Big Bang Burger Bar

Greetings, True Believers!

Er, yes. Anyway, I'm considering possibly running a Marvel based RP sometime in the new year. Andy has volunteered to lend me a d20 based marvel system, which I shall be perusing as a possible system, otherwise I shall be using the dice-less, stone-token based Marvel Universe system.

I'm also thinking that It'll probably not be a pre-published adventure, firstly because of the difficulty in finding a suitable one, and secondly, because Its more fun to make one up myself. ;)

All of which is completely irrelevant. What I'm really here to ask is exactly what kind of adventure would you guys prefer? It's going to be pick-up-and-play style, in as much as I'll sort out character print-outs, but would you guys prefer to use existing marvel (or, with some effort/translation/finding possibly also DC characters), or home-brewed, original PC's that I would cook up before the session, possibly with some input from the players who are interested?

If we are talking the latter, I'll probably brew up and arbitrary number of them to choose between, with very broad, general characterisations so that when 'claimed' (in advance) you'll be able to put your own spin on them.
conversely, if we stick to existing Supers, there could be up to 40 years of existing character matirial for you to draw on.

Additionally, general tone;
Whichever type of characters are available, the general tone of both them and the adventure needs deciding. If you have any preference between golden-age style, fighting-for-justice and general happy sunshine style characters (ala the Fantastic Four, Captain America, etc), 90's style Anti-heroes (Or out-and-out near villainous) complex characters and plots (Wolverine, Watchmen, Punisher perhaps?) or somewhere between the two (Silver age? X-Men, Spiderman, etc) then you should let me know.

It's all good, all has it's own unique challenges and possibilities, and I'd have no problem putting together a mission (and characters) for either general tone. But if you could make your general feelings on what would interest you known beforehand, it'll make my first DMing attempt go that little bit smoother. :)

'Nuff Said!

IF I can make time to play, personally I'd prefer a golden age heroic type game - being the goody type fighting off evil (you know - defending the planet against evil invaders, fighting off nazis, defeating wicked scientists etc.. type of thing).Doc Savage style character would be perfect for me (although possibly with a few brain cells!)

However, happy to go along with anything - complex (a la League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), mixed up (a la Spiderman, Hulk etc..) or just plain evil (do not know enough about comics to be able to say who would be a role model).

Whatever everyone fancies really.

How about a good old 2ND world war era setting or early 60s setting with good old four colour comic capers (the villains do something bad and the heroes try to foil them in lots of silly ways)

I will dig out the Mutants and Masterminds book for you Simon.

I would quite like to create our own characters (a super hero team audition where everyone comes up with 2 or 3 hero ideas and build a super team from their).

You can always cherry pick characters and ideas from established comic universes and use them in your game.

I know that the M&M book sets the game around Freedom City and the Freedom League are the major super team.

I could certainly see a world-war 2 era, golden age thing working.

I wouldn't worry about finding the time to play, Jim, given that it's going to happen "sometime in the new year" and I'm quite happy to schedule it accordingly. :) I don't know much about Doc Savage, but i'm sure Wikipedia does! ^_^

Depending on what the other two think, it looks like 1940's it is. The 'several characters then choose between' option certainly works for me, though depending on the system, that may or may not be more difficult. If all else fails, I can always generate characters to player specifications.

If we're doing something world-war era related, I'd go as far as to say that existing marvel characters are probably out, (otherwise we'd basically be confined to captain america, bucky, and the original human torch? Heh.)

Never heard of Freedom City or Freedom League. Nothing to do with those Freedom Force games, is it? >_>

Having had a chance to look over the copy of Mutants and Masterminds that andy lent me, I can safely say that I'm ruling it out in favour of the Marvel Universe RPG system.
whilst a good D20 based attempt at crafting a superhero system, Mutants and Masterminds is a lot more fussy than the Marvel Universe rp.

quite literally, Marvel Universe rpg is just about more rules heavy, than Toon. It has a simple, flexible feel that will in my opinion make running and playing the game not only easier, but feel more genuinely comic-book. So, yes. we have a system.

As for the character Ideas I suggested you start considering, it's safe to say that there should be absolutely no problem at all in realising them in the MURPG system. It's a very flexible system, and if nothing exists to model the powers and abilities/qualities you have in mind, they are very easily added into the system.

It's quite simple to make a reasonably powerful, heroic character straight off the bat, with the standard 40-stone starting reserve, too. Especially seeing as, whilst running up a couple of test-characters, I easily upped that limit spent to 70+ using Challenges. (Challenges are a bit like complications in Serenity, but a little less mechanical  and a bit more as a method of bribing the GM with plot hook potential in return for extra points to spend!)

At some point in the near future, after I've got my hands on a physical copy of the Core Sourcebook,  we'll have a very general look at translating the ideas into character sheets, probably later on at one of the thursday scifi sessions. In the meantime, I'm going to think about missions and so on, as we've settled on the Golden Age, World War 2 setting. :)

[edit] oh, and by the way Andy, did you mention having access to either of the murpg supplements?

I've kind of got my long-winded head on, today. Sorry. The following Post has various non-essential information that you can safely skip if you do not really have the time. If you have nothing better to do, however, read on. :)
Right, so, a few basic notes;

I've decided that at some point before the (first?) Proper session, the team will have had to appoint an official Leader.
I'm going to leave it entirely up to you four, however, as to who is elected as such. You have two options, really. Either, when we work out which characters you each are going for, you look at their abilities and so on, and out-of-character decide which character would function most effectively as the nominal commander of the 'squad'.

Or, the other route is to, after having chosen and finalised characters, you are given the chance to thrash that out purely in-character. This could result in a less technically able character being effectively voted Leader, but would be a good opportunity to play around with the types of people your characters are.

As far as the group goes, you don't necessarily have to follow your Glorious Leader's orders, or anything, but it will be mandatory to at least name a 'token leader'. If the character who is voted in charge is lacking slightly in power compared to how his player imagines him, I'd be willing to accept the position as an additional Challenge, provided the character would take such duties seriously, for anywhere from 1 to 5 extra stones to use at character creation (or to be held back for use after the first session, to tweak the character, perhaps).


Second note - I've been musing over the idea of sidekicks, and have this idea to offer as an option, should anyone be interested;

If someone is interested in playing an actual sidekick type character (for the comic potential, or whatever reason), and they can talk another player to have their character take the 'sidekick' on, I'll offer an extra 10 points to the character who agrees to take on the sidekick (NOT the sidekick himself) as a bribe, in exchange for the character actually taking his responsibilities to said sidekick, at least a little seriously.

Really, I blame the vintage Batman series, and my growing realisation that in it, Robin actually comes across as often the more intelligent of the two.

Needless to say, I am more than happy for a little sillyness to creep in to your characters. tongue in cheek stuff is perfectly fine. As long as it's within reason, and doesn't break the fourth wall, I'm pretty open to any character idea.

Lastly, speaking of character ideas, a few caveats;

Robots and/or Battle Armour - I will allow a player to use Battle-Armour (as Iron Man, Dr Doom etc) despite the early setting, as long as either that player, or another in the group, is of suitably Genius-level intallect to have made it themselves. Likewise with Sentient Robot character ideas, if another player is happy to play a super genius/inventor, you can play their creation. (In MURPG, the rules for creating battle-armour and for Robots are almost totally identical, actually).

For Robots, I'd also consider allowing Extra-Terrestrial Robots and Robots-from-an-alternate-future, as long as they come with a good enough backstory. I reserve the right to modify any alternate-future's for Plot related effect, of course. :)

Mythical or pseudo mythical entities are also fine. One day, I will get around to reading the old marvel comics 'Thor' line, after all! Gods are not off-limit at all, and even Thor himself is quite simple to realise in the MURPG system. (Though, clearly, he has more stones than you guys! :P )

Mutants are also fine, but remember they will be rare enough as to be essentially unknown at this stage in time. (Following the implied Marvel timeline, though they have existed for hundreds of years, they were only very, very rare up until recent decades, gradually becoming more common until around the 1960s when the world in general will become aware of their existence.

You can use any origin you like, and practically any type of character. Worth baring in mind, however, is that there are implied physical limits for the activities of the normal human being. Whereas mental stats, (Intelligence, anyway) does have much more leeway, if you wish to play an un-enhanced human, your ability scores will be mostly capping off at about 4 (with 10 being the absolute maximum score at character generation, and expensive at that!). You could have scores higher, and still consider yourself a normal human, but the chances are, such a character if written in the 1940's would have probably since had a different origin ret-conned by now, anyway.

(Ie, Namor the sub-mariner has abilities vastly outstripping either his human or atlantean heritage, and is generally held up semi-officially as marvel's first mutant, as he was active, as far as I recall, during the golden age.)

Ideally, by the time I'm ready to start setting dates, I'd like you to have at least two or three roughly fleshed out character ideas to discuss with myself and your other players, when we set the day for character-creation and so on, (as per Andy's suggestion, possibly role-playing through the drafting and formation of the Super Team, in an informal way.) If you've only really got one idea for a character, don't worry, it will just mean you have more time to flesh him/her out ahead of time. :)