So, I had a thought a couple of days ago about how I was going to reboot several of my characters once City of Titans goes live.
While most I'm more than happy to re-write for the sake of keeping them fresh and fitting in with the game's lore, there are a couple who simply can't be.
Many of us had both Primal and Praetorian characters who are simply too complicated to re-write into CoT's lore.
So for that reason, put these questions forward in the hopes of establishing a solid canonical, community borne ground for potential, dimensional refugees:
~Just what happened to the Primal Earth dimension when City of Heroes/Villains/ all points in between went dark? Bearing in mind Paragon Studios didn't give a clear-cut canonical answer due to the fact they were busy being SHUT DOWN, It's left a few questions hanging in the air.
I would personally like to put forward the idea of a cataclysmic, dimensional collapse that only a lucky few (your character here) managed to escape, however the RP community at large might have other, better ideas.
~Last I can remember of the Praetorian story arc, Tyrant basically went four shades of mental and trashed the city in the name of ultimate power, probably leaving it a not-very-nice place to live. How are you, the community, intending on rebooting your Praetorian characters, be they Resistance or Loyalist once CoT goes live?
I've played dozens of RPGs (both PnP and computerized) over the years and in that time I've "translated" a few characters across multiple rules systems without too much trouble. Sometimes I'll play it that it's the same actual character who has somehow "traveled to a different dimension" and other times I'll play it more like a multiverse thing where these are different people who simply share many of the same characteristics (think Spock versus Evil Spock in Star Trek's Mirror Mirror universe).
Basically what I'm trying to say is that if you want to tie your CoT characters to the fate of your CoH characters that's fine, but there's no reason why you can't simply "reboot" old character ideas and make them work within the confines of CoT without any direct relationship to any of their "prior lives" in other games. Besides to be picky about it it's probably better to distance yourself from rehashing as much direct CoH lore as possible if for no other reason than to avoid IP infringements with NCsoft. For instance terms like "Praetorian, Resistance and Loyalist" will have no strict analogs in CoT because those concepts are still owned by NCsoft.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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The fate of the City of Heroes multiverse is, to me, the same as, well, practically all fiction that is not continued - the world "existed" before the story started, and will "exist" after the story ended. The only thing that changed is that we who are on the opposite side of the Fourth Wall will never learn what "happened" afterwards. So I assume that life simply goes on as normal (in so far as to bé applicable to superheroes), and they are now fighting (and eventually defeating) the Oncoming Storm, and lived happily ever after.
Although I actually played with the idea of vaguely implying that a character is the Doppelgänger from the CoH arc. who actually survived and was hurled back into his home universe.
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The irony? Paragon was in more danger when we left than when the first heroes took to the skies. And Statesman was dead by the end of it all. =_=
I don't get mad, I restructure the laws of quantum physics and resolve the situation with temporal engineering.
There is one option, Portal Corp. Or Recluses own Portal. Your character gets asked to go investigate another universe go once on the other side something goes wrong the portal is unstable and poof your ticket back to Paragon is gone. Could they reestablish like a minor power outage, computer crashed, or something more devastating. You (your character) wouldn't know your stuck in the Titan Universe until you can find the means of reconnecting.
This would make your character suffer much like us. We don't know what happens next we are disconnected. Your character will always have that doubt always wonder if they could go home again.. or is there a home to return to.
RP wise this would make Paragon City cannon for your character. At the same time what happened would never be explained your character simply wasn't HOME when it happened.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
Very similar to the Falcon's backstory, except that he didn't volunteer, and he wasn't from anywhere as similar as Paragon.^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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I had been mulling over the idea that Portal Corp acted as a sort of escape route in the final days of some cosmic breakdown affecting coh-prime. It had a lot of ideas like civilians were treated as refugees, the heroes all had to get re-registered and/or treated as possible terror threats with probation and such until they could prove they were good... military forces addressed a portal incursion that was effectively Portal Corp. It was going to have an incident on the Peregrine Island side where villains stormed the corp and broke through as well, ultimately bringing a bad reputation for every one of the coh refugees.
Ultimately i decided against a lot of it, because it would be so game-lore influencing and it wouldn't really impact my characters, whom all have very easy reboot bacstories to happen in CoH, having been already ported to CO.
[i]“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” -Douglas Adams[/i]
I did the Portal Corp Refugee thing in CO. Seemed a few people started doing that as well and it was accepted by the RP community.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
^This. I never thought Primal Earth died. Though I like to believe my main destroyed the capital building in Atlas Park when she uncovered Lord Nemesis had infilitrated the whole city a long time ago with dopplegangers >_>
I'd like to believe Paragon City was just another city in this Super Hero dimension. As of right now there is Paragon City, RI, Millennium City, Michigan and now Titan City (Wherever). This allows my characters to cross over from game to game. Now when I'm creating characters, I tend to separate them from actual game lore in regards to RP story telling. It was the AE missions, and Player RP that made up the story so the different lore of which ever game I went to didn't matter.
Now as far as Paragon City, I want to believe that a singular (or series of) Unknown event(s) lead to the destruction of a great city. No one is certain of what happen, there are many conspiracies of what happen but nothing proven. Perfect for all characters and story-lines of a hero or villain. We can't return, plus in reality it's what actually happen....NCSOFT and one singular (or series of) unknown event(s) or reason lead to the lose of a beloved game.
I prefer to believe that my COH characters are still fighting for truth and justice in Paragon or in pursuit of their own goals in the Rogue Isles. The fact that I can't play them doesn't mean they aren't still there fighting the good fight.
My characters in CO and DC Online are simply dimensional counterparts of my COH ones who have their own stories and powers.
I believe most people are going this route, but I like to make the pain a little more real. That the fight we all were fighting in Paragon, and Rouge Isles was real, and went down fighting (As the community did.)
I'm not big on multiple dimensions and all that. I like to make it all united with each city having its own problems, its own heroes, and villains for the most part. So that I don't cause conflict with others ideas and RP I tend to keep my characters ground on one area never to speak of any other superhero city (DC online is in my opinion apart of this universe, same with anything Marvel.)
Re-imagining and re-writing the backstory is what I ended up doing with my characters from CoH that I transplanted to CO. To me, I think this is the safest bet without making me feel like I'm doing a disservice to both IPs.
I believe I will be doing the same here. Sure I may be doing away with the character developments I've had from the past, but I'm also excited to start fresh and start anew with my characters.
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To give perspective:
My first character was Lord Apollon. He was the natural arrow/fire blaster kid brother of a level 50 mutant hero run by my real-life sister, Lady Artemis.
When I got CoV I rolled Dark Apollon, the Shadow Shard copy of my first, the child of the shadow form of the first LordA/LadyA's parents. He had grown enough in ability to twist the nature of the shard itself (with the shard being part of Rularuu's mind made real) to create minions. He was a ninja/TA mastermind.
An idea struck me - one of my favorite missions was the one where you went to a world, Alpha Upsilon 24-2, where you turned evil and destroyed the world. The difference between the worlds, instead of being the normal kid-brother to a mutant hero, this Apollon was the mutant, to a normal big sister. I came up with a scenario that, while LordA was exploring, the evil-him found the return portal, and went through. He was quickly apprehended, but with the last living thing to exit that dimension, that earth's well shut down, cutting off the evil version from his source of power. Master Apollon, a fire/invul Brute, fumed, until Arachnos broke him out of the Zig.
When Going Rogue hit, I made Ultimate Apollon. Like how Praetoria itself was different, so too was Ultimate. While LordA focused on honing himself through intense training, UltiA took the shortcut, turning to cybernetics. As a Energy/Kin tank, UltiA was a radical departure from the previous attempts.
Technical Director
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I be reworking my characters for the new reality. Rotten Luck in Paragon would never abandoned his post he would fight to the end if it came to that. So I believe he would still be there so I just recreate him already did mostly for the Forum RP just fine tune it when more about the game is known.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
I've decided to simply create a brand new Character (Agent Marvel). I don't have Altism so once I get that one character I stick with them until usually the bitter end.
You and me both. Agent Kontrol and Agent Marvel will be the greatest of frenemies.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Agent Kontrol you've got my interest. I'd like to see what's up with Kontrol.
I tried the "Something indescribably awful happened to Primal Earth" backstory, but it never felt right to me. I hated the finality of it. Better to let Paragon City tick along on its own. Maybe it's unusually quiet over there.
Besides, I had already come up with my own headcanon for why characters couldn't freely move between CoH and CO in the first place. Certain universes, like Primal Earth, Millennium Earth, or Marvel Earth-616, are "nexus" universes. Each nexus has a cloud of variants, like Praetorian Earth, Axis Earth, or the Rikti homeworld for Primal Earth, or Multifaria for Millennium Earth. Portal Corp. quarantines other nexus universes, because bad things happen when heroes from different nexus worlds interact. (I was subverting the cause and effect of the typical Marvel/DC crossover events, where the bad thing leads to the crossover.)
I resisted recreating Sister Silicon in CO, but goshdarnit if Cryptic didn't overcompensate for the relative weakness of CoH electric blasters by making the CO electric set deliciously lethal. One horribly convoluted backstory involving uploading human minds, a "bridge" universe between Primal and Millennium Earths, and a teenaged Justin Sinclair killing Dr. Destroyer and triggering a bio-weapon later, I had the original full-conversion cyborg Sister Silicon in Paragon City and an uploaded AI gynoid Sister Silicon Prime in Millennium City. Makes for some great character development for Prime, but anybody who's seen her story on PrimusDB or the CO forums just goes crosseyed after a while, and sometimes I do too.
I think I'm going to make Titan City Sister Silicon a "New 52" Moira Mullins in power armor and be done with it.
Edit: Aaaaaand I've made my first post on the CoT forum a necro thread because I didn't pay attention to the year. Hell of a way to make an entrance, eh?
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
This thread is quite old and I am not quite sure if this poster posts anymore....
But yeah this is what I would play it as. When you think about it isn't that farfetched all things considered as Paragon's war walls was implied to be intended to keep the Rikti Invasions and potenial world threats solely [b]in Paragon City[/b] . It could be possibly that most of the cities outside of that have no metahumans to protect them so it would be a slaughterhouse of civilians if the Rikti and other dangerous threats in form of armies escaped.
After all the Superhero world is quite dangerous for non-metahumans that are untrained for combat
Formerly known as Bleddyn
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*grin* That's the difference between developer/publisher canon and the sprawling, chaotic nature of MMO or shared-universe creations.
My (and my SG's) version of Paragon City had plenty of meta heroes outside of the Paragon City/Rogue Isles main play areas. Some of that back story made for plenty of fun excursions elsewhere, either in Architect missions or pnp games or in alternate MMOs.
When I decided to actually write the books that had been accumulating in draft form and divorce the setting from CoX fan fiction, I had to create a new "hub" city. For me, the parallels were fun to develop, but I've been an RPG gamemaster for... (counts past fingers, toes, and a finger repeat) ... a long time, so world-building is a good chunk of the fun for me. As long as internal consistency is maintained, it's much less likely to break believability. The multiverse wierdnesses are just part of the genre to deal with, so I just roll with it.
Um... what were we talking about, again? Or, was I just riding the shoulders of the zombie? ;)
EDIT: Oh, yeah, that. An entire group of my CoX characters were already dimensional travelers, with some Earth-born friends, so they jumped ship and moved. Others stayed and fought to the end. Gayle Force, for example, stayed, believing she could do something to stop the end. Kartanian and Curiosity Kilz (most characters having been created elsewhere, anyway) moved elsewhere. Some explored Telara in Rift. Some visited Azeroth, or Millenium City, etc. And I mix it up, depending on the character. The Gayle Force you'll see in Venture City and Titan City is the one that was born in that world. Kartanian, on the other hand... well, he gets around.
A Wing and a Prayer, A Strong, Strong Wind, All Forests are One, Power Struggles - Venture City metahuman novels in the spirit of City of Heroes and other comic book superhero fiction. (http://bit.ly/sdpbooks)
I have been a science fiction and fantasy reader my entire life. Crossing dimensions, getting lost in parallel worlds, accidentally stepping behind a proton to slip on a quark and find yourself in a new world are all child's play for my imagination. Many of my CoX characters were trans-dimensional refugees with no way home. It will be a simple thing (if I choose to do so) to create a backstory linking a CoT character to CoX.
Mostly, I haven't decided yet if that is the route I'm going to take. I might come up with a lore-specific local character, or I might come up with a trans-dimensional refugee who spends a lot of time reminiscing about the old world and worrying about friends/family left behind. Since I am an unreformed altoholic, before the first year is out I'll probably have several of each.
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Good point, Greyhawk. I will probably work my way into the lore-linked characters, too. Possibilities will present themselves naturally. :D
A Wing and a Prayer, A Strong, Strong Wind, All Forests are One, Power Struggles - Venture City metahuman novels in the spirit of City of Heroes and other comic book superhero fiction. (http://bit.ly/sdpbooks)
I'm itching to reboot Rotten Luck. He became a bit more Mystical in nature with all the Norse God involvement in the RP. My goal with him was more of the victim of the city crime returning. Oh well...
Yeah the idea of transdimensional castaway isn't far fetched. Like I said and others. Paragon City still there... we just lost our connection to it. So play that someone crossed dimensions via Portal Corp and now trapped without knowing why the portal closed. Unstabled? Interruption by a god, mad scientist, or something on the otherside. Your character like us wouldn't know for sure. That opens up RP right there. Will your character be driven near madness wanting to get back? Enough to turn to crime to do so? Or will they accept they are stranded and integrate themselves in the new world. Heck relearning how to use their powers in a reality were they behave differently then He/she/it was use to could also add RP fun.
Me I'm planning on doing that with some of my other characters.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
The whole "PR Campaign" (Paragon Refugees) just has way too much appeal to it. After all, with the way things turned out, the identity of Battalion was actually NC$oft, coming to destroy the world.
Fortunately, none of my characters on Virtue had anything intimately tied into the world Lore, aside from possibly Sidhe Bang who was born (underground) in Ireland before Hamidon took over the world and confined the last (known!) remnants of humanity to Praetoria under Tyrant's rule (where she became a ward of the state). I'm fortunate in that sense that pretty much all of the backgrounds for all of my characters are thus relatively easy to reprogram for a City of Titans setting.
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