Re: X-Men, Marvel, DC, Original Super Hero RP

[Lara]

I definitely like the idea of starting small - though I'm curious as to whether everyone else would be more interested in starting at a point where the characters are already recruited and, say, a few months into the swing of things, rather than being sent out on their first missions.

My thought on doing it this way would be to create pre-existing relationships ("pre-existing" meaning "pre-first post of RP", not necessarily "in the past"), and even a few months might give everyone that false sense of security (if we end up going with hate-crimes, as was mentioned). "Oh, nothing's happened yet, we stopped a few petty criminals - this is going great!" While secretly, as quaker's been talking about, the bad guy/antagonist has been right under their nose the whole time.

Concerning location, it's totally cool that London's out of the running. I agree that it might be too large a scale. For the small-scale criminal aspect, L.A. is probably better than D.C., though I wouldn't be against being "called in" to assist with something bigger than us if the RP gets far enough along. You never know, right?

[quakernuts]

So, here's what I have written up for a CS so far.

---

Name:
Alias: (Even if you don't have one, state it)
Sex:
Age:

Appearance: (Picture allowed, but still write a bit about your character.)

Psychological Profile: (Do in the style of a federal shrink submitting a report)

Powers: (No powers having anything to do with reading or controlling the mind. No time travel/time manipulation either people! Keep the powers within a respectable limit, we aren't a squad of supermen here.)

Side effects/Weaknesses: (Every power has a downside)

Previous Occupation:

Highest Skill: (Outside of your powers, what else are you extremely good at?)

Lowest Skill: (Vice versa)

Background:

---

Fairly bare bones and easy to understand. I put in the skills section mainly for the fact that, while we are still going to be a team comprised of Supers, we should still have training in other areas as well. After all, we are technically law enforcement. So for some of us to have some crime scene investigation experience is not out there, same with interrogation, weapons handling, etc.

I was also going to put in a criminal record check just to deepen things a bit, but after thinking about it for awhile, I realize that I myself would be pretty much lying on it, so what's to stop you guys from doing so? So I dropped it.

Thoughts?

[Lara]

I think it's going to take me absolutely forever to figure out what to write for Psychological Profile. XD I'm assuming that's an alternative for "personality" - and I like it better already, because that allows you explain objective personality traits rather than everything about them. =)

I don't know about "lowest skill" though. I can see where "highest skill" would come into play - like you said, we'd be a crime-fighting unit, so it makes sense to mention the traits that would help the job. But "lowest skill" is going to end up being vague unless there's something specific that the character is absolutely awful at. Unless the point is to force us to pick something to be miserable at - in which case I can definitely go with it.

Maybe re-word it instead? Instead of "that one thing you're really bad at", maybe...I don't know how to word it. "Lowest skill" makes me feel like I have to pick something crime-related to suck at. :p Does that makes sense at all?

Maybe it's just me. It could be.

Also, in reference to the Criminal Record thing, it might be fun to come up with those at a later point, if the characters ever get suspicious of each other or something. Like a "bonus" thing - if the characters happen to go looking for it, everyone would write one up so they could be "found" in the RP. =D

[quakernuts]

I put in a lowest skill in there so that we, as players, can't suddenly have our characters good or at least fluent in everything

This way, if we pick something that they are not good at, and that situation comes up, you can't suddenly say "Of course I know how to do a triple heart bypass surgery! I learned it online!"

Just a way of insurance I guess is what I'm getting at.

P.S. Yes, Psychological Profile is a substitute for personality.

[Syrena]

Eventually I am going to type up a question about character powers to pose to all of you. Unfortunately, my brain just isn't going that direction tonight. I'm too sleepy!

I did want to add my two cents in about the skills section of the character sheet. Having a "highest" and "lowest" skill seems a bit pointless to me. I think the two skill sections should be combined into a "skill" section. That way everyone can mention a special skill their character has outside of a superpower.

I guess, also, that a "low" skill just doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps my sleepy brain just can't get around the wording...

Other than that, I think the character sheet looks good! I'm a bit excited about the psychological profile--I can finally put all those psychology classes to use outside the academic world! (Shh. I like my nerdy moments. xD.)

Edit: I didn't see your new post Quaker! I'm sorry about the extra ramble in my post. On the bright side, I think I understand the "lowest" skill section now.

[Safton]

I was planning on having a character with zero powers to speak of, but a myriad of special skills. How should I go about that?

[Kathryn Lacey]

Please add "Time Travel/Time Manipulation" to the list of abilities that are banned. I have never once in my entire life following television, movies, and books seen a situation where that ability didn't create some kind of plot hole or deux ex machina. I don't want to see that here.

Safton, replace "powers" with "skill set," methinks.

[Safton]

Seconded on the time manipulation.

I figured as much; I suppose I'll just flesh out the skills section as if it were listing powers, essentially.

[Digital Muse]

I also love the Side Affect/Weakness section personally. After all, even Superman has his Kryptonite. And I'm a HUGE fan of under-powered characters in extraordinary circumstances.

@Safton: Perhaps your character's power *is* the ability to learn many skills? Just make sure, he/she doesn't know how to do absolutely everything, of course.

As for lowest skill, are we going to narrow the band for Police-related skills or anything? I mean, I could say I suck at triple bypass heart surgery, knowing that it will never come up in game play. What do you guys think?

[Kathryn Lacey]

It should be something police related for sure.

[Syrena]

It should be something police related for sure.

I'll second this.

Although, perhaps, if we want a place for "odd or unique" skills we could add in a section. It doesn't have to be mandatory. I don't know. Sometimes having a place for odd or unique skills is fun, and sometimes it doesn't work out. I just thought I would throw that out and see what others think!

[Guest]

Tell me what you guys think of this. I can change anything. I can also change the fact that we have already completed a case; it was just an idea I heard and decided to try out.

---

Memorandum on
L.A.M.P. (Los Angeles Mutant Police Force)

The Los Angeles Mutant Police Force is an experimental division intended to deal with the low-scale crimes involving mutants* or mutant-related crimes within the city of Los Angeles. The division is composed of both mutant and non-mutant members recruited from the Los Angeles Police Academy. Duties involve detaining mutants involved in crimes and policing the opposing groups of MRA (Mutant Rights Activists) and an uprising branch of FoH (Friends of Humanity).

*Mutants being a generalized term for any being with powers or abilities beyond the capabilities of a normal human being.

Current L.A.M.P. members:
WIP

HQ Location: 510 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90013
A five-story office building in downtown LA. Large windows on all 4 sides, and a full-size basement. The building is located in the heart of Downtown Historic Core.

Previous Missions:
L.A.M.P. has successfully completed its first mission with promising results. The capture of the infamous “Faceless Man.”

Note: Certainly not a high-profile case. But as our trial run, it was the only case they would let us take on.

The capture of this criminal has put an end to a string of commercial robberies, in which this face-altering mutant managed to walk in and out of several small businesses with stolen money in hand. Able to change his face, George Young mimicked employees to gain access to the money, and then swiftly disappeared into a crowd.
The capture of George Young, or the “Faceless Man,” has earned L.A.M.P. their next case.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I like it! Now to create our characters... Should each of the characters be a specialist in some area of police work or is it all just pretty general?

[Guest]

I would imagine that starting out it would be pretty general. I doubt they would have had much of a variety to choose from. Perhaps as L.A.M.P. gains some prestige that will change.

I had another idea! We could call their headquarters the... L.A.M.P. Post!

j/k

[Safton]

I'd say leave it up to the individual. I wouldn't be opposed to have a person who's slightly more specialized in interrogations (for instance) than the others, but overall generalization is fine in my opinion.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to do my character workup. He's ex-military, former spy and all that jazz. He has a wide variety of different skills, but isn't a master of all of them. He's good at combat, for example. He has medical skills, but isn't anywhere near a doctor's level. He can pick a lock or crack a low-quality safe, but he's no locksmith, etc. Does this make sense?

[Kathryn Lacey]

L.A.M.P. Post! Bwahahah! I love it!

Also, Safton, yes. Jack of all trades, master of none (or few)? Totally makes sense.

[Safton]

I actually really, really like the L.A.M.P. Post.

Thanks; on that note I'll get to work on the CS soon.

[Digital Muse]

I also like the LAMP Post (even if it's just a nickname tagged by the media or whatever.

I think we should allow everyone to come up with their own character and see what 'specialties' we can fill with those characters and then toss together a few NPCs to fill in the gaps.

Now...the agonizing effort to pick a character to use out of my several gazillion in my files. lols

[Kathryn Lacey]

Before I write up a character and everyone is like, "NO!" I want to make sure it's okay if my character adopts Gambit's ability to blow up inanimate objects by charging the kinetic energy in them? She wouldn't use playing cards. She'd more or less have pouches containing various spheres made of different materials (because I imagine some things would charge faster and thus blow up faster) that she uses.

[Syrena]

Can we keep L.A.M.P. Post? Pretty please!

And, Kathryn, I think that's a totally fine power. It sounds good to me. ^.^

[Digital Muse]

Me too. Sounds fine by me, Kathryn.

BTW, if anyone needs a bit of inspiration for powers here's a pretty comprehensive list: http://www.superherodb.com/powers/

[Lara]

I think your powers sound fine, Kathryn. =) I look forward to seeing what kind of materials she uses to blow things up!

I'd like my guy to be somewhat like a chameleon, with the ability to temporarily store and use powers he sees in use. I have a bunch of limitations prepared for it, but since we're discussing character powers, I figured I'd throw mine out there before working on the rest of the profile.

Ysopet, I think it's fantastic that we've completed our first successful case! Like everyone else, I love the idea of L.A.M.P Post XD

[Syrena]

Lara, that sounds like a very fun power! Reminds me of Rogue, too.

Since discussing powers is a theme...

I'd like my character to be a clairvoyant. Although, I don't want her to be the kind of clairvoyant that can see an unhampered future. So, no "Quaker's character is the bad guy because I can see such-and-such happening in the future" type of clairvoyance; after all, that would be horribly boring. I'd like to assume that the future is always changing, nothing is certain, and as a result my character can only see a vague snapshot.

I don't know if any of you have seen the movie Push, but I was hoping to model my character off of Cassie a little bit. I really liked the bit where Cassie drew a picture of the tiger and knew that the tiger was part of the "current" future, but she didn't know what the tiger meant until she saw it.

Anyway, if no on minds clairvoyance as a power, I've worked up some extra limitations to tone it down a little more. I don't want it becoming too crazy.

[Digital Muse]

Clairvoyance or future-sight always makes me nervous. But so long as your character won't see exactly what will happen, I guess I'd like to see a more complete write up before saying yay or nay.

For me, I'm going pretty simple, Enhanced agility, enhanced speed, enhanced endurance, contortionist, Martial Arts and improvised weapons use. Yes, I'm totally recreating Jackie Chan only amped a little bit.

[Syrena]

Clairvoyance or future-sight always makes me nervous. But so long as your character won't see exactly what will happen, I guess I'd like to see a more complete write up before saying yay or nay.

I'll be happy to flesh this out a little more tonight/tomorrow! ^.^ Because I do know how scary clairvoyance is in role plays...

[Guest]

I'm stuck between someone who can duplicate themselves (more useful for this role-play), and someone who can manipulate gravity to a minor degree (less useful, but more awesome). Any thoughts?

Edit: Oh, and another I used once before that I really like. The ability to view the very recent past of an object by touching it. Might also be useful for the role-play. More of a curse sometimes, since it is something he can't control.

[Safton]

I'm stuck between someone who can duplicate themselves (more useful for this role-play), and someone who can manipulate gravity to a minor degree (less useful, but more awesome). Any thoughts?

Edit: Oh, and another I used once before that I really like. The ability to view the very recent past of an object by touching it. Might also be useful for the role-play. More of a curse sometimes, since it is something he can't control.

All of those sound pretty cool and potentially very useful in the context of police work and the storyline. You could possibly have two or more of them, since on their own they're not crazy powerful or anything?

[Digital Muse]

I like the duplication and the psychometry, definitely.

[Guest]

Alright, I guess I can try and fit in both of them. Thanks!

[quakernuts]

Clairvoyance sort of does fall under the whole 'mind/time' restriction.

However, if everyone else is fine with it, and as you've stated there are restrictions on it, then it should be fine.

Everyone knows my power already...bah you people and your chattiness over powers...NEIGH I SAY

Yes, I meant to spell it like a horse neigh...stop mocking me.

Ysopet: Looking good so far, sorry for falling a bit behind. School is heading into midterms...AWESOMENESS COMMENCING!

Safton: I believe the duplication could lead to more interesting posts, mainly espionage stuff kind of deal...would be interesting knowing that you could possibly be talking to a copy.

In general, I was thinking that the skills section of the CS should be used for Police related skills (Unless you can think of a skill that would be incredibly useful but not necessarily law enforcement related)

I have nothing else to input at the moment, just pretty much letting you people know I'm still here...WOOP!

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