Lameness Is Not Illegal

[coupelefromage]

Today I had to make the following announcement to my Players following the news that a new Player was entering my Game with a new Character...

 

"It is not the policy of this GM or this Campaign to force Players to eliminate Lameness from their Characters. If that were the case, I would have administered physical violence to some of you at the beginning of the Campaign. Lameness should not prevent a Character from being played, as long as the appropriate Rules Of Character Generation are observed. The proper penalty for Character Lameness has been, and will continue to be a hail of good-natured ridicule in direct proportion to the relative Lameness of said Character. I am confident that, in the natural course of events to come, a just and appropriate amount of ridicule shall be rendered to Thanos The Death Fairy..."

 

- Don

[wylodmayer]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

And sometimes, lameness is not intentional, nor really lame per se. Example:

 

A good buddy of mine had a character in one of our superhero games who had started out as a reluctant hero. He had to be talked into lending his prodigious powers to certain superheroic efforts, and he strongly resisted wearing a costume or adopting a heroic name. The first few names he used were things like "Loco" - basically annoying, intentionally dumb names he adopted just to force us to have to use them.

 

Well, anyway, in the arc of the character's development, he started to accept his role as a hero, and gradually internalized the heroic mentality and decided to adopt a *real* heroic name for his character. Unfortunately, my friend's moment of major character transition was ruined by an infelicitous choice of names. You see, he called his character "Nimrod."

 

Now, he and I both spent years and years in a Christian school, and so I knew the reference he was going for (Genesis 10:8-9). However, unbeknownst to me, my pal had *no idea* that "nimrod" was also an insult. Now, the thing is, he had, until now, been using names like "Loco" so forth, as I mentioned above, but he meant for this change of names to signal a change in his character. Unfortunately, the other players ONLY knew "nimrod" as an insult, and had no idea that it was an allusion to a legendary biblical figure (at least, I don't think they did, or if they did, that's not the association they immediately made, mainly because he had been using dumb names 'til that point).

 

Anyway, so he goes around by this moniker for like four game sessions before one of the players jumps on him for not taking the superhero thing seriously. Wounded, he defends himself - he retorts that he IS taking it seriously, as should be evidenced by his new name. Well, there was a moment of confused silence, and then suddenly the dam broke. We realized he had NO CLUE that he had unintentionally chosen a name for his character that indicates he was a moron or a pinhead of some sort. It was one of the funniest moments in my gaming experience.

 

He promptly changed names to "Orion," another legendary hunter.

[David Johnston]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Sad really how Nimrod transmuted. You see there was this Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs sarcastically referred to Elmer Fudd as a "Nimrod" (a mighty hunter) but so many of the children watching didn't get the reference...

 

Still the X-Men did try to rehabilitate the name with their "ultimate Sentinel". Didn't work.

[Lucius]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Well, no, it's not illegal. It's a Physical Limitation like any other, and should be enforced as such.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says "So no lame speedsters, obviously!"

[wylodmayer]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Still the X-Men did try to rehabilitate the name with their "ultimate Sentinel". Didn't work.

 

Yeah, see that didn't help. John Romita, Jr's art during that period was excellent, but the storylines were for crap. Claremont had already started his long, slow, painful implosion as a writer, and the whole Rachel thing was just... not good. I mean, the whole "Nightmares of Futures Past" thing was good (I had the original issues where they did that story) the FIRST TIME AROUND, but by the time Rachel showed up, it was a well he had already dipped in a bit too much - Claremont never did know when to let a plot idea rest in peace (shows that while he had talent, he had no polish, no discipline as a writer). I never did like Selene getting out of Nova Roma, either, so that storyline wound up combining two lame plot developments, in my opinion.

 

Sometimes, you just gotta know when to let a story end. Maybe it was partially the fault of the limitations of serialized media, but Claremont never got the hang of that. He was one of the most original creators in comics for a while, and he still has some spark left in him yet, I think, but - for lack of a better term - his "endgame" was never any good. He could never figure out what to DO with his wonderful ideas. He got off I figure less that three or four really good ENDINGS to stories... the rest were great ideas that sort of meandered about until we were well and truly sick of them.

 

And this is the value of learning one's craft thoroughly before plunging in.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Lame as in not optimally effective? Certainly welcome. Lame as in extremely uncool and worse, uninteresting? Unwelcome, and highly illegal.

[Mike W]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Agreed. But when a guy I was playing with came in with a weird, green shapeshifter(think Beast Boy) which he named Vegan, we were obliged to show no mercy in our taunts. I mean, if you're going to make it THAT easy...

[Insaniac99]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Well, no, it's not illegal. It's a Physical Limitation like any other, and should be enforced as such.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says "So no lame speedsters, obviously!"

 

actually, I seem to remember seeing a speedster that was combined to a wheelchair because his legs were amputated or something...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Anyway, so he goes around by this moniker for like four game sessions before one of the players jumps on him for not taking the superhero thing seriously. Wounded, he defends himself - he retorts that he IS taking it seriously, as should be evidenced by his new name. Well, there was a moment of confused silence, and then suddenly the dam broke. We realized he had NO CLUE that he had unintentionally chosen a name for his character that indicates he was a moron or a pinhead of some sort. It was one of the funniest moments in my gaming experience.

 

He promptly changed names to "Orion," another legendary hunter.

 

To relate this to the source material, does anyone remember when John Walker (now USAgent) took over for Captain America? One of his former sidekicks, who happened to be black, took over the role of Bucky. It seems the writer didn't know this was a derogatory term in the southern states (hey, it wasn'rt "Black Bucky" so by comic book standards, he was doing pretty good).

 

So the writer had a side arc where this new Bucky was confronted by an older man who asked him why he would allow himself to be referred to by that term - it was an insult not only to him but to every other African-American. The character was set as also not recognizing this as a derogatory term, and he promptly changed his name [to Battlestar, IIRC]

[Kenn]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

I have a friend who fell into a similar trap with the Nimrod thing. We kept telling him that naming a character that would make the character look like an idiot to most people because whomever the Babylonian king/hunter guy was most people know the derogatory meaning.

 

And on the issue of lameness of characters. A conversation I had with one of my players.

 

Kenn: You know, your character, Fireforce, he's lame.

Jim: What?

Kenn: Well, without his power armour.

 

(pause as Jim recalls that Peter McMurphy, sans the Fireforce armour, is unable to walk.)

 

Jim: D'oh!!!

[Tech]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Lameness can be overcome as well. A friend of mine from years ago (who's moved on to become a very successful trumpet/clarinet player onboard a cruise ship) made up an armored character. It wasn't the Iron Man type of armor but more of a powered uniform. Anyways, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, we gave him the name 'Flyboy'. He grimaced & took it, but never full accepted it - not that I blame him.

 

Eventually, Flyboy got an overhaul 100 experience points later to become Ultech, with his 'ironfist move-thru' capable of about 21d6 damage. Ouch! Same character, changed from lame name to cool name, blah outfit to cool outfit.

[wylodmayer]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

...somewhat tongue-in-cheek' date=' we gave him the name 'Flyboy'. He grimaced & took it, but never full accepted it - not that I blame him.[/quote']

 

See, that's funny, because I intentionally named one of my characters Flyboy. But, it kind of fit him - he was a goof-off superhero whose only power was incredibly fast and agile flight, and he happened to be exceedingly wealthy to boot. He acted like the cliched fighter pilot stereotype - cocky, womanizer, etc. And his power LOOKED cool, so he had lots of fans. So "Flyboy" worked for him; it had an off handed appeal. But then, no one was ever meant to take this character seriously, nor did they ever.

[Lemurion]

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal

 

Sorry, but I don't find "Ultech" to be a cool name. It's kinda "uh" to me.

 

To each their own.