PHILOSOPHY

I think it is instructive for new players to understand my philosophy on gaming and storytelling in general.

The fiction trumps mechanics

This likely goes without saying, but the overriding guide here is what makes for a great story. I will steer the narrative towards personal conflict, growth, and those little nuances that make for fun stories. There are no rails here or storyline to follow. I mostly create the world as you explore it, with interesting characters with their own motivations and other fascinating things to hook your attention - but there is no script.

Proactive, competent, and dramatic

As a protagonist, you are all competent, even against things far greater in skill and supernatural scope. You can accomplish anything. Unlike in other games, I'm not trying to defeat you. With that said, the greatest challenges shouldn't test your abilities, but your priorities and values. Get used to the idea that narratively speaking you can do anything but not everything.  So the question at play in difficult scenes is not "will they succeed" but...

...At what cost?

You will succeed at whatever you put your mind to, but nothing will come for free. Success can and will bring up further complications, compromising your values, or cost you something in the process. On that note, most rolled failures will likely have the option to succeed at a serious cost, even if you roll abysmally. I love messiness and further hooks, because again, it's about the journey.

Conflicts are pacing, not winning and losing

Most good stories involve loss or failure. Bond gets caught. The Joker gets away. The girl becomes humiliated in front of the entire school. But because you're a proactive, competent, and dramatic character, you won't lose many battles unless you want to. And if you never concede, as the story ramps up to the climax you're going to get into the really important stuff and not possess the resources to win as easily as you might have. So think of failure as pacing - the highs and lows of a good story.

However, for most players, losing doesn't feel very good. In most RPGs, loss equates to failure. As I've said, that's not the case here. When a roll doesn't meet some sort of threshold, it doesn't mean you've failed, only that the story took an unexpected turn, which in some cases can be even more exciting than success.

Story branching

Most scenes in other games work off of gated challenges. You have to roll higher than a certain number to get past a gate, whether it be a guard, a trap, or a boss battle. Scenes in this game work best as a series of possible branches. They're not challenges to be overcome. If there's a 95% chance of success at no cost, there's no real point in having a scene.

Instead, it's a fork in the road. It's a place where the story can go one of two (or more) places, and you don't know which one will happen. So the roll becomes less about "do we pass the challenge?" and more about "how does the story progress?"

Player Versus Player

This isn't meant to be a player versus player game. I expect that players will be rolling very little against one another. However, conflict is inevitable where two or more viewpoints gather together. In those cases, conflict between the characters is natural and inevitable, but behind the scenes, players should come together and discuss and collaborate to find what makes for the best story overall.

THREADS

There will usually be two types of game threads during play:

The In Character threads are whatever thread the player characters are currently posting to. The relevant fiction and narrative will be here. If there is ever a conflict between information in this thread and OOC threads, keep in mind that the fiction always trumps mechanics. These threads should contain very little OOC information or private messaging.

The OOC Battlegrounds thread will contain all out of character discussion regarding the fiction and narrative. All mechanics resolution should be logged in public here. Think of this as the log and discussion area for any mechanical concerns and their resolution during play.

Any posts in the OOC Battlegrounds thread should cite the In Character thread name and the Msg number, located at the top. For example: "In reply to {Thread Name} (msg # 5):".

In Character threads can further be divided into story threads and location threads.

Story threads are plot-critical pieces of story that are closely directed by the GM. They have a definitive beginning, middle, and end, and typically you may not move between threads once you are in a story thread, until you reach its conclusion.

Meanwhile, location threads represent a specific time and location within the narrative, like a dining hall during dinner or a study room at twilight. The majority of the game will take place within these threads, with very little oversight from the GM, except to adjudicate systems resolutions and maintain the game fiction.

When you move between different location threads, please denote the move with markers in your post:

* * * Continued in the {location thread name} * * *

* * * Continued from the {location thread name} * * *

SCENES

I find there are different types of scenes, especially when over a play-by-post format.

Dialogue scenes are where two or more player characters converse with one another. These usually work best when there are two or three players within a scene together, with a maximum of four or five. When there are more players, it can be difficult to keep track of a single thread of conversation.

On the other hand, exposition scenes are when an NPC is giving information to the player characters. This usually comes also with a certain amount of questions from the player characters, which are then answered by the NPC. To keep the flow of the narrative moving, I will usually edit a player character's post in place and add the NPC's answer within the same post, rather than make a new one.

Finally, we have action scenes, which are usually treated very differently from normal "roleplaying". It mostly has to do with the fact that RPGs tend to be combat focused, and so the true game engine begins to turn during these moments. However, I strive to keep such scenes much the same as any other scene. This means you should still be roleplaying during these things, rather than translating your posts from what you can do with the game engine, i.e. just saying "I attack" or "I move forward by three squares" all the time.

SYSTEM

We will be using the Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition ruleset. However, as the system can be very cumbersome, and I'm more interested in telling a good story than doing a lot of bookkeeping, we will be playing with the following modifications.

Character Creation

I'm less interested in bean counting and more interested in exploring interesting character concepts. As such, we will be using the unlimited power points and unlimited power level options. Players still need to calculate their power point totals, but they can use as many power points as they wish to achieve their concept.

Likewise, while this is a PL 10 game, players will be allowed to purchase one or two powers that would ordinarily break the PL limits.

However, the caveat to this being that the power point purchases need to support the character concept itself. The GM reserves the right to veto character concepts that don't fit the game or power point purchases that simply don't fit the concept in question.

Hub and Spokes

At its most basic essentials, Mutants and Masterminds is the core mechanic, as seen on page 9 of the Hero's Handbook. We will be using this core mechanic for the majority of play, ignoring the specifics of more detailed mechanics like combat, et cetera.

Additionally, powers are re-contextualized as broad guidelines rather than specific limits on what characters can and can’t do.

Likewise, I would suggest not purchasing combat related advantages. For example, advantages like accurate attack and agile feint will not be very useful in this game, though attractive and beginner's luck might be.

Abilities and Defences

Just as a preference, I'm more used to the OGL abilities rather than the ones listed in 3rd edition. Therefore, the abilities will be reflavoured as: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intellect, Wisdom, and Charisma.

Agility and Fighting are removed. Dodge and Parry are removed, while Fortitude, Toughness and Will remain the same. In addition to those defences, the following are added: Grace based on Dexterity, Clarity based on Intellect, and Daring based on Charisma.

A Grace defence represents quickness, nimbleness, and the ability to avoid hazards where speed and reflexes are important.

A Clarity defence represents applying quick and clear thinking to a problem, either to pick out a vital clue or avoid a hazard through intellect. Clarity replaces Dodge in some situations where quick thinking is more important than fast reflexes. They also replaces Will in cases where penetrating insight is more important than strength of will, such as in recognizing illusions.

An Daring defence represents force of personality and strength of character, along with a touch of healthy ego and sense of self. Daring replaces Will in situations involving social interaction as well as powers or feats affecting the personality or emotions (such as Emotion Control or Fearsome Presence).

I'm not going to bother balancing Grace, Fortitude, Toughness, Will, Clarity, or Daring against one another. Instead, a good rule of thumb is that if too many of these defences exceed two times the series' power level, there may be problems.

Combat Encounters

This game is not really all that combat focused, as I'm not very interested in doing a whole lot of round by round blow-by-blows. Instead, combat will be refocused as skill challenges, when dramatically appropriate.

I might assign encounter difficulty classes to plot-unimportant encounters that PCs will have to beat. This could be a single check or a series of checks that the players must overcome in lieu of round-by-round combat.

Many of these encounters may give PCs the option to expend resources in order to lower the difficulty class of the encounter. Likewise, these resources may be expended as the cost for failure.

Player Rolls

I prefer to put the power in the player's hands. Therefore, I try to offload most rolls to the players. For example, during a round-by-round combat, instead of the GM rolling attacks against the player characters, players will roll Defence checks versus an incoming Attack difficulty class from various enemies. Failure means they receive damage as normal.

RESOLUTION

When I call for a roll, it is with some deliberation. It will usually be in response to the player attempting to do something or asking if something they want to do is possible. First, we need to look to the fiction, which is to say we need to understand what they want to do, how they are planning to do it, and what they hope to accomplish.

After that has been determined, I will discover if a roll is even necessary, and this means discovering if there are any interesting story branches that could result from the roll. If there's nothing particularly interesting to be gained by success or by failure, I will go for the more interesting story outcome. This may mean that I go with failure, but just as often mean success. :)

If there is a viable story branch, I will call for a roll and award bonuses and levy penalties to that roll, based on what's on your character sheet. Matching or exceeding a roll's difficulty class means that what you wanted to happen happens. Rolling lower than however means that the story turns an unexpected way, though I will usually detail what will happen before any roll is made. This means you will know the consequence of your actions before you roll.

ADVANCEMENT

There is no complicated mechanic for advancement, no experience point system or anything like that. Instead, advancement within this game is predicated on active engagement within the narrative of the game. Usually that means keeping to the required number of posts per day, although quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality. For me, I look to whether something about the character is being revealed or reinforced; whether the character is engaging with others; whether they're engaging with the plot; whether they're creating something new about the world that fits with what came before and doesn't contradict; and so on and so forth, and not necessarily in that order.

What you can do with advancements is based on a discussion between the player and the GM. This might mean you gain new powers. Sometimes it means that something we knew about your character has changed, because they've grown as a person; maybe they were a hotheaded teen, but have matured into a cool under fire type of person. It could even mean I tell your character a secret about the world that very few people know.

But in general it will mean that they will be able to do things they couldn't before or do them better.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:11, Thu 08 June 2023.