Alright so let's get this ball rolling. First off: Yes I am doing another attempt at a capes game.
I realize it might not be the best idea given my track record of health issues getting in the way of staffing but recent events have given me a bit of a now or never view on a lot of things.
I realize that I've got a track record as well of doing overly oddball ideas that don't gain much traction, examples of note being the 4 different iterations of 4tMU, my Marvel Civil War game set during the Civil War, my 15th century Pirates superhero game, my Matrix game (More an example of not having the playerbase for the setting), my Fallout Lone Star mush that never got players (I'd chalk that one up to my decision to have the entire thing set in an Enclave Training vault and not getting peoples interest long enough for the vault to open), my Star Trek TOS game (A failure I chalk up to ST:O existing as well as just another case of building a product for a market that doesn't exist), Wild West Superheroes game, Prohibition Mobsters game. Point is I've always had a bit of a bad habit of trying something incredibly niche that doesn't have the customer base to see itself reach that magic number of player stability.
So this time around I've decided to try and make something a bit more simple, and a bit more straight forward as a main grid with the potential for minigrids that I can use as... off the beaten trail connected areas to try out my more oddball ideas as little on rotation events.
So. Right now the concept is this. The main grid is a Year 5 game. It's 5 years after Superman first hit the scene. He's the second actually super powered hero to hit the scene the first being a single super powered villain who showed up during WW2 and took the combined might of the Allied, Comintern, and the worlds unpowered heroes to defeat and lock up frozen in ice in the worlds most secure prison to keep him from effectively being able to take over the world.
All of the superhero comic company universes exist in the multiverse of this game. I'll put some restrictions on the ones that can appear on our main grid but somewhere out there in the multiverse if it's had a superhero comicbook written? It's in our games multiverse. This allows little stories to cross over for one off stories or plots and give people a bit more variety.
The one thing I've decided is that in this game Time Travel does not exist. Full stop. Anything that looks like time travel is actually travel between dimensions. I would liken dimensional travel to what space travel was in the 1960's. It's dangerous, takes a LOT of money, takes a LOT of power, and isn't something you just do on a whim.
Now on the subject of the universe itself my inclination is to make the universe that our grid is on a DC universe. That means we have Therymyscia, and all the good old fashioned fictional nations of the DC universe on one planet. I plan once my disability actually gets approved (God willing it will be with how bad my health is.) doing a commission with a cartographer to work out a global map that sandwiches together all the fictional DC nations on one big ol map and gives us some solid ground for what the world actually looks like.
We are going to be a Year 5 game, what that means is that it's 5 years since super powered soldiers became a thing. Prior to that five year marker what you had was the classics like The Shaddow, and Wesley Dodds sandman. Masked heroes have been a thing, but superheroes are new.
This I think gives some room for people to sandwich in characters without having too much guff and fluff getting in the way of new people (And OC's) breaking in.
How will Marvel characters work? If you adjust it to fit into this world that is DC focused and adjust accordingly to the DC lore I'm perfectly fine with Marvel characters being used. You don't have to rename them, and most won't require radical changes.
The main thing it means is Superman is the cap of what a hero can do being able to lift 700 tonnes travel at a speed of Mach 25. Lex Luthor is the smartest non mutated human on earth. And a few other little things that are true on characters. I'm going to be aiming at using Superman as the benchmark for the top of our chart of what's available to a player. Think of Superman as a rating 10, the average Human as a Rating 3
Now why is this a thread in development instead of on an advert or the like? Because I'm still working on it.
I've got a codebase, got a server host, got a basic outline for the grid I intend to make. I'm going to be reusing what I can from 4TMU just because I worked very hard on that grid and like how it turned out. What I want is some feedback. I realize MuSoap might not be the best place for ideas and feedback but I'm not the most intellectual person.
We're not going to be using Aresmu*. While I LOVE the codebase and working in it is a breeze I just can't afford the hosting costs on my zero income, and I can't just keep hoping to get approved for disability to pay for it. I've got to use the hosting options that are available to me and make the most of my resources.
I think we're using Rhost? I'm not entirely sure. It's almost six in the morning as I'm writing this, but I'll edit this when I'm more with it and can remember the codebase. I think it's Rhost though.
So to cover again: Year 5 game, most supers are just getting their start. DC Universe but Marvel is completely allowed. You can app characters from the multiverse within reason. Game is set modern day. This time around the twist is something simple that won't affect the majority of players but I intend to use on several events. Power level is slightly on the lower side for the most part. No time travel. Focused on earth on the area around Metropolis and Gotham State.
Why is this called spitballing? Because I'm looking for some feedback and further ideas that I can use as the basis for my work on this project. I'm making the damn thing come hell or high water so there's that at least. I'm just doing this part so people can throw their two cents at me like I'm a little dancing monkey in a cage. Gotta earn them shekles.
