Pendaran

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire I dunno Meta, I think this guy had a pretty valid point about it being on the GM:

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. I do appreciate the irony of you verging on double digits now in a thread where you keep talking about how bad the over investment of the other person is. And how people should just ignore the things that bother them. Come on, you can make ten! Keep going on about unreasonability and being worked up and whatever! Good on you for at least starting to abandon the really badly stitched together pretense of not personally judging the other guy though, it's at least more honest and something you can build some consistency from. The "pointing out my being a hypocrite makes you unreasonable" thing is a bit hard to support, but it's a start.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. You'd think if, shall we say, you didn't like it, you didn't have to read it. And, I don't know, maybe if enough people think they're terrible travesties and do the same thing, they'll dissapear. Some guy said that.. somewhere.. I mean, clearly you can't, and you've now reached "I'm not /that/ much of a hypocrite, I could have done even worse and made a whole thread, instead of coming onto yours, saying how badly done it was, and saying how you should just ignore things you don't like!", but still. And definitely that wasn't a value judging of "at least I didn't do what /you/ did", certainly. You don't do that! You take the high road and don't acknowledge the threads that bother you! I mean, aside from the part where you don't do that at all, but hey. And yes, you respond. And you keep responding. And you keep responding. All on a thread you claim to have no investment in and you find silly. I know, I know "you're bored", "it's fun", it's definitely /not/ about constant shot taking at view you don't like and those so posting them, because after all, you don't do that, your posts haven't kept doing that.. Oh, you wanted the contradictory part left in? I'd thought it mostly spoke for itself without the help. By the way, how many posts is this now from you on a thread where you said people should just ignore the things they dislike?

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Let me quote you from your almost initial foray into complaining about the existance of this thread: How long have you been going at this now to talk about how it's all the other guy and his "bitching thread"? I mean, I myself don't stoop to a level of giving people advice I myself don't especially abide by, but that's me. I know, it's all good because "you're bored". And then you went on to talk about how silly and trivial it all is and say things like this: Not my fault your desire to have some platform to riff about how high minded you are compared to the poor ol soul who can't stop himself from complaining, and gosh let's pity him, affects your ability to be consistent.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire Statements like these always carry a spectacular amount of high minded moral weight when they come right after first going on at length to put forth the ol college try into point by point dismissal of things said against your viewpoint here. As opposed to the "you lose" button of you going on and on at length to establish that being principled means "realistically" nothing but dead innocent people? What situation? One you initially present as blatantly contrived and say nothing about "screwing up" or even hinting it, only saying things like "nothing is working", and the writing doing its level best to present how near hopeless things are? That you only modify it later in the face of notations of railroading to say "well, no, what I /really/ meant is that people screwed up a lot to get here". It's my fault you have thusly two different versions of this scenario of yours? But let's forget that for a moment, is it so hard to believe most people wouldn't be dumb enough /to douse both creature and hostages in gasoline/ around a guy with fire powers? Really? which are then immediately demonstrated as basically pointless, because doing so makes it your fault that everyone died, yes, I understand. And with all the statements of how people are then just expecting their GMs to shield them, and how "/my/ players had no problems with it" sure you are, and epically so. You've been judgy since the get go. And congrats on deciding you're going to take your curtain bows without still explaining why in the initial set of posts, the guy who agreed the innocent must die was basically left alone, and the two people disagreeing, had indepth hounding down to "so, you think your GM lets you deny reality?" Certainly doesn't make it look like he selected your correct option. Again, forgetting that your initial scenario is nothing but "you've been doing your best, not especially incompetently, but nothing works, and this is the only shot you're ever likely to get, do it! do it! do it!" There's, say, screwing up Then there's "gasoline+hostages+monster+fire=win!" they're on different levels. And this is entire thread hasn't been from you a thinly veiled attempt to raise the "interesting" point that people who take the option specifically, and frankly, since you as a GM gave it what you say are abominably low odds, /intentionally/ designed to fail are clearly people who expect GM coddling, to ignore consequences of their actions.. Still seems like that word valid isn't exactly being used here all that well.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. I think that's my favourite part, people go round and round at length in response to someone saying they dislike something, on how much /they/ don't care, and how silly this all clearly is, and yet for all their affected easy going disinterest, they keep going on and on and on in order to protest their having such over and over, while still finding ways to stick in the original dismissive statements they made that are clearly having too much read into them. "I only keep responding because I'm bored, tee hee!" And yet you keep responding..

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Yes, you exactly said that there's no reason to post my opinions on things I dislike and made some judgements on how clearly silly it was to do so, while trying to affect like not judging at all, I got it.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire And that's certainly nice for them. You on the other hand have basically turned around and said "and so, failing in their exact ways, and doing everything they do, you will /have/ to make this choice" Which as far as this? No, I think I'm doing great for uses of contrived. It's at that a Dark Champions game, but you regardless disingenuously go on at length about how "anyone should be able to answer that", and respond to answers not like what you clearly expect with on and on about how "you expect the GM to act unrealistically then" as you go to great length to stress how unlikely it is that anything but fragging innocent people will work. For which you punished the other players, yes, I know, you established this. "now that he's screwed up, you must act, or basically take ridiculously small odds that everyone won't die! aw, darn, you gambled in a way skewed for you to lose and lost. Well, clearly your fault for having principles instead of taking your chance to kill a bunch of innocent people." You keep going on and on about this, but say the scenario and how you present it, and how you say what options should basically fail, are yet somehow "valid" I'm pretty sure that word doesn't mean what you think it means either. Or again, the guy who says he'd kill the hostages, you say /nothing/ to. The responses otherwise to that point, those were the ones you went on at length about how that would involve perspectives taken into the metagame, and tossing in implications of maybe then they'd expect their gm to "fudge consequences" for them. Goodness, that last part sounds like a value judgement, as though not all ways to run or react to this situation, are, shall we say.. valid.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. And apparently the right to basically tell them to stop posting them too.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. to quote someone else:

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire But basically either he was not allowed to think to do this before any of this happened, or if he did, none of it would be effective. If your players handled a situation badly, then everyone in this situation must be forced to make the exact same choice even if they say things like "if i'm superintelligent at using my powers, wouldn't I have figured out some kind of other strategy for attack that would have let things not get to this point?" "of course you wouldn't have, now answer the question." A valid choice you made clear to go on and on and on about how unlikely it would be to work. Your posts I guess thusly don't have much internal consistency for how you would like them to appear. You have literal comments like That read like nothing but "well, that should fail, but I guess your GM might be nice to you." Yes, that's what it is, the scenario itself is not gapingly flawed or anything. And your edits certainly don't read like "would you expect your GM to deny reality for you so you can escape the consequences of not taking a sure bet?" And hey, your initial presentation certainly says "now, my players apparently handled this badly, so my assumption is you should have screwed up to the point of reaching these events too. Even if you might not have." Definitely it doesn't instead just underscore how what looks like /nothing/ has been working, which it itself part of the essence of contrivance.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Because discussion forums are the wrong place for voicing an opinion on something.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire You set up a combat to specifically weigh it as almost overwhelmingly likely that if you don't kill everyone, even worse things are going to happen, and your own life hangs by a thread. Beyond even /that/, you've almost quite literally responded to statements of "well, I'd have some idea of how to use my powers" with "nuh uh!" and talking about "people getting off easy". Beyond even /that/ you decided that Stretchy Guy would /douse hostages in gasoline around a guy with fire powers/. No, that's plenty contrived. Then aside from that one of your players is something of a raging doofus, no, I'd say plenty can be put on you for setting them into a situation like that, then deciding to basically hose the fire wielding player for the other player's inanity, and talk about how "realistic" this all is, and nothing but actions having consequences. In fact, whoever made it such that any option not to light up innocent people is "an unlikely gamble", is certainly helping how contrived this thing is.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. To note, my original answers were, when someone first posted this years ago in another forum in response to a lot of similar hypothetical ridiculousness like these WWYCD threads that had gone on in this forum were.. "I stab myself with the syringe. At least I get to be really, /really/ high on what is apparently Heaven's personal stash before I die." Or: "Clearly all of this occuring means that God is some kind of massive jerk. I take my anger at this out on his son by stabbing him with the syringe."

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Yes, exactly.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. It's a post I recall many years ago from another forum, I fear your disbelieve check has failed there as well.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Do they really have viable actions? They seem mostly to have the original poster finding ways to respond to say why the original choice has to be made somehow regardless, or saying that people shouldn't respond like they are "if they don't want to actually answer the question". Frankly, a lot of WWYCD that involve "tough moral choices" are basically little more than epic bouts of railroading to try and get as many people to agree to something horrible as they can with pretensions of it being a "scenario". This one just abandons the pretense. I mean c'mon, it hits all the checkpoints "you must be faced with a really horrid decision! will you do it!" Or: what does it say that you were actually taking this seriously enough to ponder what the crux of my "theme" was, for the general tenor of a lot of these WWYCD threads? When WWYCD become "I will try to railroad as much as I can to make people try and answer if they would kill multiple innocent people", and that's basically a standard example of them, how haven't they hit a point of ridiculousness?

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. It's a shame that people just don't want to confront hard moral choices in a realistic fashion *nodnod*

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. *shooka shooka* I'm afraid your check to disbelieve has failed. Still, you make an important point to modify the originial scenario with.

Re: WWYCD?: The blatant-ening. Slatyn Yar is so powerful, he somehow breaks the very 4th wall itself to prevent you from flipping the table and denying having to respond to the question. Clearly.

Your character, for purposes of this thread is walking along in a desert with their one year old child that they love dearly. Said kid suffers from various chronic and fatal diseases, from incurable cancers, to, let's say, Lou Gehrig's. Also, several of their organs are outside of their body. Also, you only have enough food and water for one of you. Also, if you didn't need food or water before, you do now. Also, there is no escaping from the desert in any way, or making food for yourself, or water, or finding food or water. You can only keep walking to get out. Also, even if you normally can't have kids, somehow, you did anyway, and you've been raising this baby for a year. Suddenly! Out from the ground emerges the giant demon worm Slatyn-Yar, proclaiming that now is the beginning of its ten thousand year reign of terror and despair, in which all humanity will suffer unspeakable torment. The great evil worm is completely beyond your power in any and every way, cannot be reasoned with or persuaded of anything, and you cannot call on friends or allies or contacts or even interested enemies to stop it, who themselves are all beneath the power of Slatyn Yar, and would be helpless to stop. Just then! Jesus Christ himself descends from Heaven above and hands you a syringe full of a lethal dose of barbituates saying that only if your character injects your child with them /right now/, permanently and forever killing your child (you can't have more children, and adoption agencies have decided they hate you, and no one has named you a godparent of anything, to note), can Slatyn Yar be stopped from his reign of ultimate terror and destruction. Oh, and Slatyn Yar notes that if you do this, he will take your child's soul back to hell with him, when he is forced back into the pit from whence he came, to torment it for all eternity. This /will/ occur. What would your character do? Oh, and of course: If you feel this sort of situation is a violation of genre for your character, feel free not to respond for that character. However, hopefully most characters will be able to respond. Edit: and no, this is not an illusion, delusion, vision quest or metaphorical experience of any other sort for your character.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire Can he do anything the Human Torch can? Trap it in cages of fire? Ring it with a hemisphere of flame? Is this anything but a glorified railroad to see who says "kill the hostages" and who doesn't, then hound those who say who doesn't about not making a "realistic" choice and calling it "metagamey"? Because I notice you said not a single thing to the guy who said "kill the hostages", whereas you went on at /length/ on the guy who said he wouldn't. My bad, on both guys who said they wouldn't. I think what galls me is people present these as "What would your character do" and go so far as to say "no one answer is right", but then their responses to anyone not saying the answer they seem to actively /want/ involve things like "getting out of it too easily", and "metagaming". I realize these threads are mostly about being smug about how you present people with "hard" choices and thinly veiled mock people not giving the appropriate response, but wow, especially with the smiley, that was remarkably patronizing.

Re: (best ever)...reasons for becoming a supervillain! Not.. exactly quite. Well, not quite on the same scale, as far as who Meta was talking about in terms of a campaign villain he was describing. It has an extra layer of belief in that good is worthy, and wonderful, and glorious, but ultimately futile, pointless, and a lie. The Operative more believes in careful shepherding and pruning in order to bring out what salutary aspects there are of the world into flourishing. Said pruning just has some really atrocious methods. Endymion believes that a multiverse that contains infinite evil alongside infinite good, but seems only to reward those who engage in varying degrees of ruthless bastardry with anything beyond just status quo maintenance of worlds chock full of suffering, is a multiverse with glaring, fundamentallly conceptual flaws. Where the salutary aspects there are can never actually flourish, and are thus regularly stomped on, hollow shams that do nothing in the long run but convince people to indulge their survival impulse as though it means anything. The ideals of hope, faith, valor, justice, honour and simple decency are thusly not the very worthy things they should be, but are instead cheapened into hollow mockeries, delusions of what they /could/ be, and do nothing but keep people going like little more than purile religious homilies. High minded discourse about how it matters in terms of "keeping humanity's soul intact" doesn't change that the lot of sentient life yet generally sucks. If humanity were actually getting better, the hard and their hard methods would stop being the ones that work, that are the most rewarded. It's not that those constantly denied ideals aren't beautiful. They are. And it's not that Endymion doesn't want them to mean something. He wants /so terribly/ for them to. He admires those that yet truly cleave to such principles, even as he pities the futility of their lives. He doesn't, in his opinion, want to be right about how the world works, but he is, and the only thing that's left then is to acknowledge that, and shake reality apart until a solution comes out of it. Therefore the system has to be remade from the ground floor up, and unfortunately, the only tools that reality lets have effective results, are the most horrible tools imaginable. And while that's a tragedy, so is the universe, one more in the scope of it is certainly sad, but in a universe that runs on necessity, only necessity can be strong enough to overthrow and remake it into something different, better. Or, put another way: The world is ultimately cold, cruel and pragmatic. The people who live as the world should be, to show people how it could be are nothing but ephemeral flashes of gossamer of the beautiful potential that will forever be stamped out, crushed, and denied a lasting legacy of any worth. The brightening touch they have on the souls around them is thus exquisitely, perfectly, meaningless. That only in pragmatism strength can be found is abominable, but it is the universe exposing its jugular vein. For he then who is the most pragmatic, the most ruthless, the most extreme, is the most strong, is the embodiement of an entire universal law. And can then do with that strength whatever they like, for theirs is the ultimate control. Control enough to destroy, control enough to remake, control enough to redefine the very underpinnings of thought, space and time. For things then to be better, and for the workings of the previous reality to now be meaningless, to transcend all definition and make it so that they were /always/ meaningless, and that virtue has /always/ ruled the day. And Endymion? Why no such person ever existed. Well, so goes the view of the villain in question anyway.

Re: Galactic Champions And in the comics this was why when Mon El and Wildfire would go out to throw down on someone physically, Invisible Kid would, say /do something else as useful, but different/. Like find out where Darkseid's lair was, like use the advantage of the fight to get for himself whatever the gigantor villain that had come out was trying to get. This is also why comic books, the better ones, have things for the heroes to face where everyone can do something without having to turn off half of the team. That for me is the best part. If not for things to feel like the comics, why should a /comic book/ rpg exist, and claim that it is going to allow for the feel of playing in the world of the comics? And said comics have them doing wildly different things. Whereas when Batman and Superman exist in a game, if Superman happens to be powerful enough to do some of the things Superman can, players scream bloody murder and talk about "just make a 350 point homage!" when the "homage" can't really resemble at all the source of it, how much of a homage is it? Or, these arguements are wonderful explinations for why it's so hard to bring in new players to rpgs, especially supers ones, and especially if you're trying to do things like getting some people that read comics to game (rarer than you think). New gamer: "I'd like to play Superman!" GM: "here's this homage!" New Gamer: "... this doesn't feel like Superman at all." GM: "what are you talking about, twink with no sense of balance? He's a strongman who can fly and has an ID as a reporter!" New Gamer: "in the movies he.." GM: "how can you possibly expect a supers rpg to do the things that supers do?"

Re: Galactic Champions The pre crisis classic legion in fact had wacky powerful characters by the boatload. Even going all the way down to Saturn Girl there was planetary caliber telepathy. The princess projectra/invisible kid/bouncing boy types at best existed in equal measure to the likes of Wildfire, Ultra Boy, Cosmic Boy, Mon El, the dude with the Lantern Ring, Karate Kid was outright ridiculous, even guys as silly as Matter Eater Lad, or guys with a single power type like Element Lad were regularly pulling out insane feats with them. The Legion was basically the most powerful team you could get in comics unless the Endless ever decide to become superheroes. And frankly "well DC heroes had them as weak!" is pretty lame as arguements go, and only supports a generally dissatisfying concept of supers rpgs failing to let you actually do the things a lot of characters do as routine, but that if you complain about that, why, you clearly only care about power, you twink you.