General Chat thread

OK...so first thread to get us started. Pretty much anything goes topic wise, but I will get us started talking.

What is everyone's level of knowledge regarding:
1.) Fate Core (the basic game system we are using)?
2.) The various Fate Superhero rules sets out there? (Venture City, Wearing the Cape, any others I am not aware of)
3.) The various media this game references? (My Hero Academia, Tiger & Bunny, Wearing the Cape (book series), Marvel/DC comics)

Zero to none is an acceptable answer to the first two. I know we have some people new to Fate, that isn't an issue I don't think, but I'm hoping the third one is fairly familiar as I can't teach superheros if you aren't already aware of them at this point.

I ran a few games under fate core/venture city, one with Marvel stuff (Basically doing a run through of the first avengers movie scene by scene but allowing players, who had custom super heroes, alter the course of things) and one based on the web serial Worm (which is distinctly about superheroes). I've never seen My Hero Academia, I've seen a couple episodes of Tiger & Bunny, and I've seen most of the Marvel movies, but for comics I've really only read civil war.

For powers what we did for the worm campaign was that we created (with a spreadsheet) a list of power "themes", obvious ones like fire, ice, but also some weird ones like space, time, memes. The spreadsheet would give you 1-3 of these, and you would come up with a suitable power. The balancing factor we used, since I played with a bunch of power gamers, was that each player came up with 3 characters that they'd be willing to play, I (as GM) got to pick one, they got to pick one, and then I got the leftover. So not only did I get some characters to populate the world with, but the players were incentivized not to make the characters too strong, since the strongest ones I'd likely take for villains. Not suggesting we do that for this campaign, but it worked out well for ours.

Well naelick, that sounds good. A rasp of the game rules and superheroes in general is a plus. The only thing about My Hero or Tiger & Bunny we are using is the idea of the general idea of the Hero Ranking system they employ. The idea there is heroes get points based on the crimes they stop, the villains they defeat and the people they save while being heroes. I am also using sponsorship from corporations. They pay you to do the Hero Works so they can be associated with good guys and benefit from that association in the public eye. For the heroes it's nice to have a steady paycheck, but that means they have to balance one more relationship. So thats civilian life, law enforcement, and a job. There is a lot on a hero's plate.

My knowledge of Fate and the systems is limited to my research this morning into the link that Naatkinson posted in the interest check. Read through the Core rules, seems simple enough. Currently reading through the Venture City power catalogue and getting some ideas. I have not read (nor heard of, before today) wearing the cape.
As for Media. I have not watched My Hero Academia, but am aware of it. I have not heard of Tiger & Bunny nor Wearing the Cape. But I am a huge fan of Marvel/DC comics and have seen almost all of the movies and read my fair share of comics. I have also read a good deal of the Worm serial, which is incredible.

I know a bit about Fate Core from listening to a few podcasts that use it, but nothing about the other rules sets. As for the assorted media, I have seen all of My Hero Academia and Tiger & Bunny, haven’t read Wearing the Cape but intend to, and know quite a lot about Marvel and DC.

Are our characters working with each other or independently?

A little bit of both. You are all expected to work for the good of the people in Nova Gail City. They expect you to be altruistic and humble heroes like the Golden Age comic book heroes. In actuality, your pay is based on individual performance in the field. So you maybe you play a hero who showboats a lot to get his popularity up, or avoids the actual fighting but jumps in front of the cameras afterward. It's up to you how you play it. Another comic I just now remembered that I might compare this to is The X-tatics (again, if you know the book). They were a bit more worried about their image than the work they did as heroes sometimes. I'm not saying you have to go one way or the other, but the option is there.

Your corporate sponsors also want you to do well because they look better the better their hero does. We'll get more into that as we go along, but you will also have people scouting you. If you want to impress a bigger sponsor and get recruited to be, say...Pepsi's main hero in Nova Gail, then you have to look good. How you go about looking good is the question we will play through in the game.

Is the power level going to look kinda golden age? Like, it's an arena where a robber with a gun is a serious threat?

Not that low for sure. The PCs are potentially top tier power. I was going to bring this up as a topic once everyone was here.

In Venture City, there is only one level(if I'm remembering correctly) and its all about how you spend your points on powers. In Wearing the Cape their are classes, A being the best a PC can get, like a Superman, down to D which is still impressive but more like a Cyclops from the X-men. Nkt knocking Cykes, but imagining that fight going to anyone but Supes is nuts.

I was thinking making everyone B level which meams there are some characters that have more power and some that have less but all three can operate on the same level more or less. But yeah, thug with a gun is a joke for your PCs...5 thugs with guns might cause you to hesitate.

Also on this topic, I should mention that this world has a lot of powers. Like 50% of all humans, give or take have some level of power. 7/10ths of those powers are not Hero caliber. They are small things like "stretch my arm four feet" or "move a single object under 5 pounds at a slow rate with my mind" kind of powers.

The last 3/10ths fall into one of three categories: Professionals, the smallest group because of the danger, Criminals being the second largest group because there aren't enough heroes to fight them all, and the last and largest group being those that don't want to risk their lives for strangers.

Are we using Wearing the cape or Venture city? Or is it undecided at this time? The one thing I didn't like about venture city is how "gamey" the powers feel. Like, take the cloning power for example. Base power: you can have one clone. Enhancement: You can have another clone. It's completely geared towards a certain type of cloning character. And I know you can come up with your own powers but the materials don't really provide guidelines to do that.

DMing, I eventually came to the conclusion that a lot of my scarier villains were just high level blasters (with fluff to distinguish what the attacks were), because if you failed your defense roll against their attack you were taken out. The consequences incurred were the consequences of the extreme things you had to do to escape the full power of the attack. Like, there was a character (who might be recognizable to those who read worm) who could create bubbles of looped time. Everything inside the bubble just loops over and over, and once you're stuck you're stuck. I modeled as a high level attack defended with athletics. If you get taken out by it you're trapped, but otherwise it's like, you need to throw yourself off something high to avoid it and break something, or it catches just your arm and you need to cut it off, as far as consequences go

I am working up the specific rules in another post as I type this. I have decided we are basically using Venture City, but I will give you a higher number of free Stunts for building powers or to represent your training as a hero. Venture City characters are more along the lines of the Netflix Defenders in abilities, I want the PCs to be closer to Avengers, but not quite the Superman and JLA level.

So while I am still working on the final details, you can think about who your character will be. And think about how to spend your points. You will have 10 points to powers and other stunts, in addition to the standard 3 Refresh that could be spent on stunts if you don't mind starting with lower fate points.

A note for new Fate players...Your Refresh cannot be 0. It has to be at least 1 and you probably want it to be higher unless you want to start from a disadvantaged position.

Still waiting for two players to respond, but I figured we could go ahead and start talking characters in the Hero Work Thread.

Hey all, glad to be joining the game. I've been looking to actual play in a Fate game for a while. I'm currently running another Fate game here on GP (hi naelick) and I've played Fate for a few years now IRL. I've never played with any of the Fate superhero sets. Most of the games I've been involved in were sci-fi or fantasy. I'd say I'm pretty familiar with superhero media in general though, mostly DC, Marvel, and Vertigo stuff.

Nice!

Cool. Glad to have you cato.

@foolsmask Any plans on setting a deadline for character submission? Not that people couldn't submit their characters afterwards, but those of us with completed characters could begin play and those still working on things can either join with incomplete sheets or submit after (Seeing people playing might encourage people to submit their sheets so they can join in).

Also, do you want any help statting npc's? I've got the character creating bug :)

I was actually thinking about that this morning. It has been a few days since some of the players have posted so I will send them a message and try to get things on track.

Either way we should get started. That is a cool thing about Fate, we can just jump in and add people on the fly.

And yes, if you want to suggest some other characters to appear, that is great. Anyone can. Hero, Villain, Bystander, etc.

Are the heroes ready for their next turn, or are we waiting on the remaining villains to act?

yes, the heroes can act at any time. Sorry if that wasn't clear.