FAQ
Creating a Character
How do I apply for a character?
Just login (create name password) and follow the instructions! But you might want to click around the wiki first, just to get a feel for the characters. Check out the character page (here) for a place to start. It should be noted that generally character names should be their first names, rather than aliases (eg, Kurt instead of Nightcrawler), unless there's an overlap (even then, the last name will be preferred first).
What kind of character should I play?
There are some wanted character types (see here), but otherwise, you're free to play whatever so long as it fits in the continuity and confirms to the guidelines!
Can I app as Magneto/Xavier/the Flash?
Certain character concepts are restricted (see here); characters from non-Marvel canons are not allowed. FCs (feature characters) are allowed, so long as they fall within the application guidelines (here) and fit within the continuity of the first X-Men movie. Staff may scrutinize certain FCs more heavily than others (if you want to app Magneto, you're probably going to have to work with staff).
Which FCs have already been taken?
+fcroster will get you a list of all FCs already on the MUSH!
Can Peter play all the FCs?
No. You are limited to two FCs per player, and the total number of characters one player can have is five. Sorry, Peter!
Does this MUSH use actors to portray characters?
Yes, but it's not necessary. Fan art and official art (if you're playing a featured character) is also fine, or you can forgo posting images of your character entirely. You can find a list of taken PBs here.
Knowing the Lore
I know absolutely nothing about comics, the X-Men movies, or what mutants even are. Am I screwed?
Not at all! A large portion of our player-base is unfamiliar with the movie / comics we're dealing with. OCs (original characters) are deeply valued, and play a crucial role in pretty much all our plots. You will absolutely not be snubbed, passed over, or otherwise put on a shelf just because you're not playing Wolverine.
Can I have my character be a superhero who fights crime?
Sure! But keep in mind that this MUSH's continuity is not the comic book continuity; people wearing spandex fighting criminals on the streets is highly unusual and will (probably) be responded to with a mixture of bafflement, incredulity, and arrest warrants (vigilantism is against the law!).
Is X2: X-Men United or X-Men 3: The Last Stand part of the continuity?
X2 is not part of this continuity; nothing that happened in that movie should be considered canon for this continuity. Also, there was no third X-Men movie.
Are any other Marvel movies (Iron Man, Spider-Man) part of the continuity?
Nope! But that doesn't mean you can't make them part of the continuity (through apping a character and roleplaying it out!). But no one is under any obligation to follow any sort of 'continuity script'. If you want to app a Tony Stark who never builds an Iron Man suit, that is totally fine.
I want to portray (Marvel character) as a mutant, even though they aren't in the comic canon. Is that okay?
Yep! In fact, characters with abilities that come from something other than the X-Gene are a restricted concept.
Okay, back up. What do you mean there was no third X-Men movie? I totally saw one.
No, you're just imagining things.
There was a third X-Men movie! Wolverine and Jean Grey were in it. Xavier was young, and there was this bitchin' scene with Magneto where--
Oh, I see where you're confused. X-Men: First Class was, in a sense, the 'third' X-Men movie, although it actually was more of a reset. It's not considered part of game canon (although Magneto is totally bitchin' in it).
Roleplay Culture
Okay, I'm approved and good to go. How do I find some RP?
We have a +roleplay channel for requesting RP! People will work with you to try and arrange a scene between your characters and theirs. Don't feel discouraged if you don't get an answer immediately! Trying again a little later might draw the attention of people who just came on.
What if I just wandered the grid and looked for RP that way?
Most scenes are not happening 'organically' on the grid; they are pre-arranged between players. If you stumble across two people doing a scene, you should definitely ask before joining in! But there's nothing wrong with exploring the grid to familiarize yourself with it! You can visit this page to see all non-personal grid rooms, too.
How does time pass in this continuity?
1:1 relation with real-time. In other words, a day passes in the real world? A day passes on this game. If this creates scheduling conflicts ("My character would have totally did X, but I had work"), you can 'backdate' scenes (just do the scene later, pretend it happened earlier).
Do you log scenes?
Yes! We keep track of all scenes that players are comfortable posting publicly here! This way, players can 'keep up' with events that are going on throughout the grid. For the sake of log-formatting, remember a few things: | symbols must be properly tagged so as not to break the wiki. Tabbing your posts (with %t) in-game rather than just double-lining them (with %r%r) makes it harder to format the log (you have to get rid of the tabs!). If you're unfamiliar with how to log a scene / it intimidates you, just ask someone to help - or log it for you!
Contacting Staff
Can I have my own house / apartment / building on-grid?
Yes! The catch is that you are limited to a single room. Although you could request something standalone, e.g. your own house in Queens, common housing options exist - the low-end Sunrise Apartments, the mid-range Village Lofts, the ritzy One Sixty-Seven and the Matterhorn Hotel. Contact staff to get a place!
Wait, how do I contact staff?
Just page one of the staff (the command +staff lets you know who among them is online)! If no staff is visible or you have a more in-depth question you have two options; for things you would like to let staff know about but they don't need to act on (like if you're going on vacation or contacting them about not getting idle-reaped!) post to the Talk To Staff board, which is bboard 13. If you're new to the bboard, typing help bboard will let you know how to use it! For things that you actually need staff to act on (building requests, TP approval, etc.) submit a +request; +help req will let you know how to do that.
Under what circumstances should I contact the staff?
When you feel you have a question other players cannot answer. If you desire housing, you should also contact staff. Most government-related questions will also need to be directed to staff. If you want to concoct a scene that will hit the news, consulting staff first is generally a good idea! Ditto for player-run plots - if you have an idea for a story arc, throw it at the staff bboard first.
IC Universe
What does the public think about mutants?
Generally? Freaks. In almost every society on earth, mutants are treated with suspicion at best, hostility at worst. They're a new enough phenomenon that people are still working out exactly how to respond, but as yet nobody's been responding pleasantly. In daily life, they are not in America protected from discrimination, whether this be in employment, housing, education or even buying a coffee.
Some types of mutants tend to incur more virulent reactions than others -- mutants who visibly look other than human are faced with a lot of disgust (often even from other mutants) and mutants with psionic powers like telepathy and empathy tend to receive overwhelming suspicion and fear if their powers are known (often even from other mutants.)
In New York City, public voluntary displays of mutation are banned! Punishment for violations can be fines anywhere between $25-1000 and/or jail time of up to one year. This only SHOULD cover voluntary uses of mutation (i.e., if you're green and you can't stop being green they cannot ticket you for having green skin, but if you are a pyrokinetic and you light your cigarette with your hands, they can ticket that.) -- however, it being at the discretion of the (often overwhelmingly hostile to mutants) NYPD means that oftentimes mutants are ticketed for little to no reason and have to go to court if they want to sort it out; paying the fine tends to be less fuss.
Recently, the Mutant Registration Act was passed nationwide; full information on the effects of Registration can be found here.
Just how common ARE mutations in the world?
Even though the majority of PCs on game are going to be mutants, in the IC world mutants are by far the minority. Only about 2% of the living population even carries the X-gene. Of people who carry the gene, the majority of them have mutations so minor that they would never even know they were mutants without genetic testing. Only about half of a percent of the population display mutations noticeable enough to impact their lives. New York ICly does have a far higher concentration of mutants than the general world population, but even in New York City mutants with powers they themselves would be aware of are less than 5% of the population.
What mutations are the most common?
While most expressions of mutation are unique enough that it's rare to find two mutants with the exact same mutation, some broad categories of mutations show up with frequency! Mutants with psionic abilities (for example, telepaths and empaths or people who create mental illusions) together with people with augmented physical capabilities (e.g., anyone who can do things humans can actually do, but better -- heightened reflexes, increased strength, faster healing, etc.) are the two most commonly found classes of mutations ICly.
At what age do mutations start to appear?
In the vast majority of cases, carriers of the X-gene will not express noticeable mutations until puberty. This is not a hard-and-fast rule; mutations tend to trigger at periods of heightened stress, either emotional or physical, and for most people this leads to initial manifestation of X-gene abilities at puberty. There have been some people who do not have their first manifestations of powers until later in life (almost always coinciding with some large life stress!)
There are also occasions where children manifest mutations younger than this! By far this is most common with mutants who have very noticeable physical alterations -- i.e. a tail or purple skin that they may be simply born with. It's extremely rare for children to manifest other non-physical powers (e.g. teleportation or pyrokinesis) at young ages. In most cases when non-physical mutations do manifest very young, these mutations are or will become extremely powerful examples of their type -- unfortunately this quite often also comes hand-in-hand with mutations so powerful they are dangerous to their bearer, and the majority of children who manifest mutations young also die of them quite young. (Though it has not been extensively ICly documented yet, the vast majority of fetuses conceived with the X-gene also never make it to term; evolution is not particularly smart and often the X-gene manifests powers without also manifesting ways to keep those powers safe.)
I know New Yorkers are rude, but how come everyone is so reluctant to say "sorry"?
In fall of 2013, there was a plague that originated in New York but swept across the world -- it's extremely vanishingly unlikely that anyone alive and old enough to understand would have been unaware of these events, regardless of where on earth they were living. This disease led to an epidemic of zombies that killed one-tenth of New York City's population but also spilled over on a much smaller scale across the world. The disease was spread through the use of certain trigger-words in the English language; while ICly the full list of words was and still is not entirely known, some of the words were identified and left people extremely reluctant to say them, for fear of contracting the disease. The disease, while curable now, is still very much out there in the world, so the caution with certain words -- of which "sorry" was one -- lingers. A full explanation of the zombie plague and its lingering ramifications can be found here.
What is Prometheus, and who knows about it?
Prometheus is a government-run project comprising many laboratories throughout the country where mutants are held and research upon them is conducted. Generally involuntarily. Until December 2013 hardly anyone knew about it except the people involved; the zombie outbreak was the result of an escaped Promethean refugee, though, and shortly thereafter the news was flooded with stories of escaped labrats relating what went on inside.
What is Xavier's, and who knows about it?
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is a boarding school in Westchester County. Officially it is a small but prestigious boarding school for grades 6-12, rigorous academically and highly selective in its admissions. In actuality it is -- a small but prestigious boarding school for grades 6-12, with specialized facilities and curriculum designed to help young mutants gain safe control of their powers and have opportunity for a normal education and integration back into regular life. Students, faculty, and families of such are all encouraged to a good deal of secrecy over the mutant-friendly mission of XS, so as yet its true demographic is not publicly known.
How big is Xavier's School?
Xavier's is a pretty small boarding school; each grade has an average of 35 students, meaning the entirety of the student body is under 300 students. Given that they all live together, eat meals together, take classes together, this means that if you have a teacher or student who has lived there for more than a couple weeks, it's extremely unlikely that there's pretty much anyone at the school that they don't know by sight and name.
Can my student go there? My adult never got a proper education, can they go there?
If you have a high-school aged mutant character and you would like them to end up at Xavier's, there are probably many people who would be happy to facilitate this happening! Keep in mind that ICly, while Xavier's does have a decent amount of resources they also have an enormous number of students who aren't paying them any tuition and if your teenage character has a stable family life and a mutation under control enough that they're already enrolled in a regular high school without difficulty, they're unlikely to just be offered a place at Xavier's out of the blue -- given their limited capacity, they tend to only go out of their way to bring in students who for whatever reasons are having difficulties with regular life/regular schooling. This doesn't mean that students in stable places already can't come to XS! It just means you need to be proactive about letting other people OOCly know your goals so that you can work together to make this happen.
Unfortunately, Xavier's does not currently have any programming set up for providing education (either normal education or help getting powers under control) to adults -- they're a high school first and foremost and the bulk of their resources go to keeping their high school on track. The X-Men do receive continual training and practice, but adults who have no prior connection to the school and are not the likely type to join the X-Men are highly unlikely to be offered places at Xavier's for anything more than temporary emergency situations while the school helps them find more permanent accommodation.
