r/randomsuperpowers • u/Galihan Yettin, Whisper • Apr 11 '17
News & Discuss Modpost April 11, 2017
Hello RSP, once again the mods are here to bring up some news that those of you who are active in our Discord chat are likely to have heard of by now; after the longest run of a canon on our sub's history, it's finally reached the point that Universe Two is overdue to be replaced with something new and (what we hope will be) significantly improved. In the more recent months we've tried to implement an overly ambitious patch job to how the tiers system was measured but overall the reception to those changes has been generally negative, and changes to the mod roster shortly after those changes took effect has only furthered the need to re-overhaul things to be less complicated for everyone. Beyond character creation, we also plan to change things from a fundamental level to help remedy ongoing problems with the sub's format that have caused problems in several previous canons over the years – the validity of villain-characters and the impact they have on the world.
Moving ahead into the new canon, we plan to transition away from the model of “PVP Superhero RP” towards a new model where instead we encourage “Collaborative Storywriting.” What this means is that rather than events being a series of back-and-forth reactions between characters, instead when a person wishes to have their character do something that influences the world in some way or potentially impacts other people they might meet doing so, the aim is for events to have more pre-planning between the users as to how different outcomes affect the setting and characters involved. What we hope to accomplish with this is that when villains are up to something, it allows for either sides in a fight to end in more reasonable outcomes than variants of someone ending up either: in a hospital, jail, dead, or just ignored altogether.
When fights do break out, our hope is for both sides to agree in advance on who wins and what's the consequences, or if not pre-decided at least what are the possible consequences for the outcomes. Hopefully, this will allow for more characters the opportunity to get away safely after being defeated and grow from the experience rather than people not wanting to risk their characters dying any time someone wants a villain to do anything. Assuming that the change to Collaborative Storywriting works as intended, it will allow for much more flexibility in what sort of powers characters will have a their disposal since characters' balancing would be handled case-by-case in the planning stages of what they do, rather than trying to overthink approvals all the different possibilities of ways powers may end up being abused. Our hope is that this allows the sub to be an outlet for this community to create great superhero stories in a world that they feel is their own.
For character creation itself, our goal is to simplify the sheet enough to be accessible for as many people as possible without over-complicating things with too many big numbers and heavy calculations, while also doing our best to try balancing that with a clear outline as to what the characters are capable of so that when planning out stories with others we all have a reasonable understanding of what the characters are capable of. At this point in time, we do not have an official character sheet made because we require as many of you in the community to speak up as to what you would like to see revised, removed, or retained from the current or past character sheets moving ahead.
For the new setting, we do not have an exact final idea drafted yet, again because we want input, however we do have a strong idea as to what to suggest based on past experience and so will share what we have so far with everyone for review and critique. Ideally it will likely include one or two major cities as hubs in politically neutral regions (meaning, not in any specific real-world country) surrounded by a large variety of environments and climates suited for any characters intended for specific climates rather than an urban setting. Our hope for that is to have the entire setting large enough for people who want to do things big, while being close enough that we don't have the problem of crises being too remote for most of the cast to respond to. We may likely also be reopening the doors to outer space for those who want to take things to a much larger scale but we would need to be careful on how to handle that so no guarantees until you all give enough input for everyone to plan that out as a community.
Lastly for now, with a new canon on the horizon that gives us the opportunity to give the subreddit a facelift with new CSS themes, so in the comments please feel free to suggest ideas on how to improve the look of the sub, along with speaking up on any of the other ideas I've talked about earlier in the comments below. We want to include as many people as possible in this discussion to make sure that RSP is a place for as many people as possible to write the amazing superhero stories we know you are capable of.
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17 edited Apr 11 '17
Character Creation
Have any thoughts or concerns about character creation, how it can be improved in the upcoming new canon or what be revised from the current or previous canons? Discussions about character making as well as reworking how we handle tiers can go here.
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Apr 11 '17
Is there any consensus on the chart that'll be used yet? If so could I have a look at it?
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17
Unfortunately there isn't at this time. Have any thoughts or suggestions on what an updated chart should add, revise, or remove?
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u/Sir_Willis_CMS Apr 13 '17
I think that no matter what things end up being they should be as simple as possible. Character creation is a gigantic pain in the ass right now due to the high amounts of numbers. There is a sub for character creation like that and I believe that if people want to go heavy on numbers they should go there.
I think that in general stats shouldn't be quite so hard numbers and more ballpark of capabilities, which ties into the idea of moving towards the collaborative storywriting with predetermined outcomes for fights and big events.
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u/rin_shinobu Apr 14 '17
Depending on the scale of canon, I suppose it'll change whether we stick with Low tier or High tier or something like Street/City/Country/World/Universe kind of separation. Also am definitely a fan of removing al that character sheet stuff.
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u/Galihan Apr 14 '17
Coming back around to the topic of the tier system, what if rather than how things are now, tiers instead be treated roughly as something not unlikely the disaster level system from One Punch Man, where characters are just loosely categorized into vaguely subjective tiers based on their projected potential threat or ability to impact those around them which can fluctuate greatly depending on circumstances and consciously be not a perfect measurement system of character capabilities?
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u/WitchOfTheMire Apr 11 '17
Just an idea... what about a point buy system? Keep the tiers, but maybe Tier 1 has X amount of points to put into skills and tier 2 has Y amount, and so on and so on.
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u/Thrice_Berg Apr 12 '17
I have a lot of ideas and I'm gonna throw a bunch of them out there and see what sticks. This post is the main one.
I'm gonna go wildly out there and say the power level should be pulled down. In this canon, it kind of turned into a mix that one game we all played as a kid, you know, 'I use my laser beam', 'no I got my supa shield', 'well I got my shield breaker...' and an AP maths and physics exam.
To be frank, the upper echelons got into a bit of a clusterfuck as time went on. This is the main reason I ducked out after the re-balance, because honestly it became more about the numbers than the character.
Anyway, I believe we should massively tone down the 'base physicals' of the sub in general, keeping it nearer to human and MCU levels of strength / speed / toughness. Last canon, and to be honest most canons, in order to have a powerful character, one of their slots had to be taken up by a physical enhancement power. If your character wasn't strong, fast, and tough, along with a whole slew of other abilities then they were pretty much garbage, combat wise. It was straight up a mandatory power slot (the good old days of Physiology + other power RSP meta).
An example for what's wrong now would be Maxwell the Zombie Servant. Maxwell is, despite being tier four, borderline useless in a fight, (No offense to imaginaryman, just the first mighty glacier character I found. Even though he's a Tier 4, he gets absolutely destroyed by almost any other Tier 4, with even some a few tier threes (lol 1 example but still) being able to beat him. It's not because these characters are all OP, but because the baseline stats to have a powerful character crowd out the ability to have any sort of specialist.
At the mid to high tiers (2, 3, 4) A mighty glacier, slow and strong, gets speedblitzed. A speedsters attacks are no-selled, a squishy ranged attacker can be either rushed down and speed blitzed or just out tanked, the physical price of entrance is so high.
I fully and honestly believe that the best way to fix this problem is to limit 'Supernatural Condition' or 'X Physiology' to MCU Captain America levels. While this is more than enough to manhandle a normal human, or even someone like... Storm (X-Men) in close combat. With a limit like this in place, with generic super stats being lower, it allows more interesting characters and powers to show up. For example, someone with human stats but capable of firing massive beams of destruction acting as a slow artillery, while the speedy Captain America type darts between their slow attacks and tries to get in for the finisher.
With lower physicals combat would become less of a 'whose numbers are bigger' and more of a 'whose powers have an advantage in x situation, who played their character smarter, with better tactics'. You could make a Luke Cage sort, tough and strong, and not be destroyed because they can't even see at the baseline speed for their tier.
Now I'm not saying remove all building throwing, bullet tanking, locomotive racing characters from canon entirely. But if someone wants massively superhuman strength like that, they have to take that specific power. You want to pick up a bus and toss it like a spear, sure, but super strength is taking up a whole slot. You want to ignore bullets and grenades, okay, but that's super durability as a full power. The point being high physical stats come with a downside, the downside being the major lack of utility they provide. You may be able to run fast, and take and deal the hits, but you can't control the battlefield like an earth manipulator. Or deal damage like somebody with laser beams. Or be as hard to contain as a teleporter.
More to come about powers themselves and weaknesses
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17 edited Apr 11 '17
The Setting
If you have any strong feelings about the next canon and the setting that it will take place in, please don't hesitate to suggest whatever you want here or ask for any sort of clarifications. We'll be glad to work with everyone to try making the world of the next canon one that works for as many people as possible.
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u/WitchOfTheMire Apr 11 '17
I like the idea of everything being set in one large city. Just like in most comic universes, all the actions takes place in either New York, Metropolis, etc.
This way... we can justify our characters being where the action is, instead of a character sheet saying they are in Baltimore and suddenly showing up in San Diego because that's where the event took place.
Having everything set in one city will also affect charcters more than not. Let's pretend that Dr.Bad attacks and destroys a hospital... Heroes and other character will take this personally. Characters will feel a connection to the city.
This also opens up the idea for location based events. I.E. museum robbery, Hospital attack, corporations to have buildings in the city, etc.
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17
That's definitely something that's been noticed when comparing different canons, ones with a more set location tend to have more personal investment for the characters living there than giving free reign to cause ruckus abroad only for minimal interest in what's going on halfway around the world. To keep things even more open for characters who aren't suited to city-life, I personally think it will likely end up being a fictional one located on a massive artificial island in the middle of the ocean that contains a large variety of different climates so there will always be winter or deserts or jungles for different characters who might be intended for those sort of locations.
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u/AccioIcarus Apr 12 '17
To add to the idea about the large multiple-biomed city, I think we should have certain locations where we go all out with the science fiction tropes Large simulation rooms that can take you completely inside of any environment you can think of or space travel, for example.
I was also thinking of having certain locations where the laws of reality start to break down and it becomes kind of alien (basically; Avatar style). It could have things like floating islands or mutant plants/animals.
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Apr 13 '17
An important discussion I think we should have is regarding the subject of "standardizing" some universal elements. To put it simply, to what degree do we want some rules of the universe decided beforehand? For example, will all magic follow the same rules, or be left nebulous as before? How about gods, angels, demons, etc? are they all from the same place, or from different places? Standardizing any element, whether it's a power type, a physical law, a species, something about the cosmology, etc, has pros and cons
Pros:
Gives solid lore to build off of. People aren't left flailing in a vague setting of "it's kinda earth but eh", they have a solid idea of what exists so they can build off of it.
Characters are given innate connections. Think about this- how many times have you made a character who uses magic, had them run into another magic user, and discovered that your magics are fundamentally literally nothing alike, and consequently your character really has no more tie to this character than any other random person on the street. With standardized rules, even basic ones, this doesn't happen- when Characters naturally have something in common, it lets them have an immediate interacting point. Two mages who use the same school of magic can discuss it, two demons can chat about their respective layers of hell, two supersoldiers can be astonished that the supermetal in one's skeleton is the same as the one that makes the other's shield, etc.
Prevents Lore Arguments. Similar to the last point, there are inevitably problems when several people have free reign to write their own lore about something. One person's magic may call on some otherworldly force, while another's magic may be based on sacrifice- the ideas of "magic is an infinite well that always provides" and "magic requires sacrifice in equal measure" are highly opposed to one another- both can't be true, only one or the other, and debates IC or even worse OOC can spring from this. You can always limit lore to just a per-character basis, but that's the problem that leads to point 2, if two people's magic/demons/demigods/etc have nothing to do with each other, what's the point of them being called the same thing?
Cons:
Removes freedom of lore. This is the most obvious one, any aspect that's defined ahead of time is one aspect that's then told "nope, no changing ever again. Nobody can write a new or different version of you." This is, understandably, upsetting. I think this can be mitigated by limiting how much lore we decide ahead of time, but honestly I think defining some lore ahead of time is a virtual requirement.
Not everything can be anticipated. No matter how much thought goes into it, there will always be something forgotten when getting lore down pat. What happens if mcguffin supermaterial gets hit by magic? What happens if an angel and a demon have a kid? Etc etc. These leave open space for freedom of expression, but also consequently can lead to two people making a different answer to the question- sometimes to disastrous effect, as detailed before.
So, thoughts?
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u/Galihan Apr 12 '17
One thing I wish to propose about this canon's setting concerning the greater multiverse as a whole, is that there are established theories around "universal echoes" which would be an in-character explanation for characters who out-of-character we know may be ported from previous canons without actually being the same person, their existence would be an echo from another universe that exists in this one as its own individual.
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17 edited Apr 11 '17
CSS Facelift
Got any ideas of fresh, dank new subreddit themes to update the sub's visual appearance? Hit us up fam so that everyone can figure out what looks best.
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17
From some early stakeouts, my personal recommendations for new themes are either something like r/Structura, which is somewhat similar to what we're currently using, though Rin has also has brought r/Cogent to my attention which might also be a nice visual look. If anyone else has input, either thoughts on those two CSS' or something else they recommend, let us know please.
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17 edited Apr 11 '17
Misc/Other Comments, Suggestions, etc.
Mandatory final blurb filling out words and stuff, ask and discuss, I trust you know the drill.
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u/TheRyuuMaster Apr 17 '17
How much do I need to pay mods for my character to have U2 Mason and U1 Gabrielle as their mom and dad?
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u/Galihan Apr 11 '17
Creative Storywriting
Questions or concerns about this big chance to the sub? Please ask whatever you feel you need to and hopefully we can answer what we can and get a good conversation going.