Chuckg

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes One of my proposed solutions was simply to set the campaign in the 80s or early 90s, but use modern Internet-era tech level as a general thing (i.e., putting the tech curve 20-30 years ahead of schedule). Thus taking into account the superheroic march of progress, even presuming that energy weapons, force fields, and etc. remain cost-ineffective for general use. Of course, the "cost-ineffective" dodge doesn't work for those applications where cost-effectiveness takes a second place to throw weight, so, you still have to explain where the DoD is putting the mecha suits (albeit Turtle Armor level mecha suits) and the lightning cannons. 'They have a few hundred, arming one special high-tech battalion, doing a long-term troop test as regards their viability' is a solution that Champs 5e came up with, and I'm cool with that. Granted, one downside of using the 80s is that you still have the Soviet Union and the Cold War to deal with... wait, how is that a downside? Its practically a perpetual plot generator.

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes What gets me re: the Joker is... ok, I am going to list three highlights of the Joker's career that are still in-continuity. * Attempted to kill the UN General Assembly, in session, with nerve gas. Stopped literally in the act (with the gas safely inhaled by Superman and then super-breathed out into space) by the World's Finest. ("Death In The Family") * Attempted to destroy New York City with sea-launched cruise missiles mounting nuclear warheads. Stopped by the Birds of Prey. (BIRDS OF PREY #16-17) * Released a biological warfare agent that mutated dozens of supervillains into crazed killing machines. Summer crossover event spanning many titles. ("Last Laugh") What is the common factor among all the three above events? They involved terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Seriously. In DCU continuity, to this day, the Joker is the only living man to have not only attacked the United States with WMDs, to not only have attacked multiple times, but to have attacked with every kind of WMD. Nukes, germs, chemicals, he's used them all. And they still treat him as a criminal case? Why is he not the DCU's equivalent of Osama bin Laden at this point? Why does his showing up anywhere not result in people saying things like 'terror alert to red', 'mobilize the National Guard', 'lock down the city', 'NEST teams on standby', 'CDC biowar response teams on standby', 'Delta Force has been given orders to terminate', etc? So yeah, allow me to register my own annoyance at a comic book trope: in the comics, far too often indiscriminate mass murder and attempted mass murder of zillions is treated the same way as would be a simple homicide during an armed robbery: with measured law enforcement response and scrupulous attention paid to your civil rights. As opposed to people actually acting like real people would react to a dude who's tried to use nerve gas to kill the entire United Nations building, or blow up NYC with a neutron bomb, or unleash super-plagues.

Re: We Screwed Up, Please Help Us... Can't imagine why. Even if the girl is Azula's understudy, surely *we're* not the original targets of the scheme, are we? How could she predict we'd become involved? (The OP said these guys are bumbling idiots, long known to us to be bumbling idiots. I presume that means they are unable to convincingly lie, so, not her agents sent to lure us in, unless there's some notable bait-and-switch going on by the DM.) So, why break cover for *us*? If its her dad she's aiming at, the proper thing to do is let us rescue her, stay a grateful ingenue, and try a new intrigue next month. Note: Kaian would actually be snarkily lecturing her with the above reasoning if she actually did do it. "I have been in this business for a very long time. I am more than used to attempted treachery. But there is a difference between attempted treachery and pointless attempted treachery, and I find the latter extremely annoying. If you're going to sell yourself out, then why so cheaply? Honestly, choosing to walk a path that requires relentless and unwavering competence to survive, without bothering to learn the slightest amount of self-discipline or foresight first -- why do you people keep doing that? They're letting just anyone be evil these days."

Re: We Screwed Up, Please Help Us... Its entirely not the girl's fault who her father is, no -- and if these guys are really as comedically bumbling as they are described, then apparently they aren't guilty of anything but misdemeanors. Save the girl, explain to the guys that shit like this will keep happening as long as they're in their current careers, and maybe next time I'll be busy fighting off an alien invasion and not be available to save you, would you like some applications to the local community college?

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers When you're using them to deliver nukes or germ bombs, how many do you need? And given the situation at the time, a total blockade of Japan would have resulted in one thing: mass starvation. It is *not* more humane to starve 20 million people in order to avoid nuking 150,000... especially since its overwhelmingly likely that the Imperial Japanese government would have deliberately hoarded what limited food was available to keep the military fed, even if that meant deliberately writing off entire cities worth of civilians. Mass deaths by starvation is horrific. "If we are prepared to sacrifice 20 million lives in kamikaze effort, victory will be ours!" -- Admiral Takijiro Onishi "If we continue to fight back bravely, even if hundreds of thousands of noncombatants are killed… there would be room to produce a more favorable international situation for Japan." -- Foreign Minister Shidehara This is what they were actually saying at the time.

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers Yes, because the people who make decisions to fire WMDs (hint: its this guy who has this oblong round office in this white building, kinda famous) traditionally order entire countries nuked off the map on impulse, while exhausted and mentally strung out. Instead of, y'know, conference rooms, lots of people around the table, plans discussed in detail, multiple people turning keys, etc. Really. Seriously, the only way this plot works is if you fire a Stupid Ray at most of the main actors in it. TVTropes has a page for that -- "Idiot Plot". So, how's about we just not go to Camelot, it is a silly place.

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers

Re: Don't you recognize your own kid? Oh no, what have I done?! For one reason or another, all of my characters don't fit into this scenario: Starguard is a human-archangel merge that regenerates from any injury that doesn't actually obliterate her soul (although she is at least the only character I have that was actually fertile), Baron von Darien can't have kids due to being of the undead (and likewise, vampires don't suffer permanent spinal injury -- it either eventually grows back or else they were hit hard enough to be dusted), and Kaian is a cursed immortal who has regenerated from being at Ground Zero for exploding battleships full of ammunition, and as is common for cursed immortals, can't possibly have kids. There's also that if Kaian ever did somehow have a child, it would carry his original superpowers in its bloodline potential -- powers he no longer has. Like, Solar Exalted levels of power. So he can already tell something is wrong here from the part where his kid isn't using full-on Atlantean Magelord levels of mana channelling to just drop some artillery-scale levin-blasts on her opposition. So, all of them will approach the situation as 'She believes she is my child, but is actually not'. Starguard would be the soul of empathy, the Baron would hit her with a painless killshot from surprise (yeah, he's cold -- he'd rather have her die not knowing what hit her than live long enough to be morphed into some living weapon by some manipulative Dark Lord aiming at him, is how he's approaching this), and Kaian would... well, he can't have kids of his own, but that doesn't mean he's never ended up having to look after any, on down the centuries.

Re: Making nuclear weapons look like firecrackers Kaian -- Show the guy the math re: nuclear winter and climate change. (Kaian's no super-scientist, but he has an excellent "normal" post-grad education) If Volcano Dude is not actually crazy... well, he had enough super-science skills to invent a volcano bomb, he should have more than enough to understand basic climatology when someone else is diagramming it for him on a whiteboard. If Volcano Dude actually *is* that crazy... hospitalize him and throw him bodily through the "go home" gate superscience dude built for me to to use. That should keep him harmlessly out of the way, in Kaian's home timeline, surrounded by his teammates (Volcano Dude would arrive with an explanatory note pinned to his chest), until Kaian can finish convincing the US command structure of this place exactly how close to extinction they came. Then Kaian can go fetch him back, once his bosses have finished locking away the phlebotinum and drawing up operational plans for something with a slightly smaller blast radius. (Kaian isn't really worried about stranding the dude in his his home timeline -- dude already proved that he could build a gate bridging the two, so if he has to build another one from scratch to get back to his home, meh, no skin off Kaian's ass. Besides, his teammate Daedalus can help cut down the time with that. Once its safe for Volcano Dude to come back, that is.) Oh, and if necessary, show them how to build the bleeding H-bomb. Between having eidetic memory and having read the physics textbook, Kaian carries enough clues in his head that, when given to 1940s nuclear scientists, they should have no problem working it out in a year or so. Edit: And hah, I just noticed Kaian finally got through a WWYCD without murdering, or at least being tempted to murder, anyone. See? He *is* improving!

Re: The Incredible Shrinking Species Likewise. Muttering about how you'll 'Show them! Show them all!' as you prepare to use the power of SCIENCE! to warp the entire world without even bothering to ask permission first is like holding up a large neon sign saying 'Superheroes, please repeatedly punch me in the face until I fall down.'

Re: Happy Halloween! What Would Your Character Wear? Starguard: Would wear something cheerfully cute, and probably spend her Halloween helping dispense candy for charity or escorting kids around (in which event she'd be in her superhero costume). Dr. Pain: Is a little old for Halloween, and would be at home watching a monster movie in celebration of the occasion. Kaian: Amusingly, the campaign Kaian was a PC in had an episode with a Halloween party... a high-society function sponsored by the PC whose (Public) Identity was a corporate multi-millionaire. Kaian dressed up as the opera character Scaramouche, precisely because it let him wear a mask, carry a sword, and wear a cape big enough to hide some of his arsenal into a fancy-dress party. Sure enough, supervillains crashed it, just as he was expecting. To be interrupted by a dramatic entrance from a guy swinging in off a chandelier... well, OK, just a ceiling fixture. *g*

Re: A Gift? Starguard: If she's enthused and in the Christmas mood, open it. If she's actually remembered her safety lectures from Horus, scan it with her Cosmic Awareness, then put up her force field, then open it. Dr. Pain: Pick up the box. If it doesn't explode, ooze contact poison, or zap him, carry it back to HQ and have the team techie do his thing on it. Kaian: [muttering curses under his breath] "It's bad enough I've got the holiday shift, but now I get yet another idiot who watches too many horror movies." *radios the bomb squad, stat* Of course, given his Hunted list, its entirely possible that the package contains a tactical nuclear warhead. To be fair, most of his Hunteds who play in that league are also experienced enough to know there's no way he'd open the box, but some of them are chain-yanking jackasses.

Re: Flash Forward To Nightmare

Re: Flash Forward To Nightmare Starguard: Belldandy on an ax murdering rampage would be more credible than this. Her reaction, and her team's reaction, would be to have a belly laugh at the least subtle illusionist evar. Dr. Pain: Six months to build a doomsday device? He's an ex-pro wrestler. The only way he's seen building a doomsday device is if Doctor Destroyer transfers his brain into Dr. Pain's body. Which, since that's an actual possibility, would make him go look up a local supermage or tech authority for an anti brain transfer helmet. Kaian: Uniquely plays into this, as he (although this isn't known to anyone else extant) was a world-destroying supervillain. Prince Kaian the Betrayer, and the War of Usurpation, and its ending of "If I can't have it, NOBODY CAN!!!" is why his Earth's prehistorical Golden Age of Atlantis no longer exists. (Its also to blame for continental drift and a few other geological annoyances.) Although since awakening in the ruins as a powerless (True Atlantean Magelords of the ancient past were, to use another RPG analogy, basically Solar Exalted) yet undying mortal, he hasn't actually had any of the mojo he used to wield, and for that matter has lost enough of his formerly supernatural genius to knock him down to 'merely' being circa Batman level wits, he hasn't exactly been able to wreak the kind of damage he did back then... not to mention that after 12,000 years of being forced to live with himself no matter what, he's long since changed from being the megalomaniacal jackass he used to be... the fact remains, a future vision of him being a supervillain who destroyed the world is going to seriously, seriously, hit him right where he lives, in a place he hasn't been hit for a long long time. Kaian has basically been avoiding for the past several millenia the decision whether or not to die, because ever since he met the Exemplar he's actually had the choice to. (Exemplar's "Cosmic Justice Fist" attack, being a cosmic entity-slaying conceptual unmaking weapon, actually has a nonzero probability of being able to overcome even the epic mystical forces binding Kaian to life, and he's deliberately never asked Exemplar to try it and see what happens, or even do a serious theoretical study of the odds.) Now, he's got to face that choice again instead of refusing to think about it, and he's got six months to make up his mind. He'd likely decide at fourth and last that as weary as he is, he's actually not hoping for eternal rest just yet(*), and try to sidestep the problem by having himself put in a temporal stasis tube, or just step in a time machine and go seven months into the future, but he'd have to do a long serious wrestling with his soul first. As well as investigating (and hoping to God its true) the option that this is all a fakejob... because, really, what on Earth is going to happen in the next six months to send him rampaging down a path he's had eons to get over wanting? He is, quite literally, simply so tired of evil... Edit: Of course, he'd also have to face the choice of explaining to his teammates exactly why this scenario shook him so much, and, well, its anybody's guess as to whether even in the face of ultimate extremity, he ever would. (Exemplar, as the only entity that's known him for a plurality of his immortal life, and being an exceptionally intelligent and perceptive being, has long since guessed that Kaian is carrying some secret shame and desire to atone, but even he doesn't know the whole story, and Kaian wants to tell him the least of all.) (*) For one thing, he doesn't think he'd end up in the good afterlife, and in any suitably long superhero/mystic warrior career you've had a chance to peek at the bad one once or twice. Brrrrrr.

Re: Hero Exchange Program Not with Kaian's legendary allergy to witnesses, they ain't. But he's very stealthy, so it shouldn't be a bother. (*) It was a running gag in the campaign as to how many prior 'historic IDs' I could drop a reference to in conversation and then plausibly make up a character backstory for/retcon in later on. Even though the campaign ended far too soon, by that point I'd managed to get Achilles, Belisarius, Lancelot of Camelot, a white samurai in Tokugawa-era Japan, Baron von Steuben(**), an Apollo 13 astronaut, and of course his home timeline's equivalent of Captain America, that last one ('Captain Jack Striker') being the ID that most everybody actually knew about. (**) I was saving that one for anybody official who tried to challenge my American citizenship when it was revealed that my prior birth certificates were all phony and I actually pre-dated the founding of the USA. 'Well, actually, I was part of the founding of the USA, so my original citizenship grant is still valid, right?'

Re: Alterate Timeline: 9-11 Averted

Re: Alterate Timeline: 9-11 Averted Note, we'd probably still be at war with Afghanistan, if not Iraq. That the attacks were stopped wouldn't change the fact that we'd be epically pissed off that Al Qaeda had tried, and we'd still be telling Afghanistan 'hand him over or else', they'd still be telling us to go pound sand, and the 'or else' would thus start up.

Re: Hero Exchange Program Starguard and Dr. Pain are good team players, and not bad sorts to pal around with. Things go fine. Baron von Darien is enormously driven and ruthless, but also quite intelligent, and he only has to be here for a week. They get a brooding vampiric demonhunter for a temporary ally. Striker-One, aka Kaian, aka etc, etc, etc. is a vastly experienced superhero, and is more than capable of faking enough sincerity for a week until he can get back home. Granted, this is if they're hanging out with the JLA. Current conditions on Earth-Marvel would alternately horrify or disgust most of my characters, and Kaian would again be cynically sighing 'Why does the universe keep sending me to people direly in need of a discreet dagger up the strap, when it *knows* I'm trying to quit that habit?' He'd be sighing this over the cooling corpse of Norman Osborn, mind you. Edit: I forgot. Kaian would punch Oliver Queen in the mouth. 'Look, its not the politics, its the part where you're just that much of an asshole. Also, seriously, the way you treat your wife is disgusting.'

Re: Our Super Leaders To have a majority of both houses in Congress requires an absolute minimum of 218 Congressmen and 51 Senators. Electing this many will require either the takeover of one of the two major political parties extant, or the founding of a third party that grows so large as to utterly replace one of the big two. Add in also that to replace Supreme Court Justices you will need the Presidency, and not just once but every time a justice retires, and you are talking about a conspiracy that will have hundreds of members, require several decades, and be pissing in the cornflakes of every single major player already in the political game, because every single election that you've won (and you need to pretty much keep winning them all) is an election they've lost, and their opposition research machines will all be wondering why. Plus, your conspiracy must maintain 100% secrecy for the entire time, and nothing known to hundreds of co-conspirators ever remains perfectly secret for long. Odds ain't good. Especially when you consider that other supers might notice what's going on... one of the master supervillains, if nothing else, as some of them pay close attention to political trends. And the instant the dime is dropped in public, well, that's it.

Re: The Dysfunctional Super Team! I like the part about disguising yourself as the villain and tying yourself to the chair so you can spend a couple of hours trying to mess with their heads. I should entirely steal it for one of Kaian's lesson plans. *g*

Re: Back In The Flesh... I really should pay more attention to poster names, or else I wouldn't have made that error. But the reason I didn't check is because I never would have imagined that someone would have spoken authoritatively about setting facts and limitations, as well as intent, for a scenario that wasn't his own. (edit) I mean, seriously, in your post above you told us all this: If you are not the original poster, then you don't get to even try telling anyone what the whole point of the OP was, much less making any statements of fact about the setting that aren't borne out or supported by the original OP. What the actual intent of the original poster was is something only he knows, unless he chooses to tell us. Barring the invention of Telepathy Over Internet Protocol, I sure can't go around saying it for him, and neither can anyone else. So, let's just drop this whole dead end.

Re: Back In The Flesh... Kaian entirely disagrees with this logic: he knows that simple worldly pleasure is going to pall in a few weeks, months, or years, and then somebody's going to be back on the evil archmage gravy train. With all of the intelligence, knowledge, and malevolence that made him such a menace before, and ginormously greater ability to apply it hands-on. Rather than deal with that, might as well take this opportunity to zorch the idiot while he's not lookin'. Remember, he's an immortal, he's going to be looking ahead well down the road. And as a character experienced in the Mystic World, nothing you said re: returns is any news to him. And in all my characters' cases, there is also the question of simple justice: this guy, even as an evil spirit, was a spiteful ball of malevolence who willingly aided multiple attempts to harm millions or billions. He's got it coming, and by God he's gonna get it, right in the neck. And pointing out that delivering said justice would be very difficult... they're superheroes, its called the 'never-ending battle' for a reason. (Attempts to outline exactly how being immaterial and dead complicates the legal charges are not entirely relevant -- we discussing justice here, not the legal technicalities. Justice and law are in theory supposed to run together, but in practice sometimes don't. But we digress.) And attempts to outline how the situation intrinsically does not allow for the delivering of justice simply makes us go 'So, the universe itself stacks the deck vs. this evil SOB getting what he's so richly earned... wow, what fun.' (See below re: superhero genre and drills.) Also, as a general rule, WWYCDs that attempt to force a choice solely between two options, each one less than thrilling, trigger in some posters (including me) a desire to find the third option and take it. The whole point of rp'in the superhero genre is that you don't have to settle for the lose-lose or the compromise, yours is the drill that pierces the heavens. So, continually refining your scenario to narrower and narrower options until you get the answer(s) you wanted to hear? Generally does not work, unless you do so with superlative skill, and sometimes not even then.

Re: The Dysfunctional Super Team! Starguard: Could possibly be on this team as one of the members, as she possesses vast mystic power... and is utterly new to her abilities. On the other hand, she's also cute as a button, mentally stable, and her 'vast power + vast inexperience = needs mentor' factor is already being taken care of by her world's resident Superman analogue, Horus-Re, so she might be able to duck this. It depends on who wins what argument in Washington DC. If she did end up here, it could only be as a member: as mentioned above, she's too inexperienced for anyone remotely sane to consider as a sponsor. On the other hand, she practically incarnates niceness and peace as embodied concepts, so she'd do a lot to keep the atmosphere calm around just by being her normal self. (Starguard possesses anime-style cuteness at full-on Yamato Nadeshiko levels. Granted, this only dooms her to probably be the focus of the love quadrangle, but, at least she won't be encouraging it like some other girls might.) Dr. Pain and Baron von Darien would not reasonably be drafted for this scenario, in either capacity. Striker-One, aka Kaian, aka etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. is the resident Captain America equivalent of his home setting, on the other hand, so he'd be one of the first people drafted. That he is a soul-weary, cynical mystic immortal with dark secrets in his past and an epic amount of sins he feels necessary to atone for is not in anyone's dossier... just the part where he's really really outrageously good at what he does, and was one of the foremost stalwarts of World War II. On the plus side, he has the experience, the reputation, and the chops to herd this bunch of cats, and Lord knows he knows far more about dysfunctional human behavior and how it can attempt to mask itself than his students do (his own past is an epic education in that, let alone all the experience he's had dealing with it from other people), so, while their teacher will be very carefully keeping his poker face, reminding himself that he actually has lived through worse, and marking this down as one of the worst decades he's had in the past few centuries (and that's counting World War I, which he's still getting drunk occasionally to deal with the memories of). Granted, this only goes so far if the students are actually, however dysfunctional, still well-intentioned. He gets any outright supervillains or traitors in the bunch, at that instant every repressed desire he might have built up to bust their skulls wide open ain't gonna be repressed no more. Barring that, though, they will be brought around eventually into being relatively competent, professional, and mature superheroes, or else they'll have quit the program screaming and run far far away. Kaian lived in the original Sparta, he entirely acknowledges the efficiency of certain training methods. Its important to note, however, that he will sincerely be hoping his students make it and go on to lead better lives, however frustrated he might get with them from time to time. Kaian knows what its like to entirely destroy your own life and everything you loved by being stupid, powerhungry, greedy, arrogant, outright villainous, or all of the above: he can empathize with people who have ruined themselves. It won't stop him from ruthlessly and unhesitatingly kicking their asses when the need arises (after all, he also empathizes with their victims), but given a chance to pre-empt the need from ever arising in the first place, he would not turn it down. Even if he is mentally repressing the urge to repeatedly bang his head on a concrete wall.

Re: Our Super Leaders Also, its a fundamentally different thing from 'nobody running against a super-intelligent candidate has a chance of winning' than 'you can't even be allowed to run unless you're super'. The former is the voters choosing the person of clearly superior ability, the latter is separation by caste.

Re: Our Super Leaders To change the laws so that only supers could seek elective office would require repealing not only portions of US civil rights law, but certain provisions of the 14th amendment. The former is touching the political third rail of death, the latter even more so... and a constitutional amendment requires you to have 2/3rds of both houses of Congress and majority votes from 3/4ths of all 50 state legislatures, at minimum. So, in what way short of mass mind control did they convince most of the population of the US that this was a good idea first? The Constitution is nigh-impossibly hard to alter in any fundamental aspect by design.