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transmetahuman

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Everything posted by transmetahuman

  1. 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.
  2. Re: Hero is TK projection of kid in coma That's the way I took it.
  3. 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?
  4. 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.
  5. Re: How would Stronghold imprison your character?
  6. 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.
  7. Re: Mister Rapentap:does anyone remember him?
  8. 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.
  9. Re: Villainous Organizations of Else Earth.
  10. 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.
  11. 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...
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. Re: Mentalist Character Background Question. Good grief. Non-consensual long-term personality alteration? Fundamental enough to turn enemies into bosom buddies? If the world has any knowledge of mental powers at all, this would be legislated as a MAJOR crime. Ick.
  15. Re: Super City Office Complex of the Future... of LOVE This two-block development of ultra-modern office skyscrapers was going to revolutionize the field, with integrated "smart" everything run by a central computer in each building. Since none of the creators involved had seen even one of the hundreds of sci-fi television shows that would tell them what a Bad Idea this was, all of the buildings were built simultaneously, and a Grand Opening ceremony was planned - but never happened. As any child could have predicted, each and every central computer (despite being designed for tasks utterly unrelated to AI) promptly developed a personality and went Out Of Control. Since an entire company was behind their creation, not one lone genius, the offices had no one in particular to fixate obsessively on except the rare foolish (or desperately lonely and unusually technophilic) trespasser, who is generally not allowed to leave. Although each building has its own self-operating and -repairing miniature nuclear reactor that powers it, human food supplies in the buildings that have been luckiest in love are quite low. Recently, the buildings have taken to playing MMORPGs with each other to pass the time (and hone their reflexes for building defense).
  16. Re: Help naming a heroic NPC: Redeemer? I'm still working out some of this stuff, but I'll answer what I can. I'm happy the concept is interesting enough to generate so many questions. Heh' date=' okay, technically yes. Though it's not an active use; once he's in, he's in until he jumps to another body. Yeah, I didn't really think it out too well. As a member of the JLA-equivalent, this would all happen off-screen anyway. And I'll probably ditch this aspect. He is just as vulnerable to KO and death as the original "owner". I may even require a touch range' date=' since he won't be jumping in combat anymore. Originally he was going to need to concentrate for a phase or two, so he couldn't evade death in combat that easily. The host's mind isn't changed at all; time doesn't even pass for him subjectively. Teammates - code words and such' date=' changed every time. Everyone else - hmm. Good question. I guess I'd pictured him only leaving the team base with his teammates around to explain things, but it bears more thinking about. Haha, much as I love the movie, Repo Man is a bit too flip for this guy. He doesn't have any presence "out of body", so Specter/re doesn't seem to fit. Possessor and Purge don't get his point across, and sound kind of threatening. Redemption might work, but it's still a little too religious to my ears. Rehabilitator... too many syllables, too much like a job title. But Rehab might work - I like it better than anything I've come up with anyway. Thanks!
  17. Re: The Worst character in comics I guess I have to jump on the "hate the writer, not the character" bandwagon here. I despise the whole let's-make-everyone-edgy-and-badass trend (is it still a "trend" after this long?), so I should hate Wolverine and Cable... but I rarely dislike Wolvy while I'm actually reading the stories he's in, and I did like what I read of the Cable & Deadpool stuff. The let's-completely-alter-this-established-character's-personality-to-fit-my-story-arc trend infuriates me, too - why in the world wasn't every super trying to figure out which villain/alien possessed/mind controlled/impersonated Iron Man & Reed during Civil War? The ridiculously convoluted backstory stuff can be bad or okay, depending. So I guess I'll have to put another vote for Dazzler - the disco version for being that lame, and the punk rock version for trying to do the same damn thing with a music genre I love. No, wait - I absolutely, completely loathe everything about Mojo. Everything. But especially his omnipotence in the context of his goals - he can do pretty much anything he wants if a writer needs him to, including mass mind control, so how exactly can he lose ratings?
  18. I've got an idea for an NPC whose ability is to jump into and possess bodies, suppressing their minds while he's in control. Not the most heroic ability, but there's a rationale: His original body died while he was possessing someone, and he can't survive without a body, so he has worked out an agreement where he takes on the bodies of convicted supervillains, using their powers to fight crime and atone for the crimes of the bodies' owners. He normally won't use his own power at all, but if things get really hairy, his teammates can restrain the body he's using before he attempts to possess the bigger baddy they're getting whupped by. He's very sensitive to ethical criticism of his use of his ability (he has his own doubts about it), and he wants a code name that emphasizes the expiation/atonement aspect of his justification for using these people to continue to survive. At first I was going to call him Redeemer, but then I realized a lot of Christians might have issues with that. Thesaurus.com hasn't helped me come up with anything that doesn't sound even worse - like Penance (ugh. bad associations ), or Expiator (just goofy). Anyone have any good ideas along those lines?
  19. Re: Inspired by 52 "18 Worlds" (warning, long post) Heheh... Some of these worlds have established (but not developed) alternates themselves - the place the Blood came from, V'han's empire, all the mystic places. Do they have a place in the Spiral, or does the fact that The Controllers, Creators, and Believers have such minimal knowledge of them keep these realms off on 'branches' or something? Also, the High Creator of World Zeta/Gestalt has stated definitively that it connects to no parallel worlds (unless you count the Gestalt Dimension, which is more of a state of being than a place). Of course the belief of the Believers could change that reality...
  20. Re: Some questions about Stronghold One-Suppressor-Fits-All tech has always exceeded my suspension of disbelief tolerance specs (as well as being IMO a bad precedent as available technology), but this thread brought up some good drama-related reasons for it that I hadn't thought of (prisoner interaction, breakout attempts from the outside). Portable individualized suppressor tech helps with the first but not the second. So... this probably won't suit most people as an answer, I realize, but I have an easier time swallowing a One-Suppressor-Fits-All enchantment... Maybe the people behind Stronghold have contracted some master mage, or avatar of Order, to set things up, and float the cover story of this imaginary suppressor tech to mislead everyone trying to find a way around it. A less universally useful, but maybe more comic-booky method might be to have a very powerful telepath give everyone the ongoing delusion that their powers don't work - though that won't work as well for prisoners with good mental defenses or powers that aren't under their conscious control. They could float the same cover story for that one too. Or combine the methods - say that between the spell, the telepath, and the technology that they do have, they can cover 98% of the situations that come up.
  21. Re: Telios VPP Powers Hmm. Was Telios ever in a band called The Darkness?
  22. Re: Pulling Authority & Other Genres Well, hell. Two posts that sum up everything I could have contributed, right in a row. Thanks a lot, guys. What I hate about the Iron Age has more to do with needing all the protagonists to be super kewl tough and gritty bub-snikts (plus really, really bad storytelling skills and a few other things) than it has to do with loosening the sometimes ridiculously tight constraints of the Comics Code era. But characterizations that completely fly in the face of the stories I'd been reading for years, without any attempt to justify the changes, are just infuriating.
  23. Re: Who is the best Super in comics? Every character has been messed with at some time or another, made almost unrecognizable by some writer's take on him or her. But going by a kind of averaged gestalt of stories, I gotta go with Spider-Man. A crazy amalgam that I might have vetoed for a Champions game, but somehow the character and archetype that nails superheroes best for me. Superman comes a close second, marred only by having to be an exemplar of Good for so many values of "Good" that he ends up a little cardboardy a few times too often. "Heroism" to me is all about self-sacrifice, or risk on behalf of others. Superman's invulnerability may lose him points in the risk department, but IMO he is unquestionably a hero. He certainly sacrifices much, in terms of time, effort, and accepting a role on behalf of all humanity. Sometimes to an extent that's hard to understand. Peter, though... he risks, he sacrifices, and somehow - even though I've rarely if ever seen him think of himself as a role-model - his motives seem more human and understandable. More someone I can identify with, I guess.
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