What are some good choices for Canon based AE Missions?

[justicebeliever]

I'm a lot overwhelmed searching for an appropriate mission.

 

I'm NOT looking to farm.  I have no problem with it...it is just not my interest.

 

I'm really looking for a canon-based mission or set of missions that would make for a fun experience with some new content.

 

What do you recommend?  I'm interested in Hero Missions only...again, no problems with rogues, vigilantes, villains, insurance salesman, or lawyers in the game (wait pretty sure the last 3 were all the same).  I'm just a Heroside kinda guy.

 

What would be good in the Very Short, Short, Medium, Long, and Very Long Categories?

 

What's good <lvl 10, 10-20, 20-30, 30-40, 40-50?

 

I know there are some really creative missions that you all have done, and I have been putting off playing them for too long...

[Heraclea]

A lot depends on what you mean by 'canon based'. 

 

All three of my currently live missions make reference to canon.  But they're still mine, so don't expect a reverent treatment.  "The Great American Skull Fry", which is lowbie oriented and fairly difficult at its under-10 level, gives you Flower Knight, Statesman, and Marrowsnap.  It also introduced 'Skulls Girlfriends' in anticipation of i25.  Azuria's incompetence supplies a plot point.  But it's basically the mission I created around the forum meme 'Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.' 

 

"Spread My Legions" is all about Romulus Augustus and his plan to conquer the past, present, and future.  The mobs are customized groupings of standard game mobs, mostly, with a few customs sprinkled in. 

 

"Lawyers of Ghastly Horror" also makes reference to fairly obscure in game canon.  The opening mission has you rescuing CoT from lawyers, and lawyers from CoTs: a familiar trope.  This sets up a plot involving a scheme that threatens to tear apart the boundaries of space time.  The band 'Firemullet' (canon, but in the days of DfB it probably comes from a mission that few people see any more) has been kidnapped by ancient Romans.  You must defeat Chris Jenkins and ultimately go on to banish Lughebu, M'teru, Rambetu (canon) and Buugaluu (all mine) back to whence they came. 

 

One of these (probably Lawyers or Legions) will be pulled shortly as soon as I prepare my Catrina Calaveras origin story in a fit to publish shape.  That will be a non-canon story involving Aztec artifacts, Councilman Birch's Militia, the Banished Pantheon, and Roman amazons.

 

So 'canon related' depends a whole lot on what your canon is and how respectfully you want it treated.  Now there's a lot of in game canon that I don't know myself: very little of the goldside story line, or the deaths of Statesman and Sister Psyche, sticks in memory for me.  And making fun of Statesman is still too entertaining to me to really accept that he is gone. 

[Ankylosaur]

All of my missions are inspired by hooks I see in the canon and explore.

 

The three I have live now won awards back in the day:

 

• Rularularian - 41-54 - ID: 848 - Takes place in the Shadow Shard and starts in Mole Point Charlie. It explores how all those regular civilians in The Shard, that the Fire Base Zulu patrols have found, and that keep talking about looking forward to seeing Paragon City as if they have never seen it, got there. Gives you Lt. Flynn, Sarah Moore, lots of aspects of Rularuu lore, reflections and those lighting cloud things (forget their names) too.
• The Serpent Beyond the Horizon - 46-52 - ID: 854 - Explore the origin of the Serpents of Mercy island, plus other other lore surprises, you get to encounter ancient Egyptians, and there is some Mu stuff and even a dash of arachnos, and time travel.
• Save The Diver, Save The World - 25-30 - ID: 855 - Brought the Coralax to the blue side for Heroes to fight and brings in The True Coralax (remember in game they are mostly hybrids) plus a new mob in Coralax lore (The Virtea) that never made it into the game, plus some customized mobs (see where the Freakshow make Freaks!) + the paradox of time travel!

 

Not Live (out of slots) Recently added under a different account...

These did not win awards, but I think they are pretty strong and hope to repost them one day once there is a way to gain a few more slots.

 

• Condemning Croatoa - 25-33 ID: 17552 - So (Spoiler?) the premise of the Croatoa area is that the Red Caps want to subsume Croatoa back into the place from where it came. Veluta Lunata, a lore based Fortunata that fell out of Black Widow's good graces, is continuing to work her way back up into good graces with Black Widow (you can encounter her as a contact at lower levels in Port Oakes I think) wants to solicit your help to make it happen. For villains of course, its Croataoa and Midnight Squad lore-rich with several custom toons. You even get a chance to fight some named folk from the lore and (optionally) solo a Giant Monster (heavily play-tested, its all set up for you to win).
• Robolution - 25-34 - ID: 17551 Someone is supplying robots to all of the CoH villain groups. Who? Is there a bigger plan? (lots of lore and gangs with robots in here but would reveal too much to specify - just - well - lore based tech suppliers and robot makers). Was going to make a blue side and a red side of this one eventually - making custom robot MMs for all the villain groups was fun.

 

Was also working on a Devouring Earth one when the game shut down - so that is in progress too I guess.

 

If you explore any of them, hope you find your time well spent!

Edited October 22, 2019 by Ankylosaur

[Eva Destruction]

There's a "canon compliant" tag in the AE.  You can choose tags to search when you click "more" in the search window.  Searching "SFMA" will also give you story-focused missions, but they're not necessarily canon-based, and it's a player-created tag so a lot of authors don't know about it.

[justicebeliever]

This is a great starting place, thank you all so much...

 

I'll be posting back here when I have more questions!

[Justaris]

I've recently recreated the arc I made on live, which is meant to dovetail with the canon backstory involving Omega Team, specifically Tin Mage.    Feedback and comments welcome,

Ex Machina, #11781

 

[Sidious]

Always wanted to write a mission arc dealing with the shutdown and return.

 

mission 1: the Rikti are mounting a second invasion and you have to portal to their world to stop them. Something goes wrong and you cant portal back.

Mission 2: year 1: you are fighting a beachhead on the Rikti homeworld and learn of another portal being built. The plan becomes get the components to have the portal connect to Earth. Secure the base and Portal. Return home.

Mission 3 & 4: Years 2-5: getting the components to make the portal work.

Mission 5: year 6: Attack the base. Secure the portal. Use the components to have it open to Earth. Return home.

 

Yes, I'm using that "Unity" video as inspiration.

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, Sidious said:

Always wanted to write a mission arc dealing with the shutdown and return.

I have something like this in the works myself - it's more a personal story for my own characters so not "overall CoH canon" per se, but it will cover what happened to the CoH world during the hiatus.

 

If you do write yours, please do share.  I would love to try it out. 😀

[Sidious]

the more i think about it. the more I want to do it as a "Nightmares of Future Past" scenario. ("Nightmares of Futures Past" is a series of modules for the old TSR Marvel RPG dealing with life in the "Days of Futures Past" world.)

 

• after the initial mission and the stopping the Rikti from a second invasion the surviving heroes are captured and placed into camps. (Notes: this could be a whole arc unto itself)
• They then need to break out of the camps. While breaking out they learn that there's another portal but it doesn't go to Earth. However, it can be modified to transport people there. (Notes: arc 2?)
• so at that stage its working with the Rikti underground to assemble the components. (Notes: Arc 2?)
• Final battle will always be secure the portal and get transported home. (notes: do they even allow leagues in AE? Arc 3?)

 

I'll flesh it out more later. If anyone wants to help make this thing I'm all for it. I've never made an AE mission before. The more I think about it though, one arc may not be enough to have the scope of the story I want to tell. I dunno. I'm still brainstorming the thing.

[Ankylosaur]

Added my arcs mentioned above so updated that post with the arc IDs. Hope you're still looking for canon based arcs :)