When I was a wee hero of 5th level or so (with Velvet Jones), I got an invitation to a Supergroup. “Woo-hoo!” I thought, and leapt at the chance (even though I didn’t have any Leap pool powers).
And … that was about it. The extent to which the SG played any role in my gaming was that the daily announcement, and other idle chatter, cluttered up my chat window. There was occasional news about task forces, all of which was geared toward a higher level than I.
But that was about it. Nobody contacted me. Nobody said hi. Nobody let little ol’ n00b me know what was shaking.
Then Doyce posted about SGs, and answered some questions thereto:
I think the lion’s share of the SG’s are really meant to be little more than a permanent Team-up, or a Friends List with a channel of its own and an excuse to have a slightly different costume. And that’s about it. Fine by me.
The bigger groups… the one’s that are more organized… the ‘real’ groups, if you’ll pardon my arrogance, are more than that.
a) Online friends and allies.
People that you like.
b) Support network.
“Guys, I need a hand with these Vahzilok.”
“What’s a ‘Crey Medic’? Are they dangerous?”
“Oh hell, I just dropped 54,000 influence on six of the wrong kind of enhancement!”
“Ugh… what power should I get?”
c) Pool of cool teammates.
Now, the bigger the group, the more likely this will work out for you. The Phalanx has about 55 people, and that works out to about 6 to 12 people on most nights, varying levels, with thicker clumps in the 20 to 30 range. That’s about a 20% online presence, so adjust accordingly for an SG of 10 people.
d) Folks who ‘get’ what you’re doing.
d-1) You’re in the Elements? Well, you know that it’s okay that you and the rest of the folks in your SG have more than a passing, polite interest in leveling. Conversation will be businesslike and efficient. Chatting in mid-mission is not done, and generally confines itself to ‘Boss’, ‘add!’, ‘snipe’, ‘pulling’, ‘found it’, and ‘need a Bounce Back’.
d-2) You’re in the Phalanx? You know that the folks in your SG will be chatting during the missions, in character: swearing about fascist mystic vampires, asking about where each other grew up… do your folks know you’re a ‘hero’… what a ‘hero’ *is*, and why those Crey Medics keep taking skin samples from you during fights.
Which sounded pretty cool. He made some recommendations, based on the groups he was involved in, and since I tend to trust the D-Man when it comes to RP, I made an application, and …
… well, after an interesting in-character interview at the feet of Prometheus in Atlas Park Lake, I am now a probationary member of the Freedom Phalanx. W00T!
And, in the course of the remaining evening, I chitchatted (in character) with various folks as they came on and off. I got invited onto an appropriate-level mission in the Hollows (where we eventually got our butts handed to us, sliced and arranged nicely on a bed of troll-green lettuce … but it was fun), and generally had a ball. Since Velvet is something of the bad girl/party girl, and has a nice Southern accent, there’s plenty of RP stuff I can do for flavor.
Again, fun stuff. It’s not necessarily what I’m going to be doing every outing, but it’s a nice added flavor bit for one of the characters. And the group seems pretty nice, which is an added bonus.
Oh, and I get a nice alternative Supergroup uniform! Which, as I look at it, looks sort of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleadery. Not that there’s anything wrong with that …
So…
How does one go about joining a SG. I found nothing on the website, So I would assume that you would chat with one of the main three people in game.
Or did I miss something.
More then likely I’ll have Zazi join to see whats up.
also…which mission did you get gak’d on?
1. Go to the forums on the website. There’s a “So, you want to join” thread there. Pretty striaghtforward.
2. Something with Outcasts and Trolls in tunnels the Hollows. Huge, seething masses of red and purple trolls. I was actually impressed that we survived three or four mob-mobs of them before folks finally had to quit for the night.
Found and read.
Looks like Puck Bunny or Zazi Might fit the bill, with Puck Bunny being the Easiest to Role Play.
Though it looks like I my need to do a lot of key binding.
Also…in what way was the interview interesting?
Just sort of interesting trying to RP the character, with limited (keyboard) bandwidth and emotes. Especially since RPing a job interview is sort of odd to begin with. 🙂
Doing it where we were was interesting, too. At one point, some other chars came along and flirted a bit. At another point, a thug swam over from the nearby shore, reached us, and immediately dove off and swam away.
Stan: I’m really curious about why key-binding would be seen as necessary or important. Very interesting comment. Personally, I’d say Zazi, since I haven’t met Roben.
Like F2F RP, if your character is defined more by what they don’t do than what they do do, it’s going to be more difficult to RP them.
Pick someone who has some easy “tells” — the accent, pet names for folks, etc. RPing for Dummies. It doesn’t (at least to begin with) have to be Shakespearean to be quantum leaps ahead the average chatter.
And, yes, having that ex-con/ex-badguy gives me some schtick to play with, too.
I don’t think CoH has the “bandwidth” to do Serious RP (or, at least, there are other things I want to do with it besides that), but there’s a lot of room for stuff beyond just running around bashing and blasting, if you want it.
I was on a team the other day, and within two minutes of joining I received an offer to join a Super Group! I’d rather not belong to any group that will have me as a member. Well, without even getting to know me, that is.
If the FP is a fun yet professional group, I’d certainly consider joining up. Perhaps Velvet could put in a good word for me (if you think the Avocet would make a worthy member).
I don’t know about a costume change, though. Do they require you to wear the alternate costume when on official SG business?
Most SGs don’t require it — FP doesn’t, for example, though it’s kind of nice for SG groupings, though. You can also just incorporate the SG logo and set all your SG costume colors to “normal.” It’s the easiest way to get another costume early on.
I’m not sure if Velvet will wear her FP outfit often — she’s still kind of independent minded, or thinks she should be, even while she wants to be, underneath, “part of the group.”
Dave: “bandwidth” — I’d meant to ask you about that — you mean like the text buffer in the channels? I don’t do a lot of PBeM stuff, so it doesn’t really feel restricting to me (though I remember that it did at first, just to talk to a person), but YMMV. I know that multiple channels at once can really bug me. I split my SG channel out into a different window than the ‘chat’ channel that has team-stuff on it, so I can close one or the other as needed.
Avocet: Word of mouth recommendations really don’t do a heck of a lto — the forum-based application is the end-all be-all of the application process — the group used to do in-game recruiting and application, but we’ve since gone to a “Forum-based app, followed by in-game interview, followed by 15-day probation”, just because the requirement to go post something on the Forum, OUTSIDE the game, weeds out a lot of less-serious folks.
Also, re: costumes: No. No one really wears the ‘official colors’ unless they feel like it — lots of folks don’t feel like it, but it’s fun sometimes. The Phalanx is much more like the Avengers in that way… you’ve got your Team Comic, but also your individual titles — people are an Avenger, but also their own person. Storm Knights, another SG member of the Alliance of Champions, is much the same way about uniforms. Galaxy Gaurdians is much more strict about such things, but that makes sense for them.
That’s why I was thinking the binding thing would work out in some ways for the random quips (kinda like the ones that G5 pops off with).
Puck would be the easiest for me to RP because she’s the least serious one. Zazi would be lots of Anime and/or Japanese references, which would be harder to RP. Plus much confusion when most of the responses would be “Hi!”.
Lots of bowing (again, bind the “Hi!” and bow emote to a key).
though that would be fun too.
That’s why It’s between Zazi and Puck.
Puck would be fun just becuse all of the Hockey ref’s would play out really well in the game” “Man that Ogre is uglier then Mike Ricci”, “Going Top-shelf Baby”, “just like pulling the goalie”, “I 5 holed Him”.
—
Yeah..it was Jackie that saw Roben.
Roben: Playing off the Japanese wierd fetish thing, Roben is a Teen-girl-Android-cat-girl Tanker.
—
Hmmm…Done the Bomb mission 6 times now and I find it easier then Frosty. Trolls being way easier to pull in 1’s and 2’s then the Outcasts.
We had … pulling issues. We’d pull one. Then we’d pull another one. Then the next time — whoosh!
We could have used Girl Five. 🙂
So last night in between times teaming with Doyce and Jackie (Robenmatsu 3, Shadow.Cat, and the Strategist), I hooked up with some new folks doing missions in Skyway City, and Kings Row after they went to go watch Alias (forgetting it was Wednesday I missed Lost, frell).
I had thought it very odd that Somebody would join for a Mission, then leave, next one would show up, then leave for the four missions that we did. Turns out that they were doing Roben
Coolness.
An Idea:
Since there are going to be a lot of non-SG’d characters between all of the Testerfolk/Hill-Kleerup group, Would we just form a SG called ” The Consortium” for them as a ready of seeing who is availible for Teaming and such.
Hmmmmm. A thought, certainly. Only need a 10th level character to start it up.
Let me ponder this (probably not tonight).
Ok…Doyce likes it as well. Pick Some colors that people would want. Black, Purple, red, blue, gold…
I thought of that as soon as I started playing, although I assumed Dave would want to call it the Justice Squad (but that’s probably taken). I never mentioned it because I didn’t know how much running a Super Group adds to the workload, and I know Dave’s a pretty busy guy already.
Avo…
This would be a more informal, just among friends kind of thing.
Consortium just because, that’s what the Hill-Kleerup household is refered to in gaming terms, and I doubt that it is taken. And since everybody has so meny characters at very different levels that arn’t in an SG it could just be a fun thing.
I like it. Mebbe I’ll put it together tomorrow evening. I need to research into “how it’s done.”