All right. So you've found our site and decided to give us a try. First off: thank you. Seriously. Thank you. Without players we're just a bunch of idiots waiting around in cyberspace.
If you're a d10/Cinematic Unisystem veteran - if you've played a game using it before or know about it enough, then you may be able to skip this. It's basically a tutorial for people who haven't done it before or who need a refresher.
Getting Started
First and foremost: make a character. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to first come up with a conceived character and to then make him or her from there. Don't just make a character for the stats - you'll find it harder and harder to play and will likely make a shitty, two-dimensional character. Like most staff members do.
So how do you go about doing that? Start with an idea. Does he or she have Powers? What are they? What are they good at? Bad at? Why do they do what they do? What do they do? What makes them unique? Why? Just think about it for a while and you will get somewhere.
Who's What's, Where's, When's, Why's
Basically, who, what, where, when, and why. Who are you? This includes metaphorically and who will play your character. You'll need an actor. Ben Styx is played by James Franco, for example, so you'll need someone as well. Any one is fair game as long as another player isn't already using them.
Next, what do you do? Where do you live/where have you lived/where are you from? When were important dates in your life? Why are they important?
After you have your concept (for the purposes of this tutorial, I'll be using Spider-Man as played by Tobey Maguire. If you don't know who that is, I assume your just about to epic troll our threads, and in which case, fuck you), you'll want to write a background - it's required for all characters.
Backgrounds
Most sites will tell you short and sweet is the way to go. But we're masochists (and I'm an English major), so here at Masked, it's generally the longer the better - but if you can make it short and sweet, or just don't want to write for long, go for it. For any character, we'll need a life story (nothing too in depth, of course, but maybe a few anecdotes that will demonstrate who the character is and why they do what they do in addition to an outline of the life - no actual outlines - be a little creative, please), a reason for being a hero or villain (especially if the character is second-tier, where this becomes a central theme of the background), how you gained your abilities or skills, and what you have been up to until this point.
Fuck yo' Staff
The background is usually what lets us, the staff, know if we'll let the character be created and passed into the game world. Again, most staff are dicks and will judge you based on your ability to write or your ability/inability to conform to their perceived notions of character correctness. Fuck them. You're the one who made the character, so you know what will work and not work for them. At Masked, we probably won't care if your powers are far-fetched and your abilities make comparatively little sense. For two reasons: 1) this is a free, internet game and we, the staff, are even bigger losers for running a MUSH than you ever could be, and 2) this is a superhero game. Be as self-fulfilling and campy as you want. Make Stan Lee proud. If you make a ridiculously over-powered, off-the-wall and too-amazing character, but have an equally amazing, entertaining, and uncouth background to go with it, you're going to be approved.
And here's a dirty little secret: be creative. The more we think about your character, the more we'll probably like you. Obviously there will be characters we love and those we hate (note: we hate cliches, unless said cliches involve some form of chocolate hazelnut spread). A lot of sites (and I say a lot and mean the one or three games I've played, all Buffy-verse, and the many, many games Vertigo has played that don't involve the same five assholes) say this, but we actually mean it. If you're background sounds good, that's like a free pass. The system we've created is pretty hard to break heavily in your favor, but if you do manage it, kudos. If your background works, we'll allow it.
As I've found out recently, staff's are almost universally pricks. They're set in their ways and they don't like being told they're wrong (to staff reading this that thinks I'm talking about them, yes, I am). We do. Tell us when you want something changed and we'll probably do it. Because we aren't assholes1. All the time.
Masked isn't like other games if only because the staff here is as new to staffing (but not running games, mind you) a MUSH as you are to playing in it. We're trying our best to be the nicest2, most understanding staff, and compared to the games we've played, that doesn't seem too damn hard.
Here's hoping we don't eat our words.
Back to the Backgrounds
Okay, so you've made a concept (Spider-Man), and have even written a background. It should look something like this:
Example: Peter Benjamin Parker is the son of Richard and Mary Parker, who worked as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and were killed on a mission involving an impersonator of the Red Skull. The infant Peter Parker is left in the care of his Uncle Ben and Aunt May Parker, who live in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Queens, New York. The aging couple love Peter, but he grows to be unpopular among his peers. Between an uncle who is too old to join him in physical activities and an aunt over-protective of the orphaned child, Peter gravitates to more non-physical hobbies such as photography and home chemistry, encouraged in these endeavors by his guardians. He grows to be a lonely, timid but exceptionally bright teenager who shows more interest in his studies (especially science, for which he has an uncanny affinity that is nothing short of genius) than in social life. He is often the target of jokes and bullying by more popular students like Flash Thompson, the high school's star athlete.
Peter Parker attends a science exhibition where he is bitten by a radioactive spider. Peter later discovers the spider bite has given him an array of spider-like powers, including wall-crawling, superhuman strength, speed and agility, and an extrasensory "spider-sense".
Peter initially sets out to find fame and fortune, winning a match while wearing a makeshift disguise against professional wrestler Crusher Hogan. He attempts to interest a television network in the idea of featuring him as a costumed hero (with the advantage that he can actually do the things his character can), and creates the Spider-Man name, costume, and web-shooters. After quickly becoming a minor celebrity, Peter appears on a television special, but afterward allows a thief to escape the TV station, asserting that it isn't his problem. He comes to regret his inaction when he finds out that the same burglar subsequently killed his Uncle Ben.
Realizing that he could have prevented his uncle's death, the guilt-ridden Peter commits to a life of crimefighting and lifesaving, driven by his uncle's words, "With great power there must also come great responsibility". (The phrase is often shortened to: "With great power comes great responsibility".) This disarming mix of selfless obligation and self-recrimination brought about by his uncle's death arguably makes up Spider-Man's moral core.
In the earliest Spider-Man stories, Peter Parker attends Midtown High School. His first encounter with superhuman heroes is with the Fantastic Four, and he also fights his first costumed foe, the Chameleon. After his uncle's death, he and his aunt become desperate for money, so he gets a job as a photographer at the Daily Bugle selling photos to J. Jonah Jameson, confronting the Vulture for the first time this way. Peter dates co-worker Betty Brant and clashes with his high school rival Flash Thompson (whose girlfriend, Liz Allen, he informally tutors. Liz also later develops a crush on the unpopular 'Petey' which further serves to infuriate Flash). He encounters many of his most famous enemies for the first time during this period, including such foes as Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, the Lizard, Electro, Mysterio, the Green Goblin, Kraven the Hunter, the Scorpion, and, on the day of his graduation, the Molten Man.
With the numerous enemies Spider-Man made he also made a great number of allies, a recurring theme in the comics. For all of Spider-Man's solo adventures, he amassed a great deal of allies as well including the likes of the X-Men, Daredevil, and the Fantastic Four (of which he was a part of a replacement team for when the original team went missing. The other members were the Grey Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider.
Peter graduates from high school, and enrolls at Empire State University, where he meets Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy. His aunt introduces him to Mary Jane Watson, whom he dates for a short time, but Peter soon falls in love with Gwen. Meanwhile, Harry becomes Peter's roommate and best friend, but starts using illegal drugs. Peter's relationship with Flash also changes, and they slowly become close friends over time.
Harry's father, Norman Osborn, is revealed to be the Green Goblin and discovers Spider-Man's secret identity. Spider-Man first fought the Rhino, the Shocker, and the Kingpin of Crime, and also cleared his dead parents' names, during this time in his life. After Gwen's father, Police Captain George Stacy is killed in a battle between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus, Gwen's relationship with Peter is put on hold when she travels to England. Harry suffers a drug overdose shortly after she returns.
Spidey creates a chemical cocktail which is intended to eliminate his spider powers. However the potion increased his spider powers, rather than eliminating them, which gives him six arms. Dr. Curt Connors uses the blood of new villain Morbius to create an antidote that turns Spider-Man back to "normal".
While Harry is ill, the Green Goblin throws Gwen Stacy from a tower of the Brooklyn Bridge; either from shock or physical trauma during Spider-Man's rescue attempt, she dies before hitting the water. The Goblin appears to be killed himself in the ensuing battle with Spider-Man. Grieving Gwen's death, Parker withdraws from his social circle, only to find support from Mary Jane, who eventually starts dating him. Spider-Man first fought the Punisher during this time. Harry later discovers the truth about his father and becomes the second Green Goblin.
Gwen's death has another unforeseen consequence as revealed many years later: one of her professors, Miles Warren, clones Gwen and Peter from tissue samples that he'd taken in class some months back. Both clones disappear, but Peter's clone — presumed dead in an explosion — returns years later as Ben Reilly. Later still, Mary Jane and Peter break up, as she is not ready for a committed relationship.
… You get the idea. You can use a Wikipedia-esque style, like this one I've graciously copied from them, or you can be a bit more original and do something else. Maybe something first-person? Something abstract? Something not stolen from Wikipedia?
Yeah. That. Don't do that. You'll want to go more in depth than this, probably, but if the characters you've mentioned are really that unimportant, than you can probably get away with it. Other than that, what you put in your background is your call. Just make it work for the character and your on a very good start.
Making Stats
After the initial character background, it's time to create the stats. First, choose from our Character Types. Next, Drawbacks, Qualities, Attributes, Skills, and Powers. Probably not in that order, but something like it.
I guess the best way to do this is lay-out the good and the bad in your character.
Example: In order to keep coherence (because I'm lazy), I'll use Spider-Man to demonstrate how a character is made. First, he has both a lot of Power and a lot of Skill. He'd be a Virtuoso.
Spidey has moderate superhuman strength, high superhuman speed, good superhuman endurance, the abilities of a spider, and some cool technology to help him out.
Unfortunately, he's also out-of-luck, often financially unstable, tragic, and life has just hit him really hard.
Drawbacks
It really is a good idea to start with Drawbacks, if only so you have all your points to work with from the get-go. Remember your character and background concept? This is where it actually becomes useful. Drawbacks are taken to be, well, Drawbacks, and for every point you gain from taking them, a point adds to your Powers or Quality Point pool, depending on which you'd prefer.
Look back at the concept and the background information and see any obvious drawbacks that you can easily buy. Then start to look for ones your character has that hadn't necessarily made their way to the background yet.
What's your character like that you know you will end up role-playing, but you can't easily translate to a black-and-white, bare-bones background? Immature? Try Peter Pan Complex. Socially awkward? Go with Misfit. Accident-prone? Bad Luck could be for you. Any thing you know your character has that would be a drawback, you can take.
The point isn't to maximize possible Powers or Quality points, but to make a fully-rounded, unique individual. Of course, we're not going to mind if you do take full drawbacks. That's up to you.
Example: Going back to Spider-Man, there are multiple possible drawbacks.
Firstly, he has some pretty rotten luck. Maybe - 2 Bad Luck, then.
Second, he's never quite able to hold on to a really stable job, so he'd have Resources - 1. Depending on the era, of course.
After that, he has a sickly aunt he must take care of (though some times she takes care of him), so he has a Dependent, a 1 point drawback.
That's four, which is pretty good, but Spidey is severely flawed.
He's got adversaries up the ass, so it could range anywhere from a 2 to 5 point drawback. We'll go with - 2.
Then, there's his jokester vibe, a - 1 point drawback, since he actively tells jokes and regularly would role-play a pretty funny character. That's from Clown.
After that, he's got Secrets, Obligations, Love, and more, but we'll say he has Love - 2, for True love, and Secret - 1 for his secret identity.
That's 10. The max.
Qualities and Packages
Once you've gotten all of you're drawbacks sorted out, you may want to move on to Packages and Qualities. These represent skills and training a character has gone through that are the result of hard work. Pertaining to your background, go wild. What you choose just has to make sense to the character background.
You'll want to remember bonuses from these so you can apply them later on. It's not too hard, so you'll be fine. This isn't d20 system, so nothing too stupid will come up. We hope.
Example: As a Virtuoso, Spider-Man has both Powers and a lot of skill. He is also really, really smart. A Brainiac, even. So he'd get a +2 to Intelligence, and a +1 to another mental stat, in this case, I'm applying it to Willpower. In addition, he gets 4 points to put into his skills, which I'll apply to Science and Doctor. He'd be obsessed with his latest brainy project (and just need to role-play occasional absent-mindedness) and suffer some social penalties. That cost him 5 Quality Points.
Spidey also fits the mold of a Nosy Reporter. So he'd get a +1 to both Perception and Intelligence. Yes, it's alright to take packages that stack bonuses to the same stat. He'd also get a +1 to Notice and a +1 to Art: Photography (which I chose as his extra skill yield). He'd have Contacts 2 (Criminals), and also need to make a doubled Willpower roll to stifle his curiosity. That's his other 5 given Quality Points.
Every other Quality he buys at CharGen is now thanks to his Drawbacks. Lucky him.
Spidey is quite Highly Skilled, so I'd say two ranks of that for 4 points. He's also got Situational Awareness for 2 more points, but not yet his sweet web-slingers (he could make those in-game after some XP gains, perhaps, and buy them as a Gadget). That just leaves four more point from the Drawbacks to go to his Powers.
Skills
Your Skills determine how well you perform tasks.
For every level after 5 you are buying in a skill, it will cost you three for one level. So if you bought five levels in Kung-Fu, and wanted a seven, it would cost three to elevate your ranks to six (totaling eight spent) and a further three to get a seven (making the total spent an eleven). This is all detailed in the page, so don't worry. Again, not too hard.
But how many skills are enough for CharGen? That depends. What did you emphasize in your background? We're probably not going to accept a character with two 10-level skills and the rest at zero. Sorry, it's just not realistic. At all. We'd prefer you to have quite a few, but realize that just isn't always the case. It really is subjective, but try to have enough relatively well-developed skills to be a real, adjusted person.
But for the most part, if you stay true to the character and don't get ridiculous, you'll be alright.
Example: Spider-Man is a well-rounded man, so he'd have a lot of skills with a good amount of training.
He starts with 25 skills points, but moves up with his two ranks of Highly Skilled to 33 (he has an Intelligence of 4, and is allowed four points maximum per rank from Highly Skilled, so he gains eight more Skill points).
Highly Acrobatic, a Spider-Man at the beginning of his career relies more on superhuman Dexterity than skill, so he'd only have a 5 in that skill. That costs him 5 points.
He is pretty good at Photography, so he'd have a 4 in the Art skill, with a subset of Photography (all Art skills need a specific artistic ability), so a 4 in that skill, one of which comes from his Nosy Reporter Package Quality for free. That only costs him 3.
Spidey is pretty well versed in crime after having seen all he has seen, so he may have a 1 or 4 in that, depending on age. Since this is so early in his career, it'd be a 2. Which costs 2.
Being so good at Science, Spidey has some pretty decent medical skills, too. He'd have a 3 in that. Which, thanks to his Braniac Quality, is only going to cost him 1 Skill Point.
Spidey eventually becomes very intelligent, but this early in his career, it is likely he'd have a 4 Knowledge. This will cost him all 4 points.
Relying almost exclusively on his own body to end fights, Spider-Man is a great fighter, even at a young age. He'd probably have a 6 Kung-Fu. That would cost him 8 skill points, since it costs 3:1 for skills after level 5.
Now Spidey's got 10 skill points left, which could come from his Highly Skilled quality.
At such a young age, Spidey'd probably only have a 3 Mr. Fix-It. It would cost him 3.
He'd have a 6 Notice, so that would cost him 5 points, since one comes from his Nosy Reporter Quality. Good stuff.
His science skill, even at a young age being outstanding, would be a 4. It'd cost him 2 points, since he already gains two levels from Braniac.
Arguably, he could have some other skills, like Supes (but this early in his career - I'm only generating Issue 10-level Spidey or so - he'd not know much at all other than the Fantastic Four). He could have Computers, but since they didn't really matter back in '64, that's a no-go.
Powers
After all that, if you have Powers, you'll want to spend those points, too. Just choose what your character has and try to represent the concept well.
If you have an idea for a power we haven't got, it's probably because we've disallowed it. But if we've just forgotten one, please e-mail us and just ask. For the most part, we're very open to new powers. Just make sure it isn't already disallowed or impossible in Masked.
Example: Spider-Man would have Superhuman Dexterity, Strength, and Constitution. It would cost 6 points for the right to go Superhuman in those attributes (2 each), and from there he'd probably have a +3 in Dexterity, a +3 in Strength, and a +2 in Constitution. That would cost him 14 Powers Points.
He'd also have Battle Precognition, worth 2 points, and Wall-Crawling, for another 2. That's 18, so his last Power would go to Accelerated Healing Factor, the first level, for 1 last Point.
Attributes
After you've gotten qualities and packages, you'll want to set your Attributes. Depending on your Character Tier, you'll have a certain amount of Attributes for free, and from there, you'll gain or lose some depending on drawbacks, qualities, packages, and powers. All Attributes are 1:1 in buying, so just make what you feel represents your character well. Remember, an average person would have a 2 in a skill (and usually one or two skills with above that), while the peak-human level is 6. Anything after is superhuman, and requires Powers Points to attain.
There are six attributes to choose from, and they are all explained on the attribute page. But you should have been clicking the links any way (for all of these subsections), so just head there and you'll be fine.
Example: Spider-Man is known for his incredible speed, agility, and balance, as well as the proportional Strength and Constitution of a Spider. So he'd have a very high Dexterity score. He is also known for his Perception and Intelligence. As a Virtuoso, Spidey starts out with 20 Attribute points.
He'd probably have an 7 or so in Strength, which is great, but lower-rung among heavy-hitters in his world. He gains a +3 from his Superhuman Attributes, so he'd spend 4 points to get his seven.
Spidey's highest Attribute would be Dexterity, and it's an 9. He'd have to spend 6 points to get that.
Next would be his Superhuman Constitution, which would give him a 7 for 5 more points.
At this time, you'd have 6 Attribute points left.
Spider-Man's Intelligence would eventually increase (represented in-game by gaining knowledge and abilities and in game-mechanics as XP spends), like all his other Attributes, but at this stage in his life, he'd have a 4 Intelligence, and thanks to his Braniac and Nosy Reporter packages, it only costs him one point.
His Perception would be a 4, and cost him only 3 points, again thanks to his Nosy Reporter quality.
Finally, he'd have a normal, 2 Willpower at this stage, being impulsive and a teenager. Spidey would only have to spend one point, due to his Braniac quality.
Oh My God, Done
Yes, you're done. Fucking finally. Please, just follow the rules and you'll be fine. We're not going to make fun of you for being new, or for hating the system we use. Sometimes we hate it, too. And we were new not too long ago.
After you've made your character, submit it, either by e-mailing us or logging in and creating it on the MU*. We'll look through the BG (background), check your stats, make sure everything makes sense, adds up, is allowed, and works, and then get back to you with our reply. Hopefully it should only take a few days max.
And
Remember: this game exists for no other reason than to have fun. So do.
