Playing Mutants & Masterminds in Paragon Chat

[Ardebitis]

Lately I've been pondering the possibility of using Paragon Chat as a medium in which to play a certain superhero-themed tabletop RPG called Mutants & Masterminds. I've concluded that at the time of posting, there are two main hurdles preventing it.

• No way to accurately measure the distance between two points/characters/NPCs.
• No way to spawn or control temporary NPCs.

However there are workarounds for both of these. The former can be remedied with the following tidbits of information: with no travel powers active, it takes approximately 1 second for a character to travel 10ft, and with Super-speed active, it takes approximately 1 minute to travel 1 mile. Using these, we can measure distances by counting how many seconds it takes to travel between two points. The latter can of course be remedied by having multiple clients open at once.

What are your thoughts on this?

[HD Trooper]

Here is a cool site what may or may not be of use to ya. https://roll20.net/

[Pengy]

To measure distances you can use waypoints, or get the coordinates of each point with /loc.
Coordinates in CoH are in feet.

[ColonelAmerica]

I'd be interested in giving this a go.

[Jeff Anderson]

The lack of spawning multiple NPCs is a bit of a non starter for me. How many clients would you need to spin up to get a reasonable sized combat with agents going?

[Lycantropus]

I tried to get something like this going right after Paragon Chat started. It kind of fell apart.

That said, it wouldn't take too many people to get it going, and I wish you all the luck in doing so! What night(s) are you thinking about? :)

Lyc~

[TimtheEnchanter]

You know, if they can get teleportation into the game, that could serve as your 'range per turn' indicator.

[rookery.]

I volunteer to play a mook.

Mooks can be fun.

[pogoman]

On a whim, recently, I just picked up the 3rd edition's of all the rule books (including the DC Heroes variants).I'd give this a shot too, if you'd have me. :)

[Cosmic Z]

If there's a way to make this work I'd like to be a part of it. Hanging around at the 12th Anniversary event has given me the itch to spend more time in Paragon City. Let us know what we can do to do to make this happen!

Cosmic Z

[Nyghtshade]

I would be very interested as well, and am a life-long RP'er.  :)

[Lycantropus]

Depending on the night, if you didn't catch my hint, I'd join in as a player as well ;)

Lyc~

[Harris]

This would be really fun, is there still interest in it? Poke me in the chat if so! I'd even use other game systems.

So yeah, poke @Harris because I'm also always logged into the XPMM client even if I'm not in game.

[Nyghtshade]

Just a note that I'm still quite interested, but will be away from computers for the next week and a half.  I'll check back near the end of the month.   :)

[Jeff Anderson]

I am actually working on extending COH into a real RPG tabletop, with dstamce and everything. I'll also be integrating RPG rule sets, the first will be champions, but if I can find someone to help develop it, I'll integrate M and M as well.

Take a look here https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=12133.0

Problem is it only works with Icon right now. I have designed it to make it pretty easy to port to paragon except PC is missing a few key features, the big one bring I can't spawn extra NPCS beyond the logged in character. If I could do that I would stop messing with Icon and jump to Paragon.

[Lycantropus]

Still hopes in getting it going, or have you got something started?

Still would be interested in something if you have some ideas...

Lyc~

[psduckie]

If you're still making a group for this, I might be interested...

[mdlittle]

Would be interested...,

- ...though I don't know the M&M system all that well. I remember looking over the system once, but that was a while ago. Personally I'm interested in any attempt to get something going. If I may make some suggestions - Champions (the RPG, not that poor excuse for an online game) has a very well thought out system. It's rather number crunchy so unless you're a fan of a calculator, might not be the best for online use. One particular game that stands out in my mind is Marvel Heroic Roleplaying by Margaret Weiss Productions (no longer in print, but PDF's be what they may...  ;)). It's a very 'loosey-goosey' system that operates primarily on the narrative. Not really heavy on numbers though does take 'bell curves' into consideration. If you're curious as to how the game's played, there are (quite) a few Youtube videos online played via Google Hangouts which ought to explain how complex it is (it's not). Not heavy on measurements either so distance is, once again, based more on narrative than stretching out the tape measure and counting inches. Hit me up if you're interested!  ;D

[CupcakeShed]

Is this still a thing that people are interested in? Because if so, I could run something. I'm most familiar with 2nd-edition M&M, but I could also run 3rd edition if necessary. I guess I could run Champions, but I'd rather not, because as the previous poster said:

Champions (the RPG, not that poor excuse for an online game) has a very well thought out system. It's rather number crunchy so unless you're a fan of a calculator, might not be the best for online use.

Not only that, but Champions is pretty heavily reliant on having access to a hex grid map. So... yeah. Pretty sure that wouldn't work for this.

To solve the positioning issue, I feel like the best approach would be to have our in-game avatars sit around an actual table somewhere (was thinking the university library in Cap Au Diable, but I'm open to other suggestions) and just emote everything that our characters do. If anybody has a better idea, let me know.

[Lycantropus]

Are you aware can also use your account to create multiple possible NPC's?

(before you 'launch' Paragon Chat, you have the option to look at the little cog, which is Paragon Chat Options. You can select the option to 'Allow Multiple Instances')

Doing so will let you log in multiple times using your account with different characters. You can create alts with different info in their backgrounds for clues, or even if you wanted to use them as NPC's. Of course it's limited to what your computer can process, but with a modern setup that can be from 5-7 characters before it even starts to get laggy.

Do not thank me for this. I only learned it because of the player crashposition, and the few games they set up. I truly **wish** I had more time to dedicate to our City, or I would create similar ones of my own. If you haven't played through anything they have made, do so... totally worth it! May even give you some ideas...

Lyc~