I think one of the biggest mental benefits of Ares is being able to do multiple scenes at once, and async, because then I never feel like I am holding someone up. And people can feel freer to RP when they know they can set it and come back.

It seems like the MUSHing community has, by and large, stayed a similar community, and whereas a lot of us started our MU* career when were single without responsibilities, as we get older we start finding that we don't have six hours to spend roaming a grid and finding great pickup RP.

I always felt bad RPing with someone if I could not give them my full attention because I was working and prone to boss calls, or trying to accomplish something. Because I was keeping them from RPing with someone else.

With Ares, they can RP with that someone else and respond to me. And the same goes vice versa.

I think the other thing that is great about being able to easily do async is that there are amazing RPers that live half a world away that I would not be able to consistently interact with absent that.

Finally, I think the sheer versatility of the portal allows for you to do some really interesting things. Like have a game where you have a core character, but different versions of that character exist. You can use the same stats (or not stats if you aren't a stats game) and then just expand out from there with your variations.

Also, since it hasn't been mentioned yet, if you are a game with alts, being able to have ONE login in ONE place and connect all of your alts (if you want to, optionally) for the purposes of pages, channels, and RPing? Huge plus if you want to keep track of things.

Honestly, it's going to be a struggle to convince me to go to any non-Ares game at this point because I have simply gotten too used to the conveniences.

I think one of the biggest mental benefits of Ares is being able to do multiple scenes at once, and async, because then I never feel like I am holding someone up. And people can feel freer to RP when they know they can set it and come back.

It seems like the MUSHing community has, by and large, stayed a similar community, and whereas a lot of us started our MU* career when were single without responsibilities, as we get older we start finding that we don't have six hours to spend roaming a grid and finding great pickup RP.

I always felt bad RPing with someone if I could not give them my full attention because I was working and prone to boss calls, or trying to accomplish something. Because I was keeping them from RPing with someone else.

With Ares, they can RP with that someone else and respond to me. And the same goes vice versa.

I think the other thing that is great about being able to easily do async is that there are amazing RPers that live half a world away that I would not be able to consistently interact with absent that.

Finally, I think the sheer versatility of the portal allows for you to do some really interesting things. Like have a game where you have a core character, but different versions of that character exist. You can use the same stats (or not stats if you aren't a stats game) and then just expand out from there with your variations.

Also, since it hasn't been mentioned yet, if you are a game with alts, being able to have ONE login in ONE place and connect all of your alts (if you want to, optionally) for the purposes of pages, channels, and RPing? Huge plus if you want to keep track of things.

Honestly, it's going to be a struggle to convince me to go to any non-Ares game at this point because I have simply gotten too used to the conveniences.

@arkandel said in Comic Games And Scope:

@visquaine Aren't a lot of these tropes applicable to actual comic books as well, though? I feel it's not MU*-specific.

100%. I was just giving an example of a game that flies in the face of that trope the same way DC unleashed their writers to do the same when they went all into the Elseworlds concept, and you started to get "World without a Superman" and "Evil Superman" and "Not as Evil but kind of a Dick Superman" and "Batman meets Abbott and Costello".

They may not all be the rich world that Alan Moore creates using facsimiles of the Charlton Characters, but there are good stories to be told unfettered by what I think is always the problem with comics or games that stick to a major canon - "ok, but what happens next month?" When there is no next month, you're free to do that.

(And avoid the worst comic trope of all, "dramatically killing off a character because it makes great narrative sense, but then someone down the road REALLY wants to write for the character so we'll cheapen it". It used to be "No one stays dead other than Uncle Ben and Bucky", before someone got the (admittedly super cool) idea of the Winter Soldier.)

@runescryer said in Comic Games And Scope:

Relationships are already established and defined from the comics, with almost no deviations allowed for fear of a player making changes then dropping and future players not liking some of the changes a player made. I know that I've certainly passed on some of my preferred characters because I didn't like the in-game continuity for them.

Another factor in supers games is what I call 'A Canon Of My Own'; the desire to create a new line of stories that suit the player's tastes where published canon falls short for them. I'm as guilty of this at times as anyone, I'll admit.

I think these are really two of the biggest challenges facing comic book games. It results in a really narrowed form of both RP and administration because there always has to be an eye on how what a character does today might impact "a future player" of that character. Which in a way makes them feel a lot more transient IMO for the player - I don't really feel like I AM the character, more that I am just the person currently driving.

So you have real narrow rails on which characters can ride - you want to avoid marriages (the death blow sometimes to roster characters unless you undo it) no matter how well crafted the personal storyline is, you can't kill or make permanent changes. You're stuck in the same loop as animated cartoon shows (lampshaded brilliantly and then annoyingly by South Park with Kenny) where nothing ever really changes or progresses.

It ALSO is what's responsible for the vast amount of administrative oversight - every single app has to be scrutinized for not just the player but the future players, but also to make sure that nothing bad "slips in" and gets stuck there forever.

Now, I play on and enjoy a few comic book games right now that follow this model, it's enjoyable. I sign in, I pick up a random scene like "my hero runs into a super villain at a coffee shop and doesn't recognize her, hilarity ensues", and I enjoy my time there.

I also play on a game that turned all of this on its head by going with a model where the entire timeline resets every few months into a different elseworlds kind of theme. There you can tell the story of what happens if Bruce Wayne and Diana fall in love and get engaged, because two months later the game shifts and if there is a new Bruce or new Diana, they aren't held to that. Or where Booster Gold dies heroically saving Blue Beetle's life in a Big Hero Moment that he always deserved but not really got, because a few months later it's all back to zero.

But that's still not the same as a continued continuity - you can't leave and come back six months later and find the same plots, because they've moved on. There's not really a consistency to it and an ability to do long term plotting, it's more like super intense "what can we cram into one or two seasons of a dramatic tv show" pacing, and then it's on to the next thing.

So they are very different things, and appeal to very different people (or different sides to the same people).

And some people are here for as much drama as they can extract from their characters, knowing that once all that is done - they get to refill from the drama bucket and squeeze again in the next storyline.