'suki M&M things

Hi! If you're getting this, you either expressed some interest in sansuki running a vorish game based on Mutants and Masterminds, a ruleset for modernish superheroes and supervillains. Or you were in a place where someone else did, and just clicked it. Or you randomly found it on your own. I don't know! Regardless, I am ASSESSING INTEREST in this kind of game. There's a few important things to note, but the main thrust of this is for me to get a handle on how many people would actually be interested in playing a sytem they probably don't know at all. So, I'll do this as a fake question and answer.

*When would this game happen?

If it happens, which I haven't 100% decided on, I'd start shortly after the new year.

*How would this go down?

I've two ideas- the first is a forum thread on Eka's portal, and the second is me makiung a custom discord server for it with a dicebot and rooms and everything fancy-dancy like that. I'm kind of torn, so I welcome feedback here too. On the one hand the Discord solution is likely to tempt me into going overboard and overworking myself and is going to be harder for spectators to be able to just read some of the lewd stuff... on the other hand, gosh, my own dicebot, separate rooms for heroes and villains and other things. I could go either way-

*Wait, heroes and villains? What kind of game is this, anyway?

Yeah! So the general GIST of the idea I am toying with is that it's a fairly generic modern-era Big City, with heroes and villains doing their own thing, and then there's an alien invasion that supers have to WORK TOGETHER to fight. Usually work together. Sometimes eat each other, when they can get away with it, maybe, but mostly work together. While also trying to advance their own motivations. TOGETHER. If I get all/mostly heroes, that's gonna be one kind of game, if I get all/mostly villains, another, and if I get a mix, that's a third, and I'm OK with all of it. Power-level wise, mechanically probably the baseline PL 10- for those who aren't familiar with M&M, think kind of strong, somewhat famous big names but not world class avengers, justice league folks, etc. Catwoman, Jubilee, Hawkeye (you don't *have* to have superpowers!), those sorts of levels of folk; not scrubs, but not the people who usually fight cosmic-level threats. So let that calibrate any percolating ideas.

*Is Mutants and Masterminds hard?

It's flexible. I love the system! Most of the hard bits are in the character creation, and is mostly just information overload and being familiar with the many, many things M&M can do. Play is fairly straightforward and easy to learn. Don't worry! I have all the rules. Plus, I love making characters, so I can really help out with that given a good concept to dig my teeth into.

*Just how vorish is vorish? And can I be a furry? Is this going to be lewd?

Normal people aren't geeeeenerally able to eat people. A decent number of supers/mutants can, and it's not unheard of for 'baseline humans' to be able to, but that's rare. You can almost certainly come up with a reason your idea can eat people, if you want to. As far as furry- I mean, yeah? I will say that this is mostly a similar world to Earth, so there aren't, like, entire races of furries and demis running around, so it is more likely that the fuzzy folks will be one-off and not part of an entire parallel society. I am being careful not to say absolutes here. If I get a full slate of furries, well, that sounds like a good background tie-in to me, you just won't meet a lot of others. :D Also: Sure, lewd is fine and better than fine!





---Draft Vore Rules for Mutants and Masterminds, 3rd Edition---

The goal of these rules is to bolt a few pieces onto M&M so that it can relatively cleanly support vorish gameplay. The system is already flexibile enough that we can do most things- there's just a few core pieces that need to be placed in, and then some optional bits and such to allow for the full breadth of our fetishy fun. This isn't meant to be a be-all end-all of how this works- please, by all means, suggest more pieces, and if you actually want to run more games with this system, by all means do so! This does presuppose familiarity with M&M so I'm not going to go over a lot of the stuff that's core to that. So, the two core new pieces...


NEW DESCRIPTOR: Vorish
-The "Vorish" descriptor is available to apply to all powers that involve eating someone, in pretty much any way. Your imagination is really the limit. Vorish effects are basically always noticeable.


NEW CONDITION: "Eaten"
-The "Eaten" condition is what applies to anyone who has been physically devoured by someone, in any orifice. The hero is physically held inside someone, and is subject to digestion (see digestion section below). The character is Immobile and Disabled. This condition can be applied as the third stage of an Affliction attack, or as the third stage of a Grab attack after bound.


So, how do you eat people? You've got a few ways to do so.

First, the most straightforward way is by progressing along the grabbing track. It's an attack check, that if it works the target makes a resistance check against your strength or grabbing effect using the better of their strength or dodge; if you win with one degree of success, the target's restrained (immobile/vulnerable), with two they're bound (defenseless, immobile, and imparied), and with three they're eaten (see above). Each turn you start with any level of grab, you can try to improve it with another grab attack- degrees of success are cumulative, but if you lose any the target escapes. Escapes work the same way as in the core rules, with the alteration that a successful escape check when you're fully Eaten is against the check result of your opponent's strength check *plus five*, to account for how hard it is to get out of a predator.

The second way to eat someone is through Afflictions. You can make an affliction per the core rules, with "Eaten" as the result of three degrees of failure; this accounts for other more exotic ways of eating someone. For example, if you wanted to hypnotize someone into your stomach, you could make an affliction whose one-degree-of-failure result was entranced, two degrees compelled, and third degree eaten, and make it all will-based instead of fortitude-based. Alternately, if you want to just ooze over someone as a slime, a fortitude-based affliction that progressed from hindered -> immobile -> eaten could represent that cleanly. You can add things like Cumulative to affliction, or even give it a little range, or make it concentration based, et cetera et cetera as fits your particular way of eating someone. Any affliction power that can inflict the Eaten effect must have the Vorish power descriptor, though it can also have others. As with being grabbed, resistance checks are as written, except that for Eaten instead of the minute of recovery time the target needs to make a resistance check agianst the opponent's affliction DC + 5. When stacked with Disabled, this makes it quite hard to escape even a relatively weak predator! This might get tuned later.

Regardless, if you eat a character or a set of characters that has more mass than you (mass ranks), then you are Hindered. This is the only measure of being stuffed in these rules.


Digestion, or how to convert an eaten enemy into food.

First, if you don't have *any* power at all to digest someone, your normal physical body still has digestive processes, they'll just be weak and slow. Y'know, like how your stomach digests normal food. This is a particular section where GMs will want to eyeball this hard and make their own rules to fit the flavor of their game! For my iteration of the rules, I'm calling this "passive" digestion. Passive digestion takes place on a longer time scale. Inside combat, the prey takes no damage, and can try to escape all they like. Outside of combat, an eaten meal gets three chances to escape, once per minute of time IC; if they fail all three, they are at the mercy of their predator's gullet. Whether they're conscious or not is up to the players and GM. Without an advantage, this process can't be stopped or controlled. The meal is fully digested in time rank 10 (2 hours); each rank of mass higher or lower than the norm increases or decreases this time by 1 level accordingly, and is also increased by every 1 rank for every 4 ranks of impervious toughness the prey possesses. Immunity to acid means that the prey can't be digested at all by a normal person, and will probably lead to bathroom embarrassment. If the time to digest increases above 1 day, the prey will be able to escape the predator with their hide intact.

Active digestion, however, deals damage on combat time scales to a meal. It must have the Vorish descriptor, and must have the -1/rank limitation of Limited (only Eaten targets). It can be automatic per turn with the right extras, or something the predator has to take an action on. If the prey has enough impervious toughness that they can ignore the active digestion, the passive digestion rules above imply. If not, damage proceeds as usual, and is always Lethal. Given the amount of dice rolls, I suggest that once out of combat, GMs apply the "three chances at escape" rules above. Digestion time is similar to with passive digestion, except that every 2 damage ranks of a digesting vorish effect decrease the time by 1 rank. Acid immunity does *not* protect against passive digestion, but it does act as "half effect" against acid-based digestion attacks.


And that's really all! You can do pretty close to anything you can imagine with the creative application of M&M's different tools. I'll go over some examples at the bottom, but your imagination and your GM's patience is really the limit!

Assorted Extra Pieces

-New Advantage: Hospitable Body
A predator with this 1-point advantage can control their body's natural processes to hold someone inside them, breathing and unharmed, indefinitely. Each day, an unwilling meal gets another 3 chances to escape if they want, but for each day they're stuck inside someone they receive a cumulative -1 on top of all other penalties.

-New Advantage: Rapid Metabolism
A predator with this advantage processes their meals rapidly. The final digestion time result calculated above is reduced by 1 time rank for every rank of this advantage, cumulatively.

-New Advantage: Spacious Predator
For each rank of this advantage, increase the mass rank of prey that causes a predator to be hindred by 1 rank.


Examples:


"What about willing vore?"

What about it? Someone who is willing (really willing, not affliction-induced willing- use the rules for that) can be swallowed whole with one standard action. Persuading someone with honeyed words to let you eat them is a pretty difficult check: An NPC will need to be Helpful to even try, and it will be an opposed Persuasion (or other interaction skill) check versus Will check.


"What if you want to heal someone you've eaten?"

Then you would take the Healing power with the Limited: Only against Eaten people (-1/rank). If you also made it a Move action (+1/rank), then it would cost exactly as much as a normal Healing power, and you could take it as a 1-point alternate effect of your core Healing power. Note: In general, any close-range effect can be given that Limited (-1/rank) flaw.


"What if you want to heal yourself by absorbing someone?"

You'd make your digestion superpower have Regeneration as a linked power to your damage effect. You could also get fancy by linking Enhanced Trait and Weaken to steal attributes or something similar directly.


"What if I want to be able to reform?"

1. Talk to your GM
2. Look at the Immortality power :)


"Can I be like that pink lady in dragon ball Z and turn someone into candy?"

Sure, why not? Transformed is one of the third level conditions an affliction can inflict. Go nuts.


"Can I eat someone and turn them into another species?"

Sure. A pred can take an Affliction that applies to only eaten people (that -1/rank limiter) and have it inflict Transformation as a 3rd level result.


"Can I do something other than try to escape when I've been eaten?"

I don't see why not. You can only target your predator, of course, and you're limited by being Disabled, but you can do pretty much anything you want on your turn instead of attempting to escape.


"Can I take Immunity to Digestion?"

You can take immunity to acid (5 ranks), and that'll protect you against any normal people. As noted in the digestion section, if you have immunity to a power descriptor you are being digested with, it acts as though it were half-effect. You cannot buy a blanket immunity to all kinds of digestion, or all kinds of vorish powers, because that'd be less than fun. Still, half effect can be useful!