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.

However this paticular game set up' date=' has 12- be normal and 14- be skilled. As such I would be severly limiting myself in skills comparison to other PCs if I went for more realism.[/quote']

 

Ah, man. That blows - I hate it when you get spanked for actually doing the plausible thing, in character. My sympathies to you on that one. The GM oughta rein in the others a little so you don't have to go to excess just to compete.

 

Also thanks wylodmayer debutante is more what I am looking for. I didn't realize that about Dilettante, so thanks.

 

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

le baiser salaciously dressed martial artist with a surprising secret attack

It's... not really all that surprising, though, is it? I mean, it's not like the ability to speak French is rare...

La lettre a mild mannered postal clerk accidentally slit her finger on a radioactive envelope thus gaining the ability to become 2D and fold into a variety of shapes.

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

Now relating this to Champions campaigns' date=' has anyone run a campaign where there was a iron age/dark age as a back story and the characters were trying to return the luster to the hero world. Sort of the opposite of the watchmen or at least watchmen revisited 20 years later. Paranormals reached the brink and turned back.[/quote']

 

Let first register my sympathy for those who hate the current Marvel regime. They blow.

 

However, I have trouble imagining a game where paranormals "reach the brink" and then "turn back," except perhaps in some special case, like maybe a bunch of them come awfully close to overthrowing the gov't and then decide that it's, you know, not heroic.

 

If, however, by "the brink," you mean just basically being dark and jerk-ish, well, how do you "turn back" from that? Individuals, maybe, but not a whole groups, especially since supers don't represent a group. They're individuals, with individual personalities. They get their powers (usually) in many different ways, some of them nearly random. Certainly, in most superhero worlds, there's not a propensity for one personality type to receive superpowers above all others. Supers, then, will describe a wide range - possibly even a thorough cross section - of possible personality types. Some of them will be inveterate jerks.

 

I mean, there's no bright line between hero and villain. There's the Big Blue Boyscout, who fights what people commonly recognize as evil while respecting the law to its utmost. Then there's Daredevil, who fights bad guys but sometimes has to break the law, which is even more questionable considering he's an officer of the court. Plus, I gotta say, he spends a lot of time Daredeviling - has any client's case ever been hurt because he didn't put in the due diligence? There's a thorny matter right there. I'm not saying Daredevil's a villain, but just that he's not pure as snow - there are ethical issues with his actions as a superhero.

 

So, some superheroes will be dark, some will be jerks. Some might misuse their power in certain ways while still fighting for the good overall. Some might fight for the side of right for what other heroes consider the "wrong" reasons. I certainly don't agree with Marvel's current trend of making all heroes a**holes, but that's just bad writing in general. Making them ridiculously UNrealistic and UNnuanced, as per 99% of the Silver Age comics, is just as bad.

 

Basically, let me put it this way. If I ran a world that was a flat and lifeless as Silver Age, there would be no way the characters COULD head toward "the brink" in the first place - because to run a world like that, anything resembling psychological realism would have to be taken off the table first thing. So there could be no "turn around," either.

 

Conversely, if I ran a game with, you know, actual psychological realism, there could be no "turn around" for heroes as a group, because heroes as a group... well, don't exist, not really. There's just no useful generalizations you can make, psychologically, about them.

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.

Re: WWYCD: Felononius Feline

Ace: It makes all the difference in the world, buddy. Ace would corner her, then offer to let her go if she makes restitution to the victims of her burglary... and ask her out on a date.

Cat: As a feline-themed hero, Cat would go after and attempt to capture the criminal. She doesn't swing that way, as it were, so she wouldn't be affected by the crook's beauty. Neither would she care about catching the loot - it's regrettable, of course, but she believes in looking at the bigger picture. Catching a criminal who may victimize others in the future is more important than saving the property of one particular victim.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

Is there a reason why you don't pursue the Masters or PhD that it'd get you onto a tenure track position?

I hate to tell you, but having the PhD doesn't guarantee anything. The guy I was talking about, our resident adjunct, is a PhD in classics from... Berkeley, I think.

Yikes.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

Our dept head actually has a great deal of vitriol toward the adjunct and part-time instructor system for just the reasons you mention, Publius - he says it's basically a way for the university to employ slave labor. He refuses to use them, generally, because he doesn't want to encourage the system, although one wonder about the efficacy of this tactic. He made one exception for a guy who works more or less in his area, a fella he just couldn't let go to another school. And the guy seems more or less happy... well, not "happy," but I don't think he has that setting on his shriveled soul. He's that kind of person. But a top notch scholar.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

Anyway reading *is* work: when it's directed...I like my job' date=' but let's face it: I'm not going to read "Increased Bcl-2 and reduced Bax expression in infected macrophages in slowly progressive primary Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection" for yuks.[/quote']

 

Gaaaaaaaaaaah... yeah. I think there's the crucial difference in our fields, though. I would read stuff like "Duress, Deception and the Validity of a Promise" (current issue of Mind) or "Nations, Overlapping Generations and Historic Injustice" (last fall's American Philosophical Quarterly) for fun - and that stuff constitutes the core of our disciplinary literature.

 

I get the feeling - and I could be wrong - that the "fun" stuff in your field is doing the research, figuring out the problem and so forth. In my field, even the professional literature can be (but isn't necessarily) a lot of fun. David Chalmers, who does philosophy of mind, is hilarious, and John Kvanvig has a wicked turn of phrase when he feels like using it. I suppose the contrast derives from the supposedly "correct" tone of the literature of scientific research - arid, from my limited experience with it. By comparison (and only by comparison), we're over here composing in iambic pentameter.

 

But, I take your point - it isn't always fun. Reading Kant is pain and damage.

 

...it took me grad school, med school, and 4 years of work before I got back to the same salary level I wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't like it.

 

Hehehehe. I used to have a "real" job that paid a lot more than I'm making now, and competed nicely with what I'll be making when I graduate. But, see, since I've been so poor through school, even my starting salary as an academic will seem like riches! It's a great plan, no?

 

Thanks, man, seriously.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

I dont have a web-based portfolio' date=' for two reasons. (1) Im a computer dinosaur. I have little to know familiarity with computer stuff, and am easily confused (ask long-timers here how long it took me to figure out how to use the "quote" button). And (2) because of a forum I was on for several years. most of the stuff I have on computer is...well...naked wimmens with big boobies. I cant find a site thatll let me post a lot of what Ive got.[/quote']

 

(1) I know a ton of people who might be able to not only find you a server, but also design your website (legacy of a former career in the tech industry) and (2) I totally need to check out your work, dude. Heh.

Re: Go home, Superman!

Sounds more like what I used to do - the players kept a big list of all the criminals they knew to be in the "superprison" and there was much celebration and shouting when a new one got sent away, because they knew that meant he was effectively - barring unusual in-game circumstance - out of the campaign for a while. Gave them a sense of accomplishment.

I didn't give away the store, though; I stipulated that a court ruling had established that "normals," no matter how skilled, could not be legally committed to a "superprison," although they could go to supermaxes as exist nowdays, for instance. This allowed me to "bail out" certain superskilled baddies from time to time without stretching realism too much. However, it also threatened to induce the PCs to the use of deadly force against them, too, so I kept a careful lid on that tactic.

Re: Go home, Superman!

I'm sure Luthor' date=' the Prankster, the Toyman, and most of his other regular opponents would appreciate that.[/quote']

 

Yeah, that does kind of kink up my theory, doesn't it? Ah, well, why should I let facts get in my way? Seriously, though, I stand by my general comments, but I will amend them to allow that there are supernormal criminals who are enough of a threat that it would be impractical to leave them to "regular" law enforcement, and so, if he's around, he'd see a good reason to take care of them as well.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

Got some advice for you' date=' m'boy (speaking as a full professor with tenure, here). If you want tenure, be prepared to work 50+ hours a week, 11 1/2 months a year. If you want to climb the ladder to a full professorship, kick that up to 60+ hours a week.[/quote']

 

Hehehe - thanks for the advice! I actually do realize it takes a good bit of work; I was mostly being puckish in my comments. However, it does depend a bit on the university where you work, and your field. For instance, I put in a lot less time in my first year of grad school than my counterparts in the Genetics program, and I was working pretty hard compared to some of the folks who came in the same year as me. But that's only if you don't consider lazing around the couch reading philosophy "work" - if you do, then I routinely put in 50 to 70 hour weeks. It's just that the bulk of what I do, outside of classes and grading, consists of reading, pacing, talking to myself, and occasionally taking breaks for Xbox, rather than being in a lab and doing stuff that requires, you know, attention and technical skill.

 

Plus, the university where I attend is a large research university, so the professors there only teach two classes a semester and keep approximately one hour of office hours a week. Even factoring in committee work and grading, they are only "working" - that is, doing something other than reading or writing philosophy - about 20 to 30 hours a week. However, reading and writing philosophy is our real work. I just don't consider it work because, well, I enjoy it. The other stuff - committees etc - are the "work."

 

And, yeah, as a junior faculty, I'll get stuck with the scut work, I know, but I'm cool with it. I had a career in the "real world," and I didn't enjoy it. Academia for me, man.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

There's always room for good art!

Enh. I do mediocre at, on my best day, and I don't even know how to ink or any of that fancy stuff.

Look to your future... The national average of compensation (according to Salary.Com) for an Art Director (not including bonuses and benefits) rests right around $100,000.00 per year (topping out around 150,000.00+/yr.)

Thanks for the tip, but I doubt degrees in English and Philosophy will qualify me for that job. Besides, in my chosen career field, once I finish the qualifying degrees, I'll work about 30 hours a week, nine months a year, for an entry level salary that averages around 50k, and after six years, I've got a job for life.

And people ask me why I'm putting in all the work for the PhD... pshaw. C'mon, y'all.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts

Wow, I had no idea it was so tight out there! Well, I still maintain that no art is better than bad art, but your post does give me some much-needed insight into the state of things in the gaming industry vis-a-vis artists.

And it gives me hope that I might be good enough to work for the breadcrumbs that are on offer.