New RP Ideas Interest Thread

[Arhra]

Hello people,

I've been feeling like I have a little too much time on my hands lately and it has gotten me devising some ideas for some new games. I thought I'd put together three to see what people would like to do.

Please, tell me which one/s you'd be interested in. If you'd like some more info on one, I'd be happy to give it.

1) Superheroes!
Feeling the need for some heroism of a super nature, plus a wonderful idea for a dystopia that I came up with last time I tried to design an idealistic RP, this is my first idea. Living as superheroes in a world where the emergence of such extraordinary powers has been steadily destroying society for the last fifty years, it'll be up to you to cling to your high ideals and kick evil in the face.

I've decided to make it a little in the style of Nextwave. If you haven't heard of Nextwave, well, let me quote Warren Ellis: "It’s people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode."

2) Fun With Fantasy Lost Technology!
Recycling some setting information from my older Beggar's Ride, this is a fantasy world where magic is omnipresent. In a lost age many marvels were created, including all non-human races and many other practical things such as giant robots and doomsday devices. Relics from back then are virtually priceless.

Enter the convenient source of freakish powers and plot complications. The story will revolve around a first age flying castle that has been reactivated. It was designed for research and recruitment for the last war that ended the first age and several of its systems don't seem to realise the war is over... Don't you hate it when your still living brain gets inserted into an invulnerable robot body?

3) Soldiers of Light Reprisal
I'm not sure how many people remember Soldiers of Light. With a setting that approximates feudal Japan, it revolved around Kurama Genkai, the wielder of a legendary sword, and his various companions (inexplicably dubbed as Team Good, or Team CRYBABY ZELL in the discussion thread) and their quest to prevent the resurrection of the demon emperor Talkatz. The biggest hurdle in their path was assorted demons and psychos for hire working for Talkatz (Team Evil or Team Rocket), many of whom seemed to have their own Talkatz offing plot in the works...

I really don't think I could run Kurama, but I have planned a substitute that should give the rest of the good side more of a chance to shine. As a compulsive meddler, I'll be tweaking other things to hopefully make things even more entertaining for everyone. People would have the option of revisiting their old characters or creating new ones, seeing the characters are what made the game so memorable in the first place.

I've recently seen Raiden around though, so I'd have to check if this was alright with him before I could run it.

[Urak]

4) The forces of the world of Oroth are numerous and powerful. Oroth is a magnificently large world capable of sustaining life. Despite being more than a dozen times larger than Earth, Oroth can sustain, nourish and provide generously for an enormous population.

Right now Oroth is suffering from technological stagnation. Some nations are powerful enough in science that they have begun to almost scratch the surface of the scientific advancement of their ancestors. Long ago, there were legends of Oroth travling throughout the universe, having children among the stars.

However, a great catastrophe had fallen on the world, and eventually there was almost nothing left. Through powerful magic the world has been slowly restoring itself for hundreds of years. When the time came for the world to renew itself into an age of Enlightenment, some countries fell into savagery due to dark and evil traditions.

Some nations are powerful enough that they have ancient machines known as "Machine guns" capable of wiping out many mighty warriors at once with an average soldier! Despite the radical differences between the nations, it is possible to some day reconcile the ignorance of the people's science with the wisdom of their magic.

[Intern Nin]

I'm all for the Superheroes and that Fantasy with lost technology.

[PyrosNine]

Y'know, I never ended Gaiden, so we could just continue that. It was just put on Hiatus until NPF Avvy was over.

Presumably of course, when I restart it, I'll need new players if the original won't return and whatnot.

But yeah, whatever.

[Wizardcat]

Superheroes! Do it. Right now.

[Arhra]

Uh, Urak, I don't think you quite understand. I'm planning to GM a new game and just want to see which idea people would be most interested in.

Pyros, sorry, I forgot your one had just been hiatused. I'll be happy to take the SoL option off if you'd prefer. I was planning to rehash the original plot of SoL, but giving it the Arhra Touch (tm). That is, needlessly complicating everything. I thought the most interesting way to substitute Kurama was use someone not quite fit for the job. Probably some sort of bratty kid... they practically write subplots!

Looks like superheroes is drawing ahead. You know, I've been debating about how much diversity to allow in origins - you know, things from "Oh no, freak lab accident!" to "Imma wizard!" - so I'm curious to see what people think there.

[lazy man]

Well, after seeing what little bit of input has come in so far, I'd like to say a new SoL should be rather... well, it'll be something.

But, failing that, I like the sounds of the Techno Fantasy scenario. Nothing better than Schizo Tech to mess with that fantasy vibe.

[Urak]

I"ve got an idea, how about something like Marvel's "Power cosmic" for characters?

[PyrosNine]

How about Superhero Wizards?

Middle Age world, people finding futuristic tech, and now they're Ye Olde Superheroes, because that whole "Magic being significantly advanced science" thingy.

Well, if you do make another SoL, then my Gaiden will have to call it quits, and then Raiden's premonition that SoL will never successfully finish will come true!

And I'm tempted to let it happen...Anyone from SoL Gaiden want it kick back up?

[Krylo]

Firstly, don't listen to anything Pyros says. Ever. You should know that by now, but just in case you don't...

Secondly--I'm going to vote for number 2. I'd be fine with 3, as well, but I've yet to see a Superhero RP that was done anywhere near good and/or got past two chapters so I can not, in good conscience vote for one.

Also, vote for four but as GM'd by Arhra.

[Intern Nin]

but I've yet to see a Superhero RP that was done anywhere near good and/or got past two chapters
All the more reason to give it a try.

[Krylo]

Well, if you LIKE failing, I guess.

[Arhra]

Its time for... VOTE TALLY!

Option #1 - 2 votes
Option #2 - 3 votes
Option #3 - 2 votes

How very mysterious.

Yeah, I have to admit one of said past failed superhero RPs that crashed and burned was run by me. I believe the instabilities of the last one can be resolved by forcing player characters to collide at high speeds, creating the fabled 'super team'. I just wasn't forceful enough about putting people in groups last time.

And do a better starting plot then "There's a jailbreak and you should, like, stop it or something." Something clear and simple, like Godzilla.

[Krylo]

I think the problem with Super Hero RPs is that the Super Hero dynamic doesn't work well with group play.

You have three types of Super Hero 'groups' basically.

Solo, with maybe a sidekick--Superman. Batman. Nightwing. Green Lantern. So on and so forth.

Pre-Formed Teams--Things like the X-Men

Artificially created teams--Justice League

Now, here's the problem we run into, your solo play is RIGHT out because you've got to have multiple people.

This leaves you with recreating the X-Men or recreating the Justice League. Recreating the X-Men MIGHT work. The team aspect of it has, indeed, worked multiple times with the various "You're in a government agency, and you're special" RPs we've had in the past.

The JL recreation, however? Not so much. To understand why we need only look at the cartoons and comics of the same name. Even when you take all these big names and shove them into a group, they rarely actually work together. At least not well. There's too many large egos. Too many people that are used to working alone. In a normal RP this can be mitigated pretty easily... but:

The storyline. This is the second big hurdle for your Super Hero RPs. There's very little room for coherent escalation in a plot, at least if you plan on keeping the group together. Basically what I've seen happen is super villains being thrown at the heroes and the heroes have to go and defeat them. This is fine for a comic, but for an RP it causes things to quickly lose cohesion. There's little draw to keep coming back to see how the story ends.

Like, let's take Godzilla. Ok, everyone teams up to fight Godzilla. Unfortunately we're the JLU before the JLU was officially formed. So Batman goes back to his cave, Superman goes back to metropolis, etc. In order to stop this you have to present some kind of new and immediate threat to get everyone to stay together. No new threat immediately revealed? No one has an in character reason to continue working together. If the threat is also not immediately dangerous, we STILL have no reason to stick together, everyone going off to their own lairs to sleuth individually maybe sharing information. The cohesion falls apart.

Basically--all the various tropes used to create teams of wandering adventurers fall apart with super hero teams. The only way to make something like this workable is to create a pre-defined team, and to create a large overarching plot that is rarely endemic to the super hero genre.

Beyond that you have the fact that most people want to make down right ridiculous super heroes, and/or ones that would fit into a very specialized genre normally, and would therefore work poorly within a pre-formed group. What's the half-celestial doing on the same group as the kryptonian who is also in the same group as a mutant? Where'd this weird-ass group come from? The alternative is to limit your heroes, which just leads to less interest.


Or, tl;dr version: There's lots of difficulties involved in crafting a proper super hero story, which is why they've always burned hard.

If you think you can handle all of those as well as the general RP slump, go ahead, I won't stop you. I'm just saying that not mashing everyone together fast enough was the least of your worries.

[Arhra]

What I meant was I said to people I wanted them grouped into superhero teams from the start, but no-one really listened. So yeah, basically the problem of everyone was going solo.

Even with everyone grouped together, downtime is going to be tricky.

I guess that's the fundamental problem - superheroes are generally a reactionary force.

I have entertained plans like giving out a bunch of minor NPCs and even villains to be controlled by players for the time they appear to help avoid players having nothing to do because their character is off doing something boring on their own, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be.

[PhoenixFlame]

Since I seem to be getting some more time lately, I'll throw out that while I'm not terribly preferential toward any of the settings, I'd probably play them.

Because well, it's Arhra, and Arhra is awesome.

[secretskull]

I wouldn't mind getting on this if you'll have me, I've been eternally watching most Arhra RPs from the side.

That being said, superhero games can be amusing if you can get past the first hurdle, but I've got no problem with any of the ideas.

[PyrosNine]

I can play a super villain. I can play a super villain quite well.

[Relm Zephyrous]

Might as well throw this out there; Villains. What if we were a team of evil people? It'd be complex, but probably really fun once it was figured out, and I don't think I've actually seen an rp round here like that.

[Arhra]

Hmmm, seems that there's still no obvious leader still.

After going into seclusion to consult the RNG God, it has been determined that the superhero game will be the one I will run. This will be overturned if a significant number of people favour a different game.

It'll take a while to piece together the information for the sign-up thread into something understandable by human minds.

To give more detail, superheroes have become common over a period of the last fifty years or so and, as you can imagine, the existence of people who can lift and throw buses or shoot lasers from their eyes (and other places too!), has had a slight effect on society.

One of these effects is reasonably legal vigilantes!

Another is everything completely going to hell, but you can't have everything, right?

With such profound changes happening with single generations, society is struggling to keep up. The government is weak, sinister corporations can run slipshod over you and some people seem to think being able to breathe fire makes them a god. It is an unhealthy mix.

Of course, there's still heroes in these times, even when you have rift storms randomly dumping artifacts from... somewhere and the occaisonally genetic experiment getting loose.

Although the world is deliberately set up to be crappy, I don't expect it to be played too seriously. Excessive edginess is probably not wise and being a ravening little murder-beast is always a big no.

On the characters, I am still deciding on a few little points about superhero origins. Magic may make things a bit too much of a kitchen sink and one thing I am certain about is, at the very least, there will have been no contact with surviving alien civilisations. No idea on supernatural beings at this point.

On power level, there won't be any Supermen, but a power set of multiple abilities is still fine. Something like the (non-godlike) X-men are probably on the low to mid end of the power scale.

I've been debating about putting together a rough timeline of major events, mainly for fun. I'm curious if anyone would be actually interested in that.

So if you have questions, would like to suggest something or want to test out an early character idea, please say so.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

I EXPRESS INTEREST IN THIS IDEA!

Were you going to limit the amount of power set abilities we can have? Because what I was thinking was that we have a set of abilities along a common theme (for the character at least), so we don't get random people with metal-bending and super regenerative powers...

[Arhra]

I'm thinking most people will be mutants, with the possiblity of some otherwise enhanced, 'magical' or normal, but of the badass persuasion, people on the the side.

I have run into a stumbling block on the teams thouhg, in putting together the sign-up thread. How well supported and how official does everyone want to be? Do they want to be a fairly small group scrabbling to put together resources for even the essentials or people with a lot of backing, and all sorts of toys as a result?

And yes, people will have to be part of the 'super-squad', we lose too much cohesion otherwise.

[Arhra]

AT LAST SIGN UPS ARE OPEN! (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showthread.php?t=33826)

SUCH SHOUTING!