Time & Alt Reality / villain contest

 So here's the deal.   A lot of us peons are pretty excited for this create a villain contest. 

I read up on the rules today and saw that it is supposed to be tied into the Time & Alternate Reality expansion.   I more or less anticipated this, but it would help a lot of us contest folk greatly with villain background if we knew a couple of details about the world setting.   I'd really appreciate some detial here, and I think it would be worth your time to lay on the goods, as you'll get better submissions that way.

Specifically:

1.  How exactly do heroes travel through time?   Is this something SotM universe people have been doing for a while and this is just the expansion for it,  or is this a brand new,  just-figured-out-how-to-do-this sort of thing?

2.   Pretty similar for alt realities.   Is um... compartimentalized?   I guess what I'm trying to say is;   Is there any possibility whatsoever that heroes from the "official" multiverse could make their ways into alternate realities?   IE:  Can Tachyon meet Bizzarro Tachyon?   Would the paradox meter go through the roof if that happened?    

Any further detail you feel like  volunteering might help all of us really flesh out our villain backgrounds.  Here's hoping you guys are feeling charitible =p

-awp

Thanks for your questions!

Honestly, you're best off just writing up a character that you find interesting, rather than trying to shoe-horn it into whatever you believe our expectations may hold. No, the characters you already know do not often go jumping through time, and certainly not of their own volition, and yes, there are many different realities (remember, it's a Multiverse), and those realities often intersect in strange ways, but don't get too bogged down with the nitty gritty of it all. This expansion is destined to be both wibbly-wobbly AND timey-wimey, so create the best villain you can and make up how that villain fits into the Multiverse as if you had control of the Multiverse. We'll make the necessary changes as we deem them, well, necessary.

While time-travel is obviously a valid approach (see also: Chrono Ranger), what I'm wondering is if one could approach it in a "gaslight heroes" sort of way as well...?

Sure! Just so long as it is clearly some sort of alternate time/timeline, which I think would be pretty straight-forward with that theme.

Remember that there is nothing holding you back. Because there is no actual comic (yet) and no established timeline, you can think of literally anything that fits within the parameters of the contest, which is really loose considering its about SpaceTime and alternate realites. Unless there is something I missed from my hiatus, you can go hog wild!

Hog wild it is!

We probably don't necessarily want to publish our great villain ideas while the contest is still ongoing, but I'm hoping that once the contest is over, people will post their great ideas here for us to all oooh over.

I'd love to contribute to this contest, but I don't think I've got the capability of making up my own villain. But that doesn't stop me from wondering, what would happen if someone's entry happens to closely resemble one of the already planned villains? Say someone sends in an idea of a villain who is an evil sorcerer from the ancient world (Just totally hypothetical). If you guys already have an evil sorcerer from the ancient world as one of the planned villains, what will happen?

@Spiff: I can totally get behind that idea. It would be interesting to see what villains got passed over and how many ended up being similar

@evandan55: According to the contest page, as long as it's not a dream based villain we should be good.

@Spiff: I'd love to once the contest's over, but I'm not sure the >G rules about not posting character builds wouldn't prevent it. Maybe name and non-mechanical details? Or maybe we can as we've already given the rights up by entering the contest so there won't be a legal conflict. Of course, that makes things a little confused with some fan creations being allowed and others not, so they may still prefer we follow the first rulle of Time Villain contests and not talk about it.

Actually, this case is rather simple.  In the unlikely event that you create a villain that is similar in design to a villain they have already planned, they will likely not award your entry, and go ahead with their already planned villain.  In the event that you contest stating that they took your idea without crediting you, they will have dated evidence of their original creation. (You might be surprised how dated their creations are, actually.)

At least now I've got something to do in my free time.

Dream-based? As in a villain who is just a dream to the heroes? That'd just be weird.

So, nothing along the lines of "Nightmare on Elm Street" then?

*sigh* I really wish I could make time to participate. Stupid priorities...

I hope not. I was already peeved enough when Freddy Kreuger appeared as a fighter in the most recent Mortal Kombat game. He doesn't belong there!

There are going to be a _LOT_ of submissions, so I recommend that people enjoy the creation process and not fret to much about not winning. That's my plan, anyway.

I'd guess there would be little problem from an IP standpoint in sharing ideas after the contest, because everything we contribute will become property of >G anyway, so there's no reason the >G people can't see it. 

Hmm... I guess my thought process is a bit backwards.  I had figured that because it becomes the property of Greater than Games that we couldn't discuss it.

I'm going to post my idea after the contest is over because it's the greatest idea of all time.  If they want to take it down, let 'em. :)

You have not been keeping up with your Doctor Who sir

Have a feeling that after this contest is over there will be a lot more villains posted to BGG.

Already have a villain of my own made, long before this contest, but doesn't quite fit the Time/Alternate Reality theme, he fits closer to the Relics theme. Being a playtester for IR helped me get ideas for him that I would have otherwise had to wait for. The more material available, the easier it becomes to create balanced characters. I may try to make one for the contest however, as I've got some experience in making a villain now.

Just submitted my villain idea.  Though a bit of an epic read it is.  Of course, I'd assume most people's entries would be.

Even if I don't win, I'm actually having fun making the villain, so I guess I am getting the most out of the contest. I think what has been most important and made this even more enjoyable is having a bunch of friends here on campus with me who like the game and are giving me input. Last night, we played one actual game, but spent most of our time just bouncing ideas back and forth. And the time we spent doing that makes this whole contest, whether I win or lose, worth it. Needless to say, we had a good time. Many jokes were made and such.

I'm actually really surprised how easy most of the stuff came to me. Though I might be "cheating" by other people's standards, since I'm building off characters already in the game, but the contest rules says that's okay, so I've got no problem doing this.

I don't know if this was the case for anybody else, but when I was typing up ideas, the deck mechanics was coming to me pretty simply, but the most hindering thing was actually just finding a suitable name for the villain. That's really what my friends and I spent the most time on last night.

Though I'm more or less around halfway being done, I don't think I'll submit it very soon. There's always room for improvement, so I'm gonna keep thinking and consulting others.

Yeah I found that the mechanics sorta write themselves once you give your villain a back story. Now names? Names are hard

Names were easy for me, considering I have been working on the overall story for about 8 years now.  That also made the backstory easy, and the mechanics sorta easy.  The only issue is whether the mechanics will actually be enjoyable.

We threw a ton of effort into the making of the name. It just seemed like no matter what we came up with, it couldn't fit quite right. We eventually did reach a consenus, but even now, I think the name is just okay. Not super amazing or anything.

I had a General idea for screwy mechanics and started going backwards for theme on my submission.

My villains tend to be Mechanic to theme. My heroes are the reverse. I still haven't completely nailed my flagship homebrew hero's mechanics, but I know his theme inside and out. My created villain concepts all started as 'what would be fun to fight? Right, then let's try that! Afterwards, I think more about who they are, what they do, and why they do it. There's an exception to this general process, but it's because I'm trying to figure out exactly how to make that villain's mechanics work.

You think of mechanics first? That's pretty interesting. I like hearing about other people's creative processes. I'm more conventional, I'm pretty sure my thoughts were along the lines of:

"You know who should be a villain? Him/her."

"What's his/her name? I'll come back to that later."

"What would he/she be like? This."

"How would that affect how he/she plays? This way."

"How would that be accomplished? This main mechanic."

"Would that be reasonable? If it's like this."

"What else is left? These things."

"So really, what's his/her name? Uh..."

I had both. Ended up creating three villains, one who was formed whole cloth with mechanics and story coming more or less together, one who had mechanics but no story as I tried to make him interesting, and a final one where the idea was there from the start but fought the mechanics all the way through. Eventually, the mechanics only set judt didn't grip me and if it ddin't grip me, I figure the chances of it impressing the >G folks wold be almost nil, so the ones that came out of story got sent in.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to make the time to flesh out the one idea I've had, and I'm not even sure it fits thematically.  I might wait to see if there's another contest…

I sorta just switched back and forth between developing the mechanics and developing the character.

I started with a vague, general idea I thought could be an interesting take on the alternate realities/time travel theme, thought up some basic mechanics that might represent it well, then tried to see what sorts of characters I could get from these mechanics, then went back to fleshing out the mechanics for the ideas I liked more, which gave me better ideas for the character, and so on.

Eventually both were fleshed-out enough that I could focus on just the mechanics or just the character development for long periods of time without needing to worry about how one related to the other.

It seemed to work out pretty well.

Are you our winner? Congratulations!

Yes! Thank you! I really wasn't expecting this at all, but it sure was a great way to start the day in what had previously been a really crappy week! ^‿^

Alex, if you feel comfortable sharing, where might we find you playing Sentinels in the future? Are you a con-goer (GenCon, PAX, Origins, etc.?) Do you play games regularly at a favorite game store?

Hmm... let's see, I go to Arisia pretty regularly, and have been planning to introduce people to SotM at the gaming room, so that'd be your best bet for finding me. Look for a guy with a green squid hat, around 19-20 years old. That will probably be me.

I go to the occasional Animé convention, like Animé Boston and Another Animé Con, though I've never done any gaming there before.

I went to PAX East once, and wouldn't mind going again sometime.

I doubt I'll be at GenCon or Origins; Indiana and Ohio are pretty far from Massachusetts and eastern New York, sorry!

As for game stores, I don't really do anything at them besides buy games.

I've never been to a comic convention, but hearing about them from webcomic writers has gotten me intrigued. I might try going to one some time.

Perhaps we'll see you there in March.

Oh, but please! Come join us at GenCon! Have lots of fun!

It's pretty much the furthest I can go. 

I'd love to be going to more conventions all the time, but I never really know about any around Louisville or Nashville and have time to prepare. I usually hear about conventions from my friends on facebook afterwards, and I'm left thinking "There was a convention? Darn! I should have gone!"

Well now this is exciting

I just recieved an e-mail about it. You probably will! And if you do, it will be at the >G booth, playing Sentinels of the Multiverse with people who drop by!

You go to Arisia? I was considering bidding Sentinels as an actual Event there. Are you Boston local?

Yeah, I live near there.

What do you mean by "bidding"?