In development: pure OC superhero game
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@thatguythere I'd love to be able to offer both because I think that'd make for a more entertaining chargen experience, but I think that'd take some bribing of a coder, I imagine it'd be a fair hassle. Probably easiest to just have the point buy, and if someone is stuck then they can always roll die on their own. I've gotten my hands on the ICON book now, so am perusing.
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@kay said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
@thatguythere @Lithium - I'm looking specifically at this one https://greenroninstore.com/products/icons-superpowered-roleplaying-the-assembled-edition since one of my friends brought it up as a promising alternative. I'm not familiar with it at all, but it sounds like you are both familiar with it. Do you think it would work well for a MU*?
Yeah that's the one I was thinking of that is lower powered. I almost used it for a project I was working on, it was a good system that I think would be ok with a few tweaks.
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@kay said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
@thatguythere I'd love to be able to offer both because I think that'd make for a more entertaining chargen experience,
I have been on a d+d mush that offered the choice of taking a set array of scores to put into stats or the random roll method, so it is doable but not sure how much of a hassle it would be on the code end of things.
And some people are very anti-random roll c-gen so just random would likely drive away players even if that is my preferred method. -
Would love to see a game like this happen!
Would love it even more if it's M&M3E!
Would even put up with the inevitable army of DC/Marvel expat ripoffs and furries to give it a shot!
Noir is awesome as balls, imo, making a bunch of different-themed 'neighborhoods' would detract from the game. Even if the game ends up small, it's better to focus your players, especially in the beginning. All-OC Superheroes probably isn't going to be a huge draw, at least not until word-of-mouth gets around and a lot of active advertising. Later, as/if you get more players, you could expand to include more 'themes'.
Just my two pennies!
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The main reason I don't do comics games is because of FCs, so I would totally give this a try!
I think I would prefer a modern setting over anything historical. Partly because I might not want to deal with the bigotry, even if this is somewhat mitigated by the fact I'd be playing some kind of super character. Mostly because I'd just have an easier time of it not having to worry about major anachronisms.
And, really, noir can be pretty diverse if that's what you're going with.
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I say if you are going to have super-powers do it in future or even better on a new planet that humanity started to colonize but something about the world started mutating people and giving them powers. If you are going to be OC, then make the world OC as well.
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@carex said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
I say if you are going to have super-powers do it in future or even better on a new planet that humanity started to colonize but something about the world started mutating people and giving them powers. If you are going to be OC, then make the world OC as well.
Bleargh. I wish we could still downvote.
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IMO, the potential pitfall of an OC world is the amount of explaining staff have to do for people to get even a halfway decent gasp of it and even then they're probably still going to do things that are iffy-to-gamebreaking without meaning to because their conception of the setting is different to Staffs without a lot of active policing.
And while that's true of Earth or Earth Analogue settings to a degree, at least you can expect people to be familiar with the basic rules and history of the world. And if they're not, there's always google.
This is, of course, not to say 'don't do it'. Just 'doing it is going to be a LOT more work'.
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@carex said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
I say if you are going to have super-powers do it in future or even better on a new planet that humanity started to colonize but something about the world started mutating people and giving them powers. If you are going to be OC, then make the world OC as well.
Well, of course the setting is going to be original too, but superheroic mutants in space sounds like a different game than I'm after. Why not set that up yourself? The more OC games we have the better, I say. I'm pretty happy with my compromise of having a modern day or near future in a metropolis on an Earth pretty close to ours. A friend of mine brought up the idea of pocket dimensions, which offers the option of having a little "1940s in a bottle" option. I like that idea a lot, and could expand that to offer those other flavors like horror and the like, while still having everyone be in the same place.
@Kairos - As mentioned above, I'm not going to go with a scifi setting here. Earth Analogue for sure.
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@kairos said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
IMO, the potential pitfall of an OC world is the amount of explaining staff have to do for people to get even a halfway decent gasp of it and even then they're probably still going to do things that are iffy-to-gamebreaking without meaning to because their conception of the setting is different to Staffs without a lot of active policing.
And while that's true of Earth or Earth Analogue settings to a degree, at least you can expect people to be familiar with the basic rules and history of the world. And if they're not, there's always google.
This is, of course, not to say 'don't do it'. Just 'doing it is going to be a LOT more work'.
Not necessarily. You can have an OC game set in an already established world if you really wanted to. Something happened, all the established heroes had to lose their powers/die in order to defeat it. Now a new generation is rising up, etc.
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@lithium I would say no need for that, I mean unless there is some mechanic where heroes/villains inherently get more powerful over time, why not allow somebody to play... I do not know, a 40 year old veteran hero who is just new to the area/organisation the game is focused on?
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@packrat Not to speak for @Lithium but I think it's less about young heroes specifically than it is to remove whatever FCs are in that universe out of the equation. So the "new generation" is more about "not the Justice League" or "yes, even the Champions have been neutralized, so [thought-they-were-retired OC] must try to keep peace on the streets"
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@lithium said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
@kairos said in Interest check: pure OC superhero game:
IMO, the potential pitfall of an OC world is the amount of explaining staff have to do for people to get even a halfway decent gasp of it and even then they're probably still going to do things that are iffy-to-gamebreaking without meaning to because their conception of the setting is different to Staffs without a lot of active policing.
And while that's true of Earth or Earth Analogue settings to a degree, at least you can expect people to be familiar with the basic rules and history of the world. And if they're not, there's always google.
This is, of course, not to say 'don't do it'. Just 'doing it is going to be a LOT more work'.
Not necessarily. You can have an OC game set in an already established world if you really wanted to. Something happened, all the established heroes had to lose their powers/die in order to defeat it. Now a new generation is rising up, etc.
I'm not going to do that, but it'd be interesting to see. I think the main problem is that both DC and Marvel universes have some FCs/NPCs where you can't really kill them that way. So sure, there's no Batman or Wolverine, but there's still all these other pre-established characters. And then you have things like the Phoenix Force. On the other hand, maybe that stuff doesn't really matter as long as there's a clean slate for the heroes your players will be playing down on Earth. If someone were to make a game like that I'd certainly check it out.
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Been pondering the setting some more. I'm not going to go with a "this one thing happened and that's where all superpowered humans come from" solution, though I've played on games with that in the past and enjoyed it. I am going to offer a couple of ideas that more than one PC might have gotten their powers from, though it will in no way be mandatory. But I think a shared power origin could help fuel RP hooks for those that opt to go that way. Maybe have there be some particular evil corporation out there that likes to try and create mutants for them to control, standard stuff, maybe a super villain that likes to create robots/summon elsedimensional beings/whatsit, an unknown genetic strain that sometimes becomes dominant and changes the human into an Advanced Human, the destined wielder of the Force of Blah. Etc, etc. Probably somewhere along the lines of five to seven or so more common sources, and if none of them fits the player can just create whatever suits them.
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@kay Important though, would this shared origin let me do something weird like play a dragon? This is key because I desire to play somebody who can respond to criticism with something along the lines of
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@kay Are you familiar with the Wild Cards anthology series? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Cards
Seems like it could be a point of inspiration for the broadly shared origin event/type.
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@packrat it's a bit early yet for me to say yes or no to any specific concepts, but if you are serious about the question, I have a return question: why would a dragon be fighting crime in a big city? And would it be in permanent dragon form, or are we talking shapeshifter?
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@fatefan Yes, I love the Wild Cards series. Astro City is another favorite. I definitely want that "quilt" effect of a vast array of different hero characters working (more or less) together.
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@kay I figure any kind of dragon doing things in a big city would be shapeshift capable.
As to fighting crime? Hmm. I imagine that a 'heroic' dragon might be opposed to crime because crime reduces their ability to accumulate shiny wealth? Also if you are a 'super hero' then you get invited onto talk shows and followed by reporters and otherwise find yourself the focus of the attention you naturally deserve as a dragon. We are talking about a dragon who can coexist with human society so probably more the type to accumulate money though long term investment over going rar and robbing banks themselves.
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I think a sponsored superhero who does it for fame and money like Booster Gold sounds really fun.