I will open out of character discussion since we have 4 players now.

Would you be interested in opening with

A) A civilian social scene (i.e. after class or interaction somewhere on campus)
B) A recruitment into the superhero scene
C) Media Res-- start on a battle and skip entirely over any awkward first meetings.

Setting the right tempo and mood from the start is important before the plot starts to really take effect.

I think I would like the first option. Helps us settle into character a bit before getting into something juicy! It always takes a little time to blow off the dust from the factory and settle into a new role.

And hello everyone. :D I am your friendly neighbourhood self-righteous and needlessly perky pain in the posterior!

I'm a little unsure, but really I'd be okay with any of those. Sorry that's a fairly non-committal answer but I'm still kinda uncertain how this game's actually going to play out once we actually get going - balance between civilian and hero, approach to secret identities within teams etc.

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And hi!

I'll be playing the mandatory dark-ish teammate, although less in the edgy sense and more in the "I'm the bearer of a weapon that literally screamed 'MURDER/SLAUGHTER/KILL' into my head the first time I picked it up" fashion. Jacks might have a bit of trouble with the others at first but she's really an alright sort. Doesn't help matters that she's had to up sticks and fly across the pond on short notice on the orders of a shoddily-built piece of furniture...

Nice to meet you, then. :D We can send our sentient and opinionated weapons out to take care of things while we catch a movie. No way that could possibly go wrong, right?

Right?

But Doctor, I am a sentient and opinionated weapon Pagliacci!

But yeah, I'll be playing Richard Rider, probably the only one here whose background prepared him to fit in in a 21st century high school. And thus entirely unsuited to costumed heroism.

I'm going to push for A because it'll throw this contrast into sharp relief.

I mean, Courtney IS suited for high school... she was very good in high school. She was bright. She was popular!

Sixty years ago...

Pretty much everything she knows is now wrong. They even changed math. This does not bode well for her SAT scores.

You all have very nice weapons. But have you realized how little good they will do you when I put bubblegum in your hair and itching powder in your underwear? Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!!

But I am surprised to be the only bad guy. I thought for sure there would be a big bruiser who barely passes as human or someone who throws fire or ice or lightning from their hands or an evil double of a popular hero or a sexy ninja who inevitably falls in love with the hero.

Well-- I guess in a way it means I don't have to share the spotlight!

I am sure we can expect other villainous types in time!

I'm usual more partial to playing the bad guy, but there honestly aren't many young villains I'm a fan of and I wasn't looking to radically reinvent someone (or a younger version of them wouldn't really have fit).

I too have played my share of villains, but I have had this version of Stargirl in my head for a long time now, and when a game I had her in ended almost immediately (I think I managed three posts in total) I was pretty disappointed. So I am glad that our GM here has given me a chance to do her again properly.

Prank's first Prank is that the box on top of the door will make a big *BANG* sound when it falls and hits the ground sounding like a gunshot or explosion. So whomever enters first can do with that what they will.

You can decide which desk you end up sitting at to get one of those three pranks.

The starting scene has been up for a day.

Anyone else going to post in?

Since it is your first post, feel free to include what you were doing before school or on the way to school or how you got to the classroom if that will help you establish your character more.

I've had some things going on, but to be honest I've also been a bit of a coward and been waiting for another example of someone's posting style XD

I'll get something up today come what may.

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Also forgive my British naivety but I just wanted to be sure: does The Academy have an actual school uniform or not?

I would say that there wouldn't be a school uniform-- both because they are exceptionally rare in the U.S. outside of religious schools and because it would limit player's abilities to express their character's individual styles if everyone were wearing the same clothes.

[thumbs up emoji]

Was fairly sure that'd be the case, but when I think 'Academy' the image in my head is something very different.

Yeah, same here. We Brits are in a world where every school has a uniform.

I shall try to get a post up soon!

Hey guys new villain here. . . We I WAS meant to be a hero, but you down a few dozen aircraft and kill some people and all of the sudden labels like irresponsible, immature, and dangerous start getting thrown around! Anyway, glad to be on board!

Prank, my dude. You're going to be getting our butts stomped by a group of heroines. Not sure if I'm excited or upset with this.

Hi guys! Maid of Might, Girl of Steel here!

I'm a Brit IRL - please put down any grammar quirks to Kara 'not being from around here' :)

Also a Brit, so it's all cool!

And Heads up, I am going to be away Friday to Sunday night as I am off a-larping. I doubt I shall have access to RPoLery!

Always wanted to try LARPing, however now I don't think my body would let me.

My body is super, super broken. These days in the UK, there are loads of larps where you do not need to go camping and fight people. Lots of other options! This weekend I get to be somewhat glamorous in a 40s femme fatale film noir sort of way. While also being at least 40% insane.

Normal weekend for me, really...

Problem is my mind would want to be out there fighting, swinging swords and running around like I was twenty. However after two back surgeries and a blown knee my body tends to disagree with such behavior after a bit.

I did have to adjust. I was a championship fencer when I was twenty. Now I break bones by looking at them. I spent three hours in hospital today with a broken hand...

I got very into the social and political games though, and am now something of a feared figure in the debating rooms of various larps here... :D

I am going to move the game forward with having the teacher come in and do the homeroom stuff on Tuesday, so if you wanted to do any more before-class stuff before then-- get it in now.

I know Stargirl is out for the weekend, but the rest of you want to finish your pre-class activities, now is the time to do it.

Hello all! Your friendly (?) neighborhood (?) Black Adam, Jr. reporting for duty! Actually, he goes by Osiris, and his real name is Amon, but B.A.J.'s how he's been referred to on more than one occasion. Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

Welcome to the game!

I left my post kind of open-ended on purpose so that either Courtney or Kara can respond if you want to. If not, no worries, Amon'll work it out. :)

I think for gym class, we could have the students run one mile followed by some sport.

Which do you think would be good-- volleyball, dodgeball or swimming?

I think this would be a good test to see how the characters might act in an athletically competitive environment and to what degree they are willing to suppress their natural abilities in order to maintain their secrecy.

Dodgeball. No plan survives getting hit in the face by a dodgeball.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:17, Fri 05 Aug 2022.

Okay then I guess the plan will be a mile run followed by a Volleyball game.

I think we are still waiting for Alpha and Supergirl here.

Perhaps I should just push things forward regardless even with just 3 people left.

Well-- it is about time for me to try to advertise this game again, but given that we have been waiting nearly 10 days for two of the characters and we got no renewed interest from my post last week, I am a bit concerned about where to go from here.

The plan was to do the gym class where we could see to what degree the super powered individuals could willingly suppress their powers in order to keep their cover followed by the villains getting their first mission and then the heroes sent to stop them-- but it really looks like the initial classroom scenarios utterly killed this whole concept off.

No one wants to engage in any interaction with one another. Or perhaps the scenarios I set up didn't leave people free enough that they felt like engaging with one another was the right thing to do.

Well, I like this concept, and I am still here and willing to give it a go! I would say keep advertising. It costs nothing at all to keep the game up and to see if others will dive in, after all!

I'm still here. There hasn't been much incentive for players to interact yet, since you've had one post introducing the classroom and telling us the class passed with no incident or even knowledge of what we studied, and then jumped to gym class where we're all meant to be lining up. When you asked what sport you wanted the characters to play after the track run I'm the only person who responded, I said dodgeball, and you replied that you guessed we'd be playing volleyball then.

Really, it's early days and we're all trying to figure out the style and pacing. If you want us to be getting to know each other, put us in a lunch room with assigned tables, pair us up together on purpose for a team sport, lab assignment, homework, etc.

I will say that there's no way Amon would say "Black Adam" just to win a first day of school PE run. :)

Happy to continue to play or hang out for more players, or hey, me & Courtney can run with this between us while we wait!
This message was last edited by the player at 14:55, Wed 17 Aug 2022.

You make a good point that the whole exercise of the gym class was really to test out characters like Alpha, who is naturally super competitive and will probably want to win at all costs, and Supergirl, who has insane potential power that she could utilize and might have trouble keeping it under control.

And on the other side of the spectrum, we have Prank who caused so much trouble in the first scene and it would be a chance for the stronger characters to either get revenge on him for what he did in the previous scene or make a point of not doing so when they could.

But it might not make sense to go forward with this with just Stargirl, Osiris and Prank since none of them even have a real temptation to abuse superpowers during gym class.

So since the entire point of the scene is now moot, perhaps we reset here.

We can either jump straight to the super power shenanigans with the villains having a mission to carry out the the heroes sent to stop them or we could do a low-stakes social scene-- but I am having trouble figuring out why they would socially interact. While Osiris and Prank could be in the villain rec room, that leaves out Stargirl. But it would be difficult to imagine a scenario where they would be sitting at the same table during lunch as these characters would probably have totally separate social cliches.

It doesn't feel like you have an actual plot here. Are you expecting the players to come up with the stories? I'm not really looking for a a game that simply focuses on Osiris finding reasons to fight Stargirl, assuming she's the only "good side" player left, and if that's the thrust, I think I'm going to drop & send everyone best wishes.

There is an intended plot, but the school setting was meant to be half the game.

At the end of the day, the villain characters would get the mission to attack the local mall in order to cause general mayhem and terror, specifically to hurt business at the mall so that it will shut down.

The hero team would then be sent to try to stop them and protect civilians.

Prank hasn't logged in since Aug 12, so if it's down to Stargirl & I, I'll wait & see how she feels before I call it a day.

I'm still here!

I am just waiting to see if our scene progresses or not. I did have the last in-character post after all.

I was mostly waiting for those who are here but who have not posted. I am ready to keep hanging on for now!

Anyway, the first superhero plot was to have the heroes and villains fight over the fate of the mall, because if the villains win the mall would shut down and then a nefarious organization would take it over.

Meanwhile on the school side I wanted the characters to variously antagonize or befriend each other at the school with possible future scenes revolving around football games and school dances.

While I imagined the heroes and villains would have seperate cliches, we would have opportunity for more complicated relationship where someone might be either antagonistic to their own team or make friends at school in civilian identity with someone they hate in costume.

But generally, the characters would get more and more familiar with one another so that an end game team-up would feel natural.

All respect to everyone, but I'm going to bow out. There just aren't enough players to make this idea feasible to me. Klarion, can you please remove me from the active users list? To everyone, I wish you all good things, and hope I see you again!

Well, it's been almost a month since the GM logged in, so I'll remove this from my list. Good luck, people!