Posts made by The Tree of Woe

I can get an SF grid yes but it would need to be redesced because it's originally built for a WoD vampire game and the owner who wrote all the descs considers them proprietary to her. Fair warning. It is perhaps not ideal but it is something.

Also, I would prefer working out something other than the usual 'write a gigantic app' -- again, intent prioritized over knowledge is what I want out of a superhero game. A lot of X-Men villains, even some of the big bads... are entirely playable in a demi or non-antagonistic compact with the X-Men (Sabretooth IS an X-Man RIGHT NOW, or at least allied with them, as is Mystique at least until her next Sudden yet Inevitable Betrayal) but doodz like Sinister (and I loves me some "Sinister Wilde", best version of the character ever) or Apocalypse, no. And you can even play a freakin' non-evil Apocalypse if you go with recent canon... I kinda like Genesis/Evan. He's a good kid.

@ixokai - I just woke up so I'm not sure I'm phrasing this correctly, but I do agree with your defense of players playing an FC in the style and manner that suits them...

But what's your high water mark for when a player is behaving destructively or negatively affecting the RP of others? When would you feel it was appropriate to intervene or even yank a bit?

I'm not asking to try to grill you or anything, I'm genuinely curious.

And I do apologize if I have been coming off as stodgy or stolid. That wasn't my intent. Actually I find a lot of comic book games to be conservative and holding to some sort of odd verisimilitude in the most baffling ways, when their focus should be on encouraging players to tell brave, outlandish and beautiful stories.

@ghost Thank you. I was trying to say that last bit and just could not find the right words.

I am not - or at least, I am trying not to. I am talking more in line with the former. I have DONE the latter, myself.

I do resent being made an unwilling party to someone else's fetish, and I doubly resent when that negatively impacts my RP, or hell, negatively impacts the RP of the other people I see around me.

(Edit: Example) I'm so tired of Logans who do nothing but sit in a room called "Logan's Cabin" or somesuch and can only be enticed out to play a skeezy Papa Bear to some X-Girl (Logan @ UH, pretty much) that a big part of me would prefer a Logan player be a specifically chosen ringer, or that he just be dead and Wolverine be Laura or Jimmy Hudson or something, which doesn't FIX the problem but at least replaces it with a new one.

@tnp Not a hill I'd choose to die on myself, though part of me always wants to ask "why that specific stylistic choice?" But now I'm getting into territory where I'm unsure of my own word choices when it comes to conveying my intent.

Ultimately, while I ABSOLUTELY believe in intent mattering when you play a feature character, I do view "intent" as broad rather than narrow. I use Shadowcat as an example, again because she's an oft-abused character:

IF you play Shadowcat you are playing a Jewish girl who likes to dance, is good with computers, and is handy in a fight. She is a Mutant; she phases through walls. She will almost certainly be associated with the X-Men in some manner or possibly Excalibur though she is unlikely to ignore either group even if she winds up further afield, in SHIELD or the Avengers or tending bar in Chicago or something. That is the broad parameter of "intent" I mean when I talk about checking for intent when you app an FC. It's a big landing strip with a lot of places to touch down, but you should still shoot for it rather than parachuting out into the avocado jungle.

You may or may not choose to explore relationships with Colossus, Pete Wisdom, or an acrimonious attraction to ex-husband Star Lord, friendships with Magik, Storm, Cypher, Nightcrawler, Rachel Summers, and a tight relationship with Wolverine. Call those optional parts of the package, or "narrow" intent.

This is not cut and dried with no flex or ability to redefine - I have no theoretical problem with Shadowcat and Magik having a relationship, for instance*. During my roleplay relationships between characters have evolved where when they did appear in canon stories they never got beyond the embryonic stage... so I get wanting to do your own thing. I do.

*In practice hearing about this would send me to the other end of the football field in a hurry unless I knew and trusted both players, because the horror stories about people playing out this as a "romance" run back about... two and a half decades.

@ixokai I confess I have never chargenned at a Superhero game that didn't have features.

I have a hard time engaging with OCs sometimes, because I tend to lean on established dynamics between characters to guide me going forward. But I'd never try and restrict people from playing them.

I would honestly say, myself, MOST villains are not suitable as PCs. PCs should probably fall into the realm of protagonists.

An antagonist, especially on a comic book MU*, should be a bit a player can pick up for a plot and then put away as needed. Nobody needs to be playing Apocalypse as their primary toon, that devaules Apocalypse and if he's actually active stresses other people the f--k out.

I used to love playing the occasional villain but looking back I wish I had realized this a decade ago.

Plus I automatically assume anyone apping Mr. Sinister as a long term character these days is some sort of creep.

During the era in question where we had been debating setting the MUX, the Mutant population was slashed drastically, as in to less than 300 active known mutants on the planet. The arbitrary number for awhile was '198'. Most of those mutants, including some traditional and very nasty foes of the X-Men who had nowhere else to go (Scalphunter comes to mind) wound up with the X-Men on Asteroid M, which they dragged out of the ocean and got running outside of San Francisco. They wound up allying with Namor and the Atlanteans, who were also on the ropes.

The problem is that some characters are very strongly defined by events in their canon. Take Cypher, who I played.

Cypher was a plucky kid who had super-translator powers, a lion's heart, and was into a woman who was way too old for him. Then, however dubious the writing itself was, glossing over loincloth scientists and giant chickens... he took a bullet for his friend. Bang.

That's a ton of character definition in one decisive action, and sometimes you don't WANT to throw things like that out, because you see the dramatic potential in them, and in the fallout, even if in some ways it was never fully realized.

To me, that's part of the point, and why canon is not such a terrible thing.

@ganymede I 100% agree with you. Character backgrounds and powers writeups can be provided by staff, ON A WIKI, liberating players from the onerous chore of having to write them up themselves, only for them to be trashcanned when you're done playing that character.

Prove basic knowledge, interest, and intent. And if it doesn't work, nothing is lost.

@ganymede There are some things someone playing him would need to know in the broad sense -- his relationships with Lois Lane, Supergirl, the LSH, why he and Lex Luthor hate one another. There are stories that they should be encouraged to read if they haven't but yes, the pivot point needs to be that games need to prioritize checking that someone wants to play a Decent Man Who Saves People over whether or not they have a detailed knowledge of every little thing Superman has done. A Wiki can fill in that gap.

The problem on Super-Hero games is that KNOWLEDGE has traditionally been prized and looked for, but INTENT has been a secondary concern, at best.

The person who demonstrates an encyclopedic knowledge of Superman Obscura gets to play Superman, even though he doesn't really give a flying fuck about Truth, Justice, and the American Way. The idea that the obscura is something you can learn about while playing the character or something staff can help you learn, it never comes up.

That's how you get a Shadowcat who gets into Lesbian BDSM with somebody's OC or Magik with a penis, because you checked for knowledge but not for intent. You can have impeccable knowledge about a character's history and just NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT IT.

So, flip the playbook. Check for intent first and foremost and treat knowledge as the secondary concern, and encourage players to learn more about their FC as they play if there are gaps in their knowledge.

I'm willing to write for it but honestly? I'm working through a pretty big depression jag and have two jobs myself. Not to mention I have never done this before. But I am talking to people here and there.

I was thinking more of the X-Men centric Marvel game. Or call it the West Coast-centric Marvel game.

So if people are interested in this, I'd be interested in helping to plan it out, and am amenable to being PMed on the topic.

Ok... so... can we have this? Like, yesterday? Maybe with a little bit of law and order?