@Coin said in Freeform or Systems?:

That’s why any game I run promotes joint narrative storytelling; Batman doesn’t become a joke because everyone works to make Batman be Batman. I also typically do not allow villains and any PvP is strictly plot-dependent.

100%. And that’s why my personal feeling is to rely on filtering rather than stats. A player who barges through a scene flexing will usually reign it in after a quiet conversation with them explaining the issue. The ones that don’t rapidly find that nobody wants to play with them.

@Coin

I think this would be a better approach than the more vague soft-limits people often go for, which just tend to cause more arguments if anything (“Blasto-Man has a strength level of 20 tons, it says so on the official website” “But in this iconic scene in Blasto-Man #274 he’d be generating 3978.6 kilonewtons of force…”)

The problem I have with any kind of stat system is what I call the Batman problem. Batman has shit stats compared to Captain Randomthrowawaycharacter and if you play to the stats, Batman becomes a joke,

I keep mooting the notion (as a thought experiment, I don’t think it would actually work) of a system which has one single stat: Narrative Weight. Want to app that one paper-thin character who once appeared in a Superman comic 30 years ago and was created purely to be a threat-of-the-week able to knock Superman around easily? Sure, go ahead. Narrative weight 1. She can knock Superman around easily for a while, but she’s always going to lose any important conflict.

@Kestrel

The more creative freedom I have, the happier I am. I’ve invented entire cultures/societies with a bit of an amateur conlang on games that let me

With you 100% there. This is a hobby with a lot of different corners to it and they’re all equally valid, but I’m very much in the collaborative storytelling corner. To me the idea that there’s a better story to tell but we can’t tell that one because the dice said no makes little sense. I can get behind the occasional random element thrown in optionally, but to me the idea that’s a rule just makes it an unwelcome constraint.

We just implemented a transliterating markdown extension for the Doyle Kryptonian conlang on our game, and we’ve got a player with an OC who has done his own conlang who’s working on a font. If he can provide me with some reasonably easily computable transliteration rules for it I’ll have a go at adding that too. A bit crazy yes, but it’s fun, and that’s what this hobby is supposed to be after all.

@Jennkryst
Prototart talked about ‘bondage scenarios’. I flipped that into ‘bondage powers’ because I was being silly and flippant. I mean come on. Superhero with bondage powers. That would be amazing.

Oh wait. That’s Wonder Woman. I forgot.

Also, the difference is spandex vs latex, obvs.

Right, gotcha, gotcha. I do see the player in question once had Rogue wearing latex gloves while doing some lab work, does that count? It feels disappointingly unbondage-y and scandalous.

@Jennkryst I was being silly with the bondage powers thing.

Out of curiosity, how does this bondage-esque catsuit differ from the catsuit she wears in the comics? Or is this just a dislike of the character?

@Prototart

So, given yhat time advances on UH and HAM, two of them used to be teens.

No, that was their starting ages on those games. There was no teen Rogue with bondage powers, you’ve just been misinformed.

I might be off on 7, but it was definitely more than one.

You can go to the website, look at the revision history for the sheet. Dropped on 22 may 2022, next approval was 25th may 2023. 1 year and 3 days, during a time where as you observed, characters weren’t being approved much – and even Batman was unplayed for 7 months. You were misinformed again. Maybe you should put less trust into the gossip you’re getting.

@Prototart

(Fun side note, Rogue’s been able to control her powers for like 15 years in the comics and I don’t think I’ve ever seen somebody do a version other than a teenager who can only touch people in elaborate bondage scenarios. Because Rogue has been played by the same person on almost all of these games.)

20 on UH, 24 on HAM, 25 on LnL, not a teen. Her sheets on all three of those games make it clear there are no exceptions to the no touching rule, bondage-based or otherwise. Maybe on some of those various sexytimes superhero games that seem to proliferate, but that player isn’t keen on those.

it had been seven years since anybody had played Raven. A character so popular you tend to see her open only slightly more often than Batman… (Somebody did pick Raven up on UH, but only after being given permission to rewrite the entire app and throw out all existing “history.”)

Just 1 year, 7 would be before UH started. After the long-term player of the character dropped during the big early 2020 walk-out, the character was reapproved 1 month later and went through at a quick count 3 other players until there was that May 22 to May 23 gap. Funnily enough Batman had a gap between June 22 and Jan 23, so you’re right, only open slightly more often than Batman.

@Purplelamia I see their scene logging system broke a year ago and isn’t fixed yet, which maybe should be something they want to look into if they’re starting up again.

Even after the big explosion they kept maybe a third of what was a pretty large player base at the time because there are always going to be some people who see the drama and nope out of paying any attention to it, so don’t care. People who weren’t directly involved in the drama often had no idea what was happening until the big explosion. Without a fair bit of effort to talk to people, find where the receipts had been published and so on, it’s just people on the internet arguing and you have no idea who’s talking crap. Their bigger problem is how dead it looks.

@renaveleigh Same people, yes. Variation on the same theme? Well it is a superheroes mush, yes. Given the name I don’t think we’re making any bones about that.

@Prototart
UH still has its website up, you could go take a look. You’ll see things like

“The Avengers, first called together by Fury in 2021 to stop an attack by Loki, have become public icons, with t-shirts, toys, and all manner of merchandise for sale, though they still pale in comparison to the Fantastic Four in that regard.”

That’s for a game set in 2031 (though I remember it being 2027 when I was there, so I guess they’ve updated that). Iron Man and Batman started in 2015. X-Men and Fantastic Four in 2017. Peter Parker bitten by a radioactive spider in the same year.

HAM: Batman from 2005, X-Men 2011, etc. The Avengers were supposed to be the brand new team, having been established just 2 years prior to game day zero in 2018. Hell even the Titans were around for five years and disbanded for another three before the start of play.

SHM: JLA, this year. X-Men, not founded. Avengers, not founded. Titans, not founded. Etc.

@renaveleigh said

It’s nothing more than a reboot of L&L.

Incorrect, it’s a fundamental change of theme. LnL followed the same basic pattern that lots of these games have been following for a while – lots of pre-existing backstory that attempted to create an approximately comics-accurate merge of DC & Marvel status quo. SHM is a superheroic ‘year two’ where there’s a very minimalist superheroic history and almost everyone is just starting out. Teams and reputations have to be established (or not), and there’s no weight given to ‘because it happened that way in the comics’ – or indeed if it was ever in the comics at all – over what players actually play out.

@hellfrog 100%. Let’s just say I’m happier staffing somewhere I can ensure that’s policy.

@hellfrog Some of these weirdos are amazingly persistent. There was one player on HAM who attempted to sneak back about half a dozen times after being banned.

@EyeofProvidence

I know of one player who’s apparently notoriously been following the same MO (spending his whole time trying to persuade players of female characters to let him get them pregnant) for many years, so you may well be right. And then there’s the legendary Jill the Guest…

One thing I’ve noticed in my time in this hobby is that there’s a common reluctance amongst staff to act until they really have to, and a common reluctance on the part of players to actually put in a complaint and let staff know there’s a problem. I get it, most people are fundamentally conflict-averse and getting in someone’s face isn’t the fun time anyone’s signed up for. Unfortunately that encourages a ‘let’s make absolutely sure before we say anything’ culture which makes it far too easy for these people to hide their misdeeds. There needs to be a greater willingness to observe a clear pattern rather than await a slam-dunk, and more staff who are willing to bite the bullet and demand a change of behavior – or simply to tell someone to gtfo.

@sao That doesn’t explain the dedicated band of sex pest players though. I suspect it’s more a combination of anonymity and fantasy.

@Jennkryst

First time?

Honestly, sort of I’ve certainly seen the phenomenon plenty, and it’s hardly unique to this hobby. I have yet to figure out if it’s particularly prevalent here or just the small size of the hobby making it more visible.

@Meg Well that’s me told, off to a nunnery I guess.

You’re under a misapprehension. I’m here to satisfy my own curiosity about what makes a certain section of this hobby tick. I’m not trying to defend anyone who could come here and defend themselves if they thought it was worth the effort, I said that right at the start. I literally keep calling Vorpal Furry Satan made MU*nifest after all. Because it makes me laugh.

@Meg Facebook? Really? xD

@Prototart

Enthralling

I literally warned sockmonkey just above it wouldn’t be!

In a similar spirit, let’s summarize that whole Miss Sinister thing then:

“I’d like to app this character.”
“Interesting! Powerful character, would need a nice villain plot arc really. Would take a lot of work and nerfing to make this an RP character.”
“It’s just for an RP character but I shouldn’t have to nerf them because of characters x, y and z who got allowed before.”
“Right, in that case no. An app like this is a lot of work for staff, you’re far from being a regular player who has a history of generating RP for other people to justify that work.”

You made totally valid points about inconsistency in previous apps, it was a major problem HAM had. Prior mistakes are not a good source of precedent for future decisions though.

Apart from that though? Chaucer was perhaps a little brusque. It’s really not a compelling grounds for complaint against a staffer, though. Nor is “but prior history, please police things that happened in the past on some other game.” I honestly think if you re-read that exchange with an eye to impartiality you’ll agree in retrospect it just wasn’t a big deal.

Didn’t you and Chaucer used to be friends? This is a tiny hobby, and it seems a shame when two generally perfectly reasonable people end up fighting over miscommunications, or someone having a bad day and saying something ill-advised (we ALL do it sometimes), or whatever. I have no idea what your past issues have been, but we’re not talking about a Ditko or whoever here, after all – and it behoves us all to remember we never have the full picture. Wouldn’t it be better if you two buried the hatchet?

@SockMonkey Sorry, but this is going to be a really dull spectator sport. xD