Hmmmm!  Midnight logged in!  :)


IF Midnight is active to vote and approve, then we can get those five characters together with only eight approvals:

Max swaps with Arc
Ricochet swaps with Ghost-Spider
Octopus swaps with Steel Ninja
Midnight swaps with Jubilee

This results in the following:


This message was last edited by the player at 03:37, Sat 05 June 2021.

My so very-patient players.  I believe I may owe you the most sincere of apologies.

You are so right!  Negotiating player position swaps is so much more work than simple GM fiat.  It may have been a great mistake in me choosing this route.  Let me try and make things right, or at least as right as can be made.

I want to give you some assurances.  This game will never be in such a position again.  The selection of player teams was always going to be the most intricate decision this game would EVER make.  Here's why;  I don't intend to advertise this game.  In just a little over a month, it is nearing one-thousand posts.  Believe me, it has enough players to keep it going for a long time.  This means, over time, more players will leave the game then join it (at least for the foreseeable future).  With each player leaving, more slots open up and less teams are needed.  And each instance of player attrition will move the team structure closer to the state the remaining players want.  In short, I cannot make this mistake again even if I wanted to.

To be exact, if the game does continue long enough.  Other would-be players will hear about it and ask to apply.  But I believe the rate of such applications will not match the number of players dropping out for the foreseeable future.

You guys have pegged the main problem.  Swaps require player consent and some players have simply not been present enough to have affirmed consent (or much else in some cases).  This has slowed or stopped swaps to a crawl.

But this will change soon.  On Sunday, I will announce in the Bullpen that any player who has not responded to a swap request by next Sunday (the 13th) has automatically consented to that swap request and any other swap request to follow until no one wants to swap with that player any more.  And then within a day or two, the swaps will be complete and very much favoring the more active and passionate players.  Unresponsive players still are members of the teams, they have just allowed their characters to be placed by someone else.

So in not much more than a week, this team setup should be finished.  Until then, don't worry about it.  The Teams makeup is important, but not critical, to the game.  I  have made a new IC scene for all of the PCs to interact in without regard to Team membership.  It is not a distraction, it is a real but optional part of the game.

So why am I giving the 'slackers' a full week to get the act together?  Or why did I even indulge them at all?  And this is where I erred but I hope I erred on the side of fairness.

Having committed, rightly or wrongly, to these team swaps, I suppose further explanation is moot.  I had reasons that made sense to me at the time and it is done and will never have to be done again.

But, for the record, the best way to explain it is like a much-needed bill going through the legislature.  Every now and then in every countries' history (well, democratic ones anyway), there comes a law that is such a good idea or a urgent correction of a bad and earlier law.  The debate is excellent, well-considered and nigh-unanimous in sentiment.  It is expected that the passed law will match the submitted bill exactly.

So why even bother with a vote?  Because an idea discussed and agreed with is still not quite the same as a idea formally voted upon even if they are otherwise identical.  The vote is that proof that you went the extra mile to make as sure as you could that everyone was allowed a chance to decide (even the ones that didn't seem that vested or interested).

It is the same reason we still have trials for the 'clearly' guilty or life-long soulmates still get married.  It is that extra measure that everyone had as much chance as they could to have a voice.

And I wanted to give everyone a voice, even the less-seemingly promising.  And I now feel that I have given the less-active players as much chance as I can.  Now it is time to start focusing on the contributing players.

I am just waiting to see how teams finally shake out. It all depends on how each player is willing to invest in the role play. So I have been neutral about swaps.

So it looks like we're waiting until the 13th before we can move forward.

I'll check in then - I don't see a point in more back and forth about this.

I approve any arrangement that has me with two active characters that I interacted with in the prologue.  Jubilee, Citizen V (if she returns), Stone Cold, Steel Ninja.  Octopus counts double.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:53, Sat 05 June 2021.

For what it's worth, I agree that we should give others a chance to catch up. No sense in rushing things at this important stage, especially when those currently missing players may have been held up by some temporary problems. Waiting now would at least help us be more sure about who is going to be active.

It does, however, pose a problem in that we can't really do the team, influence and relationship stuff without knowing who is around lest we pass over someone who will resurface in that time... But I'm good to wait to get it right.

I am very flexible regarding team. But I would still like the option to interact with other teams during downtime, in case my significant connections are on other teams.  I need to finish knocking Abbi together, and then I can cobble Mina together if we need temporary pcs somewhere.

Midnight logged in and paid a little bit of attention!

Sorry bout teh lapse.   A bunch of obligations suddenly manifested at the same time as a particularly annoying bout of frozen shoulder.  But I had a good massage session today and have regained some feelings in my fingers!  so yay me!

Anywaa, I've skimmed to catch up and I'm good to go in whatever configuration you'd like to have Midnight with.

I have a slight preference for interactions with Stone Cold (because of PMs discussing Midnight's female shadow possibly having some sort of thing--friendship, relationship?) with Stone Cold.   But if we're okay with that crossing team-boundaries, then I'm cool with it and don't feel it needs to play into the character mechanics.

I'll try to be a bit more present.

If you move over to my team, that'll have one team of four, one of five, and one of six. (I'm not counting Skorpio because she's only spoken up a couple of times, once to say she was overwhelmed, pretty sure she's just gone gone. Citizen V hasn't been gone as long, and might still be here maybe.)

Hey Midnight, yes I'm still totally down with that and, if we don't have to be on the same team to interact that way then we should be good.  Also, nice to see you again, I was wondering where you were :)



Hey Octopus, I'm glad we are on the same team, I think we can definitely bond, since Paul was impressed you stood up for him :)  Ghost Spider and Arc are pretty cool too so I like our team (except for Citizen V, but I know the player is just role playing so there might be a redemption arc in there somewhere which would be cool to be a part of :)
This message was last edited by the player at 14:16, Sun 06 June 2021.

In reply to The Watcher (msg # 34):

I'm repeating my previous statement because the Watcher put this up for a vote.  I don't have any preferences when it comes a team.  I do not oppose any swaps that would involve my character.

OK, since we are waiting a week anyway, and allowing changes to inactive players, here is my current understanding of optimal team divisions, based upon stated GM and player preferences:




Is this the droid that everyone is OK with?  Your feedback is welcome.  :)

Are we okay, then, with characters having feelings and emotional connections with characters outside their team?  Michael is pretty damned straight (though Mila might not be).  And he's on the one team with a reverse gender balance compared to the other two.   I really want Michael to be all spastic awkward-teenager-like frustrated...  but I'm not clear if we're mechanically limited to such interactions with people on our respective teams.

Hm.  Maybe it's the number of letters in their name.  Max.  Cam.  3-letters.  Maybe I should change my name to Mic!   :-)
This message was last edited by the player at 01:31, Mon 07 June 2021.

We can definitely have relationships with each other, but like I was saying earlier (way, way earlier, holy crap we've gotten a lot done in such a short time...), relationships and Relationships are distinct. Your Relationships should be within the team itself, as they provide the basis for your starting Influence with your teammates, which can also affect starting Team Points when going into battle. But your relationships, lower case r, can be whatever makes sense with whoever it makes sense with.

Okay, this is almost Identical to what I had posted, with the exception of which team Skorpio, Midnight, and Citizen V are on. So given that, the player approvals we had gotten before are still valid. So here is the table with players who have approved with an asterisk next to their name:


If you don't have an asterisk next to your name, please chime in and a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Looks good to me.

For the record, I don't think Relationships have anything directly to do with Influence or anything mechanical? They're just hooks for interactions within teams. Of course they don't preclude having other, lowercase relationships emerge as well. Influence is a separate system.

I am a bit amused that our team has characters with the shortest and the longest real names.

Anyway, I have no problem with this table.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:58, Mon 07 June 2021.

This is fine.

I'm good with this as well :-)

Counting only active people, that's two teams of five and one of four. Leviathan, did you want to make a secondary character? You could fill out the Hearts that way. Otherwise I might have an idea or two. (I don't remember why I went to the Marvel wiki yesterday, but I ended up there for several hours reading about plots and characters I'd never even heard of, and now there's a symbiote in my head.)

Thank you all for your good work.  I am sorry to have put you all through it.  Like I said, the game can not ever be this complicated again.  I think it will all work this Sunday. :-)

Hi Ricochet. I said I could if necessary. But you seemed to have a lot more ideas than me. So if you wanted to bring one to life that's also fine.

Ricochet already has two characters + one of them is a brain - so limited in where to put the third one/give them no mobility if things shuffle.

Updated with player approvals:



So, we just need input from: Gateway, Skorpio, and Citizen V.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:18, Tue 08 June 2021.

Cool with it.

Awesome, updated the post above.