input.jack

Re: WWYCD: A Bomb for Two Cities Because there is no way to contact allies, there is very little the characters can do other than try to defuse or dispose of the bobm thats at their feet, and at best warn the cops about the other one.

Re: WWYCD: Registration

Re: Looking For An Artist Apparently there are alot of artists here. Myself included

Re: WWYCD: Lost in a world without Supers; 9/11/2001 The pink tutu is a particularly good touch

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... I dont know. All my Vaughn Bode art comes in the form of books. Never thought to try to track it down online

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city?

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith And things like that are why Ive largely been going to the second version of this thread

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith No. Youve completely missed the point of what I was trying to say. The hero sacrifices himself (no outside impetus to do so; all an individual choice) to avert or deflect a catastrophe that IS coming. Definately. No doubt. Its here right now. See it? The villaigers are requiring a ritual sacrifice to avert a catastrophe that MAY OR MAY NOT come. It may or may not be necessary. The villaigers are exerting outside influence on their own children to line up and die for something that (in the original set up which is where this conversation started) MIGHT NOT EVEN BE NECESSARY AT ALL. I never said that the deciding factor was how long it took the catastrophe to get here. You put those words in my mouth. That was not at all what I was saying. What I was saying was that the difference between a heroic sacrifice on the part of the hero (good), and human sacrifice on the part of the villaigers (evil) is that in one case an individual makes a decision to do something based on events he knows are coming. In the other a group of people makes the decision to kill another person based on events they fear might be coming. And your arguing about "you never have perfect information" is invalid, because according to that line of reasoning we cant ever decide to do anything because we never know what all the facts are. Anyone who goes down that path paralyzes themself in indecision.

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Supreme Ancestral Power Attack: I hit you so hard your ancestors die.

Re: Irksome players Agreed wholeheartedly. One of the things that we, as a group, try to keep in mind is that the Players are in the Character's head once a week or less, while the Character lives in their world full-time, and wont make dumb mistakes that anyone actually -in- the situation could see from a mile away. Like forgetting to bring SCUBA tanks for your diving expedition, etc.

Re: Player problem - opinions .... This sounds like a miscommunication problem, and some really bad calls by the GM. First, the GM should have made it clear what -kind- of game he was running. A campaign where a totally non-combat character and a combat-oriented character can exist side by side, and both Players think they are getting their moneys' worth out of it, I have yet to see. Not that every character needs to have 28 OSL's and a Blade of Weasel Whacking, but from the sound of it, was your PC even capable of assisting in a combat situation at all? Ive played Rogue type characters who were pretty useless in a straight up fight, but who could still open locks, decipher ancient texts and filch small shinies during a combat, in order to help the party. (One incident comes to mind where someone had let an Invulnerable Demon out of an Iron Flask; the party kept it busy chasing them, while my Rogue deciphered the writing on the FLask, learned the incantation, said it, and trapped the Demon back inside). The fact that the GM let you play what was obviously a character based on "court intrigue" and him play a character who was obviously based on "facing evil head-on" seems...unwise. The next big GM error was in the GM declaring what the Paladin, a PC, was going to do, based on a single skill roll for an NPC, apparently without even taking the Paladin's Disads into account. Now, in our campaigns we have a rule; NPC Presence skills CANNOT dictate the actions of a PC. The Player is enocuraged strongly to take the roll into account when making his decision as to what his character is going to do, but the roll itself does NOT dictate reality. Otherwise theres no reason for the Players to be there. I do think it was rather unkind of you to pester and humiliate the Paladin by making it seem he was flatulent. Again, he was wanting to play a very serious, respected character, and your character was robbing him of his dignity for sheer sport. HOWEVER, did his Paladin ask your character to stop? If the Paladin asked you to stop in character, and you persisted, then the blame must lie in some degree with you. If the Paladin did not ask you to stop in character, then the blame lies much more squarely with him, as he did not make his wishes known to your character. The Paladin deciding that your character had sent the girl after him was very much metagaming, and bad form. If he wanted to make the connection between her actions and your character's prompting them, a good GM would have had him make an Int or Deduction roll to see if he found that idea reasonable. (If the Player had not actually heard you tell her to go in, the I wouldnt have called for the roll. But in this case it is obviously metagamed, and to justify that in some way requires a roll, IMHO). The GM and you apparently thought that his breaking his vow was "no biggie", and that a little penance should cover it. The GM failed in his job AGAIN by not finding out ahead of time how serious the character was about his vows, and not talking to the Player about the Paladin's faith and coming to an agreement on how such matters are handled in the church. The Paladin's Player failed at HIS job because once told that, according to the church of the campaign, it was no biggie, he should have let it slide. The whole "taking off the breastplate and committing suicide" thing is just melodramatic and juvenile. To my way of thinking, this fiasco was brought about by a number of factors, mostly involving a total lack of effective communication between the GM, and the Players, all around. Yes, Im afraid you share in some of the blame here. But so does the GM. And so does the Player of the Paladin. To my mind, the GM is the most culpable. He made the most mistakes. The Paladin's reaction was extreme, but not something I havent seen before (though usually in borderline acceptable Players). Id recommend that either your GM tell him that hes out because of using metagame information, OR of you want to be a bit more fair to the guy, that you all get together, discuss what happened in a calm, rational manner, be prepared to apologize to him for how your character behaved towards his, and be prepared to accept his apology for overreacting. Ive known Players who have never been in anything but dark, brooding games filled with ANGST!....and they dont take kindly to being made the butt of a joke the first thing out of the starting gate. If you and your friends have a more relaxed vibe to your games, give him time to acclimate

Re: What is the most outrageous B$ power that you have encounted. The GM whose "mystical" Big Bad had a Killing NND that only worked against "Heroes" comes to mind... All his villains were magically-based, because that way he could give them whatever b***s**t powers he wanted to. Dont game with him no more.

Re: WWYCD - a deal with the devil Revenant refuses to take away free will. A world without evil would have no need for him, and he would welcome that in some ways. But to accept the deal is to remove free will from all remaining humanity. And besides, Big Red just said at this rate he -will- lose. That sounds like the plan to me. Black Hawk kicks him in the snarglies and spits on his head. Doesnt matter if he incinerates her for it afterwards; it had to be done.

Re: WWYCD: Registration Black Hawk refuses to register because she feels its wrong; a form of discrimination. She might register if it worked like it does on the West Coast in the campaign, where registered Supers who have their ID card on them are not considered to be breaking any "mask laws", can testify in court in costume with a voucher from an authorized law enforcement or court officer who knows them personally, and are more readily able to get police assistance. But general, enforced registration for no other reason than for Uncle Sam to keep tabs on us all, no thank you. Revenant also refuses to register. He also would immediately begin working on a "super computer worm" to infiltrate the government computer network and delete the files of everyone already registered. Along with a very pulic announcement that it had been done. So that the systems vulnerability to extraordinary computer manipulation is revealed, and no one will ever register again. Revenant's base computer is of alien technology (given to him by a friend) and is an AI capable of cybercombat in its own right. There are only a couple of other AI computers in the world, and the US government doesnt own any of them. In fact, one of them is the robotic villain Nekrotron, who most certainly cannot be trusted with that kind of information.

Re: WWYCD: Lost in a world without Supers; 9/11/2001 No offense, but he doesnt sound much like a "hero" at all, if hes willing to let planes full of innocent civilians slam into the suburbs and the Pentagon just because he's peeved at the people there. (Who are this worlds version of the people hes peeved at, not those actual people, anyway). That, and apparently he "kills bad-guys" pretty routinely. I know its just personal opinion, but I dont consider Punisher or most other "Iron Age heroes" to be heroes. And he sounds pretty Iron Age from that brief description. As for the nation waking up to terrorism, the fact is that the incident happening at all, even unsuccessfully, will accomplish that. People forget; we got lucky in the actual attack. Bin Laden was counting on killing at least ten thousand people, expecting twenty thousand, and hoping for more. He only got about three thousand people in his cowardly attack, and even though losses were incredibly light considering how bad it -could- have been, it still had a galvanizing effect on the American outlook.

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith Because ultimately thats irrelevant. It doesnt matter if its a villiager or a team-mate stepping up to the alter to be killed. The situation is inherently immoral.

Re: WWYCD 101:A question of faith When a superhero dies trying to stop a horrible event, its a heroic sacrifice because the horrible event is right here, right now. When one of these normal guys gives up his/her life to stop the horrible event, its an evil sacrifice because there is no way to know if its even necessary, and if it IS necessary, then the being requiring it to be done is EVIL. Is there any way to make that any clearer?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... There was a fringe artist in the 60's and 70's named Vaugn Bode, the guy whose work inspired the movie "Wizards" by Ralph Bakshi. He had a cartoon of a female soldier (his art style meant she was wearing like a helmet, boots, and a gear belt and nothing else) carrying a machine gun, who was walking along with a treaded robot, which was talking and saying things like "You are an enemy, but I cannot destroy you. Your beauty has enchanted me, and I must protect you from now on." This goes on for several panels, the last one of which is the robot syaing "Now all I must do is kill the ugly bag of mostly water, and you and I can be together forever, beautiful machine gun." Bode was always doing things like that.

Re: WWYCD: Flipside Basically, Doc, this means that YOU are now the Ref, and that the flipped Doc Anomaly is now your major long-term story-arc villain.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Is that a Vaugn Bode reference? Yow! Thats jumpin in the Way-Back machine!

Re: WWYCD trapped in a quarantined, plague-infested city? Revenant would take a few tissue samples from the child and find the cure himself, asking the doctors and experts to assist him. Arrogant? Yeah, kinda. But thats the kind of thing he does. (Like Lord Mhoram, I tend toward the Kirk mentality).

Re: WWYCD: Get Robbed...By The King At this point Revenant slinks away, back into the shadows, hoping that nobody saw him anywhere NEAR this event @_@

Re: WWYCD: Lost in a world without Supers; 9/11/2001 Revenant would contact the FBI and tell them which planes were going to be hit, where they were going to be taken, and WHY, making it sound as though -he- were one of the terrorists and was bragging that they couldnt possibly stop him. (He speaks many, many languages fluently, and could pass over the phone as a fundamentalist fanatic). If he had the names of the terrorists, hed claim to be the second in command. Then hed begin to hunt Osama down himself, before Bin Laden had a chance to rabbit. Revenant wont kill. Ever. But hes not above some serious deception to get the job done.