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Post by mcr on May 16, 2019 12:11:53 GMT -5
I was thinking of maybe Raven or Beast boy Unless you do a lot of re-working, Raven is going to have a lot of crossover with Constatine, both in terms of powers and in terms of background/personality (they're both basically haunted types who get their powers from vague, dark sources that exert a great deal of influence over their lives and tend to endanger their friends and allies), but both Raven and Beast Boy are fun characters Was thinking similar things about Raven. Beast Boy might be a better fit, but, and I'll repeat this for whatever its worth is in mentioning again, I see this as set indeterminately early in a rebooted DC continuity where there aren't any real superteams and the characters could be founding members for a new Justice League. So more prominent heroes would be given preference over more peripheral characters (Superman vs., say, Karate Kid), and characters higher on their family tree will be given preference over characters lower on their family tree (Bruce Wayne vs., say, Tim Drake). I'm willing to budge a little from that for the right character, if there's a way to make it work, but just hopefully folks will keep that in mind who are still working on pitches. On the subject of folks still working on pitches, a couple questions for folks: 1a) Would you prefer using Durability, or splitting it into Health/Energy/Regen? Normally I use Durability because it's easier to compare similar-ish characters if one them has had their stats published in one of the books (Hawkeye and Green Arrow are good examples). But which do you prefer? 1b) I'll preface this question by acknowledging that folks have had differing ideas about this in other games and don't want to start a long debate about this, but how would you suggest scaling DC characters to the MURPG system? Though I haven't really analyzed the numbers from specific pitches in depth, I've seen some folks with very high numbers, and know other folks are working on more "street" level heroes as well and am worried that the gulf in absolute power level might be too high to not just point the big guns at any problem and say "you handle this". This is a narrative problem in the comic books too, trying to explain why, for example, Superman doesn't instantly round up all of Gotham's Rogues and put them in the Phantom Zone, and to some extent there's an attitude of "just go with it" that has to be involved, which is the long way of saying "look, I don't expect one easy right answer". One possible solution which I've seen to some extent in other systems is to use a sliding scale of narrative importance - how important for Character X is it for him to be good at ABC as opposed to Character Y? Take, for example, Batman and Sherlock Holmes. Both are generally written as some of the smartest characters in their universes and among the best detectives. But being an intelligent detective is pretty much all Sherlock's got, whereas Batman also beats up people, does covert/black ops type work, runs a company, and occasionally leads or coordinates other superheroes in team-ups (usually when Superman isn't around). So maybe Sherlock gets a 10/10 (for example) in intelligence and detective skills and Batman gets a 7/10 (for example). Some of the RAW D&R chart portions appear to be written with something similar in mind - the sections for scientific and educational expertise seem to be written in a way that compares characters on a scale of 1-10 rather than against objective units of measurement like tonnage or miles per hour. Would comparing characters to one another on a scale of 1-10 help reduce the gulf between characters who are more "street" level and characters at the top of the DC Weight Class and give the "street" level characters more to do that the heavy hitters can't? And would it make it easier to write up NPC's and villains who are of similar Weight Classes to the heavy hitting heroes so that you're not playing pin the tail on the D&R chart (giving, for example, Mongul and Zod the same strength score of 9/10 rather than trying to figure out if Mongul gets an 18 and Zod gets a 20 or 21 or whatever)? Again, definitely don't want to start a long argument about this, but just, in general, what would be easier to manage and more inclusive for all the characters involved? 2) Another thorny subject: magic and similarly powerful masteries. As with scaling, I don't want to start long debates, but I generally tend to treat mastery of magic as being similar to a mastery of a powerful element, and compare a stone of one against a stone of another as being equal if all other things are equal. When Stone counts are involved, I justify the more expensive ones as being so not because they are more powerful per se but because they are generally more versatile. You can teleport with magic but not with mastery of fire. But all other things being equal, I tend to treat, for example, a one stone magical lightning blast as the same as a one stone light construct laser beam, which is just as effective as a one stone freeze ray, and so forth. But, especially in the big Crisis Crossovers, magic tends to feature prominently for at least some of the characters and for some of the overall plot, and maybe it makes sense to treat is "special" and "different" for narrative purposes. The Mastery of Magic RAW are notoriously opaque, but do folks have general thoughts about whether Magic should be treated differently for purposes of this game?
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Post by Gris on May 16, 2019 13:25:54 GMT -5
We have a lot of maybe. So since my flash idea is out. Depending if Constantine is in or not, I'll got with Raven if he is out and Beast boy if he is in. I think we're pretty settled. Its looking like Plastic Man, Constantine, Superman, plus whoever you pitch and whatever Shenron settles on And Hawkgirl!
As for the rules questions I do prefer splitting durability into 3, but it's not a super important issue for me. The rest of things... my ability to balance/parse out rules isn't good enough as to pitch it in, honestly, but in those cases I tend to go with the simplest answer or the one that fits more people, I don't really mind.
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Post by WildKnight on May 16, 2019 14:04:22 GMT -5
I think we're pretty settled. Its looking like Plastic Man, Constantine, Superman, plus whoever you pitch and whatever Shenron settles on And Hawkgirl! As for the rules questions I do prefer splitting durability into 3, but it's not a super important issue for me. The rest of things... my ability to balance/parse out rules isn't good enough as to pitch it in, honestly, but in those cases I tend to go with the simplest answer or the one that fits more people, I don't really mind.
Personally, I find that not splitting Durability leads to extremely limited options... you can either build characters who will never have enough energy to do the things they're supposed to do, or characters who have ridiculous amounts of health levels (not to mention the ubiquitous "I took Int-based because its objectively better unless my character has Durability 7+")
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Post by WildKnight on May 16, 2019 14:09:08 GMT -5
The problem with reducing the numbers is that the numbers actually mean something very specific in this system, and Mongul or Zod or Superman having a Strength of 10 doesn't cut it... or even come close to cutting it (Even "lesser" strong characters, like The Hawks, are waaaaay off MURPGs existing chart). The same is true for the Flash and speed. The existing mechanics just don't cover what he can do. You have to be flexible with them, or you have to gimp them to the point where the ONLY characters you can play are DCs street level characters, and even with those, you'll have to monkey with numbers quite a bit. There is literally no way to build anything approximating Batman with a Durability of 3 (i.e. a maximum energy output of 9 stones)
The MURPG system, as written, isn't even all that good at representing Marvel without some creative flexibility
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Post by shenron on May 16, 2019 14:18:13 GMT -5
Looks like I am going to settle on The Question as not to overload the team with heavy hitters.
Pkus, I think the Question will be a lot of fun.
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Post by mcr on May 16, 2019 20:58:52 GMT -5
The problem with reducing the numbers is that the numbers actually mean something very specific in this system, and Mongul or Zod or Superman having a Strength of 10 doesn't cut it... or even come close to cutting it (Even "lesser" strong characters, like The Hawks, are waaaaay off MURPGs existing chart). The same is true for the Flash and speed. The existing mechanics just don't cover what he can do. You have to be flexible with them, or you have to gimp them to the point where the ONLY characters you can play are DCs street level characters, and even with those, you'll have to monkey with numbers quite a bit. There is literally no way to build anything approximating Batman with a Durability of 3 (i.e. a maximum energy output of 9 stones) The MURPG system, as written, isn't even all that good at representing Marvel without some creative flexibility Yeah. I think especially for the narrative aspects of this game, the splitting of durability does make some sense. I'm still not 100% what to do to help manage ballooning power levels from getting out of hand, but as long as we all share the sense that it might be trial and error trying to figure out where exactly characters should fall on the relative power weight charts, I'm okay with that. What would slow down the game and be less fun is if every time a new character pops in we have to figure out exactly how many stones he's got in XYZ and what that means vs. Character A or vs. Power Set B.
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Post by WildKnight on May 17, 2019 8:16:11 GMT -5
The problem with reducing the numbers is that the numbers actually mean something very specific in this system, and Mongul or Zod or Superman having a Strength of 10 doesn't cut it... or even come close to cutting it (Even "lesser" strong characters, like The Hawks, are waaaaay off MURPGs existing chart). The same is true for the Flash and speed. The existing mechanics just don't cover what he can do. You have to be flexible with them, or you have to gimp them to the point where the ONLY characters you can play are DCs street level characters, and even with those, you'll have to monkey with numbers quite a bit. There is literally no way to build anything approximating Batman with a Durability of 3 (i.e. a maximum energy output of 9 stones) The MURPG system, as written, isn't even all that good at representing Marvel without some creative flexibility Yeah. I think especially for the narrative aspects of this game, the splitting of durability does make some sense. I'm still not 100% what to do to help manage ballooning power levels from getting out of hand, but as long as we all share the sense that it might be trial and error trying to figure out where exactly characters should fall on the relative power weight charts, I'm okay with that. What would slow down the game and be less fun is if every time a new character pops in we have to figure out exactly how many stones he's got in XYZ and what that means vs. Character A or vs. Power Set B. As far as power levels go... if you want toned down characters, that's cool, there are lots of DC characters I like, I can come up with something that won't overpower guys like The Question or whoever. If you're concerned with parity, then I can get on board, I just need a gauge of what others are working with. The flip side of that coin is that teams of heroes don't need to be of the same power level. One area where I would argue Justice League comics have frequently handled this issue well enough is varying challenges. Oftentimes there will be a massive physical threat that only Superman, Wonder Woman, the Hawks, etc have any hope of going toe-to-toe with, but there are additional things going on that make the other heroes equally necessary. Maybe the opponent CAN'T be defeated until some other condition is met (i.e. "Batman has to infiltrate the enemy base with his team"), or maybe there are minions for them to fight, or maybe the big tough baddie isn't even the real goal at all, but they need to be distracted while the "lesser" heroes do the real work. Unfortunately, what comics most often rely on doesn't really work for a super hero game... because in a comic, typically if a threat is too weak for Superman, what they do is take Superman out of the picture entirely, which is lazy, and in a game, not much fun for the guy playing Superman LOL
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Post by mcr on May 17, 2019 10:22:36 GMT -5
Yeah. I think especially for the narrative aspects of this game, the splitting of durability does make some sense. I'm still not 100% what to do to help manage ballooning power levels from getting out of hand, but as long as we all share the sense that it might be trial and error trying to figure out where exactly characters should fall on the relative power weight charts, I'm okay with that. What would slow down the game and be less fun is if every time a new character pops in we have to figure out exactly how many stones he's got in XYZ and what that means vs. Character A or vs. Power Set B. As far as power levels go... if you want toned down characters, that's cool, there are lots of DC characters I like, I can come up with something that won't overpower guys like The Question or whoever. If you're concerned with parity, then I can get on board, I just need a gauge of what others are working with. The flip side of that coin is that teams of heroes don't need to be of the same power level. One area where I would argue Justice League comics have frequently handled this issue well enough is varying challenges. Oftentimes there will be a massive physical threat that only Superman, Wonder Woman, the Hawks, etc have any hope of going toe-to-toe with, but there are additional things going on that make the other heroes equally necessary. Maybe the opponent CAN'T be defeated until some other condition is met (i.e. "Batman has to infiltrate the enemy base with his team"), or maybe there are minions for them to fight, or maybe the big tough baddie isn't even the real goal at all, but they need to be distracted while the "lesser" heroes do the real work. Unfortunately, what comics most often rely on doesn't really work for a super hero game... because in a comic, typically if a threat is too weak for Superman, what they do is take Superman out of the picture entirely, which is lazy, and in a game, not much fun for the guy playing Superman LOL I think as long as we all share the sense that I'm trying to figure it out as we go and we're not slowing down the pacing of the game too much by trying to figure out if Character X should be able to do ABC, we should be okay. And I think in at least in the early issues, I may put The Question and Plasticman on a separate team from Superman and Hawkgirl, with Constantine rotating between the two as sort of the mystical troubleshooter.
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Post by Mephistel on May 17, 2019 11:13:14 GMT -5
I would be going with beast boy if that's ok with you. Or is it too late to send you a CAD?
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Post by mcr on May 17, 2019 11:27:24 GMT -5
I would be going with beast boy if that's ok with you. Or is it too late to send you a CAD? It's not too late to send Beast Boy but I think I've already expressed reluctance to include him specifically for a variety of reasons. Other pitches are welcome though. Mainly just waiting for Dhark's CAD so I can compare everyone's builds in greater detail.
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Post by Mephistel on May 17, 2019 11:34:48 GMT -5
Oh. I thought he was ok. Guess I misread. Sorry. Hmm well... if anyone got suggestions, I'm open to idea/interesting team up
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Post by Dhark on May 17, 2019 11:54:48 GMT -5
I would be going with beast boy if that's ok with you. Or is it too late to send you a CAD? Mainly just waiting for Dhark's CAD so I can compare everyone's builds in greater detail. Did you make a decision on the splitting of Durability or not? I have a loosely built CAD on my laptop at home... but it looked like that was still being debated...?
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Post by mcr on May 17, 2019 12:11:03 GMT -5
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Post by RidiculousNinja on May 17, 2019 18:16:39 GMT -5
So revamping the Plasticman CAD but just wanted to say O’Brian absolutely is just as powerful if not more powerful than some of the main core members of the league. Strength wise he’s gone toe to toe with Martian manhunter. Here’s a bunch of examples of what he can do in here. Though I will be trying to mimic his personality which is why he’s a b lister.
https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads/comments/8ubuys/respect_plastic_man_dc/
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Post by mcr on May 18, 2019 17:20:56 GMT -5
With the exception of Mephistel everyone has sent in at least one CAD, so I've begun comparing them now. I think everyone who has sent in multiples has expressed which one they prefer, and I'll be working with everyone to go through them and discuss suggested changes. Tentatively we have Constantine, Plastic Man, The Question, Superman, and Hawkgirl in our lineup. For Mephistel and anyone else who might still be working on new pitches, if you can get those in by Wednesday night Eastern time? No ticking clock where I'll cut off submissions, but I do want to get things rolling, too. WildKnight, in the meantime if we could get a placeholder DC: Crisis of Fate thread, with an OOC and CADs subthread, I'd appreciate it?
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