Posts made by SquirrelTalk

@de-villefort There's like thirty years of successful MUs and storytelling that say otherwise. Maybe if you want to play perfectly normal people in a perfectly un-fantastical/un-fictionalized world, you'd have those problems, but... it's really never been an issue.

@ominous Yeah. It really is interesting, though, if a little wordy to explain.

Basically 'demon' is a catchall term for abnormal creatures. Elves, fairies, animal people and the like would all be classified as 'demons', on top of the vampires, ogres, oni, and ugly monsters you would expect. Some of them just look like humans, but are absurdly powerful and/or have magical weapons or whatnot.

A long time ago gateways to the Demon Realm opened on earth, and by the 'present day' of an anime sorta-cyberpunk future, the societies have kinda begun to merge and cross over a lot. You don't necessarily always see ogres romping down city sidewalks, but you could. Sadly, there's also been a bit of a rise in fucking organized demon crime with all their weird magical shit.

There's a group called NOMAD that's publicly an extremely powerful corporation, that's secretly an even more powerful front for underground crime, assassination, and terrorism lead by one of the oldest (possibly THE oldest) living vampire Edwin Black, who gets treated like a Lovecraftian deity in terms of being untouchable.

The offspring/descendants from human/demon couplings have the potential to awaken unique powers - on top of physically being bad ass as hell - and the Japanese government has basically gathered them together to corral and/or fucking murder criminal demonic elements, with roughly the same public presence of the CIA. They're called Taimanin (Roughly, Anti-Demon Ninja), and there's a semi-hidden town and school where new generations of Taimanin are trained, organized, and sent out on missions. They've begun to chafe a bit at the Japanese government's control.

Other than that, the USA's grown/merged/changed into the UFS (United Federation of American-Pacific States), and is basically trying to maintain global power and authority, which means undermining Japan as much as assisting it. The UFS has discreetly split into Pro and Anti-NOMAD factions, the former want to work with Edwin Black for greater power. The UFS employs some Taimanin, but most of their operatives are just using high tech (and sometimes fanciful) weapons and technology.

The Chinese Union is basically the same thing for the east, as far as I can tell (there hasn't been as much detail about them), and Japan's caught in the middle.

Also there's cyborgs and stuff, and a great big artificial island city just off the coast of Tokyo that fell into financial ruin, and became a run down haven for criminals and unsavory demons, called Tokyo Kingdom.

I think it's rad as hell for a grindy mobile game.

The more I see of that weird Action Taimanin mobile game, the more I kinda want an MU in its crazy 'ninjas protect near-future japan from criminal demons while subtly doing counter-ops and tense cooperation against/with foreign forces' setting. The game's needlessly sexy, but surprisingly fun and cute in a lot of its events.

I don't know that I'd want to keep young heroes and established heroes separate the way some suggestions kinda sound, but having distinct group or corner of the setting for the younger heroes to have things to do independantly is probably a good idea. I really don't know that I'd put the flying demigods in the same exact town as the brooding vigilantes though.

It might be fun if some/most of the established or teamed up heroes have some degree of interest and role in the education of new heroes too, but I don't think I'd want that to be the core theme. It's nice to have room for heroes to be doing their own things, and not JUST be, like, an established peace keeping force like in, say, My Hero Academia.

@zombiegenesis Make sure you recruit some help if you end up going through with it; I remember a previous effort sort of... struggling.

@too-old-for-this That's way too complicated. Who would be playing your older self? The main character in a story could get away with having a setup like that, but not one person out of (ideally) dozens.

@paradox Sure, you can probably use the dice/mechanics of Mask without clinging to its exact theme. I would assume, anyway.

@lilli said in OC Superhero Discussion:

Grid - People still use one? I see a bunch of residences. When people want a scene they usually set it up on a channel or via pages or even +rp and off they go. Even in FC games, players tend to be separated by power levels, find and tag into plots they prefer - not wander into Galactus vs the Fantastic Four scene on the grid somewhere.

System. I find most systems stifle creativity, not invite it. Also, systems always invite min/max or people looking for the loophole. That being said, I've always been more attracted to a story, rather than a system. I say more, not only. Main hurdle to any MU* using a system not already boxed is making it - and that's just the main hurdle.

I agree. A grid is kind of a relic of muds. They get in the way of finding noteworthy locations, if anything. At absolute most all you need is a 'city hub' room with links to super relevant locations. Even then, you can just say where they are in an RP room.

Also, not a big fan of complex systems, or building around a base game that requires you to be very specific age bracket or up-and-comer or whatnot. I play for the roleplay exclusively. I get that freeform isn't always possible; and that having stats to compare against each other can be useful, but if we're going full on 'table top', I'm probably out. Tabletop works with a small group going on either a campaign or an isolated adventure; it doesn't make sense for 'any number of characters could be interacting at random, or hog piling on a single villain'.

I'd prefer a wider scope in characters, rather than just teens and trainess. Older heroes and mentors and whatnot. I also lean towards freeform roleplaying, but some kind of system for sort out outcome disputes or something might be a good idea.

Homages seem okay, but I don't know that I'd make them explicit; and I'd probably cap the attainable power level somewhere below Superman for player characters, since they tend to create issues and questions just by existing; even if they can contribute interesting things.

Too bad that Cyberpunk Red(?) mu never ended up happening.

@ominous Could always go with the broader definition of 'demons' that pops up in Japanese work sometimes, where it's just kind of a catch all word for anything that's not human, so you have the equivalents of angels, elves and fairies and whatnot mixed in with the vampires and orcs and horrible horned monsters.

When I'm looking for RP, I'm asking for RP.

When I'm not actively looking for RP, I leave the window open and keep one eye on it, in case anybody asks me for RP, talks to me, or says something I want to respond to.

I don't think they're necessarily as idle as you think, they just aren't in a place where they can go for it/aren't feeling inspired.

Random idea: A Lords and Ladies game of politics and backstabbing and whatnot; but set in a demon realm of monster people of all shapes, sizes, and weird hungers.

I would never make this game, but it might be neat if it existed.

Suddenly I have a mad desire to play a MU either set in Conan The Barbarian's world, or otherwise aping that style of fantasy. I feel like I remember someone saying they were working on a game like that; is that still/was that ever a thing?

EDIT: Y'know what, maybe nevermind

@seraphim73

In my experience, those never do the job. They rarely have OOC notes explicitly stating what potential RP/avenues of investigation have opened up, and they don't talk about PERSONAL things that happen with characters, just things that the public would know about.

If you know that a character has come away disliking an IC friend of your character, you might want to have a scene with them where your character learns that, and maybe tries to convince them otherwise or just argue with them or something. That's not going to make the IC news, you know what I mean?

@misadventure

Another barrier would be keeping everyone in the loop on what's actually happening. A lot of people don't read all the logs, for various reasons. I've long been an advocate of a 'scene summary' +bboard where you're encouraged to put up the cliffnotes of a finished scene (Character learned this, did this, developed X opinion of character Y, demolished an enemy convoy, etc) but staff never seems to like the idea when I pitch it. In fairness I don't know how many people would actually think to use it.