Wordmaker

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First of all, I can fly. That's suspension of disbelief from the very start before we go into Stealth in bright light

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I was talking about believability within the setting, and I stated as much. I can appreciate your argument, I even conceded that I did enjoy doing as you suggest, so please don't patronise me when I'm trying to engage in an intelligent conversation with you, okay?

And don't get me started on how everyone with Superstrength has glowing hands when they punch. And when was the last time you saw Superman start to glow like a Christmas tree when bullets bounced off his chest? Do you also RP that every power has the same visual effect like that?

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I don't think it is that difficult to rationalise everything, and if not rationalise, then at least use the crux of it. The idea of ignoring anything you can't fit in to your story just feels 'wrong' in some way....It is a shared universe.

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The very fact that it's a shared universe is why you have to change details or ignore some, otherwise it becomes a joke. Nearly every player has, at some point, done the Vahzilok Plague story arc. Does that mean every single hero in the city has contracted the disease? Of course not! That's absurd.

I don't see it as taking it too seriously, I just don't see the point in trying to explain why the lusca appears each and every day, even though I once saw her being killed by a group of heroes. And if it wasn't killed, why is it not in containment somewhere? It's a huge great octopus, it's not like it can slip away without being noticed, while our backs are turned, is it?

I'm not saying I expect the lusca to appear once and once only, never to be seen again once beaten. What I am saying, is that there is so much in the game that does not add to the depth of roleplaying you can accomplish, which indeed can detract from the enjoyment of roleplaying, that a lot of it has to be glossed over.

I mean, can you believe I once had a guy talk to me in character, who insisted that yes, our characters' names do in fact float above their heads?

Agreeing with Augury and Ravenswing here.

Silver Weasel, if you decide that everything you do in-game should or could be treated as IC, then you're asking an -awful- lot of suspension of disbelief, even from a superhero game.

Terra Volta: Why does it keep getting attacked, and never having its security imporved? How do you explain a Natural hero going in there and being changed? And what on earth has lead shielding used for a reactor core got to do with restricting magic? Most of the theories behind magic in fiction put forward that magic is either energy found everywhere in the world, regardless, or comes from within yourself.

Lusca: So your character didn't feel sorry about the thing being blasted to submission repeatedly by hoards of heroes then?

Playing along with everything you see in the game is all well and good. But it can -only- work, believably, either solo or in a small group of roleplayers who only team with each other. Once you are exposed to another group, who've been doing similar things or even something completely different, you break the illusion.

I've done it, and it was fun. But eventually, you realise that most other heroes you meet aren't roleplayers, and the ones that are, and are doing the same as you, have just been infected with the same Vahzilok disease that you were, and even though you kept a sample of the antidote, you can't help them. Eventually, it becomes so much more enjoyable to leave the missions OOC, and run your own plots.

Only if temporal laws operate retro-actively.

In Feng Shui, for example, once you've entered the Netherworld, you're completely protected. Even if time changes while you're in your own timeline, you retain all of your memories, appearance, abilities, everything. Even if you don't exist anymore, you're still there, but there are no records of you, and no-one has any memory of you.

Sure there is. Example: once you exist outside the normal timestream, you become immune to the reality-changing effects of being within it, hence your previous memories and actions, as far as you and the universe are concerned, remain unchanged.

Something similar works in the Feng Shui rpg, once characters enter the Netherworld, their memories remain intact in the event of any changes to the timeline.

Okay, there's going to be a mini-confrontation Wednesday night as part of the plot I'm running. Anyone who thinks their characters may be getting involved, can they please compile some stats for me?

Basically, everyone will have the following Attributes:

Strength, Agility, Stamina, Perception, Mind, and Willpower.

Rank each one of these as you see fit from the following scale:

Superb
Great
Good
Fair
Mediocre
Poor
Terrible

Then pick any skills you feel your character has (the more specific a skill is, the more generous I'll be with how well you can do things. ie: Great Melee Combat is better than Fair Melee Combat, but not as good for swordplay as being a Great Swordsman), and select a level of competence from above.

Finally, pick what powers or other abilities your character has that wouldn't fit into a scale of the sort listed above.

I'll handle all the rest.

Yeah, but I don't like the Paragon City setting much, either

This is why I'm glad I'm an Arts graduate, not a Science graduate

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Just try to ignore it and you'll be fine.

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That's really the problem highlighted in the OP. There's an awful lot of stuff we just -have to- ignore in order to rationalise the setting into a believable and consistent world.

I really don't think anyone (least of all any of us) is qualified to say what is and is not possible regarding time travel. It's not actually possible, anyway, so any attempt to set down what can and cannot happen is futile. It's like any superscience. It does whatever the particular writer in question wants it to do.

I might have a look. To be honest, I'm not in the market for another superhero RPG, Mutants & Masterminds does everything I need it to, and if more people had the rulebook, I'd use that instead.

Ah, but does it let you create any kind of character you want?

This is why I prefer lower-powered heroes. You can believe that someone like Batman has to keep fighting, and still, while his city may get better for short periods, eventually gets worse again, because he's just a man. He can't do everything, and he can't affect major change in the city.

Of course, anything you can say against Superman, you can say against Statesman

I've got both the Witchcraft and Buffy/Angel rpgs, which use Unisystem. It's a great system, and really easy to use.

Problems:

1: The CoH rpg isn't out yet.
2: The CoH rpg will likely focus on replicating powers and abilities from the computer game, and most of us have at least a few abilities for our characters that go above and beyond what the game tells us we can do.
3: You have to pay for the rules. I wanted to find something that people could freely download and share.

The Fudge rules allow literally anything to be made, are free, and can be learned in about ten minutes.

I think I remember being told about a Batman issue where Batman meets one of the first heroes of Gotham, The Sentinel. Basically he was once a Green Lantern, but had grown so strong he didn't need the ring anymore, and could literally do anything.

He once watched while Batman failed to stop someone being murdered, and Batman got angry at him, saying he could have stopped it, if he'd stayed in Gotham, he could have kept everyone there safe, including his parents (not sure if he actually mentioned his parents though).

The Sentinel brought Batman back in time, and stopped the murder from happening. He then turned to Batman and told him the reason he left was because Gotham City didn't need a god, it needed a hero.

Trite, possibly, but I liked the idea behind the statement.

But yeah, once you through the kind of power that spans the globe and can travel through time into the mix, things do start to get awkward.

I'd be perfectly happy if they just decided not to bother with the creative contests. They clearly don't have the time or manpower available to judge it, and leaving the stickies about it just makes the whole forum look unprofessional and lazy.

That's not a cliffhanger! That's build-up. Honestly, you people think you've seen a cliffhanger? Maybe I should dig out the old Nevermore stories...

Excellent work, Aisla. It's always nice to see into Liz's head, since she's such a guarded character IC. And yay for more plot and background.

It's well-written, I have to agree on that. Technically, and stylistically, I can't find anything to really criticise. You write comfortable and well in the journalistic style, enough description and depth to make it interesting for the reader, yet still make it believable as a journal entry.

I'd have to agree, though, that I feel little sympathy for the character. He seems, to be honest, a little delusional when he speaks about his loyalty to Recluse. Probably appropriate, and hopefully intentional, but he definitely comes across as someone more than a little bitter at something that happened in his past, who is turning fanatically loyal to a figurehead who he views as responsible for his apparent quick rise in power, though his frustrations are telling of the kind of hierarchy he is in, where the only real power is with the most powerful, Lord Recluse. He will never, no matter how many bones he is tossed, have any real authority.

I'd be interested in finding out why he became a villain, how he got to the Rogue Isles, why he needs cybernetic limbs, etc.

I generally agree with most of what Birdy says above, though I'd disagree a bit on the DC comments, because as powerful as Superman is, there's only one of him, and he does in fact protect the whole world and often the solar system and beyond, so the fact that his attention gets diverted is acceptable. What DC did do very much right, in my opinion, is spread their heroes out through fictional cities. It allows them to act on their own without people going "Green Lantern could totally kick that bad guy's <expletive>, why doesn't he do something instead of the Flash?"

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What they are not is anti-mutant. Despite one or two people attempting to RP the whole Marvelesque "People Hate Mutants" thing, but I simply don't buy it.

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I have to agree. We can probably be safe saying that a character who looks vert different from a normal human will be the subject of some ridicule or staring in public, but that's based on human nature being what it is, to feel uncomfortable around things and people who appear different. Though I seriously doubt it could get to the level of Marvel (which in itself, is a poorly-done theme, as previously said. Just because someone's born with powers instead of having them granted through an accident, they're hated with violent passion? Don't buy it). I'd say mutants who look exactly like normal people are probably just assumed to be heroes.

But, opinions of the CoH/V settings aside, I really do have to agree that the setting is incredbily weak as an RP world. The backstory is dull for the most part, and not made readily available (you have to either piece together the history in-game, or trawl through searches of articles on the website). And for the actual amount of interesting content in it, it's quite a long backstory. It would perhaps have been a lot more interesting if it didn't say so little of real interest spread over such a large amount of writing.

Every argument in favour of the setting as believable and workable from even a comic-book and rpg point of view brings up holes in the setting and mechanics. Every attempt to fill those holes brings up new ones, or creates holes in what's previously been said.

I agree completely. The setting is one in which game mechanics do not mesh with a believable setting. Why do "Training Enhancements" exist, and why can they be traded for Influence? The system assumes all heroes adhere to a specific mould. For example, characters who are robots can still be effected by poisons and mind-effecting powers.

There's a lot of the setting that seems thrown in for the sake of making it easy for the developers to create a workable GAME rather than a workable WORLD. We have War Walls, which, even ignoring the implication that Paragon's citizens essentially live like caged animals, are utterly pointless because they should (if not for the in-game flight ceiling) have a limit to their height, allowing them to be flown over.

Paragon IS a police state. Worse, it's one which makes no sense. A city which can afford "medical chips" for all its heroes can't afford a decent police force, or to rebuild Boomtown? The police drones could solve all of the city's crime problems on their own. There are at least a dozen in Galaxy City alone, and these things can take out Giant Monsters. 12 of them could clear every single criminal and threat in the city, easily, and there are definitely enough heroes to keep Galaxy City safe for a few days. How can we be expected to believe a setting were this kind of thing happens?

If I were to come up with a justification for how the setting works, it would be a world in which heroes serve only to maintain the status quo, as mass-produced public icons existing only to lull the citizenry into a false sense of security and safety and to stop them from questioning why they are locked behind war walls and watched by police drones which distinguish criminals from the innocent based on mere appearance, running speed, and whether or not they're a registered hero.

I've checked out Fudge, and it's -exactly- the same thing I was working on. So, I'm not going to spend ages working on developing a system which already exists, I'm just going to use Fudge!

Can you find the rules for Fudge online? Hmm, must have a look, because that would solve a lot of problems.

I'm still working out the details such as that, but for the most part, I'm trying to keep it more or less freeform and distanced from the strict in-game mechanics.

Most attacks will be based on Agility to hit, with the amount of energy or power a character has available to exert in a particular activity being based on one of the other attributes, such as Resistance if the power causes physical strain.

One of the problems I've encountered time and again in this game is how to run and play adventures that rely purely on roleplaying, disregarding in-game mechanics.

Several times, myself and others have run RP-only missions, in either chat or using IRC. Now, as a GM and a player, I enjoy the potential for random chance provided by rules. So, I thought I'd work on a system of rules which would be easy to learn and use, to helps us do this.

The basic concept of these rules I have in mind, is that a character has five attributes: Strength, Resistance, Agility, Mind, and Will.

These are rated from one of five levels: Weak, Strong, Heroic, Super, and Legendary.

Skills grant modifiers to certain attributes, and powers either stack with attributes, or add new abilities.

Opinions? Criticisms? Encouragement?

I may need some help playtesting these rules at some point.

I try to keep game mechanics as seperate from my IC roleplaying as possible. As others have said, things like Hero Licences and Security Levels have an IC presence in the game, but I don't RP that my character pops down to the local Training Shop in Talos to attach an Enhancement to an ability.

I usually don't even take a character's actual level into account when considering how powerful they are. If the player is a good roleplayer and someone I trust, I'll let them act as powerful or as weak as they want!

Do it and make me a mod!

Don't you just love criticisms that contain compliments?

Wordy FTW!