Difference between revisions of "Power Copy"

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This file is meant to delineate acceptable boundaries and practices for power copying Advantages, encompassing basic Power Copy / Mega Manning, Assimilation of a limited selection of another character's abilities, and wholesale Mimicry of another character. '''All forms of Power Copying are required to be Defining Advantages, and are Standalone Advantages.'''
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This file is meant to delineate acceptable boundaries and practices for power copying Advantages and variants thereof, encompassing basic Power Copy / Mega Manning, Assimilation of another character's abilities into your own, and wholesale Mimicry of another character. '''All forms of Power Copying are required to be Defining Advantages.'''
  
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'''Power Copying / Megamanning''', shorthanded as '''Copy1'''. It involves a limited-scope ability to steal an attack, or some similarly limited scope "something" from your target. You may copy six (6) attacks at a time, and they time out after 90 days OR being used in three (3) scenes, whichever comes sooner. Consent is not required but the target player determines exactly what the copier receives.
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"Why," you might ask, "are power copiers so heavily rules-laden?" To put it simply: We're a freeform roleplaying game where people usually play pretty powerful characters, and have an interest in advancing those characters by acquiring new toys. People gauge a character's competence by Width of Ability and Height of Ability. Height of Ability is capped by our combat system and rules, but width of ability has gone unchecked and power copier power creep is symptomatic of that. While reviewing these policies, a player pointed out that their copier had, by the end of the character's lifespan, accumulated 30 stolen weapons. The net effect of unchecked lateral growth is that power copiers experience arbitrary lateral "level-ups" unavailable to other PCs, bounded only by other players saying no to them.
  
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'''Assimilation''', shorthanded as '''Copy2'''. You get three (3) free-floating bullet points, which may be filled in with Advantages stolen from other players. Consent is required from the target, who may dictate which of their bullets may be stolen and which may not. Copied bullet points timeout after '''120 days''', but may be upgraded to permanently fill one of your floating bullet points. Additionally:
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In short: People like to "level up" / advance their characters, and lateral upgrades are the only option available to people past a point. So we don't want characters to be able to acquire an arbitrary (technically infinite) amount of lateral upgrades that never go away, especially when the mechanism is inherently aping somebody else's stuff.
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*Staff will provide an +info pointer (+info PowerCopy) which is expected to be filled out with each stolen bullet,the identity of who it was stolen from, and a link to the log of the scene in which an advantage was stolen. '''Copying may not be off-screened.'''
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*All Advantages obtained by Copy are presumed to be a half-step weaker than those possessed by the originating PC, even if occupying differing slots. Therefore, if the Copier directly contests the originating PC's action with their own advantage, the Copier is presumed to lose the contest by default.
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*Power Copiers must obey Defining / 'Wide' rules with their copied powers. Copy2 is therefore unable to obtain "wide" advantages, and Copy3 is only able to obtain obligate Defining advantages if they have an empty Defining slot to fill it with.
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'''Mimicry''', shorthanded as '''Copy3'''. This works exactly as Copy2, save for the following differences: It entirely consumes a wide Defining slot, and you may instead fill ALL of your '''empty advantage slots''' with stolen advantages. Due to the fact that this fills a slot in of itself, if copying two Defining Advantage slots from another character, a character with '''Copy3''' may downgrade one '''entire''' Advantage, with all of its Points intact, to the Significant level, and in doing so, lose an '''entire''' Significant Advantage, again with all of its Points. This obviously cannot be done with Advantages that are obligate Defining.
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'''Power Copying / Megamanning''': Power Copying, or Megamanning, involves a limited-scope ability to steal an attack (or some similarly limited scope "something") from your target. This no longer requires consent to be used, but only eight copied attacks may be stored. Copied attacks universally timeout after 90 days OR being used in three scenes, whichever comes sooner. The target player determines exactly what the copier receives. These rules retroactively override the rules and mechanics of the source theme.
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There is a short list of Advantages that may not be copied:
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'''Assimilation''': Assimilation is distinct from Power Copy in that it involves permanently stealing X from another player character, and incorporating it into your advantage kit. Examples include Sylar from Heroes, Bass.EXE from Megaman Battle Network, or Shirou from Fate/Stay Night. These characters create piecemeal advantage kits by taking from others. Characters of this type are welcome to have their core kit established -- Bass.EXE can float and shoot a killer wolf head cannon, Shirou can summon Archer's swords and Caliburn -- they can't expand their toolbox without upgrade applications. Furthermore, as their advantage sets are usually complete once they have their core kit, we prefer them to settle on the most prominent kit they use from their source material and stay there instead of accumulating more.
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Obviously, '''Power Copy''' cannot copy another '''Power Copy''', nor can it copy already copied powers.
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On top of requiring consent from their target to take their stuff, and an upgrade application, Assimilators may only keep four assimilated (traits/powers/whatever) upgrades, none of which should be an umbrella advantage.
  
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No form of '''Power Copy''' may be shared with '''Share Powers''', nor may it copy '''Share Powers''' itself. It is not possible to copy someone’s Advantages and then hand them out to everyone else around.
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'''Mimicry''': Mimics are characters who steal another character's everything: Abilities, body / appearance, etc. Aptom from Guyver is an example, as is Axl from Megaman X, and to a lesser extent Beck from Mighty No. 9. To put it plainly this isn't an Advantage category we want running live at all, and we want absorbed entire advantage sets lingering even less than individual tricks. As of this writing only one character has this kind of advantage, and also has no other powers of their own, requires both IC cooperation and OOC consent to do it, and retains the borrowed advantages only for one scene's worth of use.
  
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'''Quantum Solution''' is also not a valid target for copying since it effectively allows any kind of power to be grabbed out of a bag with an infinite selection, breaking the spirit of copying in the first place.
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Instances of Mimics will need to be discussed with staff on a character-by-character basis, with the understanding that it: 1) Needs to be your character's main gimmick, 2) Will require an upgrade every time it happens, 3) Caps out at 2 maximum (not assumed, unlike other copier types) stored extra advantage sets at a time., 4) Will have the expectation you're not as good as the original at whatever you gain from them. Much as is the case with Assimilators, it's still OK for a guy like Aptom to have his core kit -- that is, his "monster mash" form from having eaten a bunch of other monsters -- but we'd mostly prefer if characters like this picked their core gimmicks from their source material and stuck with that.
  
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'''NPCs''' cannot be copied, partly for reasons of common sense, and partly that a character who merely copied '''NPCs''' is not sustaining any kind of meaningful loss or setback if those NPCs are defeated or killed --they’re essentially getting them for free, negating the couching of the Point.
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'''Point of Clarification''': Taking another character's appearance alone without assuming their traits isn't nearly this heavily locked down.
  
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'''MDA''' may only be copied with '''Copy3'''. This is essentially because the trappings of why a character can take multiple action threads are important to actually doing so, and unless a character is taking the entirety of the character’s kit that justifies it, '''MDA''' is basically coming out of thin air.
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'''Mono-Theme Power Copy''': Copy abilities only applicable in-setting (such as Naruto's sharingan) and in-setting upgrades (Aptom eating new zoanoids to improve his monster mash) may get more leeway, but there still needs to be a ceiling that isn't arbitrarily high. Antagonist subsidies do apply here to an extent though.  
  
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'''Immortality''' is another restricted copy target. Immortality exists on the presumption that the character has a consistent Achilles Heel in his unkillable state (the “Catch”) that can be learned and exploited, and/or could come up naturally in a scene from time to time to raise the stakes. Copying '''Immortality''' leads to a situation where it is possible to selectively pick up versions of it in prep for/during scenes where there is zero possibility of the Catch coming into play, and swapping it out with a different kind when the Catch could actually be present. This effectively makes for a form of the '''Immortality''' that is objectively superior to one with a single, fixed Catch.
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'''Power Copy Lifespan Limit''': Regardless of the copying method used, an advantage stolen from a character who is no longer played will be reviewed and possibly purged. It is the responsibility of PCs with power copy to, where possible, alert staff that they have abilities that have outlasted the character they were obtained from Stealing the power to fly from a superhero probably wouldn't be purged, but stealing a character's core gimmick would be. The reason for this is that we don't, for example, want the Sailor Moon of 2008 to make the decision to let Power Copier X steal her Moon Crystal Power and for the Sailor Moon of 2016 (almost certainly not the same person) to have to live with that baggage.
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Lastly, '''Resurrection''' is not possible to copy. This is mostly due to the extreme potential for this character defining Advantage to sputter and struggle when an exact duplicate is present in the same scene, since by its nature there is typically only one kind of target it is applicable to, and only one thing that can be done. This limitation also exists simply to prevent it from being casually picked up before heading into a scene where a dead character is an important problem, and then ditching it as soon as this very big deal of an Advantage has worked its magic and redirected the plot.
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To set up an +info for '''Power Copy''', the following command/template can be used:
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'''Copy1'''<br>
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+info Copied Powers=- Description of what the copied “thing” does.%rScene ID copied from, expiration date.%r<<Repeat previous for each Point.
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'''Copy2'''<br>
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+info Copied Powers=- [ansi(hw,POINT NAME:)] Unedited trappings of the copied Point go here.%rScene ID copied from, expiration date.%r<<Repeat previous for each Point.
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'''Copy3'''<br>
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+info Copied Powers=-[ansi(uhw,FULL NAME OF CHARACTER COPIED FROM:)]%r[ansi(hw,Name of Advantage copied)], Advantage Tier.%rPoint Name 1, Point Name 2, Point Name 3%r%r<<Repeat previous for each Advantage. Names need not be repeated if they are from the same character.
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Revision as of 18:10, 1 August 2019

This file is meant to delineate acceptable boundaries and practices for power copying Advantages and variants thereof, encompassing basic Power Copy / Mega Manning, Assimilation of another character's abilities into your own, and wholesale Mimicry of another character. All forms of Power Copying are required to be Defining Advantages.

"Why," you might ask, "are power copiers so heavily rules-laden?" To put it simply: We're a freeform roleplaying game where people usually play pretty powerful characters, and have an interest in advancing those characters by acquiring new toys. People gauge a character's competence by Width of Ability and Height of Ability. Height of Ability is capped by our combat system and rules, but width of ability has gone unchecked and power copier power creep is symptomatic of that. While reviewing these policies, a player pointed out that their copier had, by the end of the character's lifespan, accumulated 30 stolen weapons. The net effect of unchecked lateral growth is that power copiers experience arbitrary lateral "level-ups" unavailable to other PCs, bounded only by other players saying no to them.

In short: People like to "level up" / advance their characters, and lateral upgrades are the only option available to people past a point. So we don't want characters to be able to acquire an arbitrary (technically infinite) amount of lateral upgrades that never go away, especially when the mechanism is inherently aping somebody else's stuff.

Power Copying / Megamanning: Power Copying, or Megamanning, involves a limited-scope ability to steal an attack (or some similarly limited scope "something") from your target. This no longer requires consent to be used, but only eight copied attacks may be stored. Copied attacks universally timeout after 90 days OR being used in three scenes, whichever comes sooner. The target player determines exactly what the copier receives. These rules retroactively override the rules and mechanics of the source theme.

Assimilation: Assimilation is distinct from Power Copy in that it involves permanently stealing X from another player character, and incorporating it into your advantage kit. Examples include Sylar from Heroes, Bass.EXE from Megaman Battle Network, or Shirou from Fate/Stay Night. These characters create piecemeal advantage kits by taking from others. Characters of this type are welcome to have their core kit established -- Bass.EXE can float and shoot a killer wolf head cannon, Shirou can summon Archer's swords and Caliburn -- they can't expand their toolbox without upgrade applications. Furthermore, as their advantage sets are usually complete once they have their core kit, we prefer them to settle on the most prominent kit they use from their source material and stay there instead of accumulating more.

On top of requiring consent from their target to take their stuff, and an upgrade application, Assimilators may only keep four assimilated (traits/powers/whatever) upgrades, none of which should be an umbrella advantage.

Mimicry: Mimics are characters who steal another character's everything: Abilities, body / appearance, etc. Aptom from Guyver is an example, as is Axl from Megaman X, and to a lesser extent Beck from Mighty No. 9. To put it plainly this isn't an Advantage category we want running live at all, and we want absorbed entire advantage sets lingering even less than individual tricks. As of this writing only one character has this kind of advantage, and also has no other powers of their own, requires both IC cooperation and OOC consent to do it, and retains the borrowed advantages only for one scene's worth of use.

Instances of Mimics will need to be discussed with staff on a character-by-character basis, with the understanding that it: 1) Needs to be your character's main gimmick, 2) Will require an upgrade every time it happens, 3) Caps out at 2 maximum (not assumed, unlike other copier types) stored extra advantage sets at a time., 4) Will have the expectation you're not as good as the original at whatever you gain from them. Much as is the case with Assimilators, it's still OK for a guy like Aptom to have his core kit -- that is, his "monster mash" form from having eaten a bunch of other monsters -- but we'd mostly prefer if characters like this picked their core gimmicks from their source material and stuck with that.

Point of Clarification: Taking another character's appearance alone without assuming their traits isn't nearly this heavily locked down.

Mono-Theme Power Copy: Copy abilities only applicable in-setting (such as Naruto's sharingan) and in-setting upgrades (Aptom eating new zoanoids to improve his monster mash) may get more leeway, but there still needs to be a ceiling that isn't arbitrarily high. Antagonist subsidies do apply here to an extent though.

Power Copy Lifespan Limit: Regardless of the copying method used, an advantage stolen from a character who is no longer played will be reviewed and possibly purged. It is the responsibility of PCs with power copy to, where possible, alert staff that they have abilities that have outlasted the character they were obtained from Stealing the power to fly from a superhero probably wouldn't be purged, but stealing a character's core gimmick would be. The reason for this is that we don't, for example, want the Sailor Moon of 2008 to make the decision to let Power Copier X steal her Moon Crystal Power and for the Sailor Moon of 2016 (almost certainly not the same person) to have to live with that baggage.

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