Plottings AHOY!, Where Should We Take the Site?

[Cessily Kincaid]

I hadn't originally thought to put this up now (hence why it didn't appear in the mass e-mail) but in retrospect it's probably best to do this now with everyone flitting back in.

This site is your site, I just run it.

As such I know with the new year and potential ressurrection of the site we should probably have a game plan in regards to plot, this is where you guys come in.

What do you currently think of the plot we have in play?
Right now we currently have the mutant drug KICK on the street, which I think is fantastic. Secondly, we've been building up the idea of Sentinels on the site for months, probably for almost a year. I was thinking we can actually get Sentinels on the streets if you all wanted to make the plannings a reality. However, I'm also aware that it's possible to have too many plots running at the same time, so let me know what you think.

How do we want to deal with the site timeline?
Mia, our old admin, had originally put in place a month by month system, effectively holding the site in limbo for the length of an 'RP month', which was pretty much as long as it took to get any main plot threads done. What I wanted to do was simplify that by just keeping the site current with real time months, allowing for holiday threads to occur when everyone is excited with those holidays in real life. However, this also raises a necessity for the site to be active and on the ball. I've been toying around with the idea of doing a season timeline. Saying it's spring, winter, fall, summer, and just letting us run with it for a while, but that calls into question when the seasons should change. Do we keep it in line with the real time seasons or do we allow for more time?

What are we going to do with the Hellfire Club?
The Hellfire Club has always been a problem for the site. They're a group of people who are sneaky and backhanded, they have secret agendas...we've never had a large enough Hellfire population to actually get those secret agendas done...mostly because the key members in the club aren't in play. We need these characters to actually get Hellfire agendas done. What are the agendas? No one knows, which is a problem. What do you all think they want and how are they going to accomplish it?

What are we doing with the Rival Schools (Hellfire and Xavier's)
Without a club agenda this also puts the Hellfire Academy in a precarious position. They're the rival to the Xavier Institute. Recently, there's been far more RP activity from hellion students than xavier students and without key hellfire members to push agendas it becomes a question of what the Hellfire Academy means. We're without an Emma and we've effectively placed Scott in charge of the Academy. Without major Hellfire agendas it's possible to merge the two schools together. They've always been about rivalries, the rivalries could continue between students after merging, still a divide even though they're 'on the same side'.

What about the Morlock faction?
We've never had that many morlocks, that much is fact. The current ones running around are a bit shady anyways. Would it make sense for us to merge them with the Brotherhood? Stage a 'mutant massacre' in the tunnels and have the survivors flee to the Brotherhood for protection?

Do we need to condense the factions?
This plays in with the potential mergers previously mentioned. With current activity and member numbers we have way too many factions to properly have interplay within a given faction. The most faction-driven play has been within the Hellfire Academy, that's where the most activity has been recently. The Brotherhood and Morlocks have never had huge numbers, and let's face it, X-Men is nothing without bad guys. Bad guys need to interact, but it's hard to do that if there aren't enough members of a group to play with.

It's easy to continue the site without human characters, there's enough squabbling within the mutant community to get away without the Friends of Humanity and such. But, bad guys are essential. It's hard to have the X-men fight the bad guys if the bad guys can only create a posse of 2 people at any given time.

Alright, those are my main questions right now, let me know what you all think. I just want something that's going to continue to make RPing fun. If you guys have any plot ideas you'd like to see enacted that I didn't mention feel free to put them up for discussion. At our current place we have the ability to do just about anything we would like to do, I just need to know what that is.
~MAM

[Dominic Petros]

I'm alive, really... X_x

And I think the mergings are very good ideas; especially the X-men/Hellion merge. There's a lot of potential for a lot of tension there, and with Scott running the rival school it seems pretty possible. My only curiosity is how it'd affect the teachers? Would they go along and join the mansion? Would they break off and become brotherhood members? Is Dom finally gonna get expelled for all the rules he breaks? x)

I like the KICK plots and I think it can flow into the sentinel thing. With mutant powers overloading and such it'd bring an increased need for "security" against them.

Far as the timeline goes, I think we should keep it seasonal based off actual New York seasons since.. Well.. majority of the RP takes place in New York anyways. It makes it both simpler and still keeps to real time.

The morlocks I don't think need to be touched to be honest. A morlock is a morlock but they're pretty free to do whatever they'd like. I mean how many mutants can you squeeze in the sewer anyways right? Them being a small group isn't such a bad thing and them being tense with both sides adds some spice. They can work with the brotherhood if swayed the right way or against them if betrayed.

[Jean-Paul Beaubier]

The seasonal timeline sounds good. To be honest, my brain goes 'ka-BOOM' if there's a RL month = RP month timeline. What happens if a thread overruns the month it was started in?

Now, on to Hellfire Club plans. If we do the Sentinels plot, that could possibly be something for them to investigate, in their sneaky, underhand, Hellfire Club way. Or, with KICK on the streets, we can do...something. I'm not sure. Maybe try to get a monopoly on the drug to make sure certain people don't get it? Though, I'm not sure what their policy on drugs would be...

I think that the Hellfire Club and the X-Men might have to be merged eventually, if we don't get more Hellfire Club members and/or if none of the Hellfire Club plans work out.

I think the morlocks are fine where they are. I like the fact that their alliances could go either way if the Brotherhood and/or the X-Men pisses them off. Besides, like Porky said, how many mutants can you fit in the sewers?

[Cessily Kincaid]

I like the generalness of a basic "we're in this season" format.

I seem to remember Spoo trying to work a plot with Quicksilver dealing drugs to the hellions...and doing...something, I can't recall. The Hellfire Club is smart enough to realize the way supply and demand works, they're also smart enough to realize it's a barganing chip to get them whatever they want...that and they know they don't want their enemies to get a hold of it. What's the point in having a leg up on the competition when the competition has the same leg up?

The Hellfire/X-Men merge is going to be tricky if we need to do it. My best idea for it at the moment is the Club itself decides with the introduction of the Sentinel they need to downplay their public face. They're mutants, many of them probably haven't been outed as such, they say they support a mutant school because they believe in the future of tomorrow yadayada. But, that was before we had mutant sniffers running around. If a Sentinel can ID a mutant on sight, and the Hellfire Club can't think of a way to use their underhanded dealings to fix that little problem where they're concerned it's possible they'd simply say they're removing funding due to lack of enrollment. Scott doesn't want to leave the kids with nothing so he herds them back to the Institute, bringing along any teachers who still want to teach...a few could be spying for the Hellfire Club, relating all the information happening at the Institute back to them. The Hellion loyalties are obvious, and most will probably continue to be loyal to Hellfire, which means the Club is getting their brats trained for free.

How many mutants can fit in the sewer? I'm not sure, but I think in the canon list there are enough characters put under the category of Morlock that they would outnumber Brotherhood membership if all the characters were taken in both groups.

[Pietro Maximoff]

A seasonal time line sounds splendid to me. If anything, it'll give people the impetus to keep close-to-regular posts... people meaning me. ;
Aaaand I just like the idea of having holiday threads corresponding with real time. ^^;;

Hellfire club... Frankly, I'm itching to see some back-handedness out of them in terms of financial/political plots and what not. I see the problem as us not having that big of a non-mutant population. While its probably easy enough to run the board without a human population/threat like the friends of humanity or something along the same route, it limits the board to personal mutant v. mutant squabbles, most of them personal rather than ideological, political, or moral. Theres only so many times a mutant can go rob a bank before it gets rather expected. If there were a broader threat that each faction had no choice but to face, while still facing it in there own way (something like the sentinel project), maybe.

As for that mutant massacre idea w/ the Morlocks... I rather like it... Not now, maybe not even anytime soon, but wasn't there something like that with the Marauders in the comics? It'd make for good plot fodder if some anonymous force came and messed them up- trying to pin it on an enemy faction in order to gain members. *shrug* Don't ask. I type as this crap floats to the top of my head.