The Last Hurrah (adventure for your use)

[Kirby]

Thanks for the adventure concept. I may be able to mutate this someday into something that fits my campaign.

Don't you understand, he doesn't want anyone to alter the idea to fit in their campaign. His whole "Reagan has to be linked, and you couldnt [sic] change the plot," statement tells you that. You are right that it is a good concept, which could fit in nearly anyone's campaign. But Crackerjacker is adamant about you having to keep the plot as-is.

Sheesh, I think I'm going to turn into a ranter. Let me go check out some other threads.

[Agent X]

> Give the guy a break.

> The scenario could be used with virtually any Presidential Administration.

Only if 'virtually any Presidential Administration' would build, train, equip, and retain violently unstable retards with nihilistic death fetishes literally the size of a planet.

Dude, we're talking about people Randall Dowling(*) wouldn't tolerate on his staff. You don't even have to assume that the Presidential administration in question is benevolent, you merely have to assume that they have more than one functioning brain cell, and the suspension of disbelief will completely implode.




(*) Wildstorm, "Planetary". For those who don't know -- the most purely evil sonofabitch in that entire damned universe.

You're bringing up suspension of disbelief in a rpg forum for characters who fly, throw lightning bolts, and read minds.

[Agent X]

Don't you understand, he doesn't want anyone to alter the idea to fit in their campaign. His whole "Reagan has to be linked, and you couldnt [sic] change the plot," statement tells you that. You are right that it is a good concept, which could fit in nearly anyone's campaign. But Crackerjacker is adamant about you having to keep the plot as-is.

Sheesh, I think I'm going to turn into a ranter. Let me go check out some other threads.

He's proud of his plot. Let him be and move on. Take what you like and throw out the rest.

[Chuckg]

You're bringing up suspension of disbelief in a rpg forum for characters who fly, throw lightning bolts, and read minds.

If characters who fly hyperspace-powered starships, or who throw fireballs and summon demons, or who run across water by the power of chi, or help hairy-footed short guys carry magic rings across their world's equivalent of WW3, are still all judged on literary merit by how believable their thought processes and emotions are as compared to real people, then so can superheroes.

Pointing out that the *physics* of the universe in question are massively different is nothing but a cheap handwave to try and distract the audience from the truth -- which is that the *psychology* is /not/ different.

And most especially, basic tactical and strategic logic are not different.

'Fantasy', or 'Superheroes', is not a magic excuse to abandon all sensible plot.

[Agent X]

You know, I was holding some hope for you, but this just seems to have eliminated that. With all your posts on this thread, you just seem to be a junior high or high school kid with a superplot just to have one. Heck, I've been there; I've had the horrible plots/adventures. (Though mostly in D&D.) The difference is that when I was critiqued by my players, I listened to what they said and have never run as horrible adventures as I did back then. Not that all my plots are great ones, but I've learned and progressed since then.

Totally uncalled for

You haven't even been willing to change anything, or accept any suggestions from those offering it. You've said that you made changes so we could use it, but our changes aren't good enough for you.

He presented this as an adventure idea for others to use if they wished. He did not ask for your opinion on how HE should change the adventure.

Aside from how unlikely anyone posting is to use this exact theme, let's look at some basic flaws you won't budge on:

1: You've not changed Reagan a little, but made him nearly opposite of how he was.

The story doesn't require a negative quality assigned to the President. And you need to remember this is his Reagan in a campaign world with superbeings. He's got to decide for himself what Reagan's position on that would be. There is no credible authority on what Reagan would have thought about superbeings.

2: We would have to create/introduce world-scale villains that everyone is supposed to already fear for their background.

Yep. So if you don't have those you wouldn't use this adventure as written, so what?

3: We would have to rewrite history to accomodate your plot, making the U.S. and U.S.S.R. work together to stop these people in the past, when this may be the antithesis of someone else's history.

Yep, So if your timeline couldn't handle it you wouldn't use this adventure as written, so what?

4: We would have to rewrite history again and suddenly all know that these "enforcers" were public-like figures and that they were in the spotlight from 15-23 years ago.

Do you stick with the timeline as originally written for a campaign or are you willing to "backfill?" Comic book companies do it all the time.

Do you see yet why we have trouble with this?

Looks like you really like Reagan or don't like dark plots AND you feel the need to make an issue of it.

This just adds to the problem. The "Susceptible to suggestion" implies that Reagan or the government was looking for some easily brainwashable people. The Secret Service agents charged with protecting presidents are not lackeys. They are determined minds. Why would supers have to be brainwashed or mind altered when normals aren't?

Because superbeings are a greater security risk the government would love to have a means of controlling them... so they wouldn't blow up the world. The irony of the adventure scenario is that the government essentially produces what it is seeking to avoid.

Stating that a president and his staff are the only ones to know of a nuclear facility (what about those guarding & operating it?) and wouldn't tell their successor tends to give us an idea. Follow that up with you saying it was Reagan's "paranoid insurance policy" and I think the implications speak what we've been saying.

Yep, that you don't like his characterization of Reagan. Okay.

Learn to take suggestions. Several positngs state how they'd change some things to run it, but no, you don't want that. Lighten up. This last post of yours has made me not want to help out any more and I've lost interest in doing so. I truely hope your next thread idea is better and that you'll take suggetions.

The people making suggestions need to lighten up quite a bit as well.

[Agent X]

If characters who fly hyperspace-powered starships, or who throw fireballs and summon demons, or who run across water by the power of chi, or help hairy-footed short guys carry magic rings across their world's equivalent of WW3, are still all judged on literary merit by how believable their thought processes and emotions are as compared to real people, then so can superheroes.

Pointing out that the *physics* of the universe in question are massively different is nothing but a cheap handwave to try and distract the audience from the truth -- which is that the *psychology* is /not/ different.

And most especially, basic tactical and strategic logic are not different.

'Fantasy', or 'Superheroes', is not a magic excuse to abandon all sensible plot.

And rogue cells have never formed in governments? And there is no plausible supercampaign way to explain the mental instability of the supers in question?

[Chuckg]

> And rogue cells have never formed in governments?

'Fulfilling the last legacy of' is not 'rogue cell'.

If you have to retcon/redesign his plot in order to have it make sense, then the /original/ criticisms of the plot are /not/ refuted, they're /acknowledged/.

> And there is no plausible supercampaign way to explain the mental
> instability of the supers in question?

None was supplied. The sole explanation given that I saw was 'Reagan wanted to hire crazy blood-death-fascist enforcers to do his dirty work'.

Suspension of disbelief = dead.

[Avatar]

Ok, here is what I'm going to do.

Its not Reagan, it was Clinton, Who in my opinion was one of the worst presidents in MY lifetime so far. If you disagree, tough.

He had made the Juggernaught to take out Monica if she blabbed, but when it did happen his popularity soared within the middle aged and single males betwwen 18-65. So he never used it, but now, after the terrible fall from grace when he couldn't get cast in a soap opera his rouge and slightly crazed secret death supers decide to blow the world up to make sure they get Monica because it was all her fault for whatever deranged reason.

The heroes must stop them, or just bring her dead corpse to them and they will calm down and take the blue pills again back at the crazy super home.


There, I bitched about a Prez, showed my political asperations and rants. feel free to flame away and tell me how wrong I am and what I should be doing instead.


OR, take what you want from this poor guys post, and let it die. Agent X, you are as always gracious and kind. Your posts were a pleasure. (anybody feel injured by any slight I may or may not have stated, suck it up and read another post.)

Remember the 9:30 show is different from the 7:30 show, thank you and good night.

[Chuckg]

Well, the first thing you're doing wrong is not giving Clinton credit for the brains that God gave a retarded gnat. Or for that matter, the political survival instincts.

Second...

... well, the whole point of this exercise is to show that pretty much every criticism we made about the Reagan exercise also applies when it's the other side of the political coin, isn't it?

Yes, it does. We freely admit this. If I ever use Clinton in a game of mine, this plot will *not* be one that I use for him.

And not just because it insults Clinton (hell, I insulted Clinton damn near every day for 8 years), but also because even just as a plot, all political bias aside, it's still stupidly unworkable and just too damn silly.

[Agent X]

> And rogue cells have never formed in governments?

'Fulfilling the last legacy of' is not 'rogue cell'.

If you have to retcon/redesign his plot in order to have it make sense, then the /original/ criticisms of the plot are /not/ refuted, they're /acknowledged/.

> And there is no plausible supercampaign way to explain the mental
> instability of the supers in question?

None was supplied. The sole explanation given that I saw was 'Reagan wanted to hire crazy blood-death-fascist enforcers to do his dirty work'.

Suspension of disbelief = dead.

"Fulfilling the last legacy of" from the perspective of mentally unstable superbeings. I don't agree with what I think his politics are but he didn't say that Reagan wanted to end the world!

As to suspension of disbelief, it didn't take much for me to figure out a way that this would be plausible.

And concerning retcons/redesigning a plot, the criticisms were unfair. It's impossible for someone to design adventure scenarios that use backstory that won't require many GMs to retcon or redesign.

[Chuckg]

> "Fulfilling the last legacy of" from the perspective of mentally unstable
> superbeings.

Who are mentally unstable because Reagan wanted them that way.

[snip]
> As to suspension of disbelief, it didn't take much for me to figure out a way
> that this would be plausible.

But in order to do that, you had to change the plot enough that it was no longer what he'd written originally -- which means that the criticisms of /that/ one are still valid.

If you admit that it needed fixing to work, then obviously, you acknowledge that it needed fixing.

> And concerning retcons/redesigning a plot, the criticisms were unfair. It's
> impossible for someone to design adventure scenarios that use backstory
> that won't require many GMs to retcon or redesign.

To use a software analogy, retconning or changing details to fit into a particular campaign is like installing a WinXP driver instead of a Win98 driver, 'cause you're moving to a different system.

Having to fix the core plot itself, OTOH, is like a kernel debugging.

[Agent X]

> "Fulfilling the last legacy of" from the perspective of mentally unstable
> superbeings.

Who are mentally unstable because Reagan wanted them that way.

[snip]
> As to suspension of disbelief, it didn't take much for me to figure out a way
> that this would be plausible.

But in order to do that, you had to change the plot enough that it was no longer what he'd written originally -- which means that the criticisms of /that/ one are still valid.

If you admit that it needed fixing to work, then obviously, you acknowledge that it needed fixing.

> And concerning retcons/redesigning a plot, the criticisms were unfair. It's
> impossible for someone to design adventure scenarios that use backstory
> that won't require many GMs to retcon or redesign.

To use a software analogy, retconning or changing details to fit into a particular campaign is like installing a WinXP driver instead of a Win98 driver, 'cause you're moving to a different system.

Having to fix the core plot itself, OTOH, is like a kernel debugging.

I read it that Reagan wanted these guys to be controllable. Their suggestability designed to make them controllable proved a weakness against a supervillain who then made the guys mentally unstable.

I didn't have to change anything about his plot within HIS CAMPAIGN as he explained why these guys went off the deep end - A Supervillain did it - that's plausible.

Did you read his response when he filled in some of the gaps in his original post?

[Chuckg]

> I read it that Reagan wanted these guys to be controllable.

... that would argue for making them *more* stable, not less.

Sociopaths, psychos, schizos, and other such nuts are the *opposite* of controllable. Not just theory, fact. (The old KGB spent a lot of time and effort trying to make use of such people for execution squads. After years of trying, all of their experimental results basically added up to "These people are more trouble than they're worth.")

Edit -- plus, the idea of sending forth your top super-strongarm squad and they all have a x2 vulnerability to Mind Control or other such 'control' effect, and it's not even compensated for by some MD that only you can penetrate...

... well, geez, that's like sending them forward in nitrocellulose underwear and c-4 pullovers, with a huge sign on their necks saying "KILL ME! KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLL MEEEEEEEEEEE!"

> Their suggestability designed to make them controllable proved a weakness
> against a supervillain who then made the guys mentally unstable.

Nice addition, but it was *completely absent from the original plot*.

So while your idea is more workable, the criticisms of *that* plot are still valid.

> I didn't have to change anything about his plot within HIS CAMPAIGN

Oh yes you did -- you had to insert a supervillain who did it. That wasn't originally there.

> as he explained why these guys went off the deep end - A Supervillain did
> it

*looks at original post*

Don't see the supervillain.

Oh, and what about the small army of 'American Glory' mooks? Are *they* all insane too? Where the hell did this team *keep* that private army for 16 years? What did they feed them? WTF were they *doing*?

> that's plausible.

No.

> Did you read his response when he filled in some of the gaps in his original
> post?

No. I did read the response where he back-pedalled like crazy and retconned like John Byrne on speed...

[Agent X]

> I read it that Reagan wanted these guys to be controllable.

... that would argue for making them *more* stable, not less.

Sociopaths, psychos, schizos, and other such nuts are the *opposite* of controllable. Not just theory, fact. (The old KGB spent a lot of time and effort trying to make use of such people for execution squads. After years of trying, all of their experimental results basically added up to "These people are more trouble than they're worth.")

Edit -- plus, the idea of sending forth your top super-strongarm squad and they all have a x2 vulnerability to Mind Control or other such 'control' effect, and it's not even compensated for by some MD that only you can penetrate...

... well, geez, that's like sending them forward in nitrocellulose underwear and c-4 pullovers, with a huge sign on their necks saying "KILL ME! KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLL MEEEEEEEEEEE!"

> Their suggestability designed to make them controllable proved a weakness
> against a supervillain who then made the guys mentally unstable.

Nice addition, but it was *completely absent from the original plot*.

So while your idea is more workable, the criticisms of *that* plot are still valid.

> I didn't have to change anything about his plot within HIS CAMPAIGN

Oh yes you did -- you had to insert a supervillain who did it. That wasn't originally there.

> as he explained why these guys went off the deep end - A Supervillain did
> it

*looks at original post*

Don't see the supervillain.

Oh, and what about the small army of 'American Glory' mooks? Are *they* all insane too? Where the hell did this team *keep* that private army for 16 years? What did they feed them? WTF were they *doing*?

> that's plausible.

No.

> Did you read his response when he filled in some of the gaps in his original
> post?

No. I did read the response where he back-pedalled like crazy and retconned like John Byrne on speed...

You are being incredibly unfair. This is the post where he eplained how the team turned:

"Reagan has to be linked, and you couldnt change the plot. But the idea is that the Minutemen were picked by Reagan because they were the most susceptible to suggestion out of America's most powerful superhumans. They all underwent severe psionic and just old fashion conditioning to the point where they would never betray the president and become his assassin. However this all did not help their mental stability, so when the Utopian (actually the Nazi supergenius Meister-Verstander in deep cover) planted the seed of the idea in the leader and most political of any of them, Justice, it didnt take much to convince the rest of them to join in the plot to capture and destroy the nuclear devices of the world. The Hood did it out of nationalism and irrational hatred, The Killing Joke did it for his sociopathic kicks, and Nightwatcher did it because he was ordered to, and in his personality it was so ingrained that he didnt want to disobey an order from Justice. And US Law did it bececause he was a violent psychopath AND a nationalist.

These guys were worldbeaters, and it took a whole lot of cooperation between the USA and USSR to stop them. It ended the life of the Hood, and the Utopian wasnt a part of it, simply slipping into another one of his cover identities. When Justice flew to into space the crisis was over, and the authorities did there best but could never find The Joke or Nightwatcher, and US Law was impossible to find as they did kill him, but he regenerated and escaped.

Justice had been intercepting radio transmissions, and came down from orbit and instituted a secret meeting with the remaining Minutemen, all of them slightly less powerful than they were back in the day, but still extremely powerful supers (just not worldbeaters anymore).

Being the ultimate patriot and American soldier, Justice (who is kind of a delluded Superman) beleived that now that Reagan is dead they all have to fall on their swords. They should of died before their master did, as retainers are supposed to (using samurai code for inspiration in this bit, I am). Maybe none of them but the near-alien in his insanity US Law and the larger than life Justice would go through with pushing the button, but Nightwatcher and the Joke were both whacked out enough to be part of the plot. The plot, that is, to end their lives and complete their mission of preventing nuclear war, by causing a nuclear holocaust of their own.

Maybe I didnt make this all clear enough the first time, but still you'd have to really be not paying attention to think I was saying that Reagan wanted to cause a nuclear holocaust."

[Chuckg]

> You are being incredibly unfair.

Stating the bald and simple facts of the situation is unfair? Sheesh.

> This is the post where he eplained how the team turned: [snip]

[bigsnip]

I read it already, thank you. I didn't need the replay.

No -- that is the post where he completely retconned his originally posted scenario because of the response it had gotten, but still tried to pretend that he hadn't gotten anything wrong.

See Trebuchet's original response on that point, it says it far better than I could.

His original scenario was massively flawed and in general, it bit. You can't change that. You shouldn't be trying to. Because, if nothing else, you *know* it's not gonna work.