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

Perhaps he's saying he doesn't find comic books particularly funny... hence comic [sic] books.

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?

...(or lacking the technology' date=' simply a visor that obliges him to hear and see an endless rerun of soap-operas, that would be rather despair-inducing, too ). If the latter is ruled to be cruel and unusual, hot sleep.[/quote']Bwahaha... I'd love to watch the judge that has to explain her ruling that the former is more so than the latter. Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing, mind you.

Re: a limited mimic power

I'm coming back to Champions after a half-life break (I stopped playing in 1986), so be kind in your responses to what is probably an ignorant question.

 

I'm building a character whose secondary powers are telepathy and (through that telepathy) an ability to mimic an opponent's energy blast. What I would like to do is just buy an energy blast power, and have a variable special effect based on the special effect of his opponent's energy blast, and require a telepathic roll in order to activate the power. Is it legal to have a varied special effect in this way? I can see potential exploitation issues, what with the different vulnerbilities of opponents. Do you see other pitfalls?

 

A caveat: I don't have the 5eR rules, just Sidekick 5eR (probably wait until 6e comes out or until I become re-obsessed with Champions), but if there are ways to do this under the 5eR rules, I would love to hear them. From what I understand, some people build mimic-powers as a VPP, but I would like to aviod that, if possible, since it just seems overkill for one power.

 

What do you all think? How would you build this power?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Jim

Re: Mister Rapentap:does anyone remember him?

Gold through Bronze' date=' though... not even Wolverine or the Punisher would smack kids around. I bet Power Pack could get away with it though.[/quote']Which kinda begs the question, who did Power Pack fight when they were kids in their own book? All I remember is aliens and Morlocks - and I bet there was a minimum of the usual superhero fisticuffs (or none at all), though I didn't notice the lack back when I was reading the book.

 

Anyone done a Pre-Teen Champions game? Do the kids mostly fight other kids? Or is having superpowers and putting on a costume a tacit rejection of the social protection you supposedly get (at least from non-parental adults) from being a kid?

Re: Time travel in the Marvel Universe

as i understand marvels policy on time travel everytime trip creates an alternate timeline universe

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.

You are kiddin'' date=' right? I mean, come on, you can't be serious about that. Especially that thing about RPGs and D&D would freak out my players. [/quote']I got a laugh out of it - maybe a bit too wacky to be taken seriously at all. However powerful she/they may be, you gotta wonder why anyone who doesn't have dragon blood joins up (then again, you could ask the same question about VIPER/COBRA/DEMON/whatever).

 

But I'm dying to know why she's fixated on D&D dragons! I mean, there's gotta be some backstory there, right? Is her secret ID Margaret Weis or something?

 

I like the idea of tying the stereotypical, nearly inevitable snake-themed group (I usually have one, too) in with dragons, though.

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

Good Question, I would presume that his ideology was more Heroic than his powers. A Hero can take many forms even in Gestalt what truly defines a Hero are the actions he takes not just the powers. Anyone can be a hero (firemen, cop, even a politician like William Wilberforce, or many of the founding fathers of these united States) thus to be a hero one must act like a hero.

 

I would make him Fairly tough (but not invulnerable because a hero will fight on despite the odds being against him thus he should be an example of this attribute), can fly, reasonable High STR, high PER. His mere presence should inspire others like Captain America (I refer to Steve Rogers not Bucky) and cause dread among villains.

 

Liberty, Freedom, and Justice (equity) should be his highest ideal, and injustice, tyranny and Slavery his bane.

 

I think you can come up with idea's for powers based upon this info.

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!

AFAIK' date=' F-Bomb refers solely to the word f**k ... then again, I use that version of the F-Bomb, whereas I've never used the F-word for homosexuals, and could be out of that loop.[/quote']A quick Google says you're right. Seems like it's used when someone says it while being broadcast... so the "very publicly" in the OP is important I guess. Sorry I misunderstood.

 

A lot of people who never seem to swear are actually saving profanities for extreme situations; potency and the satisfaction from using them do diminish with frequency. Unless the character had expressed disapproval for someone else using the word in the past, any of my characters would just assume it was a case of hoarded emphasis.

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

For those wondering about how this idea came about, and I'm sure most of you have figured out at least one half or the other if not both...

 

"Hey, you got your Astro City Beautie in my Mary Marvel!"

"Yeah, well you got your Mary Marvel all in my Astro City Beautie"

*Reese's type realization*

"Hey..."

Re: F-Bombs Away!

As a side note' date=' is this just an expression of frustration ("OH F***!"), an intensifier ("That was f***ing awesome.") or a pejorative ("F*** you!")? Or any old F-bomb?[/quote']Since I'd only ever heard of the "N-bomb", I was wondering myself for a while. I believe they're referring to a certain pejorative term for a gay person that a television actor was semi-recently infamous for spewing in a situation where he really really shouldn't have. Could be wrong, but in my circles "Oh f**k" wouldn't warrant a raised eyebrow much less the term "bomb".

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.

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).

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.

[1] Who did he make this agreement with? His teammates' date=' the local government, and/or the villain he was possesing?[/quote']Originally, I was going to have the possessor guy (let's call him Joe for simplicity) just go ahead and do it, with his teammates' and the public's knowledge, but with the governments out of the loop - "presented with the fait accompli, they've just accepted it so far". Joe is meant to be a member of the world-class supers team, the JLA of the game world, who reside off Earth entirely. But that seemed implausible - the issue of trial, conviction, and the possible innocence of the host might be avoided if he only possessed criminals in the act (though there's always the possibility of mind control), but once I decided to make him extra scrupulous (he worries that his need for a body is clouding his judgment) that just won't wash. Plus I don't want this team to be that Authority-like.

 

I'm not sure if limiting him to volunteers is plausible either - he's risking the life of his bodies, after all. What incentive would make people volunteer? I'm thinking maybe the agreement is with certain nations whose prison systems wouldn't be able to handle the host, where it's a question of capital punishment or being sentenced to hosting Joe. There's no general power nullifying tech in this world. That begs the question of how his host body is supposed to be restrained if he jumps to another one, though; maybe I'll ditch that part.

[2] Isn't he constantly using his power if he's possessing a person at the time?

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.

[3] What's the plan on carrying this out? Does the fighting just "stop" and they restrain his physical form, then get up and say "let's continue"? It seems that if they're having a tough time with Villain X, there may not be enough people able to pull out of the fight to restrain him so he can posses Villain X.

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.

Additional questions: How is the NPC defeated? Is he KO'd if his body is KO'd? Can the NPC be trapped?

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.

Does the current villain body instantly become good by his actions, or is his mental state restored once the NPC hero leaves?

The host's mind isn't changed at all; time doesn't even pass for him subjectively.

If the criminal's outlook doesn't improve (and indeed' date=' it may simply get worse after having this done), what repercussions will there be?[/quote']It won't. The idea is that Joe needs a host body to survive, and his possession of one deprives the owner of a life for the duration. Why not use host bodies that the normal system can't handle, that would be deprived of a life anyway? The fact that it makes rehabilitation impossible is countered if he only uses prisoners sentenced to death - but the ambiguity is intended to fuel what is my most angsty NPC to date.

How can somebody tell if the body is possessed by NPC hero as opposed to someone faking it?

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.

For other names, possibly:

Rehabilitator

Repo Man

Possessor (or for a bit of corniness, Professor Possessor)

Specter (if British, Spectre)

Redemption

Purge

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!

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?

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?

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...

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.

Re: Telios VPP Powers

Hell you could design a powered armor suit he could use out of organic concepts as he pretty much considers other lifeforms at the same level as objects and this could really hit home as to why Telios is such a bad guy.

Re: Pulling Authority & Other Genres

I’m probably in the minority here but I don’t have an issue with superheroes that kill at least not in and of itself. Not all superheroes are bullet proof or immune to harm particularly from other superhumans. You can make an argument that the only reason many of them haven’t come across a moment when use of lethal force was the only option is because they’re not written that way. I’m not using the realistic because it’s sort of a useless word when you’re dealing with genres as fantastic as comic book superheroes.

 

BUT, I don’t think any hero should be a ruthless killer, ruthless defined as remorseless, callous and brutal even taking pleasure in murder nor should lethal force by the default option in all situations. As has been said several times, superhumans tend to have more options when it comes to dealing with lesser opponents so most of the time killing would be a choice not a necessity. In some situations, that choice might justifiable, other it wouldn’t be. I like to read stories that have some nuance in that regard and death don’t turn me off instantly.

 

Characters that kills and seem to revel in it, even chose to do it when it’s not necessary, brutality to the point of taking pleasure it… not my thing. And I can and do appreciate supers stories where there’s “always an option C” in when the question: Kill or don’t Kill comes up.

I tend to agree with you if that is the premise of the comic and world - I enjoy the Ultimate Universe, where that kind of thing is not uncommon.

 

But changing characters that have a silver age glory to them, or worlds where that attitude (or something just a step down from it) has been the operating premise for decades is a bad thing*.

 

Part of the reason I don't like the Punisher. In his own thing he works (the movie was great). In a completely Iron Age setting, fine. But in the Marvel Universe - he would have been taken in by Cap or Spidey for murder years ago.

 

To me, it's all about the baseline assumptions the character is operating in.

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.

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.