I'm all for X-theme characters only, tbh. I think it'd be the best way to do it.
Once you start allowing non-Mutants, almost all the air goes out of the "life as a mutant is hard" bag, which I think would be pretty vital to the atmosphere of an X-Men game.
Once you crack the door to whatever, it's just a matter of time before the game is just another sandbox of every theme ever, with no real cohesive story.
Personally, I'd want to see a more narrowly focused setting/theme. I think there needs to be specific "this is how life is" and "these are the current threats we face" and stuff like that. Less "okay you got Emma Frost, go do some slice of life shit until somebody runs a random plot".
ETA : Staff would also probably need to pick specific iterations of certain characters.
No, you don't have to play the character the EXACT SAME as in the comics, but no "this is alt verse cyclops and he's 19".
"Cyclops is in his 30s and the experienced leader of the X-men and blahblah. You have some leeway with his personality and can make your own decisions moving forward, but that's the general idea of Scott we expect to see."
@surreality
You are so whiny, jesus.
@tragedyjones
Here's something constructive for you, to shut @Surreality up.
It seems incredibly unlikely you're going to BE ABLE to put much effort into a metaplot, when your advertising post for the game is "We've got every splat you could ever want! And we're going to stay true to the theme of all of them!"
With 6 or 7 or more splats, there is no way this ends up being anything other than another sandbox.
It'd likely require at least two full-time staffers dedicated solely to vampire (while not playing it themselves) to run a Vampire sphere with "undiluted taste".
Werewolf as a splat flat out does not lend itself to story-telling games. Werewolf is the "join a pack, shack up with pack, do some 'me r alfa' sexxorz, occasionally do in-pack plot, and never be seen in public again" splat. This is actually one sphere that can be run fairly hands-off. Problem is this is also the quintessential sandbox sphere.
Mage, much like Vampire, would require multiple staffers solely dedicated to that sphere to provide a realistic Mage experience. They could potentially play in it though, since mage is usually a little less cutthroat.
Changeling is much the same, if you're going to provide an "undiluted taste", you'll need staff to run leadership NPCs at the start until they're phased out, and then staff to keep hands in the ongoings of the Courts after that.
So, just from those 4 splats, you're looking at needing 5-8 full time, 100% involved staff, some of them not playing in their own sphere. I only went over those 4 because I don't know Promethean/Beast/Geist (real talk though, Beast seems to be the most awkwardly Special Snowflake uninteresting splat ever, and really seems to water down everything around it since it's in theme for them to 'group up' with all the other splats, but that is just my personal impression after watching Beast on NOLA).
If you don't have that much staff, all of them willing to be that involved, this is just going to be a sandbox.
There's just no way around that.
If you do get the staff, odds are at least half of them will end up actually not doing their job very well or very actively and will basically lurk for the power of being 'staff' or they'll just quit within 2 months.
TL;DR cut down on spheres, or this will just be 2nd ed Fallcoast. (Disclaimer : I have not played Fallcoast, I just assume it is still the Discount Wal-Mart of nWoD with every splat and no story.) Yeah, you'll get your rocks off looking at a 60 person who list inflated by the fact that 8 people feel the need to make a character in every splat, but nothing much will actually be "happening" on the game.
Which works perfectly fine for a lot of people, admittedly. A lot of people don't want to be involved in shit, they want to sit in their corner and do their own shit. We just have a lot of games like that already.
@Thenomain I'm so sorry, please forgive me, senpai.
@zombiegenesis We had a rather thorough discussion about this in the first portion of the 'Super hero poll Gut Check' thread or wtfever it's titled. A few people seemed to really like the Utopia idea, some liked the general 'Xavier's in Westchester' type thing.
I have no idea what FASERIP is. I remember not really minding the Marvel Superhero RPG sheets or whatever that Marvel Reborn had once upon a time. But, that's a lot more code/data entry work for staff. And I'm pretty sure there's tons of X-characters who won't have stats already done, so staff would have to wing most of it, I'd think.
My concern with even opening the door a crack to non-X themes is that once you start, it's almost inevitable that you'll eventually open the door all the way. And people will push for it non-stop.
Now, on to important matters. How shall we punish @Ghost for shamelessly inflating his numbers by counting each Cuckoo individually.
@fei-dawen said in Your Opinions of These Games:
Which is fine, but I couldn't really get into the whole Lunar/Wild Arms/Xenogears??/some Tales games but not others shebang.
This was my problem when I was looking at it too.
They seemingly skipped entries in series they were using that would've thematically fit just fine, but included other entries that stretched the limits of the theme, and tbh it just gave the distinct impression of 'staff wanted to play characters from Wild Arms 1 and 3 but not anybody from 2, so we ignored it', etc. (Those numbers might be off, I haven't looked at the game in a while.) Which is fine, I guess. It was just kind of offputting, and annoying because most the 'popular' characters from all those were taken already and you're left going "well...if X entry in this series was included, there'd be more characters available..."
@Derp Definitely. And I know I saw that done occasionally on The Reach, which is fine. I don't think I'm a prude, but I also don't think PB pics need to be half-nude and showing a ton of cleavage/whatever.
@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:
So, for a mild dose of necromancy I wanted to address this here:
@tempest said in Fixing United Heroes- Too bad we cannot talk about it on the game:
I would like to report @Ganymede for moving this thread and committing treachery most foul. She has let the nazis win.
@Arkandel, don't let this injustice stand!
I know you're half joking but to give a quick answer, which can cover others' concerns as well. Please keep in mind I'm tired, and my ideal evening does not include MSB. It's the time I can actually play games or watch some basketball on TV, so if it doesn't make sense I'll go over this again in the morning.
The concern here seems to be that if a thread is in the Hog Pit it's 'hidden' behind the opt-in wall, and thus invisible to casual viewers. That makes our system prone to being played by malevolent posters who want to hide their dirty laundry from those viewers.
However MSB isn't a court of public opinion. It's not wikileaks for MU*. That's one of the roles we serve, and I think we've done pretty damn well in that way for a long time, but it's not our goal. Its purpose is not, to coin a term I never agreed with but have often seen, there to 'shut down games'. Not only does it not have that power, it shouldn't.
MSB is here for the MU* community, all of it or as much as we can have, and not just for the popcorn-and-lolz masses hoping to see someone burn a bit more in the court of public opinion. There are those - there are many - who don't want to read massive flamewars, fuck-you memes and personal attacks; that's precisely what the Hog Pit is there to do, it's a compromise between the two crowds.
So to actually address your issue (generic 'you' now, since it's not just you voicing it), if you think a thread ought to stay out of the Hog Pit then don't turn it into a dumpster fire. It will stay out of there, then.
The poster we all know was a staff alt/friend from UH didn't foul the thread up. Sure, he/she stirred the pot, but I didn't see any particular foul language in there. We stooped to that level ourselves - we did that - and in doing so, the thread went away.
So can someone play us like that? Use the system to hide their dirty laundry? Yes - by design. And yes - if we allow them to. We don't have to. If this guy had started shouting profanities that novelty account would have been banned within minutes, believe me. So ... take some responsibility as well here, please. If you want a thread to stay out of the Hog Pit, don't make sure it ends up exactly there.
Now, having said aaaaall that.... someone pointed out to me we could have split the thread better. We could have not moved the entire thing but only select posts.
I think that's something we can improve on, yes. It's just a matter of every admin figuring out this forum's ins and outs, not to mention having the time to do so. So to address @Tempest's actual complaint, I back Gany 100% here - it was objectively the right call to make - but I'll also see that we all us admins get some practice using our vast powers for which you hate and fear us , since we could have split up the nasty parts of the thread and left the rest up for public consumption.
If you have thoughts to share please do so. I actually felt we had been doing something good here - there were two cases of games lately where staff abused its own players and protected themselves which we didn't allow it to happen. That is a healthy sign.
Thanks for reading. I'll catch up on y'all tomorrow, my Tauren paladin needs some new boots.
So, what exactly is your problem?
You're saying Enarei's posts were fine.
@enarei said in Fixing United Heroes- Too bad we cannot talk about it on the game:
What is entertaining is the fact accusations were made. Rebukes to said accusations with log proof were gives. People on this forum deny that the log says it. Log Quote with Line is given. People still deny it as fact even though the log is not Staff Property but the property of the player's friend. You people are honestly pathetic. You bash a game and people with no proof. When proof is given to the contrary you deny that proof and call it a lie or you redirect to something else. Are your lives so pathetic that this is all you have to do? Fabricate drama to make you feel special? I honestly feel sorry for you. And with the proof in front of your eyes you still do not see it. Anyway I am out. Talking here holds nothing productive with closed minded drama queens.
If that's not "uncivil" IDK what is.
But apparently a gif of "go fuck yourself" is the end of the world?
You guys seriously need to abandon ship on this moderation thing, because you are fucking taking different stances on it every day.
I'm also pretty sure the whole "moderation" thing revolved almost entirely around policing ADVERTISEMENT threads.
@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:
@tempest said in Regarding administration on MSB:
Faraday appears to be super mega invested in turning this into rainbow unicorn times. Way more invested than anybody willing to argue with her about why she's wrong, anyways. It's not worth the time.
Let's not reduce this argument on either side into a strawman. It's not a "people who just want to see the world burn" versus "people who want rainbows and unicorns".
There's more nuance than that, so let's find a compromise instead of demonizing each other.
Multiple people have tried discussing this with Faraday for the past like 15 pages. She is single-handedly dominating this discussion.
As far as I can tell, most of them gave up because she isn't listening.
She's still pushing, and you're still listening.
IDK.
I'm not "demonizing" @Faraday or anything.
I am just saying, the past like 10+ pages of this thread have been "the people VS Faraday", and some of her points have been way off base.
The whole "the tone on MSB taints the public channel on games!" thing is just....wrong. It's honestly more than wrong, it appears to be purposefully disingenuous in an attempt to make it seem like we really need to censor MSB for the sake of MUing!
It's like one of those things that isn't real, at all, but if you throw it out there, it sounds like it could be real and people will fall for it.
I'd honestly wager the exact opposite is true. If people can't come vent here about stupid shit on game, they will find other ways to do it. Quite possibly on the game itself, leading to huge problems.
Hey, if people are having fun, that's what's important.
Or...
Or........
Just don't ask.
"Oh look, there's 30 people (maybe, if you're lucky) over there pretending to play in my setting FUCK THEM THEY MUST DIE RARRRRRRRR!!!!!"
Like....nobody cares about MUing, but yeah, if you ask, I'm pretty sure they're obligated to say no.
The problem here, is the "oh i'm so nice 
pls no insult go to hogpit :D" crowd has repeatedly shown to have no problem with insulting and...gasp...omg....DOGPILING!!!!!! on people.
But the minute anybody so much as casts any criticism in their direction, they go into "OMG! I'VE BEEN VICIOUSLY ATTACKED! MODERATE!!! MODERATOR HALP!!!! PLS!!!! THIS NO HOGPIT!!!! MY IDEAS MUST BE SAFE!!!"
@meg said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:
I think there is a certain magic in the randomness of people that you come across in M*s. I love the feeling of playing with a new person
That magic feeling is called masochism.
Look, if you want to explore that sometime, in more intimate detail, hit me up.
