MA cliches: What to avoid in your new Arc.
By
Aces_High,
Posted on: 2009-04-22 06:15 in Mission Architect
On the other hand, try taking ALL the cliches here ... and making the world WORST arc possible. It could win you a great cult following -- kinda like that movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatos" or "Plan 9 from Outer Space."
Start off with Robotic Killer Clowns, who are all based off your own cherished hero, who happens to be a "Demon with a Heart of Gold" . Them have your CONTACT who's the REAL BAD guy in the end talk to you real professinal like: $Name, you must do (fill in the blank.). You're the only one who can help me." BUT THEN, right after that, in parenthesis, ADD ("Little does $Name know, I am the BAD GUY and when he does this, I will have him in my evil clutches." Be sure to include one of those BIG EVIL LAUGH emotes, just so no one is confused.
THEN CREATE A DEFEAT ALL MISSION. BUT SET IT ON THE SMALLEST MAP POSSIBLE.
THEN in your last mission -- where you have to rescue someone who turns on you just as you get to the door -- REVEAL that the reason they want to kill you is because you ONE-STARRED THEIR MA ARC, and they just want revenge!!!! Make this foe an AV and set him on EXTREME! And as you die, have him laugh at you and tell you that HIS real name is SHAKESPEARE -- and that NOBODY like a CRITIC!
(Or, if you want another way to amuse yourself, try my arc #1224, "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" - still playing at an AE center near you.) 
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On the other hand, try taking ALL the cliches here ... and making the world WORST arc possible. It could win you a great cult following -- kinda like that movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatos" or "Plan 9 from Outer Space."
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There's a trope for that too. And it is indeed awesome.
We'll always have Paragon.
As a writer, particularly in the fanfiction genre, I've learned that Mary/Marty Sues come in many different breeds.
-- Damsel in Distress
-- Independent Barney-Bad***
-- Love Me For I Am Cute
-- Destined Lover
-- I Hate You/Will Kill You!
-- I Am What My Writer Wishes To Be
These are just a few of what seem to be the most common. More often than not, these breeds are mixed together to give the reader an even more pronounced feeling of nausea. The trick to keeping a character from becoming a Mary/Marty Sue is to not make the players feel underpowered in comparison. You also want to avoid the character making the Player Character out to be inferior in some way. (Villainous gloating does not count here, that's just another cliché.)
All original characters have the potential to become Mary/Marty Sues, but with a bit of caution you can keep it from happening. Make sure that the character is needed, but keep that reasonable, too. We don't want things bordering on obsessive co-dependence.
Different people write different styles best. Some are good at humor while someone else is good with angst. Just don't bog the story down with one or the other. Keep things balanced. I think that's the best advice I've ever heard.
SG Leader "Knights of Tir Asleen"
"I am a humanoid... I get really annoyed at the things humans do."
"Shepherd" ID: 135806 - Heroic Morality Story Arc
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Damsel in Distress
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No, a Mary Sue would be causing distress for the would-be kidnappers.
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Damsel in Distress
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No, a Mary Sue would be causing distress for the would-be kidnappers.
[/ QUOTE ]Piffle. A mary sue can be a DiD by dint of being someone that everyone wants so badly that someone oversteps their boundaries and claims them by kidnapping. Then everyone in the world, no matter how disparate they are or how much they hate one another, will unite under the banner of Let's Rescue The Mary Sue because they all wuv her sooo much.
When they do finally rescue her they'll find that she'd just talked the kidnapper down from what he was going to do, and that she then stops the vicious sock-beating of the kidnapper from ensuing because:[ QUOTE ]
"He did what he did out of a love for me," Tyffani Picard-Rabbit said, sighing sadly for yet another man overwhelmed by the strange, down-to-earth, simple charm that she offered, as she hugged her wave board to her chest, glad to once more be in the company of friends, "Can you really blame him?"
Sonic, Riker, and Eddie Valant all stopped quiet at that, knowing, as they looked down at their feet, that they too could have been in Sylar's shoes... with just the wrong incentive.
[/ QUOTE ]I don't read fanfiction and that seems a fairly obvious and intuitive application of the trope.
And then of course, some people take Sue hate too far.
I'll admit it, my arc is a sue arc... hell, one of the characters has SUE as their MIDDLE NAME (she is, incidentally, the most sue-ish of the lot =P). However, this has only stopped one person from enjoying it afiak... and he hates self-insert/sues/other peoples characters in general so much that he REFUSED to rescue any of them and got his butt handed to him by an AV who was designed AROUND HAVING SIX HELPERS TO DEFEAT... and then he complained it was TOO HARD.
Yeah, there's some other problems with the arc, but complaining that it's too hard when you're given the tools to survive and prosper is somewhere between stupid and reta-... erm, mentally disabled.
(incidentally, i tried to make the other characters not-so-sue-ish, though I doubt the player cared and wrote them off regardless *shrug*)
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
However, this has only stopped one person from enjoying it afiak... and he hates self-insert/sues/other peoples characters in general so much that he REFUSED to rescue any of them and got his butt handed to him by an AV who was designed AROUND HAVING SIX HELPERS TO DEFEAT... and then he complained it was TOO HARD.
I didn't have my butt handed to me. I didn't even complain that it was too hard. I explicitly said I couldn't judge its difficulty accurately because I was playing a weak character, a 32 EnB/Dark Corruptor. That notwithstanding, I soloed the AV in question. Had Kalinda bothered to actually spawn I'm confident I could have dealt with her as well.
I always leave NPC allies for last or skip them altogether if at all possible. There are two reasons for this. The most important of these is that the story is supposed to be about the player. If the mission won't work unless the player lets NPCs do all the heavy lifting, it's broken. The player isn't supposed to be a spectator. The second reason is that NPC allies diminish rewards, including tickets. Dragging one EB around pretty much means you're wasting your time. Having to compete with two EBs and four Bosses...well, we're back to the game turning into a spectator sport.
I one-starred the arc because the plot was absurd. I knew what was going on in act I; the rest was, in Arcanaville's words, "riding the slow train to stupidville". The player just runs around blindly following a cop's orders with no offer of proof of any crime having been committed and no illegal activity on the scene when the player arrives. Act II in particular Fails Police Procedure Forever. Idiot Plot + Mary Sue = Wall Banger.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
"This episode of Ed, Edd and Eddie completely fails to properly represent the school curriculum as it's exhibited in the state of Colorado. How can they publish this crap?!"
Fair enough, though you did complain that it was tedious... which it wouldn't have been if you bothered using the help in the mission to begin with =P
As for the plot, the fact that the morons are attacking you on sight is usually good enough to bring someone in and continue an investigation. If somebody attacks a cop, the police don't shrug and say "well, there's no proof of a crime, we should let them go". Heck no, they lock the jerk(s) up and investigate.
Act 2, yeah, you made a good point about there not being a warrant mentioned, however, do you know how many times a contact ever mentions a warrant?
ONCE.* During the Countess Crey arc. And that's IT. So this is to mean that warrants are either supposed to be automatically assumed, or that heroes don't have to abide by them, or that the contact has the ability to supersede warrants, in which case you're being overly harsh in your analysis.
*: I used google to search through Red Tomax's site, and the Countess Crey arc was the only blue side mission to even use the word at all in any context.
And you don't have to "run around blindly". You can easily RP it as "I'm just going to do what he says for now and wait for the other shoe to drop." Or maybe you're playing a Villain (which, YOU were) who just wants an excuse to beat on some heroes and shouldn't give a rat's behind about police procedure (though in that case, one has to wonder what your motivation would be for betraying your contact and messing up Kalinda's scheme). Or maybe you can assume your characters don't read TvTropes and aren't as genre-savvy as YOU are and despite their intelligence, might actually not be all that suspicious (at least until act 3, which is where people's red flags are supposed to start going up).
Plus, you can't even question any of your contacts ever, as we don't have access to dialog trees, so harping on me about what amounts to a technical limitation is somewhat unfair.
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
@Mizzer: Sounds like your husband is a lucky man. Technically, you can leave the unpublished arc on his hard drive and it'll act as one of his local stories. Just make sure you copy over the Mission, CustomCritter, and CustomVillainGroup folders. I've been copy/pasting one of my arcs back and forth on a thumb drive so I can work on it at home and on campus.
As far as the main conversation, my upcoming arc is based on one of my characters. However, the character is never mentioned by name so that it properly fits the player's character. It allows me to make the player important yet have a story mission that actually involves two of my characters.
Right, it's on. I actually went back through this wretched thing to check the facts, this time with Venture/Virtue.
In the first mission, the target is fighting Arachnos when you arrive. Her defeat clue makes it clear that your character does not identify himself as working with PPD; evidently you just spontaneously come to blows. Either Milgram was right and the player will open fire on another registered hero without warning just because an authority figure said to or the NPC heroes are trigger-happy and shoot at any super they don't know (my character has the Superstar badge, but whatever). This pattern is repeated five more times. It's a hard sell to pull off just once, seeing as how the game is not set on the planet Levram. The detective you're working for says they're going to interrogate her psionically...um, yeah. Sister Psyche is clearly rubbing off on the PPD.
Here is the briefing for the second mission, cut and pasted:
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With Disgruntled Ex in custody being examined by our psychics, it's time to shift focus. She hangs out with a few other heroes who've formed something of an unofficial supergroup, and somewhere in the base they're renting out is bound to be some evidence we can use against her... and possibly her allies.
Don't look so surprised. Her "friends" include a guy imbued with evil magic, a former Outcast, a supposedly reformed alien invader, a crey experiment gone wrong and a magic entity we don't know jack about. In short, not exactly the most trustworthy bunch.
Anyway, I want you to break into thier base and search thier computers for anything that can help our case. Use these USB sticks to copy their HDs. Then our tech boys can sift through the data, and you don't have to waste any time.
Speaking of wasting time, you'll only have 30 minutes before thier control equipment locks onto you and forces you out of the base, so work quickly!
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Notice that it explicitly says you break into their base. I think we can assume there's no search warrant. If the detective did have probable cause to search the group's computers he'd get a warrant and a bunch of CSI types would show up to examine and/or seize them. If the supers or their pet bots resisted then they'd call in SWAT, other supers, Longbow, whatever. Of course, the plot would fall down and die if this happened, since the supers aren't doing anything wrong so they wouldn't resist, and there's no probable cause to search them in the first place. The detective proffers no reason for the search beyond "I don't like them". The mission entry popup, which I accidentally banished trying to copy from, once again says you're breaking in.
N.B. that whether or not the devs mention warrants when they should is irrelevant. Mistakes do not stop being mistakes because the devs made them first. The majority of missions in the game take place under some plausible exigent-circumstances situation. If a bunch of 'dyned-up hoods with machine guns are shooting up an office building you don't need to play mother-may-I with a judge before going in and cracking heads. That doesn't apply here as the NPCs are fighting known offenders or in the privacy of their own base when the player attacks them. The canon does specify that heroes have to follow police procedure (mentioned in the first history file on the company site).
Oh, and FWIW, "The Eternal Nemesis" also mentions warrants in the next-to-last mission, as Christopher says "I have warrants galore" before sending you into a Nemesis facility. This is odd since you probably wouldn't need one, but whatever.
In the third act we get to see how seriously to take this:
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[NPC] Patty-Sue Ivanova: What're you stupid? Don't you see how many badges I have?! You don't stand a chance!
[NPC] Patty-Sue Ivanova: [tell] Malaise, Oh hey! Nothing, just fighting some turds who raided my instance... Oh crud MT!
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This time you actually have the detective with you, or you're supposed to. He spawned behind the heroes as it happened. Why the colossal misunderstanding, if a PPD detective is presumably ordering them to stand down, etc.? Because the plot requires it. Arguing that the game engine doesn't allow you stop fighting and talk is irrelevant because the entire circumstance is contrived. Neither the player nor the NPCs have any kind of casus belli; they just go at it on sight because that's what the script says.
Of course, in Act IV the Contact goes Axe Crazy. Once again I stealthed past all the allies and took out Lee, this time without cracking a sweat. Once again, Kalinda failed to spawn. Shooting from the hip I'm guessing this means she tried to spawn at an occupied point and failed, or the map doesn't actually have the amount of room it says it does. Normally I would kick this in the head again and forget it but since we're making an issue out of it I reset the mission and tried it the "right" way, dragging the moron brigade around. The first room, BTW, is probably a death trap for anyone the mobs can actually hit, but whatever.... Kalinda deigned to spawn this time and folded like a busted flush. I'm not sure what the custom Fortunata did since they couldn't hit me...looked like PsyBlast/SR, and it looked like they were all LTs. IOW, basic killer GMing. The debriefing is fairly vanilla and there is no souvenir.
There is nothing in here that requires a character to be Genre Savvy in order to realize something is wrong. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of civil rights (say, with a high school education in civics) would know Lee's orders are illegal. The player and the NPC heroes fight only because the plot demands that they do so. "I'm just going to do what he says for now and wait for the other shoe to drop" requires beating people up and arresting them under false pretenses.
Ironically the only characters in the script who aren't acting like idiots are Lee, who is mind controlled, and Kalinda, who is controlling him. Everyone else catches the Idiot Ball and runs for the end zone.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
[ QUOTE ]
As a writer, particularly in the fanfiction genre, I've learned that Mary/Marty Sues come in many different breeds.
-- Damsel in Distress
-- Independent Barney-Bad***
-- Love Me For I Am Cute
-- Destined Lover
-- I Hate You/Will Kill You!
-- I Am What My Writer Wishes To Be
These are just a few of what seem to be the most common. More often than not, these breeds are mixed together to give the reader an even more pronounced feeling of nausea. The trick to keeping a character from becoming a Mary/Marty Sue is to not make the players feel underpowered in comparison. You also want to avoid the character making the Player Character out to be inferior in some way. (Villainous gloating does not count here, that's just another cliché.)
All original characters have the potential to become Mary/Marty Sues, but with a bit of caution you can keep it from happening. Make sure that the character is needed, but keep that reasonable, too. We don't want things bordering on obsessive co-dependence.
Different people write different styles best. Some are good at humor while someone else is good with angst. Just don't bog the story down with one or the other. Keep things balanced. I think that's the best advice I've ever heard.
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OK. I know I'm going to kick myself for asking but know that I know all these things about Mary Sue, only one question remains:
WHO or WHAT is a Mary Sue?
I know my arc "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" #1224 has a damsel in distress, so does that make Alice a Mary Sue? And if Alice is Mary Sue, then who is Alice?
This may or may not be important information for me, since if I ever create a Catepillar for "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" (#1224) ... he would have to ask: "WHO ... ARE ... YOU?"
So if Alice is Mary Sue, how does she answer? It all seems so confusing to me ... especially the part where "Wicked, Wicked Wonderland" (arc # 1224) only has 96 plays now but needs 100 to get me to the next level.
Would it be advantageous if Alice were a "Mary Sue"? (If so, she is, and you need to help her at once!!!!)
Is it more advantagesous to the player that she's not? (If so, I assure you that she isn't - and doesn't even have a friend named Mary Sue ... and you need to helo her at once!!!!)
Either way, I assure you that my story - like myself -- holds itself up to the highest standards of INTEGRITY (unless you prefer low standards, in which case it reaches new depths you may personally enjoy.)
Oh for goodness' sake.
X and Y are ways that Mary Sues incarnate, this does not mandate that all instances of X or Y are Mary Sues. There is writing abundant on the subject of Mary Sues, and Venture links to TVtropes enough. How hard could it be to look it up if it matters so much?
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There is nothing in here that requires a character to be Genre Savvy in order to realize something is wrong.
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Uh, newsflash: something IS wrong! A high ranking member of the PPD has been compromised and is being used to take out Heroes (ironically, it's that member of the PPD whos job it is to make sure that compromised heroes aren't going around doing stupid stuff like... hurting civilians and other heroes). Would the plot really benefit from there being no indication of this whatsoever until the last act, at which point he go nuts for no reason and out of nowhere?
I dunno. I just like to build up to things, though perhaps i over did it?
Anyways...
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Notice that it explicitly says you break into their base. I think we can assume there's no search warrant. If the detective did have probable cause to search the group's computers he'd get a warrant and a bunch of CSI types would show up to examine and/or seize them. If the supers or their pet bots resisted then they'd call in SWAT, other supers, Longbow, whatever. Of course, the plot would fall down and die if this happened, since the supers aren't doing anything wrong so they wouldn't resist, and there's no probable cause to search them in the first place. The detective proffers no reason for the search beyond "I don't like them".
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Imagine this: Let's say DX -was- an arachnos spy like the Detective believes. Narrative structure demands that she would be in the middle of some sinister plot and that there wouldn't be much time to wait for warrants and getting folks together for a proper investigation before something disastrous happened. Your probable cause is the fact that she attacked you in the first place, plus the origins of the other characters, which (along with most of them being annoying, jerks, or both) was supposed to convince the player that indiscriminatingly taking them down wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Obviously, you didn't buy that reasoning. Good for you. It's just too bad that you think the arc is worse than a ritki comm farm for it =(
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
Mary Sue
As this page indicates there is much dispute over exactly what constitutes a Mary Sue. The Other Wiki has a page on Mary Sues as well which you may note is not entirely consonant with TVTropes. N.B. that since City is a comic book environment some traits that normally flag a character as a Mary Sue get a pass here. The obvious example is "the character has superpowers", which is perfectly normal for a City character. In fact, it would be more Sueish for the character not to have superpowers (or gadgets emulating them) and still manage to show up the superpowered opposition. A superpowered character in City would have to have powers that were excessive or exotic in some way to qualify for this particular Mary Sue trait.
For my purposes here, I use a very specific definition. The character must be one of the author's player-characters or an obvious proxy (though that is much harder to spot, proof does not fit in the margin), and the story must serve to glorify the character in some way. That would include all the various ways of making the world revolve around the character described in those articles. I don't differentiate by gender (Marty Sue, Gary Stu, etc.)
Simply including a character you play doesn't qualify as a Mary Sue or even necessarily bad writing in my book. Two of mine appear in "Chains of Blood" as victims of the Circle's plot. (As of the last edit, they don't even fight; they're depowered and wounded so they must retreat.) Likewise, while obnoxious characters that possess enough gravitas as to become dramatic black holes are certainly bad writing, they don't quite hit the pinnacle unless they're also obvious author inserts.
Diablo Navarra is an example of a character in my own arcs ("Two Households Alike") that some might consider a Mary Sue by the standards of TVTropes/Wiki. Obviously I think I stayed within the lines, and no one has made that particular complaint about him (one commentator expressed concerns about his difficulty, one just didn't like him), but I could see how someone might feel that way. While I think he's an interesting character and I like the way he turned out graphically I doubt I'll use him again for that reason.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Mary Sue
As this page indicates there is much dispute over exactly what constitutes a Mary Sue. The Other Wiki has a page on Mary Sues as well which you may note is not entirely consonant with TVTropes. N.B. that since City is a comic book environment some traits that normally flag a character as a Mary Sue get a pass here. The obvious example is "the character has superpowers", which is perfectly normal for a City character. In fact, it would be more Sueish for the character not to have superpowers (or gadgets emulating them) and still manage to show up the superpowered opposition. A superpowered character in City would have to have powers that were excessive or exotic in some way to qualify for this particular Mary Sue trait.
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If I am to understand your final ruling on this, I need a further clarification. By Excessive and Exotic, would you qualify Statesman a May Sue? I was considering making a new toon to play today that was channeling psionic energy into their hands, using EM/SR. o.0 Would this be improper?
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Simply including a character you play doesn't qualify as a Mary Sue or even necessarily bad writing in my book. Two of mine appear in "Chains of Blood" as victims of the Circle's plot. (As of the last edit, they don't even fight; they're depowered and wounded so they must retreat.) Likewise, while obnoxious characters that possess enough gravitas as to become dramatic black holes are certainly bad writing, they don't quite hit the pinnacle unless they're also obvious author inserts.
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If I were to add in a custom character of my friends or my own that was being held hostage, would that be considered improper by the set standards you propose then? o.0 I've been considering revamping a few things since reading over your teachings per say.
Regards,
-C.A
Hi hi all,
I have been readign all the posts on this subject and it has brought to my mind a question. Before I ever started to play CoH, I had already written stories about a few characters. When I started to play I created those characters in game, and alter there stories slightly to fit.
If I create story arcs based off those stories, where in the player(aka anyone) is sent after one of the few villians. Is this considered bad writing? The mission would have the player going after a villian that my heroes commonly fight, but the player would be in the role, not my own heroes.
The reason I ask is, by doing the arc, the player would be drawn into the world of the stories that I write, but would not have contact with my own heroes, just the main villains.
The problem with the whole "Mary Sue" rhubarb is, we ALL have our 'pet' characters, mains, et cetera. And the prolific storytellers in the bunch probably have their entire superhero careers (if not LIVES) plotted out to the second.
So it'll be really hard to not trip over these folks.
I'm of the mind that it's OK to bring your own character into the story as long as they're not the center of it. Make the player the pivotal role, if not for he or she, then the whole thing unravels, obviously your character can't hack it (for whatever reason - mine is, the story takes place in the past, and at that time she wasn't even a hero, or even empowered.)
That's the problem with mission arcs - you're essentially writing the supporting cast for an impromptu play... and you hope to {deity} that the player has the sense of humor and the desire to drop into the role you've left open... the headliner.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Pet characters don't always denote Mary/Marty Sues. In the fanfiction genre, more often than not, Mary Sue was the basic term for a "shameless self insert" that went way overboard.
One example of it would be something like this: the newly introduced female half-elf in a Lord of the Rings fanfic has superior magic powers rivaling that of Gandalf, uses a sword like a master, rides a unicorn, and has the attention of Aragorn, Boromir, and Legolas. Everyone wants them, or wants to be them, and suddenly the entire canon cast is hit with an Idiot Stick. Everyone gets portrayed as grossly out of character, personalities get maligned, and the entire story becomes painful to read - IF you managed to get that far.
The other alternative is that she's a helpless PitA who couldn't fight her way out of a wet-paper sack, but she still manages to snag the attention of the most desired males in the fan-base. Either way, when she's introduced, the aforementioned males get hit with the Idiot Stick.
In fanfiction, they were easy to spot - they were the perfect people who had hordes of lovesick men/women just trailing after them. Admittedly, in CoX, not so easy.
I don't mind someone writing their characters into a story, as long as it doesn't turn into a bunch of self-grandeurising crap. Don't make your character "better" than someone else's. We're all Heroes and Villains in the game. Security/Threat Levels may vary, but technically we're all equal. Venture refers to the Idiot Ball with good reason. NEVER pass it on to another player. No one likes being treated like they're stupid.
SG Leader "Knights of Tir Asleen"
"I am a humanoid... I get really annoyed at the things humans do."
"Shepherd" ID: 135806 - Heroic Morality Story Arc
Part of the problem is using a fanfiction literary term to outline a roleplaying entity. One needs to justify its existence within a narrative, the other causes the narrative to happen. Approaching writing story arcs as if they're the same genre and subject to the same rules as the many different forms of literature and fanfiction is just creating a gigantic template of failures with which you can stamp anything you dislike.
I think there's enough common ground to identify a particular type of pathological behavior here. I do agree that it's easy to stretch the label to apply to just about any character you don't like, which is why I define it precisely for my purposes.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
And that's why the term should be confined to the place it best belongs - in the analysis of fanfiction. And if you're going to redefine the term for your own purposes, come up with a better term that doesn't come with a massive amount of baggage and its own Tvtropes category.
I don't see the definintional issues being any different here than they are in fanfic. No one in fanfic circles agrees on what a Mary Sue is, either. If I were critiquing fanfic I'd still have to pick a definition and stick to it.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
I don't know how to ask this without sounding like the ultimate D-bag... so I will just come out and say it: Venture, how is it that you have become the self-appointed critic and venerated "deity" of mission writing? Why does anyone care what you think?
We've talked about this before, but I don't think your definition of Mary Sue matches up with mine and I don't entirely agree that you can't make an arc about a character or that you have any choice but to lead someone on rails in this game because it's not like it's multiple choice.
The big thing IMO is to be sure your player is the one doing things in the arc. Whether you're helping the NPC or just being pointed in the right direction, I think both make for valid stories.
If someone is having fun while they do your arc, then I say you've succeeded. If that's because you've made them laugh, shown them something they've never seen in-game before, or making them think, those are all valid.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing to create a character for an arc or make your own hero or villain a character within it, but just be aware that most stories like that floating around the MA are glorified self-insertion and you're likely to have people dismiss it out of hand. It may not be right, but the signal to noise ration makes it so that if they think for a moment that this is your character that you play, they assume it's going to be another lousy story from some roleplayer who is working out their Oedipal issues.
I also disagree that a mission that is impossible is bad out of hand (it was another poster and I'm too lazy to search back through the thread to find it). Someone obviously hasn't played @Muu's "Uncreation." That first mission, heck the whole arc, is a classic as far as I'm concerned.