I actually just got a new chair myself after retiring one that lasted me almost 2 decades. It was a bit weird, I loved my old chair, but the one I've settled on seems to work pretty well so far. It's a gaming chair, which I wasn't looking for either, but a ton of people suggested it to me and I don't regret it as of it (had it about a week now).
Anyway, it's this bad boy: New Chair
I've been jonesing for a Thundarr or He-man style game for years. I almost did one using FATE Accelerated but it did not go well with my test group who could not wrap their heads around the narrative focus of the system.
@ortallus said in Social Systems:
Again, maybe hyperbolic, but this is when using full on magic to influence someone's thoughts. Now, take the magic out of the equation and I don't care what your 'persuasion' skill is, if I think sending in my troops is a bad idea for me, them, or my homeland, and you've offered nothing to convince me otherwise, then yeah, I'm not going to budge either. If your character has seduction over 9,000, but my character doesn't like were-badgers, I'm not going to TS with you.
In the TT game the issue was the player would not listen to anything regarding being convinced otherwise. The Song of Ice and Fire RPG offers a fantastic intrigue system where each player picks their desired outcome (I don't want to commit troops vs I want you to commit troops) and starting stances (I forget what they are exactly but you can pick something like "Very Against" or something) and then the intrigue starts and it's like a mini-game with each player whittling down the other players intrigue points (like health points) to get their objective. It could include things like straight out convincing, intimidation, blackmail, etc and so on. No one had a problem with burning a fate point to not send troops we would have just like to have seen HOW the intrigue played out. We felt it could have led to some great RP and character defining moments. Instead all we got was "I want you to send in some troops" countered with "No!" Not very fun or exciting.
Game Update!
We've hit a little slump. I blame myself. This year has not started the best for me so I have only recently gotten back to being on regularly. I also blame my use of the Marvel Heroic RPG. It just did not catch on. I still think Cortex Plus is a great system and could work on a game...just not this one apparently.
I'm not giving up, however. I have plans in the works to phase out the Marvel RPG for something easier for casual players to slip into. We're discussing the exacts on the game now but I'm hoping to start implementing it next week or the week after.
So we're down but not out. I love this game, the RP I've had, and the people I've met running it and I have no intention of letting it go. 
@fatefan I remember that game. I'd play on it as much as I'm able to play on any game(1-3 times a week for a few hours a night). I think it could be good action-y fun.
@Thenomain Most of the systems I use (Savage Worlds and A Song of Ice and Fire) actually have you set a social objective before you enter into the social conflict. Each player starts by stating what their goal is in this conflict and then the two players (or more) RP and roll around how to achieve those goals. I think it's just easy for combat because the implied goal is "I bring you to 0 health".
I just wanted to use this post to reach out to a few different types of people...
Players who have left: I'm hoping to lure you back with a new character generation system and RP! Things hit a hard slump at the beginning of the year with me being sick and out of sorts and people just really did not take to the Marvel Heroic RPG. Well, both of those are fixed(I hope)! I'm feeling much better and we now have our new traits-lite Power Grid system live. I'm also hoping to lure back old staff and to start running scenes again starting next week(I'll be running a scene every Monday night). So if you've let a character idle out I'm going to leave them open for you to return for another week(till 4.15.19). After that I'll return all idle characters to the general application pool.
Staffers who have left: Come back! LOL Even if it's just to your players I'd love for all of you to come on back. I'd also adore it if we could get back to running 1 scene a week a piece(right now I'm doing Mondays but I could switch to Sunday or Tuesday if Monday suits someone else better).
To everyone else: It's a new day of H&V MUX and there are a ton of characters open to app. A lot of high profile characters in fact so if you're at all interested please check us out at hvmush.com. Thanks.
@SinCerely I loved the PR movie. I was way better than I ever thought it would be.
Yeah, I guess my point is that while M&M is a fun system that really hits the superhero genre on the nose it really works best with a group of people who all understand and buy-in to the PL system. The PL system is the biggest strength and biggest weakness of M&M and some players just won't be able to either wrap their heads around it or buy into it.
The pros of M&M though include the fact that I think the entire system is available for free online via the hero SRD. Yeah, you can find it here. If you take the time to code up the archetypes system from the new hero's handbook it can make c-gen fairly quick and easy. And combat can be fairly quick with the caveat of characters with a ton of feats which can slow things down considerably as things need to be explained and what not.
I'm okay with it in the form of having a concept and maximizing the idea of that concept. I think it goes both ways, I once played a big and strong boxer who was not very bright. I made sure his mental stats were below average and took some disadvantages that actually came into play through RP. What I hate are the people who take, say, Strength 5 (in a system where 5 is max human) and describe their character as being thin and possibly even "frail".
We continue to press on! As of today I've put all idled out characters into the general app pool so there are A TON of characters available for application.
I'm also scheduling scenes every Monday. We're looking to start around 6pm ET and be done with the main scene around 9pm.
Looks like Irredeemable is free for anyone who has a sub to KindleUnlimited. Gonna check it out!
Yeah, whether you use a system or not I think you'll get players. You just have to decide what interests you, what will motivate you to support the game, what will motivate you to play on the game. Do what you want, be passionate about it, and people will come.
I'm not really sure what the focus of this post is supposed to be but I'll say this, I'm a fan of social combat being played out just like or in a similar way to physical combat. If I have a character that I think should fight like an MMA pro I invest points in it and go with the +rolls. If I want someone who is super willful or is a seduction master or an expert politician it's "Well, then we just RP it and things go your way" and I don't like that.
I want to invest points into the things my character is good at and have it played out with rolls, you know? I'm not my character and I like taking some of the decisions out of my hand. If the roll fails, I roll with it and RP accordingly.
Now I see why some people have a problem with that type of a system, I just don't. To me there's not much difference between physical combat "fuck, my character is dead" and social combat, "fuck, you seduced my character and now we've slept together ICly" or something like that. Now everything has context, sure, and these are just broad strokes but, in essence, I'm a fan of social combat.
That's my plan. When we reopen to have a "pre-opening" for returning players to reclaim characters from the original opening.
I'm in the same boat as some others with Discovery just not capturing my interest. When I heard there was a new Star Trek I was excited for Star Trek and to me that means mostly TNG followed by TOS and Voyager. What we got was closer to DS9. Which isn't bad but it's not my cup of tea. At least not right now. I wanted TNG-style Star Trek. Thankfully The Orville fills that need quite nicely. Unfortunately I only have so much time for TV so Discovery has been tossed by the wayside.
That said, back in the day Firefly wasn't my cup of tea either. A few years later I watched it and loved it. I'm assuming the same will be true of Discovery. One day in the future, perhaps once the series has wrapped and I can binge watch the whole thing, I may like it.
Then again I may not. I hate what they did to the Klingons. I hate it. It's not like when Gene Roddenberry updated them for TNG, then he was just doing what he would have liked to have done in TOS. This is Bryan Fuller (and I love Bryan Fuller for the most part) taking a Michael Bay sized dump on my favorite Star Trek species. It just doesn't sit well with me.
Aberrant is one of my all-time favorite settings(if not games) and with 2nd Edition being KSed it has once again piqued my interest. I'm doing an outline of character generation for Ares and I'm left wondering...do we need to stick to the story path system or could we do it a more traditional way?
For those who may not know the "story path" method of character generation leads you down a path where you define a number of life paths that your character has taken. During each step, you define the path, select a number of skills and edges, and some other narrative stuff. Then, for attributes, you "rank your arenas", spend points, select your "favored approach" and then increase each attribute in that approach by 1 point. Then you spend 6 more points in skills.
For Aberrant, you'd then apply the Nova template and spend 150 XP on powers and other things.
While I like some aspects of the story path system(I think Arenas and Approaches work well for knowing how attributes are meant to function) the character generation part just seems needlessly complex.
So I was wondering if potential Aberrant players would be opposed to or offended by the idea of using a more classic White Wolf CG style. I can't really think of why a player couldn't just spend 7/5/3 in attributes, select 12 points in skills, and 6 dots in edges. Seems nice and tidy to me.
It would require some house ruling on the XP side of things. You get a discount for Paths and Edges in your Path and your path also gives you connections. I think that might be minor compared to simplifying character generation overall, however.
Anyway, I figured while I was outlining how I want things done I thought I'd throw this out there to see what others things; code it up as it's presented in the books or simplify it?
@ixokai 5E has actually made me a fan of some classes that I wasn't a fan of before, namely the Monk, the Warlord(the Battlemaster archetype for the fighter), and...the Bard. There's really not a class I would not play in 5E. And there is a shocking amount of variety and versatility in every class. I played in a TT game where we were all clerics and we were all very different and the group was shockingly well balanced. I definitely suggest giving 5E a look.
Nice. I'm a huge Stargate fan.
Also just read about this 5E Licensed Stargate RPG.