I'd like to try a theme/system/et cetera that's unfamiliar, or at least different after years of comic book and assorted anime-themed games.
I need to work on plot-running, especially as it relates to following through on ideas and maintaining motivation.
I could also really stand to work on consistent activity, given that I've been bouncing around aimlessly for the last few months.
I want to learn enough MUX code to, if not work up a project, at least be able to write/read it usefully, too.
Updated.
One of these days, I really oughtta try a non-media property-derived game, I guess.
I started taking improv classes in April and graduated a couple of weeks ago. With any luck, most of my graduating class and I will be starting up a troupe of our own.
It's been an amazing experience, unlike anything else I've done; my class is laid back, supportive, and hilarious. I'm hoping we're able to stay together for a long while to come.
Another dumb question: If the game isn't intended to be strictly competitive, what do you envision the main drivers of conflict to be? Will there be third parties regularly stirring up trouble for both sides to deal with as they will, alongside the general ideological clashes inherent to focusing on the X-Men and the Brotherhood?
@enoch Awesome. I think I'm gonna look at apping-- someone, I dunno who, into the Brotherhood, then!
@enoch Can anyone who isn't explicitly listed on one of the rosters on the wiki be placed in whichever group a player decides?
Is anyone already, like. Spoken for? Via alpha/beta players, staff, etc.
I can't help but be excited for this concept. I can't put my finger on why, exactly, but I'm into it.
No idea who the hell to look at playing, but I'm into it.
Setting: Anything, ANYTHING but Westchester/School. Anything at all. I don't care if it's Utopia; I don't care if it's Genosha; I don't care if they're living on Asteroid X and fending off Skrulls all day; the private school in upstate New York is just so, so played out as a setting for X-Sphere MU* play. I'm not even totally against the idea of /a/ school, of there being a component of education and/or training to whatever setting is used, but on the occasions that I've played in the traditional setting, I've found it to be stifling and dragged down somewhat by an overemphasis on the minutiae of school life.
Maybe that's just me, though, I dunno; it's certainly popular enough.
Personally, I would be into using Utopia, or even brainstorming some mystery alternative, if that really doesn't suit.
Canon: I'm super ambivalent about the idea of a canon-cutoff game. It's a useful shortcut towards sidestepping some of the common problem of superhero MU* settings these days by providing the game with an already-fleshed out setting, providing players with a good sense of what important events have or haven't already occurred, and preloading some easy character connections for FCs. I do, however, think that it would be entirely possible - especially in a game with a more limited focus - to construct a suitable setting/overall game framework that both lets people enjoy some of the freedom of adaptation that tends to come with playing on comic games and still maintains a sense of internal consistency if the staff was willing to take care in coming up with a solid foundation and work with the playerbase to ensure that its overall integrity is maintained.
It's not hugely important - to me, at least - whether the precise events of the Phoenix Saga, or Inferno, or X-Cutioner's Song have occurred, or whether the first X-Men were Archangel, Maggott, Cecilia Reyes, Colossus, and Storm; what matters more to me is that whatever setting is run with is consistent and coherent on its own terms.
Scope: The X-Men have quite a few unique(or, at least, recurrent) setting elements, enough that - in combination with what the wider Marvel Universe provides - there's plenty of diverse territory to cover. I personally have found myself drifting towards a preference for combined themes, so that's of course where I would fall, given a choice-- but, given the aforementioned diversity, and the commonality of broadly combined theme games, I think my actual feelings run towards trying to find some middle ground between that preference and a more limited scope by taking some inspiration from M1963+, as well as M3, and any number of other fandom-based games with mixed themes:
Open with 'mutants and associated allies/adversaries only', or even 'X-Men/Brotherhood/whatever else feels appropriate' as the scope, and gradually - via plot, at a deliberately measured pace - expand that scope over time, allowing new FC options to trickle into the pool in a way that - at least, theoretically - allows for some of the variety that seems popular in the circuit these days without running as great of a risk of theme-dilution. Maybe after shutting down a moon-based Master Mold, the X-Men discover the Blue Area, opening the door to tentative negotiations - and/or conflict - with the reclusive nobility hidden within it; maybe Fisk Industries opens a San Francisco subsidiary, drawing a number of costumed mercenaries to the area as the Kingpin sets about trying to tame the underworld of a city actively protected by mutants; maybe ~teenagers from the future begin appearing around town with dire warnings of Kang and/or his adoptive children, whose brutal, timeline-spanning regime began with exploiting San Fran's dormant Celestial. The important thing, ultimately, would be taking care to mold anything from outside of the X-verse to fit the setting, rather than the opposite-- which goes back to the importance of a well-defined and carefully maintained theme.
Alts: The number of possible FCs for an X-Men only game still runs well into the triple digits. They aren't /all/ A-listers, but there's still a healthy enough variety that I'm not convinced of the importance of restricting everyone to a single FC-- though defining a set of 'important' characters that no one person should be playing more than one of would certainly be useful. If it's a matter of forcing focus by limiting the number of alts on a game, well-- people are going to be as focused or unfocused as they're naturally gonna be, no matter what rules this one game has in place to encourage or curb them. There are other MU*s; there's World of Warcraft; there's Netflix; there are a million things that could reduce the amount of overall attention paid to this one game which its admin would have no control over.
That said, of course: I don't think that there needs to be a crazy number of 'em allowed, either. 2, maybe 3 FCs; a laxer number of OCs, though likely not 'unlimited'. I don't have any strong feelings, there. If there were some gradual process of adding to the available character roster, then it could be that - a ways down the line - allowing for more FC slots could be warranted, but absent that, I'm not so sure.
I probably have more thoughts on this specific subject - I definitely have more on the broader subject of concocting a cape game, though I can't really vouch for their coherency ATM - but they aren't coming to me, right now.
@Arkandel said in DC Game Wanted:
I mean it might just be the MSB effect but some of the posts in similar threads have have been like "if the Flash is Barry Allen I hate it and I won't play there full stop" and whatnot.
I think this mindset may play into most of the games based on existent comic properties tending to go broad and let differing versions coexist wherever possible(can't have show Barry and comics Barry, but Barry, Wally, Jay Garrick, and so forth can all be 'the Flash' if that's how players want it) nowadays, whether multi-theme or not.
I can't really speak to it being better or worse than a more rigid adherence to a specific canon, specific versions, etc, but I generally don't mind it.
@Moritz I've only actually seen them done as teens-to-adults, either from some other reality, or from the future.
@tragedyjones He's pretty fantastic, although I've yet to read his post-Secret Wars appearances.
@moritz Ah, that makes sense. Valeria/Franklin would probably be awkward, at best(even moreso than usual).
@Moritz Why are the Fantastic Four members prohibited from being sourced from other realities/takes, out of curiosity-- is it just a thematic concern? Or am I misreading what you said about them?
IOW: Could Evil Conehead Reed make an appearance, or nah?
Slipknot was the guy in the Ostrander run whose sole purpose was to demonstrate that Waller wasn't fucking around about the team's explosive bracelets, so his inclusion seems reasonable.
Incidentally:
I know it's been asked plenty, but I can't help but add my voice to the chorus: @Swaggot, why /do/ you keep popping back up to do the same pointless shit(complaining about MCM and EE&E; calling people on this forum irrational liberal cunts because they disagree with you; unclever, sideways homosexual slurs; general 4channery) when A.) it seems to get you banned with the quickness and B.) nobody particularly cares about any of it as anything but momentary entertainment.
If you're going to keep sneaking into a moderately active forum dedicated to an already small hobby that is perpetually in a state of contraction, why not try being a constructive member? Do you just need the satisfaction of feeling as if you're rustling this forum's collective jimmies every month or so before you inevitably tilt into ban-worthy inappropriateness, or are you genuinely having a hard time figuring out how to behave in a way that won't put you at odds with the majority of the userbase?
EDIT: Obviously, calling people irrational liberal cunts in the Hog Pit would probably be fine. But this isn't there.
Shit, he coulda just named the dude 'Exsanguinator' and called it a day.
@Ninjakitten said
What I'm kind of curious about is: DO superhero games have a history of treating non-straight male heroes poorly? "Unlike many other games that treat even established gay, bi, and queer male characters poorly" strongly suggests that, but as someone who doesn't play the genre, I don't know if that's true. If it is, I can see a non-fetish place this would come from, although given my experience in other genres I'd've thought an everyone-welcome game with strict enforcement against people being that kind of asshole would work also.
Comics absolutely do. Comic games - at least, based on my relatively limited(8 yrs, maybe 6 or 7 games) don't, really. I've never been on a game without a contingent of queer players/characters, and I'm fairly sure that I've come across numerous examples of players doing (presumably) straight characters as gay or bi without issue on every game I've played. Also two examples of the opposite, but it's not at all common.
I can't speak to any experience but my own of course, so it's entirely possible that there /have/ been people who have been harassed due to their/their character's sexuality on these games, on the DL. But I've not seen or heard of much of anything along those lines; maybe the worst is the odd, broadly intolerant or !PC player here or there, but little that's systemic, or widespread, or even particularly accepted.
JLU mux's former head admin was maybe the closest thing to a homophobic staff type I've experienced(and I take it that it was, at least before I began playing it, kind of shitty towards queer players on a policy level). But the game was eventually edged out of his grasp(not /just/ because he had some 'phobic tendencies, not that they helped any), and even before that point, the game had otherwise been plenty welcoming to queer characters once those shit old policies had been done away with.
@DnvnQuinn I don't have any (useful) content, but I'm curious: what D&D 5E MUSH?
@Vorpal said in Comics Stuff:
I think I know what happened- the Cosmic Cube didn't restore Steve Rogers to youth-
It brought in a parallel universe Steve Rogers who was a HYDRA sleeper agent. His memories are therefore consistent with his history even if they are not consistent with o-
No. I've got nothing, really. I don't see how they can pull this off without staining Cap.
Well, given the telepathic Red Skull(the Cube in question was actually a small child with Cosmic Cube powers, for reference) lurking around the periphery of that particular situation and the scenes about Steve's Hydra indoctrination being completely gray save for a few splashes of red, this or some variation on it(editing Steve's actual history the same way that he once did Sam's seems likely, though I'm sure there'll be another twist or something on this concept) is almost certainly what's going on here.
Personally, I'm kind of apathetic bordering on rolling my eyes at Marvel and, really, DC Comics* seemingly having decided to compete to see who could spin the dumbest twist to draw some eyes to their perpetually flagging sales, but if this turns out to be a story about Steve(and Sam, who'll have even more time as 'the' Captain America before the status quo reasserts itself) and co. fighting to protect Steve's own core self and values from the Red Skull, I feel like the character will be fine in the long run, even if he'll probably be in for some Bucky-esque angst once it's all said and done.
(* Obviously, DC's specific flavor of dumb twist** is a wholly different animal, and I'm not in any way trying to trivialize the feelings of people who may be genuinely offended by the Cap reveal, etc. )
(** But, seriously, Geoff, Watchmen? Really?)