transmetahuman

Re: What would happen if Los Angeles County vanished? I was going to say that any number of American Fundamentalist preachers will love it - God's wrath on the American Sodom, etc. I'm sure they'd blame the gays, who were also responsible for Hurricane Katrina. But in the Buffyverse, yeah, thing's would be a bit different. They'd just had that whole "the sun has been blacked out and vampires are crazy partying" period, and a goddess had basically mind controlled everyone in the world who so much as saw her on TV, and that whole Sunnydale thing... Apparently all the people busy keeping magic, demons, etc. a secret all these centuries pretty much just said screw it, in Joss's world.

Re: Hero is TK projection of kid in coma That's the way I took it.

Re: Hero is TK projection of kid in coma I was just reading the thread title and thinking, Damn! How many hundreds of dollars worth of books am I gonna lose if that kid ever wakes up?

Re: The Silence of the Catgirls or too much realism in fantasy Philosophically, I can totally get behind the science characters who "don't believe in magic" in the sense of "magic transcends physical laws". If mystics can reliably act on the physical world in ways that contradict our current guesses at the laws of nature, that just means those guesses need refinement. That doesn't have to take the magicalness out of magic, or reduce it to "gesture X + syllable Y = effect A"; any magical system that can be described consistently (whether its ultimate causes are known or not) can be examined with the scientific method. If it's not consistent, its inconsistencies can still be examined - and it'll be harder to game with. I've got a similar kinship with what you guys are saying Mr. Terrific feels about gods, but any expansion of that should probably go into NGD. Basically, I hate the false dichotomy of magic versus science. Science goes perfectly well with magic. I hate that schtick of supposed scientific geniuses inventing "technology" that is just a manifestation of their powers. The kinds of groundbreaking paradigm shifts that would lead to super-tech would affect lots of other aspects of current theory, and any real scientist would be 1) trying to reconcile it with everything his theory affects, and 2) be using peer review that would very quickly let him know that his supposed discovery is a very personal and localized aberration. Basically, you're saying your "genius" is an idiot, and not a part of any scientific community. Okay for an occasional deluded mad scientist, but not for someone I'm supposed to take seriously as brilliant. Edit: Also, calling it "psionics" (or, ugh, "reality warping") doesn't make it scientific. Psi is just magic marketed for the sf genre instead of the fantasy genre (though it usually comes pre-loaded with soft assumptions and limitations, the Wild Cards books show it doesn't have to). Another pet peeve. Limited power sources are really, really helpful in keeping a setting internally consistent, so I like that. No reason there can't be more than one source of powers, though, and I like to encourage players to come up with elements that I wouldn't have added to the world, so long as I can veto stuff that doesn't fit. "Sure, okay, you come from Atlantis, and Atlantis was actually settled by vegetable alien colonists millenia ago. I had no plans for Atlantis, and I planned to have ETs, and your veggie guys don't seem like they'll be a problem to fit in. Give me a day to think about whether any of this will conflict with anything else." I've been thinking about trying a "any background element that you've written down, or that you spun in-game, and I didn't veto from the start, is sacrosanct. Anything else I can add to at will, but you get a veto ("you never mentioned family, so this session your hippie mom is coming to town to visit. you cool with that?"). There will always be stuff that's pre-determined ("NO TIME TRAVEL!"), but I don't like to spell out exactly how everything works before chargen. Finding out more about this stuff is part of the adventure.

Re: How would Stronghold imprison your character?

Re: a limited mimic power Exploiting the vulnerabilities of various others is acknowledged as pretty much the point of Variable SFX, so don't worry about that. Just realize that Variable SFX alone isn't going to distinguish a mimicry of Zero's armor-piercing blast from a mimicry of Captain Yuck's AoE Cone EB from a mimicry of Mister Evil's Continuous, No Range RKA. In other words, EBs are distinguished from each other at least as much by advantages (and limitations) as by SFX. You'll probably want at least a large Variable Advantage advantage to go with that Variable Special Effects advantage.

Re: Mister Rapentap:does anyone remember him?

Re: Time travel in the Marvel Universe Yep. Reed has cured "past-Ben" at least once, but it doesn't do "present-Ben" any good. One of the Runaways had parents from the future, and still has/had (I'm working from collections from my public library, so I'm always out of date on this stuff) a time machine that was either mostly or all out of juice. caris beat me to a mention of Magik - yep, Limbo + her stepping discs mutant power often led to time travel - in fact that's how the X-Men lost lil' Illyana to one and got a teenage Illyana back a second later. Which means that Belasco, S'ymm, and whatever techno-organic beasties are "still" in Limbo (again, hazy on anything since I stopped buying New Mutants long ago) can time travel, too. Heck, theoretically, anyone or anything that has ever been or ever will be in (that) Limbo could pop out any time.

Re: Villainous Organizations of Else Earth.

Re: Superpet concept on the drawingboard: "Fluffy" Aww, I love Stitch. It's an alien, so there's no reason to make it anything like Terran animals... but they make good jumping-off points of reference. Start with the Conquering with Cuteness form: Probably not too many pairs of legs, nor serpentine, nor insect- or spider-thin legs. Almost gotta be (pseudo-)mammalian, or close enough to be mistaken for one, cuz most humans are weird that way. Probably warm-blooded, lots of soft fur, and big, BIG eyes. Purring, and/or soft mewing or mip-mip or burbling sounds... anything that reminds humans of a happy human baby really. Very tactile, likes to be touched/petted. The monster form you can go nuts with; draconic cthulhoid xenomorphic grub-spider-squid rotting cadavers... Slimy, tentacles, insectile or reptilian at the very least; jerky movements, extremely touchy reactions, harsh/eerie voice or noises its body parts make... You know the drill.

Re: In the Gestalt Universe, The Superhero Ideal This strikes me as a very American set of ideals - and even most Americans don't really want to see freedom/liberty as the highest ideal, taken to the logical extremes that a Gestalt would (or there'd be a lot more Libertarians and anarchists). I wonder what the ultimate heroic archetype of the combined planet would be like... I'm thinking the fundamentals would be compassion, self-sacrifice on behalf of others, and a strong drive to prevent or end suffering and protect people from same? Edit: Or maybe not. For some reason, that scene from Robocop where he's been reprogrammed with so many directives that he's paralyzed comes to mind. Poor, poor Pure Gestalt of Heroism...

Re: F-Bombs Away!

Re: [smashup] PS238 + Eureka !!! Well, is this Eureka more of a place to hide/quarantine/exile all the freaky paranormals, and the school is for their kids? Doesn't seem like superheroes as we know it (or as PS238 knows it) would even exist, if they're all stuck in one town. Sounds more like a Teen Champions/Top Ten smash-up, which has its own charm. Or is Eureka still a research-oriented think tank which happens to produce a lot of inexplicable, irreproducible Science Accidents! that give a lot of the kids powers? Are you planning on including any of the supernatural characters from PS238? If so, how do the scientists take all this? And of course there's no reason to segregate the supers deep underground if all the Eurekans know about them, and it'd be hard to justify keeping the already top-secret Eurekans in the dark about this stuff. Or are you thinking of making it less about inherited super powers, and more about the kind of trouble that super genius kids might get into? I guess the main question is whether you're changing the reason Eureka exists and is kept secret, and how that might justify more supers.

Re: The Deconstructing of Wynnie Wonder Heh. I got the Mary Marvel part; gotta wait (impatiently) for the library to catch up on their Astro City acquisitions I guess.

Re: F-Bombs Away!