OOC

Let’s talk.

So modern day. Romance. I’m imagining a soap opera situation where everyone is in everyone else’s business. Let’s throw in another genre just add another theme. What do you think?

Sounds good to me. I'd definitely describe my taste for the perfect game as the third season onwards of a CW show, when most people have agreed that it fell off in quality 😄

If we're going with modern day, then superheroes or urban fantasy are obvious choices for genre additions. Both work pretty well for additional drama as well.

What were your thoughts on how to organize the game? GM-less or should one of us take on a GM role for it?

Nice! We’re on the same page then. Something about that third season is just so cheesy. Or Smallville season 6 when Alex and Lana get together. Love it.

Ok. Let’s try Superheroes then. That should be interesting and provide lots of interesting fodder for the game.

I’ll GM, since I wanted to get some practice. Ofcourse, any ideas or additions or world building you have, are more than welcome.

I’ll open a thread for world building in a second so we can keep all our stuff straight.

What should the tone be? I know romantic, but gritty? Light hearted?

Probably not too dark generally, but with some really serious moments strewn in where appropriate.

I feel like this type of game needs an ensemble cast. Mixing and matching and breaking up and rematching couples is kind of a necessity over time. So maybe even if you want to go for a GM role, I should still play a couple of different characters. I don't really see how this would work super well with just a single PC.

Sounds good. We’ll keep a stock of characters.

I’m reading up on the the superpowers in the book, but it looks like it’s a pool of points to use to boost your rolls or booms, so that should be straight forward. I’ll have it figured out soon.

Do you have any concepts for a character or a few? Do you have any of the supplementary books for additional careers? We don’t need to do full character creation but high level?

I’m thinking in classic super hero tradition we need:
A scientist contact
A police officer contact
An underworld contact

I haven't really had time to dig into the book yet, but I hope I'll be able to tomorrow a bit and then more on the weekend. I also haven't really had many thoughts on main characters yet.
Maybe a tech support character who's not doing any heroics themselves but builds gadgets. Oh, I had a concept for a different game that I never got to play that I could probably tone down a bit and use here. A rich girl who's tired of having to act all proper all the time and lets off steam as a supervillain from time to time. Then probably one straightforward superhero and maybe someone else who has some superhero related trauma.
If that sounds generally good to you, then I'll keep fiddling with those ideas a bit.

Those contacts definitely sound like important cornerstones.

Take your time with the book. I’m rereading it too and trying to track down a podcast where they use it.

Those all sound great concepts. Keep working on those.

Hey, sorry for the delay. I've been a bit distracted by real life and figuring out a new ruleset always takes a lot of mental energy for me, so I'm taking a bit longer. I'm definitely still interested, though. I'll try my hand at just doing some character creating to get a handle on that in the next days.

No worries. I’ve had stuff going on too over here so it’s all good. I’m just messing around making some characters. Take your time.

Okay, I've been doing a bit of character creation work.
Some questions: Are we using careers or specializations? Do we count powers as a career/specialization? Or should we create custom Boons to represent powers. Something like Telekinetic could easily be adapted, I guess.

Great!

Careers. I think we create boons or boost the ones already made. Depends on the power I guess.

I went ahead and made and added two characters to the Worldbuilding thread. John Myers (cope with a heart of gold) and The Doorman (Local Veteran Hero).

I wanted to try it out and I think I’ve got a hang for it now. And at least I know which pages to look at.

Tell me about these characters you came up with?

I've been mostly trying to figure out the mechanics. Seeing your finished up characters helps with that. I'm just not really a mechanics minded person and this is a lot more difficult (both in terms of wrapping my head around it and in terms of getting myself motivated to try and work through the mechanics) than I expected.

Okay, I submitted a character sheet for the counselor character I mentioned before now. You should probably take a look over it. I just created custom careers rather than pick from one of the lists as none of the settings seemed to quite match what we had in mind anyway.
I also created a custom Boon for her powers. I also assumed that superpowers would run closest to Psionics, based on skimming that section of the book?

Anyway, take a look at the base and tell me what you think. Once I have one sheet worked out, creating more shouldn't be as troublesome.

You’ve got it. I’ll take a look.

Ah. I guess I can throw the guys I made into this template too. It’s very nice.

That character looks great! Keep going. I’ll move my two people over and come up with a couple of others. And I’ve got an overall idea of where to start and where to go.

I’m going to have to learn how to use these tables, because that looks good.

I could probably make the sheet look a bit nicer than this still, but I still only know the basics compared to some people. Some people build really crazy automated sheets on here.

I submitted two new characters and I noticed I made a mistake with my first one. Non-combatant doesn't give additional abilities but career points. Fixed that.

For the tinkerer character, the only real tinkering mechanic I found is downtime related, so I figure for him to be useful in his specialization, we'll need to make downtime be a common-ish thing. We'll see how things go.

Awesome. I’ll check those.

Adding in downtime should be be a problem. But what were you originally seeing for the Tinkerer? Because we can maybe make that work. Super powered Macguyver or something?

No, downtime does make sense, I think. He's not supposed to be "out in the field" himself, just the guy who builds gadgets that other people then use. Not really assembling something in the moment. I think it's all good.

Ok. Cool.

I made a few more characters ( I’ll have to clean up the sheets, and we can start soon.

I think I’m going to put together at least a preliminary list of connections and relationships for these characters, soap opera style.

And i figure we can open in that support group council if session. Can you tell me a little more about what you were thinking for that concept? It’s really interesting.

I'll try to get the last of the characters I proposed done tomorrow and submit them. And I'll be happy to help you figure out how they fit into the social web!

For the counseling, the original setting I made the character for had a recent event where lots of people suddenly gained superpowers, so she was trying to help those people cope since she already had powers before.
But outside of that, the idea is that she is an older student at the university, she has superpowers and she suppresses them, and she wants to help people who are struggling with their powers. So it would kind of be a group therapy thing. Talking about how the week went, whether there were any problems, giving advice and coping strategies, being there to talk to. That kind of thing. It'd probably be a university club that's officially something else but unofficially, people know what it's about. Rebecca as the one leading the group would be known to have powers, but she'd try to let anyone else in the group keep their anonymity if they want to.

That sounds great. When I have a first draft of the relationship web, I’ll throw it in here. Probably near the end of the day today

This group sounds like a really good idea. Lots of meat in this concept, so I think we will start there.

Here’s a first draft of the relationship web so far. Very high concept relationships.

Did you post descriptions for the characters you added to the characters you added somewhere? That would help me wrap my head around the web.

I can add that. No problem. I’m filling in the bios and stuff now.

Ah. Mingling is a great idea.

We can definitely explore these guys and their convo. I’ve just got a couple of situations and scenarios planned, but i mostly want to do this kind of sandbox style. Poke around, see what’s interesting and what’s not, you know?

So definitely let me know what you or the characters are interested in and we’ll make that happen.

Then let's go for that scene. And maybe somethign to introduce Cole, since he has no powers and didn't go to Rebecca's thing.

I think we hit a good point with both those stories at about the same time, actually. Who do you want to move onto next? I guess, pick two?

I guess for one scene, we could go for Brian's attempt to get access to Rebecca's phone. Not sure what his approach would be, but probably to meet under some false pretense. Or to follow her and try to find a good opportunity.

As for the other scene, we could go for a scene at university. Maybe Cole and Elise actually share a class, or they're both eating at the uni cafeteria (not together, but near each other) when something happens there.

I'd just leave the details on both of those up to you. Unless you say you want me to come up with something concrete.

Nope. That’s enough. Sounds good!

What would Rebecca be doing mid day on a Wednesday? Actually, what does her say to day look like in general?

I think she mostly has a pretty boring life schedule. She goes to university, meets with friends... maybe she has a job as well. Probably nothing exciting, just as a barista or something, as she focuses on studying. I imagine she lives in some student apartment with a friend as roommate.
As for midday Wednesday, I'd probably just say she would be at university, but if something else works better for you, just go for it. Overall, she just doesn't live a very exciting life.

Nope! That’s perfect. I’ll get something going.

I've been trying to find avatars for them but my initial tries weren't too successful. I'll lower my standards a bit and search again.

Haha! The same! But I need to see them, so like you say, lower standards for now, until we find something better.

Hmm, I went to Midjourney to try and get some images for them. I'm not completely happy yet, especially with Elise, but I guess these might be better than nothing.

I love them. Very nice!

If you need any help with trying to get an avatar done with Midjourney, I can try to help, though I'm not very good with it either and you know best what you're looking for.

With Rebecca, I figured he exchanged the phone. I'm thinking of how to best handle it. She would want to check whether the message that got her to pull it out in the first place was anything important, so maybe it could be an opposed check of some kind as he tries to distract her. His appeal vs her mind or something? What do you think?

For the other scene, I don't really feel like what you wrote fit how especially Cole would act. I'd prefer if you don't play my characters like I wouldn't play the NPCs.

I should be able to get a post out tomorrow.

Hey. I’m still around but I’m doing a bunch of impromptu traveling for Thanksgiving for the next week and a half. I’ll check in and post when I can but it’ll probably be slower.

No worries. Good to hear from you!

Sorry. I’m still here. holidays and real life caught me, so I’m catching back up. I should post soon.

Hey. Super sorry I just dropped off the planet like that. I had a TON of stuff happen in RL (wife had a kid super early AND a brand new job and new responsibilities) and got pretty overwhelmed. I kept thinking I was going to post something "tomorrow" but tomorrow kept moving and by the time I realized that, it'd basically been a month, I guess.

Anyway, with all of my RL stuff going on, I've got to scale back and basically quit any of the games I was in if they didn't quit me first, so I won't be on the site much for a while.

Again, sorry to be so flighty.

No worries. Thanks for the update. I really enjoyed the game as far as it went. It's a shame, but I totally understand! Congratulations on the kid 😊

Yeah, me too. It was a lot of fun! Maybe I'll poke you when I get back and we'll see about resuming or rebooting the series, lol.

Thanks!

Sure, poke me if you ever get the chance. I'd be up for something - this or something else - if I have the time.

I’m just going to read and catch back up

Yes, I need to read back a bit as well. It's been a bit of a break.

No rush, but I posted something in the game thread.

Yes, sorry. I read the post but then had some fairly busy days and ended up forgetting to respond. Thanks for the reminder!

No problem, just didn’t want you thinking I disappeared again because the post didn’t pop for you.