Shadowe

This is an artefact of the revised cape and aura missions. Go see the City Rep in Atlas Park City Hall and do the new missions. When they first came out there was a "feature" that required you to do them again to change your cape or aura. Sounds like it was never fully corrected.

I must have misunderstood the question, then. Well, and Black Pebble's input. If I understand correctly, though, the -noverify switch tells the launcher to not bother with verification after the game has patched, allowing it to run without you hitting "yes" to the verify. The downside being that the verification doesn't happen, so if there are corrupted files, the game won't work.

To implement into a semi-level-less system, it accounts for the minimum and maximum levels at which enemy types spawn in CoH, adjusted for enemy rank (so a Lieut is 1PL higher than a minion, for example). I have an almighty spreadsheet somewhere around here with everything on it. It does a pretty fair job of putting weaker enemies in the low PL range, with the bigger threats at the high end. It breaks down a bit for enemies that span the entire CoH level range, since the generic calculation puts almost all of those around PL 10. I'll PM you a link to the sheet when I find it, but I have a big PnP weekend coming up, starting today, playing Hero System, so I might not have the time until next week.

Thought of another system that could be used, too: Fudge.

Go all-out and use Rolemaster or Spacemaster for the truly insane critical results.

When I say "rough" I do mean "rough". It's not an absolute 100% "this is what I would put into a game" version. I'm well aware that Drain (All Traits) is NASTY, but it was based on the consideration that Fatigue is actually an overpowered condition if applied as "damage" (it's almost impossible to recover from in combat, and even then you need to burn Hero Points to do it, and two stacks of it almost completely wipes a character out of the fight, permanently), but a Sapper's BFI is meant to nuke powers and abilities. This version does that, and does it well. Remember, Malta Sappers can be a death sentence to even a L50 character if not dealt with quickly and effectively - If you can come up with a better way to represent that than a truly evil Drain effect, be my guest. Bear in mind, it has to be capable of preventing any and all of the character's powers working for a short period of time. I agree that the stats are too high, and the skills are overboard. This was a "first pass" version to nail the powers down and my general process sets the skills and stats higher than they need to be, then works them down.

And as for Ancestor Spirits, they were thrown in to the block to just have them there, without deep reference to their full powers and abilities - I was paying far more attention to the other Tsoo when writing them up for the adventure I was running, since those were the ones that would end up engaged in combat.

Re: My main - he was originally for a PnP game, anyway, and some of his capabilities cannot be represented in CoH. Yes, L50 characters can be represented by PL10-12, and I'm not disputing that. He was originally written up in DC Heroes, then used in CoH - the version above is closer to his original conception than a straight port to M&M from CoH would allow.

I'll agree that Golden Girl was "looking down" on the OP, but I'm afraid to say that she has, in the past, expressed some distinctly condescending (and woefully misinformed) opinions about roleplayers, too.

These bits prompted me to think a little. Scary, I know.

It boils down to this, for me: What is "Lore"?

Now, I'm sure someone will manage to pull out a dictionary definition that's easier to understand, but to me, Lore is a combination of established history and prior characterisation.

It's the second part that's tricky to writers. Weaving a story around established history (little things like when Statesman got his powers, when the Rikti invaded, when Nemesis became Emperor of America) is easy. All you need is a timeline, and to fit your story into the gaps. And for something like City of Heroes, there are some pretty EPIC gaps.

Importantly, this is very different to Canon. Canonical material is EVERYTHING that's written in or about the game by the devs. It includes Lore, but also includes the particulars of how characters are represented and their actions throughout the game. It is impossible for the developers to "go against canon", because canon is "whatever they put in the game". However, it is possible for canon to violate lore. Efforts should be made to ensure that it doesn't, but it can be done.

The hard bit though, as I said, is working with prior characterisation. Let me try to think of an example. Freakshow are a gang of cybernetically enhanced anarchists. That is my "one sentence snapshot" of their original characterisation, as I would have described them back when I first met them and started learning their story. Since then, they have evolved, as more and more writers have been involved in their stories, into becoming something of a joke group - 13375p34|<1|\|6 idiots is most common view of them. Which doesn't preclude them being a gang of cybernetically enhanced anarchists, I'll admit, but it actually makes them less intimidating. Because there's very little intimidating about someone who tells you that they're going to "pwn" you, when you and your 7 buddies with superpowers are pounding on them with great vengeance and furious anger.
Still, later writers are constrained by that prior characterisation, to the extent that we get Freakshow going to school and we find it amusing. Because leetspeaking idiots going to school actually is amusing. If you ask me, though, cybernetically enhanced anarchists going to school is something else entirely. But still potentially amusing, depending on how it's played.

If a new writer comes along and decides to go back to the roots of characterisation for Freakshow, they will behave very differently to how we've seen them evolve over recent issues. Neither is it wrong to do so. That's what I think Positron means when he says that writers aren't completely constrained by existing lore: Not that new writers have total control to re-write enemies as they wish (making Freakshow a peace-loving militant book club, for example), but that within the realms of their original characterisation a writer is free to explore the group however they want.

So, what I expect (hope?) is that each enemy group has a "one sentence snapshot" and that writers are told to obey that, but not to feel restricted by how other writers have decided to write that group.

Hellions: Demon-raising gangbangers.
Skulls: Death-worshipping gangbangers.
Trolls: Super-drug-addicted stupid gangbangers.
Council: Paramilitary megalomaniacs with a sideline in human enhancement.
Malta: Mysterious meta-human-hating paramilitary organisation with wealthy backing.
Knives of Artemis: Female Assassin group nominally under the control of Malta.

I'm sure the list goes on.

The same principle holds true for individual characters, really, but they tend to require a little more depth to their "snapshot".

What I'm saying is that the writing team don't (and shouldn't) need to slavishly adhere to every scrap of existing detail regarding groups and characters and only operate them within those restrictions. They can, if they choose to, of course, but there is not requirement for them to. Can you imagine how much it would ruin the game if Nemesis could only create variants of his prior plots? On the other hand, it would ruin things just as much if Nemesis were suddenly characterised as a straightforward-thinking simpleton whose idea of a "plot" is "rob the bank".

There is a happy medium, and that happy medium is actually Lore. If new Canon material added to the game adheres to the Lore, then there's very little anyone can complain about.

So, to put my own spin on things, Positron's statement should have been that he doesn't require new writers to strictly follow canon.