wylodmayer

Re: Grond + Eclipse = 2 Gronds? (It's been a while since I looked at Grond, so I may be misremembering what his character is like) I like the idea of Eclipse becoming Grond. This has potential. Imagine it happens by accident, once. Then, once the power reverts back, some little bit of Grond, deep inside, that's still Potter, starts obsessively looking for Eclipse. When he finds her, obviously, he shortly reverts back to Potter. Potter wants to subdue Eclipse or keep her still long enough to figure out how to make the transfer permanent, so he can go back to being himself. I imagine this happening several times. Heroes could hear about Grond being unusually active, lately, in weird bursts of activity here and there. Possibly in unusual places. He's stalking Eclipse. When he's Grond, he doesn't know why he wants to find her, but he does. She becomes frightened - maybe she goes to heroes for help? Suppose the powers are transferred, but now Eclipse-Grond is off destroying stuff. Does Potter come to the heroes with ideas about how to take him down? Can they use him to develop new weapons against Grond without helping him stick an innocent... uh, okay... a person with his curse? I dunno. Like I said, I may be totally misremembering what Grond is like. Right now I have a very Hulk-esque memory of him, but that might not be right. If not, ignore. Or change him.

Re: help fleshing out skills for Teen Champ Character. My pleasure. Seems like a neat concept, I hope you enjoy playing her.

Re: Your character's pet peeve(s) Ace: He's pretty easy going. I don't think he has any "pet peeves," except perhaps getting his clothes mussed. Cat: Mainly comrades who think that powers are enough to get by on, dumb people (which would be, in her estimation, most of them), authority figures, country music, etc. Holocaust: Random weird stuff. She doesn't like fast talking, rhymes or poetic language, impressionist art, bright colors, non-matching socks, liquor stores that close before midnight, being told she can't smoke where-ever she happens to be, sloppy handwriting, PC (rather than Mac) enthusiasts, animals, children, apples and apple-related products, and so on.

A long, long time ago, I remember Kim Mohan writing an editorial in Dragon about how sometimes he was impersonated at cons... by women. I was thinking about that recently. If I recall it correctly, Mohan was talking about how, more than once, people had shown up at cons claiming to be him (except they usually thought that he was a "she"). You'd think this would only be to get free (VIP) entry and whatnot, but some of them would actually call in advance and schedule speaking appearances and so forth... people who had clearly read Mohan's editorials and could pull off a credible impersonation. He mentioned that he knew it had happened to others in the industry, including Tracy Hickman, for instance. So, here's the question. Someone has been impersonating your character at cons, speaking at schools, or just whatever. Maybe this person is even trying to fight crime, sans powers, of course. Is he/she a harmless prankster, or part of a villainous ploy? A detractor out to ruin your reputation, a con out to cash in on it, or an adoring (if crazy) fan? What does your character do? We'll assume this person tends to schedule any public events at the last moment, making it hard(er) to track the person, but feel free to speculate on alternate scenarios.

Re: Need some name help: French Supers It's... not really all that surprising, though, is it? I mean, it's not like the ability to speak French is rare... Okay, that's awesome.

Re: You, or your PC? I prefer to play PCs that are somewhat- to very-different from me, psychologically. I especially pay attention to small decisions, like whether to smoke, what to order at restaurants, and so forth, and try consciously to not do what I would do. Most of my characters have ideas about law, justice, morality, people, etc that are radically different from mine. I don't find this all that difficult. I mean, I run games all the time, and this is something a GM has to be able to do, or the whole world will start to look like it's populated by (psychological) clones of the GM. And, man, as a player, I loathe being in games like that. But, yeah, I just apply the same principles to the character that I do to running NPCs.

Re: help flushing out skills for Teen Champ Character. I dunno. That's a LOT of skills for a 14-year old, even a gifted one. Maybe "flushing out" of skills is what's called for, here. Especially note that a 14- is solid professional competence, possibly even above average, if I recall correctly (I don't have my book to hand). So, we're talking about a 14 year old who is as good or better than professional adults in the same field at: public speaking, acting, singing, and socializing. That last one especially concerns me - the first three can be chalked up to (phenomenal!) talent, but being a smooth social operator is the kind of thing that mainly comes with experience. There's only so good you can get at it from raw ability. I'm also curious what "PS: Dilettante" is supposed to be. It doesn't mean "rich person," as some might think (not supposing one way or the other whether you thought that). It means, essentially, a dabbler - the rich are often called dilettantes, but not because they're rich (well, not precisely). One might call Angelina Jolie a dilettante in international politics, because she uses wealth and status to jump into international crisis areas and stays for a month or two and then leaves to go back to her comforting life for a few more years... people who make a life out of helping out during such tragedies might just use that label for her. None of that is to say that there couldn't be a "Dilettante" skill. Indeed, it might function as a kind of weird, catch-all "default" skill. Jolie could probably claim an 8- or 9- roll with a lot of stuff because she's a dilettante. She dabbles. So it's a legitimate skill, but under that interpretation, I seriously doubt whether a 14 year old would have it, at any level. Now, if you're looking a skill to describe what a rich, idle teenager does - i.e., shop, eat out, and hang with celebrities - then "debutante" may be more what you were looking for. However, I'm not sure what kind of skills that would confer.

Re: Loved at home hated by the world. So, I take it that you're stipulating that international law works as you say it does, at least in the campaign world where this is taking place, rather than asserting a descriptive statement about how international works in the real world. If that's so, then objections that international law doesn't "really" work that way are missing the point rather broadly... I mean, physics doesn't work in such a way as to explain the powers of any of the characters we're talking about here, either, so we can assume he didn't the thread initiator wasn't talking about the real world. Anyway, I notice there's a crucial piece of information missing - is the hero guilty? I mean, the scenario stipulates that the hero actually did kill innocents while attempting to stop a villain. However, it's still quite possible that the hero was reckless and negligent. The threshold for what constitutes negligent behavior will probably move with the level of threat that the villain posed. If we're talking a super-armored madman who's going to destroy the world, and has already caused massive collateral damage, then a hero, especially if he's outgunned himself, will have a much lower burden for avoiding incidental damage to civilians - which is not to say he has no burden in this regard. If the law in this scenario world (and country) has a structure which parallels real law, then the courts will be sensitive to the fact that there are cases where caution kind of gets thrown to the winds to save thousands, possibly millions, of lives. A hero who is on the ropes and trying to prevent the extermination of mankind won't be held rigidly responsible for an action that might be considered unforgivably reckless under less high-stakes circumstances. If the villain is just a bank robber, for instance, who's trying to escape, rather than harm anyone, then the hero is almost certainly guilty of some sort of serious crime for killing the innocent bystanders. Basically, the law would take the view that the hero had no excuse for taking any action which could reasonably cause the deaths of innocents in order to apprehend someone who had committed a property crime and wasn't an immediate threat to anyone. And of course there are shades of grey. Ace, for instance, is liscenced to carry a firearm and has a bounty hunter's license as well. He discharges his sidearm sometimes in fighting villains, but certainly not near crowds, unless there's imminent and serious danger to someone's life. If he was shooting at a bad guy and hit a civilian, it was either (a) because he had no idea the civilian - or any civilian - was anywhere nearby, or ( because the bad guy was about to kill someone. Either way, it's probably something like reckless homicide at worst. If the bad guy was a bank robber, they'd probably rake him over the coals, and he could get ten years or so. But if he was shooting at a murderer and had reason to believe either that there were no civilians in the line of fire and/or that the guy was an imminent danger, he might get off with two years suspended. Ace would probably stand trial - after all, he did kill someone. Unless he wants to become like the criminals he hunts, he has to subject himself to the judgment of society - if THEY think he was being irresponsible, then he wouldn't be so arrogant as to tell them to get bent and flee justice. Talk about becoming that which you hate... Cat, on the other hands, has no faith whatsoever in the criminal justice system, and she doesn't enforce the law, she is fighting for what she thinks of as right. She'd torture herself endlessly about having killed someone, but she'd never, ever let herself get taken in, even if it meant changing identities. Ingrid does not use deadly force unless authorized by the proper agencies, in which case she has a "good faith" defense.

Re: Cleaning the Tarnish: Iron Age to Silver Age

Re: Need some name help: French Supers Some suggestions: I used Chanteuse ("singer," female version) as a sonics-based hero once. The masculine version would be Chanteur. Fleur-di-lis (the trefoil symbol of the French monarcy) is a gimme, but it still works. Mine was a savateuse (female kickboxer, male version savateur) from Quebec. Le Renard ("the fox") is also a gimme. So is La Fantome ("the ghost" or "the spectre"). The French have a tradition of demonic antiheroes, not to mention outright villains. Le Diable ("the devil") is an obvious one, but Le Polisson is a less obvious possibility - it means "devil," but also "rascal," much like we might say, "you little devil!" We don't usually mean that the subject is genuinely demonic. Usually. If you want a throwback to the classic French villain Robur (as mentioned in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and portrayed by Vincent Price in Master of the World) you could go with a villain who flies (naturally or mechanically) called Capitane d'avion (lit. "The Captain of Flying"). There was an actual French supervillain - or maybe an antihero - called Le Nyctalope. There's an entry for him in Wikipedia. A lot of French heroes and villains seem to have mesmeric abilities. Le Hypnoteur is too obvious, unless you want your heroes to know what he does. You could try L'Astreindeur ("he who forces") if they don't speak French. There's a French fairy tale about a golden axe - a magic item weilder who had this item could be called Le hache d'or ("the golden axe") or even just Le Forestier ("the woodsman"). Obviously, he could even be a tech-gadget weilder, with a mythical theme on his main weapon. La colombe blanc ("the white dove") is also a figure in French fairy tales. Le docteur omega - "Doctor Omega" - is a French science fiction character. L'enfant de feu means "the child of fire," and I think that sounds neat. For other character types: Solaire means "solar energy"; Vite means "quickly"; and Le Bastion means "the fortress." Hope it helps.

Re: Approved by the Comics Code Authority Oh, holy [CCA censored]. Let's see - Ace: Ace uses his genetically-engineering perfect good looks and physique to pick up women... a lot of women. He would cry, except that Sean Connery doesn't cry, and he regards early Bond movies as a sort of manual for life. I dunno - Tony Stark got away with a lot back in the late 70's, early 80's, under the CCA, but it'd still be a pale shadow of his life before. Cat: Let's see... a borderline insane, teenage superhero who was having an illicit affair with two someone she shouldn't have been, who had suffered several things the comics code could NEVER show as a youth... yeah, no way. Ingrid: Wow. A huge no. Canadienne: The closest thing I have to a Silver - or even Bronze - Age character, and even she would have one of her subplots edited out by the CCA. Terminaxx: Oddly, the CCA doesn't prevent heroes from being portrayed as complete a**holes, so he'd get in. Weird. Yeah, I don't so much play CCA-friendly characters.

Re: WWYCD: The Switch. Well, Derek Parfit might try and say that this guy is the original, or close enough anyway, but Parfit has weird ideas about personal identity conditions... heh... Anyway, Ace would treat him as a different, but psychologically similar, person to the one he replaced... which includes being a little suspicious that he might go bad again or just be pretending to be a good guy. After all, the guy he replaced was never a bad guy, and this fella was. Now, that doesn't mean the former could never have GONE bad, and the latter could never go good, but, well... it does mean they ain't the same. Cat would watch him close, but she lives cloaked in enough lies to not make a fuss about him pretending to be someone that he, technically, is not. Holocaust would avoid him. She has a hard enough time dealing with people, anyway - someone who looks and sounds, but is subtly different from, someone else she knew once would totally mess up her head. Canadienne would never know. Seriously. She has no Sense Motive and a negative WIS mod. Oblivious doesn't even cover it.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts He's kinda recognizable, though... well, come to think of it, I wouldn't know the pieces he did that weren't, would I?

Re: Heroes and their compassion There was a great example in a Daredevil issue. Jon Romita Jr did the art on it, and I think it was back when Ann Nocenti was writing it... anyway, this guy loses his job at, I think, a pharm company, because he can't figure out how to use the computers they installed at his station. So he starts poisoning some of the company's products to ruin them. Anyway, Daredevil tracks the guys down, but so does the Punisher, and DD and Big Pun slug it out over this guy's fate. DD wins, of course, and hauls the guy in, but also defends him, as Murdock. The guy's guilty, no two ways about it, but Murdock promises to help him get psychiatric treatment - basically, the guy is shown to be a bit slow, and deeply troubled, a victim of economic forces beyond his control. It didn't excuse what he did, of course, but Matt recognized that the situation this guy was dealt was far from ideal. He did the right thing for the victims of the guy's crimes by bringing him in, but he also tried to do the right thing for the criminal himself, by trying to see to it that he got the help he needed. Pretty good stuff, if you ask me. Real heroin' is about more than just bustin' heads.

Re: Secret Identities and Teammates Well, I can see the point the "no secrets" guy is making, but I still think he's wrong. After all, the cry of "but it's in character!" isn't a trump card that defeats all other considerations. I think most of us - I realize there's likely to be at least one dissenter - would move to suppress PC actions that are highly disruptive to everyone's enjoyment of the game, no matter how "true to character" they may be. After all, the player might have a character who is an absolute cretin! In such cases, all sorts of undesirable behaviors would be "in character" - that doesn't mean they are any more welcome in the game. On the other hand, we are concerned, generally, that PCs act in character rather than just for the convenience of the player or his fellows. We applaud the player who has the chops to do something that isn't in his character's best interest from a metagame POV because it's the plausible thing to do in character - it's usually considered good-roleplaying. Some GMs give some leeway in allowing players to seize upon "backwards rationalizations" for the purpose of finding "in character" ways of justifying an action the player wants to be able to take - perhaps this is what the "no secret IDs" player meant when he suggested that a reason be found to reveal your secret. This sort of play treads the line between metagaming of the "using player knowledge improperly" variety (which is generally considered bad) and metagaming of the "using player knowledge to find reasons for the character to act in a genre-appropriate fashion" variety (which is sometimes - but hardly universally - considered good). In any case, there's no clear consensus on whether this is a good way to play. Certainly, though, if keeping your secret ID is plausible for the character, and not just a metagame way for the player to annoy his comrades, then you seem to be on the side of right, here. While the "in character" excuse can't be used to justify obnoxious behaviors, it seems unlikely that a reasonable level of secrecy from one character would be considered game-disruptive by any rational person. Once we rule out the idea that your persistence in maintaining the secret of your true identity is actively harming the group (as players or characters), then we are left with the sense that your fellow player is complaining that you aren't playing the character the way he would, a complaint which seems highly unreasonable. Gaming is a social activity, and gaming groups have social norms. While in many (but not all!) gaming groups, it would be considered disruptive to kill other PCs, few groups would consider it out-of-bounds for an individual player to make his own decisions about a character, even if those decisions didn't sit well with another player! The player who says that your continued secrecy is ruining the game for him is making a rather outrageous claim - much as I would be if I claimed that I can't enjoy a movie if anyone else in the theater is wearing blue sneakers. There's no social norm which prohibits wearing blue sneakers, just as there's certainly no social norm that prohibits individual players from making their own decisions! It would be unreasonable for me to single out that particular, innocuous act to make a stink about, just as it's unreasonable for him to claim that your decision to play the character in your own way somehow ruins his enjoyment. Obviously, his defense would be that such play is disruptive and thus not subject to the "in character" defense, but at that point, he is in disagreement with the rest of the social group. If he really feels that it is disruptive, he needs to either (a) convince them of this idea, ( find a group that already feels that way, or © learn to live with it.