Posts made by The Tree of Woe

@fatefan I would cut New Mutants off RIGHT after they captured Sugar Man and retrieved X-Man, because that's when DNA's arc started to go off the rails and that story was actually pretty cool.

Well there's FASERIP itself, which is free. So.

What do we have so far.

X-Men centric (but not limited to). The Utopia Era... was it just before Schism? Anybody knowledgeable enough to throw out specific issue cutoffs?

Possible: Using some version of FASERIP to provide system support or add a random element to combat should it be desired.

An issue I'd like to put up for debate: Villains yes? Villains no? Some people aren't happy unless they're apping villains (and that does narrow the playing field a bit) but I'm honestly at the point where anyone playing certain characters gets considered a Creeper Until Proven Innocent. And a lot of the X-Villains are... well, leaning gray during the Utopia Era. Even stone-cold killers like Scalphunter.

@Runescryer Seems legit. Maybe give the option of random choice for those who want a more authentic FASERIP experience?

The problem is that power will always be accorded to the dude with combat stats, because the damage you suffer by humiliation or by having your character's financial interests harmed, etc. is abstract --

But losing your toon is permanent. And that's the only real hard bedrock of power that's ever existed in a social game, especially WoD.

I've had this argument with people I liked, who went 'ISN'T SO' but then I remembered the toons they made and the plots they ran, and, well... yeah.

Pretty sure experience bears me out.

Preceded into death by his career, which he smothered to death on-air during the MDS telethon in 2007.

I don't think most FCs would be accumulating XP either. They'd get their sheet and then go with it. OCs, we'd need to work out a system.

So given that it's free, what would people think of going old-school and using FASERIP as an option (not required) for players to add a little randomness and dynamism to RP?

Free is best price...

@fatefan And it's free...

I don't know. Part of me feels like if there were a simple system it could be used to add an element of randomness to combat rather than relying on people's simple narrative ability to carry it out, which might make Super-Hero combat more... fun? Is that the right word? Fulfilling?

Like, if I remember right, TSR's old Marvel RPG had really basic stats, that worked in a simple way.

@Thenomain I will apologize for making you feel Othered, that was not my intent. I come here to let my hair down a bit and stop being nice, it gets away from me sometimes.

In the end I can concede that there are benefits to stuff being accessible off the game itself without having to head to another window, and some people do just function better that way.

And I am not a coder, so I'm coming at it from the opposite direction. Remembering commands and understanding the way things are put together doesn't come easily to me. Just the opposite, in fact. So anything that I can access from outside of the MUX window itself seems like a net positive.

What is "easy" based on our experiences is different.

However, interface aside, what ways could the whole process be improved rather than doing the same things comic book MUXes have always done? That's the million-dollar question, I feel like.

@Thenomain Well there's that and that I find that for reading anything except a pose or maybe a desc, a MUX window is often itsy-bitsy, relatively speaking. Maybe I don't have my client set up correctly but that's always been the case. We probably won't agree here unless you want to take it to pistols at twenty paces or something.

Which I guess is a point of user interface disagreement between us. I find remembering fiddly little MUX commands to find something buried in the help absolutely befuddling, when I can just check the wiki for it. But I suppose that is a discussion for another place.

I don't know, maybe people like writing gigantic apps and I'm just barking up the wrong tree, but it seems like the easier you can make it on people and the easier you can make it on staff the happier everyone will be. I could be GLORIOUSLY wrong, of course. Gigantic apps do create a sense of "ownership" I suppose.

@Thenomain That's what wikis are freakin' FOR. You could even, with staff's help, come up with little association charts.

Psylocke LIKES: Cypher (saved her life from Mojo & Spiral), Brian Braddock (her older brother), Angel/Archangel (on-again off-again) Logan (drinking buddy).

Psylocke IT'S COMPLICATED: Fantomex (...really what more is needed)

Psylocke HATES: Sabretooth (almost killed her), Mojo (installed spy camera cyber-eyes in her face)

...If you can get quick access to the salient points you don't need a TON of gratuitous history.

The point being, Wikis are as easy to manipulate and access as MU*s are slow and kludgy and clumsy. Moving as much read-only info onto a wiki as you can seems like a net positive.

@Tempest Exactly what I was thinking. To tell you the truth, I HATE big ass apps that take a ton of time and effort. All I'd want to give someone a PC is either a logged conversation or maybe a +job that touches on why the player likes that character and what they plan to DO with them along with maybe a few other things that staff can point at when they go inactive or go off the damn rails. 'Choo didn't keep your word, ese, 'choo don't get to keep playing Wolverine.

Dissertations not required, especially if there's a wikipage with a +sheet or powers writeups or whatever on it. Honestly I'd be happy with something as light as FASERIP as far as systems go...

I can get a San Francisco grid, though I'd need to rework the descs to shake some of the WoD out of them.

Basically yeah. That's the thing, when dealing with the young X-Men comics the lens is generally on the Mutant students who are going to become soldiers in the X Army. It's not a given, of course, but that is generally the case. Some might die, some might wash out, some might go bad, but these are the kids who've decided or will decide to fight.

Basically I think the things that haven't met virulent opposition on this purely hypothetical game are:

Canon setting.
X-Men focus, other characters welcome if they can be written in at all plausibly.
Centerpoint: Utopia, San Francisco, USA.
Canon Cutoff: Before Schism and the founding of the Jean Grey School? Other cutoff points up for debate?

Stuff undergoing some hypothetical debate:
Use a System or do the tried and true "narrative only"?
How much of what usually winds up on a Super-Hero MUX gets moved onto a wiki (my personal hobgoblin).

I quit because I literally could not get anyone to talk to me there, and I had played on the game in one form or another for a couple years. I hadn't even done anything pernicious - just nobody there was speaking to anybody else, like a huge WASP family reunion.

@Social-Diseases That could also work.