart]

@zombiegenesis said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I remember the games that required thousands upon thousands of words on even the most simply powered characters.

Yeah, like, the thing about stepping discs and zero-point energy - that's shit I actually had to write on a game once plus a ton of other just absolute nonsense about how Limbo intersected timespace on fifth dimensional axes or something like that and

It was basically just a total word salad but it was LONG and it was SUPER COMPLICATED so it meant I was a good player somehow

[ixokai]

@the-tree-of-woe said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

I feel like having pertinent character details up on a wiki (along with links to more in-depth backgrounds) and a character sheet is a superior choice to a written app. The 'application' should be a player talking to staff about the character and what they want to do with them and then getting the nod. Staff working with an OC to work out their background and build their sheet is essentially the same as reviewing an app anyway.

I'm confused. How is that not a written app? Someone had to write what the powers and limits are on the wiki. I have a huge aversion to anything that feels like an "interview" or "audition", and I don't per se know at app time what I wanna do with a character. Sometimes that depends on dynamics of the team/people.

[scourge]

Wouldn't staff having to sit down and talk to players about characters they want to app take longer than just filling out an application and slow down people getting to play?