[Recruitment] Hero and Villain (Cortex Prime)

Things have been a bit stressful lately, but I'll soon have a little more time to play again. And so I would like to see if there's any interest for a concept I've been kicking around in my head for a while.

Me: The GM, you: Two players, one playing the hero, one the villain. You each get a sperate thread (I think it's possible to make it so you don't see each other's threads) which contains a lair to scheme in and something to play out the life of the alias. For you it'd be a 1-on-1 experience except for when you get into the shared thread where you thwart each other's plans and try to get rid of each other for good.

I'd make sure effects of your actions carry over and affect the world, and probably throw in some minor opponents as well. Logically, the players would have to be pretty consistent posters and obviously one of them would have to be an actually villanous bad guy (personally for example, I can't play the bad guy, I slip into good - or at least grey morality - guy every time. It happens less as a GM because I'm not as involved with any one character but I still have to remind myself not to)

Setting is pretty flexible with Cortex Prime, and the book also has a list of powers expressed generically as "abilities" that you can flavor however you like. I'm not a pro with the system but I do think it's pretty cool and want to get into it more.

Let me know if you're interested and what kind of setting (also power level, main conflict) you would enjoy.

I am definitely interested. This idea sounds super interesting! I have some experience with Cortex, though I found the Cortex Prime book pretty confusing. I'd definitely be up for giving it another shot, however.

As for setting, I generally tend to prefer street level, so maybe more something like bank heists, hostage situations, etc, rather than destroying whole cities. More Spider-Man than Superman.
I would be up for playing either the hero or the villain, but I do like to be evil sometimes, so I think the villain would be my preference.

You know I'm a regular and consistent poster, so that shouldn't be a problem for me.

This looks super cool! I've been into Cortex Prime lately, playing a couple Dragon Prince games. By the way, I'd recommend everyone who doesn't grasp the Cortex Prime book (which seems to be 90% of people) to have a look at Tales of Xadia, this is what made everything click for me, as it is a specific implementation of Cortex, with a selected set of traits and rules, it's much easier to understand.

Do you see this as a superheroes game, or are you open to other settings? One option I see is making the hero and villain play at different Scale, for example a cyberpunk setting where the villain plays the role of a megacorp owner, with access to Resources and Factions, and the hero being part of the resistance, so to level things up, he/she would have more powerful individual Traits.

I think I can currently commit to 4 posts/week minimum, sometimes more. If that's not too bad, then please consider me. I'd also prefer the villain, but I'm happy to play any of the two.

I'd agree with what gnomius said
Cortex Prime is really just a toolset. A basic system that has a bunch of mods that you can pick and choose from depending on what works best for your theme. Like bowl you play Tales from the Loop, which runs on the Year Zero Engine, as do most other (?) Free League games. I assume it was originally developed for Mutant Year Zero, but obviously that post-apocalyptic setting with mutants doesn't work for Tales from the Loop or Coriolis setting. And it's not only the setting they changed, they also added/removed some other smaller mechanics so it works better for the genre. The Cortex Prime book is basically just all the mechanics you could need in a reference document, you're not supposed to use them all at the same time.
If a person who can swing the same post rate reliably and the same setting preferences wants to play, I can work with that too.

I have experience with Smallville and with Marvel Heroic (and a bit with Cortex Prime through a conversion), which both came out before Prime but are still running on basically the same engine. I just found the Prime rulebook confusing precisely because it contains all those different options and I didn't find it formatted well, but I'm aware that once you limit it to what you need, that makes it a lot simpler. As I said, definitely happy to work with it again.

I would personally not be interested in that cyberpunk angle while I'd be very interested in the superhero version of this game. But if you want to go the cyberpunk direction, I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding another player for that.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the cyberpunk example was just something that got to mind, I'm happy with supers as well. :-)

This is only an interest check so far anyway, as I don't really have time to get into details until Monday the 20th, so if new ideas come up that's fine too

Bumping this up to Recruitment.

The trait sets I would go with are Distinctions ("I wouldn't be who I am today without...", "My cover story/alter ego is...", "Sure, I have powers but the coolest/most interesting skill I have outside that is...") which I hope will include a collection of values/goals as well as everyday skills and normal social connections, Affiliations (to setting-specific social/occupational groups), and either Powers or Abilities (there's overlap, I'd just go ahead and see which list has things both people are happy to pick). None of these are set in stone, though. I'm also inclined to use the stress/shaken and stricken mod

Extra Info: I think it'd be interesting if we started off not knowing what the other person's powers are but again, I could be convinced otherwise. A little clarification also that consistent/reliable poster doesn't mean "posts every day", just that the time intervals are always the same (except in especially stressful weeks/unforseen circumstances) and ideally matching the other person's rate

My interest hasn't changed. If you'll have me, I'd love to play in this game. Small warning though. I'll try my best with character creation, but I'd probably need some help with it.

I have a character idea in mind for the villain, if you'd like to hear concepts to help you decide. I don't have a hero idea yet, but I should be able to come up with one

I'd be down to join or be on wait list--love Cortex in all its forms. I've done cortex supers with power-set and it was a good time!

Still interested!

The proposed Trait sets look good, although if you want to use the shaken/stricken mod, I'm not sure if we'd need maybe Attributes or Skills (seems hard to imagine applying stress to Distinctions or Affiliations)

@Dunko great to hear you're interested. I would appreciate if you could also answer the question in my original post ("Let me know if you're interested and what kind of setting (also power level, main conflict) you would enjoy. ") so I can pick two people who synergize well
That's not necessary, although I wouldn't stop you if you did
Oh thanks for pointing that out, totally missed that! In that case I'd probably just go with mental, physical, social attributes