Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Hey, sweet! I promise not to suck at this. Since this is civil war, I'll take Black Cat's "Questionable Ethics" milestone, and I'd like to build my own "Hero for Hire" one, if that's cool.

Also, is there a way for us to establish contact? Like, and IRC room, or facebook group or something? Or should we keep that the OOC thread? I don't have platinum, so I can't do PMs, unfortunately.

Danger-Pumpkin fucked around with this message at 02:02 on May 3, 2013

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Lager
Mar 9, 2004

Give me the secret to the anti-puppet equation!

Sweet, time to binge on the run of Incredible Herc to get the voice down as well as I can. Looking forward to this game!

Since I've never played this game, is there anything you want me to do to get ready, or do you want to give me a crash course on the basics or something?

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


There's a lot of stuff you can do with this system but we can establish the very basics pretty easily. I'll touch on taking an action, putting together a dice pool, and resolving it. Everything else can come later.

The first thing you want to do is decide what you are trying to do. Generally you will be trying to inflict stress, or create assets or complications. Stress is like damage, and there are three kinds of it: physical (punching type stuff), mental (which can be confusion, brainwashing or telepathic attacks) or emotional (which can be anger or sadness or shame or whatever). You can inflict any of the three kinds you want, just explain how you do it. Assets and complications are like a dice that other players can borrow. So decide what your goal is and then tell me what your character does, like "Iron Man is firing his lasers!"

Once you decide that you should build a dice pool. You can use one distinction, one specialty (like combat expert) and one power from each set. You also have things called SFX, which are various special skills. You can use one from each set there, too. Then you roll all your dice and select two dice for your attack number (like a to-hit roll) and one for your effect die (how hard you hit). The thing with effect die is that it is only the size of the die you use that matters, not what you roll on it. So a D12 that rolls a 2 is bad for your attack roll, but is much better than a d6 rolling 6 on an effect die.

(e: continuing!)
After you've put together your roll, the watcher or the other character will make an opposing roll. Highest roll wins, ties going to the attacker. Your effect die determines how much damage you do or how effective your aid is. However, if you are the defender and your effect die is higher than the attacker's, but you lose the roll, while you still take damage, you step their damage down (so it's like a partial defense).

The other major mechanics that go on are plot points and the doom pool. I group them together because they are kind of the same thing. You earn plot points by rolling 1s (at which point the watcher "buys" them from you with a plot point and gets to add a D6 to his doom pool), using your distinctions as a D4 instead of a D8 (which is in situations where the distinction is a disadvantage, like Iron Man's "billionaire playboy" distinction might be a disadvantage when trying to persuade someone who is very serious), or activating your limits. You can use plot points in many ways, so I'm just going to c/p my list from the last thread.

Defiance Industries posted:

The Defiance Industries Guide to Using Plot Points!

Plot points can do a lot of things. They're pretty versatile and exist mostly to help you get awesome. Your choices can be grouped roughly into four categories.

Activating SFX is pretty obvious. Most characters have at least one SFX you spend a PP to use. In the case of a Limit saying you need to "activate an opportunity" to regain a power, that also requires a PP, and uses up that opportunity.


Before the Roll you can use PP on the following things:

Add a D6 push die. Use this when you can't think of something better. Generally, though, you want to...

Add a stunt die. A stunt dice is like a push dice except better because it is D8, not D6 (D10 if the Watcher rolled a 1 that you are using). There is a catch, though: a push dice requires nothing extra, while a stunt dice requires you to tie it in to a power or specialty your character has. You are also, and the rulebook does specify this, required to describe the cool thing your character did, whether it's Iron Fist snap-kicking a keg into someone's dick or using Tony's tech mastery to make every screen in the room play a sex tape he made of him and the bad guy's daughter.

Use more than one die from a set. When I had Iron Man shoot a giant fuckoff laser at the Shark Man and the Armadillo Man, I used two SFX from my powered armor set at the same time so I had to spend a PP to do that. You could also do it if you wanted to use two distinctions or expertises or whatever.

Add your stress die to your roll. This is a more unusual one. You can add your own stress die to your dice pool "when it makes sense." So we want to do things more in line with "add my emotional stress to my roll to see if I am strong enough to stop a train!" rather than "why yes my d12 mental stress makes me even better at repairing the Quinjet engines that are exploding in mid-flight, why do you ask?" Keep in mind two things: first, that the Watcher can use your stress dice in his pool, as well, and that it steps said stress up +1 after that action ends (so, if you have D6 stress and use it, it's still D6 when I add it to my pool, too, but after that you go to D8).


After the Roll

Add an extra die to your total. You know about this one.

Add an extra effect die. Functions basically like AoE except you pay one PP for each effect die. You can't use two effect die on the same target, though, so you can either hit multiple enemies at once (or multiple members of a mob of enemies, to knock out several dice at once), like you kicked two dudes into each other. OR, if you can come up with a good description, you could use the second effect die to create an asset or complication, like if Spider-Man were to swing and hit a bigass robot, and it ends up crashing into some pipes and steam starts going everywhere as a result, confusing the robot's thermal scanners. It doesn't specifically say you can do this, but it doesn't say you can't. Have a good description and make it sound cool, that's the important thing!

Change the stress to a different type. You can make your attack any type of stress (physical, emotional, mental) you want, if you can come up with a reason. Beast might try inflicting emotional stress by intentionally pulling punches he could connect with to demoralize an enemy, or he could inflict mental stress by confusing and disorienting an enemy with well-placed strobe lights. However, for a PP you can redirect stress to a different pool. You might decide that a physical attack didn't hurt you, it just MADE YOU SO GODDAMN MAD, for example. A mental attack might not harm you mentally, it might make you lash out and injure yourself.

Use an effect die on a reaction as an asset/complication. On a successful roll, you can use a PP to turn your effect die into a persistent effect; again, I assume you will describe it somehow and make it sound cool. If some random dude tries to take out She-Hulk with a flying double-leg dropkick, She-Hulk might decide that the kick not only didn't hurt, but the guy broke both his legs doing it, and spend a PP to turn the D10 effect die into "D10 Broke His Legs Like a Dumbass."


In transition scenes

Use a PP to create an asset associated with an expertise. This can be useful in a lot of ways. It can dictate the direction a plot takes by showing which types of leads the PCs get (a team like ours, which is loaded with stuff like Tech and Science, will gather different info than a team of Covert/Crime people, for instance). You can also use it to create a resource for the next scene that represents preparation beforehand. A resource created with Expert skill is a D6, while a resource created with a Master skill is D8. So if Dr. Strange wanted to cook us up some protection beforehand for our journey into the literal Sphincter of Hell, he could spend a PP to put a D8 Mystic resource on us that could represent a persistent spell to repel rear end-bats. If we were headed into the Great Purple Galaxy, though, he could only give us a D6 Cosmic resource.

Borrow an expertise from another player. Beast and Dr. Strange, who do a lot of our healing people up, could do this to collaborate on a medical project. The PP that gets spent in this way doesn't go back to the Watcher, though, but rather to the player who you request help from. It also doesn't have to be the same skill, in some cases. If the team got hit with a nano-virus in an action scene, Beast might use his science mastery to isolate it, and then he could give Iron Man a PP to use his Tech Mastery to help him design and deploy a countermeasure.

The Doom Pool is kind of the same way; I can use the dice in it as Watcher to make my rolls better or to activate things. It also represents a general opposition for rolls that aren't against a specific person. A good example is the attempts to pull Thor's hammer up last scene, where they had to beat my Doom Pool roll because they weren't actively fighting Dr. Doom while they were doing it.

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 23:19 on May 3, 2013

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine
I'm just going to say that Doctor Strange is obviously an Illuminatus, so if I could have the Illuminati event milestones here in the thread that'd be pretty cool.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Both of them?

Mr. Maltose
Feb 16, 2011

The Guffless Girlverine
Sure, I will pick and then try to convince someone in the thread to totally be an Illuminati Buddy.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


I was gonna try to start our IC thread on Saturday, but then I remembered how much stuff I have planned on Saturday, so look for it Friday night. Let me know any milestone changes you want to make before then, or you'll have them until we start Act 2.

e: if you want to change milestones but are still undecided and want more time to think, let me know! We can sneak a tweak or two in after we start, I just wanna get the basic ideas in place.

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 06:49 on May 3, 2013

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
Maybe it's just because i've had to be awake pretty much continuously from the time I first posted in this thread to now, but we are zooming. I'm okay with that! I think i'll leave Dust's milestones as the default for this Act by the way, if I can change them later.

Did we ever decide on whether there's going to be an IRC channel? I just took the liberty of setting one up at #mhrcivilwar if people want to congregate there.

Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 06:18 on May 3, 2013

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Heh, I guess we are. I'm just glad to see such a positive response for our game. It's a lot more enthusiastic response than I expected. I wanna get going because I have all this stuff in my brain and there's so many people who apparently also have Internet superheroes in their brain, and to me, that's really cool.

I'm not saying I'm Jonathan Hickman but when I decided that I'd take eight players instead of my upper limit of 6, I did have a vision of a disembodied JJJ head shouting "EIGHT PLAYERS? ALL RIGHT, DEFIANCE INDUSTRIES, TIME TO HICKMAN UP!"

I'm not opposed to an IRC channel but I don't know if I'll be in it much of the time. FB group might be better, though it seems to serve all the same purpose of this OOC thread.

E: have you considered what you are doing hanging out with the New Avengers? I'm keeping Beast around as an NPC if that helps you have a hook.

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 06:34 on May 3, 2013

Druggeddwarf
Nov 9, 2011

My first attack must ALWAYS be a charge!
NPC beast is cool, but do I get to donate my hard earned XP to players?

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Druggeddwarf posted:

NPC beast is cool, but do I get to donate my hard earned XP to players?

Nope! Guess we'll just have to keep it in escrow until you return.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
This thread alone is probably fine, but being able to chat in real time is handy sometimes. I'll leave it up if anyone wants to use it.

I was actually wondering about the motivations for being there thing- how does this Act start out? Is it a New Avengers pow-wow? Wanting to link up with Professor McCoy Beast in this time of confusion would be a solid hook if it's specifically that team.

potatocubed
Jul 26, 2012

*rathian noises*

Defiance Industries posted:

Well, I kind of thought YOU might. Half the fun of muddled allegiance is the big reveal. If you don't care for the reveal we don't have to play on the DL.

Good point. I'll send you a PM.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Kellsterik posted:

This thread alone is probably fine, but being able to chat in real time is handy sometimes. I'll leave it up if anyone wants to use it.

I was actually wondering about the motivations for being there thing- how does this Act start out? Is it a New Avengers pow-wow? Wanting to link up with Professor McCoy Beast in this time of confusion would be a solid hook if it's specifically that team.

Well, it's almost immediately after the events in Broxton and Scranton. The public doesn't know that the New Avengers have just formed, but people who are **in the know** can recognize the signs, between the prisoners still loose in the Breakout and the fight at Broxton. The team has returned from their fight with Doom and are laying low while they recover from that fight with Doom, having come home to the news of Scranton. It's been almost a week and nobody has seen any of the people involved.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
I'm excited! Hickman-style plotting sounds good to me.

If we're going with Beast instead of Tony, I'll say he called in an old favour. He doesn't like Mystique, he thinks she's dangerous and volatile and definitely not superhero-material, but he has something in mind - a task or an idea of a coming challenge - that he thinks he'll need her for. He's playing her close, keeping her as a New Avenger so he can watch her instead of something blowing up, and he's tacitly suggesting that others try to keep her in line.

If you want to be plotting Hickman-style, here's my suggestions for that hook.

-What did Beast do for Mystique that she owes him for?
-Why would she pay him back instead of blowing him off?
-What does Beast know that causes him to call in the favour? Why Mystique over someone else?
-What are his plans if she was to go rogue? (not that I will, but it's a valid question)

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Those ARE very good questions. It's much easier with Hercules, where I can just assume he walks into Stark Tower's lobby and yells "HELLO I AM READY TO AVENGE WITH YOU GUYS. PLEASE AND THANK YOU."

As far as Mystique's hooks, you'd need something that goes pretty deep and she can't just run from. The sheltering that Tony is doing at Beast's behest is good but not enough, because if she wanted to disappear she still could. To have a proper Sword of Damocles for her, it needs to not just be a threat to her safety like tossing her out of Stark Tower would be, but something that threatens her way of life. As for the favor, maybe after M-Day her shapeshifting became increasingly unstable and Beast got Mystique stable again, and now you are compelled to work for him (a maneuver known among hero scientist circles as the Reverse Mister Sinister). Perhaps the two could be tied together, and it's not a permanent fix.

The third one is probably going to be Beast preparing for the future. Mystique is a quality asset to have on your side, and if you're in the Secret Club like he and Tony and Strange, you need to have people willing to do things that you can't just ask Nightcrawler for.

And his last part? If the overhanging threat doesn't work he will give Rogue's cell phone number and a list of all her favorite things to Tony, who has most of the traits Mystique hates about Gambit, but he's also a flatscan, so that's even worse.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
Okay, now that i've brushed up on my recent New X-Men history (and assuming the continuity is about the same), I think i've got motives for Dust figured out.

So after House of M/Decimation, many of the newly depowered X-students were sent home only to be killed by William Stryker on the way (because finally there are few enough mutants to make a full frontal assault! yay!), leading to Dust and the other hastily assembled mutants going out for a revenge mission, during which her friend Icarus was revealed as a traitor before being killed. Between the Decimation and the reinvigorated anti-mutant hate crimes and Icarus dying, she decided she needed to get the hell away from the X-men and the Institute for a while and into a different environment. She'd been considering returning to Afghanistan but couldn't bring herself to leave the situation in the US behind, felt caught between an increasing number of rocks and extremely hard places, and when she heard about Broxton she decided to track down Beast because he's a trusted mutant adult who could help her figure stuff out or at least provide a relatively safe space for a while.

Mystique being there will be interesting because Dust has some really mixed feelings about mutant persecution and uncaring authorities right now, and she'll be looking for a role model. She definitively turned down Xorn before when he tried to make her choose mutant supremacy over her faith, but in the current circumstances she might at least be persuaded to go anti-registration.

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Hey, Defiance, I'm wondering if you could help me design a Heroes for Hire milestone. I was pretty sure there was one I could just lift off somebody's data file, but I was apparently wrong. I'm not super sure how to design this, since I'm not super sure how the Heroes for Hire are coming into play here, especially since they didn't really get involved until later in the storyline. Any ideas?

Edit: Actually, I just noticed the "My Ally, My Enemy" milestone, and I think I'll take that. It works well with Cat's vindictive nature, relationship to Spider-Man, and the ambiguity about which side either of them was on (though Cat was pretty clearly on her on side.)

My Ally, My Enemy (replacing Burglar):
1 XP when you visit a place you and Spider-Man frequented, encounter an enemy you fought together, or meet up with a mutual friend.
3 XP when you use your powers against Spider-Man.
10 XP when one of you switches sides, or one of you removes the other from the conflict.

Danger-Pumpkin fucked around with this message at 20:30 on May 3, 2013

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


I'm trying to figure out how the Black Cat would get tied up in our pre-registration shenanigans. Since you wanted to tie into her relationship to Spider-Man, maybe she's trying to confront the New Avengers about dragging Spider-Man into the events at Broxton and how that's causing serious blowback for him?

e: Milestones are updated for everyone except Iron Fist (need to finalize his 3xp one).

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 20:33 on May 3, 2013

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3547580

IC thread is go! I wish it was better but I have to leave in like ten minutes. I'll try to touch it up but I'll be posting on my phone so any weird misspellings or malapropisms are because of that and definitely not my fault ever.

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Hey, I was wondering if there was a preference for how we do our rolls. I already made my first one using real dice, since that's what I'm more comfortable with, but if you've got a preferred online roller or if you like to handle the rolls yourself, that's fine with me, and I can totally re-roll.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Generally we've been using an online roller but if you prefer real dice that's cool. Just let me know about 1s.

E: are you trying to enter the sealed R&D that's part of the Avengers base, or a more pedestrian workshop? I'm just saying Stark Tower is way more than 11 floors.

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 03:11 on May 4, 2013

Lager
Mar 9, 2004

Give me the secret to the anti-puppet equation!

I went ahead and threw out my first post on the thread. Please let me know if I messed anything up!

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Nope, I was hoping you'd go for making a leaping roll on your own, just so you could try out the basics, and that's what you did.

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.

Defiance Industries posted:

Generally we've been using an online roller but if you prefer real dice that's cool. Just let me know about 1s.

E: are you trying to enter the sealed R&D that's part of the Avengers base, or a more pedestrian workshop? I'm just saying Stark Tower is way more than 11 floors.

A more pedestrian laboratory area... with an almost direct connection to the real R&D going on on the upper levels! (I was honestly planning on having Cat break into the secret super-science crawlspaces that places like this always have, but only once she was in the laboratory areas. Then it's a hop, skip, and a wall-crawl up through the building to the real prizes inside.)

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Danger-Pumpkin posted:

A more pedestrian laboratory area... with an almost direct connection to the real R&D going on on the upper levels! (I was honestly planning on having Cat break into the secret super-science crawlspaces that places like this always have, but only once she was in the laboratory areas. Then it's a hop, skip, and a wall-crawl up through the building to the real prizes inside.)

Okay then. Once you hit... THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, you'll have your rolls opposed by something besides the Doom Pool though.

e: You know what? I think I'm going to bring Hector back.

Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 08:16 on May 4, 2013

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Thinking about it some more, I probably gave Mystique's intro the short shrift because I was under the gun for time (ironic, since I probably thought about it the most). So I'm gonna do what I can to give extra guidelines for the intro.

Hank's tickets are legit and don't raise any flags. He used one of Raven's "clean" identities to purchase the ticket. The fact he knows about this identity at all is sort of surprising. You can clear security easy. Little too easily. Gives you time to size up the passengers, try and figure out who is a threat.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
So like...surely Ronan the Accuser would be pro-registration, right? He's a LEO. He's like the Kree attorney general.

ibntumart
Mar 18, 2007

Good, bad. I'm the one with the power of Shu, Heru, Amon, Zehuti, Aton, and Mehen.
College Slice

Kellsterik posted:

So like...surely Ronan the Accuser would be pro-registration, right? He's a LEO. He's like the Kree attorney general.

Hey man, Ronan's in a weird place right now. He's got to figure stuff out, so who knows which way he'll go?

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Say, could anyone help me with Orokos format? I can't for the life of me get it to work. It just keeps saying "invalid dice expression" no matter what permutation of "2#1d8, 1d10, 1d6," I put in. Really not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Never mind, I'm an idiot and I assumed that if I used plus signs Orokos would just total the rolls together. I was wrong.

Danger-Pumpkin fucked around with this message at 12:31 on May 4, 2013

ibntumart
Mar 18, 2007

Good, bad. I'm the one with the power of Shu, Heru, Amon, Zehuti, Aton, and Mehen.
College Slice
You have to use lower case d and a + or - sign. So for your example, you'd write 2d8+1d10+1d6. (Though maybe do 1d8+1d8+1d10+1d6 because I don't remember if a 2dx will list the two numbers separately in the results.)

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Alright. I'll try it again without the 2# thing and see if doesn't screw it all up this time.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
edit: nevermind I literally can't read

Arivia fucked around with this message at 13:58 on May 4, 2013

potatocubed
Jul 26, 2012

*rathian noises*
Sorry about the delayed response. Was at a wedding for pretty much all of yesterday and have only just got back online. Anyway, let's get this rolling.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011
I think that works! I'm not sure.

Is it okay to add details like this? I'm not sure how cooperative/GM-directed it's supposed to be.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


potatocubed posted:

Sorry about the delayed response. Was at a wedding for pretty much all of yesterday and have only just got back online. Anyway, let's get this rolling.

To answer your question, Danny being Iron Fist is apparently a known quantity. If you aren't sure, character sheets usually denote an identity as public or secret.


Arivia posted:

I think that works! I'm not sure.

Is it okay to add details like this? I'm not sure how cooperative/GM-directed it's supposed to be.

Totally okay. In general, I try to nail down anything I want to be a specific way early and leave the rest to be determined.

Danger-Pumpkin
Apr 27, 2008

That's the way the bee bumbles.
Realizing that my (super vague) heist plan has about a dozen individual steps, about how far ahead should I move before before I pause for you to arbitrate? I mean technically there might be dudes in the security room for me to deal with, and technically, I'd still have to make the trip through the labs unnoticed, and then technically I'd need to climb through the building's infrastructure to get at my as yet undisclosed MacGuffin. I just don't know which of these things you actually want me to roll for, in the interest of keeping things moving at a steady-ish pace.

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
Do you want more from me for the scene outside? I didn't know how much I could narrate at once, I was planning to use the Sympathetic Guards asset to be escorted inside (probably pissing off some of the protesters she was yelling at.)

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


Kellsterik posted:

Do you want more from me for the scene outside? I didn't know how much I could narrate at once, I was planning to use the Sympathetic Guards asset to be escorted inside (probably pissing off some of the protesters she was yelling at.)

I'm sorry, I completely forgot to tell you that you have to pick who goes next. If you go next the woman gets 2 turns, otherwise you continue switching off. My mistake. I meant to mention that here but completely spaced it. Sorry!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Kellsterik
Mar 30, 2012
Now I know! I'll let the woman/mob go next then.

  • Locked thread