POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check

[The Tree of Woe]

I would also like to say, part of the role of staff on a Superhero game is keeping a character inside a set of parameters. Call it the conundrum of equilibrium - if Wolverine becomes a chlorine-farting three headed penis monster or Wonder Woman develops tits as big as the rest of her and isn't interested in saving the world because she's too busy gobblin' Power Girl's pie, then staff on a comic book MU* has an obligation to send out the Shepherd's crook and fix the problem.

That's the FC problem -- A FC ain't only about what you want. Whether you're playing on a "Year One" game or a game using canon backstory, that character comes with parameters you should be living within, as it were. Superman saves people, Shadowcat is an X-Man, and so on. Now if Superman and Wonder Woman's players hate each other OOC that's a different problem...

Edit to Add: And yes, I'd totes play on an X-Men focused game set in the Utopia era, or even on a general marvel game where that was where cutoff put them, with the ideal era being right before "Schism." The whole family is home, crazy shit is happening, and it's as much "We must fight humans who'll try and exploit us" as "People who fear and/or hate us are going to try and kill us."

Edit Edit: Also Namor was FUCKING AMAZING as an X-Man and that is where he belongs forever.

[Social Diseases]

@The-Tree-of-Woe said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

I would also like to say, part of the role of staff on a Superhero game is keeping a character inside a set of parameters. Call it the conundrum of equilibrium - if Wolverine becomes a chlorine-farting three headed penis monster or Wonder Woman develops tits as big as the rest of her and isn't interested in saving the world because she's too busy gobblin' Power Girl's pie, then staff on a comic book MU* has an obligation to send out the Shepherd's crook and fix the problem.

That's the FC problem -- A FC ain't only about what you want. Whether you're playing on a "Year One" game or a game using canon backstory, that character comes with parameters you should be living within, as it were. Superman saves people, Shadowcat is an X-Man, and so on. Now if Superman and Wonder Woman's players hate each other OOC that's a different problem...

Edit to Add: And yes, I'd totes play on an X-Men focused game set in the Utopia era, or even on a general marvel game where that was where cutoff put them, with the ideal era being right before "Schism." The whole family is home, crazy shit is happening, and it's as much "We must fight humans who'll try and exploit us" as "People who fear and/or hate us are going to try and kill us."

Edit Edit: Also Namor was FUCKING AMAZING as an X-Man and that is where he belongs forever.

I agree with and echo all of this.

(Except for the part about Shadowcat, she could definitely hang out exclusively with a character defined in their source as a coke addicted poor-little-rich-girl bitch who has no loyalty to anyone but herself, and totally ignore X-people unless she sees tits in an image gallery. That is the truest spirit of the character and staff has no right to intrude on it.)

[The Tree of Woe]

So considering the above, here's my pitch:

An X-Men-centric place set in the Utopia era, probably right before Schism -- Wolverine and Cyclops's falling out either goes differently or it doesn't happen. Either that, or just set it at the end of, ugh, Secret Empire and use the ending to that trash fire as the galvanization for the "Return to Utopia". Maybe the Cyclops that died of M-Pox was a fake and somebody finds the real one in Sinister's bondage dungeon, I don't know.

Anyway, my proposal goes like this: If you can find any halfway decent excuse for your character to join up with the X-Men, run with it. Mutant, Inhuman, Freak of nature, funky robot... whatever. As long as staff buys it.

Move +sheets and as much of that off of the game itself and onto a wiki as you can. Wikis are easy to read on and write in and review; MU* text is cumbersome in all those ways. Use the technology to make staff's job easier.

Divide the X-Rosters up into teams; players can play characters on different teams. Different teams have different jobs, for instance. The X-Club is Weird Science, Weird Shit. The New Mutants are "Fuck we lost track of <Mutant Ally or Enemy> during all the attempts to wipe us off the face of the earth, go find them." X-Force is "That can no longer be allowed to exist; get rid of it." And so on.

Encourage players to NPC characters that haven't been apped as stories and apped character needs require them, with some limitations that are reasonable. Don't NPC a character and start a romance, etc. I call this the 'Nobody really wants to app Doop or Warlock, but Doop's kind of funny and somebody needs to handle the phones, and it would be nice if Cypher had Warlock to fall back on it's kinda his thing' clause.

Thoughts?

[Tempest]

Does Utopia mean no cancerous horde of teenage OC brats wanting to go to mutant high school and making whoever apped X-Men want to blow their brains out?

Despite playing/staffing on multiple hero games, I've never been the biggest actual comic nerd, so I don't know all the details of every bit of canon. (I read /some/ utopia stuff, I think. AvX crap. Been years.)

[Social Diseases]

@Tempest said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Does Utopia mean no cancerous horde of teenage OC brats wanting to go to mutant high school and making whoever apped X-Men want to blow their brains out?

Utopia explicitly isn't a school. It's a militarized mutant city-state on an island off the coast of San Francisco, run primarily by Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magneto and Namor.

There is a school there, but it isn't at all mutant high the way X-stuff has an unfortunate habit of becoming on games.

The X-Men were also basically the San Francisco Avengers at the time, which was neat.

It also kept them away from a couple of stupid events. The only Secret Invasion stuff was a mini if I remember right.

[The Tree of Woe]

Tempest, yes and no. Teenage mutants would be taken in housed and educated - but then Utopia offered that to ANY mutant, even ones who the X-Men had been fighting for years, but it is specifically "This is our nation, we will defend it with the full force of virtually all the mutants left on Earth plus the Atlantean navy. And to prove our goodwill, when Hydra or some other bunch of idiots gets up to something on the West Coast, we'll smack the crap out of them, gratis."

[The Tree of Woe]

Also in Utopia everybody had to work -- when Anole was complaining about having to work in a garden Magik dropped him into a desert in Limbo -- which is to say, a desert in Hell and then came to get him about five minutes later, which for him was some absurd period of time where he had to scavenge for food and/or fight desert demon-worms.

Though really she just did it because he's a little green bastard and she hated him and was tired of his whining and posturing, everybody just went with it being a lesson about Why Food Is Important.

[Tempest]

What's the Brotherhood doing during this time?

Most of the allure in an X-Men specific game is being able to play the X-Men and Brotherhood off each other. They can antagonize each other, but also work together for particularly dire situations. And they can do social scenes with people trying to manipulate/recruit/etc each other.

It seems like something that'd be very 'healthy' for the game and would inspire a lot of RP without Staff always having to shove plot forward.

Without that dynamic, I have to say, an X-specific game seems like a waste of time/effort.

[Ghost]

@Tempest IIRC the Brotherhood was generally welcome in Utopia so long as they behaved and didnt draw law enforcement.

In X men Canon, Utopia was a recognized 'burb of San Francisco, a city who in their spirit of acceptance, extended their views to mutant rights, as well.

So think mutant town that upgraded to MutantBurg complete with being a recognized part of California. IIRC.

Naturally, that also drew a lot of drama towards the greater bay area.

[The Tree of Woe]

There was a sort of general amnesty declared, and even guys who didn't decide to give Utopia a shot settled down in San Francisco to sort of live under the umbrella. Avalanche opened a bar in SF I remember.

The X-Men also were acting as jailers for a lot of their more insane or irredeemable enemies at that point, rehabbing some and just keeping others under VR lock and key because you can't let Sebastian Shaw run free, but you can't just kill him. I guess.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Social-Diseases said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@Bobotron said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

@Social-Diseases
You mean an X-Men game set in Utopia, don't you?

Pretty much, but there are non-X characters you could work there.

Like, the West Coast Avengers compound was open as Avengers Academy around the same time, The Order still existed, and there are plenty of lower-key Marvel chars who'd work fine in SanFran. There are only a couple of Marvel characters you can't justify removing from the New York area, but they ARE pretty big ones.

Also active in San Fran in that era would be Hellcat, (Patsy Walker- Hellstorm) and Son of Satan, (Damian Hellstorm). Pasty and Hank McCoy are even friends from their time in the Avengers and Defenders together.

[Bobotron]

@The-Tree-of-Woe

NNNNNNG DANGER!!!!!!!!!!

[ThatGuyThere]

@Tempest
there would still be plenty of FC teenage mutants around Anole, Rockslide, X-23, Hellion, Pixie etc were all around during the Utopia era. there has never been an X-Man era with out some annoying teens, well except the late 80s when all the teen chars were either New Mutants or being trained by X-Factor.

[Arkandel]

I prefer Year One takes more than anything. It keeps continuity in-game since everyone starts from more or less scratch, and even though immortal/long lived characters aren't really going to be newbies their relationships to other PCs for the most part will be fresh.

It's perfectly fine for the game itself, if it runs long enough, to start piling up its own internal continuity; just don't force players to guess, it should be explicit somewhere on the wiki who Batman's sidekicks are, and how long the Justice League has been formed or who its current roster is.

Oh, and have a good plan on how transitions will work when a character returns to the roster and/or changes hands.

[Chet]

@Tempest That's a complex issue, playing to theme and limiting character concepts and options. If you're writing completely true to the character's canon, you're limited a writer, but I agree that you can't radically change the character from the essence and blood. Superman's essence is that he's a man that can do anything, bound only by his time and the necessity to save everyone, and the blood of the character is the mythos. Obviously, these modifications are easier to make on 'character actor' parts, like supervillains or supporting characters.

Limiting character concepts and options is also a matter of making characters that are fun for newer players (characters that have a broader, easier ingress factor to roleplay), versus characters with narrower means but more interesting ones, that can support the other players. You want your newer writers moving along in terms of the game's ethic and architecture, and that means, you need to allow them to spread their wings, with inspiration provided by the older players.

It's not a concern that you should apply with an extreme viewpoint, that's just a kneejerk reaction to people that've had bad teachers.

[Social Diseases]

@Tempest said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

What's the Brotherhood doing during this time?

Avalanche had a bar in San Francisco. Magneto was part of what was essentially Utopia's ruling council. Pyro was dead, Blob de-powered.

Exous was at one point leading a splinter group if I remember correctly.

[SunnyJ]

My suggestions:

Theme: Feared and Persecuted

I know people dig their heroics, but the O5 (Original Five) felt to me like a necessity, a response of a species that needed protecting instead of a group of superheroes. When you put the X-Men as a struggling minority fighting for acceptance is where they are best, and it brings the characters together. When the world outside is dragging obvious mutants across the streets tied to pickup trucks, you make all aspects of your fight (philosophical, physical, etc) that much more important. The Brotherhood believes that without action, mutants will be killed off, and the X-Men think too much aggression will put them firmly AGAINST humanity, and provoke a conflict nobody wants. Set the game in the pre-Onslaught Era (Good Old Cartoon Show, more or less) or Post 198 (Where all mutants were depowered by the Scarlet Witch and only 198 are left).

This makes the grid (either the Mansion or Utopia) matter, it makes the superheroes of the setting matter (what the fuck are THEY doing), it makes other characters matter (so few you can't really just say 'fuck off and die' even to your enemies), that sort of stuff.

Also, I like it, and that is VERY important.

Roster: Year Two
Let people write their own versions of Cyclops and Wolverine, for as long as they obey some pre-established notions written in the wiki. Stuff like 'Cyclops must be this age or older'' or 'Angel has been a Horseman by this point' and then general guidelines 'No player may erase family members of a character during CG as determined by Earth-616 continuity', stuff you NEED to make the game work. Stuff that will diminish the effects of 'Who is this OC living inside my favorite X-Men's character's body' and still allow for some creativity.

Villains: When To?
The Brotherhood needs work. They need a home, they should have a structure for RP that lets them have friends, family, lovers and rivals among the X-Men and RP between them should be facilitated. However, some villains should be earned, imo, by Storytellers who prove they are capable of providing RP for the grid on a consistent basis. Characters like Sabretooth, Mystique and Mister Sinister should either be plot tools, or taken by people who know what they are doing and will help the game. I am a huge believer in not closing any doors, and being meritocratic. If players go the extra mile, maybe the game should find some wiggle room to allow some experimentation.

Young X-Men
PLEASE do allow them. Mercury, Rockslide, X-23 are all great characters. I am not hot on OCs either, and I am much more prone to teach as Nightcrawler, Emma or Gambit if it is a FC student. I am not saying BAN OCs, but OCs need to understand they are fighting an uphill battle and not resent other players for it. It would be unfair to hate people for not liking OCs, as it would be unfair to ban OCs altogether.

Enough Talk, Lets Game!
Lots of talking! Is this game gonna happen?! Or are we just babbling here?!

[Chet]

To play a Mutant OC, you really have to follow the X-Men formula and make the character's power a secondary consideration. Remy Lebeau, for example, is a Cajun professional thief that knows staff fighting, and is an expert gambler. Without the power, you'd still having a compelling character.

[The Tree of Woe]

At the moment we're babbling. So, here's a thought - most superhero games have no system underlying the characters - Brave and the Bold included a WEG DC RPG sheet for each character but it was only there for lulz and was never seriously used.

I would really prefer some sort of established continuity point instead of Year One/Two/Three, for various reasons ranging from 'I like a lot of stuff in continuity and if sometimes it's used and sometimes it isn't, it gets confusing' to 'No, you can't reboot Shadowcat into a glue-sniffing BDSM enthusiast, there is ample evidence she is NEITHER'.

Maybe give each character a FATE or another system sheet for powers use and to give structure to combat?

[Social Diseases]

@SunnyJ said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Young X-Men
PLEASE do allow them. Mercury, Rockslide, X-23 are all great characters. I am not hot on OCs either, and I am much more prone to teach as Nightcrawler, Emma or Gambit if it is a FC student. I am not saying BAN OCs, but OCs need to understand they are fighting an uphill battle and not resent other players for it. It would be unfair to hate people for not liking OCs, as it would be unfair to ban OCs altogether.

Mercury is amazing. Why would anyone not want to play Mercury?