Posts made by The Tree of Woe

So I have a couple of thoughts on a starting point:

Schism Never Happened - either it just doesn't happen or the disagreement between Cyclops and Wolverine that led to Logan haring off and founding the JGI simply didn't end the way it does in the book. The X-Men remain based out of Utopia and the game's plot threads pick up at that point. The continuity's a few years old, but this mode is niiiiiiiiice and simple.

Fallout from the Secret Empire - More controversial considering the Secret Empire event is a trash-fire and it'd require a lot more jury-rigging and figuring out what the fuck's going on considering how many books are ignoring or downplaying it, but basically the premise is that Hydra squatted and took a big old dump right in the heart of the Federal Government. While there are various groups trying to fix the damage such as the Avengers, the game focuses on "Nation X" - New Tian, which incorporates a lot of the West Coast, including California, and is goverened by the X-Men out of Utopia. Basically this cutoff point would be before the current X-Restructure that turned into X-Men: Blue, X-Men: Gold, etc.

My suggestion for why the X-Men would regather under one roof despite it all is basically: No one's sure if there's going to even BE a United States anymore after Hydra and FascistCap went at it with no lube, and someone found adult Cyclops alive.

In other words, more complicated and having to touch an event that's no hyperbole comic herpes, but with a more recent continuity point and the chance to try something new WITHOUT it being a Year One.

Despite giving the second more elaboration, I really like both.

At the moment we're babbling. So, here's a thought - most superhero games have no system underlying the characters - Brave and the Bold included a WEG DC RPG sheet for each character but it was only there for lulz and was never seriously used.

I would really prefer some sort of established continuity point instead of Year One/Two/Three, for various reasons ranging from 'I like a lot of stuff in continuity and if sometimes it's used and sometimes it isn't, it gets confusing' to 'No, you can't reboot Shadowcat into a glue-sniffing BDSM enthusiast, there is ample evidence she is NEITHER'.

Maybe give each character a FATE or another system sheet for powers use and to give structure to combat?

There was a sort of general amnesty declared, and even guys who didn't decide to give Utopia a shot settled down in San Francisco to sort of live under the umbrella. Avalanche opened a bar in SF I remember.

The X-Men also were acting as jailers for a lot of their more insane or irredeemable enemies at that point, rehabbing some and just keeping others under VR lock and key because you can't let Sebastian Shaw run free, but you can't just kill him. I guess.

Also in Utopia everybody had to work -- when Anole was complaining about having to work in a garden Magik dropped him into a desert in Limbo -- which is to say, a desert in Hell and then came to get him about five minutes later, which for him was some absurd period of time where he had to scavenge for food and/or fight desert demon-worms.

Though really she just did it because he's a little green bastard and she hated him and was tired of his whining and posturing, everybody just went with it being a lesson about Why Food Is Important.

Tempest, yes and no. Teenage mutants would be taken in housed and educated - but then Utopia offered that to ANY mutant, even ones who the X-Men had been fighting for years, but it is specifically "This is our nation, we will defend it with the full force of virtually all the mutants left on Earth plus the Atlantean navy. And to prove our goodwill, when Hydra or some other bunch of idiots gets up to something on the West Coast, we'll smack the crap out of them, gratis."

So considering the above, here's my pitch:

An X-Men-centric place set in the Utopia era, probably right before Schism -- Wolverine and Cyclops's falling out either goes differently or it doesn't happen. Either that, or just set it at the end of, ugh, Secret Empire and use the ending to that trash fire as the galvanization for the "Return to Utopia". Maybe the Cyclops that died of M-Pox was a fake and somebody finds the real one in Sinister's bondage dungeon, I don't know.

Anyway, my proposal goes like this: If you can find any halfway decent excuse for your character to join up with the X-Men, run with it. Mutant, Inhuman, Freak of nature, funky robot... whatever. As long as staff buys it.

Move +sheets and as much of that off of the game itself and onto a wiki as you can. Wikis are easy to read on and write in and review; MU* text is cumbersome in all those ways. Use the technology to make staff's job easier.

Divide the X-Rosters up into teams; players can play characters on different teams. Different teams have different jobs, for instance. The X-Club is Weird Science, Weird Shit. The New Mutants are "Fuck we lost track of <Mutant Ally or Enemy> during all the attempts to wipe us off the face of the earth, go find them." X-Force is "That can no longer be allowed to exist; get rid of it." And so on.

Encourage players to NPC characters that haven't been apped as stories and apped character needs require them, with some limitations that are reasonable. Don't NPC a character and start a romance, etc. I call this the 'Nobody really wants to app Doop or Warlock, but Doop's kind of funny and somebody needs to handle the phones, and it would be nice if Cypher had Warlock to fall back on it's kinda his thing' clause.

Thoughts?

I would also like to say, part of the role of staff on a Superhero game is keeping a character inside a set of parameters. Call it the conundrum of equilibrium - if Wolverine becomes a chlorine-farting three headed penis monster or Wonder Woman develops tits as big as the rest of her and isn't interested in saving the world because she's too busy gobblin' Power Girl's pie, then staff on a comic book MU* has an obligation to send out the Shepherd's crook and fix the problem.

That's the FC problem -- A FC ain't only about what you want. Whether you're playing on a "Year One" game or a game using canon backstory, that character comes with parameters you should be living within, as it were. Superman saves people, Shadowcat is an X-Man, and so on. Now if Superman and Wonder Woman's players hate each other OOC that's a different problem...

Edit to Add: And yes, I'd totes play on an X-Men focused game set in the Utopia era, or even on a general marvel game where that was where cutoff put them, with the ideal era being right before "Schism." The whole family is home, crazy shit is happening, and it's as much "We must fight humans who'll try and exploit us" as "People who fear and/or hate us are going to try and kill us."

Edit Edit: Also Namor was FUCKING AMAZING as an X-Man and that is where he belongs forever.

If you narrow the focus too much, you risk players feeling isolated, and unable to do certain plots. While you COULD do X-Men only for instance, sometimes the X-Men team up with or fight the Avengers, sometimes they fight non X-Men villains, and sometimes Wolverine just fights the Hulk.

That said, these days a game using a canon cutoff and focusing on just one comic universe is a rare bird.

I voted NO based on the criteria you set, because what I want is a game set in one comic universe with a canon launch point and simplified apping relying heavily on +sheets and the like being moved off the MU* itself and onto a wiki, with applications being less rote typing and more a brief, logged discussion with staff about that character and what you want to do with them.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martin-landau-dead-ed-wood-811318

I'd say that there are more things that distract people who would play before they go looking deep enough to find MUs. For instance, I found them when I was looking up stuff about Amber as a lad and found AmberMUSH. But Super-Hero MUs or WoD MU*s don't come up when you're looking for either of those genres, really, because there's a lot of things that have more weight.

If we did things to bring them closer to the surface of the murky, scummy internet pond sure we'd find more people. It's a free roleplaying hobby.

I would say that there is also a frequent occurence, in my observation, that people don't feel like they have the right to say "no", such as "I don't want to play with VASpider, and no, I don't need to give you an explanation or an excuse, I just don't want to, and I have the right to not want to."

Or, worse, people don't feel like another person has a right to say "no." Specifically, to them.

Also because his current suit may be the best updating of the Doom armor since Doom 2099's silver and black.

I am buying Infamous Iron Man because it's a Doom comic, and because I suspect Doom has some end goal in mind as to why he's doing this, which may well be to lure Ultimate Reed Richards ("The Maker") out into the light and stomp him like the roach he is.

@surreality I quit the recent Mage: the Ascension CYOA game because one of the first things that happens to you is that you run into a Cultist of Ecstasy who says "Let me teach you the ways of Ecstasy!" And gets handsy and mouthsy with you when your POV character is emotionally vulnerable and physically stressed due to an accidental use of Magick.

I noped right the fuck on out of that game. The vampire one may have had a controversial writer, but that bit was unconscionable to me. You have a point.

@Gilette Inches and degrees. Emotional reactions can be wholly unreasonable, for a variety of reasons. It cuts both ways, and I have seen (and on occasion BEEN) a person who needed to take a step back and take a deep breath, and didn't, at least not with the alacrity I should have. You live and you learn and on occasion, you err.

I have also seen people who viciously emotionally abused others by telling them they were too invested, when in fact it boiled down to them holding the other person by the wrists and making them slap themselves in the face, while chanting "Stop hitting yourself!"

Some people can be cool cucumbers. Some can't. The last time I lost a character, I actually found the experience liberating, like passing through a pitch-dark doorway and finding not a stone wall or a bottomless pit, but a multiplicity of choices on the other side.

But I can't really blame someone for not wanting to go through the door, especially not if there are other attached problems, which all too often there seem to be in these high-emotion instances.

The larger problem seems to be that Marvel came up with this story, and numerous readers went "Um. Ok, so he's mind-controlled?"

And the Marvel writers went "Nope, Captain America was a Hydra mole all along."

And numerous readers went "Guys, I'm not sure about this."

And Marvel went "No, no, it's great, shut up."

And then various comic shops (including the largest and oldest one in my home city), not institutions known for being too terribly woke, spoke up, and started saying "We aren't really thrilled about advertising for this event, guys. Nobody likes it. We don't like it."

And the response seems to have been "Well you're idiots shut up and enjoy Nazi Captain America."

I guess the way I usually refer to it is "X-Pac Heat." It's the kind of draw where it's largely hate and not any actual interest that's keeping people paying attention. Or, short version, Marvel invested a lot of energy and money into a terrible idea and then decided to press on despite the misgivings of their product consumers. Will the ending to the event bear them out? Possibly.

But this may be one of those times where it might've been a good idea to leak the ending before people started turning away.

You can be asked to make the attempt, and that's it. Nobody has the right to demand that a person completely emotionally disassociate themselves from something they do for fun. That is, to put it baldly, lunacy.

Subjective Thoughts:

Anyone who goes at you too hard for not being able to separate your emotions from a roleplaying event, especially if they are placing the goalposts for what that means and in relation to what or whom, should be assumed to be trying to take a dig at you. Also, since that invariably seems to come from a person in the power position, it has always struck me as a type of gloating, and largely contemptible.

HOWEVER:

The truth is that everybody involved has emotions, and it's easy enough to forget that when you're looking a person in the face. Having a computer barrier between you and the other person or persons is an additional complication.

It makes people shitty communicators, and it makes people shitty listeners, and when you add a raw emotion to that mix, you might as well jam a blasting cap into it and call it a bomb.

To paraphrase Dorothy Parker:

This is not a comic book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown, with great force.

Depends. There are games that are supposed to be genuinely challenging, as in, the challenge is the point of the game, and games where I care more about the story. For instance I'll usually turn the difficulty down on say, FF because I care more about advancing through the game than in super hard tactical battles, but I have had a blast playing Dawn of War with my buddy on Nightmare Mode. Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard vs. the Green Tide.

I've been playing FFXV. There's a game here, unlike FF 12 or 13, but A) Prompto should've been the focus character and B) my god is this plot rolling out slowly, what the fuck is this Evil Empire DOING, considering they can track me everywhere I go that isn't in a town?