Posts made by Ghost

@chet I ran Blob against them. I had a lot of fun when they'd punch him and get their fists stuck in rolls of sweaty blubber. I played that up, seriously, because that's what Blob is great for.

I'll go first.

His name is Lazarus.

One time, in a SuperHero tabletop game, I asked my players to list their characters' pet peeves. The list came up as follows:

• Liberals
• Hipsters
• People who talk too much
• People who listen to stupid music (metalhead player)

So I created an on the spot character whom I accidentally named "Laz". Laz was a waiter at a pizza place the heroes went to out of costume to try to take some time off. Enter a hipster with an ironic haircut, a neck tattoo of a rose, and a finely coiffed beard, wearing a plaid shirt and a white belt with his blue jeans. His dialogue was as such:

• "Hey, are you guys doing anything tonight? Because I'm totally into this band you probably don't know about, the Jamie Lannister Pornography Experience, they're kind of like a melange of Anthrax, old-school Lady Gaga, and Tibetan throat singing, and if you're cool you'll probably go."
• "Hey, why are you ordering iced teas when we've got vegan ultra-local microbrews? Oh, also? You're ordering the quiche nachos, right? Anyone who's anyone gets them"

They ended up accidentally causing him to die in a kitchen explosion.

A few months later we started a new super hero game. They were all playing mutants at Xaviers. GUESS WHO THEY RUN INTO AT A COFFEE HOUSE?

Only now, Lazarus is a mutant with a fringe mutant skill of +40 to coffee making, technopsychic control of all APPLE devices, and a power where he will resurrect after dying, but with no prior knowledge of 48 hours before his death.

"Oh hey, look at you guys! Hey, have you heard of 311 versus the Volcano? They're like a country version of Metallica meets De La Soul..."

Dead.

"Oh, dude we've never met before, my name's Laz, pronounced Laaaaws but it's short for Lazarus..."

Dead.

"Dude, do you guys wanna sign up for my quinoa apple butter microbrew tasting?"

Dead.

They're now begging me to have Laz show up in every game I run for them.

@lotherio By whack, though, please don't kill.

Without Bing we would have never had Tasha Yar

Any wiki mavens out there?

I'll reach out to you in PMs later, ZombieG.

@the-tree-of-woe But then that comes back to the original discussion. Sure, some concessions might have to be made for some key non-mutant FCs, such as Juggernaut, but the overall goal is to avoid the mistake some of these Supers games make in allowing too much scope until it just becomes watered down pockets of activity.

So it might be worth mentioning a few that have standing with the X-men enough to be regulars, like extended family. Perhaps Juggernaut, Hepzibah, Hulkling, and a few others, but not so much that the scope gradually starts to creep away from the X-men.

It'd be a slippery slope to suddenly having Avengers, etc.

I dig it. Consider me on the help list.

Rick Jones.

@tempest A bunch of people I know list Q as Queer.

It's not my scene, personally, but I added it just in case someone would be like "OMG GHOST, WHAT ABOUT Q???" So I put Q on there.

LGBT and beyond. Whatevs. XD

@scourge Right, that might be worth a definite conversation as well, but I put them on the list because they have the x-gene. I mean, Beast is/was/sometimes an Avenger, too, even if primarily an X-man. There's members of Excalibur on the list.

Splitting up Wiccan and Hulkling would definitely be a decision that would have to be made.

Regardless, the point that I'm trying to make is that there are a LOT of great FCs that aren't some kind of weird 70s fringe D-list character to choose from, and many of these characters on this list are tangled up together with years of character history, faction alignments, and would all technically be welcome in Utopia.

BRACE FOR SPAM
Iconic Tier (Leadership, whatever)
Angel/Archangel
Beast
Colossus
Cyclops
Emma Frost
Gambit
Scarlet Witch
Iceman
Kitty Pryde
Magneto
Marvel Girl
Mystique
Nightcrawler
Professor X
Psylocke
Rogue
Sabretooth
Storm
Wolverine
Magik

General Population
Anole
Arclight
Armor
Aurora
Avalanche
Banshee
Beak
Berserker
Bishop
Black Tom
Blindfold
Bling
Blink
Blob
Blockbuster
Boom Boom
Cable
Callisto
Cannonball
Chamber
Changeling
Cheney, Lila
Chimera
Cloak
Collins, Rusty
Cortez, Amma-Marie
Cortez, Fabian
Cuckoo, Celeste
Cuckoo, Esme
Cuckoo, Irma (Mindee)
Cuckoo, Phoebe
Cuckoo, Sophie
Cypher
Dagger
Daken
Dark Beast
Dazzler
Domino
Dr. Nemesis
Dust
Elixir
Fantomex
Feral
Firestar
Forge
Frenzy
Harpoon
Havok
Hellion
Husk
Icarus
Indra
Jubilee
Juggernaut???
Karma
Lady Mastermind
Lifeguard
Loa
Longshot
M
Madrox, Jamie
Maggot
Magma
Mammomax
Marrow
Match
Mercury
Mimic
Moonstar
Namor
Nocturne
Northstar
Onyx
Pixie
Polaris
Prism
Prodigy
Pyro
Quicksilver
Reyes, Cecelia
Rictor
Rockslide
Sabra
Sage
Scalp Hunter
Shaw, Sebastian
Siryn
Skids
Songbird
Speed
Strong Guy
Summers, Rachel
Sunfire
Surge
Tempus
Vertigo
Voght, Amelia
Wallflower
Warpath
Wiccan
Wind Dancer
Wisdom, Pete
Wither
Wolf Cub
Wyngarde, Martinique
X-23
Yukio

I will note that I think that Speed and Wiccan are an important addition for 2 reasons.

1. They are family to Wanda and Quicksilver, and are mutants
2. Wiccan is an iconic gay character who was part of winning awards for depiction of positive LGBTQ role models in comics, and I think that'd be great for characters who want to roleplay him.

As for the Cuckoos, I was gonna list them as 1 (worth 5), but again that'd definitely be a staff conversation. Allow 5 players to play 5 cuckoos? 1 to play 5? Keep as NPCs? (Though may be a lot of fun for a group app)

EDIT: I mean, there's only so many iconic LGBTQ characters in the comics, and I think it would be nice to give them a home.

Right right, I mean there could be some bumping around.

Take Juggernaut for example. He's not a mutant, but he's iconic to being a part of the Erik Lensherr pain train. So allow it? Honorary family? It'd be up to staff to decide, but I'd personally lean towards yes.

I've been working on a list. God, there are a LOT of great characters in the X-universe.

I'm at about 19 "iconic" FCs that are core the comics and should probably best be left in the hands of people willing to run plot.

I'm currently looking at 113 "General Population" FCs.

That's 132 potential FC options, and they're not just old throwaway 70s mutants, either.

BRACE FOR SPAM
Iconic Tier (Leadership, whatever)
Angel/Archangel
Beast
Colossus
Cyclops
Emma Frost
Gambit
Summers, Hope
Iceman
Kitty Pryde
Magneto
Marvel Girl
Mystique
Nightcrawler
Professor X
Psylocke
Rogue
Sabretooth
Storm
Wolverine

General Population
Anole
Arclight
Armor
Aurora
Avalanche
Banshee
Beak
Berserker
Bishop
Black Tom
Blindfold
Bling
Blink
Blob
Blockbuster
Boom Boom
Cable
Callisto
Cannonball
Chamber
Changeling
Cheney, Lila
Chimera
Cloak
Collins, Rusty
Cortez, Amma-Marie
Cortez, Fabian
Cuckoo, Celeste
Cuckoo, Esme
Cuckoo, Irma (Mindee)
Cuckoo, Phoebe
Cuckoo, Sophie
Cypher
Dagger
Daken
Dark Beast
Dazzler
Domino
Dr. Nemesis
Dust
Elixir
Fantomex
Feral
Firestar
Forge
Frenzy
Harpoon
Havok
Hellion
Husk
Icarus
Indra
Jubilee
Juggernaut???
Karma
Lady Mastermind
Lifeguard
Loa
Longshot
M
Madrox, Jamie
Maggot
Magik
Magma
Mammomax
Marrow
Match
Mercury
Mimic
Moonstar
Namor
Nocturne
Northstar
Onyx
Penance/Speedball
Pixie
Polaris
Prism
Prodigy
Pyro
Quicksilver
Reyes, Cecelia
Rictor
Rockslide
Sabra
Sage
Scalp Hunter
Scarlet Witch
Shaw, Sebastian
Siryn
Skids
Songbird
Speed
Strong Guy
Summers, Rachel
Sunfire
Surge
Tempus
Vertigo
Voght, Amelia
Wallflower
Warpath
Wiccan
Wind Dancer
Wisdom, Pete
Wither
Wolf Cub
Wyngarde, Martinique
X-23
Yukio

I'm gonna get my Destiny2 (Iron Banner, yo) on and then might start working in google drive on prospective mutant FC lists.

@ZombieGenesis do you really think you can code the Margaret Weis MSHRPG system into code? If so, ive got all the books and could probably turn out about 20+ FC +sheets in no time.

So 2 chars total. Out of the gate you can take 1 FC and 1 OC?

That sounds reasonable to me. That should also sound reasonable to anyone who wants to support the player base in finding FCs to play from a community standpoint. It's fair.

I agree with a temporary no alt policy

I dont think that most people would find unreasonable to be limited to 1 character for a few months to let the FC roster pan out. It would avoid a snatch and grab.

Last thing you want is within a week of the game opening to find out that only FUCKIN BEAK is available because everyone got greedy.

Let's be honest with ourselves. Being able to grab 2 ASAP would definitely result in people grabbing the best two ASAP that they could find so that no one else gets them first.

But if you have 20 players, that means FORTY FCs could disappear in the blink of an eye.

Alt limits would be necessary. There's only so many mutants before youre forced to create an OC or play BEAK

If you love Beak? More power to you, but getting a roster of appable mutant FCs that would center on Utopia is key, and I think making sure people have a list of mutants to research and choose from to avoid defaulting to WTFBEAK would help.

My suggestion:

• Overall: Mutant only FCs based out of UTOPIA setting. Allow X men/School/Utopia/San Francisco/Brotherhood as IC faction/setting elements.
• FCs: Only if they're mutants. It doesnt matter if they're former SHIELD agents or current, but their core of influence needs to be at Utopia. Reserve major chars and major villains for NPC use only (Sinister, Apocalypse, Cameron Hodge, etc). This means no Thor, Captain America, etc, but there's nothing wrong with people taking on NPC duty to role play as them in events. I'm sure some people would love spending an afternoon playing Thor swinging a hammer at their buddies in a TP.
• OCs: OC mutants only with reasonable mutation spectrums. No claws and time travel and magic and technomancy. OCs must have a power theme. Iceman never developed laser beam powers, but could shoot beams of cold.
• PrP/TPs: Give love for the genre. Mutant civil rights, mutant supremacy, punching at Iron Man for delivering bullshit civil rights mandates on sovereign soil, diplomacy with non mutants, fighting the Reavers, Purifiers, visiting the Shi'ar, etc
• Random Cool Idea#4: Unlockable mutants. Select a group of fringe characters that can be unlocked thru TPs. If the players choose to rescue Caliban? Unlocked. Make it like a fun kickstarter stretch goal element
• Alts: 2 characters per player total, but only 1 can be a starring cast member, such as Storm, Cyclops, etc
• ConflictOfInterest: Since all chars are in one sphere, dial back CoI rules to assisting in benefit between characters.
• System: This will be the big one. Some systems are too chunky and require books/knowledge that is hard to obtain. I ptefer the Margaret Weis MSHRP system (out of print), but Champions might be too chunky. Most HeroMushers are okay with the consent system, but at the least there should be some dice resolution.

In my GUT CHECK thread I said a lot of things, but the one I feel most strongly about is to keep the roster to X-TYPES ONLY

A more inclusive roster will just repeat what fails on these other games: too broad a scope.

If everyone is x-sphere and the game gives a reason for no more than 2 factions to exist, then they're all kept together, role playing together.

If you add in Avengers...more splintering
Add in space: more splintering
Add in Asgard: MORE splintering
Add in a magic faction: MOAAAR SPLINTERING

Next thing you know, you have a game with 32 characters role playing as part of 20 factions, and no one role plays with anyone outside of their preferred clique.

Dont be afraid to say: This is an X-Sphere game. You love the mutant civil rights drama, the characters, the setting, the history. Come here and play mutants

Then allow NPC cameos of the big bads and outside influences:

• The Avengers come to enforce registration. Time to fight the Avengers
• Sinister, Apocalypse, etc are all great for plots
• Doom visit Utopia

Long and short of the idea is to keep the PLAYERBASE focused on one aspect of the super hero world to keep them together and make their characters important. While you may have mutants that use magic (Magick, for example), doing this will keep Magick's character functionally important to the other PCs, rather than creating some Strange/Constantine/Zatanna hit squad that pulls the character further away from the core of rp for exclusive time.

No, instead make Magick important to the mutant community, one of their few magical experts, which will come in handy when Mephisto sucks them all into Limbo to fight demons. (Kyle/Yost/Young New X men run)