Butterfly with Bullet Wings's page

To respond to the previous threads' question of: "How much are you detailing the illusions? I am curious, given that I 'filled in the blanks' with the play and added all the lurid decadence, madness, and violence that ensued."

I think it might shift from illusion to illusion. I could go vaguely descriptive in parts, more vivid with other, but at least sort of alluding to what the illusion is in a sort of Lovecraft-ish way. I'm also thinking of maybe centering the bard around Intimidate and using the illusions as window dressing; would you allow a slightly reflavoured Haunted Fey Aspect for that? Nothing would change mechanically, just the things they would be sheathing themself in, illusion-wise. It's a cantrip of negligible effect, I'd just want it for added spookiness.

As for the play itself; I'd go for the quotes that exist in the source material here and there, and again other times just sort of be vague in the description of it, or perhaps sometimes sing songs about the Dark Tapestry instead; a proper bard whose repertoire just includes the play for when there's sufficient reason to bring it out.

Alright cool, then I'll give it a shot. I'm thinking of maybe rolling up a bard who focuses on illusions so that he can show people "what he's seen" in addition to the general fixation on the play. Or combine the two in some very expressive ways.

This sounds really cool, and I'd definitely like to dot, but would you allow someone currently DMing the game to play if they were to keep OOC knowledge separate from IC?

Wow yeah "Pathfinder adventurers in tights" actually describes it a lot better than the weird linguistic circles I keep walking in. That's pretty much where I'm going here.

I definitely want the feel to be a bit more Avengers-ey. Gods among men isn't quite where I want to go, and I guess the best way to put it would be that if you were to strip away all of the superheroic elements, you would still have something that "made sense" as a fantasy RPG game about great heroes doing what's right. Very exceptional people using their exceptional gifts for good.

The race builder does sound neat, but the more I think on it, the more I like a Vigilante gestalt as the gimmick, since the options race builder opens up again kind of feel like they might be more "Golarion with superheroes" more than "superheroes in Golarion" if that makes sense at all.

It definitely wouldn't be starting at first level, but not particularly high either. 3-5 maybe. The goal would definitely be to get up to very high-end enemies over time, but I want to run the gamut of threats and start off with some more street level foes. Thankfully, there's no worry about "power level" with Pathfinder beyond character level (relative build strength notwithstanding), so there's no need to really narrow people down to a specific flavour of superhero power level, I think. A level 3 wizard and ranger can deal with level three threats and that can feel appropriate as a thing they should be doing, so it's not quite Doctor Strange and Hawkeye in a party together and expecting them to both be equally capable.

I don't want to quite go as far as "you get a narrow selection of conventional powers", and more that you are exceptional people who preferrably have some kind of gimmick to them. A wizard with a lightning motif isn't necessarily not just a very good spellcaster who specialized in the Air elemental school, for instance. The superpowering should definitely be somewhere within what Pathfinder already offers to players rather than trying to make the system support something beyond that, I think. Someone who got their powers through a science experiment in sort of a Captain America vein is a fine idea, but I feel like the flavour should match the setting rather than adapting it to support the conventional tropes of the genre, if you get me.

Yeah, Vigilante is super flexible and offers the flavour in its core abilities, but would still open up the option to go anywhere with a build to really iron out a solid concept. If I do go gestalt, that's probably the way I'd do it.

Oh, okay I thought there may have been some kind of system I didn't know about in a new book or something for that. That sounds like it might work, but it also seems a little hard to balance and opens up some cheese. It's certainly doable though, so it's ahead of Mythic in that regard because Mythic is definitely a no-go. Vanilla, gestalt, or extra RP are all viable options for this right now and I guess that's one of the upsides to doing an interest check before starting.

I've seen Mythic in action and it's probably a bit more than I'd like to handle. Gestalt is a possibility, but I know it could get pretty divisive in terms of interest and who's in and who's out on principle, even if thinking on it, a gestalt game where one half is Vigilante might not be a bad idea, to give people all the secret identity goodies involved in that. Although if I do go with gestalt, you would be facing comparable threats who are themselves gestalt, so the specialness there wouldn't equate to being overpowered.

I'm curious as to how race points would be given to players, though.

There's a closed recruitment post from a few days ago that's left me inspired, and I've been kicking around a lot of ideas ever since about running something superheroic within Pathfinder. So, super curious and bursting with ideas, I'm coming to see if there are enough interested parties for me to start bringing the ideas all in line and trying to run it, since I love supers but have found most systems in that vein sorely lacking in different places.

The game would be centered probably in Absalom just because of its size and ease of doing pretty much anything, and would revolve around a group of costumed vigilantes who began their crimefighting careers independent of one another, but who come together because of reasons to team up and fight crime, both in the standard street level sense, and in more high scale, high stakes sorts as the game progresses.

I'd want a fair bit of focus on roleplaying both in costume and out, with civilian lives given a fair amount of importance, and some minor sandbox elements to explore their lives without their masks. Which means that for character creation, it would be fairly involved and require some explanations of the character as a person, their "origin story", and their masked persona. People would be free to take inspiration from existing superheroes, but not quite to the level of a broody ninja who fights in the shadows whose real name is Bruce Payne. Got to have some of yourself in that.

For allowable content, I haven't decided yet on allowing third party material, but the Vigilante playtest material would definitely be on the table. I don't want to make it a requirement though, because I want this to be a long-term game and I'd rather not center an entire campaign around content we'll only see finished and fleshed out a year from now, so people can take it if they want, but it's not needed. Past that, the only character creation info I'm settled on is that you would start above level one, to represent experiences as either a crimefighter or as something else.

So yeah, let me know if there's interest in this, and I'll consider getting serious with the idea.