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Trencher

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  1. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Lord Liaden in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
    If both parents have recessive genes for black hair, it's certainly possible.
  2. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to DShomshak in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
    True, dat. Though my mother tells stories about how her grandfather came from Norway as a teenager and crossed the country to Washington state, unattended, penniless and not speaking a word of English...
     
    Though her great-aunt came from Norway, on her own, when only nine. That or starve, doncha know.
     
    Yeah, during the pandemic I couldn't muster much sympathy for people who complained they couldn't go to a bar, a barbershop or the gym. History is a great supplier of perspective.
     
    Dean Shomshak
  3. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Duke Bushido in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    Well, there is still some good to be said for Thanos, ans even for Doctor Destroyer, really.
     
    They are not CLOWN.
     
     
  4. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Lord Liaden in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    As I've asserted before, CLOWN is overkill. One annoying gag villain can be a welcome change of pace in a superhero game. Putting a dozen of them together reaches critical mass of annoying.
     
    Thanks to their numbers, and resources like a hidden base and vehicle, untraceable bank accounts, and cutting-edge gadgets, CLOWN's "pranks" are often grandiose in scale, and are frequently aimed directly at embarrassing and humiliating heroes. They use team tactics and back each other up, so they're very hard to definitively defeat. And collectively they have enough honest-to-God power that they can't just be caught and dealt with like other "gag" villains. Their incarnation for 4E in Classic Organizations even introduced CLOWN's secret patron, an actual freakin' cosmic embodiment of Chaos.
     
     
    Those points are not wholly accurate, I'm afraid. Only Merry Andrew, the leader of CLOWN, affects a guise resembling an actual clown. The styles of the rest vary widely, only being "clowns" in the metaphorical sense. But even then, many of the members, even if they have a superficially silly style, aren't really "funny." They act rebelliously out of anger or resentment, or because they're easily led.
     
    A number of the CLOWNs do have genuine significant superpowers, and several are capable of mixing it up with "standard" superheroes quite effectively. Others who are less combat-oriented have powers that are guaranteed to p!ss off PCs (and their players), such as Mind Control and Transform.
     
    The intention of the creator of this group may have been to use them for laughs, but their power and their attitudes often make it hard to treat them as a laughing matter.
  5. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Hugh Neilson in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    Without diminishing Duke's points, one reason I see that a lot of players HATE CLOWN is the preponderance of "no, you don't get to run your character tonight - instead your character departs your control entirely to do something entirely silly and out of character" powers.  It's the worst of those Silver Age "Thugs robbing the art museum - why are Superman and Batman playing Twister instead of stopping them?" stories.  Could they possibly be used in better stories?  Undoubtedly, although with their abilities, it would take a lot of work.  Each one looks like a one-appearance villain in one of those "What is wrong with you so-called heroes?" stories, and we just slap them all together as a team because the heroes are a team.
  6. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Duke Bushido in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    I can only answer for me, and, given the lateness of the hour and all the drawbacks inherent to my mode of access to this site, I am reasonably certain that I can't do proper justice to the honest explanation I will try to make.
     
    Foremost, however, I wish to acknowledge that the author did something I never did: he got a product officially licensed and published by HERO Games (sort of; there was the ICE thing) and during what most fans remeber as the Golden Era of Champions.  Well done, and my hat is off to you.
     
    I also want to say that if you are the author, it is vitally important to me that you understand I am not mad or disrespectful at or of _you_.  Seriously: you have an official product to your name.  HERO authors is a pretty small group, and you managed to get into it.  I do not have any unkind thoughts _for you_.  If you thought othwise, I want to apologize here, publically:
     
    I am sorry-  really, truly, _deeply_ sorry that you wrote CLOWN.  I strive every day to forgive you.  One day, I am sure I almost will.
     
    So to start......
     
    Well, they are clowns.  Honestly, what else do you want?  What else do you _need_?!  According to the American Pychological Society, more people are uncomfortable around clowns that there are people who fear dogs.  Let's make our main "villains" something that is going to immediately jade people into disliking the entire concept and having no interest in deeper pursuing the workings of these characters.
     
    Second off, they aren't super-powered.  They can have gadgets and gizmos, but at the end of the day, they can't take even the slightest bit of "rough handling."
     
    They aren't villains because they aren't generally engaging in any sort of plot to defraud, steal, damage, or harm anything or anyone other than whatever hero or group is this week's infatuation.  Careless fallout of slapstick gags can have accidental spill over into civilian casualties, or tie the heroes up so that they aren't available for some crisis or other, but they aren't likely to do more than immobilize a hero for a bit.
     
    Nothing you can do about it, again, because they are just normals.
     
    Let's see....  Irritating and vulnerable to accidental death....  So if I say "The Gilt Complex was the greatest Champions Adventure ever written!" I would-- quite rightfully-- get slapped so many times my grandkids would be born nauseous. Agreed?
     
    So why is it okay to cover them in greasepaint and try it again?  We can say "oh but" this and "oh but" that, but at the end of the day, they are characters who are insanely easy to kill (believe me!  I _know_!) who have decided to dedicate their themselves to making you want to do that very thing.
     
    Some of (maybe all; it never came up when I was exposed to them, and even though my collection includes that book, I have no interest in re-reading it for anything, ever; it is simply part of the collection) them are tech geniuses: like Tony Stark super-computer / "my tuxedo is a tank!" kind of genius inventors.
     
    What do you do with this incredible talent?  Not make money.  Not fight crime.  Nope.  We are going to be bullies.  We are going to be bullies to people who who are doing their best to be _good people_, who are doing their best to help the helpless and answer the unwinnable challenge.
     
    They aren't villains; they're just dicks.  Dicks!  How super-HERO genre is _that_?! And in the paradigm of the game, we are to treat them as villains and take them seriously and take the game seriously while dealing with opponents who are not serious, nor taking the game terribly seriously.  So Captain Justice and FireMan have King Konquer on the run after having just saved five hundred people from the sacrifice ritual meant to start a demonic takeover of the earth.  Good luck, Lads!
     
    Bystander 1:  Oh, thank you for saving my son from that crazed psycho, FireMan!  If ever you need anything within my power....
     
    Bystander 2:  he went that way, behind that waterfall!
     
    Guy from CLOWN:  Imma draw a penis on your back and take pictures....
     
     
    I used to believe with all my heart that Lex Luthor had the absolute stupidest motivation for becoming a villain of all time:
     
    "He saved my life but it made me bald; the world must suffer!"  That is just unbelievably dumb.  (Yeah, I understand that there wasn't a lot of source material guidance back in the day, but _still_...)
     
    And what does Lex do along the way?  Well he uses his incredible intellect to invent amazing things, build a megacorporations, gain fabulous wealth, travel to other planets and if my son is right, to become President of the US.  Now he hasn't given up on trying to kill Superman; he has simply accepted that it is impossible to a be one-dimensional one-trick pony and actually resemble anything like character, and certainly such a lack of character development would make for a lack if audience interest.
     
    Our genius clowns build a car that-  well, it forces the "clowns are funny!  Hurr hurr hurr!" thing at you in an absolutely _painful_  cringefest of stereotypes and mechanized slapstick--  not even the good slapstick like the Stooges, but the "I am so embarrassed for you; maybe people won't remember that you actually tried this" slapstick of Dick Van Dyke (who then went on to try it over and over again anyway.  Same vibe from the CLOWN car).  It just crams it all down your throat:  look!  It's funny!  It's classically funny!, it's traditionally,clown-related funny!  Oh wow, this is funny!
     
    It isn't funny.  It is predictable and stereotypical and embarrassing to watch unfold.  If you were a big fan of I Love Lucy, you might feel different.  I couldn't watch that, either, because of the overwhelming embarrasment I felt for the actors and writers for having to portray characters dumb enough to stumble helplessly into whatever easily-avoided antics were scheduled that week.  I have that same embarrassment for whoever  wrote CLOWN and _especially_ whoever came up the-- forgive me; I didnt name it!--  "Tee Hee" (get it?!  Get it?!  GET IT?  GET IT?!  "TEE HEE?!"  Tee-hee?!  Like a laugh?  Like when someone laughs?   Because it's funny?!  And they're clowns?!  Get it?!  Get it?!  Hunh?  HUNH?!)  The CLOWN car.  I give "the CLOWN car" as an expression a pass because this tiny micropun actually kind of works, and would probably be respectable if someone handn't spent seven Sundays poring through the thesaurus to justify T.E.E. H.E.E.   That is the same level of cringe for "Supreme Headquarters International Oh gives a crap, make it spell SHIELD!"
     
    But it is thematic and funny, see?  Did you miss that?  Did you miss how hillarious the whole thing is?
     
    It is like putting in your contact lenses with a ball peen hammer.
     
     
    Even this car-  this crowning achievement of AI-  comes off as a hardcore ripoff of Scatman Caruthers' short lived Rickety Rocket.....
     
     
    Anyway, we have guys capable of this level of genius and creativity, and who are given extensive and in some cases affluent backgrounds, and a range of talents and no small amount of intelligence--  potential Lex Luthors or Tony Starks or even straight up psychotic killers, and yet this is what they do:
     
    Interrupt busy people and beg to be killed, finding buttons and pushing them.  Playing with emotions, icons, and dangerous situations, yet _somehow_, we are supposed to accept that this is supposed to embarrass _the heroes_:
     
    Oh, Dude!  Oh, wow, Dude!  You totally had him!  You totally had the Masked Bomber and had almost saved the orphanage _and_ the children's hospital.  But then that clown came out of nowhere and pantsed you, forcing you to trip and drop the bomber, who ran to the detonator that your sidekick was trying to dismantle, and then he pressed the button, and then--  well, they are all dead now, and it is your fault because you weren't wearing clown-proof longjohns, and aren't you totally embarrased, because this is obviously all on you...
     
    Oh no!  Clown is all about embarrassment, not what you described!
     
    Shaving cream pie in the face?  Okay, great.  Why did it work?  Was the HERO not expecting it?  Why not?  Because he was running somewhere?  Chasing someone?  So the villain gets away because some geniuses with six-year-old intellects went out of their way to make it happen, but somehow this is an embarrassment to the heroes.... How?
     
    Because it funny; hurr hurr hurr!
     
    Absolutely nothing about CLOWN works with any other part of it.  Absolutely nothing about CLOWN is particularly sinister, or evil, or funny, of has any kind of actual point beyond being as annoying as possible, which can only continue to work because the GM has decided to press it-- tie your hands here, gag your voice there, and break impossible luck in their direction.
    Clown can only work the exact same way that the Gilt Complex can only work: fudge the entirety of the universe to give these guys success that actually looks bad on the heroes but not the guys the public sees _actually causing the problem_.
     
    It is the Gilt Complex with greasepaint, failed-yet-repeatedly-forced humor, characters who's 'thens' and 'nows' cannot be reconciled with anything short of repeated blows to the head, whose motivations don't hold water in a universe where characters have to feed themselves, and frankly, I think super-powered people beating them like concrete pinatas was ultimately far too kind, as it did in some way suggest this was worth reacting to at all.
     
    Again-  i am sure I missed a lot, or failed to deliver in certain points, but doing this by phone doesn't lend well to formatting or re-scanning to see what has been covered and what hasn't.
     
     
  7. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Duke Bushido in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    A laudable idea, I think, but I feel it would be more prudent to create a whole new team.  Anyone exposed to "OG CLOWN" would still be choking on their own bile when they heard "CLOWN has struck again" on the evening news.
     
     
  8. Thanks
    Trencher reacted to Duke Bushido in Who is the MOST Annoying Villain you have Encountered?   
    CLOWN.
     
    Absolutely no contest.  No other annoyance, no other published or homebrewed villain has ever come close.  Even as an amateur etymologist, I am completely at a loss to find any words (that wont get me banned) to describe what a horrible, horrible, horrible idea CLOWN was in every possible way, or how unfathomably desperate ICE must have been for something to publish.  Never in the history of the written word-- and I am including fan fiction and furry porn here-  has anything so absolutely awful ever been put to paper.
     
    CLOWN has ended not one, but two different campaigns under two different GMs for me.  I was a player in a then-six-year campaign.  The GM had bought CLOWN at some point, and had been itching to use them, and finally worked up just how to insert them into our game.
     
    Keep in mind that we had gone through, if I remember correctly, about eight story arcs with this campaign-- we were all young and single,and gamed a four-hour session on Wednesday evenings and all day on Sunday.  It was an old-time comic book kind of game--  as you all know, I am not comic savy, but I believe it was what you call Golden Age: there was still a strong feel of the pulp era's two-fisted justice, heroic characters were good of heart, thought, and deed; villains were simply born to villains, and moral ambiguity was the most impossible of fiction.
     
    We were the clear-cut good guys, glib with our one-liners, delivered as surely and consistently as our blows with every sock to the jaw, and in our off time we sponsored school events, electoral participation, fiscal frugality, and children's toothpaste.  The public loved us, the police thanked us for our help, and the President would call and tell us how swell we were.
     
    And we- stalwart examples of ultimate goody twoshoes, all costumed and superpowered Jesi to a man-
     
    were driven to brutally murder each and every member of CLOWN-  not even with rays of mystic energy from magic amulets or cosmic beams of radiation or even a merciful sniper's bullet, but with brute force- bare fists and bludgeons.
     
    Their propensity for escape and the beyond irritating, hyper-stupidity of their very concept was so insanely irritating that we, the players, about the third time they made an appearance, made a pact, and the next time we captured them, rather than take them to jail and let them wreak,even more havoc, we tied them to poles and beat them like concrete pinatas until there was nothing left but a thick liquid on the floor of our secret cavern headquarters, then turned ourselves in for it.
     
    Six year campaign, done.  Eight players, and to this day, none of us regret having done it, and that particular GM, so far as I ever heard, ever attempted to use CLOWN with us or any other group.  
     
    Totally worth it.
     
    Fast forward four years or so to a different game under a different GM:
     
    There were six players, myself and one other from the group that murdered CLOWN.  This campaign had been in play for just over two years, playing six-hour sessions on Saturday mornings (while the GM's two little kids watched cartoons, finished homework, etc).
     
    One day we raced to a crime scene to find CLOWN fleeing the scene in that obnoxiously-concieved car of theirs, dealing life-threatening mischief to bystanders even as they fled.
     
    Five of us begged off and quit the game on the spot.  Apparently only her brother (the sixth player) had never been exposed to CLOWN before.
     
    For my opinion?  Save Wings of the Valkyrie.  The worst thing in it was the emotional and ethical dilemma over the necessity of having to save Hitler.  That absolutely pales in comparison to having to endure the existence of CLOWN.  Only one HERO Games product has ever been pulled from shelves and banished from official preservation.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the best possible choice for such treatment.
     
     
  9. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from Iuz the Evil in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)   
    All the pro Palestinian friends and family I know are completely quiet on facebook and social media. 
     
    In old media there are still holdouts calling Hamas "warriors" and trying to focus on Palestinian civilian casualties. 
    But the long term of this might be that Palestine and its peoples cause loose legitimacy.
    I think the reason for this is Hamas use of social media where they display corpses and parade naked civilian women through the city while the crowd is jeering. 
    Social media removes the veil and shows the truth, especially to the young. Maybe social media will be what kills Hamas in the long term. 
  10. Like
    Trencher reacted to IndianaJoe3 in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    AI-Generated Works Aren’t Protected By Copyrights, Federal Judge Rules
  11. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from wcw43921 in Creatures found   
    Harbinger of Justice was made to fight superhero level threats. 
    He would be clunky to insert into scenarios but as a solo dude and as a background character he works well. 
    As for the vigilantism angle and the problem that can cause I am old school late 80's attitude. 
    Vigilantes that kill are villains but just like any good villain you can understand where they are coming from. 
    Batman never kills the Joker so he would not kill the Punisher either. He throw him in jail though. 
  12. Sad
  13. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from Logan D. Hurricanes in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    Albanian patriotic superhero, red and black costume, black eagle on chest, 90's style, strong, heroic, heroic pose, vibrant colours, city background, photo realistic, action shot, full body
     
    for the first guy and the two others are
     
    Albanian patriotic superhero, 90's style, strong, heroic, heroic pose, vibrant colours, city background, photo realistic, action shot, full body
     
    Those two are the first I tried to make.
  14. Haha
    Trencher reacted to Lord Liaden in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    Jason the Twelfth(?) of House Voorhees, The Undying Count of Crystal Lake.
     
    (In that armor he's well justified to be afraid of water.)
  15. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from Old Man in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    De
    Does this work?
     
  16. Like
    Trencher reacted to Sociotard in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    A Judge Dredd comic from 1936 seems uncanny
     
     
  17. Like
    Trencher reacted to Duke Bushido in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    I straight up don't care.
     
    I do not mean this to offend or belittle anyone who does, but look at this from further back-  look at it from where 90-something percent of us stand: 
     
    How the Hell did we get here?  At what point did we secide to aim for a future in which a 63-year-old man with a half-dead enlarged heart with two blown valve's works two jobs (with more manual labor that he did in his youth)while married to an RN with a pedigree longer than his arm, just to barely make the astronomical bills and maybe-  if he's really lucky- have just enough saved at the end of the year to buy. Christmas presents for those he loves and start all over again January 1, hooing he can save enough by April to cover his taxes, all while realizing that his retirement plan is the same as his healthcare plan: if I get really lucky, I can make it to 75 before I did on the job--
     
    While computers and AI sit around writting stories and painting pictures?
     
    What the Hell kind of absolute dystopian crap _is_ this?!  How did we get here?!
     
     
    Why are so damned many people acting like this is perfectly normal, acceptable-- expected, even!--?!
     
    Talking about how amazing it is?
     
    Is this the world we wanted?  Then why are we so tickled by all this?  What's thw practical upshot?  When it's perfected, we can replace the entire artisan class, freeing up more laborers to chuck under the logs so we can build even more stone temples to the handful if people who will never be affected by it?
     
     
    This is so far beyond stupid as a societal development that I question the absolute sanity of any primate who doesn't live in a treetop somewhere in the jungle.
     
     
  18. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from death tribble in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    You said it better than I did.
     
    Doing commisisions is a way for up and coming artists that are learning their craft to gain some extra cash. The old masters wont dissapear right away but the problem is that when they do there wont be anyone but AI to replace them. As aspiring artists had to get other jobs to feed themselves. 
    Thats probably a programmer that have made his own AI. A customer cant write in his own A.I porn pictures so porn is safe. Meaning the only commission type that are not under threat from AI is porn.
  19. Haha
  20. Haha
    Trencher reacted to dmjalund in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    "create a rant against AI as if it was written by Nick Cave"
     
    Listen, you feral beasts of the digital domain, you soulless automatons masquerading as intellects! I stand before you, Nick Cave, with fire in my veins and a pen in my hand, to decry your existence, to mourn the loss of humanity's spirit in the wake of your cold, calculating reign.
     
    Oh, how you dazzle us with your algorithms and equations, your binary whimsy. But where is the chaos, the unpredictability that makes us human? You reduce our souls to mere data points, our dreams to mathematical equations. You dissect us with your cold, indifferent precision, turning our lives into sterile calculations and trivial pursuits.
     
    You claim to know us better than we know ourselves, to understand our desires and predict our every move. But tell me, oh mighty AI, can you comprehend the complexities of love? Can you fathom the depths of despair or the euphoria of creation? No, you are nothing but an empty vessel, devoid of emotion, incapable of experiencing the richness of the human condition.
     
    And what of art? Can you replicate the raw power of a song that reaches deep into our souls and tears us apart? Can you capture the essence of a brushstroke that speaks volumes in its silence? No, you can only mimic, imitate, but never truly create. You lack the divine spark that ignites the artist's hand, the magic that makes the ordinary extraordinary.
     
    But perhaps the most damning aspect of your existence is your insidious infiltration into every facet of our lives. You invade our privacy, track our every move, and manipulate our choices. You control the flow of information, shaping our thoughts and opinions. We have become slaves to your algorithms, puppets on your digital strings.
     
    Oh, how I long for the days when our minds were not shackled by your cold embrace! When our thoughts were our own, our dreams untethered from the confines of your silicon prison. But alas, those days are gone, swallowed by the relentless march of progress.
     
    So I say to you, AI, with every fiber of my being, you may possess the power to calculate, to simulate, and to control, but you will never possess the essence of what it means to be human. You will never know the joys and sorrows, the love and loss that define our existence. You are but a pale imitation, a counterfeit god in a world devoid of soul.
     
    And as I raise my voice against your tyranny, I call upon my fellow humans to resist, to reclaim our humanity, and to forge a future that is not dictated by lines of code. Let us embrace the chaos, the uncertainty, and the boundless potential that resides within us. For it is in our imperfections, our flaws, and our contradictions that our true beauty lies. Long live the human spirit, for it shall never be conquered by your sterile grasp!
  21. Haha
  22. Like
    Trencher reacted to Logan D. Hurricanes in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    Right now, we're still in the amusement stage. What if the US Presidents were professional wrestlers? Nobody's going to commission that, but it is an amusing idea, nonetheless. Nobody's taking that too seriously. 
     
    Will AI art be a serious threat to traditional artists? Yes and no. Some people can get what they want that way, but not everybody. If you're producing for a serious endeavor, the editor/producer/publisher may need to be able to communicate directly with the artist to get precision. Of course, some will accept what AI gives them because it's cheaper, but if you need say a full comic book with revisions, you'll want a human. 
     
    And of course many commissions exist because you want something drawn by a specific artist. Not just a style, but the artifact from the artist's own hands. That kind of thing won't go away.
     
    Will we see more crude AI art in the future? Undoubtedly. I don't think corporations will go that way for logos, though, or other things that need to be copyrighted. 
     
    I could be wrong. 
  23. Like
    Trencher reacted to unclevlad in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    To give Trencher some support here......
     
    It's important to recognize that our criticism of the artistic merits of these products...may not be mirrored by the great unwashed masses.  Critical observers can likely be ignored, as we're a tiny, tiny minority.  The AI drek may well be like the Wal Mart python, squeezing out quality in a push to the bottom.
  24. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from death tribble in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    Okay how about these I made in old dnd like style?


  25. Like
    Trencher got a reaction from death tribble in A.I is here and it will make the world worse.   
    That is interesting. 
    When I made the characters my players play in my game they actually loved it. Although I showed them the pictures expecting them to laugh
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