WORG's FAQ

Here are the rules we use for writeups at the DC Heroes mailing list, the answers to common questions about the site and its content, and assorted stuff I thought would be interesting to mention when writing the two previous categories.

They might interest the legions of avid readers of this site as well as the curious types.

Since they grew organically, it is best to explain the versioning rules through a few sample version numbers :

• A v0.1 writeup means this is a beta and should not be considered reliable. Many comments are necessary to help improve it.
• v0.5 is more solid, but still considered a beta.
  
• v0.8 or v0.9 indicate a pretty solid writeup, but the author is aware of some deficiencies. Maybe, for instance, he couldn't research some of the issues where the character appears.
  
• v1 is a solidly researched writeup, and the author is confident he's pretty close to offering a work of sufficient quality.
  
• v1.1 is a v1 writeup that has had significant modifications due to comments or further research.
  
• v1.1.1 would be a v1.1 writeup which has had minor modifications (a few typos fixed, some sentences made clearer, minor corrections in history, etc.).
  
• v1.2 is a v1.1 which was further improved - and so on.
  
• v2 is a writeup for which there were previous versions, but which was redone from the ground up.
  

"Primary source" means the actual comic book, film, book, manga, etc. from which the character is drawn. Anything that happens there is direct material for the writeup. This is in opposition to "secondary sources" (sourcebooks, interviews with editors or writers, Who's Who entries...). Material in the secondary sources can be used, but with great skepticism. For instance, comic book characters will often be claimed to be the best in the world at what they do, while the actual skill levels they display are not that exceptional.

Tertiary sources are writeups done for other game systems. They can be used as a checklist, but are not considered to be trusted material.

What Ifs, Elseworlds, fan fiction, etc. are not usually considered to be a viable source. Unless, of course, they are the subject of the writeup - or of a part of the writeup.

In short, the writeups we do are as faithful as possible to the primary source material, and try to distance themselves from opinions on that source material.

In the mid-90s, many writeups were assembled from memory and after re-reading key stories and old notes by people knowledgeable about the character, then debated with other knowledgeable (or simply curious) list members. Published writeups for other games system (especially TSR's classic Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Game) were also used as a viable source. The level of quality, with hindsight, seems close to that of most published sourcebooks for super-hero games, though not entirely satisfying because we are compulsive freaks of nature.

As time went by we became more and more attentive to quality and extensive research, and it became not uncommon for writeups to have been done after pouring over nearly every single appearance of a character. Obviously, this is impossible for characters with 40+ years of history - hence the various writeups describing characters at a precise point in time, or for a specified era ("current", "classic", "early 70s", etc.) - and it's not the case for every writeup we do.

In most cases, the amount of research done should be easily visible by the amount of detail in the history and personality sections and some technical details.

There is, however, a gray area of very old writeups, capsule writeups (the author could or wouldn't do a full writeup), stats recovered from hard to find material and reposted on the list (Dragon Magazine articles, uncommon Mayfair material...), old but interesting notes, writeups which are but slightly updated official stats with a Who's Who profile, etc. I've finally made the decision to include them on WORG - though it makes the site feel less professional than I would like, it's still interesting and usually unique (or at least convenient) information.

The preliminary nature of the material is usually obvious ; I hope you will find them valuable, though they are not as complete as other items.

Ideally, all such writeups will eventually be revisited and redone. Ideally. Even more ideally, writeups that are OK but too old and too undetailled should be redone - and many will actually be. Better illustrations would also be cool for some of our older work. Ideally...

All such borrowed material is expressly noted in the first few lines of the writeups. At least there will be the name of the author of the material or the URL, and if possible both. If the material has been edited, enriched, etc. this is also noted.

Part of this was started for a simple reason - sites disappear, especially if hosted on community sites like Tripod, Geocity, etc. Thus my preference for copying and crediting instead of just linking. Several excellent sites have already disappeared over the last ten years, and I'm quite glad the duly credited material has been saved on WORG.

Our copyright policy can be accessed from the WORG home page.

However, in the actual comics, many characters routinely lift more than 100 tons. Since it is obvious the 100 tons ceiling is not being followed by Marvel writers, we base our estimation on what the characters actually do, not what the sourcebooks say. Remember, for us, the primary source is queen and no lying editors will deceive us.

As long as the comments respect the work and intelligence of the author (i.e., no fanboyish rants), we are fully open. Be aware that in some cases the original poster is no longer part of the list - c'est la vie.

This is a quirk from the site's admin, that has spread to a few other posters. This is mostly due to the admin doing most of the Photoshop work for illustrations - the work on the description section is thus done with the polygonal lasso and colour manager, not words.

Of course, the problem is that I'll never finish my backlog of published characters. So I'll prolly eventually start including homemade stuff as I go along.

• Major characters make for very, very long discussions in which people have a hard time agreeing - despite our awe-inspiring politeness and tact. We are talking about *months* of debate, research examples, counter-examples, differences of analysis, rules debates, etc. It takes a lot of time, we can't have too many of those discussions going on at the same time (one is enough), and it's exhausting for the primary writer.
  
• Major characters have usually been through the hands of many different writers, some of whom had markedly different interpretations of the character and his abilities. This can make it quite difficult to produce a coherent writeup from an incoherent material.
  
• Minor characters are what is needed in most role-playing game sessions. Sure, you may have a cameo by major heroes or a big scenario against a major villain, but having ready-made stats for the riff-raff and handy minor villains for henchmen and minor encounters is what most GMs need. Minor heroes are also easier to meet and work with, as they do not overshadow PCs like the Justice League (c) or the Avengers (c) would.
  
• Minor characters are easier to research and thus make for more enjoyable work.

In fact, most of that published material is still available from used book sellers, eBay, Amazon.com and other online book sellers, Internet game stores, etc. - often at quite affordable prices.

However, when the time comes to revise old official writeups (they include errors, are really becoming obsolete, somebody feels like doing a complete overhaul of a favourite character, etc.) we tackle major DC characters.

When non-DC characters started being written, it thus became usual, within a few years, to include suggestions for porting the character to the DC Universe so he could be used in games set in that universe. Since it often can be an amusing exercise, both to write and to read, that tradition has continued. Unless the writeup's author can't be arsed to come up with one - it's not a crucial section, after all.

And no, it has nothing to do with the US military.

Our approach here is two-pronged :

• assign AP values to stats that correspond to the role stats actually have in game (that would be a separate essay)
  
• stay as coherent as we can with the "landmark characters" in the rulesbook. Is that character more or less perceptive than Aquaman ? Could Batman lift this weight ? How destructive is that energy blast compared to Starfire's starbolts ? Etc.

This mean, of course, more coherent stats, and characters that do what they are supposed to be able to do in game. The text in benchmarks is, in many cases, unfortunate fluff, and we hope it'll be rewritten in future editions of the game.

I'll assume that the "always on" part is clear - and that the "already factored in" shorthand isn't. "Already factored in" stands for "every statistic that should be impacted by the Always On Power has already been tweaked to reach the desired effect - just use the stats, mate."

Frex, if you see a writeup with "Growth is always on and is already factored in" it means that :

• Physical RV has been taken care of. If the Character just has a BODY and has no distinct value noted for his RV, the writeup's author implicitly used a "Growth adds to BODY, not just RV" Bonus.

• The STR is at the target level with Growth taken into account
• The ground movement speed is likewise the correct one - it is normally listed as APs of the Running Power, so you don't have to derivate speed from Growth. If no Running is visible in the writeup, the writeup's author implicitly used a "Growth does not add to ground
  speed" Limitation
• Ditto for the swimming speed
• The weight and height of the Character are of course taking Growth into account
• The factors from Growth that affect no other statistic still have to be taken into account. So Characters with 5+ APs can make Sweep attacks, and other Characters can still consider his OV to be lower against Perception and some attacks.

Always On, already factored in Density Increase works much the same (RV or BODY, weight and DEX - and maybe STR - at correct values). Note that always on, already factored in Shrinking isn't used - for reasons reading the Shrinking Power will make clear.

This is a common Internet trope, that however does not correspond to reality. For a quick comparison, let's take the Attribute in MEGS for which the range of values for normal human is the narrowest - STR. Human normally range from 02 to 05 STR in MEGS (though 05 is rare, and even greater values are ludicrously improbable).

In the d20 system, normal human STR ranges from 08-18; but those values are only used to give a modifier to d20 rolls ranging from -1 to +4. In the Storyteller system, stats are expressed from one to 5 dots. Thus, for a normal human, and for the attribute with the narrowest STR, MEGS is just as granular as the two main role-playing systems (especially if you shift to single-width columns - see the next question).

Likewise, MEGs skills are what GURPS would call "bang! skills" - broad groups of related skills. Subskills and optional specializations allow for as much granularity as most RPG systems. Differences between characters are further enhanced by Schticks (a list-designed repertoire of signature moves), Powers, Advantages, Drawbacks, etc.

There *are*, of course, more granular systems such as GURPS or Hero. They are also far crunchier than MEGS.

This tends to just be a corollary to the "lack of granularity" legend. However, it *is* true that the Action and Result Tables were printed in order to have a very wide range of scores, since a super-heroic game is more common.

If you do not need the rightmost reaches of the table, you can modify the leftmost part so that each value has its own column - this way each AP can behave differently from the next, and the Column Shifts have less drastic effects, allowing for a more comfortable low-level play.

Yes - and this is both a weak and a strong point. MEGS is quite flexible in character creation or modelling, but does not have built-in safeties preventing Players from munchkining out and exploiting the system to design absurdly powerful Characters.

Thus, each and every character design can be vetoed by the Gamemaster.

Superhero gamers tend to be after power, so precaution is advised. For Players who are more interested in making phallic symbols than modelling Characters, crunchier games such as Hero or the second edition of Mutants & Mastermind might be better - they include safeties against that kind of Player.

Yes. However, they have to be done in a rigid format (so I can script the HTML tagging) and the only illustrations will be the ones you provide.

Oh yeah. However, there was a major change of format for the site in September, 2004. The occasion was seized to improve the texts (mostly in matters of readability and clarity) and the illustrations (better resolution, usually) - but with the sheer amount of stuff on this site, it wasn't possible to do everything at once.

Thus, the "Newest" button lists a mix entries that :

• Are genuinely brand new. See the "Updates archive" link on the homepage not to miss any !
• Have just been rewritten and/or reillustrated. When gauging an old writeup for reformatting or republishing, it's not uncommon for it to be rewritten from head to toes
• Have just been reformatted - better layout, typos ironed out, quite often a better illustration, etc.
• Have had small changes due to remarks from the list