If You Wrote The Lore

[Sakura Tenshi]

Just a random discussion thread asking what folks might add, remove, change, clarify, etc. if they were writing the lore and background for City of Heroes, you can imagine either something for back during live, for a storyarc added here, or even imagine if it had been part of the game from the beginning and share thoughts and opinions on it. (also not sure if this should be here or Roleplaying, admittedly, feel free to move)

 

Anyway, getting the ball rolling, some of my own thoughts and ideas would include:

 

• After colonizing in America, not all of Oranbega chose to remain part of it, and thus were spared the worst of the war and were outside the demonic pact, instead choosing to live amongst the local Native American tribes. This has resulted in a Narrangansett reservation close to Paragon the Circle of Thorns inexplicably avoid, and the shamans of the tribe wielding familiar magic and myths of an ancient member of their own deities: Emett* The Traveling Wiseman
• Cimerora, despite being ostensibly Roman was an island inhabited by pre-Hellenic Greeks, and largely seen as a quirky and weird backwater spot though still good enough to pay their tithes and taxes to the Empire. Relatedly I'd retcon/establish Cimerora as existing in the 60sAD during the reign of Nero, and perhaps refer to, intriguingly, Rome itself being not wholly unlike Paragon in the number of exceptionally powerful oddballs. (how do you think Nero kept his power?)
• Part of what makes Terra Volta impressive (and important) is that in the alt-history of City of Heroes, Terra Volta was the first practical Fusion Reactor put into operation in the whole world, and in the post-Rikti War era supports much of the Eastern seaboard of North America and even the Maritime provinces of Canada to the north. Though technology has marched on and Councilman Alderman isn't wrong that a far better reactor can be built for much cheaper (thanks to Praetorians and Positron, anti-matter reactors are available), but transitioning the power grid, not to mention concerns about anti-matter reactor tech, stymies headway into such legislation.
• Gilgamesh of Uruk was the first Incarnate, already a demi-deity he found and drank from the Well of Furies and gained greater power which he shared later with Enkidu. The Well attempted to assert itself over Gilgamesh many a times but failed as his will was too powerful and even attempts to seduce him under false pretense of being an equal lover ended with it rebuked. So instead, the Well offered itself to a mighty bull which then rampaged through Uruk before being destroyed by Gilgamesh and his companion and finally, the Well exploited Enkidu's greater drawing from it to strike him down and withdraw enough of its support to make Gilgamesh mortal once more. In turn, Gilgamesh sealed Pandora's Box, and resigned himself and Enkidu being remembered in their deeds and works.
• The original pre-issue 18 Bobcat is 'still canon', Neuron simply grew tired of the half-feral, distrusting catgirl and threw her into the Underground with the Failed Experiments while he used blood samples to create a far more docile and sensual version.

[Greycat]

I would -

- probably get people together to go over the lore with a fine toothed comb to make sure it's consistent. (Seeing different viewpoints is fine or someone hearing such and such, ok. But the underlying timeline, lore, etc. should be consistent.) Just so we have a good, solid basis.

 

- Get rid of the whole sentient well and go back to the idea (granted, vaguely described) of it collecting humanity's potential and occasionally releasing it (causing ages of gods/herores/legends.)

 

- Put in Nictus-side storylines redside, to see that side of the Kheldian war. Get choices to make other alliances to work with or against Arakhn on the way, for instance.

 

- Even if it can't be an EAT (because those are a lot of work on top of this,) introduce the whole Blood of the Black Stream - NPC group, storylines from 1-50, interactions with other groups, etc. There are several hints and mentions that just were dropped because the live devs went "oh, we're ignoring that, we want new people to do their own things, not actually finish these other things."

 

- Similarly, more information and missions with the Coralax - who were also supposed to be an EAT at one point - and their (as I recall) enslaved race, the Virtea. (You know that odd "thing pulled up in the nets" in... I believe Stephanie Peebles arc? Yep. That. Another hook that was never paid off.)

 

- While it's a minor hook - Hollows missions from Wincott. You find the Hellions with artefacts, one of which is a hollow skull. That was a nod to one of the other EATs that never saw the light of day (meant as a way to give players wings before they figured out how to do it as a costume piece) - Avilans. I think I'd want *something* just to explain what that was. Even if it had to be specifically in Ouroboros.

 

- More Ouroboros (and other time travel) missions, not connected to any greater storyline, but exploring bits of the history. Fight in Brass Monday. Investigate Mayor Spanky way back when. Try (granted, fail, but still) to save the Moraine.  Finish a series of them, get a badge - something like "sepia-toned glasses."

 

- While it's a minor thing, purge anything that tells you THIS is where you get your powers (like dark-themed sets often saying "they're from the Netherworld!" No... leave that to the player.) Epic ATs excluded, since they're tied to a storyline so it makes sense to have more definition there, but for the generic sets? No.

[Glacier Peak]

Basically I'd throw in the Moon Base zone and tie it in to Kheldians and Shivans some how.

[Oubliette_Red]

I'd like to see an arc regarding Praetor Keyes' (Anti-Matter) cracking of portal technology with a quest chain in First Ward that eventually leads to Praetorians having access to Cimerora (and level 35+ content). Level-wise it should be in Night Ward, but I don't think that would fit thematically and he did stop the Hamidon forces in First Ward without nuking the entire city, so I think it would make sense for him to have a hidden lab there.

 

[Arc-Mage]

The vast majority of the existing Lore Bibles in CoH are written incredibly poorly. I would write them with more passion and better structure.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Arc-Mage

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'd like to thank the person who wrote the lore that made my baby fall in love with me.

 

 

[Lazarillo]

Swap out Nemesis for Malta as the masterminds of the Roy Cooling arc.  Cooling being "What do you mean you've never heard of Malta? They're a super secret conspiracy, everybody knows that.", some 20 levels before everyone's supposed to know that, among other things, was just, honestly, really bad writing.  But given the eventual reveal that Nemesis was behind the Sky Raiders anyway, and that the mission which reveals such is a standalone that "hides" outside of anything you can even find in Ouroboros, it would've made for an alternate way to get all that information out, kinda like happens with a lot of the Rikti-related reveals if you do the RWZ arcs.

 

Also, drop both the Reichsmann TFs, but especially the Barracuda SF.  There's probably no salvaging those, from a lore/story perspective.  An orbital strike is the only way to be sure.

 

Oh, and related to that first point, maybe have an arc or SF or something redside that puts Malta more out in the open there, so when the newspapers start writing about 'em at level 40, it makes a certain amount of sense.  Just a little gap-fill, in that case.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Lazarillo

[tidge]

Two big issues stand out to me:

 

One bit of the Lore that has always bothered me is the weird hint in the Scholastic history badge about the link between Superadine and dimensional research. This especially bothers me because of the supposed manufacture and distribution of Superadine via the Skulls/Family. Given that we never see anything like a "recruitment drive" for Trolls (even their raves are simply all Trolls!), nor anything like the recruitment/hangers-on we see with Skulls, Hellions, or Council, I always assumed that the Trolls are actually extra-dimensional creatures... contrary to whatever the Midnighters and the Regulators would have us believe about Trolls being mutants. The later Praetorian arc that involves Malaise bringing drugs to Primal Earth almost feels like a loose end that is supposed to be tied with this, but as we see absolutely nothing like Trolls red/gold side, and they are pretty much ignored after level 20 I feel like this was just something that was walked away from.

 

I would have preferred that the Praetorian story didn't progress to its end. It never made sense to me that the Praetoria zones we so good looking and well-designed, but would fall to Hamidon... the Rikti, Nemesis and Devouring Earth are constantly doing things like taking down Paragon City's War Walls and invading, so I just didn't want that story to go the way it did. I blame Incarnate content. I would have preferred that Gold-siders  got their own Epic ATs ("PEATs"). My rough concept was that (like VEATs) you are nominally loyal to Cole, with one path being an Assault Trooper who could go either the "Heavy Trooper" router or become a Hybrid Devouring Earth Soldier, or another class that could opt to go the Seer route or have your mind placed into one of the Praetorian Robots (shades of Malta, with a suitable nasty twist like Nightstar). Basically instead of letting Praetoria crash and burn, Cole has leveraged even more desperate measures for his devotees. They'd get their own arcs like HEATs and VEATS.

[Scarlet Shocker]

one of the things I loathe in the (mostly) rich lore of this game is the whole Well of the Furies shtick about how we gain Incarnate powers. It's incredibly poorly written, but the premise itself just grates on me like nails down a blackboard. "A wizard did it" would've been a far better explanation. 

 

I hate it for a number of reasons - not the least of which is we're suddenly gifted power by this otherworldly poorly explained thing that just "well it respects power so you get some too" with a horribly written backstory that reads like a badly produced clip show from your very favourite TV series. Trapdoor? Really?

 

It feels like a completely missed opportunity to do something interesting with character development. It might have been nice to turn it into something related to character origins. It could have put the whole science, tech, natural, mutation, magic stuff to bed in a productive way, as an example - a nice idea that was never well utilized in game. I get that the whole thing needed content and I don't hate the later incarnate content - some of those TFs are fantastic, but the whole thing that actually turns you into an Incarnate lacks imagination and seems poorly thought out.

[DoctorHugh]

On 1/22/2023 at 9:26 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

the person who wrote the lore that made my baby fall in love with me.

Haha man that video has been in my "favorites" list for soooo long now!

 

Thanks for giving me an excuse to watch it again today.  🙂

[tidge]

I think it is ok to dislike just about any (and all) aspects of the Incarnate system. It's so obviously bolted on, and mostly segregated from, the original concept of the game that I spend so little mental effort thinking about a viable rationale for why certain characters now get powers that are fundamentally outside of their ATs. I see the incarnate system as little more than "Always wanted an AoE attack?" or "Always wanted pets?" or "Need MOAR Enhancement?", "Here ya go!".

 

When I do think about it, the part of the Incarnate Lore that sits wrong with me is the retroactive explanation of some NPCs as being Incarnates, especially Positron. My Blue incarnates solo that guy's Task Force (all versions, all parts) and he just stands around on a little stone pedestal. My Red siders repeatedly punk him before Incarnates, and as Incarnates too.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

I think it is ok to dislike just about any (and all) aspects of the Incarnate system. It's so obviously bolted on, and mostly segregated from, the original concept of the game that I spend so little mental effort thinking about a viable rationale for why certain characters now get powers that are fundamentally outside of their ATs. I see the incarnate system as little more than "Always wanted an AoE attack?" or "Always wanted pets?" or "Need MOAR Enhancement?", "Here ya go!".

 

When I do think about it, the part of the Incarnate Lore that sits wrong with me is the retroactive explanation of some NPCs as being Incarnates, especially Positron. My Blue incarnates solo that guy's Task Force (all versions, all parts) and he just stands around on a little stone pedestal. My Red siders repeatedly punk him before Incarnates, and as Incarnates too.

 

What gets me the most about incarnates is that there are SO MANY of them.  Welcome to the pantheon of ultimate godhood, Squirrel Girl!  You are number 2,312,165 and we will be assigning wings and manna as soon as your turn comes up.  I don't want to put barriers in place to keep anyone away from it if they want to work for it, but I have always thought that limiting incarnate status to one or two per account or server would be a nice compromise.

[tidge]

35 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

What gets me the most about incarnates is that there are SO MANY of them.  Welcome to the pantheon of ultimate godhood, Squirrel Girl!  You are number 2,312,165 and we will be assigning wings and manna as soon as your turn comes up.  I don't want to put barriers in place to keep anyone away from it if they want to work for it, but I have always thought that limiting incarnate status to one or two per account or server would be a nice compromise.

 

I hear you. I'm slightly tweaked that the lore (as written) implies that choosing to become an Incarnate implies a certain amount of loss of agency and/or negative effects, even "walking the slow path". None of this applies to PCs, except possibly with respect to complaining that we players never got the "complete" Incarnate system.

[srmalloy]

23 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Welcome to the pantheon of ultimate godhood, Squirrel Girl!  You are number 2,312,165 and we will be assigning wings and manna as soon as your turn comes up.

Feeling a bit like this?

[Scarlet Shocker]

I wrote the lore and the lore one 😞

 

 

[cranebump]

Haven’t you heard? Nobody needs to write anything anymore. Chat GPT is going to do it all for us. 
 

Thank God. We’ve been actively wasting all these brain cells when we could be going to the Feelies.

[Uruare]

I'd have scrapped everything to do with the Incarnate lore in favor of putting the choices in the players' hands as to if and how a given character wound up breaking through the conventional limitations of the strictly mortal-tier super powered beings.

I would have very much liked to have seen concept choices presented to players about how their character could continue to advance in ways that went beyond level 50 without necessarily raising the level cap to do it.   Story arcs could have been written that forced player characters into situations that forced them to choose between seeking greater personal power, perhaps at some sort of risk or implied cost (present or future) and foregoing greater personal power in favor of calling in allies to help gang up on a problem.

What I would have liked to have seen leveraged would have been the central theme of power always coming at some sort of cost without strongarming anyone into feeling like their character was being pigeon-holed as a villain for pursuing personal power.

Honestly, I would have liked to have seen those that kept choosing to grow their personal power as being more and more required to solo various challenges and story arcs that those preferring to rely instead on allies and teamwork could tackle in small to full groups instead.  

The cost of immense, nigh-unfathomable power seems to me to be well engendered in the concept of Doctor Manhattan.  Utterly unspeakable power the like of which is difficult to comprehend in terms of his true limitations, but he's lonely as crap, has lost nearly all ability to relate to others and he has nothing to look forward to beyond more of the same for eternity.

I would encourage players to have to make the kinds of choices for their characters that might absolutely lead them down the path of having the power to solo entire Task Force-grade challenges...but at the cost of not being able to count on NPC allies to be able to help them anymore even if they'd like to.   I'd put a lot of story and fluff down such paths that really dug into how more and more of the NPC's they once knew and maybe even considered good friends just couldn't keep up with them anymore, maybe got hurt or even killed for trying to do so, maybe grew alienated, jealous or even agrieved at seeing their friend the PC become something they couldn't understand anymore.

There's an infinite sea of personal drama that can and should be involved in pursuit of that kind of power that is completely trivialized and mostly ignored by everything involved with the Incarnate lore.

As for the game mechanics providing the framework for that kind of power, I'd have disallowed people with someone going down whatever one might wish to call the Incarnate path from teaming with others that weren't on the Incarnate path.   

I would have explicitly wanted the players to understand that -their- experience of playing a character with that sort of power would be a lonelier path, just like it would be for their character.   They wouldn't be able to team up for things with normal supers as freely, and during things like holiday events and for world bosses, I'd have let them team up but not able to use their Incarnate powers or benefit from Incarnate perks while doing so.

But for general content, the choice to go Incarnate would have been made to feel a bit isolating just like immense, truly god-tier power would absolutely do.

Look at how Homelander in the show 'The Boys' is depicted.   He's a psychopath, sure, but part of why is because he's been so powerful all his life and he's never truly needed anyone.  He wipes the floor with most lesser supers like they're made out of tissue paper, but what good does all that power actually do him?

 

He's an excellent example of a really bad hero/villain Incarnate in my line of thought here - a serious problem for even top-tier 'normal' supers to face as a group.   But he's alone.  And he will always be alone because his power has made him arrogant and emotionally stunted, which has in turn made him utterly insufferable and violently unstable.

 

I would see the nature of such a path for a character also making the player choose about a favored playstyle with a given character.   

They'd be welcome to take their character down the path of the unspeakably overpowered badass, but they wouldn't be able to ruin the game for everyone preferring to accept mortal limits and rely instead on alliances, friendship and teamwork to get things done. 

I'd be very sure to make the incentives for staying mortal very present as well.  It's a lovely sentiment to say that friendship is its own reward, but gamers like carrots to chase and, if they're looking for group content, challenges to overcome through superior coordination and gumption.

Those choosing to go the path of the solo god-level ultra-badass would get solo content to test themselves against and earn their character's way up through the ranks of lowly demigod-tier badassery all the way up to cosmic tier Superman vs Darkseid grade challenges that would really require the player to put some serious effort into playing well, building their character well and actually having the chance to feel like the god-tier megasuper they wanted to be playing right then.

For the mere mortals at level 50?   Group content requiring more and more coordination, larger and larger groups doing more things at once and ultimately leading up to things as crazy and desperate as things comparable to Marvel's Infinity War versus Thanos or DC's Crisis of Infinite Earths grade of total fuckery to have to team up, coordinate and roll out to do something about.

 

The rewards for the folks staying at level 50 and sticking to mortal-grade superpower capabilities would not be power creep, but probably power diversification.
 

I'd have come up with some way for the mortal-tier supers to, through their continuing struggles and trials, to gain access to a third and fourth and fifth power pool, but only able to have two active at any one time.   Diversification and flexibility through picking things up from the people they regularly fight alongside and through advanced training to expand upon their abilities within the scope and scale of their overall potential for power would be what I would offer to the characters whose players chose to go the route of the Everyone Else that isn't some kind of Superman or Doctor Manhattan.

 

I think both playstyles being rewarded and encouraged would make it very easy for players to, character by character, explore the full breadth and scope of what the Super Hero genre has to offer.

As for actually making a game that worked like that...I don't see it as any more or less difficult than it is to make the types of games that already exist.  No less so either.   

Most of it is completely unreasonable and likely impossible in the engine of THIS game, but if we're tossing coins into the wishing well, there's a rough outline of mine and what I'd like to see done with Incarnate-like power and the dramatic tales that can and should be involved, and not to the exclusion of characters that aren't Superman.

 

[Techwright]

I'd have eliminated War Walls.  I know the game necessity for having them but they make no lore sense.  First they are walls on the scale of dams.  Dams that take years and years to build properly.  These supposedly went up in short order in the middle of a short but powerful war.  Second, we're fighting an opponent that can fly.  One that had an active mothership as well.  And we build massive concrete walls.  That's like creating the barrel to shoot fish in.

 

Second, I'd do a better job writing the rest of the world into the story.  I realize the game's name is defining, but that didn't have to be so in the beginning.  No city is an island unto itself (Even Praetoria has several islands.).  While we do have the Rogue Islands as "elsewhere" and we have stories that reference other places, I'd have like to have seen a better integration into the state, the region, the country, and the world at large.  We could have had task forces that of necessity sent us to London , or Cairo, or Ayers Rock for that matter, to deal with something that would have grave consequences for Paragon City if left unchecked.  for that matter the current lore states that the invasion was global in its scope.  We should have seen more of the fallout from that.

 

I'd also have written a clearer history of the heroes and villains.  I've managed to piece together bits here and there, but even with the plaques and markers, I'm left feeling a bit disjointed.  I pointed out in another thread some time ago there's some seemingly contradictory information on those plaques about the timeline of Mayor Spanky for example.

[Redletter]

The first of business is to canonize Stickbonker as Mayor.

 

Everything after that can, and will, be blamed on the mayor.