Comic Noir Game
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If people want to get in direct contact with me personally in order to get the IP for the game, or to volunteer for a staff position (We're always looking for more staff!) You can contact me at Dayshark115(at)Gmail(dot)com. I check my email frequently and will get around to responding as quickly as I can. Though I would prefer people ask questions on this thread as opposed to filling my inbox or private messages with them.
Our game's wiki can be found HERE: http://4tmu.wikia.com Come on by and check things out. I'm updating it as often as I can with new information about the world of our game!
Hello everyone!So this is more a gauge for interest then anything else, I want to get a feel for how the community feels about the general concept, and my basic plans for this mush as well as answer whatever questions I can.
So as some people may be aware I've been working on a Superhero mush on and off in some capacity since mid 2000. There's been a good few false starts, restarts, and beginning from scratch along the way. However this time I'd really like to do my absolute best to stick with it come hell or high water to see for a fact that this game at the very least see's a closed beta by the end of the year.
The concept to put it simply is: What would happen if the golden age of heroes happened in World War 1 instead of 2?
The world's history is essentially the same as our own real world history up to April 15th 1912 when the RMS Titanic is saved from sinking by the worlds first caped crime-fighter, (currently it's been decided that hero was Superman, but that may change as work progresses on the timeline) following his daring rescue people around the world are inspired by his actions to take up costumes of their own to help protect the people around them.
The sensation spreads like wildfire to every corner of the globe and soon costumed criminals join the fray, wanting their own piece of the action. Governments in fear of the Superman and the costumed heroes begin top secret projects to create a superman of their own in the event he should go rogue, the successes in these projects combined with the actions of the 'minutemen', and the emergence of naturally born super humans known as mutants lead to the start of the Golden Age of Heroes. It was a time of wonderful technological advancement and social progress spurned on by the ever growing population of powered individuals born or created.
Warfare grew more devastating with super powered soldiers leveling entire cities, and sometimes entire nations in their fighting. Every nation had their own 'superman' ready to defend their borders.
Tensions raised as territories changed hands in the wake of battles more devastating then ever before, leading nations to band together to protect themselves eventually splitting between the Central and Allied powers, two massive alliances of nations dedicated to protecting their own. In July of 1914 open war was officially declared between the two mighty powers.
The war spanned the entire globe leading to massive destruction on all fronts as the worlds supermen fought to the death. The war ended in November of 1918 with one final massive devastating battle between the two sides, the second Battle of the Sambre. The Allied powers found themselves a Pyrrhic victory over the central powers leaving France in its entirety a no mans land and a majority of the super soldiers on both sides dead from the battle.
The game takes place several years after the final battle of The Great War in what was once the city of New York, now split into the twin cities of Gotham, (The Rotten Apple) and Metropolis (The City of Tomorrow).
The golden age of heroes has come to an end, and most of the world has been rendered completely uninhabitable from the conflict. Nations have risen and fallen giving way to many of the fictional nations found in DC and Marvel continuity, and a majority of the worlds population has perished either as soldiers, collateral, or from starvation due to completely collapsed infrastructure.
It's a dark and hopeless time for many, with a good deal considering it the end of days, but it proves fertile ground for a new generation of heroes to take up the mantels of the fallen, and bring fourth a new age of heroes to mankind!
Edit: We are looking for staff to help get this project rolling if anyone out there is interested in signing on for the project. Currently it's a two man team, myself and my coder. We've got a second coder who's willing to help if need be but he's more on standby then actively coding for the game.
We're mostly just looking for Theme Staff, Wiki Staff, and Builders to help make things move along a bit faster, we're also not going to turn away help from any coders out there that might want to join in on the fun, assuming they're at least mostly sane.
While the game WILL get finished and launched without those staff if it's needed, (I'm refusing to give up on this project this time around) it would go much more smoothly, and launch faster with more people around to help take a bit of the load off me. We'd also be fine with people who want to be app staff when it launches speaking up, or help staff, but we're still a good ways away from launch with just two of us working on the project.
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@mr-johnson I wonder if you might find it useful to draw some thematic/aesthetic inspiration from Mike Mignola's Baltimore comics, which imagine an apocalyptic WWI era (although it's due to vampires rather than superheroes).
At any rate, I would love to see this game happen. Its premise sounds intriguing, and I'm a sucker for pulp/Golden Age supers of any sort.
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@fatefan I will definitely see if I can't pick that comic up from somewhere I'm always looking for more inspiration.
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@mr-johnson Also, not to keep Mignola-fying this, but there's another book/comic series he did, involving "Joe Golem, occult detective," in which Manhattan began sinking in the 1920s and became very Venice-like. I mention this as you might find it interesting for maybe a neighborhood in Gotham/Metropolis as an effect of the Great War.
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For the curious we are looking at utilizing a modified variation on the Wild Talents rule set, while the point buy total hasn't been decided yet we're most likely going to utilize the standard 250 points for character creation. Players will at their choice be more then welcome to limit themselves to less points in order to make a more street level character, and may depending on how things go receive a bit of a reward in other areas for making a character that uses less points.
@fatefan That's another excellent idea and I'll look into the possibility of adding it to the grid if I can find a good spot for it. I might just use Old Gotham for that, have a partially sunken version of new york deep beneath the more modern Gotham that's got flooded roadways and the like.
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I hope no one minds me mentioning more potential sources for inspiration. I was just reminded of the Multiversity "Society of Superheroes" issue, which posits an alternate Earth populated by pulp heroes set after "The Great War." (However, the main focus of the story is interdimensional travel/warfare, so there's less world-building than one might desire.)
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@mr-johnson said in Comic Noir Game:
We are looking for staff to help get this project rolling if anyone out there is interested in signing on for the project. Currently it's a two man team, myself and my coder. We've got a second coder who's willing to help if need be but he's more on standby then actively coding for the game.
We're mostly just looking for Theme Staff, Wiki Staff, and Builders to help make things move along a bit faster, we're also not going to turn away help from any coders out there that might want to join in on the fun, assuming they're at least mostly sane.
While the game WILL get finished and launched without those staff if it's needed, (I'm refusing to give up on this project this time around) it would go much more smoothly, and launch faster with more people around to help take a bit of the load off me. We'd also be fine with people who want to be app staff when it launches speaking up, or help staff, but we're still a good ways away from launch with just two of us working on the project.@fatefan Now that is actually a source I've picked up already, I've been combing my way through everything from Gotham by Gasslight to the excellent Marvel Noir Imprint looking for inspiration for the game. I always welcome more potential inspiration to use for building this games theme, and like I said more then willing to welcome on new Theme/plot staff.
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Sorry to do a double post here but thought I'd give people skimming through this who might be interested an update on the state of the game.
Currently our dice rolling system is complete, we've managed to fully code in Hard Dice, Wild Dice (Our renamed version of Wiggle Dice from Wild Talents, which work slightly differently then the actual Wild Talent Wiggle dice, I'll explain further if people are interested) and of course Regular dice.
We're starting to drift from a literal translation from Wild Talents in order to make for a more MUSH friendly environment. This is coming in the form of some changes that may be a slight bit controversial but I think in the end they'll turn out for a much more enjoyable mushing experience.
A few of the big changes are the removal of willpower, experience points, and the point cost system.
Now the removal of point costs is just something we're testing out (No need to get to up in arms just yet). We're only trying it out for the early stages of testing and will most likely be adding it and possibly experience points back in later down the line to try and ensure most of our games characters are on roughly even footing. This all depends on the kind of feedback we're given by our testers and here on this thread.
As an aside even if we do re-add point costs and experience points the XP system will be used during the closed Alpha and Open Beta for testing purposes only. XP values will be reset upon full launch in order to avoid beta, or alpha testers having an unfair advantage over players who didn't get in on the ground floor so to say.
Another change we're testing out currently in the closed Alpha (Thank you Alpha testers! Seriously couldn't do this without you guys.) is the Adrenaline and Stamina system, which will effectively be taking the place willpower once served. In short the two stats function as a sort of 'health' and 'mana' bar respectively. Again if people want more specific details I can get into them but I don't want to make this post too needlessly long winded. (At least not more then it's already going to be.)
Our grid is rapidly taking shape, thanks to some kind donations of grid layouts from a couple of our testers. I'm still very much open to people donating room descriptions if they want to help out, and am definitely still looking for people willing to help me build the grid.
Theme and Rule files are mostly feature complete, and shouldn't change too much unless something big happens on game to warrant a modification of the rules.
The wiki is... let's just say a 'work in progress' to put it kindly. I'm not very good at building Wiki's but I'm doing what I can to remove outdated information from the most recent incarnation of this project and transfer our theme/rule files over. There is still a lot of work to be done on that front, and a dedicated Wiki-Wiz would be a godsend. Once it's in a state that I find acceptable I'll edit the initial post to throw in a link to it, however at the moment the Wiki is a fairly low priority. Still I work on it whenever I'm not working on some other facet of the game.
Edit: I'd also like some feedback on a little grid thing I added recently, Every outdoor room on grid has 3 ratings that go from 0-5 *'s with 0 being non existent and 5 being the other end of the spectrum. The ratings are Crime, Pollution, and Wealth, with a fourth not really a rating but more useful bit of info in the form of Zoning. Just wondering what people think of the idea, if people think it's worth the effort to give more info for people to work with.
Over all we're making better progress on this project then I ever could have imagined in my wildest dreams. This project has been my baby for the better part of the last 18 years and I'm finally seeing it grow and take shape thanks to the great people I've had the absolute pleasure of working with. I want to take this moment to give thanks to my Coder (Dude, this would never even be remotely possible without you man, I can't code my way out of a damn paper bag. Hell I'm still not sure it's possible even as we're managing to do it. One step at a time), the excellent alpha testers who've worked with us, and everyone who's sent me private messages asking about the game or sharing potential ideas to mix things up a bit, to make the game feel more a live.
Seriously this wouldn't be even remotely possible without you guys, and it warms my old heart to have the opportunity to work with each and every one of you. I know sometimes I can be an ass, and a lot of the time I'm not the sharpest knife in the crayon drawer, but I truly mean every word of thanks from the bottom of my heart. Thanks for helping an old man live out a dream.
A really simple dream he should have had the talent to achieve years ago, but still living the dream.
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@mr-johnson said in Comic Noir Game:
Sorry to do a double post here but thought I'd give people skimming through this who might be interested an update on the state of the game.
Thanks for the update! Also never worry about double posting to tell us about cool new games and features; in a sea of cat GIF memes actual content is always welcome.
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@mr-johnson said in Comic Noir Game:
Edit: I'd also like some feedback on a little grid thing I added recently, Every outdoor room on grid has 3 ratings that go from 0-5 *'s with 0 being non existent and 5 being the other end of the spectrum. The ratings are Crime, Pollution, and Wealth, with a fourth not really a rating but more useful bit of info in the form of Zoning. Just wondering what people think of the idea, if people think it's worth the effort to give more info for people to work with.
These are great when players and staff actually use them, and then it doesn't matter whether you make it a numeric index system (which is easier to read at a glance) or make it part of the room desc, or tuck it away in +views on the room, or newsfiles about Zones, or whatever. If they aren't used or enforced either then you just wasted time and effort.
All of the best MUs I ever played on had these types of rankings on at least some IC rooms (or every IC zone, with certain rooms getting much higher ranks than others such as "under the bridge" in a bad part of town getting a high crime rating that guaranteed you'd end up in an NPC timestop if you hung around/idled there or if you and a friend scened there, or other locations getting you harassed by NPC police or private security if staff noticed you on +where).
I started out saying I'm not sure what the Pollution rating specifically would do for you but then I realized that Even the Pollution rating's kind of a cool idea, because even if Captain Planet or the solar-powered Nuclear Man from Superman IV aren't playable characters, somebody might come up with an OC or PrP idea that can be affected by it or where it can be used as a foil. But Crime/Security/Police Patrol, Wealth/Poverty, and that type of per-room or per-zone ranking system have been making MUSHes awesome since the 1990s so I say run with it.
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@Prototart Now that comic is exactly the kind of thing I need for inspiration! Thanks a million for that one man, I'm going to pick that up right away and give it a look through for some new ideas.
@nemesis To give you a general idea of why the pollution rating is even there: There is not a single room on the Gotham side of the grid where pollution is less then **, (Fairly light pollution, but I wouldn't recommend drinking the river-water. Might get the occasional bad smell.) with several rooms getting as high as ***** (At that level the sky is literally blacked out by smog creating a perpetual night.)
This is to represent the overproduction of factories to keep up with demands following the destruction of so many of America's factories in the war, as well as the complete lack of any regulations on emissions or waste disposal. Gotham is a smog filled city of darkness where the reason it always seems like the weather is terrible and it's dark and gloomy on even the best of days is due to walls of factories constantly churning out all kinds of pollution into the air and water.
On the other side of the coin there are no rooms (Yet, and I don't exactly plan there to be unless player actions alter the grid.) in Metropolis with more then ** in pollution, and most rooms there have 0 or *. I feel that this helps show the stark contrast between the Dark City, and The City of Tomorrow.
I am actually very glad you decided to give me this feedback though! It really does give me the motivation to keep adding these to rooms as I redesc my way through the grid. After all it doesn't take that much extra effort to come up with the basic levels for what one can expect in an area.
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Well guys it's that time of the day again: Update time!
We've been steadily working on improving and refining our custom combat system, progress so far is fairly steady and I've got every faith that it won't be too long before we can properly put it through its paces. Our current goal is to have the combat system feature complete in the next two to three weeks.
Character generation is fairly feature complete from a write-up standpoint, and is making slow but steady progress from a coding front. At current rather then giving a standard points level that everyone uses then cutting away from that pool we've instead simply added a cap to the maximum amount of points you can spend and a series of smaller categories that will give you an idea of just how powerful your character is. The categories are:Normal Human(40-100pts), Exceptional Human (100-200pts), and Powerful Human (200-500pts). No player character will have more then 500pts, this is going to be a hard cap. Players of wild talents should recognize these names as those of the first 3 power levels out of the six the game provides, the other three rankings will be reserved for event characters only, and not see regular play by anyone. The names of the different categories should give you a general idea of what concepts would fit into which brackets. Commissioner Gordon would fit into Normal Human, whereas The shadow would be an exceptional human, and Superman would of course be a powerful superhuman. Now the flip-side of this is that we will NOT be adding back in XP instead players will be able to upgrade their characters as much as they want, within that hard point limit. Of course every upgrade you make will need to be reviewed and approved by staff, to avoid potential absurdity. Like Batman gaining telekinesis.
We've managed to get our +finger system up and running for the most part. You can actually set all the basic information that describes your character now. It's just one more important step towards opening up full and proper character generation for our alpha testers! We do need to do some fixing on the formatting, and clear some... interesting... bugs out of the way that I'm not entirely sure how they even exist, but once they're ironed out of the mix we should be completely golden on that front.
The decision has been made that we're going to, for the duration of the Closed Alpha and eventual Open Beta, limit our players to one character total. Now I know this is going to anger some people but I think it's honestly the best course for the overall health of our game and keeps people from yoinking up all the good characters before we have a chance to launch. When we do officially launch we're going to have a three character alt limit. The idea is to allow people to app one villain one hero and one original character, but they can use the 3 slots however they deem fit.
The wiki has seen a great deal of improvement over the last few days with a majority of the outdated information purged. Currently it's just down to transferring our rules and themes posts to the wiki for easy purview of people who don't yet have access to the private alpha. After we get all the data transferred over from our mushside we'll focus on adding brand new information like group histories and fun theme information to help you guys get a feel for the world. Expect to see the link to the wiki added here in the next few days or weeks at most depending on how far my drive carries me.
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Well we'll well. This sounds interesting.
So could one possible start out a normal human in th e nor setting and work towards super powerful human?
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@songtress That is exactly the plan we're working on. We understand fully that eventually the direction the players take the game may take us away from the gritty low power feel we're going for, and are willing to accept that to an extent. (Gotham will always be a haven for crime villainy and good ol noir fun.) We want to allow people to grow as characters, not too rapidly of course we're not likely to approve two updates to a characters powerset in the span of a month. We'd like to see the improvement be a very gradual process that takes people up the ranks of our power scale.
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Aww aliens are restricted. (I mean I had an idea but that kinda clips it but that's OK)
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@songtress Honestly they aren't going to be forever, just to start us out. A few of the restrictions will be lifted as the story progresses. The main reason they're restricted is that the ones that do land on earth are captured by CHECKMATE, and the ones that refuse to follow their 'rules and restrictions' are forcibly captured by their own group of powered people and shoved into indefinite isolation in the depths of the Genosha Bay Super-Max Prison Complex, hidden miles beneath the facility (The main prison is a complex that houses the worst, and most powerful mutant offenders). The same thing happens to aliens that reveal themselves as aliens, the information they send out is sanitized through disinformation campaigns and they're captured before being locked in the depths of Genosha Bay never to be seen or heard from again. We're planning on down the line running an event chain where the prison is assaulted by players, and the aliens are broken out revealing the cold harsh truth of what the American government has been doing to Aliens around the world. Most the restrictions are just there till we get off of our feet and get stable if I'm honest with you.
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@mr-johnson said in Comic Noir Game:
To give you a general idea of why the pollution rating is even there: There is not a single room on the Gotham side of the grid where pollution is less then **, (Fairly light pollution, but I wouldn't recommend drinking the river-water. Might get the occasional bad smell.) with several rooms getting as high as ***** (At that level the sky is literally blacked out by smog creating a perpetual night.) ...
On the other side of the coin there are no rooms (Yet, and I don't exactly plan there to be unless player actions alter the grid.) in Metropolis with more then ** in pollution, and most rooms there have 0 or *. I feel that this helps show the stark contrast between the Dark City, and The City of Tomorrow.Does the Pollution and Crime ratings have an effect on the system?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede It's more to give people an idea of what they're working with, however we're in the process of testing out a potential power flaw that would make your power weaker/stronger depending on the level of pollution in the area. Mostly it's just there to provide helpful tips on what's typical for roleplay in an area.
Edit the first: Actually now that I think about it crime ratings and the flipside of them the new 'police presence' rating WILL effect certain powers that allow you to call in NPC assistants to help you in a scene. You can call more criminals to help you in an area with high crime, more cops to help you in an area with high police presence.
Edit The second: Here's the flaws/extra's that are effected/effect those little ranks:
Environmentally Linked (-1 to -4)
Your power is directly impacted by the environment around you. An attribute, or multiple attributes, (Crime, Wealth, Pollution, or Police Presence. Which is effected is decided at chargen, and should be noted in your description) of the room you're in directly effects how well your power functions.At a room rating of 0 the associated power does not function at all. At a * you operate with a -3 to your dice pool for all actions associated with this power. At ** it's -2. At *** there's no effect at **** it's +2, and at ***** it's +3. If you want you can have the scale operate in reverse order but it must be noted in your powers description at chargen.
Note: When taking away dice this removes hard dice first, then regular, and finally wild dice. When adding dice it only adds regular dice. This will not allow you to roll more then 10 dice, but CAN allow you to have a dice pool higher then 10. If a power has this flaw and the Booster extra, Booster takes effect AFTER the modification is calculated.
You can take this multiple times, each time selecting a different room attribute to be effected by. If a room doesn't have any attributes listed use the attached rooms attributes, or ask the person running the scene.
Environmental Impact (+2 or +1 per rank)
When you use your power it effects the environment around you temporarily. This CAN NOT be used with Permanent or Endless (Because that would mean we'd have to alter the grid rooms every time someone used the power.), but can be used with duration. When you take this extra choose one attribute, (Crime, Wealth, Pollution, or Police Presence) for each rank you have in this your power can raise or lower (Decide which during chargen) that attribute by one * to a minimum of 0 and a max of ***** every time you use your power.This effect wears off at the end of your turn, or the end of the current scene if you take it with duration. If it happens every time you use a power and you can't control it, the extra only costs +1 point per die.
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@mr-johnson Is there any freely available version of the Wild Talents rules, by any chance? I suppose I should begin familiarizing myself with it...
