sinanju

Genuine MIB Neuralyzer Category:tool Description:Flashy-Thing: Minor Transform 9d6 (Normal Person into Person with Edited Memories of Preceding 5 minutes, Can Be Reversed By Another Application of the Power) (45 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Minute, -1 1/2), OAF Fragile (-1 1/4), 4 Charges (-1), All Or Nothing (-1/2), Incantations (Requires Incantations throughout; -1/2), No Range (-1/2), Restrainable (-1/2), Requires A Roll (DEX roll; -1/2), Required Hands Two-Handed (-1/2), Limited Power (Negated by Visual Flash Defense; -1/2), Gestures (-1/4) Real Cost: 5 Points Bio: The Flashy-Thing is a piece of hardware obtained from REDACTEDin REDACTED by REDACTED on DATE REDACTED. It consists of a metal cylinder approximately eight inches long. One end features a small red lens. When a control stud is pressed by the user, the red lens generates a bright flash of light; anyone who is looking toward the lens is subjected a powerful psychic effect which is not yet fully understood. What is understood is that the subject’s memories of the previous five minutes (approximately) are eliminated. {The science staff theorize that the device prevents the brain from transferring data from short-term to long-term memory, much like the lack of memory of the event that often follows a severe accident or assault—but without the accompanying physical trauma.) The subject is left in a brief (about one minute) but highly suggestible state. If he is instructed as to what he “remembers” of the last few minutes, he will accept this as the truth, often filling in details from his longer-term memory or imagination that reinforce the story he has been told. The device is fragile, and requires considerable battery power. It is good for about 4 uses in the field before it must be returned to the armory for recharging (it uses an integral power source, and all efforts to employ more conventional batteries have failed). It is completely ineffective against anyone whose vision is filtered in any way (even ordinary sunglasses). It can be very dangerous to the user, so typically both hands are used to aim it or the user dons a pair of sunglasses with one hand while he readies the device with the other.

I'm playing in a traditional Champions game now (very strict adherence to the rules). But prior to that, I ran a Champions game for a while in which everyone had Speed 4. Everyone. And that only to judge when the "Post-segment 12 Recovery) happened. In practice, everyone got one phase every turn. Characters acted in order of DEX, or in the case of ties, alphabetically based on their hero/villain ID (though I didn't tell anyone that). It worked very well.

I think it's been at least three hundred years, maybe more, since we could have a real "Renaissance Man" who had a real, expert grasp of most if not all of the sciences of his day. There's simply too much accumulated knowledge for any one person to master it all. Mastery these days is becoming increasingly fragmented. On the other hand, communication has never been easier, and access to the knowledge of other specialties (and increasingly sophisticated ways of mining it for the data that are important to you) are also improving daily. So we're already at the point where "what knowledge matters" depends greatly on your circumstances: what your environment is, and what your goals are. "If we cannot reach the stars" is already sort of true. Even if we discovered a cheap, reliable FTL drive tomorrow...the vast majority of human beings are never going to leave the solar system. There's nowhere for them to go at the moment, and most of them (of us) don't want to leave anyhow. It's like the discovery of the new world--a relative handful of people colonized the Americas, but the vast, vast majority of Europeans never left Europe. Even once America was thoroughly settled, when millions of immigrants came here every year--far more people did not. They lived out their lives without ever leaving. Immigration to the Americas never made a dent in the population of Europe (or anywhere else). It'll be the same if/when we colonize the solar system or other star systems. While eventually they might have populations of billions, they'll be mostly native-born. As for AI--I'm of the opinion that we'll have "effective" AI long before we can even agree whether it's "real" AI or not. Expert systems that can communicate with humans in English at least as well as humans communicate with one another (including occasional mistakes in what they "heard" or thought the other speaker meant) will be able to do pretty much anything "real" AI can do (except perhaps true creativity--and maybe they'll be capable of that too). Long after children grow up with Jarvis as their minder while mom and dad aren't home, we'll probably still be arguing over whether Jarvis is *really* self-aware, but it won't matter much except to philosophers.

I once thought that if I were in charge of Marvel or DC, I'd do away with Continuity . It was my view that too-strict adherence to continuity led to storytelling failure. And it still might be true. I thought that if, instead, you let artists and writers run the character during their time on the book, and use as much (or as little) continuity from previous works as they liked, you might get better results. I don't think that anymore. Seeing how badly many books have splintered--I literally have NO IDEA how many X-Men variations (individuals, teams, universes) there are anymore, for instance--I see the problem there. I find it hard to care about ANY of them. Ditto for the exploding Spidey-verse. And other comic books/characters who all resemble Hydra these days. "Cut off one head, and two more will take its place!" I'm not sure there IS an answer. The anecdotes about comic book editors who recycle stories on a two-year timeline because they believe the readers will have turned over by then...were probably mostly right. Nowadays, most comic readers are long-time fans who haunt their local comic shop for their latest offerings. This is especially true given that you can't pick up a comic from the spinner rack in your local drugstore anymore, which was how I got hooked back in the 70s. So you can't just recycle the stories. (Well, you CAN, but....) And too much change will unhinge the fanboys or start a shooting war between the pro-change and anti-change crowds. You just can't win.

I cannot "like" this or agree with it strongly enough. I'll never forgive Joe Quesada and that crowd for this debasement of Spider-Man. They've ruined him for me. From the "deal with the devil" aspect of the retcon to the childish rationale ("our readers can't identify with a married man...even though they seem to have no problems identifying with men with spider-powers, or power-armor-wearing billionaires, or gods of thunder or....") it just appalled me. I rooted for it to fail miserably and hoped to see those idiots fired and the retcon retconned away. Now? Now I just don't care about Peter Parker/Spider-Man anymore. It doesn't matter what they do with him anymore. I just can't bring myself to care. I followed the Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man for a long while, but most I'm not reading or following any Marvel comics these days. Or DC. They've splintered into so many parallel and conflicting timelines that I just can't be bothered anymore.

I saw Suicide Squad last night. It's not the train wreck I've heard it was, but a lot of the criticisms I've read were on the money. The introductory scenes and voice over were a troublesome. They're trying to cram the backstories/origins of too many characters into a few minutes at the beginning of the story. The movie is tonally inconsistent; there's Zach Snyder's GrimDark worldview, of course, and the lighter, funnier scenes (some of them reshoots, I gather) to match the original trailer everyone liked so much. I liked Will Smith's Deadshot. I loved Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. I liked Fire Guy , though I don't recall his name. He was the most conflicted and interesting character, in my opinion (but hot and crazy Harley Quinn was my favorite to watch). Killer Croc didn't get enough lines or screen time to know much about him. Captain Boomerang was a not terribly interesting stereotype. Katana didn't even rate an official flashback intro, we were just TOLD her story for the most part, and she too was mostly a cipher. Amanda Waller...not Viola Davis's best work, though I wouldn't agree with reviews saying it was her worst performance every. The plot didn't make a great deal of sense, and seemed more like rushing through a video game (choose your characters, choose their skins, equip them, get intro cutscene, fight!, another cutscene, fight!, cutscene, BOSS FIGHT). Jared Leto's Joker did nothing for me. Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger were far, far better. I understand that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor, and good riddance. Overall, I enjoyed it enough that I don't regret paying to see it, and would even watch it again on cable. (Which is a step up from BvS, which I have no desire to see again, even for free).

HEROINE COMPLEX by Sarah Kuhn. I bought it because the cover art jumped out at me in Barnes & Noble and picked it up to look it over (never say cover art can't help sell a book), and the description and skimming a page here and there sold me. It's the story of Evie, an Asian-American young woman, who is the long-time best friend and personal assistant to Aveda Jupiter, San Francisco's only superhero (also Asian American). While technically Aveda has a superpower (extremely low-STR telekinesis), it's all but useless, so she fights demons* with her martial arts skills. She's fanatically dedicated to training, and to being a diva. It's a humorous story, told in first person. There are other people with minor superpowers in San Francisco, all acquired--like Aveda's--following the first incursion into San Francisco by demons. It failed, and Aveda has been dealing with the recurring portals ever since. When she's sidelined by an injury, Evie is forced to pretend to be Aveda using a glamor provided by a sorcerous friend, and...things do not go according to plan, naturally. In some ways it's a typical urban fantasy with heavy doses of romance, but it's also explicitly superhero focused (as opposed to "people with superpowers"), and there's a great deal of social media attention paid to Aveda (or "Aveda" when Evie is masquerading as her), which is amusing and which I found entirely realistic in contemporary culture. I enjoyed it. It's billed as the first in a series of books about Asian American heroines, and I will happily buy the next one. *Demonic incursions are the only source of unnatural problems in this universe, and only happen in San Francisco for whatever reason.

Well, I finally saw Batman vs Superman last night. My brother-in-law has a Plex server we have access to, so I was able to watch it. The good: It wasn't the eye-searingly awful travesty I was expecting. I have no need/desire to watch it again, mind you, but I don't regret the THREE HOURS I spent watching it. Gail Gadot was good as Wonder Woman. She's attractive (but she doesn't make me jump up and down in my seat because she's so hot), and she really sold the love of battle (or maybe of a real challenge) in the final boss fight. I'm looking forward to the Wonder Woman movie. Ben Affleck was...adequate at Batman. Jeremy Irons as Alfred was far more entertaining (but then, he wasn't so wrapped up grimdark angst that he couldn't make smartass remarks). What's-his-face as Superman was...okay. I've never liked him as well as Brandon Routh, to say nothing of Christopher Reeve, but he was okay. There were flashes of an interesting character in Lex Luthor, but only flashes. Mostly he was a just a long-haired poser in over his head. The bad: I have no interest in, or respect for, this Batman, or this Superman. Batman is murderous and obsessed with revenge on the guy who tried to (and ultimately did) stop Zod and company, albeit at immense cost in property and lives. Superman is still a mopey dude so filled with self-doubt (if not self-loathing) that he's just no fun to watch. The movie was way too long, and the CGI spectacle boss fight, in particular, went on way too long. Too many irrelevant asides in blatant ploys to tie into the upcoming Justice League movie. The usual complaints about the washed-out color palette and relentless grimdarkness. Things That Made Me Go Hmmmmm: There were a few moments (but only a few) that made me think about what the world would think of Superman, given how much less they know about him than we the viewers do. From their point of view, he appeared at the same time as the Kryptonian attackers, the brawl destroyed unimaginable amounts of property and killed many thousands of people. They know Superman is an alien. They know he's physically next thing to a god. They know he goes where he wants and does what he wants, and if he mostly does helpful things, they don't know why--and can't rely on it always being the case. And that's...pretty much it. But those moments were rare. Mostly it was just a film world where altruism and heroism are virtually unknown, a dark, grim (grimdark) world no sane person would want to inhabit. Or watch, for very long, or very often.

In the D&D game I (periodically) run, that's actually how Wands of Healing work. You STRIKE the person across the face, and he gets some healing. If he needs more, the ritual response is: "THANK YOU SIR. MAY I HAVE ANOTHER?" Lather, rinse, repeat.

John Wick ...I said that in jest, but maybe Baba Yaga. "He's not the f'ing boogeyman. He's the guy you send to KILL the f'ing boogeyman."

Speaking of rush hour....in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, wormholes are one of the ways people get around at FTL speeds. You enter the wormhole in System A and pop out a matching wormhole in System B. Every transit destabilizes the wormhole to some degree. For drones or very small ships, it may be unnoticeable or only a matter of seconds. For very large ships (freighters and warships) it can be minutes. For FLEETS of ships, it effectively closes the wormhole for hours. So there are scenes where commanders have to choose between transiting one or two warships at a time at intervals--while not knowing if they're being blasted to atoms on the other side-- by a superior force, or bring a huge honking fleet through all at once...but shut down the wormhole for hours and hours, meaning no escape route and no backup if they find themselves in an untenable situation. Also, huge fleet transits consist of a scout vessel popping into the new system and broadcasting a warning to all the commercial vessels awaiting their turn to travel through the wormhole. The warning is something to the effect of, "Attention! Evacuate the area IMMEDIATELY. Fleet incoming." And all the freighters run (as fast as freighters can run) before millions and millions of tons of warshisp appear out of nowhere....

Where, exactly, are they supposed to get "these few points every session or so" if they're getting, at most 2 points per session?

Yeah. I'm not willing to give Hilary or the DNC the slightest benefit of ANY doubt. But if the hackers had found some real evidence, we'd be seeing it already.Were the DNC Powers That Be pushing for Hilary and opposed to Bernie? Well, duh. Everyone could see that. But if they did anything underhanded, they were smart enough not to leave evidence on a computer where the hackers could reach it.

I don't think many people like our drawn-out political seasons, but I don't know what we could about it. I suspect restrictions on campaigning would fall afoul of the first amendment. "No, you can't go around the country asking people to support your candidacy/raising money/campaigning" sounds pretty anti-free speech to me. And no candidate is going to tie his own hands by subscribing to a shorter campaign period voluntarily when all his rivals are out there running from the get-go.

Susceptibility: Double Stun from Kidnapping Attacks. Bad guy trying to kill you? You can fight back effectively (or as effectively as any normal NPC, anyhow). Trying to kidnap you? One whiff of chloroform, or the gentlest clout on the head, and you're out like a light.

Yes, this. It was obvious in S1 how constrained they were by not being able to show _anyone_ as Clark/Superman. Now that they can, I think they'd be well advised to keep him on the sidelines. Have him show up only, as you said, to converse with Kara (or possibly others who are present), but not DO anything. Supergirl should be the one saving the day because it's her show. Clark should be busy elsewhere most of the time.

Yeah, it was pretty much all right there in the opening narration of the live action show from the 50s. "Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound!" Nothing about actually flying. Or having superhuman senses, or x-ray vision, or any of that. Or vulnerability to Kryptonite. That was invented for a radio show version of Superman, and caught on (I think. I could be wrong.)

The gaming group I was with in Virginia lo these many years ago now did that sort of thing. Every player had a stable of PCs of various sorts, and not just different archetypes, sometimes archetypes from entirely different genres. (The game world had different areas for different kinds of games.) We'd mix and match them to varying degrees, and the GM even had plots worked out with notes to himself about which sorts of characters it was for (or not for--if a PC telepath is in play, murder mysteries are right out). Over time, various PCs developed relationships good and bad, some PCs worked and played well together (and even had relationships that resulted in children), others...not so much. There was no complicated accounting system. Players just introduced new characters when they felt the need for a change, or brought old favorites back when the mood struck. It worked fine. The gaming group I was with in Virginia lo these many years ago now did that sort of thing. Every player had a stable of PCs of various sorts, and not just different archetypes, sometimes archetypes from entirely different genres. (The game world had different areas for different kinds of games.) We'd mix and match them to varying degrees, and the GM even had plots worked out with notes to himself about which sorts of characters it was for (or not for--if a PC telepath is in play, murder mysteries are right out). Over time, various PCs developed relationships good and bad, some PCs worked and played well together (and even had relationships that resulted in children), others...not so much. There was no complicated accounting system. Players just introduced new characters when they felt the need for a change, or brought old favorites back when the mood struck. It worked fine.

Yeah, but (while I'm sure there may be exceptions), Dr Who treats time travel more as travel (i.e., a way to get to visit interesting times/places/people) and not as a "get out of jail free" card. They're quite explicit that many events are Fixed and cannot be changed (for reasons my tiny human brain cannot comprehend). But even where they're not, you don't see the Doctor returning to the same point in time over and over and over again, trying to change what happened. Generally, if someone gets killed, they stay dead. The Doctor doesn't get do-over after do-over. And that, not time travel in general, is where the Flash writers are screwing up. Someone commented on how Barry has never gotten over his mother's death. Well, prior to becoming the Flash, it looked like he had--as much as anyone can in such a situation. He grew up with Joe as his foster father, became a forensic scientist and was living his life. He believed his dad was innocent of the murder and was trying to find a way to free him, but he was dealing with it. Now that he's so fast he can time travel pretty much at will? Why SHOULD he put it behind him? It's NOT. He can revisit that moment (for good or ill) anytime he likes. The temptation to try to fix it would be enormous for ANYONE who could do that, no matter how many times you're told it will only make things worse. What I'd like to see (not that I expect to) is that Flash saved his mother. His father didn't go to jail. He didn't grow up with the Wests as his foster family. He returns to "the present" to find it completely different. He's still the Flash, but he acquired his powers (according to Caitlin, Cisco and Wells 3.0) in a different way. He's got an intact family and a whole history...that he doesn't remember. He's basically living through an episode of Quantum Leap in which he's jumped into his own life and has to fake his way through it until he's up to speed. And even at that, HE still remembers growing up without a mother, and a father in prison, and all the rest of it.

I bought it as Shapeshift with No Visible Power Effect. Since it was a "dream logic" power, the effect was the character, Raven, didn't look any different. Anyone who saw her would recognize her. They just wouldn't find it odd or upsetting in any way that she was present...even if she was sitting at the table with the mafia dons who wanted to kill her. They took her presence for granted as perfectly normal.

What incentive is there for someone to dig his own grave for the guy pointing a gun at him? He isn't killing you RIGHT NOW. He might kill you (or get you killed tomorrow or next week), but for the moment, you're still alive.

Yeah, and I don't really expect Zoom to abruptly murder most of the cast of the show. But in terms what you might actually expect of a superfast psychopath? That's one way to go. What I really want is just to have the protagonists show a little intelligence. So, yeah, they captured the lesser threats and drove Zoom away. Do they talk about (or show ANY evidence of having considered) what to do if Zoom comes back (as he clearly could do, given how easily he escaped)? No. Instead, they decide to have a dinner party and just ASSUME the threat is over. That was just stupid. The recurring villain is a classic trope (and not just in comics). And it's one I've grown incredibly tired of, primarily because bad tv writers so often resort to making the heroes behave like idiots so the villain can escape again and again. But it can be done well, or done poorly. And the Flash series has done it quite poorly this season. If our heroes had even given LIP SERVICE to the worry that Zoom might return, I probably would have been happy with what happened. But they didn't. They acted like idiots instead.

I concur. And yes, it bothered me immensely that 1) Zoom was able to create a portal with his hand and escape to Earth-2, and 2) that Barry and friends apparently completely ignored the possibility that Zoom would COME BACK once the vibrational threat ended, since he can (apparently) come and go at will. Yeah. The first hint that Zoom was back should have been Joe, Iris, Wally, Tina, Harrison, Jesse, Cisco, Caitlin and dear old dad all dropping with their throats slashed open. "A running man can cut a thousand throats in a night," Zoom says, as Barry stares in horror at his dead family and friends, "but that's if he's merely human. Why stop there? Let's go for a million." And he vanishes, running through the streets of Central City killing everyone he meets, with Flash in hot pursuit....and already on the road to madness from anger and grief. Or, alternatively, if Barry's superspeed is always on and doesn't have to be activated, meaning he can react to Zoom's sudden appearance as quickly as a normal person could react to a normal intruder bursting through the door--all everyone else sees is a blast of displaced air and then a tornado of red and yellow lightning until one or the other of them drops, unconscious or dead, or flees.

Yeah. Can we have a villain who is NOT a) also a speedster, and trying to steal Barry's speed. A physically powerful, mind-controlling gorilla would be good. Or someone who can jump from body to body. Sure, the Flash can catch him, maybe, but how do you hold him? Or a Xaver-class mentalist who can create illusions and mind control people at a distance. He could go on a crime spree and never leave his mansion. Which means leaving no clues, so fast as Barry is, he can't track him. Or a superstrong woman who is as fast as Flash, who can fly besides, and shoot lasers from her eyes. She'd make a GREAT big bad for the season. I'm just sayin'.... Yes, Barry being so insanely fast means a lot of threats are easily handled. But not all. It just requires smarter writing.

Which brings us back around to what does the original poster want from his game? I posted how I'd handle magic vs superpowers. I think that would work well, in that it would give me the distinction _I_ want. It may not mirror Marvel or DC, but it doesn't have to.