RPGWW

I've been hankering to start something up on the board lately, and have been weighing the pros and cons of hauling out two of my favorite smaller settings, Cha's Metro City and Amanda's Strangeness in New York. There are very good reasons to use either one over the other, and of course I don't want to run two RPs on the board at the same time, so I must choose. So, here is a brief synopsis of each setting and the pros of using either one (assume a pro I list for either one isn't as much a part of the other):

Metro City
A city like any other, assuming other cities have a large superhero community. A place where the people who keep you safe are less likely to wear a blue uniform than they are to wear red tights. The tone of the setting is slightly toward the less serious end of the spectrum (I've always thought of the Teen Titans cartoon as a model for the tone), with Mike Haggar from Final Fight as the mayor and the more bizarre villains showing up every Monday to cause trouble.

Strangeness in New York
It's New York City, just like we know it, in the year 2007. Bush is president, Mike Bloomberg is mayor and both Rudy and Hillary are running for president in 2008. Well, maybe not just like we know it, with those inexplicable reports of property damage and otherwise perfectly sane people claiming to be able to see floating shapes and occasionally monsters. Those monsters are very real, though invisible to most, (and that property damage might be the fault of my character Niranjan), and it's the job of a secret organization to fight them, an organization that makes use of normal humans who have begun to obtain seemingly impossible superpowers. This setting I've compared more to Heroes except that everyone's a comedian (welcome to RPGWW, right?).

Metro City
-New characters can be introduced at the drop of a hat. "Hey, I'm a superhero living in Metro." "Oh, sweet, follow us to some villains to fight."
-No constraint on abilities (think Marvel superheroes)
-Larger existing playerbase
-Less introduction needed for new players to understand what's going on
-No need for characters to join any specific organization or be bossed around by Amanda's SiNY character Michelle

Strangeness in New York
-The idea I have for RP in SiNY is more developed (and probably more compelling) than what I'd probably come up with for MC
-More realistic style
-All the convenience of making RP decisions with a formal leader character nominated by an NPC higher power (it's my favorite form of railroading)
-Characters don't have that weird superhero "These are my powers, and assume everything else I do is just the height of normal human achievement" thing going on
-I'm pretty sure I like my SiNY character Niranjan more than I like my MC character Boreas, but not by much

I could potentially play Nicki in either of these, so I'm ambivalent. Nicki knows more people in MC, but SiNY might offer something new and nifty.

So yeah. You'll probably have me either way.

Have you, huh? ;)

Would Brian be cool with that?

Please. I've been had all over the internet from religious discussion boards to Star Wars.

I'd say the latter scenario seems especially appealing to me -- especially if the said superheroes have extra-ridiculous powers that they must find clever, ingenious uses for to actually defeat their would-be foes. Kind of like Mystery Men...I love that movie.

You want superheroes with ridiculous powers? Look no further than Metro City, actually. It's like a slightly serious version of The Tick. Hell, I have a character who was inspired by The Davinci Code. His name?

Sodak, the Man of Corn.

Talk to me tomorrow, I'll set up a chat RP.

SiNY is actually very far from Mystery Men. It's really more like Heroes, except with more substantial powers; for instance, my character Niranjan can merge his body with any large solid object and increase his strength drastically.

More like...Heroes mixed with...I'd like to say Witch Hunter Robin, but that may just be me.

Two snoozefest shows combined? Alright, I'll go with Metro City then.

Molo just lost approximately 8% of the respect I have for him (which, considering how much respect I have for him, is a lot). Also, future Hiro kills him with his katana.

Oh, come on. I watched the entire first season of that show waiting for something to happened, and was sorely disappointed. Not to mention casting an American person as a native Japanese, among the other terrible non-Japanese stereotypes in that show? It has some problems in my eyes.

...You're actually complaining about them casting George Takei as a native of Japan?

...Really? Sulu?

I have to say, I might not have lost respect for you, Molo, but I must say shame on you. :(

Not George Takei, he's fine. I'm talking about James Kyson Lee ("Ando"), and, to some extent, Masi Oka.

Aha. He's actually South Korean, Lee, not American.

Don't know if that's better or worse, though.

Hn. I find myself favouring Metro City for the moment, mostly because it feels more freeform to me. Then again, the character concept I'm settling towards would probably work fine in either setting.

I have yet to play in either setting, and both of them seem extremely compelling. I like the idea behind SiNY, just because it does remind me a lot of Heroes, and there's a lot of potential, but at the same time I've always wanted to make a superhero.

Thus, my vote goes to Metro City.