Hi all! The 200X era went live on March 8th. We're within a few hours of the end of the first 30 days. At this time I'd like to ask:

How are we doing so far?

In terms of numbers, in 30 days the 200X era has amassed:

1016 OpNet posts,
345 fiction posts in 45 unique topics, and
43 characters.

In that same span of time, there has been a total of 18 OpNet posts and 0 posts elsewhere on the 2010 Forum.

Y'all ready to allow migration yet?

Wow, Seph you really are in a hurry aren't you. 30 days, and you have it all figured out. Who's to say that 200x won't die out in 3 more months..then what? You will have killed 2 forums. 200X is new, people always flock to what is new. People may get tired of it and move back to 2010.

Let 2010 die on it's own, if that is where it is heading. I for one like have multiple arenas of fictions.

Who said anything about death? I'm not suggesting we euthanize anything. Merely pointing out that I think that with the trickle of traffic the 2010 forum has seen recently, reasons for not allowing 2010 reboots have run out. There's no rule barring people from still playing their 2018 character and there shouldn't be any rule against people still playing their 2010 characters. I just think we should be able to reboot our 2010's in 200X, if we so wish.

Fuck, I even advocate making 2010 reboots cost a slot.

I guess what I'm saying is why do you need to do a reboot for 2010. What is it that 200x has, other than to make a mockery of aberrations, that 2010 doesn't?

Mockery of aberrations? Explain please.

One free quantum effect aka aberration as a body modification without taint or penalty.

It is true that people tend to flock to what is new, but I don't think 200x is going to die off in 3 months. The shiny hasn't worn off yet, and isn't likely to for a while.

I suppose I should have expected some people to get upset about Body Modification: Special Effect.

Yes, it gives you an aberration - or several aberrations, or more specifically a special effect - for no taint and no penalty. Or specifically, any penalties or bonuses aren't codified by the system and can vary from person to person. It also grants no extra points, so numberically there's no problems whatsoever. It's 'free' in both senses. If you still want aberrations and associated price breaks, the taint system's right over there.

The taint system is also a heavily codified system that subdivides aberrations into minor, medium and major along somewhat arbitrary lines, codifies social penalties that are universally applicable except when they aren't, allows very little wiggle room and most seriously, if you want an aberration you have to pick it off this list if we're going strictly 'by the book,' or submit it for approval.

You could spend time working out what, say, an aberration such as "looks like a fox-woman" or "blinks like a light bulb" is worth, and if it's anything other than minor you can spend time figuring out what other aberrations you HAVE to take, then submit the new aberration for approval and hope that your reasoning doesn't conflict with someone else's, then be unsure who's freaked out by you and who isn't (the APG states in brief that novas with less taint are freaked out by novas with more taint, which seems to conflict with the main book) and never increase a taint-linked trait for fear that suddenly the asthetics of your character will be ruined should he or she sprout nipple-tentacles...

Or, you could skip all that, take Body Modificaton: Special Effect, and leap right into the fun part which is the interaction and writing part.

It's an expedient, simple system, and I'm not going to apologize for 'making a mockery of aberrations' with it. If people are selecting this option over a system that makes their characters more powerful, I say more power to them.

I think some people might be taking the system a bit far, (looking at you unicorn boy), but I think it is a good system. Like I stated in the original discussion. I dated a girl with Pink hair in college and my parents even liked her. No reason things that are cosmetic shouldn't be doable without building up taint. Not every oddity is going to cause massive social penalties. There are people in real life that are into doing body modifications and have surgically implanted horn and skull spikes and all kinds of weird shite. The only social penalties they get are those the viewer chooses to give them. There's nothing inherently creepy about them, it's just a matter of cultural taboos and such.

I'm with Fox, some things should just be viewed as Taint. Like anything thought the Body Mod trick has it's ways of being abused. It's the mods responsibility to police that.

I think it's a creative way to add odd appearances to a nova without them being freakishly ugly. Nightcralwer is a good example his appearance is startling to those who first meet him, but there isn't a single 'friend' who suffers a social penalty when dealing him. He an okay guy, just odd looking.

RE: Nightcrawler
And exactly how many non-nova friends does he have?

Careful - invoking Nightcrawler might cause Craig to remark that this isn't a superhero game.

A more apt comparison might be someone who's got a scar, or is missing an eye, or due to a skin condition they look kind of orange. It does startle you at first but if life's taught me anything it's taught me that people can and will adapt. I figure that people in Aberrant have a heightened tolerance for weird stuff since they see it on the news.

As for 200X proper I think it's doing well. The mods are approachable in ways that they couldn't be in 2010, the system is cleaner and doesn't get in the way of the stories as much, and there's a very nice charm in being able to start over with characters we enjoy writing about but who were made back when we were lesser writers and have accumulated their share of mistakes.

I only really forsee one problem: that the enthusiasm might wear off. You can't really argue someone into becoming enthusiastic - you have to engage them emotionally, not logically. There's no way to foretell whether or not people will want to stick with 200X, although personally I'm more enthusiastic about it than I ever was about 2010. What we can do is try and figure out why people lose enthusiasm and take the steps that we can to curb that.

Personally, whenever this place devolves into a thin-skinned high-pitched screaming match with everyone sulking and muttering to themselves afterwards, my enthusiasm vaporizes. My enthusiasm might also take a hit once the Slider-Proteus-Aberrants metaplot's up and running, since I've run through it about a dozen times and thirteen's not my lucky number. However, I'm not going to leave the board over it, I'll just try to gently steer around it and hope it doesn't become too obnoxious.

Other than that, 200X is great. There's no way to predict how the future social dynamics are going to shake out, but I think if we treat what we have in common - a desire to have fun writing Aberrant stories - as more important than what we differ on, we'll do fine.

Been a while since I read X-Men, but when I was reading Nightcrawler had reactions ranging from a torch-wielding mob to women in his bed and everything in between. Kate Pryde - another mutant - was freaked about him for a long time, while the other members of the circus he grew up in loved him like a brother.

Several.


WW meta-plots are stupid and poorly thought out. I hate them, always have and always will. I've never used a single one of them here at home and tend to ignore them when they arise around here. When Slider gets plugged it'll be no more news worthy than a kid robbing a McDonalds IMO.

We all agree that the meta plot is laughable at best, the way we've always stuck so vehemently to the canon story had always left me confused.

I don't foresee 200X jumping off the tracks when Slider is killed because nobody here is involved, as far as I can tell.

Nightcrawler would have medium taint: eyes, furry skin and "twisted limbs" being his 3 digit hands and feet. He does invoke fear from "baseline" normals and IIRC, the APG says that social penalties from taint are removed once someone takes the time to befriend such a Nova.

As for the Slider scandal, at least Pandora is a member of Utopia so the boards will probably hear about it that way...

I'm sorry, but this kind of thing annoys me. This question is (by all appearances at least) deliberately off-topic, deliberately antagonistic, completely unhelpful, and (most importantly) completely untrue.
I don't know why everyone else felt the need to chime in with posts defending 200X from Ziggurat's accusation, but I see no need for it. If you (Ziggurat) can:
A) explain what possible relevance your question had to Seph's post, and:
B) point to some overwhelming trend within the 200X forum to "make a mockery of aberrations"
then I'll take your question seriously. Until then I'm simply going to point out that it's annoying and distracting.

Back on topic:
Re: Seph's proposal: I still don't really see a good reason to disallow 2010 characters from joining the 200X boards, and I don't personally have any problems with the idea myself.
Re: Flicker's initial observations: those are some very impressive numbers, and I know I've really enjoyed myself here during the past month, and from the looks of things it seems like most everyone else has too.
Re: The Meta-Plot Problem: I'm new and I wasn't around to see how things were handled on the previous boards, so perhaps I'm just naive about this, but I don't really see this as a problem. The Slider Scandal is just a big news piece that'll give us all some reason to gossip ICly amongst ourselves for a few days. Where's the problem in that? As for the Proteus thing, I'm pretty sure that we all agreed that any stories dealing directly with major Meta-Plot threads would need to be reviewed by pretty much everyone and would have to involve carefully plotted out storylines with several different co-authors, etc, etc. I don't see any of this becoming a problem unless someone specifically makes it a problem. So let's all just chillax for a minute and get back to writing good stories, ok?

One it fucking well isn't. Face facts and deal with it.

Two, Marvel doesn't have the TAINT MECHANIC that is present in Aberrant that says ABERRATIONS BRING FUCKERY when it comes to taint and being a nova.

Night-fucking-Crawler doesn't have taint. He has a "mutant gene".

And yeah, in my non-mod opinion the "body mod" is being abused like a motherfucker. But I ain't a mod.

Adressing the mockery point for those who dwell in the realm of subjectivism, lets start with the definition of Aberrant:

First the Adjective,

Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin aberrant-, aberrans, present participle of aberrare to go astray, from ab- + errare to wander, err
Date: circa 1780
1 : straying from the right or normal way
2 : deviating from the usual or natural type : atypical

now the Noun

aberrant
Function: noun
Date: 1938
1 : an aberrant group, individual, or structure
2 : a person whose behavior departs substantially from the standard

So in other words, someone with pink hair is BY DEFINITION an aberrant. Not to mention someone who flickers constantly or looks like a unicorn.

As much as many of you wish to deny it; but someone with pink hair will elucidate a negative reaction. So to have something that deviates from the norm without a similar negative reaction, is to deny the very word aberrant.

You guys want to have aberrations without the subsequent penalites..hence the word mockery.

Have you not noticed that Seph has stubbornly retained his crotch-attached interation with Slider so he very likely could be a source of massive meta-plot dealiage with Cain?

never mind.

To your point: Talk to the mods in 2010 and get their okay. All of them.

I'd like to argue that by now, many people will be used to somebody with pink hair or who perpetually glows. They will still draw attention, but otherwise... Well, I'd call it negative if COMA's on your butt trying to kill you or something.

I prefer Taint to be more harmful or out-there effects; Anima Banner, Glow, Hair/Eye Colour and some versions of Aberrant Eyes aren't weird enough for me, so I like the Body Mod: Special Effect.

I also think we'll disagree over this, so let's not go there.

Someone with pink hair wouldn't get a second glance here in San Francisco...we must all be aberrants here!

I've lived in San Fran..the place is full of aberrant people.

Nice flamebait. Nobody respond to this please.

Actually, I think he was replying literally by the definitions he provided. It's not very socially aware, and certainly easily perceived as rude.

Perhaps the thread should be stopped for a bit or locked, as nothing real useful is coming from it at this point and is creating a lot of ill will between people.

Addressing my problem with the poster for those who've dwelled under a rock for the last twenty years or are otherwise new to the Intertubes, let's start with the definition of a Troll:

Fuction: Noun

1. Fuck it, I lost patience. You know what I'm driving at.

Special Effect is a special fucking effect. No penalties, no reduced cost on anything. The dictionary is not our rulebook, so I politely demand that you:



See above.

Looking at the length of time that's passing between posts now, I'm going to risk leaving it open. It was hectic not long ago, but it appears to have slowed down.

I could be wrong, though. I just hope I'm not.

Aaaand Alex ninja-ed me, proving me wrong.

Er...sorry?

It's a cute pic.

Just as a side note regarding "Body Mod - Looks Different" vs. Aberration - Looks Different -- Just because there's not any mechanical reason for your character to have a problem with someone who looks like a "freak"(as defined by you), that doesn't mean you can't judge them as a "freak". That's called role playing. I know it's a difficult concept for non subjective people to grasp, but it's true. If you are playing a character who absolutely loathes and despises pink-haired people, just because they don't get a social dice penalty for having pink hair, doesn't mean you can't hate them for whatever reason you want.

But that's just my two cents.

That's a good distinction. Thank you.