My cat, Veronica Mars, passed away Monday night. She was my special little girl for 17 years. My wife and I are devastated. There are no words to express how much we’re going to miss her.

Not really anything about an actual game. I’ve just been laid up dealing with some health issues, and, for some reason, I find fighting with code relaxing. While I’ve been recovering, I wanted to see if I could do a web-based character generation and sheet for the Marvel Multiverse RPG in Ares. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s not 100% done but it’s in the final stretch, I think.

Not sure what, if anything, I’ll do with it. Just wanted to see if I could.

This was one of the toughest coding projects I’ve ever done. It’s not entirely finished, but it’s done to the point I can make characters and whatnot. I’ve tested it with a few archetypes, and it all seems to be working as it should. So far, anyway.

I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of M&M, but 4th Edition seems to fix some of the issues I had with 3E. It did give me some interesting code challenges, but I got there. I’m pretty proud of it, so I thought I’d share it here. For those who might appreciate it. LOL

It seems I code more than I RP anywhere, which makes me sad, BUT my group challenged me to see if I could do the Fallout 2D20 RPG for Ares. I think it came out pretty good. Sharing here because no one else I know would be interested or care. LOL

@Faraday For me, it combines aspects of several mediums into one. Specifically, I’m referring to Ares though most of this applies to other MUSH/X platforms.

1. A centralized, persistent world where characters and RP are organized in one place, making it easy to find people and opportunities.

2. Ways to create both public and private scenes that can later be easily shared and logged - keeping track of all the collaborative storytelling.

3. Character profile pages with lots of character information including demographics, backgrounds, sheets, and galleries - all connected to the game world.

4. Integrated dice rolls for games that use RPG systems, without breaking the flow.

5. Easy integration with Discord for OOC communication while keeping IC stuff in the MUSH.

6. Being able to save RP logs to build world and character history.

Those are the big reasons why I prefer MU*s to other forms of online RP. I’ve tried forum RP and discord RP extensively and it just doesn’t hit the same for me. There’s something special about logging into a persistent world where everything you need for good roleplay exists in one connected space.

RE: Hidden Sheets

I’ve never done it, but I don’t think it’d be that hard to make the character sheet tab on the Ares web portal visible only to the character and staff.

That said, I’m also a fan of transparency with character stats. Too many bad experiences with the “OOC Masquerade” from WoD games.

Looking for feedback on a potential game.

2024 was rough for me, and I’m aiming to make 2025 better by getting back into the MU gaming scene as a GM. While reviewing potential themes, I’ve noticed some of my favorites (particularly Star Trek) might have limited player appeal.

I’ve been considering combining modern Gothic horror with the Storypath System. Think World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness style gameplay, but without the associated complexities. It would offer a familiar theme with a fresh mechanical approach.

I’m planning to host this on Ares since traditional MU environments don’t fit my schedule anymore - can’t commit to those lengthy single-session RPs these days. The good news is I’ve already implemented character generation through the web portal. The core mechanics are in place; we just need to develop specific Edges and powers.

One of Storypath’s strengths is its flexibility. Converting WoD/CoD abilities should be straightforward, and we could easily create custom powers too. This would give players extensive character creation options.

The setting and some theme elements are still in development. I’m mainly wondering if this concept would interest people? All the Storypath System information would be readily available on the wiki.

Would love to hear your thoughts or suggestions!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Whew. This almost broke me, but I got there. Being able to create a Battlesuit(powers, including arrays, nested inside a device container).

I often struggle on “older” games because there just aren’t many ways for new players to find RP with the established crowd. Cliques have formed, RP circles have popped up, storylines are already rolling…and I find myself stuck trying to break in. I’ll make a character, maybe do one or two random “coffee shop scenes,” and then just stop logging in because nothing clicks.

I really dig games that give newbies a natural in with older, more established characters. Star Trek works great (getting assigned to a ship, base, or Starfleet Academy), school-based games too (Hero High, Supernatural University, etc.), and super-hero games (with their teams or those built-in relationships between FCs we can lean on).

I obviously don’t speak for all new players, but I don’t think I’m some special snowflake here. I bet tons of new players hit these same walls. Maybe this is why so many MUSHes fizzle out after a few months - they don’t solve the “new player integration” problem.

AI detectors make me twitch because they don’t actually detect AI. They can’t. What they really do is look for patterns in the writing, like how smooth and predictable it is. Clean sentence structure and sensible word choices. Things like that. Ironically, the better your writing is, the more likely a detector is to call it AI.

My honest suggestion is this: if you think someone is using AI in their poses and you don’t like it, treat it the same way you would any other RP issue. If you don’t enjoy their writing for whatever reason, stop RPing with them. You’re not obligated to RP with anyone.

Whew. This almost broke me, but I got there. Being able to create a Battlesuit(powers, including arrays, nested inside a device container).

This was one of the toughest coding projects I’ve ever done. It’s not entirely finished, but it’s done to the point I can make characters and whatnot. I’ve tested it with a few archetypes, and it all seems to be working as it should. So far, anyway.

I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of M&M, but 4th Edition seems to fix some of the issues I had with 3E. It did give me some interesting code challenges, but I got there. I’m pretty proud of it, so I thought I’d share it here. For those who might appreciate it. LOL

Just a coder rant being put here because I have nowhere else to do it. LOL

Kind of related to this, I wanted to see if I could create a web-based character generation system based on the upcoming Mutants & Masterminds 4th Edition, mostly just for fun. When you look at a character sheet, everything seems manageable. You think, “Yeah, I should be able to do this.”

Then you get hit with all the little niggly things.

Specializations and focuses for skills took me hours to sort out. I’ve been working on powers and their modifiers for going on two days now. Some are flat, which is easy. Some are ranked, which is also easy. Some are flat in certain situations but ranked in others. Some are extras in some cases and flaws in others. Some depend on the overall cost of the power and apply after all the other modifiers.

Several times I’ve sat back, pinched the bridge of my nose, and thought, “If I really wanted to do this, it would be easier just to use PDF sheets.” But then I think about how cool it would be to have this as an actual working system, so I press on.

I’m taking a break now after sorting out what I hope are most of the various modifiers. When, or if, I come back to it, I need to go through each power individually and deal with the specific modifiers that only apply to them.

Then I need to figure out how to do arrays…

RE: Hidden Sheets

I’ve never done it, but I don’t think it’d be that hard to make the character sheet tab on the Ares web portal visible only to the character and staff.

That said, I’m also a fan of transparency with character stats. Too many bad experiences with the “OOC Masquerade” from WoD games.

@MisterBoring Yeah, I think staff being able to lock the PDFs down would be a must. I think that also adds to the consideration, having to submit the PDF to staff in some way(such as email). It’s an added step that is more complicated than just creating a character via the web portal.

The Freeform vs. Systems thread got me thinking about a related question: coded systems versus PDF sheets.

I’m coming at this as someone who plays exclusively on Ares games. I need the web portal and scene system because they fit my schedule, so this question is aimed specifically at Ares-style games.

How important is coded or web-based character generation to you? Would you avoid a game if it used PDF character sheets instead of a coded chargen/web-based character creation system?

I’ve often thought about doing an OC superhero game using either Champions or Mutants & Masterminds, but I’m not sure the effort required to code a full web-based character creation system would be worth it. That made me consider using PDF sheets instead, though I worried people might not be into that.

So I’m curious: would PDF sheets be a dealbreaker for you, or would it not really matter as long as the game itself was solid?

@Pyrephox I highly recommend Legend in the Mist. It’s light- to medium-weight and very narrative. My group now uses it almost exclusively, regardless of genre. We’ve used it for fantasy (both horror and more traditional), sci-fi (Star Wars and Transformers), and as a replacement for WoD. The best thing about it is that most of these “hacks” require little to no work. The most we did was add more “might” scales for Transformers to represent the huge difference between humans and robots.

I guess I’m the oddball, because I almost think it works best the other way around. I don’t really care for freeform in superhero games, but I think it can work well in other genres. I know freeform is the standard for superhero games, and has been for 30+ years, but given the huge power disparities in those games, I’ve never been a massive fan of it.

I think some of that can be mitigated with a rating or benchmark system, but I’m not a big fan of straight-up narrative traits.

I do think it could work better in lower-powered games, though, like Star Wars. Even then, I’d still want some kind of rating system, even if it’s narrative in nature(novice, expert, professional, that sort of thing).

I’m also an RPG system nerd. To the point where I’ve coded up numerous web-based systems for Ares for no other reason than to see if I could do it. I like RPG systems because character sheets give you a ton of information about a character at a glance. They also provide a neutral way to arbitrate conflicts and similar situations.

I also think mechanical systems give a game a useful tool for keeping things “even,” or as close to even as these things can get.

@catzilla Ah. Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s totally doable. I think for Star Wars, it might even be beneficial, since most RPG/mechanical systems struggle to balance force users and non-force users.

@catzilla There’s a Star Wars game out now that uses traits. I don’t play there but not because of the system they use. I think it could work very well. You can check them out at https://swdarktimes.com/