Mutant Genesis (X-Men)

[Enoch]

So, I was a little too fast to reply to @faraday. Expecting players to just pick up and continue /intimate/ IC relationships with players they don't know seemed a weird to me. I was the target of people pressuring me into doing such in my first MU, and it seemed obvious that any reinforcing of past relationships would be a terrible thing.

But there is something to be said about the impact it has on stories and continuity, those being our main focuses. We want these characters to feel like they belong to our game, to the players roleplaying them, and personal relationships are a huge part of storytelling. Even in actual comics, you see crazy stuff with people dating for a week or w/e and then moving on. And the fact that it DID happen adds a dynamic to things in the future, even after it ends. It gives the world another layer of credibility.

After discussing this with my staff last night, I wanted to put the idea forward and hear people's thoughts on the subject of not enforcing continuation of intimate connections, but maintaining they happened in the past. Should both parties agree to continue it, great. If not, your characters can break up. Their past would remain untouched.

It was pointed out that this idea is clearly not as appalling as my initial gut response led me to believe. After all, games like Firan and Arx operate with FC systems. If you app a married FC they're married. If you apped an FC and they had a secret @rel saying they got rolled with 3 Princes in a gangbang, well, that happened and it was part of your character's history. Maybe your version of the character was trying to be different, but it still happened.

Let me be clear, I'm female. I've staffed on games and seen behavior of stalker/predatory types. That is not going to be tolerated on any level in my game. We would not let this be used as a means to harass or bully new players into things, and we would take even a whisper of such a thing being done very seriously and there won't be much of a walk between that suspicion and a siteban. This sort of behavior has no place in our game.

But, the idea clearly works in other mediums. And hey, we in no way would expect players to continue relationships others established, but they would have still happened, and we think that does add a dynamic to the world and the characters. If Jean and Scott are dating, and Jean gets a new player, they continue that, or they can say they broke up and move on. She will be another woman with an ex, but with some story to boot. And it's not like it's even uncommon in the comics themselves.

What say you, people? It sounds strange to me, but I have warmed up about it. Need opinions!

[Wolfs]

@enoch I think if you, as a game, wish to have prior RP matter, it's a slippery slope in the context of IC relationships. We all know a draw for a lot of people in these things is playing out various relationships.

Scott/Jean, Logan/Jean, Rogue/Gambit, Emma/Scott, Shatterstar/Rictor, Kitty/Piotr, Kitty/Pete Wisdom, Logan/Scott/Jean/Emma (okay, maybe that last one's going a bit off the rails) - these are all canonical, expected and accepted character relationships depending on the cutoff. But yes, if Scott and Jean are playing one in-game, one of them drops, and a new player comes along and doesn't want to continue it, that's one thing. The new player has every right to go in another direction.

However, I don't think it's fair to the other player to just say "Well, none of that stuff happened now." It essentially invalidates and throws out things that did happen in-game, and it can be a big problem.

If something is logged and posted, it typically counts. If you have a tool in-game (+canon, was it?) that establishes something in a simple one-line explanation, it sounds like it counts as well. If people are doing this and that "off-screen" that becomes more difficult to enforce without proof of it, and we know that happens. In addition, some people don't want to share the mushy stuff with everyone even when it's purely vanilla. I understand if someone wants to keep it private. Using +canon could be a great alternative to posting a log.

But, if it's established and is part of the continuity in any way, my suggestion would be that at least in the general sense, it sticks. If a new player wants to go in a different direction, fine. If the new player and the old player agree to just say "They saw each other for a while and now they aren't" without focusing on any more than that, fair enough.

When someone comes in to play a character that's already been played before, there should come with it an expectation that the former player(s) may have done some things the new one wouldn't have, but it's not an automatic reason to retcon a bunch of stuff immediately. If there are a lot of logs, it's tough to expect someone to account for every little detail so some summarizing may be needed, some info from other players of characters that did things with someone, whether it's a relationship or not. It can make taking on a played character more daunting, but in general it's good for the game if "What Has Gone Before" is maintained as still there somehow.

Most things can be worked around, acknowledged, etc. If there IS a good reason to retcon, figure out a sensible justification and excuse with staff. It's a comic book genre. Strange shit happens. New writers put different spins on characters and change things we've seen in the past. "I was mind-controlled by blah," "Sinister cloned me," "I was stuck in an alternate reality and replaced by a different version of me," "It was a Skrull," or "It was just a phase I was exploring" may be cheesy, but it's not necessarily wrong to go with any of those. Create an RP hook out of it that an existing, affected player can at least do something with, even if it's not perfect. Don't simply toss out the time and effort they put in. Honor it.

Just take it on a case-by-case basis as needed. Be prepared to spend a little time helping hash something out and hope both sides can come away satisfied with the result. Also make sure players who take on a new character that hasn't been played before understand that anything they do that's available for all to see can normally be expected to stand.

[TNP]

@Salty-Secrets @Enoch As far as power level goes, given that Exodus and a fully Phoenixed Jean are being played, that argument doesn't really have a leg to stand on. (I'm also assuming they're staff alts so correct me if I'm wrong.)

Speed, I don't get unless it's solely because Wiccan is banned. Likewise for Apache, Morph and Mimic (and if 616 Mimic is banned for some reason, does that mean Exiles version is too as his powers are slightly different?)

edited to ask: Is there staff alt transparency?

[Arkandel]

@wolfs I think given how relationships in comics evolve and change to keep them fresh(-ish) over what is, in many cases, 40-50 or more years of shelf life then we can expect similar things to happen on MU*, albeit in a more accelerated fashion.

So if there's a Scott+Jean at first, and then Jean's player is retired and a new player signs up who prefers her to go with Logan then that's probably fine.

Granted I'm just enough of a purist to at least expect relationships though to go a way comics have already paved or hinted at in the past. I could be in the minority about that part though.

[Autumn]

@tnp I've only looked at the wiki, but it might be that Jean is using the Phoenix name, without actually being fully powered? Since they have both a Jean and a Rachel, they have to distinguish between them somehow, codename wise.

But I have no idea what's going on with Exodus. He seems like a better deus ex machina device than an actual PC, but I admit I had sort of tuned out of X-lore by the time he came on the scene, so I might be missing something important.

[Arkandel]

Either way the power level should only matter for the usual two reasons:

1. Dick-waving contests

2. One character taking over plots since they can do everything themselves while others twiddle their thumbs.

But otherwise not all X-Men ought to be at the same power level - that's in fact one of their thematic points; mutations are random. One person can be hideously misshapen but get no real usable perks while another gets to be a muscle-bound invulnerable person who can function perfectly well in real life.

[Collective]

On the relationship front, I would respectfully submit that maybe the onus should not be on the new player in regards to the 'breakup'. That should be assumed to have happened off-screen, unless the new person specifically opts in for that RP.

If I want to play, say, Iceman, I'm not going to be thrilled if Mystique and Northstar both are ICly pissed off at my character for something that had nothing to do with my RP, but because the last guy used her for a beard and him for gay training wheels.

[Tempest]

Despite playing comic MUs, I am no comic expert. Didn't Speed/Wiccan come up in the other X-Men game thread? They aren't really X-Men characters and I don't think they've ever been broadcast as such.

[Arkandel]

@collective True, but for consistency's sake the fact Iceman used to sleep/be related with both should still be IC no matter who his player is.

Yes, after several player switches this stuff (not referring just to the sexual parts) can get confusing but in a way that's very normal for comics; if you think about it characters who've been running for decades have done a lot of stuff, sometimes very wacky depending on the era, and the latest incarnation just picks which of those they want to emphasize without always explicitly retconning the rest out of continuity.

[Tempest]

As long as the other players aren't actual jerks about the "ICly being mad over a breakup" kind of stuff, I think it could be fun.

[Collective]

@tempest said in Mutant Genesis (X-Men):

As long as the other players aren't actual jerks about the "ICly being mad over a breakup" kind of stuff, I think it could be fun.

Greetings, strange visitor from another continuum. I take it you've never met MU* players before?

[Tempest]

@collective Whether MUers can be trusted with this sort of thing is definitely an entirely different question, yeah and not one that history gives much hope for.

Alas.

Staff would literally have to be on HIGH ALERT regarding both IC and OOC predatory/shitty/etc behavior every single time a new player gets a character.

[Enoch]

Great replies.

I want to touch on power levels a bit. As @Arkandel mentioned, there are only two instances where that is an actual concern, and both of those warrant a talk from staff if they become a constant with any player of our game. As we have plastered all over the wiki, sharing the fun is paramount in our game.

Likewise, most of the extremely powerful characters are getting hit with a friendly nerf bat to diminish (but not eliminate) power disparities. Most characters are younger in this timeline and are still learning themselves. Even Exodus, who is old af, is not the 'final boss' version you see in the comics, and he would have been been banned if the character didn't fit the theme so perfectly.

On to the relationship thing.

I am surprised at the responses. I was not expecting this to be so accepted, but I am thrilled to have been wrong about it. We will be pursuing that in Mutant Genesis and we promise to take all the care in the world to make it so the people who abuse it are caught and dealt with. No sense in eliminating a neat addition to the game because someone might try to abuse it.

We will get to it!

[TNP]

@enoch You didn't say if there was staff alt transparency.

[Enoch]

@tnp I will ask them and we will see!

[Tempest]

Let me just say, I actually like @tnp and have had great fun RPing with him in the past.

I also know he's pretty fond of Mimic as a character though, so it makes it a little hard to take any of his comments without a grain of salt, since they all seem to have been fuelled from the initial gasoline of 'they banned the guy I like! and they're playing Jean Grey! WTF! What about staff alts? HUH?' At some point it starts to seem less like discussion and more like looking for an excuse to attack.

Just some thoughts, since we're trying to do this whole 'Be a Better MSB' thing.

[DariRyu]

Throwing my hat into the ring for interest. Probably OCs, though, I don't know much about the Marvel continuity where the game's timeline comes from.

[Enoch]

@dariryu We are glad to have you!

[Ganymede]

You also have my interest. I'll probably snip my Glitch from Marvel 1963 and bring her here. She fits in better here.

[quixotic]

Pretty excited about this idea from what I have read so far.