BoneDaddy

Re: A Thread for Random Musings The magic eight ball in my head said "President Tancredo, '08" this morning. I keep shaking it, but there it is.

Re: brainstorming Wait - is that the same campaign or a different one?

Re: brainstorming American Zero -> Iron Dragon -> Iron Ronin -> Kage Almost all done, and I'm mostly satisfied, but only mostly. If Aquaman had a son, and that son wanted to continue with the family superheroing tradition, what would he be like?

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Scatterbrain. Don't Call Me Dude. Bet you forgot about that one.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Christine McGlade is still very cute.

Re: [Character]: Quantum, the mass-shifting heroine! Flash intangibility is nifty, but not expensive or risky enough. Were I the GM I'd require some sort of roll, maybe two. That might also mean that I'd require a held action, which would render the whole thing moot. Still - neat idea that should be fiddled with. As it is it renders her nigh invulnerable, which is a bit much, IMO.

Re: brainstorming Are we talking about Robert Mitchum from Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, vs. Jake Gyllenhall from Jarhead? 'Cause Robert Mitchum would eat that boy for lunch. (Your overall point is totally valid, your reasoning sound, your storytelling concept compelling, your detractors a tad too picky.)

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Goddammit that is one sexy piece of machinery.

Re: brainstorming When do you want character submissions, and where? And, great idea. High concept. Let's do it.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I thought he was talking about that wrestling show. Seemed like a fairly deep critique of a shallow event.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings When I sleep, I cease observing reality, and everything exists in an undifferentiated state, and all states are simultaneously possible in my dreams.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos In 2004 DJ Dangermouse remixed an acapella release of Jay-Z's Black Album with the Beatles White Album, and released The Grey Album. These are some of the results. This may challenge some of you, musicly speaking. You may not get it. It may not appeal to you. That doesn't make either of you inferior. I don't understand a lick of Chinese, for example. Although I wanted to lick one once. I don't get a lot of Thelonious Monk, either. The Life Change Clothes w/ Little Piggies Encore (This on is actually a fairly novel video)

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Blondie vs. The Doors on youtube.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I was not aware that this ever happened, with or without Hallmark.

Re: Neil Pert is a frickin' genius! It's like being lectured by Margaret Hamilton, set to music.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I'm not sure unanswerable is the same thing as meaningless, or that meaningless is the same thing as unimportant. In terms of how our society is structured, it's a very important question. Additionally, why does free will get hand waived in while the same statements could be true of God and God gets hand waived out? How is free will not an extraordinary claim?

Re: Musings on Random Musings If I understand you correctly, you ackowledge that free will may be a myth, but that it is an acceptable myth, in that we have thus far accepted it. But couldn't we just as easily (by free will or the more Newtonian action-reaction model) abondon the concept of free will? It might be hard to persuade everyone else to go along with it, but could you give up on free will as being completely and utterly unsupported by anything other than wishful thinking? IIRC you are deeply agnostic, so maybe you can't, but could someone? As for me, I'm in the agnostic camp on this one, too. But I still can't see how you can have materialism and free will together. And by the way, have you considered The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic?

Re: Bad Powers When I think about the OP's concept, I try to imagine someone with powers sufficient to oppose a superhero but insufficient to be a superhero. This is a narrow range of powers. As boring as it would be conceptually, I think a suppress/ dispel oriented character could be very effective, and could really put a hurting on the heroes. Having one's flight dispelled in mid flight hurts. Maybe some transfer could give him something else to do with his time. A dispeller with a gun is deadly. And add some bitterness and insanity, and there he is.

Re: System cap on creativity The arrow trick is a power trick requiring a held action. Robyn's archer would target the other arrow (a focus) and the opposing archer. It could be modeled as a sweep, but suffice it to say it would take one hell of a good shot. It happens to do the same thing as missle deflection, but I'm guessing it will be a rare enough occurence that it doesn't really need to be statted out. Additionally, it isn't like she can do this trick with any other form of missile except maybe rotten fruit. Unless her archer's stage act goes horribly awry I don't see it as too much of an issue, and it's cinematic as all get out, so I'd find a way to let her try it if I was the GM. We're here to have fun, remember. As for the general nature of the original topic, there are some things Hero does not do well, and for those things there is Transform. I usually find transform to be the last refuge of the creative power idea. I have wanted for years to come up with a better way to hex an opponent with a little unluck (or even a lot of it) than transform, but so far, no dice. The best way I can come up with to model it requires a lot of bookkeeping for the GM, and vigorous use of transform.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I can't for the life of me think of a logical reason free will might exist. Why should the chemical reactions in my head be different from the chemical reactions everywhere else in the universe? Their location, in a skull, isn't really so special. By simple virtue of their complexity and "emergent properties?" We might as well argue that weather has free will from that standpoint - it's machinations are also too complex for us to understand altogether at this point. If I argue that my own experience of being alive is ample evidence that I have free will, how is that different from the same argument for me having a soul? You can't see my free will any more than you can my immortal soul. There is nothing you can do that can't be looked at as just stimulus and response. Emergent Properties... Horsefeathers. It reminds me of that cartoon with two professors at a blackboard with a massive equation on one side and the other half of it on the other side, and in the middle it says "and then a miracle happens." Here's the image (check at the bottom of the post, obviously.) The trouble is, our whole society is founded on the notion that we have free will. It is the source for all notions of individual responsibility, culpability, success or failure. If it is a myth, then what? Then what? If you argue we are better off with that myth than without it, how is that different from any other religion? Once you open the door to even one efficiency argument for fairy-tales, the floodgates are open.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos http://www.videosblog.be/index.php?itemid=788 The old guy's laugh is just too much. Got me laughing today, which was a very good thing.

Re: Shapeshift: Still having trouble adjusting from 4th to 5th. Clearly, clarification is needed. (I might just be wrong, and what the puppy says sounds pretty good - it's happened before!)

Re: Shapeshift: Still having trouble adjusting from 4th to 5th. And that's becuase it stinks. Touch group = shape. Sight group = color. Taken literally, if you don't spend points on the sight group, no matter what shape you assume you should appear the same, which is clearly impossible, as major portions of you would have to become completely invisible. It's a small break in the system, and if your GM won't let it slide, I recommend having him slapped. (my 2AP)

Re: What's with all the points A lot of it is simple point inflation. I do find that my 350 point characters are more well rounded than my 250s were, but only on paper. I haven't used a background skill yet, but man I have 'em!

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Rocky. The first one. I had never seen it before. That is one fantastic movie. All the characters are deeply human. Stallone really did some great acting, as did the rest of the cast. The sequels represent Hollywood at it's most spectacularly venal.