Character Guidelines

Overview

X-Men: Alternate Class sits between the original X-Men comic run and the Giant X-Men relaunch. Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and then Polaris and Havok, whose adventures ended on an abrupt note. When the new run started up, the original team had went M-I-A, forcing Xavier to recruit the international team of New Mutants (Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Sunfire, and Thunderbird) who were led by Cyclops. Fans of the Giant X-Men run are familiar with the Krakoa story, but XMAC diverges before that point. As a result, player characters will primarily consist of alternative mutant teammates who join the team in place of the aforementioned New Mutants (e.g., Storm will still be in Africa where she’s worshiped as a goddess; Wolverine remains part of Alpha Flight; Colossus is still in the Soviet Union; Nightcrawler is still a retired circus performer hiding in a monastery, etc.). Canon characters are plot-specific and will not be featured prominently in player roleplay.

Sim Start:

That means the sim's setting originally featured Professor X as the Headmaster and Cyclops as Team Leader. The rest of the original team was declared M-I-A after June 21 of 1990. Eventually Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters will transition into the larger Xavier Institute For Higher Learning to accommodate older characters, but players should bear in mind the primary setting for the sim is, in fact, a school. That means no children -- teenage runaways at the youngest -- yet of secondary to post-secondary schooling age in order to at least pose as students. The student roster will consist of more than just the seven slots of the original team who went missing.

Setting:

Due to the 50+ years of X-Men comics, it's been necessary to adjust the timeline in order to make the story fit within a single generation at the X-Mansion in Salem Center, Westchester, New York. As a result, the Alternate Class is formed in 1990. Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters was organized in 1980. The original X-Men's first field mission was in 1984. For more details on dates, see Timeline Events. For more details on the school itself, see Campus Grounds.

Player Characters:

Players will choose --

(1) A student at Xavier's School to play up as a trainee, eventually bringing them to a junior X-Men member.

(2) A recruited mutant from elsewhere who would take the place of the New Mutants.

(3) Some combination of the two.

NOTE: Special characters such as Brotherhood members, unaffiliated mutants, or cameo allies & villains (especially canon characters) are not available to players except as special exceptions to decided on a case by case basis.