Posts made by Lithium

@Thenomain said:

@Apos said:

Another example, automatic logging of all events. I've had some testers tell me they just aren't okay with it, even if it's entirely voluntary. They just dislike the -potential- of some of their RP being captured without their consent automatically. Some players are way more prickly about their privacy or anything that feels invasive than others. I personally do not care if everything I do publicly on the grid was captured for posterity but others REALLY disagree.

This is interesting, because a lot of people are logging the RP without consent, on a person-by-person basis. If you feel like you can get a candid response to this, I'd be interested to hear what the justification for this double-standard is. That is, they're okay with people doing it without notification, but not the game itself.

What I'd like to try is a scene logger. People log scenes. People post logged scenes. It happens so much in WoD games that people stopped asking me, and so I assume they stopped asking others; does that mean this is no longer an invasion of privacy? I don't know. There really is no difference, here, except that we'd be offering a service to simplify what people are doing anyway.

I think an automatic scene logger that stripped out rolls and ooc's would be awesome. Especially if it was tied into the SQL and thus uploaded to wiki easily as well, where it could be modified if need be.

@ZombieGenesis said:

Again, I think this is an interpretation thing. I don't agree with how you are interpreting it. No where does it say the word negate. To me negate means it totally removes and penetrate does not. You still get a save, a full save.

You're also using the term "rather easily" very loosely. You'd have to have 16 people with law rockets to satisfy with the hero not fighting back I think.

Anyway, you have your way of looking at the game and devising your house rules thusly. Which is absolutely fine. I've just been expressing my own opinion on such things.

While all this has led to me deciding I won't be playing on the game I wish you well with it! I think the MU world really needs a few M&M games.

Negate as in remove the Impervious not the toughness altogether.

So for example: Impervious Force Field is 2 points per rank. You buy it at Rank 12 for 24 points. Someone buys rank 6 attack with 3 points of penetrating for a total of 9 points. Those 3 points negate the imperviousness and thus they get a rank 3 attack on you.

Another example: 3 point gun with armor piercing (penetrating 3) bullets shoots a character with impervious 12 defenses. Instead of it bouncing, all 3 points get through. Admittedly you only need to roll a 6 to bounce it, but that's a 25% chance it doesn't bounce. So you've just paid an additional 12 points that were negated by 3 points spent by your opponent.

That is why it needs a bit of tweaking, either you need to have enough points in penetrating to completely defeat the impervious defense, or some other method needs to be used.

I haven't decided on a course of action yet, all I know is as it works in 3e by default, even the toughest characters aren't very tough compared to the source material.

I'm sorry to hear you won't even check it out when it's ready but good luck and have fun.

@Apos It's public RP, therefor it should be public for consumption. Anyone who gets their panties in a bind about stuff done in public being logged is, in my opinion, a twit. It's a public room, there is nothing stopping anyone from coming in and invading the RP to begin with. If it's private RP keep it in private (and off public logs).

I am seriously considering public RP to be fully open. Staff can and should just drop events down on the grid on public people. Boom, event. Make things exciting. Stuff happens when you're out in the real world and no public RP should be considered sacred or private.

Ahh this coffee bar rp is awesome OMFG IT'S A PACK OF FLYING MONKETS WITH TASERS KIDNAPPING PEOPLE!! That Dastardly Dr. Hominoidea is gathering up subjects for his terrible experiments! What do you do?

And so on.

@ZombieGenesis

Cut and paste from the book:

Your effect overcomes Impervious Resistance to a degree; the target must make a resistance check against an effect rank equal to your Penetrating rank. So, if a rank 4 (Penetrating 2) effect hits a target with Impervious 9, the target must resist a rank 2 effect (equal to the Penetrating rank). If the effect were rank 6, the target would have to resist the full effect anyway, since its rank is greater than half the Impervious rank. You cannot have a Penetrating rank greater than your effect rank.

So yes, it negates it.

EDIT: For formatting

Also, that -1 stacks. You can be overwhelmed by law rockets rather easily. Or Tanks. A bunch of tanks shooting at you and you'll go down rather quickly with Rank 9 penetrating 9, even if you are at Toughness 18 impervious because that -1 affects damage resistance, it /will/ eventually kill you.

@ZombieGenesis Penetrating, page 143 M&M main book 3rd edition.

I'm not saying they will always be hurt by it, but the potential is there. Rolling a 6 or higher is still a 25% chance of being hurt.

@ZombieGenesis

Page 11 GM's guide, 3rd edition.

Also, penetrating point for point negates impervious. So if you had penetrating 2 on a rank 4 attack, you'd still get 2 rank attack even against impervious 30.

I don't downvote because it does nothing, and I don't think I can.

I've been downvoted though, I've also been upvoted.

As for Cirno...

Why do I see so many similarities in sentence structure and words used. Hmmm.

@ZombieGenesis

Yes, but the powerhouse can lift 1.6 kilotons. Yet a 30.06 rifle with an armor piercing (Penetrating) bullet can completely ruin his day. There's no immunity to small arms unless you buy an immunity to that individual thing. It's also a problem in other systems such as Hero System when you get the stun lottery. It's just messy.

One of the things that was great about TSR's game is someone like Juggernaut was hard as heck to hurt physically and that was easily simulated. Even softer bricks such as Iron Man, or Colossus, or The Thing were able to just not care about a lot of conventional weaponry.

I think impervious and penetrating should be able to be bought more than once. Buying Impervious on Toughness 12 lets you ignore attacks of rank 6 or lower. But, buy 6 points of penetrating on an attack (For half the cost of buying Impervious on 12 defense) and you have, for 6 points, completely bypassed it.

For example: The light anti-tank weapon, or the LAW rocket, is pretty ubiquitous and can be purchased fairly easily at a gunshow. It does Ranged Burst Area Damage 9, Penetrating 9. So it can negate the toughness of up to an 18 imperviousness. 18. That's world defending power level range and it's a weapon that anyone can get, even more common if you start adding in bazooka's left over from WWII and Korea and Vietnam or mass produced by various countries and sold all over the world.

One of those hits you and on a non-crit you're looking at DC 24 to resist in the best of circumstances. Set up anti-tank mines, and you got Damage 15 penetrating 8. Which would be a 30 DC that can overcome toughness 16 impervious.

It doesn't exactly simulate those types of comic characters who can laugh at modern weaponry. Those guys who take tank cannon shots (Ranged Damage 9, Penetrating 9 also) without a care, of which there are a more than a fair few of.

It's one of the things I don't like that changed from 2nd to third edition. Impervious actually felt tough.

Alright that's fair. I can see all those points and yeah I am hacking the rules somewhat (Mainly because some of them are kind of weird and make designing a pain in the ass).

There will be some changes because it is a different medium, some powers will be removed, the way penetrating and impervious affect things is changing (It's ridiculously hard to be as tough as a tank in M&M for example, or even moderately bulletproof as a sniper rifle is going to possibly hurt even Toughess 12 Impervious characters ).

I recognize I might have a leg up because I am very familiar with super hero systems, especially ones like Hero System and others but I am going to do my best to make it approachable and easily understood by any who wish to play on the game.

Part of that is simply making access to information easier, not having to flip through books and find pages etc.

I'm working on commands to facilitate that today actually.

I don't know how we could be in disagreement as to what a toolbox is. A toolbox is a bunch of pieces that you can put together to create individual powers and characters that are unique. Hero System is a huge toolbox, for an example, and while M&M has toolbox elements it is nowhere near as daunting as that particular one is.

@Runescryer Yeah I remember reading something about that, and honestly that's why I'd never looked at M&M for so long because it was OGL and I figured it had 'levels' like D&D does which turned me off to the idea of an OGL super hero game entirely.

@ZombieGenesis Most super hero games are toolboxes, or you get a list of powers that is in and of itself a whole book like the old Marvel Ultimate Powers Book (I loved that book...)

We'll see how it goes, but I do think that with templates and low PL characters available like popcorn it should be easy for people to get involved with a minimum of fuss.

That's the dream.

@Runescryer My attempt to make it less random was to try and convert it into a point buy system but trying to determine the point value for each power was... well it was a pain in the ass. I got pretty far, my coder at the time did some pretty amazing things but I didn't have enough support to see it through in the end because at the time I didn't really trust enough people to be staffers cuz it was my baby.

Thankfully that's less of an issue now in some ways, I'm more willing to give people a chance.

I have tools already to track how many commands people are using just in default systems. If someone is burning through commands at an unreasonable rate they are probably trying to force the code to break which in and of itself is something /I/ do every time I right a new piece of code, to see if it needs a Semaphore or not. Anyways I know that individual could either be 1) A problem player, or 2) Someone looking for bugs to try and help the game.

Either way I will watch to see if they're flooding commands all the time and will discuss it with them.

As to OOC spying, no, I don't want to know what you and that other person are doing in your private room. Humans have some weird sexual desires and honestly, some of them freak me right the fuck out, but I don't care what two consenting adults do.

I just have a few simple rules: No Rape. Period. Any parties who participate in such plots are gone. Bye. Don't care if it was IC or not. Every time I've heard 'it generates story' is bs, it generates annoyance, and disrespect, and turns rape into entertainment and that is something I will /not/ allow on my games due to my past.

Anyways, that was off topic...

No OOC spying isn't necessary, I too encourage a game culture where logs are posted all the time because I find they help promote RP and make it easier for people to get involved if they can see the kinds of things going on.

@Runescryer said:

@Lithium
There's a couple of other supers game systems out there.

DC Universe: the last game from West End before they completely folded, it's the modified D6 system adapted for supeheroes. Not really sucessfully...

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Margaret Weiss Production's recent entry. Has some interesting dice and narrative mechanics, but no chargen, as far as I remember.

Cypher System: new universal game system from Monte Cook using the system from Numeria and The Strange. Simple dice mechanics,deceptively simple char gen (in a good way).

Abberant: White Wolf's superhero game. Storyteller system and easy enough. My only real problem with it was the narrow 1-5 trait range.

In the end, I agree with you that M&M is the best overall mixture of ease of play and complexity.

Well I don't and won't use that travesty that Weis came up with for Marvel, talk about non-existant rules for making a character other than some crazy handful of dice and put what you want where... just ugh.

I don't mind WEG games, but, I also don't want to deal with fistfulls of d6 too, it can get annoying and just creates dice bloat in the end.

Aberrant is a setting I love, and the system isn't horrible, but it is not balanced. At all. I made an Aberrant MUX back in the days and while we were coding through chargen we realized just how broken it would be on a large scale (The mega-attributes in particular are incredibly abusive).

I have not tried Aberrant d20, but I figured that'd probably be using something similar to M&M being d20 to begin with and since I'm not using that setting...

@ZombieGenesis As for pulling only M&M players, I'm not entirely sure about that. If I make the chargen system intuitive and helpful enough, and give people avenues to just play a balanced character without having to finagle the system then it'll be pretty welcoming. That's the hope.

Other than the old Aberrant system (Which anyone who is familiar with WoD would be familiar with) I expect M&M to have the most proliferation when it comes to game system in this day and age.

Maybe I will get only M&M players, and if that's the case, that's ok too so long as everyone is having fun and I don't have to deal with Batman tapping Robin in the batcave.

@TNP I don't think the system requires that much of a learning curve, it's a single d20 + modifiers most anyone familiar with 3.0 D&D is going to be used to or at least familiar with. I guess creating extreme min-max characters takes practice but, I don't think balance is going to be difficult to bring in due to how PL works.

@Thenomain said:

@Lithium
This is true. It is less painful to go barefoot into the backyard of someone with twelve dogs with the runs than it is to go barefoot into a room covered with broken glass.

I'm not quite sure why you'd associate such analogies with this particular game system. Out of all the super hero game systems I've come across it's the easiest to understand other than pure consent... well no, that's not entirely true. The original Marvel SuperHeroes RPG that TSR made in the 80's was /super/ easy to understand but was based on random character creation which would mean luck, and only luck, got to determine how powerful your character was compared to everyone else.

Try making an encounter balance where one guy can lift 75 tons, and the other has human max stats because the origin they rolled doesn't allow for anything high at all.

There may be options I am not familiar with to be sure, I don't claim to know every super hero game system out there but out of the ones I do know, M&M seems to be the easiest to balance for an online game, and facilitate original character creation.

Hero System is so crunchy it's a huge barrier for entry
DC Hero System is chart dependent and more crunchy than M&M (Though I almost went with that instead of M&M until I read more on it)
Sailor Moon RPG is based on the tri-stat system which, I dislike.
GURPS is a nightmare of customization and will not balance, ever.
Heroes Unlimited... Palladium. Nuff said.
Wild Talents has a neat system, but one that is unique enough that people who know the system will destroy people who do no every time at the character creation stage.

M&M at least I can put in some guide lines and limits on my end so that people cannot nerf themselves into oblivion. A key point for all super hero games is character creation and it's at that point I need to make sure the code and assistance is it's strongest so that everyone who comes through can reasonably contribute to most situations.

Will I succeed? I don't know, but I aim to try.

What system would you even consider trying for this particular Genre Theno? I am honestly curious.

@Admiral said:

Sorry, guys. I can't find the thread where we listed the currently active games.

Could someone link me to it? Or if it's gone somewhere if someone could paste me a list of current games here I'd appreciate it.

www.mudstats.com

@Thenomain said:

@ZombieGenesis said:

I think the key to understanding M&M is understanding PL. It is, unfortunately, a min-max issue by default.

Thanks, this was the point I was getting at. The game rules of MM2 touch on this lightly, "Set your PL as high as you can go, then go from there," but going from there is not straightforward.

@DnvnQuinn said:

Min Maxing in a game with combat as a focus is...just smart gaming.

It rankled me when HelloRaptor said things like this. My contention--my very strong and deeply-rooted belief--is that if the game doesn't help you play it, it's a shitty game. If your table doesn't help you overcome the learning curve, they are shitty friends.

MM2 requires you to be good at its brand of min-maxing before you've ever played the game. This is doubly true on Mushes, because the people around you aren't friends, and MM2's chargen system makes WoD Mage's magic system look like kindergarten math.

Anecdotally, my MM2 character attempts end up with maybe two powers, while those around me have six or so and do more damage with a better chance to hit. How? I have no idea, because this form of min-maxing is not in my gamer's DNA. MM2 is, probably quite by accident, antagonistic toward anything but the d20 Feat-Based gamer mentality.

---

The main, and almost only, reason I point this out is that every time people gush about how awesome M&M is, I want to scratch my eyes out crying tears of blood.

Ok I can see how that would be a relevant concern, but I still feel it is less of an issue than say someone going into a Hero System game without any understanding of how to make a character because then it'll be even worse.

I do plan on putting archetypes into the game, think of them sort of as a pre-built character that can be customized to your hearts content in order for people to see what I want the majority of characters to be like.

So you will be able to pick an archetype, say Brick/Tank and then customize the abilities via their SFX so that one brick might be made of steel, another might just be a superman type, another might be a regenerator who heals damage as it's done, etc.

The chargen I am working on also gives advice on how to balance things to be effective, and hopefully other staff who do approvals (They better do this or they won't be approval staff for very long) will also work with people at all stages to help make functional characters.

@Thenomain said:

I will play on an M&M 2 game if someone promises to make my character for me. I do not understand the system one whit. The basics are clear, but there are expectations of minmaxing that are not evident in the rulebook.

I've also been reading too many web comics that subvert the superhero/hero trope, from "Superbitch" to "Cucumber Quest" to "Strong Female Protagonist". I find the power fantasy to be the least interesting part of someone with powers beyond mankind's ken which ... you know, maybe I shouldn't be allowed to play on a superhero game of any sort.

As to min maxing, I can see how it could be done but it's still limited by hard balance locks for the power level, and of course a GM willing to say 'No' can help a ton. That said, there is a lot of flexibility to it and so I am sure someone who really knows the system could game the heck out of it at the chargen level.

Right now I am reading through the 3rd edition stuff to see if I like the changes or not and see which I prefer. 2nd edition seems to have a lot of different theme books, while third seems to have a lot of different power books.

The problem wth added powers is it can be easy to have power creep so I will go through them with fine toothed comb. I am already yanking out time travel, dimensional travel, postcognition, and precognition because they are a royal pain in table top, and will be even more in a mux.

I liked the colors of potato but for me it was shift F1 and Shift F2, being able to convert line breaks and spaces into %r and %b's that keeps me using SimpleMU.

EDIT: And Control-P to cycle through what I'd written before.

@TNP It's nowhere near as crunchy as Hero System, or as chart dependent as DC Heroes and requires far less conversion than say TSR's MArvel Superheroes game back in the day.

There's a certain elegance to d20 + modifiers vs d20 + modifiers and determine results. No matter how you look at it, that's pretty simple game play and a lot of people are familiar with the type of modifiers that might come into play due to exposure. I don't have 3rd edition, just 2nd so I was going with that.

@Runescryer said:

@Lithium
As i said, when you're ready for staff, let me know. I do like your world idea; sounds like a solid plan.

I will be in touch when I get to grid building