Post by dorkknight23 on Aug 12, 2014 0:01:54 GMT -5
Mankind is on the cusp of a new evolutionary watershed, Homo Sapiens Superior, also known as mutants. Through a byproduct of manifestation of the X-Gene during puberty, mutants develop a variety of superhuman powers. Many people hate and fear what they don't understand, and they certainly don't understand mutants. While evil mutants like Magneto and the Brotherhood or Apocalypse and his Horsemen threaten to rule over mankind, the X-Men fight to keep peace between both mutants and humans. Their mentor, Professor Charles Xavier, secretly runs the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters in upstate New York. You are part of the newest class of students at Xavier's. The previous? The X-Men, who still show up from time to time and help with instruction when they can as best they can. For now, you're a group of messed up kids in a messed up world trying to figure out how to use your powers to help people, if you can handle your raging hormones during the process and survive evil mutants and Sentinels trying to kill you.
The continuity of this game is intentionally left a bit fluid and as light as possible. I plan on making the cast of X-Men similarly intentionally vague and have teams or members to call on when I need them for the story or as relevant. In terms of tone and setting, I'm most trying to ape the early Claremeont-era New Mutants, where the group goes on madcap adventures and has to face death and weirdness on a daily basis. Some other influences I'm drawing on tonally here include things like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Animorphs, anything with teenagers with superpowers struggling to make sense of both growing up and super powers and high concept sci-fi rigamarole at the same time.
Before I talk about specifics for chargen, I have a few comments about what I want out of characters in terms of personalities and power sets. Try to build your character around a straightforward theme, focused on mostly one or two powers. To be clear: this isn't a 'descendants of the X-Men' game (although I do love those, obvs,) so no lost children of Wolverine or anybody please. Weapon X rejects or similar tie-ins to the setting are fine, given approval (or at least be prepared for me to add some "yes and"'s or "yes, therefore"'s along with it).
The second issue I have is harder for me to explain, so I'm just going to try and explain it as best I can. I want to emphasize how I want you guys to create flawed characters. Your teen mutants should have some baggage related both to their conditions and general teen angst (problems at home, identity issues, psychological strains, struggling attitudes about things like popularity or the opposite sex (or the same sex...)) I think it's also awesome when the character's powers have something to say (either in comparison or contrast) about their personalities, but that's more something to consider than an actual prohibition. I think it would be great to see a ragtag bunch of misfit kids eventually become a well-oiled mutant combat machine. I don't want boring perfect teenagers (or overidealized ones).
And just as a random aside: I'd rather not see Modifiers granting free stones to actions except maybe Claws and Targeting (and they might have to be very concept-specific,) so I'm probably going to give you massive amounts of crap for Psycho-Centric Power Template and modifiers based on it. Stone attrition is a real thing, but I want those kind of issues to pop up at least in the early game. Those kind of modifier will most likely be available for purchase later on.
Now for the crunchier bits:
Power Level: Pick one of these three options and build your character accordingly. You must also have the Mutant challenge, the remaining 7 stones of challenges can go towards anything else. If you're a more powerful mutant, you'll find yourself being more constrained as things progress and picking up challenges you weren't quite expecting very quickly.
Beta-level Mutants: 25+max 10 challenges
Alpha-level Mutants: 30+max 10 challenges; 5 future challenge stones
Omega-level Mutants: 35+max 10 challenges; 10 future challenge stones
Notice the “future” challenge stones. You'll build your character normally, ignoring the future challenge stones (they don't grant you any additional stones). I'm basically going to be keeping an additional 5 or 10 stones banked (depending on how powerful your character is) to either add or upgrade challenges later on (I might also use the stones to add on a disadvantage like Power Out of Control to an action if I'm feeling especially ironic). Any challenge stones gained past that point grant more character creation stones as normal.
shawn expressed interest in this concept earlier, so I'm tagging you here so you hopefully see it. Everyone else, the normal stuff: questions, comments, crazy concept ideas that need approval, PM me and we'll talk about it. Don't be too scared, worst I can do is say I don't like it and try to challenge you to come up with something in a similar direction.
The continuity of this game is intentionally left a bit fluid and as light as possible. I plan on making the cast of X-Men similarly intentionally vague and have teams or members to call on when I need them for the story or as relevant. In terms of tone and setting, I'm most trying to ape the early Claremeont-era New Mutants, where the group goes on madcap adventures and has to face death and weirdness on a daily basis. Some other influences I'm drawing on tonally here include things like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Animorphs, anything with teenagers with superpowers struggling to make sense of both growing up and super powers and high concept sci-fi rigamarole at the same time.
Before I talk about specifics for chargen, I have a few comments about what I want out of characters in terms of personalities and power sets. Try to build your character around a straightforward theme, focused on mostly one or two powers. To be clear: this isn't a 'descendants of the X-Men' game (although I do love those, obvs,) so no lost children of Wolverine or anybody please. Weapon X rejects or similar tie-ins to the setting are fine, given approval (or at least be prepared for me to add some "yes and"'s or "yes, therefore"'s along with it).
The second issue I have is harder for me to explain, so I'm just going to try and explain it as best I can. I want to emphasize how I want you guys to create flawed characters. Your teen mutants should have some baggage related both to their conditions and general teen angst (problems at home, identity issues, psychological strains, struggling attitudes about things like popularity or the opposite sex (or the same sex...)) I think it's also awesome when the character's powers have something to say (either in comparison or contrast) about their personalities, but that's more something to consider than an actual prohibition. I think it would be great to see a ragtag bunch of misfit kids eventually become a well-oiled mutant combat machine. I don't want boring perfect teenagers (or overidealized ones).
And just as a random aside: I'd rather not see Modifiers granting free stones to actions except maybe Claws and Targeting (and they might have to be very concept-specific,) so I'm probably going to give you massive amounts of crap for Psycho-Centric Power Template and modifiers based on it. Stone attrition is a real thing, but I want those kind of issues to pop up at least in the early game. Those kind of modifier will most likely be available for purchase later on.
Now for the crunchier bits:
Power Level: Pick one of these three options and build your character accordingly. You must also have the Mutant challenge, the remaining 7 stones of challenges can go towards anything else. If you're a more powerful mutant, you'll find yourself being more constrained as things progress and picking up challenges you weren't quite expecting very quickly.
Beta-level Mutants: 25+max 10 challenges
Alpha-level Mutants: 30+max 10 challenges; 5 future challenge stones
Omega-level Mutants: 35+max 10 challenges; 10 future challenge stones
Notice the “future” challenge stones. You'll build your character normally, ignoring the future challenge stones (they don't grant you any additional stones). I'm basically going to be keeping an additional 5 or 10 stones banked (depending on how powerful your character is) to either add or upgrade challenges later on (I might also use the stones to add on a disadvantage like Power Out of Control to an action if I'm feeling especially ironic). Any challenge stones gained past that point grant more character creation stones as normal.
shawn expressed interest in this concept earlier, so I'm tagging you here so you hopefully see it. Everyone else, the normal stuff: questions, comments, crazy concept ideas that need approval, PM me and we'll talk about it. Don't be too scared, worst I can do is say I don't like it and try to challenge you to come up with something in a similar direction.
