sinanju

Re: OIHID or Why Doesn't Billy Batson not Change Back? If something as sudden and unexpected as a sniper's bullet triggers the transformation, then I think Bruce's rPD/rED are always on (i.e, it's armor or resistant defense with no SFX), but he can only access his enhanced STR (and whatnot) when he transforms.

Re: OIHID or Why Doesn't Billy Batson not Change Back?

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity Or, alternatively, everybody knows Clark Kent is Superman. Or at least, everyone in his day-to-day life. They all just pretend not to see it. See, Superman is insanely powerful, apparently immortal (he hasn't aged since he first appeared in 1938), and goes ballistic when his "secret identity" is threatened. In any way. When the first (real) Lois Lane was killed by gangsters while covering a story, he went crazy with anger and grief. And eventually found a woman who bore a powerful resemblance to Lois and decided that SHE was Lois. No matter that she claimed otherwise (she'd been brainwashed), or that others claimed likewise (also brainwashed, or worse). Any physical evidence or documentation of her true identity dissuaded him. It was all faked, as part of some elaborate scheme. With no other choice, the woman was forced to settle into Lois Lane's life and play her part. And that's when the federal government stepped in. The other major players in "Clark Kent's" life weren't getting any younger. Understudies were found, and trained, and stood ready to take the place of anyone else (including the second Lois) who needed to be replaced due to death, by old age or otherwise. Clark Kent's co-workers and neighbors were organized (or, as the years went by, were replaced thru natural attrition by trained agents) to make sure his "secret" identity was never again threatened. Occasionally, they have to stop someone who tries to break the masquerade by getting to "Clark" and revealing their knowledge of his secret identity. For the most part, they've been successful, but the occasional determined troublemaker gets thru, and a cover story to satisfy Superman has to be worked out. Fortunately, he's pathologically committed to this charade, so it's not very difficult to convince him. The Daily Planet continues to publish only because Clark Kent works there. If not for massive annual subsidies from the federal government, the paper would have gone out of business decades ago. There have been several Perry Whites running the paper over the years. Ditto for Jimmy Olsens and others. The most dangerous part anyone plays is Lois Lane. There have been more Loises than all other parts combined. (In the forties and fifties it wasn't so bad. She could put him off and play chaste for years, but the sexual revolution has been hard on Lois, as Larry Niven has described.) Or so I've imagined.

Re: Public vs. Secret Identity

Re: List Your CO Heroes! I've seen a lot of those. I even use the Silver guide when choosing what powers (when I have a choice), talents and specializations to take as I level up my archetypal characters. THe problem is that even the these guides are generally steeped in jargon that means nothing to me, or almost nothing. Buffs and debuffs, and DPS vs Tank vs Healer vs Controllers, and drawing aggro, and passive versus active defenses and attacks (but WHICH attacks/defenses do they mean? They hardly ever say.) and on and on and on, assuming a familarity with MMOs in general even if not with CO in particular. Ditto with collecting treasures and fusing smaller items into larger ones and then adding them to existing items. I have little or no idea which ones are worth pursuing and which aren't. ANd then there are "roles" and how those influence your choices, and.... It mostly doesn't bother me. I never play PVP, only PVE, and 99% of the time I play solo, though I'll occasionally join a pick-up team. But my first character, a Behemoth, played fine until I reached level 26 (about the time of the latest update to the game). Now any time I play her, she gets her ass kicked routinely by hordes of mooks or solo baddies that she once could handle without a sweat, because the amount of damage she dishes out is pretty low (it seems) and she doesn't stand up to taking damage like I remember. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if the rules changed somehow and I didn't get the memo. Now I'm mostly playing (by which, I mean I have two) Devestators (Trollop and the Man-Ape), who I play because they can dish out horrific amounts of damage and take down the bad guys before they can pound them into submission.

Re: List Your CO Heroes! I have a subscription. I have had for several months now. I still just play archetypes. I know they're supposedly not as good as freeform characters, but this is my first MMO and I haven't a clue how to minimax the game for maximum effectiveness (especially the gear you can use), so I'm content with archetypes.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: And Now for Something Slightly Different: Mis-Spelled and Reimagined Supers Wander Woman - Amazonian princess Diana leaves Paradise Island to wander the outside world, discovering what life outside of paradise is like. Unlike the opulent life she lived on Paradise Island, in "man's world" she ekes out a living doing menial jobs for food and shelter, moving on whenever she can--or must. She travels constantly, helping the helpless, defending the defenseless, defeating the...defeatless, and righting wrongs. (Cue soulful music from the Hulk tv show....)

Re: "Neat" Pictures Louis Wu and Chmee reunite after a long separation.

Re: What if there are no super-prisons?

Re: You Don't Have to be Crazy to be a Superhero, but it Helps! The part that drives me crazy is wondering HOW your man in the street knows the difference between mutants and, for instance, Spider-Man. Spider-Man got his powers by accident, so he's okay. If he'd been born with them, or developed them at puberty, he'd be a mutant and therefore a threat to civilization (in the minds of the public). And somehow, the public just magically knows which he is, though they know almost nothing about him. So if the X-Men would just SHUT UP about being mutants, and claim to be no different from Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four or whoever, they'd have no problems. (Or if the X-Men are too well know, then at least all the YOUNGER mutants should wise up and stop hanging out with them and deny being mutants.)

Re: Alien Flagship Falling From Orbit Iron Maiden and/or Rose Hancock, being flying bricks, would do their best to steer the falling warship toward the nearest large body of water to minimize the damage. Doctor Syence, being (like Wile E. Coyote) a Suuuuuper-Genius, would figure out a way to get the ship's systems working again, and regain a stable orbit--or at least work out how to manage a controlled landing instead of a catastrophe cratering. Black Mask (martial artist), Raven (reality manipulator), Black Knight (indestructible brawler), Legion (shapeshifting spy), Hell's Angel (human torch) and most of my other PCs would abandon the falling warship and, if possible, try to warn someone who COULD handle the problem, because they certainly can't.

Re: Curious about your view on the current state of CO. (Anybody still play regularly I'm playing again after a hiatus of a few weeks. Clearly, my approach to CO is the same as my approach to computer games in general. I'm a faddish player; I'll play it incessantly for a while, get bored, walk away for some time, then eventually come back. Lather, rinse, repeat. My PCs: Iron Maiden (Level 26), Trollop (Level 23 currently--she's the one I'm playing most now), Doctor Syence (Level 15), Legion (Level 8). When I came back from my hiatus, I played Iron Maiden and got my ass kicked repeatedly by NPCs I shouldn't have had any trouble with. I don't know if they nerfed the Behemoth archetype in the last revamp, but she isn't nearly as effective as she used to be. Trollop (a Devastator), on the other hand, kicks the ever-living **** out of everyone she runs across with her ginormous hammer. She gets beaten down occasionally, but only rarely.

Re: Time Frame for Appearance of Superhumans That's how I tend to do it. I figure that "supers" have always been with us, but that they're a) always relatively scarce, and the concept of people running around in distinctive, brightly colored costumes* is a recent (circa 1920s-1940s) fashion. Since the advent of so-called "superheroes" it's much more common for people to dress up in colorful costumes and adopt superheroic/villainous names, even if their powers are rather limited. In which case, even when supers are relatively rare, a costumed yahoo is newsworthy. A mysterious figure in a slouch-brimmed hat and scarf who helps someone and then disappears isn't so much. Plus, a tiny fraction of 6 BILLION humans is a much larger number than a tiny fraction of hundreds of millions--and...just as we hear about every child abduction, mass shooting and other rare but attention-grabbing crime in the world instantly nowadays, we hear about these costumed yahoos the moment they go public. As opposed to the days when, yeah, there might be some superpowered vigilante running around in a distant city, but you weren't likely to hear much about him, and probably at least as much (erroneous) myth as anything factual. *As opposed to mystery men in concealing hat, cloak and optional mask--going back as far as The Scarlet Pimpernel (and probably considerably farther).

Re: Jokes A Polish man is out plowing his farm one day, when he plows up a lamp. He rubs it and a genie appears and grants him three wishes in return for freeing him. "I want the Mongol Horde to raid my homeland," says the Pole. The genie blinks in surprise, but grants the wish. The Mongel Horde thunders over the horizon, sacks Poland, and departs. "And for your next wish?" "Do it again." The Mongel Horde sacks Poland once more. "And for your LAST wish?" the Genie asks. "One more time!" the Pole shouts. The Mongel Horde reappears to rape, loot, plunder and pillage the man's homeland, then departs. "You don't have to answer," the Genie says, "but I'm curious. Why did you ask for the Mongols to pillage your homeland three times?" "Because they had to cross Russia SIX TIMES to do it."

Re: NBC Revolution My understanding is that *smokeless powder* (i.e., modern gunpowder) is the sticking point. It's not easy to produce, and requires considerable tech to do it well and in quantity. If you try to use black powder (or even something a bit more sophisticated but not modern), you get a lot of fouling, which makes it nigh impossible to get semi-autos to function well. But even so, I think you'd see people resorting to modern-style revolvers (which could function with black powder, even if they required a LOT of cleaning afterward) instead of muskets and smoothbores. (A modern reloading set-up could be made to work with black powder quite easily, I think. You'd eventually have to mold your own (unjacketed, lead) bullets, but that too is fairly easy if you know what you're doing. P.S. In response to another post, yes, Ariel: The Book of the Change (by Stephen Boyett) was a fascinating novel, and one of my favorites for a long time. In that world, not just electricity but all high tech stopped working (guns, motors, explosives, even complex machines*) when magic came back into the world. There's a sequel, I'm told, though I haven't read it. *The author has admitted that he wrote the novel when he was very young (eighteen or thereabouts, I think), and didn't think through some of the implications of his premise. But he didn't revise the book when it was reissued because that's how the story was written.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I recently finished Wearing the Cape, and Wearing the Cape: Villains, Inc by Marion G. Harmon. Our protagonist, Hope Corrigan, is a college student who is driving over a double decker bridge when a supervillain destroys it. The explosion collapses the upper deck onto the lower. Hope survives, and experiences a "breakthrough" as she discovers she's acquired superhuman strength and toughness (and the ability to fly) in the disaster. She helps with rescue efforts and is later shepherded away by one of the costumed heroes before anyone can learn her identity. She takes on a costumed persona and joins the local supergroup. There is plenty for her to learn, both about her own new abilities, and about the world of superheroing. In Hope's world, superheroes burst onto the scene when she was a small child, a relatively recent event but not brand new. There are heroes aplenty, and villains too. The introduction of individuals with incredible power has shaped the politics of her world (and in more than a few cases, the existence or boundaries of various nations). Harmon's take on how such things work, and how the world has adapted to the presence of superhumans is interesting. I enjoyed the first book enough to immediately buy the second, which was just as entertaining. A third book, which won't focus on Hope, but instead on another character from the first two books (who moves to New Orleans to take up magic-oriented hero work) is due out sometime later this year. More books are planned. I recommend these to those of you who like superheroes.

Re: Last Dance With Mary Jane... Iron Maiden, Hell's Angel, Rose Hancock, Le Fantome, and most of my other other PCs wouldn't do anything about it. Either they don't care or it just isn't a high enough priority to bother with. The Black Knight might harvest a little for his own personal use. The Dark (a Shadow-esque vigilante) would investigate enough to make sure it wasn't owned or managed by some big organized crime ring. If not, he would then forget about it. If it was, he'd use it to further his efforts at destroying said crime ring.

Re: What is at the Ends of the Earth? If you truly travel to "the ends of the earth" you find...a wall. You can actually reach out and touch the sky. And if you dig through it? Assuming you're able, eventually you'd breach the barrier that separates the world as you know it from the primordial chaos from which all else was created. And it will pour in, instantly dissolving anything and anyone it touches until and unless The Powers That Be who created this sanctuary of permanence can fight a battle to push back the primal chaos and reestablish the boundary. And you need to read Steven Brust's "To Reign In Hell." My all-time favorite fantasy novel, and (whether anyone else ever knows it or not) the fundamental cosmology of any fantasy world I'll ever run. In it, "the universe was without form, and void"...until Yahweh sprang into existence spontaneously (in an infinite sea of chaos, anything is possible eventually...) and managed to carve out a tiny sphere of stability instead of instantly being swamped in chaos again and vanishing. Eventually he was joined by others, and they worked together to create Heaven, i.e., a much larger realm where the threat of chaos was held at bay. Mostly. But even there, chaos occasionally burst through and battles were fought against; some died, others were permanently transformed, for good or ill. Eventually they decided that a more permanent fix was needed, and decided to create the universe. But it would be a very risky, very dangerous undertaking, and many of the denizens of Heaven would undoubtedly die in the process. Not all of them liked that idea. Discussion, argument and politicking followed, as well as treachery, miscommunication and a tragic conflict that is the subject of the novel.

Re: NBC Revolution I saw the preview for this a while back. My thoughts: 1. Wow, they're ripping off borrowing from S. M. Stirling's "Dies the Fire" novels, in which most high technology just stops working one day. 2. This could be cool, if they do it right. 3. I suspect, however, that like "Heroes" and "Flashforward" it will open big with some really nifty special effects and amazing scenes...and then quickly decay into something we've seen a million times before. 4. And...suspicions confirmed. They're going to JUMP ahead 20 (or is it 50?) years, to the new status quo, post-electricity--so they can give us the same cliched "quest to find my daddy/the maguffin" story we've seen a million times before. I can't express just how bored I am by that. I wanted to see the world in the throes of chaos, adapting to the sudden absence of the lifeblood of modern civilization. I'll probably watch the premiere--and nothing else, unless it defies my expectations and gives me something really unexpected.

Re: "Neat" Pictures He was Billy Jack.

Re: Japanese Giant Robot I'm skeptical of humanoid robot war machines. Ever. They waste a lot of technology on replicating human body mechanics that could instead be used to make them faster, tougher, more destructive (like fighters, choppers, tanks, etc.). Having a mech that can 'dodge' incoming fire like a soldier doesn't help much when it's targeted by missiles moving at hundreds of miles per hour. Superior mobility in urban conflicts doesn't help much against aircraft that can move above the battlefield. (There's a scene in Firefly where Wash is piloting Serenity nap-of-the-earth, weaving through canyons at high speed, trying to lose his pursuers...who are cruising along at moderate speed, high above, looking down on his aerobatics. Yeah. Like that.) More and more on the modern battlefield, the rule is "if you can see it, you can kill it." And we can see it from farther and farther away. Navy ships routinely blast enemy vessels that are over the horizon these days. Mechs are high-profile, pretty much by definition.

Re: Royal Pain

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill Prosecutor: "...and that's murder, any way you slice it. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you must convict Captain Righteous of murder. Thank you." Defense Attorney: "...and as numerous witnesses testified, Doctor Apocalypse has been captured and jailed repeatedly. And he has escaped repeatedly, often killing prison guards, other prisoners, and innocent bystanders along the way. And he has tried repeatedly to destroy major cities from Los Angeles to New York, and in one case, had he not been stopped, he would have destroyed the world. We've been lucky. Doctor Apocalypse's victims number in the hundred, not the millions--or billions. But how long can we expect our luck to hold? Captain Righteous may have acted rashly but...." Jury: "Not guilty." (What they won't say, if they're smart, is that yes Captain Righteous violated the law, but they're all going to sleep a lot better at night from now on because a criminal lunatic won't be threatening their lives--and the lives of millions of others--ever again.)