Best posts made by Runescryer

First episode of Moon Knight is up on Disney+

You need to go watch it. Like, now.

Daredevil Season 1 greatness, then cranked up to 11.

So, the idea was bounced around in another thread about a MU based on the Amazon series Carnival Row; all about fae and humans in a fantasy Edwardian England. I'm sure that interested parties are working on adaptations using Changeling (Dreaming or Lost), but apparently, there's an official free RPG from Monte Cook using the Cypher System.

https://nerdist.com/article/carnival-row-rpg-download-free/

SPOLIER
.
.
.
.
.
She-Hulk, Episode 8...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
LAST CHANCE TO BACK OUT...
.
.
.
.
.
.
Matt's arrived. And it's been worth the wait.

Fantastic interaction between Matt & Jen. Both in and out of the courtroom. They are now my new shipping obsession.

Plus, the walk of shame Matt does after leaving Jen's apartment was hilarious.

Only criticism...

WTF wasn't the fact that Leapfrog used the wrong kind of fuel in his boot jets not discovered by Jen in her initial interview with him? I mean...that's just a basic question to ask before taking a product liability case, right? "Did You Follow The Operating Instructions?'...

Also, the 3rd Degree Burns exaggeration. My dude...you would not be out of the hospital, walking around, if you had suffered 3rd Degree Burns on your leg a few days/weeks ago... 2nd Degree is enough; 3rd Degree is charred flesh down to the bone.

@Cupcake

@Ghost Regardless, I do understand the complaint of how I approached this. I still feel the need for secrecy and to respect the privacy of those involved. So, in the future, I won't mention any possibilities of who the person in question might be, but just a more general 'creeper' alert, advising players and Staff to be aware that there's potential creeper activity noticed on a game and that Staff of the game is investigating. No names, no details until they're okayed by Staff to be released upon completion of an investigation. No speculation of which bad actor might be returning...

Hopefully, this is an approach that is more acceptable to the community at large.

@Ganymede I think of it as Pessimism vs. Optimism.

Cyberpunk is pessimistic by nature. Humans are greedy and amoral as a rule. You have to 'do it to the other guy before they do it to you'. Corporations are the ultimate expression of the amoral and greedy nature of humanity.

Transhumanism is optimistic by nature. Humans are just humans, with good and bad, although most people are basically cooperative and semi-altruistic. Corporations are profit-motivated, but not to the extreme amorality of Cyberpunk corps; and those that are tend to be the bad guys.

Which brings me to another defining feature of Cyberpunk vs. Transhumanism: who exploits your tech for whom's benefit? In transhumanism, you exploit the tech you use for your benefit and personal advancement. In cyberpunk, those in power exploit your tech for their own benefit. Using cybereyes as an example. In a transhumanist setting, cybereyes just give you corrected or enhanced vision; nothing more. In cyberpunk, cybereyes also give you enhanced vision, but also act as a doorway for corporations via constant news & advertising feeds in the bottom of your field of vision, not to mention turning you into a roving surveillance camera that the manufacturer has backdoor access to.

I'd be in for an all OC game; and an M&M 3e one at that. For what it's worth, here's a couple of ideas I've been running around with for my own 'in planning stage game'...

1. Legacy Characters. Every player gets the chance to create 1 Legacy; whether it's an alien race, a hidden nation, or a lineage of characters using the same name stretching back decades (or even centuries depending on how you want to set your game history). You can even have the legacy change 'sides' over time (example: Marvel's Black Knight, who started off as a knight to King Arthur, had a descendant fight in the Crusades, the 60's descendant became a villain because the Ebony Blade rejected him, leading up to the modern incarnation, Dane Whitman, who was given the Ebony Blade and accouterments of the Black Knight by his villainous uncle repenting on his deathbed). Other players can tie their characters into a Legacy, but only with the permission of the original PC (A PC creates an Atlantean Legacy and another player wants to create an Atlantean PC, but needs to get the permission of the first player to do that.)

2. Homage characters. Let's face it, there will be characters that are pastiches or straight off copies of big name characters. It's not necessarily a bad thing, since that's part of how new players learn a game or how to RP; it's just a thing. After all, Iron Man started out as Marvel's version of Batman, and the Fantastic Four were a super-powered version of the Challengers of the Unknown. So, each player gets 1 Homage character that's an obvious expy for a better known character. That doesn't mean straight carbon copy, though; The Confessor is Astro City's homage to Batman, but the characters are very different (same with Samaritan/Superman, Winged Victory/Wonder Woman, First Family/Fantastic Four).

3. Two Cities. It sounds like you're already on this track, but the Metropolis/Gotham dynamic does help enforce a separation of themes. Rather than having the Batman-type character enforcing a 'No Supers in my city' rule, I would recommend that you set up the 'grittier' city to be deliberately anti-super/anti-vigilante (through corruption of city government, perhaps, which adds lots of 'clean up the city' style TP's for the vigilantes).

4. Character Wills. It happens: RL or some other factor prevents a player from logging back in, and it disrupts the flow of the game if they were a PC vital to certain events. You can help mitigate the damage when this happens by making each player fill out a Will to determine what happens to the character when the player drops for whatever reason. Does it go into storage until the player returns? Does it become available for app by another player? Does it become a Staff NPC? Figuring out what happens beforehand is a good idea, IMO.

Looking forward to the game

Also, because Masks is a PBtA game, establishing ties with other PC's and NPC's is part of the c-gen process. In fact, there's a couple of playbooks where the Mentor/Mentoree relationship is essential to the chaacter's mechanics.

I'm of an opinion that a two-city grid is important to a functioning supers game. But instead of a young/old splits, it's more a Gotham/Metropolis split. My homebrew setting does this, adding in a West Coast vibe and mirroring the dynamics/perceptions of San Francisco & Oakland.

The best city split setting that I've seen is 5th Edition Champions, where you have 3 primary campaign cities: Millenium City/Detroit (Metropolis/traditional Supers), Hudson City (Gotham/street level Crimefighters) and Vibora Bay (mystical hoodoo characters)

For what it's worth, the more that I play mixed-universe games, the more I find that the disparity in power between Marvel & DC at the higher level characters gets more difficult to reconcile if you're using a numerical stat system. Heavyweights in the Marvel Universe just can't stack up to their DC counterparts. Thor, Hulk, and Juggernaut all top out around 100 tons of lifting, while Superman, Doomsday, and Wonder Woman surpass that by orders of magnitude. There's only been 1 time that I can think of when a Marvel character displayed DC-level strength, and that was in Secret Wars where the Hulk held up a mountain to keep himself and his companions from being crushed after it was dropped on them.

Yes, most of the times, the strength/power comparisons get handwaved in the comics, especially in the Marvel Vs. DC fights, but that's because the characters so rarely interact. On a MU, you have these characters interacting much more regularly, even if you only do 1 or 2 crossover events a year.

I'm probably in the minority, but I'm fairly burned out on FC super games. A lot of this has to deal with the heavy competition for the big name characters. With OC games, you can create obvious homages, but at least they're your character(s) and you can bring them to life without relying on previous comics canon, current comics storylines, or having to ret-con what a previous player may have done. You're also more free to write your own character without having to worry about how it might affect the prospect of a future player picking the character up at a later date.

Hmmm...A thought has occurred to me...

I present to you 'Runescryer's Law of MU's'...

"Given sufficient population and lack of Events, all MU's, regardless of theme, become sex MU's"

So, I get the idea of what @Mr-Johnson is saying/pitching here. Getting back to his idea of a Fallout MU, at some unspecified point in the Fallout Universe, pretty much the post WW2 50's, the world took a 'step back' and used atomic technology to fuel technological advancements that benefited society, much like the science fiction of that era and earlier had proposed. And, the aesthetic of the world remained stuck in the 50's, because reasons.

There's a few problems with this general concept, though (even with the Fallout series, not just the MU pitch)

1. It's internally inconsistent. We 'step back' and devote to technological advancement through atomic power, but we still build nuclear arsenals and there's still a Cold War between 'Yanks' and 'Commies' going until 2070 when the nuclear war breaks out between the US and China. So, there's really no 'step back' moment.

2)It ignores societal changes that accompany technology. Everything is basically 'Leave It To Beaver', but with robots and clunky wrist computers.There's no mutual influence of society and technology upon each other, outside of a general consumer demand for 'more convenience'. Society has been frozen for about 120 years, which is hard to justify outside of 'it's just this way because'.

Now, this works in a game series like Fallout, because the primary focus is survival and shooting. Also, the universe is meant to be a satirical comment on the 50's-early 60's consumer culture. The past is barely sketched in enough to support the game's style. It works great for a FPS, but on a game where the primary purpose is role-playing, it leaves a lot of details lacking.

I think this is the issue when designing a game around a particular aesthetic: you have to have a slightly logical reason for the aestetic to exist beyond 'it looks cool'.

Let's take a look at a successful game with a strong and clear design aestetic: Shadowrun. It boils down to 'cyberpunk + magic', but FASA worked the lore around the concept in order to explain it and how society has changed and reacted according to the in-game history.

Bottom line: things don't just exist in a solitary vacuum. William Gibson created the idea of cyberspace, and that influenced how the Internet developed into what it is today as much as the physical technology of ARPANet. We have dedicated scientists and technicians working to create matter/enercy converters because Star Trek postulated the possibility with transporters and replicators. If you're proposing a dieselpunk/atompunk/raypunk/whateverpunk aesthetic for a game, there needs to be reasons why the world exists like this. And that means creating details that may make creating the gme more of a chore than a pleasure for you.

fishes around in pockets and puts 2 cents on the table

So, my take on it, for what ever it's worth, it that there are a lot of various factors involved in this. I don't see that much of this, but I usually connect on Superhero games and Places We Don't Mention (in polite company); both styles where Pretty is the norm. For both women and men.

Saying that I have noticed this on certain games. Some Slice of Life games, some Supernatural games. And when the 'pretty-shaming' happens there, that's where the multiple factors come in

1. Distrust of Player/Motives. Having played several female PC's over the years, I understand the GIRL effect; Guy In Real Life. Making a pretty female character can be (although not always) a sign that the player is a male, leading to all sorts of mental disconnects with other players, especially for male players looking for TS. The other half of this coin is the automatic assumption is that a pretty female character is just there for TS-bait. This assumption grows with the amount of 'purple prose' in the character's description (i.e. Her cupid's bow lips are plump and moist with a natural red color like freshly picked strawberries...).

2. RL Issues. Let's face it; this is not a hobby with an overlarge percentage of mentally stable participants. I'm included in that with my depression, commitment issues, and ADHD. But, we do have a somewhat-deserved reputation for attracting the socially maladjusted. It's not a large percentage, but it's noticeable. And it's amplified because these kinds of players tend to be on all the time and have a greater amount of participation. We're going to have the incel crowd with an amplified voice/presence, is what I'm saying. So, pretty female characters are going to set these folks off by reminding them of the 'bitch cheerleader that wouldn't go out with me in high school just because I liked comics/anime/RPGs/other. Definitely not because I never used deodorant and was always staring at her boobs...' This can even pass over with a general social anxiety; 'Everyone says she's a great RPer, but the character is just too good looking and social. She's never going to want to RP with a character like mine.' So, that gets twisted into hostility; preemptively rejecting the character before she 'gets a chance of rejecting me'.

So, what's the solution? Unfortunately, this is something that the 'pretty hater' players need to work on themselves. As a community, all we can do (and usually do here) is stick up for the players that get caught up in the issues of the player's putting out hate because of their own issues. I'm not saying that playing a misogynous or misandrous (male hater) character is wrong or even invalid, but that's a thin line that's only slightly easier to walk than playing a racist/predjudiced character.

@derp said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@bear_necessities said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@derp What? There is a big difference between being able to play a character and being able to create a plot that is fun for everyone involved.

No, there isn't.

You create a character and a premise for a scene. That's pretty much all it takes. Every MU player does it every single day.

This might be something that's easy for you to do. And I, and other DM's, find it easy to do as well.

That doesn't mean that every player has the same capability. It can be for any number of reasons, as well.

Just speaking for myself, all my IRL gaming tends to be as a DM, and playing in MU's is my 'creative break' from being a 'forever DM'.

As overly-jazzed I was for the 5e Spelljammer announcement, I keep thinking about the other big setting announced in that in that PR cycle: Dragonlance.

So, I've been pondering a 5e Dragonlance game, but set on one of the other continents besides Ansalon or Taladas. Show the War of the Lance in an area that hasn't been historically defined yet.

@ganymede While I agree that having a venting place can have positive benefits, it's more likely to blow up a community. gestures around wildly I think that there are plenty of spaces now where MUers can go to 'shittalk'. MUS doesn't have to be that space. It's not like Discord hasn't made 'a board of our own' an extremely viable concept.

This isn't WORA; and speaking as someone from those days, that's a damn good thing. I'd rather not see this board headed down that path. Like I said, we can all provide the needed functions here (evaluations, warnings, etc) without bashing. I just see the Hog Pit as a relic that's outlived it's usefulness to the community.

If it absolutely must be brought back, opt-in is the best way forward, I agree with that. Possibly even limiting it further so that there's a way for those that don't opt in to be able to only view and respond to HP threads where they are mentioned so that they can defend themselves, or confirm/deny events they were witness to?

For years now, I've asked admins on games I've been on if they would allow their games to be advertised here on MSB. Some have, but more likely, they refuse because of the lingering legacy of WORA; even without the recent drama, MSB has a reputation of being WORA 2.0. Some of this can be attributed to the usual shiattalking by the usual suspects whose behaviors have been exposed here; but, IMO, I think the presence of the Hog Pit adds some truth to those claims.

Anyways, back to Lurk Mode...

I was on Anomaly for a bit. I can't remember the name but I was an Alpha Centaurian Medical officer. I was around for the whole pregnancy drama, but dropped off a while after that. Honestly, I'm at an age where I have trouble remembering what happened last week, much less years ago on a game

Overall, I liked the set-up and setting for Anomaly, it was just the Reports system that drove me up the wall. It was like having a second job; and one I wasn't getting payed for, at that.

That said, I'd love another LUG-Trek game; it's my favorite out of the 3 published TTRPG systems. Just so long as there's no mandatory Reports system

Finally getting around to reading the Foundation cycle. Also have the Lensman series and Jack Vance's 'Dying Earth' series on tap with my Kindle app.

@Thenomain said in High Fantasy:

@Runescryer

I dunno, Shadows Of Mordor was pretty cool. It would've probably been pretty cool without the How-I-Got-My-Powers McGuffin too, but as it came out around the Saint's Row 4 days maybe not as popular.

Have you looked into the The One Ring RPG system? It takes cues from almost all other Middle Earth games in that your character can more or less be depressed to death. Better than a morality system, that's for sure.

Haven't checked out The One Ring yet, but I have a ton of material for MERP/Rolemaster from back in the day.

And it's not impossible to have a good game take place in a setting like WoT/LotR, it's just very difficult because of the constructed timelines and the fact that you have these characters that are/will kick all sorts of epic butt in their adventure, so you just can't plop PC into the setting without forethought or adjustment. The PC's have to understand and accept that they're not the ones that will ultimately save the world, but they can save their own corner of the world/galaxy/whatever. It's a lesson from Star Wars gaming; yes, you're not going to be the one that blows up the Death Star, fights Darth Vader, or kills the Emperor, but you can still make an impact in your sector and go up against stakes and enemies that matter there. So, in a way, this all ties into the 'Low Stakes' thread here in terms of 'Comparative Stakes'.

@fatefan Well, it's also possible to condense it to different areas/neighborhoods/suburbs have different themes. In Astro City, you have Shadow Hill housing the mystic threats and themes. Metropolis, you have the Central Business District for 'classic' superheroics and Suicide Slum on the same island for darker vigilante heroes. Part of why I recommend a two-city system has more to do with verisimilitude than genre conventions. There's an area of The City that's riddled with crime and corruption; why wouldn't the PC's spend time there to help clean it up and take down gangs and criminals that have no real chance of hurting the superheroes?

@raemira And yet...

In an AMA, Brandon Sanderson was asked about the 'Perrin's wife' thing. He said he objected to it, felt it was completely unnecessary, and suggested that Master Luhhan could fulfil the role of shocking Perrin in the same way, without being problematic. And he was ignored.

Just because they're listed as consultants, doesn't mean they're being listened to. Or have any real input.

William Gibson was a consultant on the film adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic, and that was horrible. Because the director didn't listen to Gibson at all.

Sometimes, the consultant gig is only a rubber stamp to keep fans quiet.