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/

Wild Talents is fun. It certainly embraces the wild part of the title.

RE: System for OC Game. Heads up, this is kind of stream of consciousness, so it’s long and rambly. Sorry in advance.

I’ve thought about running an OC game for a long time. I actually ran one ages ago called Sovereign City, back in the Mutants and Masterminds 1E days. Superhero MUs have been my main source of RP for most of my MUing life (since the mid-90s), and most of that time was on blended-universe games. For whatever reason, those just don’t do it for me anymore. I get why they exist and why they’re popular. I just can’t bring myself to play on them these days.

So I keep coming back to the idea of running the game I want to play. The problem is, I’m not sure anyone else would want to play it. Modern superhero comics don’t really grab me either, so if I ran a straight canon game, the canon would basically be the 1990s bumped up to modern day, with some tools bolted on to fold in characters who’ve shown up since. And my worry is that would appeal to exactly one person: me.

The natural fix is an OC game where players can run pastiches of canon characters or build their own. But then I start thinking about all the problems that come with that, and the big one is: what system do you even use?

I firmly believe the bar to entry for any game should be as low as possible. That alone rules out most of the RPGs I actually like (Champions and Heroes Unlimited are two favorites). I’m also not sold on narrative traits for an OC game. You either get the player who doesn’t explain nearly enough, or the one who explains way too much, and somehow both lead to the same problem: wildly different ideas of what that write-up actually means in play. That kind of system works fine for FC games, where you can glance at a character and go, “Oh, I know what they can do.” But on an OC-only game, I think it’d be a nightmare. I picture staff spending more time refereeing arguments over whether a character can do this, that, or the other thing than actually running scenes.

So, long story short: if I were starting an OC game today, what system would I use? Two ideas:

A hack of Aberrant 2nd Edition. I’m a big fan of Aberrant 2E. Well, parts of it. I’d gut the whole nova tech section, which I find basically unplayable. But strip it down to the core system and powers and it’s a pretty slick setup.

A hack of Legends in the Mist. This is my current favorite RPG. For anyone who doesn’t know it, it’s an evolution of City of Mist, which itself grew out of PbtA. You get four themes, each with a “might” scale (I’d probably use 5 or 6 for supers). Each theme has 4 Power Tags and a Weakness. That’s it. It’s very narrative, very flexible, and the bar to entry would be nice and low.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I love the idea of an OC game. I just keep getting hung up on actually pulling it off.

@Raistlin One of them is. They’re working on it behind the scenes.

There is no tea. It was just a weird and unfortunate coincidence.

It’s kinda funny, I was just talking to someone who was thinking of doing a Chronicles of Darkness game using just the CoD core rules and directly related sourcebooks. The focus would be on mortals, and psychics, and any other supernatural things they’d allow would use Dread Powers or something.

I thought it was a neat idea. Gives people a recognizable system but still gives it a fresh coat of paint.

I play every day. It’s all thanks to Ares. If it wasn’t for the web portal and async scenes, I’d likely have been forced to leave the hobby.

Nowadays, for games I create, I use web-based only. I shy more and more away from the traditional MU shell and more toward web-based for all my RP needs.

Absolutely! I love having my characters struggle and overcome. Social, physical, romantic, whatever. I love drama. IC drama that is. I avoid OOC drama.

Buck Rogers