Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?
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Follow up side note, i think heavy rules mechanics in the wake of 3e and other games sucked some energy out of fight scenes by bogging it all down.
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@Thenomain There was absolutely a point where I thought about making a Fables game that ran on Fate Core ... at which point I realized no one would want to check it out and so shelved that idea.
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I think the cinematic element of the fighting in Into the Badlands is a matter of the skills of the writers involved. But there would need to be a reasonable mechanic, and the opportunity to perform cinematic feats.
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
-- Hamilton: An American Musical -
Assassin's Creed.
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Android would be a neat Cyberpunk setting.
Sense8 for round-the-world shenanigans, but your RP group is still close-knit. Could be tricksy, though, as we only have a limited view of their world.
Obligatory L5R plug I forget if I've done already in this thread.
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I ran a savage worlds campaign a little while back, while waiting for Savage Rifts to drop. It started off using The Mist as the setting, and then, when the PCs got to the army base to shut down Project Arrowhead, they found evidence that it was using stolen research from Black Mesa.
I think a fun MU setting would be centred around the 13 minute war, either with characters trying to stop/sabotage the experiments, or dealing with the fallout of the war in some sort of City 17 analog.
The idea with rifts was that at some point, the characters were going to be able to get to Rifts Earth to fetch tech and adventurers to try and free their world.
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Hmmm...
Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Kora: Fantastic, rich setting with martial arts and elemental magic. I have no idea why this hasn't been done more as a game
Wild Cards: A different take on superheroes; maybe it will get more love if GRRM actually does a TV series
The Man In The High Castle: Alternate history, espionage, and resistance
Tekumel: It's a good book series and one of the original RPG settings. Rich in history and detail, clan politics; a great non-Western fantasy series. I think that it's the level of history and societal detail in the books that prevents it from being used as a game, sadly.
RPG's
Top Secret SI: There should be more straight up espionage games, and Top Secret SI (the second edition) had a fantastic set up with clearly good guys (The Orion Initiative) and bad guys (WEB), instead of murky realpolitik. There's a new edition of the game coming out soon by the original creator, Merle Rasmussen.Eclipse Phase: One of the best sci-fi settings, game or otherwise, in years. Doing this game could combine various player's cravings for an 'Expanse' game and a 'Cyberpunk' game in one.
Blue Rose: A nifty fantasy RPG from Green Ronin; the first edition used their True 20 system, the new second edition uses their AGE system. A romantic fantasy game where the emphasis is on relationships and working as part of a group to protect society, this is pretty much the 'Chronicles of Valdamar' game that fantasy readers have been asking for, but Mercedes Lackey has been quashing. Plus, you can play an intelligent, psychic animal. The setting might be a little too accepting of gay and trans characters for the tastes of some hardcore gamers, though (the main kingdom has full equality and acceptance of gay/lesbian persons, and second edition adds ideas like using magic to shape new bodies for transsexuals to complete their transformations. Also, Intolerant Monotheistic Theocratic Frenemy Country on the border that's only not a full enemy because of Evil Necromantic Nation of Evilness to the North). Still, it's a good break from the traditional 'murder hobo' adventuring of the majority of fantasy games, and the emphasis on social relationships fits in nicely with what the majority of MU*s are or turn into, IMO.
Scion: Wish this game would have gotten more love from the MU* community. I played Monsters and Moshpits while it was around, and Scion remains one of my all-time favorite games. Hoping 2nd Edition turns out well, but feeling nervous after Onyx Path pushed out Exalted 3rd...
7th Sea: Again, another fantastic RPG that never seemed to get love from the MU community. Swashbuckling, magic, deep conspiracies...this game was a blast. Sadly, I'm not too thrilled with 2nd edition, but the setting is still great.
Renegade Legion: Outshined by it's big brothers at FASA, Shadowrun and Battletech, Renegade Legion had a great premise: high space opera focusing on a group of resistance fighters against an overwhelming and evil galactic government. If it sounds familiar, it's because Renegade Legion grew out of the game design that FASA pitched for a Star Wars RPG license that ultimately went to West End Games. However, changes were made, like the Evil Galactic Empire rising from the ashes of Earth and being modeled on a fascist interpretation of the Roman Empire. It was fun, had lots of emphasis on epic combat, and had a great deal of setting depth and lore.
TORG: Speaking of West End...Torg was just an awesome expression of 10 gallons of weirdness in a 5 gallon hat. America converted into Dinosaur Land. The British Isles converted to a fairy tale kingdom with an epic story of Light versus Dark. The South Asian island chains turned into horror-scapes with Victorian Colonial 'White Man's Burden'. A French papacy mixed with cyberpunk where people experience God and Heaven by jacking in...The setting was amazing and the system was enjoyable. The card mechanics shouldn't be too hard to duplicate. If you ever wanted your Japanese Techno-future corporate ninja to have adventures alongside a fantasy paladin, a werewolf, and The Shadow, this is the game for you.
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I'll second Avatar: tLA. I will also throw in The Dresden Files.
"You're a wizard, Harry."
"No shit, now hold my beer and watch this." -
I always thought the setting of Matthew Stover's Acts of Caine was ripe for a MU with the PCs as the Actors
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There have been a few Dresden Files Mu out there. Current one is Tenebrous Isle
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@WildBaboons
Reaaaaallly. Now I'm going to check it out. Right before I leave for my Dresden Files tabletop game. ... I'm a bit obsessed, aren't I? -
I'll throw in my vote for Eclipse Phase. I would dearly love for someone to put together a good EP mux or mush. Not necessarily they exact ruleset but the general setting with transhumanism, nanofabrication, the Titans, and the Pandora Gates. There are certainly some issues that straddle setting/ruleset that would probably need some tweaking such as nanofabrication and blueprints but the setting is really solid.
In a similar vein I would probably throw in Cthulhutech. Again, don't really like the rules but the setting looks like a lot of fun. With giant mecha, guyver-like tagers, sorcerors and the Nazaddi there's pretty much something for everyone.
The last one I would really love to see would be a pseudo-John Carter of Mars setting. I say 'pseudo' because by diverging from the source material you are freed up to allow more humans to be running around. You can throw in native races with sorcerous abilities, create floating pirate cities, and generally go nuts while keeping the feel of the original stories.
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A couple of other RPGs that I left off on accident...
Underground: Recycling a scaled down version of the Mayfair Exponential Game System (DC Heroes), you've got genetically modified soldiers with superpowers and accompanying mental health issues ranging from Berserk Killing Rage to Multiple-Personality Disorder, recently completed their tours of duty with a Private Military Conflict company that enhanced them and set loose back into society. It's the perfect mash up of dystopian futurism (you have to get a Free Speech Permit, but you also have the right to bomb a post office as free speech), over the top 90's comic book violence (guns go up to the 75mm range and the works of Frank Miller, Geoff Darrow, and Peter Chung are heavy influences), and social commentary ranging from the treatment of veterans to manufactured ghettoization to unrestrained free market corporatism. One of the neater bits is the ability for a character group to spend Karma/XP on actually improving social conditions, ranging from a neighborhood to nation wide, depending on how they go about accomplishing the change in RP. For example, increasing a neighborhood's quality of life could involve something as simple as a plotline about protecting a local Free Health Clinic from gang extortion or boosting a shipment of meds for the clinic, while changing it on a national level could involve something like breaking into the broadcast transmission of the Super Bowl and showing evidence of how money that's supposed to be used for healthcare gets diverted to CEO payouts instead. Of course, it cost more group XP to improve things on a national scale than on a local scale, and when you improve one social aspect, another decreases. So, maybe you end up getting better healthcare for your neighborhood, but take home pay decreases because of an increase in local taxes to pay for it.
Space 1889: Classic Steampunk adventure before Steampunk was even a thing. Victorian adventures on Etherships throughout the Solar System; ties in heavily with the 'John Carter' style of Planetary Romance Sci-Fi. European Colonialism abounds, with the British on Mars, the Germans on Venus, and everyone hating the Belgians.
Trinity Universe: The best meta-plot ever created by White Wolf, IMO. The Storyteller System adapted to Sci-Fi, Superheroes, and Pulp well with only a few bits of kludge. I'd love to see a game that covers the whole timeline, with sub-games for each era, but I realize that the intricacy of the meta-plot might mot make that possible. Challenging to pull off, but I think that the RP rewards would be well worth it when a Trinity Era character sees the ultimate culmination and effects of a TP that happened in the Adventure! Era.
Colony: Great series on USA. Like the classic V, but turned up and without stock characters. Collaborators and Resistance characters are both well fleshed out and I like that the main characters have to make hard choices that sometimes go against their moral codes or even betray their alliances to protect the family. Set it in one of the other major cities on Earth; how would the scenario be different in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Dallas, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, or Cairo...lots of different storytelling possibilities here.
And yes, CthulhuTech would be awesome as a MU, Sands
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There was an AtLA AND a Korra game at one point. Both failed and folded due to lack of playerbase.
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@Runescryer said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
Space 1889: Classic Steampunk adventure before Steampunk was even a thing.
You can bypass the "steampunk" label and add so much depth to it by calling it what it is: Verne.
Its tag-line is even more descriptive: "Everything Jules Verne should have written. Everything H. G. Wells could have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of, but never published because it was too fantastic." Bam! You are there!
edit: Or for Fantasy Victorian, Castle Falkenstien (preferred for originality) or Victorianna (aka Shadowrun 1889).
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My issue with the "steampunk" label is that it doesn't describe setting or theme or time-period. It describes technology, and only just. It describes fashion more than it describes anything else. It's like a bunch of 90s kids started running around in ripped jeans writing stories about being poor and unhappy and saying that makes the story "grunge".
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Bobotron Not enough bunnygirl changelings.
I would love an Avatar game but man, what a clean, beautiful setting. It would never survive players.
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@Thenomain said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
@Runescryer said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
Space 1889: Classic Steampunk adventure before Steampunk was even a thing.
You can bypass the "steampunk" label and add so much depth to it by calling it what it is: Verne.
Its tag-line is even more descriptive: "Everything Jules Verne should have written. Everything H. G. Wells could have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of, but never published because it was too fantastic." Bam! You are there!
edit: Or for Fantasy Victorian, Castle Falkenstien (preferred for originality) or Victorianna (aka Shadowrun 1889).
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My issue with the "steampunk" label is that it doesn't describe setting or theme or time-period. It describes technology, and only just. It describes fashion more than it describes anything else. It's like a bunch of 90s kids started running around in ripped jeans writing stories about being poor and unhappy and saying that makes the story "grunge".
Yes
I'm just so used to explaining it as 'steampunk'. But Verne, Wells, Edison, and Tesla, all mashed up with lumeniferous Ether Theroy. I used to play a Texas oilman modeled after Quincy from 'Dracula' back when the game game out. -
@Runescryer deja vu
I'm just a surge protector doing my job, sir.
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@Lotherio said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
@Runescryer deja vu
Okay, how did I manage that?
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I also concur with Eclipse Phase (perhaps extra hard, with 2e coming out. Details as my Kickstarter stuff trickles in).
But.
As a space game, the NERD in me wants some sort of flying sim built in, which everyone else hates. And so I weep.
