Quote from: ponta1010;1123689So not only did he cause major damage to a downtown Atlanta, killed an unknown number of bystanders and office-workers (presumably in the buildings) but he also killed the NPC!

How does this play out?
Missing out on hero points, is listed as one prescribed outcome, presumably the rest is up to the GM(?) or are there any Ascendant setting details that come into play? For example the government sponsored superheroes were to disappear in "The Incredibles" movie.

It seems to me that unleashing your strongest move is bound to kill someone if they're a glass cannon. What options were available to the player use their power at a lower level?

You get Character Points based on limiting destruction/saving lives and defeating baddies, so sadly American Eagle would have also not gotten many experience points. But this was his very first superhero fight in his career, he didn't really know what he was doing, so we can't be too hard on the big guy.

As far as the setting - in the official story, government-sponsored superheroes end up in a battle against a superhuman-supremacist terrorist group in Washington DC that leaves about half of the government-sponsored heroes as casualties. Then WikiLeaks reveals the fact that the superhuman villain of the Battle of Atlanta, the Manticore, was actually a US government soldier created by an experiment. Thereafter American Eagle flies off into space. That's where the campaign begins.

The game affords you any number of options, including attacking at a lower power level, using nonlethal attacks, and so on.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1123716That's not exactly the problem they had. People talk smack all the time. And, as you say, they can be ejected for stepping over the line (they threadbanned and temp-banned one guy for talking bad about Monte Cook).

The problem was that you had official moderators for RPG.net saying these things, without reprimand. Which could be construed as site policy.

It's not too dissimilar IMO (I'm not a lawyer, so take with a big bag of salt) from what burned Oberlin College during Gibson's lawsuit. It wasn't that Oberlin students were protesting, it was that Oberlin was aiding and abetting them and letting them use college resources.

That's correct. So the situation that RPG.net's owners found themselves in was:
1) If they allowed their moderators to defame me, they were at risk of a lawsuit.
2) If they told their moderators to stop talking about me, the moderators would be forced to allow others to say nice things about me without being able to let everyone know how terrible I am. That, in turn, would have led to a moderator revolt.
So the owners did the only thing they could do, which was to simply ban discussion of me.

I personally always liked Shannon (the owner) and thought he was doing good work on the history of RPGs; and I sponsored his site with gifts and ad dollars when I ran The Escapist. So it's sad how it all played out.

Not really to into supers games. How well would this work for kind of silly supers like the Tick? That is really more my speed for supers games and not a lot out there that really does it well. I may get in at the $20 level just to spite the big purple, I did the same for ACKS and was very happy with that, ultimately getting everything because it is a solid game.

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1123716That's not exactly the problem they had. People talk smack all the time. And, as you say, they can be ejected for stepping over the line (they threadbanned and temp-banned one guy for talking bad about Monte Cook).

The problem was that you had official moderators for RPG.net saying these things, without reprimand. Which could be construed as site policy.

It's not too dissimilar IMO (I'm not a lawyer, so take with a big bag of salt) from what burned Oberlin College during Gibson's lawsuit. It wasn't that Oberlin students were protesting, it was that Oberlin was aiding and abetting them and letting them use college resources.

I am aware, my sarcasm obviously was weak.

I just found the idea that a site where they ban people for something as simple as using the wrong color of text (some kind of pink / purple apparently triggers posters) or eye rolling emoticons (because again triggery) being portrayed as the victims amused me. "Oh nos we can't talk about this game here because we can't control what our posters say and we might get sued."

A particularly lame excuse when the issue wasn't even limited to posters, but was coming from mod staff.  

I'm pretty sure the mods over there have ban quotas to meet to ensure they are working.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1123788Not really to into supers games. How well would this work for kind of silly supers like the Tick? That is really more my speed for supers games and not a lot out there that really does it well. I may get in at the $20 level just to spite the big purple, I did the same for ACKS and was very happy with that, ultimately getting everything because it is a solid game.

Well, the official setting has a levitating manatee named Levitee and a blind-deaf assassin named Helen Killer, so I'm certainly comfortable running with silly. I think it would work fine if you tuned the Hero Points a bit to reward silly play rather than serious mission-focused objectives and if you switched combat to Nonlethal by default. It might be a bit overpowered for your needs but if other super games aren't getting the job done it might work for you.

In any case, thanks for your support of ACKS and kind words - cheers!

I won't deny it's disappointing, watching them fall into their own assholes.

Getting back on topic, my only question about Ascendant -- there seems to be a HELL of a lot of numbers flying around if I'm reading some of these sheets right? I hope actions are streamlined so we're not having to do complex math to run an encounter?

Quote from: Ghostmaker;1123801I won't deny it's disappointing, watching them fall into their own assholes.

Getting back on topic, my only question about Ascendant -- there seems to be a HELL of a lot of numbers flying around if I'm reading some of these sheets right? I hope actions are streamlined so we're not having to do complex math to run an encounter?

Most of the math is taken care of by the CHART and the Damage tables. But there is some math.

A typical example would be:

A: "I attack with AV 14."
B: "My DV is 13".
A: "OK, my RV is 14 - 13 = +1".
A rolls on chart at +1.
A: "I scored a Yellow result. I deal 128 damage".
B: "I have 32 protection, so I take 96 damage." or it might be
B: "I roll with your blow, reducing it to 64 damage. I have 32 protection, so I take 32 damage."

Whether that's too much math is definitely going to vary on a player by player basis.

I saw a link to this on Facebook and thought it looked like a cool idea.  I didn't back it, as I'm not gaming much these days.

I'm backing it tonight, after hearing how TBP reacted.  Screw them.

Good luck, amacris!

It's not for me, but I did just buy Ruined City of Cyfandir for 5e so I deserve brownie points.

Quote from: Tait Ransom;1123865I saw a link to this on Facebook and thought it looked like a cool idea.  I didn't back it, as I'm not gaming much these days.

I'm backing it tonight, after hearing how TBP reacted.  Screw them.

Good luck, amacris!

Much obliged, thank you!!

Quote from: S'mon;1123867It's not for me, but I did just buy Ruined City of Cyfandir for 5e so I deserve brownie points.

Oh, nice! I love that adventure. Do you want chocolate chip brownie points or fudge brownie points? :-D

Quote from: amacris;1123914Oh, nice! I love that adventure. Do you want chocolate chip brownie points or fudge brownie points? :-D

Chocolate chip, thanks. :cool:

Quote from: rgalex;1123471The game looks interesting.  I'm keeping an eye on it for now, but chances my group will try a supers game that isn't M&M are slim.

After thinking about it some more, I backed the $20 pdf level.  Even if I never get to run the system, I should be able to get some mileage out of the setting material and hopefully the mission generation system.

The mission generation and the event handling of asteroids, volcanoes is what is selling me here as well. Not to discount the mechanics! It seems like it flows well and the effort to match up physics beyond weights and speeds is appreciated.

Quote from: Half the people in the threadHaha, rpg.net hates and bans it so I will back twice

I agree with the sentiment but this Supermetric system was originally for Vox Day's Alt*Hero RPG kickstarter stretch goal. And now it is not after a lot of hue and cry against the author.

I would count that as a win for the cancel culture.

So I backed at the $60 level, but I haven't had the time to dig too deep into the setting. Does the setting currently include any evil super groups? Anything like the Mutant Brotherhood or the League of Calamitous Intent?

There's a really good actual play of the system posted at https://youtu.be/fejJL5TlnY8.

Seems to play out really well in the session. I'm getting the vibe that the game might run like GURPs, in that the character build is crunchy and there a lot of crunchy/well built systems for you to work with for various situations. But you can also ignore the systems you want to and keep it to a lighter core in actual play. ACKs was sort of built the same way. The core game was pretty simple with a lot of added well mathed out systems on top for designing kingdoms, dungeons, magic items, new classes, etc. But you could pick and choose the systems you wanted to play with.