What is allowed in MA?

Hey,

I am just curious how far we are allowed to go for controversial missions?

I know we should have no swearing, sex, or direct copying of things like Wolverine and such ...

But we can have stories where we murder, kidnap, corrupt, attempt to conquer the world, or even raze a village of innocents to the ground... right?

So how does this deal with making missions with real world issues? What if I wanted to make a mission involving drugs? Would I have to use ingame concepts only like Superdyne? What about using real world drugs and drug problems that arise? What's the difference? Would they only be allowed if they were Villainous in alignment?

What if I wanted to have a mission dealing with alcohol abuse and the damage he caused or the redemption of someone suffering from it?

The CoX world has it's own world leaders and presidents and such but what if you wanted to make a villainous one where Recluse has you assassinate one of these important people?

I believe the PTB would not have many problems with the heroic aspects of many of these ideas ... stop the assassination, arrest the drug lord, or help a fallen hero suffering from binge drinking because he let a child die .... buuuuuut since we also have that whole other side of the game which is villainous ... what is stopping us from making missions doing the exact opposite?

I think a lot of us have watched The Watchmen by now or read the graphic novel .... I don't know about you but I really dig how their issues are grittier and not so cut and dry with what normally flys in comics.

We were given this MA system to allow our creativity to flow but before I start crafting something I want to know where the lines are. I would hate to work hard on an arc just to have it brought down because some people find it "controversial" regardless if I stay in line with what ideas are allowed to be explored with this rampant creativity. What if the arc had a warning on it?

I guess an easy answer would be this ... from what we know of what kinds of stories get pulled .... What is the worst kind of mission that is NOT getting pulled? Could this be used as a warning or metric of don't go much farther then (blank)?

I love the MA system and can't wait to flesh some of my ideas out but I want to make something a bit more Sin City and a lot less Powerpuff Girls if ya know what I mean?

Thank you for listening to my semi-rant and I am curious to hear what you guys think about this.

Peace,

Amrat

These are great question, for which I have almost no answers.

I have not noticed many posts about missions actually being pulled because of mature themes. This doesn't mean it isn't happening, but given the way people complain around here, I suspect it isn't happening very much. I encourage you to follow your interests, and see what happens.

You are a lot less likely to get complaints if you mention anything contraversial in the mission description, of course.

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I think a lot of us have watched The Watchmen by now or read the graphic novel .... I don't know about you but I really dig how their issues are grittier and not so cut and dry with what normally flys in comics.


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Yeah, you and the entire 1990s.

Here's the thing: Watchmen is fundamentally a story about "superheroes" failing, and holds up the problems the traditional superhero fantasy can't address.

If you want to write a story about failure, go right ahead, but keep in mind that people tend not to like games that end with "congratulations! everything's worse now!"

I don't think the issue is writing about "failure." More like if you actually have characters do things that are morally questionable suddenly the "ooh, we are such bad villains" playtime fun fades away. For example, just try writing an arc in which Recluse decides to destabalize Paragon by manipulating a character to go nuts and start shooting children in a classroom. Or say, crash an airplane into a building in a crowded city.

Once you picked something actually evil, being a villain isn't such fun. It frequently complicates writing the story since you have to come up with a semi-plausible motivation for why a human being would do that.

At the same time, I could see an interesting story arc that explored this territory. Although I don't know if I'd actually enjoy playing it much. I've never really liked being a bad guy, and I'm really pleased I can use the MA to take a "villain" and make them a hero.

Honestly, this is something that's going to come down to individual player choice. This is a T rated game, and it's probably going to have some controversial subject matter. There is Westin Phipps, after all.

If you make players too uncomfortable with your storylines, you might get some backlash. I don't know if anyone would report it as offensive, or if CS would consider it a violation of the policies if they did, but you're probably going to get PMs from players saying, "How could you even think of such a thing?! I'm going to go wash my brain out with bleach now." And that could be either a positive or a negative reaction. There are those who actually look for stories that challenge their world view. (I know I do)

I think ultimately it will be self policing. If you push your audience too far, you won't get good ratings, and your arc will be forgotten. You could step over the line by being too racist, or sexist, or attacking something that means something to people, like politics or religion, but I think those are well defined lines that we can all agree on. Just being controversial, in and of itself, is not against the rules. It's only when you intentionally attack or harm someone with that controversy.

I DO think that it would be a very good idea to put a warning in your introduction; "This story arc contains ideas that may be controversial to some. Play at your own discretion." That lets your player know what he's in for, and may even attract the type of players who are looking for a more thought provoking storyline.

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I guess an easy answer would be this ... from what we know of what kinds of stories get pulled .... What is the worst kind of mission that is NOT getting pulled? Could this be used as a warning or metric of don't go much farther then (blank)?

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I would add that this is NEVER a good thing to do. I have many times seen people on the Internet insist that they have been mistreated or unfairly singled out because a moderator asked them to stop using abusive language or acting in some other way that was offensive, and they replied with, "But I saw so-and-so post that exact same word here!" or "This guy was being way more insulting than I was!"

I actually just saw a comment made by one of the devs in an article I just read, linked to in another thread. He said, in essense, "Nothing happens to offensive content if it never gets reported." There could be HUNDREDS of missions with content that violates the TOS, but as no one who has actually played it yet has reported it, the GMs don't know about it, and no action has been taken against it.

That doesn't mean it doesn't violate the TOS, it just means no one has yet noticed it.

I believe it's a very bad idea to single out a specific anecdotal example in a mission and use that as a comparison for your own. Try to determine where the line is by looking at missions in general. The line will always be vague, it will never be explicitly defined.

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Hey,

I am just curious how far we are allowed to go for controversial missions?

So how does this deal with making missions with real world issues? What if I wanted to make a mission involving drugs? Would I have to use ingame concepts only like Superdyne? What about using real world drugs and drug problems that arise? What's the difference? Would they only be allowed if they were Villainous in alignment?

What if I wanted to have a mission dealing with alcohol abuse and the damage he caused or the redemption of someone suffering from it?


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It's all a matter of presentation.

The CoX storyline, collectively, is no stranger to mature themes - we have murder, drugs, poverty, immoral and amoral characters, and crimes that range a wide span.

You can even find 'questionable' arcs in game. Kelly Arqua, Westin Phipps, even the "Cure the Lost" arc - you are taking away their own (albeit possibly misguided) choices and sense of belonging and yanking it away without helping them find better circumstances.

My mission "Dyne of the Times" involves an amoral scientist who has figured out how to combine Superadine with Excelsior to enhance neurological function, increasing a mind to near-machine speed and allowing better interface with technology. Problem is, give it to someone who's not cybernetically or genetically enhanced and they go insane. And I also have a well-liked and respected canon character facing the consequences of the drug and its use. The arc pulls no punches.

You mentioned wanting your arcs to be more Sin City - are you talking more for its presentation, or its themes? Gore, sex, and violence for the sake of shock, I can see the PTB yanking the plug. But if they're peripheral to the story (your hero is sent to investigate a prostitution ring, and you find out they're all volunteer women who are using seduction as a means of infiltrating a villain group to save their loved ones, and the hero now has to face a choice - break up the ring and sabotage all their efforts, or help them take down the villain group and ignoring the fact of them breaking the law), then yeah... I can see it working.

It brings up an interesting idea - being able to create a "Mature" tag and only accounts acknowledged as 18+ years old can access those arcs. I'd still hope they'd be done with dignity and taste, but you could REALLY get some gritty, in-your-face arcs that way.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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At the same time, I could see an interesting story arc that explored this territory. Although I don't know if I'd actually enjoy playing it much. I've never really liked being a bad guy, and I'm really pleased I can use the MA to take a "villain" and make them a hero.

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An interesting concept... are you suggesting that a villain attempt to stop a plan that is fundamentally Evil, because they aren't willing to cross the line of being an accomplice to child killing or genocide or 9/11 type stuff?

or is it more like a story Idea that I have in which you sucker punch a time traveler, steal his time machine, then proceed on a time bandits type thing where you screw up the time stream and create a vicious paradox that is unravelling the fabric of reality. at this point you are chased by heroes while simultaneously trying to prevent the end of the world for purely "I don't want to die" purposes?

could it be a mix of the two? you team up with another villain in order to pull a major heist, but suddenly your partner goes over the edge and plots genocide. you aren't willing to have that on your consience/record, so you start working against him, with the heroes also trying to stop him thinking that you are still a willing accomplice. and do you succeed in stopping the other villain, or do you go down in flames and an entire world, group, school, species, etc. are killed?

Well, those specific idea you mention are all rather interesting and plausible when it comes to motivation of the characters. Certainly small time hoods and drug dealers still have their own moral standards.

The other approach is to explore how someone can be pulled into evil acts one small step at the time, slowly compromising what moral standards they do have.