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Mutants & Masterminds - Table Talk

Started by Reepicheep, January 03, 2018, 03:33:49 PM

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Reepicheep

Mutants & Masterminds
Table Talk & OOC Thread

The Hunt for the Progenitor


I've been working on a few character sheets with folks (as well as a couple of NPCs) and I'm getting quite excited about getting started with this. Once we've got four player character sheets sorted out, we'll get an In-Character thread started.

This thread is for out of character and table talk. It's where we can keep ourselves organised or resolve misunderstandings (there will be many) without interfering with the pace of the main roleplaying thread. I'm also going to take this opportunity to go through the game a little, talk about a few rules and some house rules as well.

For anyone other than folks who either sent me a PM or made a note on my interest check poll, it's not too late to join at any point. We'll set up your character sheet and figure out a way of being able to jump in.

What is Mutants & Masterminds

More info than I can give can be found on this website.

This is a fun game that you could call collaborative storytelling. My job as Gamemaster is to throw your characters into scenarios and you respond to it as you think your character would. Solving the problem is encouraged. Making the problem worse even more so.

To give the game a sense of randomness and consequence, your actions will succeed or fail based on rolls from a 20 sided dice. Your character sheets help to modify these dice rolls, so you have the tools you might need to give yourself an advantage in certain scenarios. Though you may find yourself lacking in others. Don't worry - failure is part of good storytelling. In fact, it's rewarded. I'll get to that.

While a lot of the scenarios you'll find yourself in is in my control - such as the setting, the characters you'll encounter and the level of danger or difficulty you'll need to surpass - the consequences of your actions are not. The dice controls your fate and between us we can only do our best to give ourselves advantages against randomness.

As a house rule for myself, I try to treat failure of a dice roll as something happening outside of your control preventing you from succeeding, rather than your character being inept. This is to try and make repeated failures not reflect badly on your character. The one universal exception, where failure is on account of the character's inability to resolve the problem, is a critical failure. Any time the dice rolls a 1, regardless of whether it beats the required score, will be treated as an inability to complete the task. There will be some additional exceptions to this depending on circumstance.

I will mostly use my own intuition to judge how your actions will translate into a dice roll and which abilities, skills, advantages and powers contribute to that action. If you want me to use a specific modifier, leave a little note at the bottom of your narrative.


The Setting at the Start of the Game

Your characters will be in a state beyond their origin story, in the early days of their superpowered careers. They might have faced down some petty criminals, solved a minor mystery or two or maybe they've applied their skills to robbing some aristocrat. They're waiting for their chance to enter the big league - or perhaps that chance is coming their way whether they want it or not.

To begin with, your characters will not have met each other. It will be my responsibility to get them together, and then it becomes yours to learn about one another.

We'll work together over private messages to work out your character sheet. Feel free to bombard me with questions during this process, as the game has a lot of depth when it comes to character customisation. I'm going by quite a washed down, maths-lite version of character sheets to streamline the game as best as I can and avoid any obscure character statistics.

It's up to you how much of your character sheet you share out-of-character. Just keep in mind that what you learn about other characters through table talk doesn't apply to what you know in-character.


Writing an Action

There are two modes of game: in action and out of action.

Out of Action:

While not in a combat situation, or similar situation where timing is of the essence, you can be lengthy and descriptive about your narrative. You can take as long as you like to describe how you navigate the spaces, what you look at, how you talk to the people around you, even what you're thinking.

The only thing you can't do is describe your main actions as things you have succeeded at. This is the difference between:
Darth Vader cuts off Luke's hand.
and
Darth Vader attempts to cut off Luke's hand.

The first narration implies that the action succeeded, while the second one allows the dice to make the judgement.

Naturally, trivial tasks like walking around or talking don't require dice rolls. It's when we get into the realm of acrobatics, heavy lifting or investigation that this use of language is needed.

I may not necessarily treat the order in which people post as the chronological order of events. For instance:
The room fills with poisonous gas. Player 1 resists the gas, but player 2 begins to choke.
Player 1 goes to treat Player 2 for the poison.
Player 2 tries to find a valve to shut the poison off.


In this scenario, it makes sense to do Player 2's action first. The treatment for the poison might be too time consuming for the post order to make sense, but will still be beneficial after Player 2 switches off the gas.

In Action:

When a combat or action rounds starts, this will be clearly announced. Keep in mind that there is always an option to avoid or escape combat. Once you are in action, there are a few rules to consider.

The same rule of language applies during combat situations. Here, however, actions last somewhere in the realm of six seconds. Within this time, by default you will be able to move and perform a standard action. (Or in reverse order)

A standard action could be anything that takes more than a couple of seconds, such as using a power, throwing a punch or performing a skill. It can also be used to actively defend, increasing your defence chance for the round.

Move actions include anything that changes your state. Changing location, standing up or drawing a weapon count towards this. You can opt to perform a second move action instead of a standard action.

In addition, some actions are considered free, consuming neither a movement nor an action. Communicating, dropping an object to the ground, going prone or sustaining an already active power are examples of free actions.

Most reactions, like defending or dodging, are also essentially free. They may occur automatically when outside of your control, and don't necessarily need to occur on your turn.

There are times that you can alter this. Some advantages and powers change how much you can do in those six seconds. Additionally, you can opt to use extra effort.

Extra effort is a limited resource that allows you to do more within your move. This will allow you to perform a second action in your move, increase your roll modifier slightly, enhance your powers, reroll dice or boost your resistance. To use it simply state at the top of your post that that is what you would like to do. Using an extra effort puts your character in a state of fatigue. If a fatigued character attempts to use extra effort, they will become incapacitated.

In action, the chronological order of posts will be determined by initiative results. This means you won't need to wait for the correct posting order to make your move. It may mean that some moves will get ignored, depending on the result of prior actions. The opponent's turn will be integrated where it belongs in this order.

I'm going to do my best to keep combat short, so that we're not facing down the same baddy for weeks at a time. I'm going to keep the mechanics by which I manage the pace to myself, so as not to give you any meta advantages. Rest assured, pace is a priority for me.



Hero Points

At any time, you might be awarded Hero Points. These get handed out to everyone when the story gets interesting. It isn't a reward for being victorious, rather it's a reward for good roleplay and storytelling. Embracing your character's flaws and putting them into narrative is one way of achieving them individually. You may be rewarded Hero Points as a team when you've been outwitted and fall into a villainous trap.

There are a few significant ways you can spend Hero Points, some of which infringe on my powers as a GM.
  • You can create environmental advantages for yourself. You might find a plugged-in bunsen burner to give your fire manipulating hero a power source, or you notice that a loose roof beam could be collapsed and sent sailing down on the assailant's head. If you're in doubt about how far you can take this, let me know. You can't, for instance, derail the scenario by transporting everyone to your safe sanctuary all of a sudden.
  • You can temporarily grant yourself a new advantage from the advantage list, to give yourself an edge during an action turn.
  • You can add 10 points to any roll, as long as the roll is from your own action.
  • You can be given a free clue during an investigation without needing to use a perception check.
  • You can freely counter an attack.
  • You can recover from a status effect, such as being blinded, poisoned or stunned.
  • You can use extra effort without suffering fatigue.

They're pretty powerful, but they won't be handed out like candy. Use them wisely.

Hero points may be removed for unfeasible use of OOC knowledge to affect your choices in character.


Consequences

As a quick note, I won't ever put your characters in lethal situations. They won't die in circumstances beyond their - or your - control. If you would like a character to be killed off, let me know privately. Situations that could be dangerous enough to kill will result incapacitation. I see this as an opportunity for other characters to resolve the problem of an incapacitated character. More plot, more fun.

There's no lose state either. If all characters become incapacitated for whatever reason, it will lead into something like a capture scene.


House Rules
An ever-expanding list.

1. When characters must make moves in a certain order - for instance, the initiative order during a conflict - the order will determine which posts I read first. You may still post outside that order, just be aware that someone who posts after you may end up going before you.

2. If a player becomes absent for any real life reason, I'll try and continue the game as usual. This will take in-game time into consideration more than real-life time. A four-minute puzzle may take a week to solve, during which an absent player can get away with 'hanging around'. But should the occasion take players away from a scene part way through an absentee's activity, I will use my GM authority to solve that character's activity, or grant the other players the opportunity to solve that problem. Please don't feel ashamed for not posting for a period of time, I'll be proceeding using only my own judgement of fairness and pace. That's an unreliable call.

3. Resistance saves will be made with 2d10 instead of 1d20. Snake eyes will count as a critical fail when relevant. This means your characters' resistance scores (normally Fortitude, Will and Toughness) will matter more and middling results will be more common. Defensive saves (avoiding damage, usually Dodge, Parry and Will) will still use 1d20. NPC opponents must still resist using 1d20.

4. Some actions can be made from having equipment, which, if your character comes pre-equiped with them, requires your character to have the 'equipment' advantage and pay for them using an independent currency to Character Points. The corebook distinguishes gear and devices (equivalent to powers) from equipment by the mundanity of the object, or how non-specific it is to the character. For the sake of clarity, I'll distinguish them by whether it is consumable. a batarang is equipment. A boomerang is a power.

I'm also denying the 'equipment' advantage from being used to buy a headquarters (for now). The cost exchange allows you to buy a moon base for 5 character points. It's safe to assume your character has a place to live, though.

5. Usually a power's ToHit (Accuracy) + Damage can't exceed the character's Power Level x2. I'll allow this to happen within reason, but each use of that power requires a trade off of accuracy, damage or a balanced attack. You get to decide which. I'll reduce the undesired quality by however much the power exceeds the limit. This is just to make character creation a little easier, since damage calculations are the last thing we do and it's a bother to go back and spend character points elsewhere. It also gives you some more flexibility of how you use your power.

For example, a character may have:
Arm Cannon: Blast Damage 10, +12 (DC 25, Crit 20) 6 Tradeoff
Where +12 is the accuracy given by the character's ranged skill and damage 10 is given from the power's blast effect rank. It's a bit excessive, but a good example. Here, the DC is calculated by the attack's damage +15. That's the number that the target needs to roll their toughness against to resist it.

The 10 of damage and the 12 of accuracy puts this power 6 points over the 16 limit. If the player uses it wants to take more care over their aim, I'll reduce 6 points from the damage "+12 (DC 19)" or if they want to power up their weapon for a more lethal but less accurate attack I'll take those points off the ToHit +6(DC25). A balanced approach would remove 3 from each. "+9 (DC22)"

If you don't have an attack with the 'X Tradeoff', then you don't need to worry. Your attack will always fire off as designed.

Villain and NPC powers will not be permitted this exception, so you will never be up against such devastating odds.

6. I will roll the dice for every routine check anyway. A routine check is where, under non-pressure situations, your bonus modifier is within 10 points of the difficulty or where, under pressure, your bonus modifier exceeds the difficulty. For instance, if you need to decide to intimidate a single, non-threatening guard, then a DC15 can be routinely beaten with an intimidate skill of 5. If a high pressure situation like disarming a bomb is DC20 you would need a technology skill of 20 before it becomes a routine check. Normally you will chose if you opt to roll the dice or just automatically succeed, but I'll roll to save time. You can only fail a routine check with a roll of 1, and degrees of success are still measured.






Let me know, either here or privately, if you have any more questions. I'm still working all of this out for myself, so your questions can help me figure out some of the specific quirks of the game.

Reepicheep

#1
Reserved Post - For location and character references. This encyclopaedia will become populated as you learn about the setting.

Player Characters
Catwhowalksbyhimself as Bill Morgan the Organ King
Organ Grinder by day, Organ Grinder by night.

UnkoMan as Queen Ant
That's a lot of ants.

Death's Jester as Wild Card
Slick dressed man of mystery.

Glitch Girl as ????
Identity unconfirmed.

Friends


Foes


Places

Emerald City
Founded in 1818. Emerald City is a sprawling metropolis on the West Coast, USA at the mouth of the Albian River. It is a centre of culture, commerce, trade and industry. It has seen its share of costumed heroics since the 1940s. Villainy came not long after.

Lakeside
Emerald City's latest project and the centre of the arts scenes. Lakeside is poppin'. It is located just east of Lake Vallee. Some criticise that the gentrification of Lakeside is only displacing the poor to the docks, the warehouses or, worst of all, into the undercity.

East Vallee Industrial Park
Not far from Lakeside is a small industrial park. About twenty years ago it was found to be causing significant soil pollution and was closed down before it could do any damage to Lake Vallee. A few tidier businesses still operate out of there, but the place has mostly been an industrial graveyard. Why the Lakeside district council hasn't demolished it with the recent up marketing is anyone's guess.

Deaths Jester

Hey, mine has a name and a bit of an idea with nary a smell of...wait...nevermind, just spilt some booze on the paperwork I've been compiling for my character. Course I'm pretty much building my character with some Gm input while everyone else is having you (Reep) help them out and some secret help from me with those special pdfs... : P 
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

UnkoMan

#3
Heh heh, yeah, I'll admit I'm green as the grass here. Without that help I'd have taken ages.
I do have a quick photoshop job though.
Spoiler

Reepicheep

You're allowed to go as in or out of depth as you like. I'm really excited to see what you've put together in action.

Couldn't have done it without DJ's secret help. Anyone know any good, quick hangover cures? (In all seriousness, thank you, DJ. Everything fell into place once I stopped needing to machete my way through 2nd hand information.)

The updates on that second post will happen as you learn about things in character, so if you opt to reveal stuff here in the OOC thread, it won't apply. Completely up to you how much you wanna share, but secrets are fun too.

I put together an excel spreadsheet of my own to compile character sheets and make them a little easier to fine tune, as well as to have them all in one place when I refer to them. If anyone wants my template, shout at me. I need to reformat the ones I've sent out to be a bit clearer.

Deaths Jester

#5
Not a prob Reep, I just wish I could've let you get that stuff via one link and could've done it via Pm instead. Anything that makes it easier on you...

Also, don't worry about being green to it, Unko. At least here you got folks more than willing to help out! :)
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Reepicheep

#6
By the way, if folks want to at any point, you could have a crack at designing a second character sheet to be your nemesis. More villains, more fun.

I've added some house rules to the OP, designed to try and smoothen things out a bit. Don't worry if you don't understand them right now, they're more my problem than yours.

Rule 4 might seem especially alien, but I'll talk you through it if it applies to you.

Deaths Jester

#7
Hurm...nemisi for my "hero"...hurm...

Rule 4 makes perfect sense to balancing out that problem you ran into with the PL rules.
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Reepicheep

#8
DJ has been a huge help in deciphering the game and solving a lot of the presumptions and downright misconceptions I had. Apologies if I've been flip flopping a bit with the rules and character creation over PM. Just getting my bearings.

Character creation is definitely the hardest, most cerebrally demanding part of the game, so I'm being as thorough as I can going through the process. There's, like, five pages of the book about how to actually play the game. The other 348 pages are for character creation and story ideas.

My house rule about equipment was closer to the core rules than I thought. There's a slight difference that I'll keep, and I've updated house rule 3 to reflect this.

I've said to a few of you privately, but I'll repeat here, that I'll give folks one free respec of their character sheets once we're in game. That way if you find your character design is in some way wanting, either for being ineffective against threats or not fulfilling your hopes for the character, we can revisit it.

Emerald City has a sort of universal origin story where a cloud of alien nanobots was released in the city centre during the 1980's, mutating some of the population caught in it. The event is referred to as the Silver Storm. It's a lot like energy X. I'm going to leave it up to you if you choose to use or ignore that for your own origins. Not to spoil anything, but only one of the villains you might face during the first campaign uses this.

I'm kinda going anachronistic with the setting, to be flexible with the theme. It will be set in a range of between the 1970's to the present day. That way we can have present day (and beyond) technology without the restriction of current culture or narrative style.

I do know the OP is a wall of text. And so is this post. It's intended as reference as we go along rather than essential learning. Literally the only parts that matter are the notes on setting and the first couple of paragraphs of writing an action. Most of the rest is notes, mainly for myself, about how to make the game forum friendly.

I think we're almost ready to go.

Deaths Jester

You give me too much credit, Reep, I just pointed you towards a few things was all.

For those using the Silver Storm as your origin, those who gained their powers that way are often refered to collectively as "Stormers" in Emerald City (per the book).
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Glitch Girl

Just checking in.  Nothing to add at the moment except that I already sent Reep my character concept and he gave me a power breakdown which I am digesting (mmm powers).  Work has been chaotic lately so been more distracted that usual.
-Glitch Girl

"Cynicism is not maturity, do not mistake the one for the other. If you truly cannot accept a story where someone does the right thing because it's the right thing to do, that says far more about who you are than these characters." - Greg Rucka

Deaths Jester

Looks like my character is mostly done...Reep and I are just making sure I calculated everything right and he fits into the PL 8 requirements.
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Reepicheep

Take your time! I won't start until everyone is ready. Work started for me just now, but I got the campaign scenario finished last week (which is why I may have been a bit hyperactive). I've been really enjoying going through the character sheets as they've developed, so this part is good fun for me.

I'll put yours through my magical spreadsheet tonight, DJ. It looked fine from what I could glean with my limited 1am mental arithmetic skills.

Deaths Jester

I'll Pm you the reworked skills latter today. If the numbers don't come out right when you run them thru the spreadsheet let me know cause I've got another character started up that should fit PL 8 better.
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

catwhowalksbyhimself

I honestly had't given a thought to how my character got his powers.  His situation is a bit unusual making that question not so simple as it first appears.  I will probably not worry about it unless it somehow become relevant.
I am the cat that walks by himself, all ways are alike to me.

Reepicheep

I've always been an advocate of discovering characters as you write them. You might flop around a bit to start, but it ends up feeling right. So I'm not gonna demand rich origin stories going in. Plenty of time for that.

Deaths Jester

Quote from: Reepicheep on January 11, 2018, 09:18:50 PM
I've always been an advocate of discovering characters as you write them. You might flop around a bit to start, but it ends up feeling right. So I'm not gonna demand rich origin stories going in. Plenty of time for that.

:doh:..and here I had a full origin story worked out.... :banghead:
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Reepicheep


Deaths Jester

You just say that because you want to mine my character's past for ideas... :-P
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Reepicheep

They're on to me!

*takes all the characters and runs.*

Deaths Jester

Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

Deaths Jester

Must say, I'm interested in how Reep will bring the characters together without falling back on the old "you wake up in a strange place together, let last thing you remember is..." type setup.  I mean, it would be easy to get (am guessing) Unko's, Cat's, and GG's characters together with some type of villian attack or such but my character throws a monkey wrench into that setup a bit...maybe...who knows?!?

At least we won't be starting out with the old "you all happened to be in the same bar when..." or the "you four strangers were invited to this meeting because..." setup...I think.

<ponders if Reep is quickly jotting out a new intro after silently screaming at DJ...> 
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

catwhowalksbyhimself

My character is particularly easy to introduce, as anyone who lives in the same city has probably already seen him.
I am the cat that walks by himself, all ways are alike to me.

Reepicheep

#23
*Grumbles, scrunches up some paper and chucks it in the bin*



It'll be succinct


In terms of morality, it should be neutral enough. A piqued interest - or an appraisal of opportunity might be the right term - rather than a goal. I can't be handing you motivation on a platter as we go, but I also won't knowingly force the narrative into any moral bias. That's your job.

Deaths Jester

Sorry for wasting that piece of paper, Reep.....<goes out and plants a tree>...and moral bias?!? What's that?!?! ;-)
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.

UnkoMan

I can easily say my character has probably NOT seen your character, Cat, and would certainly see no reason to go to a place a villain was attacking. That sounds like the opposite of where they'd want to be.

So, yeah, I'm actually quite curious as to how everybody will meet.

catwhowalksbyhimself

Quote from: UnkoMan on January 15, 2018, 06:06:57 AM
I can easily say my character has probably NOT seen your character, Cat, and would certainly see no reason to go to a place a villain was attacking. That sounds like the opposite of where they'd want to be.

So, yeah, I'm actually quite curious as to how everybody will meet.

I think you have entirely the wrong idea about my character, but you will see!  Although I suppose it's possible your character is a hermit who never goes outside.  I am very much looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with!
I am the cat that walks by himself, all ways are alike to me.

UnkoMan

Quote from: catwhowalksbyhimself on January 15, 2018, 06:51:03 AM
I think you have entirely the wrong idea about my character, but you will see!  Although I suppose it's possible your character is a hermit who never goes outside.  I am very much looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with!

Ehhhh heh heh heh.

Reepicheep

Quote from: Deaths Jester on January 14, 2018, 10:43:21 PM
Sorry for wasting that piece of paper, Reep.....<goes out and plants a tree>...and moral bias?!? What's that?!?! ;-)

It's when you go outdoors to plant a tree because someone else threw a piece of paper away.

Deaths Jester

#29
Umm...crap...<goes and uproots two trees>...ah...I feel right again...


As for everyone else's characters, my character "might've" seen them but not how you think. As for the villian attack...ehh...
Avatar picture originally a Brom painting entitled Marionette.