Best posts made by Collective

It depends on what the staff is going for, I'd imagine.

I know that a concept I try to keep in mind when gaming is the Fun Tax.

The essence of the Fun Tax idea is that gamers and game designers tend to bake in assumptions in their games and then cling to them stubbornly as 'genre appropriate' or 'historically correct'. Never mind the game has magic swords, dragons or zombies. Nope, that doesn't stretch the imagination as much as people not being assholes towards black folks, women, Jews and queer folks.

This means that those of us who aren't your typical gamer have to pay a higher buy-in to the game and put up with more insulting and/or disturbing stuff than the average cis/white/straight dude. And that's not fair.

So I ask my players what they want. And if they don't want to deal with discrimination in the game, we don't. Screw genre fidelity when it gets in the way of fun. And again, dragons, zombies, magic. If those don't stretch credibility, neither should somebody's hardboiled lesbian PI or black wizard.

With respect, I think having the default setting as a prequel is a bit of a mistake, for two reasons.

First, if you remove earthers from the equation, you make the game harder for casuals to really sink their teeth into it. It's easier to imagine Indiana Jones with a ray gun or Sam Spade in space than it is playing a prince of the Arboreans. Yeah, you definitely can do that, especially with a roster, but with a setting that is so niche, setting the narrative buy-in low is probably a better way to get people with character generation and out on the grid.

Yes, that takes a little fudging, but hey, maybe Mongo settled into a 'counter-earth' orbit or something.

Second, I'd suggest saying that Flash bought it. He took a ray gun blast or just went missing and other heroes from both worlds have stepped up to fight Ming and his forces. That lets the PCs be heroes, without the players knowing, from the start, that their stories are less important than the official one.

@tnp said in FCs on Comic MUs:

And if Wolverine and Hercules can get it on in canon, it's time to just stop worrying about whether an FC has been 'turned gay'. Just consider it an Alt U version and get over it. It's not like there's a ton of gay, lesbian, trans, etc FCs to choose from to begin with.

I have to admit, I wish I had the guts to just go ahead and app some characters I love as being bi or gay. As you say, there aren't a ton of choices and I always feel a little weird playing straight when I'm not for a couple of different reasons.

Firstly, I worry about making it too broad and stupid (rawr, football and boobs!)

Secondly, I've tried playing characters who have canon hetero relationships in comics and people just will not take 'my version of Spidey is focused on school and webslinging, he's not looking for love' for an answer.

On the other hand, I feel like if I app, say, Nightwing or Red Hood as being into dudes, I'm going to have to wade through a mountain of assumptions about what I'm actually doing on the game. And if I don't include that in the app and I do end up in romantic RP, then I feel like I've lied by omission to the staff, who might not be cool with Dick being into dicks.

This is just my two cents, but hey, I'm not shy.

We're all here because we love MUs and MUing. Or at least that's the healthiest reason to be here. So fostering an environment where we can have constructive, positive discussions about the thing we love is a good thing.

The Hog Pit and general nerd negativity is, well, it's a nasty side effect of nerd culture. Not pleasant, but not exactly without use, either. I rather like the approach of having a board that is generally expected to be constructive and thoughtful and being able to commute to Mos Eisley for my daily dose of scum and villainy.

What can I say? I read BBC World News and TMZ and I think there is a place under the same banner for both ends of the spectrum.

My thought is moderate the rest of MSB to the same degree as any nerd-focused fansite. Not quite to professional standards, but not anarchy either and let the Hog Pit be. And stop worrying about precedents and bylaws and pleasing a bunch of grumbling gamers. Because it's not going to happen. Make common sense rulings, rather than iron-clad rules, let context be key and ignore people who demand a pseudo-legal system for a site where we talk about pretending to be sexy undead teenagers with rainbow hair.

@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 said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

IDK how people RP on phone.

Usually slowly, badly and with an 'oh, well' attitude towards being bad.

But that's a gripe for another thread.

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

The new player knew what they were getting into when they apped the character. If they didn't want to be married, there are other characters they could have taken. Encouraging new players to take a wrecking ball to existing relationships on a whim just seems... kinda cheesy to me. But it's not the red flag that retcon was, for sure.

Do you play a lot of superhero games? Because the continuity builds up fast and thick. Saying that a new player 'knew what they were getting into' isn't really fair or accurate in a lot of cases. First, the 'canon' relationships are iffy and more often than not, the last player went another way with the character. Sometimes a radically different way.

I've apped on games where the first thing I get when somebody sees the name in the who list is a page like: 'Hey, characters X and Y were in a poly relationship with the guy you're applying for, how do you want to handle that'? And I stay away from the serious TS magnet characters, like the Teen Titans.

Sometimes you don't want to deal with somebody else's past fuckbuddies. You just want to play Spider-Man.

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@roz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thatguythere So I think it's really about the fact that the community exists but you personally don't engage with

Isn't that pretty much the same as my initial statement of "to me this place is not a community". You all can have all the community you want just don't expect me to call it that or care about that aspect.

Something I came across when preparing a On Stranger Tides based home campaign a few years back:

https://sexselvesandsociety.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/all-about-the-booty-sodomy-in-the-golden-age-of-piracy-1718-1723/

I'm thinking queer pirates would fit right in, with the proviso that some people (mostly Calvinists) have a stick up their butt over it. And with a player understanding that 'gay' is a 20th century social construct and nobody would identify that way, verbally.

I logged in, tried it, had a couple of scenes and haven't been back.

The good: Staff absolutely will work with you on making sure your character fits their vision and integrating them into the game.

The bad: This is very much a game for the staff. Once I figured out my character was there as a background character to the interesting stuff happening to others, I decided not to stay.

That is NOT me calling this MU bad, by the way. I suspect that if I had the spoons to dive in and put in a few months as a spear carrier, my character would be upgraded from 'regular extra' to 'supporting cast'. But that's a lot of effort to be adjacent to somebody else's story, for me.

If somebody is willing to put in that time and work and OOC social-fu, I'm sure they would have a more rewarding experience.

Which is about as fair a review as I can give.

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

What do you think?

I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm tired of shutting up and taking it while straight people, no matter how revered or well-meaning, find reasons why it's cool to call me a fag.

And yes, I know my characters are not me. But I also don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask why the 'right' to be vile and hurtful to other people is so much more important than anyone else feeling welcome in a given environment. Because those words hit the players with the same force they hit the characters sometimes.

And yes, some queer person will be along in a minute to tell you it's okay. They don't mind. Good for them. I do. And despite what people want to say, that's not actually unreasonable.

I mean, I get it, free speech uber alles and all that. But while I'm sure people will jump in to tell me they are the ones who are the exception to the rule, I've never seen an Internet free speech warrior out protesting 'Free Speech Zones' or actual government censorship or anything like that.

They all want to fight for that simple right to call me a fag online, though.

I'm not ascribing any attitudes or attributes to them in real life. I don't know them. But I do know I wonder why this particular fight is so important and so enduring and why it needs to always be fought at somebody else's expense.

It seems like things would get meta really quickly. For instance, wouldn't we have to set up a new site to complain about the MSB Mu?

@pyrephox I had a great tabletop campaign with that idea. With the twist that it was supposed to be a penal colony. So the former guards and the former prisoners (who ranged from political prisoners to outright psychos) had to find a way to work together to survive and thrive.

Also, there may have been ruined alien step pyramid cities in the jungles.

Because, well, aliens.

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.

I'm a bit hesitant to offer advice on humanizing NPCs, as I'm sure that you have your own ideas and have it handled. But this being the Internet, I'll offer unsolicited advice anyway!

I wrapped up a long-running online tabletop game with high NPC casualties (and moderate PC casualties) a couple of years ago and I found a couple of techniques that really take advantage of using the Internet as a medium and a resource.

Obviously, for MU*s, casting is a thing. There has been no shortage of military shows for a while now, so finding folks with the right 'look' for Colonial Marines shouldn't be a problem. Putting faces to the names really is a great first step.

Two other techniques that worked really well for me both involved weaving those characters into the background of various scenes and situations.

For instance, I gave the campaign's Discord server a pseudo-message board feel, kind of a barebones chat/news aggregation vibe. To that end, the NPCs of note had their own chat avatars (headshots, usually) and their posts, joking back and forth about various topics (the most successful was an ongoing argument between two NPCs about hot water use in the ship that ended up being something the players loved to have their characters riff on) and sharing various news stories to the group. The links just lead to mock-ups of webpages I threw together in GIMP and Scribus, but they looked pretty good.

Also, when I was doing written cut scenes, I'd do them from the viewpoint of an NPC who was going to figure into the upcoming stories. Like the pilot interrupted while recording a letter for his family, etc. Do that a few times and the players start developing a feel for the characters and if not affection, at least a sense of attachment.

Basically, it boils down to filling the background with a pool of characters that might or might not be important but will soon be familiar. That gives their loss more of a narrative punch. And it makes for interesting background action as newbies arrive to replace the fallen NPCs as well.

One thing I've had a lot of luck with (again, mostly in tabletop games, because I've never run a MU) is the concept of modular 'black box' technology. Posit that at some point in the future, stuff just gets too complex for even repair people to handle.

So your tech comes in two forms: Average, everyday tools that are perfectly engineered and darn-near indestructible. That would be your kitchen knives and garden tools, screws and hinges and all that.

But the complex stuff is sealed up in little boxes that are attached modular-style to an also sealed power pack. The difference between a laser scalpel, a blaster and a mining laser are just a couple of universal components. Your character doesn't really understand the tech because nobody outside of the AIs and a few super-genius humans actually understand it. They don't need to, the same way we don't need to know how a combustion engine actually works.

@TheOnceler Because we're playing Hollywood versions of the various faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share the same Faith mechanics (gaining Blessings and getting Guidance), but obviously different flavor. We're not at all opposed to having a few Jewish characters and even a Rabbi wandering the grid -- although a whole crew is probably a bit much for the setting.

Which is a shame, because Jewish freebooters are known for having pirate minyans.

(I'll show myself out.)

I think a good approach might be an 'All-New, All-Different Year 1'.

The original five as established characters, teachers and X-Men and then bringing in later characters (from the Claremont era to today) as 'new mutants' or other former students who are now either full X-Men or living post-Xavier's School lives.

I am always, always, always amused by nerds when it comes to plausability.

"Look, I'm fine with interstellar teleportation, true AI and space Mormons, or FTL ships, matter transmutation and fields of coherent invisible energy that block attacks, or space samurai, laser swords and moon-sized ships, but damn it, this one thing over here is just a step too far!"