I almost used the FFG plugin for Ares for a Star Wars game set in the Old Republic but some of the other staffers involved were worried that it would scare people away(it being a system at all and not having the online c-gen that some associate with Ares).
Torg could be really cool. Also, I was a huge fan of the Masterbook series back in the 90s. So could a game like Aberrant. I love the idea of your powers slowly corrupting you. It's one of the things I really liked about Ravenloft too.
I'd be totally down for a Ravenloft game. Deadlands could be cool too. What I'd really like to see is a darker themed superhero game. FC or OC but something along the lines of Savage Worlds Necessary Evil where all or most of the heroes died fighting some cosmic villain and it's left to the villains to save the world from total devastation. Or something along the lines of Dark Avengers/X-Men or Justice Lords from JLU.
Or something that embraces the madness of Rifts. A game where any character(mostly) is feasible.
I've never read Wheel of Time. I've always wanted to though. Might give it a shot this summer.
And yes! Discworld! That'd be a blast.
Two things inspired me to post this; the announcement and subsequent excitement for Stargate MU and the realization that we seem to be in a dry spell gaming wise. So, my question is...what types of MUs do people think might do well in the current climate(by do well I mean having, let's say, 10-15+ unique IPs connected at peak hours).
Games based on IPs(TV, Movie, Comic, or Game)?
Ghostbusters
TMNT
Transformers
Star Wars
Star Trek
More comic games(combined universes, single universes, games focused on an aspect of a single universe such as the X-Men or Teen Titans)
Judge Dredd
Godzilla/Monsterverse
D&D/Pathfinder
Vampire 5E
What about games that focus on a particular theme?
Combat. Make a Wrestling, or Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter game with coded combat and rankings and champions and all that good stuff.
Horror. Kind of like Gray Harbor where you play normal humans in a world filled with monsters. I know of two or three like this that are in the works.
Erotic/Sex-based. Sex is huge on most games so what about a game that maybe doesn't put a focus on it but doesn't stigmatize it the way some games do? Could be any theme; fantasy, superhero(I know there have been a few done in the past like Flights & Tights and Super Perils MUX), sci-fi(I once played on a semi-private Star Wars game that had a major sex sub-theme that worked well for those of us who played it), etc.
Mystery based. Think RPGs like Gumshoe where solving mysteries is the driving force of the narrative. I think this would need HEAVY staff involvement obviously but could be fun.
Those are the things off the top of my head anyway. I'm just curious to see what people think other people would like to see and play at. For me, I know it'd get furry stigmatized immediately, but I'd love a TMNT game.
Yeah, aside from what Faraday said, I can only think of one other game: that Empire hero game. We seem to be in a dry spot but I've heard of some good games in the works so hopefully that will change soon. 
@ghost You know Wade Bogg's is still alive, right? Or is this an Always in Sunny thing...?
As I've said, I'm not as active as I'd like to be but I have a blast there with my character. I actually very much enjoy it as a smalltown simulator. Maybe I just gravitate towards that style of RP, however. I also play on a currently closed/private game with a similar type of theme(just set in the 1980s) but the players are all humans living in a world filled with supernatural horrors and I have a blast there too. Might just be a preference thing.
I'm not nearly as active there as I'd like to be but I'll throw in another voice for Gray Harbor. Great game filled with great people.
Not to be pedantic but Stargate came out in 1994 not '92. Not that the world changed a whole lot in those 2 years(aside from me graduating high school...) I'm quite excited for this game. Stargate is one of my all time favorite franchises right up there with Star Wars, Star Trek, and Ghostbusters. I can't count how many times I've seen the movie and the show as the only reason I subscribed to Showtime. SG1 is one of the few long running shows where I did not hate a single season. So, yeah, hella excited about this project.
Nice. I'm a huge Stargate fan.
Also just read about this 5E Licensed Stargate RPG.
All I can say is why I choose to use stats and levels and whatnot even if in a homebrewed system; because it gives a neutral tool that players and staff can use to help end conflicts. There's no interpretation needed if players and staff can just go, "Well, Tony Stark has an Intellect of 8 and the Technology skill(giving him a +1 when it comes to Technology) and you have an Intellect of 6 and no Technology skill. Let's roll em." And whoever gets the higher roll gets to choose the narrative direction of the scene.
Yes, this could have been resolved by reasonable players doing reasonable things. Yes, the arguing can continue by truly unreasonable players doing truly unreasonable things. But, to me, I feel this at least gives you one last tool that is neutral and unbiased to help end a disagreement.
@Ganymede I think it boils down to this. You're saying: Why not just always be reasonable? And others are saying: Not all people are reasonable all the time and dice based/level based systems help compensate for that. It's a simplification but I think that's what all of this boils down to.
As for the Arsenal/Tony situation, I think it boils down to "what qualifies Arsenal to correct Tony on anything technological?" Yes, it boils down to his app but what if there's ambiguity in that application and neither player agrees on Arsenal's level of competence?
As for the specific Arsenal situation, I think the player presented it to me in a poor manner. He focused on a specific thing "He fixed a spaceship in the comics and is considered a genius!" instead of saying something like, "Hey, I'm basing this version of the character of his appearances in Red Hood and the Outlaws." It was poor communication which is what I think this entire mini-thread is talking about. Some people, not everyone, like levels/dice based systems to help mitigate communication and/or attitude issues.
At least that is how I am understanding it.
Things seem to be going into an argumentative direction and I'm not sure why. Someone asked "why would anyone use a stat/level based system" and I gave the reason why I use one. For me and my game, it was the best way to set expectations for how strong/smart/capable characters can be. For one, in my experience in more "hand-wavey" trait-based games you get a lot of argumentative players who try to justify whatever they can whenever they can. Second, for a multiverse game you can't simply use other characters as a baseline.
If it's a single universe game you can get away with saying things like "Strong-O is roughly as strong as The Thing or She-Hulk." In a game that is purely Marvel that approach makes sense and most players will be able to know what that means without needing attributes or levels or benchmarks.
In a game that combines multiple game universes, things need to be balanced and benchmarks need to be set so that players know where characters like The Thing fall strength wise. For H&V I went through a process where I compared both universes for various things and leveled them against each other. For example, I'd say something like "Who are the strongest characters in DC and Marvel? Thor, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Hulk, etc. Okay, so these should represent the upper limits of strength on H&V. They have all been leveled and balanced against each other setting the top standard of strength for the game which is to say Rank 10(able to lift a mountain)." And I'd go down the list from there.
I've also played on games where characters were not balanced against each other. Superman was listed as being able to lift and exert trillions of tons of force while The Hulk was limited to 100 tons. To me, that doesn't make sense and was the reason I left said game(Marvel characters were treated as second class citizens).
Anyway, I'm not saying my way is the right way and that others are wrong. It's just one answer to the question "why use stats/levels instead of a more freeform system since everyone knows these characters anyway?" In short, the reason is two-fold; as we've seen in this very thread perspectives on characters can vary wildly from person to person and sometimes you need to set a standard that may not be immediately intuitive to the playerbase.
@Phase-Face To be clear I'm not saying a system is the only way to manage players. I'm saying it's the way I choose to manage players. Every game has to find their own way but once they settle on that method they have to be clear and consistent in that methods usage. Which seems to be the overall case with Empire State. At least from what I've read in this thread(I don't play there).
And most people on H&V were GREAT. Don't get me wrong there. My overall experience with H&V was really good. But, for a time, we were getting one of those players a day that tried to push things just a bit too far and would not listen to reason when we tried to tell them otherwise.
@Alamias I never looked into it to verify what the player was saying to me so I can't say how accurate this is either way but, apparently, the character was involved in some storyline where he rebuilt a spaceship with no help from anyone else or something. They said or hinted at that Roy was some secret genius who tried to downplay his intellect or something. I don't know. It just seemed off to me and I offered a compromise of him being genius level intellect but being just below Tony Stark and not even that was enough. It was above Tony Stark or I was 'ruining' the character.
It's stuff like this(which I dealt with on a daily basis on H&V) that I use levels and limits on my hero games. That way you limit the ambiguity that can come up in ability debates.
@Ganymede I hope you continue to have such a great experience. I truly do. The pessimist inside me, however, doesn't think it'll last forever. Even when having a system that defined levels on H&V I was having weird conversations with people right up to the day I closed the door on the game where people were trying to justify things like Roy Harper being smarter than Tony Stark and Reed Richards.
That's how that player envisioned Roy Harper, as a super technological genius that outshined Tony Stark and Reed Richards in that area. That was his perception of the character. If we had no system in place that codified what he could do imagine that player in a scene with Tony Stark whose player has a very different take on just how smart Roy Harper is. Roy Harper corrects Tony Stark on some advanced technological thing, Tony's player starts going OOCly 'Huh?', and the debate begins about whose vision of the character should take precedent.
The problem with comic books games is at some point in time some writer somewhere wrote the phrase "It's been said (this character) is the best in the world..." and those are the issues players of those characters focus on. These were actual things people tried to get approved on H&V: Harley Quinn being as invulnerable as Superman because he hit her in one comic and she didn't die, the Joker having telepathy better than Charles Xavier because "it only makes sense given what he's able to make people do in the comics", Wonder Woman being stronger than Superman, faster than the Flash, smarter than Batman, and a better fighter than Thor or Hercules simply because "it only makes sense".
Anyway, I'm rambling. It's just been my experience that even with hard limits and levels things get messy and argumentative. I can't imagine NOT having them at this point as a result. In a more freeform system you have your vision of a character and someone else may have a different vision and the problems tend to come from the "figuring it out" phase. At least when certain player types(not all for sure but there is a shocking number of the mout there).
When I was developing Heroes and Villains MU the initial idea was much broader and was going to be powered by FATE Accelerated. The idea was a game where nearly any multi-media character could exist. It was a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy game, Rifts meets Thundarr sort of thing. I played in a tabletop game that used the same theme and FATE Accelerated worked wonderfully for it.
Well, during the building phase I had actual conversations that went like this...
Player: I'm planning on playing Hulk Hogan who has a +4 in Forceful just like Superman! So that means I can smack people with cars, right?
Me: No, Superman has a narrative reason to be able to throw cars that takes the form of his Last son of Krypton aspect. Hulk Hogan doesn't have anything on his sheet that shows he should be able to throw cars. But, narratively, his primary focus is his strength so he has the same impact as Superman when using it he just has to use it in different ways.
Player: Uh, they're both +4 in Forceful so they're just as strong as each other. I don't see why, if Superman can throw cars, Hulk Hogan can't either.
So I revised the theme and decided to use a system where limits and levels needed to be defined. I've found that when they aren't defined people will literally do whatever they want and then hold up the game/scene/whatever as they argue about how they're right no matter what you or other s say.
I've had some people ask about the state of the game so I thought I'd post about it here. It's going but it's going slowly. Most of the code is actually done I'm just working on the wiki now then I need to rebuild the grids(which probably won't actually take very long). The big issue is that I'm also working on another project with some people that's absorbed my time and some RL stuff has kicked off(in a good way, I'm starting to see some success in my professional writing so I've been doubling down on that). So, in short, the game is coming and I'm hoping by end of summer but no promises. I haven't given up though just got sidetracked by some other things.
@AeriaNyx I say this about more and more things but...I would have loved to seen it as a 10 episode series on Netflix or something. There's only so much one can fit into a movie, you know? You are right, there is a ton of stuff they could have explored that would have made the movie so much better. Like I said, I'd have loved to have seen it as a limited series somewhere.