I was wondering if you guys had thought about a Jr. High & High school in the lore designed for Super Powered individuals. Something like Sky High. While the movie is cheesy, the concept is pretty cool. It kind of takes Xavier's school for the gifted one step farther by increasing the scale of it. If super powered individuals have been around for at least one generation, it makes sense to create a school system that is designed to handle the various challenges kids whose parents are super powered would have. I mean who really wants a Super Strength individual who is still learning to control his strength on a football team with normal individuals, or an emotional teenage girl flaming out in the middle of class and burning down the school because no one knows how to deal with a walking bonfire. It also creates some interesting lore interactions, because it gives the real possibility that super heroes and villains had gone to High School together.
Fri, 08/18/2017 - 06:33
#1
Lore Suggestion
Interesting idea and certainly worth exploring imo.
Maybe they could at the very least create some kind of task force that centers on a "super hero school". That or maybe there could be a faction that would involve a school for supers that you could do missions for.
As an even more involved idea maybe they could somehow let us run characters who start out enrolled in a superhero school and at some point have to "graduate" to become fully recognized heroes/villains. Perhaps it could be handled as some kind of extended tutorial mode that would require you to run specialized missions and work up to say level 10 before you're considered trained and free to do anything you want. This might be a fun way to get real life kids into playing the game by making them feel like they are graduating from school in the game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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[i]or an emotional teenage girl flaming out in the middle of class and burning down the school because no one knows how to deal with a walking bonfire.[/i]
two words...Katie Kaboom
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I like the idea of a High School or Academy which helps teenagers deal with and develop their abilities.
Non-powered teens could practice alongside their powered pals.
We had something like that going in the CoH RP Forums. We even got to go on a few adventures!
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I'd rather see that be SG theme idea than something that the lore says "Hey, all the super meta kids go to school here because the law!" :p
Hero high or not, a high school is a must for the city.
A non-powered school would have a different lore. I.E villain groups monitoring the school. Mutants often gain their powers with adolescence. Teens are bad at keeping secrets. this make good pickings for villain groups for recruitment of assassination/blackmail.
--once a super teen is discovered, it is easy to find the family.
such an environment would create a need for a secrecy, but not every teen is prepared for a double life.
this could lead to secret clubs/teams of supers.
or a villain releasing a mutagen gas where the survivors all get powers but 80% die.
another villain could unleash an expendable robot hoping to flush out super teens.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
I wouldn't mind a mission where maybe the school is under attack and we had to safely guide kids through an underground tunnel away from the school to a safe zone.
And yes, X2 should come to mind.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Though it would be crazy amounts of work, It would be cool if PC's could in theory train up the next generation of younger hero's, villains and mercs.
AMERIKATT ACADEMY (or Amerikademy) has a certain poetic ring to it!
NARF!
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I'd love a regular high school for the city. A few actually, as a huge city would have more than one :p
This almost seems required in a universe where supers are normal. I mean, yeah, how could you expect super-powered teenagers to function around regular high school.
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*sage nod*
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Like they did in X-Men: Evolution.
Really, it's not that hard. Especially considering in such settings, there wouldn't be that many super powered teens.
Yes. Player wise, we could have millions. From a lore stand point? What are we going to say? There's millions upon millions? For a movie like Sky High, sure, it's not a matter. This isn't Sky High. In CoT it would more likely be "Welcome to Super Teen Class of 2019! All 30 of you!" :p
I wouldn't assume that the Devs would steer the lore of the game towards making it the "law" that all meta kids would have to go to superhero school. As you yourself pointed out there aren't going to be that many super-kids in the overall population anyway. Using the X-Men example of Professor X's school only a few dozen mutants out of thousands around the world ever went to his school. And my idea of making it a CHOICE to have your character be enrolled in an NPC based super school would be just that - a choice.
I wouldn't have any trouble with the Devs establishing some kind of analog to the Professor X school in the game. It could be the center of a Task Force or faction that players could choose to be involved with or not. And the existence of such an in-game school wouldn't stop players from forming their own SG based super schools for their own RP purposes.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Boys room, Girls room, Litterbox room. this school has it all!
1) A 50' scratching post.
2) attacks by giant robot mice
3) Squirrel Scouts
4) Catnip pushers in the parks just outside
5) Friskies bar at the cafeteria
6) Danger Room featuring giant stuffed dogs
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No, it wouldn't stop them. However, for those who want to do it, it may make it feel more redundant.
That's a risk I think the folks at MWM could eventually afford to take. Think of it like the difference between public school and home schooling - the people who want to home-school their kids will do it regardless of what other "established" schools are doing.
The differences between what a game-run school does and a player-run school can always remain quite enormous. For example a SG that RPs as a witches coven is essentially like an "alternative school for magic-oriented supers".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I would agree that making it law to attend would not be a good idea, but if you made "Sky High" the public school version of a super powered school, people could then create RP guilds where their school was a private school. That would leave them the freedom to make it more prestigious, or more focused on origin, like a witches coven or a tech school, or maybe they are an underfunded charter school where all the poor, or rebellious super powered kids attend.
There could be endless debate in congress whether to publicly fund Super-Schools or offer vouchers. Maybe a community college version for "late bloomers"? -- A 20-something kid who can clean rooms and make beds at lightning pace paying for his tuition. He ends up in the middle of a dispute with the local hotel workers union.
Homeless kids kicked out by their super fearing parents might have Dickensesque street gangs using their skills for petty crimes and sing-a-longs. Or perhaps, multi-generational super powered child street gangs ala City of God.
I can see lots of options with varying story tones available.
Possibly, a super high for privileged affluent children whose parents are able to pay genetic-mega companies or illegal 3rd world underground experimental cybernetics camps or a crazy old wizard (who only needs a fresh human host to inhabit) to ensure their next generation comes out on top of the food chain.
Yeah probably lots of fun ideas here.
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Thanks for linking the PS 238 site, Redlynne!
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Still think it ruins the role play.
A SG that makes their SG such a RP, doesn't interfere with the one SG that would prefer a X-Men style school. Also, saying there is a public school in Titan City, means there are just that many teen metas going around. Which doesn't make sense really, unless the idea is "Oh hey, there are hundreds of super meta children between k-12 to keep such a public school going."
If it's just a handful (from a lore stand point, what would be a good number...100? Let's say 100.) of 100 super meta students. Why even have a whole school? That's maybe four classrooms. That's a house near a park to use as a school field.
It seems to me that from a lore stand point there should be hundreds of super powered teenagers based on the number of players and super powered NPC in the game. Sure, there might not be enough teens to support a school in a different city in the country, but if the lore is setup like COH, then in this city there should be. Just consider how many non-super powered NPC you fought against in COH. I don't remember any. Yet every district had multiple super powered gangs in them. Or look at how many there were in just one mission, like for example, the Frostfire mission. There were probably 100 NPC in the mission, which makes sense since it was a 3 story building. If those 100 NPC just hooked up with each other and only had 2 kids per couple you would have 100 kids from one building in one zone. That seems to indicate to me, at least in this city, there should be enough kids being born to justify one public school dedicated to supers.
edit: OK, so maybe there were non-supers in the game. Some of the henchmen for gangs such as The Family, might have just had guns and no powers, but that was less common than running into a super regardless of whether they were magic, mutant, or even technology.
The Roleplayers have already been RPing a super high school. Well until the RP seemed to dry up.
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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 feel that is putting game mechanics into lore, which is ALWAYS a mistake.
You don't assume, in RP, that when you take out the NPC standing on the corner, that the respawn is just instantly there.
I wouldn't even RP that every player I see is actually there. By doing that, you're basically saying there's more (theoretically) PC characters than NPCs, as infinite players with infinite alts. How exactly is the city in need of any heroes? How would a city with that many super heroes (or competition) not have the bad guys going "I'd be better off in New York."
Look at DC and Marvel comics. They don't tend to have enough young metas for a real big school, let alone multiple schools.
I'm just not really seeing how having a "super school for kids" concept baked into the lore/missions of CoT would really affect anyone's ability to set up their own independent "super school" SG. It's like saying there should be no taxi cabs in the game because that could ruin the ability of people who want to run some kind of "taxi teleport" service SG like they used to have back in CoH.
This is exactly why I don't let game lore dictate any RP I want to do. If game lore fits in with the "vision" of what I want to do RP wise I'll happily incorporate into what I'm doing. If it doesn't I simply ignore it just as easily. IRL there are thousands of specialized schools that may have hundreds of students or only a handful and none of them are impeded in their existence by the existence of any of the others.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Perhaps the Devs could make a nice High School geographic feature and then SGs can decide to be clubs and classes at the school, or not. I agree, there should be no Lore that forces any aspect of player character history or behavior. SGs could also declare themselves private institutions for the incarceration of juvenile delinquents.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I like this idea the best. Maybe add a few door missions (police scanner size) designed to test players like, the "Save the civilian" mission in Sky High...you would have a choice to play against NPCs or PvP
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If people didn't care about the lore, it makes me wonder why the don't just play one of the many MMOs out there.
TOR...just say you're a super hero with fire powers. Doesn't matter who you use. You're disregarding lore anyways.
The problem with a school for metas that isn't player based imo, is that means there's just THAT MANY schools for metas. Really, there shouldn't be THAT many meta kids running around. From an RP standpoint, you can always ignore the other SGs as not existing. Becomes harder when it's established game lore.
Oh hey, I don't like that NPC, they don't exist in my lore, then we see new stuff that does nothing but center around that NPC. It's as bad as RPing in CoH that you're wounded, when CoH lore said "Med Teleports fix everything."
You and I both know we've discussed the more generic issue of "how much (or how little) players should strictly adhere to any RP lore established by a given game" in other threads and for some reason we've always talked past each other on this. Clearly you like to stick to everything a game like this provides as immutable fact for RP purposes whereas I tend to pick and choose what games like this offer in a-la-carte style.
If it actually helps you to understand my position (for future reference) I tend to take superhero RP very liberally whereas if I'm playing in say a Star Trek or LotR setting I can almost promise you I am FAR MORE strict with those than you would likely ever be. CoH (and CoT) are literally built to be GENERIC sandbox settings where you can get away with almost any character concept imaginable. That's why things like this "super school" idea doesn't bother me one way or the other. On the other hand if we were playing a Star Fleet Academy game together you'd better understand what the term 'Dunsel' means and why the Kobayashi Maru test works the way it does and whether or not you're playing in a pre-Kirk or post-Kirk timeline (and why that would even matter in relation to that test).
Basically there's no right or wrong way to RP in any game. I'm sorry I don't consider the lore of a game like CoH or CoT to be as critical as you do. I simply don't when I can play a two-foot tall Incredible Hulk clone, a robot ninja that can summon undead cheerleaders to fight for me or anything in-between. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yes, generic, but still some lore. Knowing that lore also helps avoid issues in RP.
Like...no, there isn't a masquerade effect on CoH vampires. :p
As long as the people you RP with are as strict (or loose) about the lore affecting RP as you are then there's no problem. If you didn't want your CoH vampires to have a masquerade effect then you could have always played with a different group of CoH vampires. ;)
It's not the game's prerogative to force everyone to play it the same way - it's your responsibility to seek out like-minded RPers within the generic sandbox the game provides.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I was thinking more a long the lines of open world RP. It gives everyone a common ground to point to.
Sure there's nothing wrong with having "common ground" to base any RP on. I guess my point is when you have hundreds/thousands of potential RPers to work with everyone's going to have their own interpretations of what that "common ground" is or means to them.
Perhaps the big difference between RPing in a MMO and say maybe table-top RPGs is that you don't really have a single GM that organizes/controls the setting. Since every MMO player is a peer no one really dictates the agenda therefore no one really gets to "make the rules" beyond what everyone collectively agrees to. Now I could see where a SG leader could almost act as a kind of pseudo-GM for his/her particular SG members. But minus being in a SG every MMO player can effectively choose how much or how little a game's lore is relevant to them.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
That's why I like to point to the games lore. It gives something to point to. I'm not saying, don't have wiggle room, but there's some things that can be done to make good lore and a better story.
Which admittedly, the idea of a city with enough heroes in it to populate it's own city is a kinda bad. :p
In such a city the oddball "normal humans" running around might be worshipped as special snowflakes or eaten as tasty treats. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
That setting sounds familiar.
Redlynne ran a Teenagers From Outer Space campaign back in the late 90's set at a school called Skye High. Not only did it predate the movie, it was a lot more fun. Of course, part of that was because it was started after we finished up a long-running Champions campaign, and had the same players, so our old Champions characters would have cameos as faculty and staff.
SHACC, the Skye High Alien Control Commander. Little old Asian guy, mostly bald, white mustache and beard, thick glasses. Always found sitting in his office behind a low Japanese table, sipping tea. Always. Nobody ever saw him leave that spot. Stakeouts were conducted. And yet somehow he knew [i]everything[/i] that went on in the school (including the stakeouts), and was Perpetually Calm about it. Even gross building damage never seemed to disrupt the part of the office where he was sitting.
The student parking lot. It was just a large square area bounded with a white line. No marked spaces, no stacking limits. You could park wherever you wanted in there. The only rule was that anything outside the white line was removed. You'd come back to the lot and that part of the vehicle was just gone.
The subway station by the school which was done entirely in bathroom tile. Many rumors as to why, but no confirmations.
Lots more like that.
"To suggest is to create; to define is to destroy." So whatever we define in CoT can remove possibilities like the above, and needs a good justification for doing so.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Every school needs a mascot. Who better than "The World's Mightiest Moggie" to represent a school in the City of Tabbies?!
Which school will it be, as there can be only ... ONE?!
Extend your claws, raise fur on arched backs, bare your fangs, and wheel out the swimming pool full of tapioca pudding! Let the mayhem begin!
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Think of it this way ... statistically.
If City of Titans has a population of around a million people (let's call it 1,000,000 to make the math easy) and if even 1% of that population has superpowers, then you've got 10,000 people in town with superpowers.
If 10% of those people in town with superpowers have kids (either with each other or with unpowered "muggles" for the sake of illustration) who are of K-12 school ages [i]and have superpowers themselves[/i] then you've got 1000 superpowered kids who need to go to school (somewhere) ... and that's enough students to create the necessary critical mass to build at least 1, preferably 2, primary education for superpowered kids facilities in the City of Titans covering the K-12 grades. I say preferably 2 so you can have (at least) one north and one south of the bay/river that bisects the city so it doesn't turn into an "impossible daily commute" situation for families living on the "wrong side of the river" in town.
Note that 1000 concurrent logins represents something of a (mental) threshold floor for a healthy and stable gaming population for a server that can produce a successful in-game economy.
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I would think for the game to seem like the comics it claims to represent, then 1% is to many.
Also, it assumes people with powers will have children with powers.
I'd think the population of super's would be more akin to less than 1% so maybe .6-.7% in the US with no reason to believe they'd all be in one city.
Didn't the Devs already address how many "super" people they were assuming the city had in a previous thread? I seem to remember there was a thread (like maybe a year ago?) that started getting into population estimates of super-powered people and it dragged on long enough for the Devs to actually jump in with some numbers of their own. Given that the Devs themselves were citing numbers I can only assume we could take their input as "gospel" as far as the lore of the game goes. Sadly I don't know off-hand how to easily find where the Devs where talking about it.
Regardless of that information a "super school" established by the game's lore could have ANY number of kids the Devs wanted it to have. Think of it this way: In real life there are specialized schools for all sorts of things including "special needs" kids as well as specialized trades (such as blacksmithing or watchmaking). These kinds of schools exist where there may only be a few dozen or even a small handful of students. Thus a school for "super-powered" kids (run by the government or other for-profit/non-profit group) could easily exist in CoT with literally ANY reasonable number of students (from a few to a thousand) or anything in-between.
Basically the number of super-powered people in the city has almost no direct bearing on how many students a hypothetical "school for supers" would or could have.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
But, of course, Titan City also has a long-standing 'supers friendly' reputation, which might enhance immigration from beyond the city and thus raise the percentage of Supers in town. Super-couples and others with (potential) super-spawn might move in just for the possibility of a compatible environment for raising the kids in. Even if the incidence of supers was 1-in-a-million, that reputation might concentrate the super-population in the city. Where else will the 'muggle' parents of super-kids find a PTA that understands their problems?
There could be Many different kinds of schools in Titan City, and that doesn't even consider the draw of Ephesus University on super-related young people, from all over.
Be Well!
Fireheart
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/119398#comment-119398]"1 in 400"[/url]
But it's just commentary. There could always be Genoshas, Dark Sides of Moons, Frankensteins constructed from multiple heroes to complicate the density or the math. Or, as explained further down, more or less logins.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
Alright so I think I have an idea, what if it's not just one public school for superheroes, but rather many privately owned schools for superheroes, maybe even specialized ones, that parents specifically pay for their child to enroll in, like one's for young magicians, or like a school for kids born with their powers, or a boarding school for mad scientists. You don't have to send your child to one of these schools and can just opt for the main one, but if your kid has a certain interest that he has knack for or if you're worried that your kid won't be able to handle growing up around people without super powers, you can send him to one of these other schools, that way nothing will stop a player from making their own school for super powered youths.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Okay, but that still doesn't mean it has to be forged into Lore... Or, rather, it might be indicated that there are several public high-schools which essentially integrate normals and supers, others which might specialize, like Magnet schools, and plenty of private schools of many different flavors. All without naming names, locations, or 'flavors'. Let the Lore be 'generic' and the Players can define specifics.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Again I've seen no "proof" that if the Devs of this game wanted to establish anything remotely "super-school like" in the lore of the game that the players of this game couldn't STILL do whatever else they wanted in terms of their own super-school based RP. One more time this game will be a GENERIC superhero sandbox - I would never let -anything- this game's lore tried to establish ever completely supersede anything I wanted to do in my own RP. Sure the Devs might plant a "Superhero High" on some corner somewhere - who says I can't have my own "Professor X" type school for elite heroes, underground fight club that doubles as a school for super villains, or so on wherever I want?
You guys must stop thinking that if the Devs make something up you have to stick to "their vision" 100%. At best "game lore" provides a guideline for RP, it doesn't dictate it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Perhaps someone requested this as a Mogul-level building? I don't know, but it could be a thing for that reason anyway.
(insert pithy comment here)
There's always Ephesus, it's a [b][i]university[/i][/b].
(Bolded and italicized for ephesus)
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
I think you're missing the point.
We, who really love super hero settings, want to try to stick to the setting/lore as much as possible, like you, the trek fan, want to keep to it's lore as much as possible.
That's not what I said... or at least not what I meant.
If you are just going to ignore it anyway, then there is no point in establishing any concrete Lore. Some RPers will Want to stick to the Lore and that's Fine. All that means is that the Devs are best served by keeping the details loose, so they can be enjoyed by more players.
Personally, that means that there should be an educational system and the Devs should declare if it's segregated by default, or not. Details, such as whether the public K-12, HS, Community College, and University systems are unified and integrated would be useful. Cultural/Community/Population attitudes about super-persons, semi-super, and non-super persons, along with cultural divisions in attitude, could all be useful contrasting background information.
In a supers-saturated environment like we seem to be envisioning, there might be unique opportunities for work and study in super-related fields. How might the community respond to non-super persons, or any persons, who are interested in super-matters? How might industries respond to the super-marketplace?
These, I think, are all worthwhile areas for Dev development, so as to establish the environment which we Players will operate. Yet, there is a line between 'environment' and 'Story', which I think should be treated with care. Devs should, absolutely, create 'environment', but should not impose any more 'Story' on Player Characters than necessary. Let us play out that part, ourselves.
Be Well!
Fireheart
It's true I like Trek but what does that have to do with this conversation at all?
It's you who keeps missing the point here. If this was going to be a narrowly-focused game (such as a game set in the Star Trek or Star Wars universes) then I'd fully expect any "school" in those games would STRICTLY adhere to those well-established settings. But SUPERHERO settings by their very nature are very GENERIC and open-ended. Even if this game was going to be based on an pre-established comic book property (like DC or Marvel) it would STILL be far more open to doing almost anything you wanted because each of those properties have allowed all kinds of storylines for decades. But unlike a DC or Marvel game CoT will be HYPER-EXTREMELY open ended because it's completely new and has no "baggage" from previous systems. This will practically be a GURPS-type setting, or more accurately a HERO system setting. Do you really not understand just how much total RP freedom you're going to have in this game?
CoT (like CoH before it) is going to be one of most open-ended RP sandboxes there has ever been (except for maybe something like Second Life) yet you keep talking about wanting to constrain yourself to whatever "lore" the MWM folks are going to supposedly impose on you. It simply boggles my mind that you are looking for strict constructionism here when this game's main strength will be that you can play a robot, a ninja, a wizard, a superhero, a space alien, a cyborg, a vampire, a solider, an elf, a pirate or ANYTHING else you could possibly imagine.
P.S. Ironically even if you choose to strictly cling to whatever minimalist lore this game will provide it'll still let you do almost anything because the lore is going to be all over the map in terms of having stories about robots, ninjas, wizards, superheroes, space aliens, cyborgs, vampires, soldiers, elves, pirates, etc.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I never said this game's lore was to be ignored. I simply said that there's no need (or requirement) to be entirely constrained by it. At best lore provides guidelines for RP, not rules.
As I just pointed out in my last post Superhero game settings by their very nature are extremely open-ended. Even by technically following the lore of such games as strictly as possible you'd still be far more free to do almost anything you'd want RP wise than most other games and still remain "within" the details of the lore.
Superhero settings can be a RPers' dream because almost any character concept is "explainable" within their context. Frankly speaking if you're the type of RPer who loves to adhere to every iota of lore a game universe provides then Superhero games may literally -not- be the right type of game setting for you.
If the Devs shouldn't impose "story" on us then they shouldn't provide any missions or task forces. I think you've probably not fully considered your point here.
Again nothing the Devs could establish in their lore for this game would ever upset any kind of RP I wanted to do because I accept their lore as intended - it's "suggestive material" for RP, not "dictated rules" for RP.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Because, there's no reason that a superhero game can't have a narrow focus than the one you want to give it.
As for me wanting to constrain myself, no issues really. What do I want to play? A superhero :o One preferably more akin to Marvel/DC than some crap munchkin RP everyone with their own lore and then expecting everyone they RP with to not laugh at them if they go way outside the line. And yes, I laugh at any who decide to play a Jedi in a superhero game. Play something akin to a Jedi. Makes sense. Play an actual Jedi...I laugh. :p
Robots, ninjas, wizards, space aliens, cyborgs, vampires, soldiers, pirates...you realize all those are in superhero settings, right? The elves tend to be a little less, but sometimes they get in some way (like via Thor). Which leaves me to another lore question. Are the mythical gods, just metas of their time? Space aliens? Still around?
It seems, in this case, you have no idea what wanting lore means, because obviously, I have no issues to anything you just listed. :p
Also, there's the idea of the city's lore. Are we going to have crappy teleport systems that then leave me questioning how so many could be dying and left hurting in RP ALL THE FRIGGING TIME? Made worse by those who RPed that the city had those, but they just some how never seemed to work on them (which is one of the reasons I love a regenner :p)
....... /e starts eating popcorn
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Even a "narrowly focused" Superhero game will let you (or any other player) do almost anything you want to do RP-wise without either of you being more "right" than the other.
RP snobbery at its finest. The sad fact that you actually believe there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way to RP in a Superhero game makes me almost feel sad for you.
Oh yes I suspect you'll have plenty of "issues" because according to what you've said thus far if the strict "lore" of these things doesn't narrowly match your mindset of what these things should be you'll likely be upset. ;)
I simply will remain boggled by anyone who wants to self-impose strict limits on their enjoyment of a game that's literally designed (by nature of its unique setting) to allow you to do anything you want RP or character concept wise. It's like wanting to own a PC that only has a calculator app - sure you could strictly stick to that one app, but you're going to waste the potential of what the rest of the machine will let you do.
I will hope for your sake that the CoT version of ANYTHING (let's take vampires as an example) will make you happy. I will not care less because if I ever want to create a version of vampire for myself in CoT I'll define it the way I want them to be for my own character concept, not how some MWM Dev thinks they ought to work. The superhero setting is quite big enough for TWO or MORE TYPES of vampire to co-exist.
Things like this NEVER bother me because I allow myself to rationalize on a case-by-case basis how things like this might affect each of my characters. This is the freedom you have when you don't have to assume game lore works the -same- way in all situations.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
RP Snob? Yeah, like you wouldn't get bent out of shape if someone brought in a Jedi into STO. Or an X-Man. :p Which, now I might have a character idea for STO. O.O
I took my CoH characters over to STO. They even appeared in some literary challenges on the boards back in those days. A little arm-waving, obscure Delta Quadrant origins, all was good. Although I did steer clear of the speedo costumes from Risa so maybe I wasn't trying hard enough.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
I doubt I'd get "bent out of shape" (because I honestly don't care how other players I don't know choose to RP in MMOs) but the fact that STO is such a [b]relatively CLOSED setting[/b] it at least wouldn't make much "sense" for a Jedi to exist in STO. You could probably do some mental gymnastics to rationalize it in -some- way, but you'd have to stretch the handwaving pretty far to make that stick.
On the other hand a game like CoT is such a [b]relatively OPEN setting[/b] it would be comparatively simple to "explain" how a Jedi could show up. Just a quick trip through an inter-dimensional portal (which are a dime-a-dozen in superhero settings) would explain that.
Do you seriously not get the difference between the average superhero setting and most other game universes? Superhero games (practically BY DEFINITON) allow for almost ANYTHING to be very easily explainable/possible. Until you realize that fundamental difference you're going to continue to miss the point that any "lore" in a superhero game is at best a guideline, not a rule.
The irony is that even you will hypocritically "bend the rules" when it comes to your linking the lore of CoT to your character concepts. Let's use the classic example of vampires in CoT. We can assume (since we're dealing with an open superhero setting) that CoT will define in its lore some version of vampires. Now let's say for some crazy reason the Devs of CoT want their vamps to "sparkle" every color of the rainbow. I'm going to assume you would absolutely hate that because I'm pretty sure you've said as much in other posts. So what does this mean for you? Will you decide to never create your own vampire character in CoT because you (as someone who wants to strictly follow ANY lore established by the Devs) would never want to run a sparkly vamp or would you simply DISREGARD that silly detail of the lore and create your own non-sparkly vamp? My guess is even if you made that vamp it would constantly annoy you because you actively had to ignore a piece of lore you disagree with to make that work. If it were me I'd drop the sparkly vamps lore in a hot-microsecond and not think twice about it because I realize that ALL the lore of the this game is there to serve me as I wish - it's not there to confine me in the least. In a superhero setting it's trivially simple to "explain" that you could have both sparkly vamps and non-sparkly ones regardless of the Devs' precious lore.
P.S. I get that you like to laugh at random people who aren't RPing the way you want them to but why do you even care? Sure if a person I actually know and like to RP with tries to do something silly I might openly make fun of them. But if a person I don't know is doing something dumb and not bothering me with it I typically couldn't care less. Maybe you should just be minding your own business or at the very least ignore what other people are doing and pay attention to your own stuff. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Wouldn't be to hard to rationalize adding anything I wanted into Star Trek. Parallel universes and all. I could easily say some how a worm hole opened up and spewed forth Edward Cullen into the Star Trek universe.
Or even simpler, that silly Q thought it would be funny to bring in some Jedi from their galaxy far far away. Or they just traveled to the Alpha Quadrant using warp drive.
However, the idea is, one wouldn't generally want any of that in their Star Trek. So, it's no different not wanting something in your super hero setting. Which lore can at least be pointed to when people do it, when people try to RP it.
Like, I'd point out that just because a villain wore civvie clothes, does not mean Longbow was attacking civvies, it meant the game couldn't tell the player was in civvies. :p
Right, so if you can accept it's actually relatively easy to rationalize things like this in a Star Trek game then why can't you see it's practically REQUIRED for these things to exist in a superhero game based on the HERO system?
You realize this is completely 100% your [b]opinion[/b] on the matter don't you?
You've made a false equivalency that I've already shown several times doesn't exist: A superhero game (again effectively based on the HERO system) DOES NOT require/expect the same amount of internal consistency that a Star Trek game calls for. These things are apples and oranges no matter how much you think the "lore" of CoT (a brand new superhero game with brand new lore) matches that of a 50 year old franchise that has hundreds of episodes, multiple movies and dozens of books to set its lore in stone. These things (and any games based on them) almost couldn't be more different if you tried.
Lore are NOT rules and never will be. You as a player are free to pick and choose how much you want to follow the lore of any game. But I will always categorically deny the fallacy that if your RP doesn't "match" the lore you're doing it wrong. That's very narrow-minded thinking on your part for a game that will allow for (by definition) ANYTHING you can imagine. If you're seriously going to have constant hissy-fits when people around you keep ignoring your precious lore in this game you only have yourself to blame for letting yourself be "upset" by that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
You missed the point. I can easily rationalize anything. Doesn't mean it's not a stupid idea. :p
If you can easily rationalize "anything" why's any game's lore ultimately sacrosanct in any way?
Game lore is great only up to a certain point - it becomes a "stupid idea" when it gets in the way of what you want to do RP wise.
While a game's lore doesn't impede what you want to do (or even helps you) then great - follow it like a lemming off a cliff.
I actually try to do that most of the time despite what you probably assume of me.
But when it does get in the way (which it almost always does to [b][i]some[/i][/b] degree) then chuck the bits that fail you like a hot potato.
I simply have no problem avoiding/modifying/replacing lore that DOESN'T help me.
It fascinates me when people imply they want to strictly follow a game's lore COMPLETELY - even the bits that are silly.
It IS a "stupid idea" when you let a game's lore "upset" you in any way.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Which makes this whole argument and the recriminations involved a waste of energy. We'd be better off sharing and building ideas for what is wanted and how how it could work.
I see a suggestion for school campuses.
I see suggestions for Story, 'law' and 'customs' for background and lore, relating to those schools.
I see suggestions for ignoring any parts of 'established' lore (however it is established) which conflicts with player/character storytelling.
I see suggestions that any such variation should be discouraged.
I've been suggesting that such background lore ought to be flexible, to allow many different expressions to flourish.
What about this thought? We are aware that City of Titans is to be set in a 'Boston-like' area of an alternate world. Boston, Massachusetts, USA is quite an old locale that grew up organically over time. No Doubt it has/had Many schools of various sorts. Perhaps people interested in school settings could research these schools and make reports/suggestions about type/look/location for the Devs to consider adding to the city?
Be Well!
Fireheart
You know, we could go by your idea, but I find it just doesn't work.
Let's take for example a character concept I had where the character was really just the manifestation of someone in the real world, trapped in their own mental world (coma or very mentally autistic) and everyone around them was really just a figment of the characters imagination.
You know how many complaints I got for that simple concept? Lots! Lots! Almost everyone hated it and when I say almost everyone, I really don't recall anyone telling me they like it and only everyone I ran into saying they hated it. :p Didn't fit lore. Felt it ruined their characters.
The exception that proves the rule...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It was an awesome concept!
Not sure it didn't fit lore, as it really didn't change lore, only said it was all in the mind of the character. Still no idea how it ruined any characters. All hated it still.
They probably hated it because the only way others could RP with you was to let you tell them that their character were not real and that everything revolved around your character. Essentially you made everyone else a supporting character with you as the literal center of attention (without you there is no world in which they exist).
Simply put, your background took ownership of every other character.
I'm not sure "awesome" is the word I'd use. You might have stumbled upon one of the most impossible character concepts to try in -any- RPG much less a MMO. What you're describing would be exceedingly difficult to try even with a table-top RPG surrounded by a bunch of friends physically sitting with you. Solipsism for the lose...
Sure you might be able to argue your concept didn't run counter to the game's lore. But if a concept is genuinely UNPLAYABLE on almost any level that's absolutely NO PROOF that running any character concept that doesn't strictly stick with lore is impossible or stupid in any way. Yours is like trying to say that you've proven people can't fly to the moon because you tried to do it in a half-filled Jacuzzi.
People didn't hate your RP idea because you "dared" to play against the lore of the game. They hated your idea because it was frankly a dumb idea given the logistics of the way people around you could interact with you. Can you really not defend your position in this thread with something better than this? Even DC and Marvel have hundreds of mutually cloned-characters who technically started in one universe but were essentially "borrowed and reworked" enough to be used (legitimately or otherwise) in the other. The very concept of the [b]"CROSSOVER"[/b] is what superhero settings are famous for.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Actually it's quite easy. If everything's a dream. It didn't mean you controlled the others. Do you control everything in a dream? No. So even if the character learns they're in a dream, and let's say they do begin to lucid dream, they tend to control themselves, they still don't always control the others around them in the dream.
Also, I did explain it. You yourself said you wanted people to RP and understand things certain ways in Star Trek and Star Wars, I would want the same thing in a superhero mmo. IE...I wouldn't want Star Wars in my Superhero setting. So no, "I'm a Jedi" I wouldn't want Vampire: the Masquerade in my superhero setting, as really neither works together, especially when people can't even play the VtM aspect right (seriously, they hate the sun, fire kills, and no, you're not a Methuselah).
You can make it flexible while still putting in rules. Putting in a super powered high school for instance, automatically says "Oh hey, there's so many metas running around, they have enough for their own school." There's thousands upon thousands of metas running around in one city. That's right, in this city, there's thousands of Supermans, Wonder Womans, Green Laterns, Batmans, Flashes, Cyborgs, Green Arrows...basically enough heroes in the city to have 50 of them standing on a rooftop at any one time and enough that they need a traffic control specialist just for them.
Maybe you could apply some real world logic to the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_school][b]super school[/b][/url]. I mean even the most obvious comic book version of the super school, Xavier's school, is effectively a boarding school that brings student from all over North America, in some cases the world. In CoT, parents from all over the world, the universe or even alternate dimensions could send their kids to this super school simply because it's one of the very few in existence.
And even though the Xavier Institute exists in the marvel universe there are others. Fantastic Four and Avengers both have super 'schools' (Avengers have one in North America and Europe). Emma Frost ran one (there were actually allusions to more than one) and the rivalry was a major plot point for a long time in the X-Man comics. If you want to make your super guild a super school you can without going against the games lore.
Which is what I'm saying the player made super groups would be. You know there's bound to be some.
The question really is, how much lore do they put in. With how Lothic talks, I wonder why even have any lore at all. If the idea is to just disregard everything, then all we really need is a city with faceless enemies and we can make the rest up from there.
Well no. Lothic has not been advocating to disregard everything lore related. Lothic has been trying to explain that she expects CoT to be a generic super hero setting in order to allow players as much freedom as possible while still giving them ideas they can build on. Everything I said about the boarding school concept was said before in this thread, both by Lothic and others, in an effort to get you to see that lore is only restrictive when you make it so.
The game could have a specific lore about vampires but that lore will not discount the possibility of player created lore. The game could have a super school but it won't mean players couldn't RP their own. The game should be open enough that if someone wants to play a Jedi or Starfleet Officer they can. I expect that even homage characters from other works of fiction or from the real world could be created as long as they were not direct copies. Friends and myself intend to create a silly guild based around a concept of ex-presidents as alien warriors (Space Lincoln and his Cosmic Cabinet).
I agree with you to an extent that just lifting one character concept from a specific source and dropping it into another isn't something I would RP with. But my reasoning isn't that it doesn't fit the lore, it's that it is lazy. Someone saying they are a transported Jedi lacks creativity. But if a player creates someone with superpowers that mimics Jedi powers and has their character's delusions make themselves believe they are a Jedi then they have shown more creativity. But that's just my opinion. The guy who drags and drops a Jedi or Klingon into CoT may think their background is fantastic and to them it is. Much like you thinking your dream world concept is awesome and me thinking it is a played out and restrictive concept.
What you have to understand is that your idea of appropriate RP material is only relevant to you. It's an individual opinion and it should stay that way. I doubt many would be interested in the perverse and politically incorrect RP'ing we intend to engage in with our cosmic cabinet and I fully intend to ignore every ounce of lore the game has for this guild. But another character may be fully entangled in the games lore and still another might treat the lore like Dim Sum and pick and choose what I want to apply.
To summarize, Lothic is not saying the games lore is irrelevant, she is saying it is not set in stone. The devs will give us a lore filled playground and it is up to us how we want to use the equipment.
That still leads to this...
If you think pick and choose is the way to go and others think don't put that in, leave it to the super groups. Then why put it in? May as well leave it out of the lore.
Let's be realistic here, we aren't like to see a Red Skull like villain in CoT as I'm pretty sure CoT won't show a swastika. So we won't get to kill nazi's in the game, when who wouldn't love to take down evil WW2 nazi groups that survived to the modern days, like the Red Skull?
I think part of the problem is the game isn't likely to be anything close to a pure sandbox design. If it was then you would have built in tools and open spaces to add content on the fly. Consider SWG as an example where you had tons of readymade tools to create a story right in the middle of the game. It lended itself to more seamless RP. Closer to RPG or LARPing in the real world where the storyteller could respond in real time to player decisions. CoT will probably have nothing like that and neither did CoH. Even the player content was separated by an instance in CoH and it there were no "live" tools.
If you want to ask for more RP tools for players then that might be worth working toward. As it might offer you more control over your experience and more flexibility to work within or without game lore. I personally wouldn't mind RP if it had a little more teeth to it than emotes and local chat.
I doubt this would be a priority for development though. Can anyone think of helpful alternatives that could be easily implemented to offer more dynamic interaction? Perhaps instanced space a player/storyteller could use to create content and then interact with players in real time?
Well comic books usually have someone that is a stand in for Nazi's, marvel has hydra, DC comics has HIVE, and CoX had the 5th column.... I think our stand in is the vrill, which are like the Nazi's plus every conspiracy theory on earth.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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You seem to be the only person I can find in all of the internet who thinks a superhero game should not include a superhero school specifically because it will interfere with role playing a superhero school guild. I looked but can't find anyone else who actually comes close to thinking that way. There may be some out there but I doubt your position on this is held by a majority.
So keep that in mind, because your argument is basically 'I don't like this because...'. The opposite of that is 'I do like this because...', so using number of people who agree with you isn't a good idea when your side is smaller.
About your odd Nazi comparison, I am almost positive there will be some form WWII Axis representation in CoT just as there was in CO, CoH and pretty much every other superhero media ever.
It was more than interfering with the RPing of one. *eye roll*
It's that to do something that says in the lore that there is that there is enough supers in the world to have 50 on top of every building waiting for a crime to happen, maybe there's to many supers in the world :p
Also, I didn't say representation, I said actual, like in Wolfenstien when you would kill nazis.
Again, it only interferes if you let it.
This is you making up something and arguing against it.
There are 7.5 billion people in the world. Every year we get around 80 million new people. Looking at birth averages you can find that people born with rare conditions like oculocutaneous albinism is .0025%, roughly 1 in 40,000 people. Even if you want to be very conservative and say only .000125% of new people in the CoT world have powers thats still 100 new people a year getting powers, roughly 1 in 800,000 which borders on the average rate of Progeria (one of the rarest birth conditions) . This doesn't even touch on those kids who might enroll in such a school without powers in order to learn how to be a non-powered hero or those who use extreme intelligence to make the tools heroes might use in the field.
Since most specialized boarding schools tend to have populations under 200 students and those students can have as much as 6 years difference in age (on average) that means there would be as many as 600 people who would be eligible to enroll in those schools.
That means the world could easily house more than one super hero school so your argument of it interfering with your role playing is just made up.
Put another way, you're unable to make the existence of a game designed super school work in your own RP and so do not want anyone else the chance to do so.
Ok, let me get this straight. You want this game to follow a comic book lore consistency and specifically site Marvel and DC as an example of this. Now you say that despite the fact that the universes you want to emulate use representations of Nazis it's not good enough.
Not exactly a compelling argument.
You know they had nazi's in comics when they started right? o.O Captain America punched out Hitler and everything.
We know what they are, why hide it?
Because we're supposed to be kinder, gentler people, now.
*snort!*
Be Well!
Fireheart
this entire thread is a circus fire..... and I'm the clown...
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Not my circus; not my monkeys.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
That's a good point... ONWARDS OISHIMA!!! *rides out of the thread on a steampunk tiger that shoots bees out of it's mouth*
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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You know why they originally used Nazi's in comics right? It was a propaganda tool. In order for the comic book companies to get deals on paper during the war they portrayed Japanese, Italians and Germans as grotesque caricatures. The infamous Captain America punching Hitler issue was actually a commission bit of propaganda.
After the war comic book companies used nazis for some time because they were an established draw. When the cold war with Russia came into full swing the comics followed suit and nazis fell away.
When comics again started to look at the nazis the world had changed. Comics now had international distribution including Germany (now an ally). Germany, very sensitive and still struggling with nazi sympathy in their country, had banned any reference to the nazi party. At first comics would issue an american version full of the direct nazi reference and one which blocked out those references for international distribution. Quickly they saw the problems with this, errors caused issues being confiscated, fines and the like. So they decided to create representations of nazis to avoid these issues.
For about 50 years nazi representation in comics has been through the use of groups like Hydra. Even the Red Skull denounced the third Reich as a relic of the past. Since the first use of nazis in comics was around 1940 and stopped before the 50's (with a short resurgence in the 60's) we are looking at around 10-12 years where comics directly reference nazis. Comparing the 50+ years of comics not using direct reference to when (and why) they did means your high horse is sinking in the mud.
It's not hiding it. It's being true to the genre in which nazis have been portrayed through a representation. Even now, when comics are less restricted by international distribution, enemy groups with nazi ideals/origins are still distanced from WWII. It's an enduring comic book trope.
That's why.
Now, do you have anything more to say on the topic of the thread?
[img]http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/2308751/84178920.gif[/img]
ARRRRTTTTAAAAXXXXXXXXXXX
I didn't even go into the fact that the first appearance of Nazis in a 1939 issue of Marvel Mystery Comics used a representation of the swastika and not the actual symbol. Or how the comic book code had an influence on the depiction of WWII axis powers.
Maybe, but Captain America punching Hitler has the swastika on his arm.