I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

[Badger]

Well I was reading the Alternate Earth 22 replys tonight. It then dawned (well it had before, but I am thinking about now and was curious about other opinions and such). After reading one dream world of no crime I began thinking that would be a nightmare for my hero and lots of other heroes too.

 

Ok think about it. The hero's primary purpose in life, so to speak, is to fight crime (yes it varies on reasons why). What if they succeeded in this goal to erradicate crime? What would a hero do then? We all want a purpose even supers. So in essence crime is the yin to a hero's yang. So I was wondering deep down could your hero handle not going out there handing it to the bad guys?

 

Note: Yes I am probably babbling. I worked had at work tonight and my brain is likely fried. LOL. But I was curious as to reactions of this perspective.

[BcAugust]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Hmm, well, my character is more of a ruler/defender then a superhero. In a world with no crime, she'd still have a purpose.

 

In general, though, I could imagine that most heros aren't set up to imagine a world without crime. It sort of reminds me of a batman fanfic where there was no crime for a week. It drove Batman nuts.

[Badger]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Actually when I thought about this Batman was the first one that came to mind. Punisher would probably be another.

[Ghost Archer]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

One man's Heaven is another man's Hell. I've always believed this and for Archer to find himself is a world free of crime would be Hell for him. He is not driven by events in his past, like Batman and Punisher, he is driven by his nature. It is built into Archer to battle crime and injustice and to help people in need. Utopia is nice for a visit but then give me strife and crime.

It sounds a little selfish to wish a hostile world on all of humanity and if he were given the choice of his world as it is or a world of total peace, he would take a peaceful world, even if he was forced to live his life out miserable and for someone immortal, that is a very long time.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

I can't say (honestly) that I build characters who are all about the crime fighting.

 

Wraith (deceased) was about the cool (he liked what he did).

Robot (retconned away) WAS pretty crime focused, but he'd be fully able to set himself back into civilian mode (if nothing else, DATA WIPE!)

Sludge is a villain-lite anyway.

Flippant is in it because he lost the purpose to his life. He'd be happy just speechifying and being civic.

Estatua... he needs to save people. If he didn't have to do it from other people, that would be nice, but he'd go back to pulling people out of fires.

Smoke and Mirrors (pending finding a home ) - yeah, she is crime focused. But since she's hardly developed her own personality, any non-need fro her would just force character growth.

 

Interesting. Robot and Smoke and Mirrors, my two AI, are the ones most crime focused. And they have a lot else in the world for them. So no problem.

 

Oh, I forgot.

Reiver (rejected) - Here's my vigilante. He needs an outlet for his rage, all right. Okay, I have characters who 'need' crime.

 

But only one who would have the slightest problem in living in that Utopia. And he would probably get over it.

[Vondy]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Pehaps the heroes external struggles are an allegorical representation of his own inner war. By that same token maybe the heroes powers are, in fact, symbolic in terms of his own inner nature and the spiritual and moral tools he uses to confront these struggles. The hero is representitive of someone who struggles with his own evil inclination and pervails, while the villian is a representation of someone who has failed in these endeavors, or makes no such noble efforts at all.

[Sketchpad]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

I dunno ... I think that heroes would like to lilve a normal life if they could stop crime ...

And as for the Batman thing, check out Kingdom Come Specifically the first parts about Gotham

[OddHat]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Nope, I don't buy this.

 

On a practical level, all of my characters would be much happier if they had no need to spend their days beating up criminals. Of the active characters, Style would be thrilled to spend his life writing, researching and exploring, Flesh would be a full time movie maker, and AnimeGai would be used as a research tool.

 

On a Joeseph Campbell "The Heroes Journey" level, the journey would just switch external symbols for the internal struggle.

 

A world without challenge would be hard for anyone to deal with after a while (which is its own sort of challenge); a world without people trying to kill one-another is no problem at all.

[The Watcher]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Same here. Warp got into the super hero game to protect innocent people. If no one needs protection anymore he could just go back to living his life as Daniel Stone, billionaire playboy and financial whiz, and enjoy life just fine. Spectrum was originally an astronaut, so he could go back to exploration, and perhaps working to learn to consciously access the Progenitor Knowledge in his head. And Mystic could divide his time between writing novels and magical research.

[Metaphysician]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Microman II, similarly, would have an entire world to explore ( the microverse ), if not busy fighting villains.

[Tech]

A world without crime

 

Heroes and heroines fight crime generally to keep people & society safe (including family, friends, loves, etc.), as well as for moral reasons. If the world were suddenly free of crime, my heroes would (going down my list...):

 

Neutron - be glad to finally give up crimefighting. He's tired of fighting VIPER and now that he's married has even more reason to want a peaceful life. He's my very first character of over 20 years.

 

Roger - life would continue as usual. Being a toon, he tends to have more fun not fighting crime than fighting it. I do have to say, adding Roger to the team actually changed the entire team's modus operanti (?). Going on a 'steak-out' has a new meaning nowadays.

 

Blue Wind - she'd be glad. She has a singing career and is busy as it is right now.

 

Tech - she's a policewoman and a fine good one at that. Without crime, there'd still be some things for the police to do but not much that I can think of. She's probably have to quit her job and do something else. What it would be, she wouldn't know.

 

Bulls-Eye - also in the police force and a top-grade sharpshooter. My guess is he might become a park warden or ranger; anything to use his skills. Maybe he'd become a professional archer though he's not an archer at the moment.

 

Silverstreak - give us his powered armor and continue in his field. Not much of a change since he was always more interested in technology anyways.

 

Angel (Beldandy) - based on Beldandy from OMG, since she's from a different dimension anyways, she'd be happy to marry her love some day and have a simple life. Still, there are plenty of things for her to do other than fight crime, such as helping lost children, etc. etc.

 

All in all, I guess my characters don't have any particular obsessions with fighting crime. They do it to protect their loved ones and move on with life; it's what they do in life but it's not their life.

[Guest Soulcatcher]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

My characters typically have other things that they are involved in that goes beyond crime fighting such as dealing with demon plots. Unless the whole multi-verse goes evil free, my characters will always have something to do.

[OneWingedAngel]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

This reminds me of something I read in "The Tick":

 

"I don't want to stop crime, I just want to fight it!"

[Supreme]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

If any of you don't own "Unbreakable" rent it, and check out the DVD featurette. There are a number of people talking about comic books and super-heroes (and even how overly intertwined they are). One of the people is Trina Robbins, who does "Go Girls," according to her you can be a good person without the presense of evil but you can't be a hero. Without evil, you'd just stay in Smallville and be a really good person.

[Chuckg]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Starguard -- well, she'd be more than a bit lost, but she's more than a bit lost *as is*. Not knowing who you are, how you got to be this way, or anything else tends to do that to you. She's fighting crime because, well, with great power goes great responsibility.

 

 

Dr. Pain -- would retire. Hey, he's getting old.

 

He'd be bored, but not angsting.

 

 

Baron von Darien -- is a vampire. He allows himself to continue to exist only because a) he feels a sense of duty to oppose mystical evil and he's too proud to surrender to despair and kill himself.

 

Thing is, in a world where he's truly not necessary, where the last battle has been won, it's not despair to finally lay down and rest.

[RDU Neil]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Many of the characters in my games would be just fine with "no crime" especially if you look at what that really means.

 

To continue in the philosophical bent...

 

Crime... aside from socio/psychopathic people (born or made)... is about violating laws. Laws tend to exist because of finite resources and/or access to resources. The haves and the have nots. Laws created to protect property/wealth. One person has/controls a resource... another wants/needs it, there might be laws to protect the property/resource rights of one over another. To have a crime, you have concepts of property/wealth/etc., that are violated (murder being the ultimate violation of the ultimate personal property, the self.)

 

To have no crime would require a society freed from lack of resources (for all intents and purposes). Everyone would have their basic needs met at a high level of satisfaction... food, shelter, future prospects, etc. This would leave only crimes of passion/emotion/chemical imbalance (drunk or the above sociopathic mentality). Because society as a whole would be freed from most day to day cares (enough resources available for everyone, remember) it could put a great deal of energy into managing and coping with the passion/emotion/disturbed individual acts, effectively reducing negative affects of them to negligible levels.

 

No crime.

 

At this point, it isn't just a question of "what would my superhero do now" but a question that all humanity would have to answer. The options would be so different from reality (with anything you need available, EVERYONE would be super and godlike to some extent) that it is hard to predict.

 

The question comes down to a fundamental nature of humanity. Even with needs satisfied, would people still want "more" and compete and fight to be better than/have more than the next guy... or would society come to some kind of equilibrium, where individual gain was not measured by being better/having more than someone else? If the former...crime will still exist as laws will still need to exist to judge people's acts against one another... but if the latter, well such a society would be so utopic that concepts of hero and the like might utterly vanish over time... or change so drastically as to be unrecognized by our society.

 

I think of the main "Big 3" of heroes in my world... Vector, Locke and Thermal. All three have spent over a decade fighting for a better world... all of them would be happy to deal with the new, unique challenges of a utopia over bitter political infighting, war, slaughter and crime that they've had to face. Locke could become the god that would unite humanity at the psychic level. Thermal could become the immortal starlike being who spends his time exploring the universe... Vector... hmmmm... I'm not sure, but I think he'd be happy to sit on a beach on a terraformed Mars and play with his daughter... (these are other players' characters in my world, so I'm just guessing, here.)

 

Interesting question... most definitely.

[Badger]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

Anyway I didnt mention earlier what my character would do. (wanted to see some feedback first). But anyway.

 

My character Superbadger it would be a case of he has grown to like fighting to some level, maybe it is thrill who knows.but he seemingly had passed the point where he could easily adjust back to civilian life. He really doesnt have a family outside the team, heck, the loss of his family was what brought to where he is. He would most likely become the last villain left. Course before he joined up, he was a semi-villain of sorts looking for the murderer of his family. but anyway.

 

Also a friend's character who was a bit Punisher-like (with immortality). He would have trouble too. He was ex-Green Beret, turned mercenary. He would have trouble himself. He seems to only care about fighting and chicks. Guess that would leave more time for chicks. . But even that would get boring eventually (he was granted immortality after all)

 

Actually the rest of that group wouldnt have much trouble admittedly. A couple of gadgeteers would probably become top inventors. The others I dont know what they would go on to do. But they had a life of some sort outside crime-fighting. Course this also proves a moral of such, that if you put so much of yourself into one thing, and you lose that one thing, it could destroy you.

 

I can think of real life cicumstances that have caused people trouble adjusting like this. Mainly Vetnam guys. But I wont get into that.

[rebeccared50]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

MMmm, that is a tough one..

 

Crimson Aura - well, considering she's half demon herself, she could easiely become a bad guy if there weren't any to fight! I think she'd have a hard time accepting a "Utopian" world because somewhere in the back of her mind she would suspect it was just someone way of controlling/enslaving everyone (ala "Brave New World")

 

Starry Knight - she had the chance to be in on the ground floor of the creation of a new nation, and knows that taking care of everyone isn't easy. But since she's also a singer/exotic dancer, she'd love to spend her time singing, dancing and spending time with her recently reunited with husband.

 

Blaze - she didn't start out to fight crime, just to gain fame and fortune for herself. Her morality lead her to oppose villians, but in their absence, she'd still be out for herself.

 

Mmm, it would seem that a character who was in the game just to fight crime would probably have it rough in a perfect world. Most of my heros were such by necessity, not choice (probably some sort of reflection of my own physche) and would continue to have things to do if all the villians in the world were gone.

[zornwil]

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight.

 

If anyone's interested, there's an older thread on this at http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9885

 

What I didn't realize until I searched for it...I started it! But based on an idea WhammeWhamme indicated. Anyway, I just say that as it explains why the thread seemed so familiar to me!