Posts made by ZombieGenesis

@Misadventure I think that's the best option as well.

So it seems people would like to play an OC hero game. They'd like to use M&M 3E. Now, where would you like to play?

John Saxon

I'm not sure what qualifies as good by your standards but here are a few games that I know about. All of them run on Ares.

Obsidian Reverie - Chronicles of Darkness 2e. I think they used to do their sheets via google docs. Not sure if that's still the way.

Doomed - A Buffy game that uses FS3. They do allow FCs, which may or may not be a deal breaker for you.

Then there's obviously Gray Harbor and Spirit Lake but I think those are more supernatural based than horror.

I know of a few games in development. Another Buffy game and a game that is meant to embody the spirit of Gothic dramas like Dark Shadows and Vampire Diaries.

Hope those help!

@TiredEwok Oh yeah. The Paragon was just a proof of concept attempt to see if it worked and if people liked it. There'd be 8 total archetypes I think.

Oh yeah, assumption 3) It'd be run on Ares. Ares has built-in dice commands both on the MUSH itself and on the online web portal.

So, for fun, I whipped up a proof of concept cg guide. The following assumptions were made...

1. The game uses M&M 3E
2. It has no in-game cg system and uses sheets attached to the character wiki profile(mostly because I've come to the conclusion that MUSH coding is not worth the effort it takes to do it).

For those interested in checking it out you can find it here: H&V Guided Character Generation.

Is this something that would work for people? Is it too much? Not enough?

The beauty of Champions is you can scale it to fit your needs. My only real problem with M&M is I find the stun mechanic a bit wonky with characters prone to stun lock. It seems simple from the outset but when you start adding in complications and conditions or whatever I find it spirals pretty quickly.

In the end I think both systems scratch the same itch just in a different way. I own a ton of books for both and when people ask "which would you suggest" I can't really answer because it depends on what you're looking to get out of the system. For me, it's Champions but M&M is certainly not a wrong answer. If you get my meaning.

The Champions core rule book does the exact same thing actually. Pick an archetype then customize your character from a menu of options.This is in the Champions book not Champions Complete.

So M&M 3E and Champions were the big winners of the superhero poll. Both are fairly similar systems in terms of crunch. Personally I find M&M 3E has a bit easier character generation but Champions plays better during actual play. Either way, the crunch of the systems might be enough to turn some players off. What tools and resources might one make available to these players to entice them to tackle a character on such a game? Again, I think both systems are similar enough in difficulty that most of these tools and resources could be used for either game.

Here are some of the things I did for the Champions game I ran last year for some people...

1. Both the Champions rulebook(not Champions Complete) and the M&M Basic Hero's Handbook offers an archetype system where you pick an archetype and then choose from among a variety of options for building a standard character(PL 10 in M&M and 400/75 in Champions). While these books aren't free it's not that difficult to find them in PDF format if one does a basic Google search. This is what most players in my game did. It worked really well.

2. Submit an overall description of your character to staff and have them build the sheet for you. As a general rule, I just took what they wanted and built it using the above archetype system. There was a bit of back and forth extending character creation a bit but it still worked really well.

3. While sheets are mandatory to use of the system is not. We primarily used the sheets on my game just to set the overall abilities and limits of the characters. The sheets let us know what our characters were capable of but we just used freeform RP with the sheets as a guide for how things should go.

4. Ample help files. I had a ton of links to youtube videos on the site and a number of help pages on our wiki itself walking people not just through character generation but how the system plays as well.

I'd love to see an OC hero game out there. I wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to re-opening H&V as an OC game. Regardless, I think it's important to get information out there for anyone who might be looking to open an OC game as for what might work and what might not work for people.

Well hey, while I enjoyed Know Your Role as an RPG I kind of wish they had revised the OGL a bit more than they did. Apparently I was not alone in that thinking because someone did just that! You can find it here Wild World Wrestling: Main Event

My only problem with World Wide Wrestling is that it isn't kayfabe. You're playing a person who is playing a character on a wrestling show. I like something more immersive. Right now the best game to scratch that itch, for me, is the old Know Your Role RPG. It's 3E OGL but it's not that bad.

Such a game isn't necessarily in progress but I know some people who are pondering the idea and thought it might be a good poll to have anyway. What system would people most like to see on an OC superhero game?

• M&M 3E: I don't care for this system much at all if I'm being honest. It seems popular though so I put it on the list.
• Prowlers and Paragons: This is what my current TT group uses. It's fun, fast-paced, and fairly rules-lite.
• Champions/Hero: This is my personal favorite. Front heavy on CG but that can be gotten around with aides and staff help.
• Aberrant 2E: Obviously this would be more than just a system choice as the game is kind of tied right to its theme. This would be my second choice with the caveat that it be heavily house ruled to streamline character generation, which I find to be a convoluted mess.

Anyway, this is more of a conversation starter than anything else. I'm hoping if we talk more about OC games and show what people are interested in it will maybe inspire someone to move forward with an idea they might be sitting on.

@Cupcake said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Fantasy Greco-Roman, a la Hercules and Xena.

Man, I've been tempted for years to try my hands at a game inspired by Pantheon Mythic Battles. Essentially post-apocalyptic ancient Greece. The Titans rose up and destroyed Olympus, the gods have been exiled to Earth, the gates of Tartarus have been shattered releasing all the monsters and villains ever locked within. Great game, great theme.

I agree. It's one of the big reasons I've avoided using MH on any of my games. Even on the private games I run I shy away from it and those are with players I know and trust.

Well, that's a gross oversimplification but the sentiment is there. It's not like a player RPs their character waggling their eyebrows at other characters, makes a roll, and it's sex time. There'd be no "sex code" or "seduction code" but the system is there to put "conditions" on other characters that may influence how they RP their character. The system doesn't imply that you can force another character to sleep with your character but the implication is that your character could turn another character on and the other player would RP accordingly(however that may be; with anger, shame, by reciprocating, etc).

I don't think that game size equates to success. Right now the only games I play on have about 5 players on them and I have a blast. I think the issue is PbtA games become trickier the second you're out of that "tabletop group" size environment. Given the nature of conditions and strings(and I think this crosses over into Fate related games as well) that I think will meet instant resistance by the average MUSH player.

PbtA games, and MH in particular, emphasize character vulnerabilities and, in my experience, most MU players don't want their characters to be vulnerable. They're unshakable badasses that may take physical damage, sure, but I'm not gonna RP that my character is damaged and hurt. If you get a group of 5 or 7 people that you know and trust, and that know and trust each other, and this isn't a problem. Start adding in general players and I think you'll start seeing things fall apart. It happens on games with much more straight forward systems, I shudder to think about the drama that would crop up on a game where you can inflict the "Afraid" or "Turned On" condition on another character.

I think these systems are great, myself, as I feel they encourage players to RP outside of their comfort zones. At least that has been my experience in small groups. There are opportunistic RP predators out there, however, so I can see the flip side of the above argument too; players creating a super charismatic sexual predator going around and trying to "turn other characters on".

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe a game could run MH(or Urban Shadows or whatever) and be fine. The fact that these things are possibilities, however, are enough to kind of make me shy away from the system. Possibly even Fate as well and just fall back on Witchcraft or the Buffy RPG for a WoD alt game.

That's my thought, honestly. I think, in theory, MH/PbtA should be a grand slam for how MU's mostly function(cooperative RP) but I think there'd be immediate natural resistance when someone used a string on their character. Players seem okay when a dice pool says they lost a round of combat and take X damage but I can see a lot of resistance to someone spending a string and trying to apply a condition to a character. Damage X is okay but telling someone "I just dredged up some crap from your past and gave you the OUTSIDER condition" would likely be met with "I'm not comfortable with that" and lots of arguments.

That said, I do think a WoD alternative would be fantastic. I've been pondering trying something using a hack of the Dresden Files Accelerated Edition rules. Gives more crunch than regular Fate Accelerated but is still fast-paced and easy to consume.

I think a MH game would be best set in a college town, for sure. One where the college is maybe even assimilated right into the town and caters as much to townies as to outsiders.

My biggest concern was strings. On MUs characters need to be largely independent and self-contained. Strings complicate that quite a bit. Keeping track of them, spending them, and having players buy into them seems pretty problematic I think.

And if we're talking about Monsterhearts specifically(as opposed to Urban Shadows or something) the game is geared pretty specifically towards older teens/young adult characters. This is fine but, as we've seen in other threads, games that allow characters under the age of 21 are often viewed with suspicion at best, and hostility at worst.

I'm not saying it couldn't work necessarily, these are just the biggest hurdles we saw while we were discussing it.