Metaphysician

Re: Is your character religious? Microman II: Was less than a week old, some things hadn't been hashed out. His father was, IMO, an 'evidence agnostic' ( "Who needs faith, with what I have seen?" ), so I figure Microman II would start at that. Of course, that was before he took a side trip through Heaven. . . Diomedes: A more hardened agnostic, despite being trained by a goddess ( given said training included an aspect of "your job is to keep the other gods from screwing the world up" ). Might have turned into a devout Athena follower of sorts. Jack Frost: Never gave it consideration; I imagine some kind of inoffensive, mostly nonpracticing, Christian denomination. Hermes: . . despite the name, the fact that he is a god, and the fact that he's a scientific supergenius, he's quite religious. Specifically, a devoted follower of Ra. ( long story )

Re: WWYCD: King Arthur is back Going with the assumption that he's better known as "Ivan the Terrible" ( likely false, but hey, its a likely mistake ). . . "I'm sorry, what can we do to help you bring down this vicious tyrant?"

Re: The Super Darwin Awards A prior campaign run by my GM, variant Aberrant ( bronze age, with the PCs being from the, roughly speaking, 'villain' faction ). . . First character by a given player, Fenris Wolf. . . 1. Pissed in a public fountain while on a diplomatic mission. . . 2. . . to a hostile nation, in a city wherein what amounts to Superman is in residence. . . 3. . . and when the guards showed up and sort of warily tried to arrest him for public indecency, he ran. . . 4. . . through the blocks of houses between him and the city walls Did I forget to mention he was basically a class 80 brick, with the Juggernaut style "I don't stop for barriers", and there's lots of people in these buildings? Long story short: 'Superman' showed up, kicked his ass, and took him into custody for mass murder. During his trial he took every opportunity to anger those judging him, and despite receiving a merciful sentence of life imprisonment, used his final chance to speak to *further* offend and insult on a massive scale. Thus, he got stuck in a metal orb, and thrown into deep space. And if you think this is a bad case of Darwin Candidacy, you should hear about his *second* character.

Re: WWYCD: Once bitten . . . Most of my characters, this scenario isn't applicable. They are either mechanical, too well armored, or too fast ( barring this being some Marvel Dracula megavampire, which if not specified as such, I assume to not be the case ). For Diomedes, it would mostly depend on how vampirism works, which he'd immediately start asking Athena about. Response could be anything from "stake himself" to "start arranging food supplies and adjusting own schedule."

Re: After DEMON wins...

Re: After DEMON wins... No, the Kings of Edom are sharks in that sea. The guppies would be things like what Cloaca is turning into. Its just, there's sharks, and then there's kraken. . . and then there's Godzilla. . .

Re: After DEMON wins... As for whether the Edomites are native or alien. . . I'd say the distinction is moot. They have embraced the Qlippoth, which is to say, Unbeing. Their continued 'existence' is solely as an aspect and agent of multiversal decay. There is nothing left of them that is not Qlippoth.

Re: After DEMON wins...

Re: SAS in Champions Universe Well, my campaign isn't really Champions Universe, so much as an amalgam of a bunch of stuff. However, at the least I use Seawolf and a few of the Untouchables in the campaign, though they've yet to properly appear. I also might use Requiem, though that depends on whether I want to terrify my players.

Re: Realism vs cynicism The world's reactions to superhumans This all mostly presumes you have that many, and that powerful, of superhumans yourself, though. If your the Justice League or Avengers, you really aren't beatable, or stoppable, by a military force unless it has super-equivalent resources of its own, or its willing to engage in hilarious pyrrhic practices, anyway. A big part of military antisuper doctrine would be accepting that the other side is going to do damage; the trick is to reduce their ability to do damage, and in turn having the ability to counterattack when they do move. Depends on the situation. If the villainous supers are freely tossing around skyscraper-shattering firepower, than there really is hardly any reason *not* to, as whatever damage friendly fire does to the city is lost in the noise. . . and stopping the bad guys quickly may be the only way to reduce the damage. This can extend all the way up to being willing to nuke your own city, because the bad guy *absolutely* must be stopped, and losing a city worth of people is less damage than will happen if the bad guy succeeds. That said, this is the big reason why full scale military force would be a distinctly fall back option for dealing with even high end supervillains, compared to superheroic opposition. . . and why lesser supervillains wouldn't really ever warrant military opposition at all, even if police have an exceedingly hard time with them.

Re: After DEMON wins... OTOH, if the attitudes of Eurostar are right, they might make good 'candidates' to be warped by the qlippothic energies of the Kings of Edom into utter monstrousities ( moreso than already ). I doubt they'd consider this a good thing, however. It'd be more like an aspect of your personality just turned you inside out into a tentacled-appendage.

Re: Realism vs cynicism The world's reactions to superhumans Yeah, in a setting with extant superhumans, the military would have doctrine for how to deal with them, ranging from tactics to effectively fight superhumans, to methods to reduce vulnerability to them. These would be of varying efficacy, though, depending on the tech level, the super, and whatever superhumans the military has available ( and I can guarantee you, any first world military would be eager to recruit any superhumans who can manage discipline and competency sufficient for NCO status or better ). For example, against a teleporter like Nightcrawler ( presuming he somehow ended up fighting a military unit ): -Offensively, emphasis would be on using long range sensors ( like JSTARS ) to spot the guy from long distance, and once so spotted, hit the area he's in with a long range, supersonic area attack, like a ToT artillery barrage -Defensively, you'd have command units constantly on the move, with armed defense on the *inside* as well as outside, and every effort made to keep command vehicles indistinguishable from normal ones -In addition, if the troops are feeling particularly self-sacrificing or the command is feeling particularly ruthless, you could have a surprise 'friendly fire' attack readied to land on a given unit if engaged by the teleporter. . . or more safely, a fake command vehicle that doesn't have any people inside, but a load of explosives rigged to detonate the moment someone pops in Between tactics like this, and military superhumans, an army wouldn't die on being attacked by a superhuman, barring either overwhelming power, overwhelming cleverness and skill, or most likely, a team of superhumans with different powers that syncretize.

Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Her fight with Toshimoko, during the battle for the sword? I suppose Artemis getting KOed would be bad, but for that fight, it was really not hugely indicative. The fact that Darius, Rory, and Colin were all on the same battlefield at the same time was indicative enough.

Re: WWYCD "super" registration Still sounds like a bad mix of Kingdom Come and Aberrant to me. ( and any setting that has *Superman* getting killed because of too much collateral damage and an inability to control supers is a setting that misses the point of, um, Superman )

Re: After DEMON wins... OTOH, the freed Kings of Edom are a threat to the entire multiverse, ultimately. So, I see the Zoas opposing them. . . just not in any way, or with sufficient promptness, to matter for Earth, or Earth's dimension. ( even the Prime Avatar of Chaos; while his unrestrained destructive aspect is entirely hostile to anything resembling human life, it does not threaten the continued existence of existence, merely the form in which it takes. The Kings of Edom threaten the ability for anything to exist )

Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? I don't think I've really had a nice "oh shit" moment yet. I suppose if Tir Numen ever actually openned up and girded for war, that'd be such a moment. . . but I can hardly think what would get them to do so. *Maybe* the imminent destruction of the Milky Way. . .

Re: Realism vs cynicism The world's reactions to superhumans Actually, alot of it depends on how powerful the superhumans are. Spider-man would have to run and hide from an armored division with air support; Superman could go to sleep. Or, not all superhumans are created equal. That said, tactical acuity or lack thereof can certainly make the difference in marginal cases. A flier who always makes sure to be either below cover or at high altitude can make tanks ineffective, while having, and actually using, high mobility can make you a much harder target for artillery and air strikes.

Re: WWYCD "super" registration How exactly did mass nuking kill everyone? Quite a few of the people you listed can plink nukes.

Re: Realism vs cynicism The world's reactions to superhumans Eh, I don't think the "This is Not the Superfriends" article was quite that bad. Its point was more that popping a node did not cause people to automatically make up a codename, put on spandex, and either rob banks or stop people from robbing banks. Outside of the Secret Evil Conspiracy, I think Aberrant generally had a pretty decent setup for what "realistic" supers setting would look like. You had some people who'd use their powers to try and better the world, you had some people who'd use their powers to indulge their darkest desires, and you'd have most people who'd use their powers to live their lives, only *bigger*. And every superhuman is a celebrity. Likewise, government reaction ran the gamut from "totalitarian crackdown and genocide" on one end, to "lets just make sure they don't commit crimes or cheat on their taxes while they *push the economy into overdrive*" on the other. Which reminds me, I think the thing most Iron Age writers forget most readily? Governments, and corporations for that matter, aren't nameless faceless entities that exist entirely in their own right. They are made up of *people*, who are in fact still *people*. Writing a government as deciding that its going to respond to superhumans appearing by killing them all, requires writing that a large proportion, if not the majority, of the people composing that, from the Executive at the top down to the cop or soldier doing the shooting, believes that this is a good idea, or at least good enough to be worth acquiescing to when so ordered. Way too often, writers assume that, 'becuz guvnment iz ebul!', a government will decide, in some nebulous manner, to commit some horror, with somehow *no one* in the entire hierarchy having any ethics or morals whatsoever, despite no hint that those composing it were anything other than ordinary people. Authority can get people to do awful things, but not *that* easily and casually.

Re: WWYCD "super" registration As described, the law would be unconstitutional on its face in the US, and all my PCs local to there would oppose it on that ground. Hermes, as usual, falls into 'situation not applicable' territory, as the society he lives in is *ruled* by superhuman god-kings.

Re: [storytime] Birth of RAVEN I hope you mean 'seems' with emphasis, because Africa is most definitely *not* untouched by VIPER. Its their place of greatest strength, and in fact, they could conquer the entire thing more or less, if they wanted to. They currently don't, because they don't yet have the resources to hold it against a first world counteroffensive.

Re: After DEMON wins... Yep, the Kings of Edom were banished long before life arose on Earth. Freed, they are bad on the same order as if Gravity one day decided it hated life, and was going to make life impossible by sending planets spiralling into suns and galaxy scattering into lifeless void.

Re: After DEMON wins... I tend to favor the "arrive in the burnt out wreckage after the Kings of Edom have left" option. There's really nothing to keep them on Earth longer than necessary for everyone involves to yawn, stretch, and get fully waked up ( doing so would, natch, be more than enough to warp and destroy Earth, even without intent ). And you *really* don't want to be anywhere near an active King of Edom, not if you want your players to actually survive the experience. Some suggestions for what the wreckage in given areas might look like, as related to which King of Edom was sitting there: -Queen Beyond the Pale: scattered structures and machines of uncertain purpose and impossible construction; drifting clouds of utter darkness from which nothing can be heard or seen from outside; surviving humans who have great magical or technomagical power, at the expense of utter and total insanity -Muse of Lethargy and Despair: chaotic images and forms that look more and more beautiful the more insane you are; human survivors who won't be for long, because they are doing nothing to sustain themselves ( or perhaps they will survive starvation, but only so long as they do nothing. . . ) -Master of All Sorrows: twisted wastelands on which it is just barely *not* possible to survive forever by working them; passing waves of mirages in which the old, living world returns once more. . . always to the moment of a victim's worst regret or failure -Heart in Man's Dementia: bodies, endless bodies; the wreckage of every form of rape, murder, and destruction known to man, perpetrated by everyone on everyone; people who just died, randomly, in impossible ways -King of Lost Hope: utter ruination; the works of man cast down by every natural disaster known to man, in twisted unnatural form; impossibly horrid luck at any task performed within the area. -Luther Black: the one place where humans likely still reign. . . in a manner of speaking. They could not really be called humans after he is done, though, as he would change them into. . . things. Pairs of races that can only reproduce themselves by raping the females of the other; fully intelligent beings in bodies unable to manipulate even the smallest of tools; people lacking both sight and hearing, but gifted with a powerful sense of smell and an unresistable hunger for anything that smells organic. . .

Re: WWYCD: The New Recruit. . . And thus, I see the confusion. Your not part of a superhero team. Thus, the scenario is impossible, as Dark Avenger would never be so *insane* as to consider joining that posse of borderline or otherwise psychotics. He might kill Dr Diavolo though. Oh, btw, a magical geas wouldn't be a Psych Limit, it'd be a Physical Limit.

Re: WWYCD: The New Recruit. . . I would suggest, again, rereading the initial scenario. Dark Avengers actions have, to date, been affirmed by legal authority as falling within the bounds of self-defense and defense-of-other. Your implication of vigilante executions is directly contrary to the established facts, which has Dark Avenger no more guilty of murder than an FBI sniper. The only genre setting wherein this is not possible, the Silver Age, also doesn't have heroic torturers, either.