Application Guidelines

If you haven’t already, go ahead and create your character bit on the game server (inheritancegambit.com 2099).   If you don’t already have a login for the website, you’ll need one of those too. There’s a link on the site that lets you register for a login, or you can click through HERE.   Also take a few moments to review our Character Policies and pay particularly close attention to our banned and restricted concepts. If you have any questions at this point, or simply aren’t sure whether your concept will fly, go ahead and log in to ask us either by paging us or – if we’re not online – by submitting a ticket here on the website.

Once you’re all set it’s time to get down to filling out your character sheet. Click through the link to add a new character (It’s under Characters > Application Guidelines > Add Character from the dropdown menu) and you’ll start the online character generation (cgen). It will take you through a number of pages and at the end you can upload some images for the Character page. 

This is a required field. This should match the name of your character bit in-game. This is what we’ll use to title your page and your images on the website and having them match makes it easier for people to find your page. It does NOT have to be what your character goes by ICly.

With the potential for a number of characters all being versions of the same “original” character, please remember that no one should have the “original version’s” name. For instance, you can’t be “Scott Summers” as your character bit name, even if your character might go by it in character. We need to be able to tell the clones apart OOCly even if we can’t ICly!

Maybe your Scott Summers clone’s Character ID is “Greg Ichabod”, “Summers-813” or “Jason Summers”. Whatever you want to use, it should be unique.

DBRef – This is the DataBase Reference number of your character bit in-game. If you’re not familiar with what a MU* DBRef is, use +cg/info from within the game server. Please make sure to include the # ! We need this to transfer the information from the website you input here to your character bit in the game.

For this section you’ll need to pick a Legacy and a Creation. In order to see what that means in detail, please refer to Character Types.

This more or less what you’d say if someone asked you to describe your character in one line. It could include your Origin and Source as well as what character (if any) you’re based on. If you can give it a poetic spin, so much the better.

Examples:

• Chimera Clone of Cyclops
• Born Hybrid of Wolverine and Storm
• Furious LMD (Digitization/Android of Nick Fury)
• Age of X Basilisk (Clone Chimera of Cyclops from an Age of X simulation)

What is the defining difficulty of your character? Need somewhere to start? How about http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterFlawIndex? This isn’t something you should feel like you’re applying to your character, it should be something that’s already part of your character idea.

Examples:

• Spider-Man – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
• The Hulk – You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry
• Rogue – I Can’t Control My Own Power

After you’ve done all that it’s time for Aspects. These are, in brief, a poetic way of describing things that are important enough about your character to have narrative weight. 

Pick a song title or lyrics, a quote, a Trope or just make something up yourself and give a brief explanation of how/why this relates to your character. A lot of players already like to pick a Theme Song and a Quote for their character, we’re just making it part of the formal process. Take a look at our Dramatis Personae page to get a look at what other people have used. 

You should have at least one, and can have three at most.

You get one skill at Great (+4), two at Good (+3), three at Fair (+2) and four at Average (+1). Just check the boxes for the ones you want at each level. If you need a reminder of what the various skills do, just click on the text and watch for the dialogue box.

At various points (called Milestones, see Upgrade Guidelines) you’ll be able to make changes to your skills, moving them around and changing them out completely, so don’t worry that you might be locking yourself into something for the life of your character!

At this point you have a fair idea of what your character can do and who your character is. Now it’s time to define what they’re good at. Your character starts with three ‘stunts’ to spend. You can spend them here, or save them for Powers. Stunts are little tricks tied to your skills that make you better in certain situations or allow you to bend the rules in a particular way. There’s a list of them sorted by skill here. 

This is, after all, a superheroes game. Most characters will have superpowers. Custom powers can be made if needed, though the existing list is pretty comprehensive. Most of the things that you might think of as its own power is likely a creative use of one or more of those already listed. Feel free to ask Staff for suggestions if you have something a bit out of the ordinary.

 You get 3 points that can only be used to purchase powers. You can use any leftover points from ‘Stunts’ from above to buy powers as well if you wish.

Building powers is the most complex part of our chargen and we suggest you go HERE for more help on how to build a power. Don’t forget to look at approved characters and our sample characters to help you out!

Powers and Comic Depictions

Let’s put this right out here. We’re working with standard power definitions. That means that it won’t work exactly like the comics Issue XX, Page YY, Panel ZZ. We’re sorry. There are just way too many instances of a single power being used with vastly different effects for the same character, let alone several characters with the same power over the decades of comic history.

We’ve got a built-in reason why they’re not exact. The cloning/hybrid process ICly isn’t perfect.

On the upside, you don’t need to write detailed descriptions of your powers. You’re able to just pick and choose and add some customization.

You can find a full list of Powers here.

Refresh controls how many Fate Points you start with at the beginning of each ‘reset’ period (generally about a week real-time). The more fate points you have, the more options you have without having to Compel your Aspects. Every character starts with 3, and refresh can be voluntarily reduced by up to 2 during C-Gen to buy new stunts, or stunt equivalents such as Powers.

Fate points are one of your most important resources in Fate—they’re a measure of how much influence you have to make the story go in your character’s favor. You can spend fate points to Invoke an Aspect, to declare a story detail, or to activate certain powerful stunts.

Fate Core/Venture City

For those of you not familiar with Fate, surprise! You’ve just created a Fate character. What does this mean? That’s entirely up to you. At this point you can just play as if this were any Traits-style MU* and just ignore all that pesky Fate stuff.

Seriously. You don’t have to use it. We don’t care.

Why did we use it then? Two main reasons.

For staff. To give us a baseline, so that all characters start on essentially the same footing as any others. To give us a framework for “experience” or “upgrades” and how to apply them.

Conflict Resolution. If you absolutely, positively, cannot come to a resolution that two parties can agree on, it gives everyone a framework as to how the final decision should go.

Have a look at Benchmarks vs. Fate for some ideas of how to use the system without needing to use Fate.

If you want to learn how this system works, it may benefit you to take some time to acquaint yourself with the basic concepts. Most of those we’ve tried to cover in the articles under Roleplay > Fate Core System. There you’ll find definitions for things like ‘Aspects’ and ‘Stunts’ as well as advice for creating them and getting the most out of them.

For of you interested in digging a little deeper, you can also go pick up a copy of the Fate Core .pdf for yourself at Drive Thru RPG (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114903/Fate-Core-System). The publisher, Evil Hat, has been kind enough to put it up for a ‘pay what you want’ price. So you can get it for free if you like, or you can toss them some money. Either way it is in our humble opinion well worth the download.