Duke Bushido

Grab your bags, gentlemen!

My latest D&D related pet peeve concerns people that chastise others for metagaming while concurrently chastising others for having their characters being uninterested in quests (because, in the words of the complainer, "Quests are worth XP.").

If I am, I am doing an incredibly bad job of saying things!! 🙂
 
I have read a LOT of Batman and fewer Joker stories.  I have read great Joker stories and some awful ones.
 
I think, in the good stories, more than any other member of the rogues gallery, Joker is the antithesis of Batman. It is that direct contrast that often makes the story a good one, the opposite throwing the heroic into sharp relief.
 
I agree with @Christopher R Taylor that writers got into a bit of a bidding war in how far they could take chaotic evil and a lot of that almost glories in the anarchy rather than in the heroics necessary to remedy it.
 
In the Dark Knight film, when Joker left Batman with the dilemma of which of two bombs he would choose to defuse, who he would allow to die, classic Batman would have had a contingency to cut the Gordian knot and prevent both bombs.  THAT is why he is a SUPERhero, not one of your run of the mill heroes.
 
The Joker gives the writer free rein to imagine excesses, it is his job however to ensure he gives the Batman a way to rein that it.  any sacrifice should be personal. If it came to it, Batman would die and save both people.  I hate that they wanted to make drama by having the Hero fail.  If I pulled that crap in a fame, my players would string me up and it demonstrates to me, again and again that the big studios fundamentally do not understand superheroes.
 

Once again, the reason the Joker has to be taken out now is not because of anything innate in his character, but because of the way writers have been writing him. Each new writer thinks they have to top the previous one. Frank Miller tried to show Joker at his most unhinged, most horrible so that Batman had to take extreme measures to stop him -- and later authors took that as a base line and wanted to make THEIR Joker story even more awful.
 
In the end, they turned a sinister, somewhat deadly clown who did tricks like turn every fish in the harbor into Joker fish... into a mass murdering psychopath who slaughters by the dozens, or hundreds.  THAT Joker has to be taken out.  The Joker he started as, no.

Well @Steverhat clarifies things. That description would have been a little more helpful. 😉 Then go with Lonewolf though a few dice in Aid still won’t hurt imho.

Egad! 
 
I went into all that detail, but never bothered mentioning the 'final form' of the House Bushido Skills System. 
 
First, I wish to apologize to anyone who came over here because you got a notification that you were quoted. 
 
If I may explain:
 
Evidently, when you spend a really long time working on a post, it "saves" in your editor.  In that past, that has not been a problem, because the next time you pull the editor up for that thread, there is a "clear editor" button. 
 
To make the first lengthy post via phone, I opted to crawl the various ap stores and downloaded a keyboard with buttons almost large enough that you can only touch one at a time.  Usually.  It also has the unexpected benefit of an autocorrect that speaks English (just not enough English). 
 
Problematically, I havent see the Clear Editor. Button since, nor have I been able to delete quote blocks as I could before.  Not sure why the keyboard makes that kind of difference, and of course, it could be coincidental.  (it is a Microsoft app, so I am pretty sure I am being keyligged the entire time, but her!  If they learn about Champions against their will, who's fault is that, ultimately? 
 
Next:
 
I promise this will be _short_! 
 
All the above about the skills system was in use for years, and still is with my primary group, but I have been testing a simplified version of it with the youth group:
 
When you want a Skill, you define it and buy a Skill level.  Your skill is Characteristic roll plus 1.
 
Rhis was derived as such things as buying +1 to Per (an INT roll at heart) with a skill level, or bonuses to coordinated attack when working with a particular character or maneuver, or even just bonuses to INT rolls when working on a particular item or topic (+1 when repairing antique computer tape drives). 
 
These are at their essence skills.  You get a base characteristic roll and take a bonus because you are doing something with which you are familiar.  Because you have skill in that area. 
 
A specific skill is a three-point skill level (+2 when cracking Defender brand sages or +1 when cracking old-fashioned sages).  It is improved with additional 3 pt skill levels. 
 
A broader but skill that covers closely-related fields (+2 with woodcraft) is a 5pt skill level, and defaults to Characteristic roll +1.  This "broad skill' can be improved with 5 pt skill levels.  Additionally, a player may opt to break out an individual skill or three and raise them independently with 3pt skill levels:  the woodcraft character might decide he is particularly good at tracking, and put an additional skill level in just that aspect of woodcraft. 
 
For an 8 pt skill level, the character can have what conversationally refer to as a broad skill (Science +3, for example).  This skill starts, like the others, at characteristic roll plus 1.
 
The player may opt to use a 5 pt skill level on a tightly-related set of skills (or science field in this case, such as 'chemistry') ) or he may opt to use a 3 pt skill level to break out one particular skill.  (an additional bonus for 'Chemical analysis,' perhaps). 
 
 
I was concerned that it would get pricey quickly, but since the default is Char roll +1, a lot of initial cost is offset (versus what we had been doing) and we are able to mix broad and narrow and "cluster" skills on the same game.  Thus far, it has been working well.  It might not work as well for heroic, abut then I have to wonder how much of my concern there is based on some wish that points be expensive to slow down character progression, which I can just as easily do two other ways:
 
Declare up front that XP will accrue somewhat more slowly than the group is used to
. 
Put a gate between XP and Skills- some sort of rule like 'you must have used this skill for consecutive successes before you may use XP to raise it (woah- I am just spitballing at this point, folks) 
 
Or you must roll a certain number of 3s, or some such thing.  I suspect if I go this route, the gate will depend _a lot_ on the intended length of the campaign. 
 
 
 
There. 
 
I apologize for totally forgetting to mention the current rules being (successfully) playtested at the moment. 
 
 
 
 
 

Oh my god; _THANK YOU_!
 
Wow.
 
 
I really thought I was the only one....  I really, _really_ dislike that character.  I dont hate him, simply because there is nothing there to hate: a collection of cliches isn't out of place in comics; some are just more tired than others.
 
 
 
Agreed on all counts, but my list against him has one more entry:
 
Derivative.
 
Yes, that is a word that gets thrown around a _lot_, even when it isn't really a good choice:  we all know that Mechanon was an homage to the robot from the Avengers movie, and many, many characters were similarly pastiche or love letters to favorite characters from the source material, especially early on, but Dr D always felt like "we need a villain!  Who's a good villain?"
 
I remember when the Venture Brothers was fresh and new, and the Monarch got off his line "that dime store Doctor Doom!".   Yep; niether Doom nor even Underbheit were the first character to pop into my mind with that line.  I thought immediately of Dr. Destroyer as the most obvious "dime store Doctor Doom."
 
Frankly, Underbheit is a _way_ better framework for an interesting Doom-type knock-off character, and he is specifically a joke character from a joke show poking fun at a genre.   And yet-  he is by far the more interesting character.
 
Doctor D comes off as "okay, we need Doctor Doom, but he can't just be some rich guy with a grudge over a lab accident.  He has to be _evil_. Okay, make him a Nazi.  He was an evil Nazi scientist doing horrible things--
 
Dude....  That would make him.... _how old_..?
 
Well, he invented life-extending science and built it into his armor-
 
So what happens when he takes it off?
 
Well, he probably shouldn't...
 
I bet it _reeks_ in there!  I mean just _reeks_!  And he's like ninety something?  I feel like we accidentally pastiche-ified The Terror from the Tick.  I don't know how my players are going to feel about fighting a mummified nonogenarian who smells of rot and possibly urine...
 
He has to be a Nazi-
 
Nazi _jerky_, you mean!
 
Well he has to be a Nazi, because we don't really want to put a lot of thought into this, and we don't have to, because you are not allowed to question or wonder about anyone's background or to ever think anything but "yep; pure evil" when someone says 'they were a Nazi,' so we save a crap ton of time there....
 
 
 
He was supposed to be _the_ Big Bad of the Champions Universe for decades, and yet he was so hopelessly, blandly generic that he may actually have been the single biggest reason I was and remain turned off on the entire Champions universe.  (Well that and Mechanon.  While he is a much better homage /pastiche than DD will ever be (apparently), I find the idea of the ultimately unkillable / undefeatable recurring bad guy to be supremely distasteful.  A couple of reappearances?  No problem.  Batman's Joker?  No.)
 

If they killed off the Joker, then the comics would have Joker knock-offs filling the space.  Batman is an archetype and his stories need opposing archetypes for him to work.  If not the Joker then some other character of a similar archetypes who might as well be called the Joker.
 
I don't like comic book continuity, it skews too many things as time goes on and the players neither age, grow or change.  If there was no continuity, then there would not be 1000's of Jokercrelated deaths over decades, just the potential victims in this story.
 
I like superhero stories, always have.  I don't mind them re-using villains in the same way I don't mind them using the same heroes, I know what I am expecting. The same as when the daleks or cybermen turn up in Dr Who.
 
In a superhero game, I only repeat a villain if the players demand it, otherwise I undermine their successes.
 
The problems with Joker and Batman stem mostly from continuity which demand they explain things and connect them to stories from before.  The need for grimdark nonsense drives some of it.
 
As for the neural health thing, there is an argument that anyone who commits a drive is mentally ill.  Folk use crazy and mentally ill epithets too easily (in comics AND real life).  I take the comic-book diagnosis of Joker's mental illness with the same scepticism as when he us declared medically dead, open to question.
 
To me, he represents an archetype of fear and chaos which manifests in a variety of ways.  I enjoy the stories that emerge from putting such an archetype into a place like Gotham and how it's archetype of justice and retribution engages with those results while sticking to a principled refusal to take a life.
 
Doc
 
 

Even so, there are fun and interesting enemies, and boring and pointless enemies.

The best kind of correct, Sir! 
writer's 
 
 
This is where we differ.  I don't think he's a great villain.  "Oh look; sociopath mass murdered goes on a killing spree!
 
 
Again."
 
And Again
 
And Again
 
And Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againandagainandagainandagain....
 
At this point, it seems,mathematically impossible for any citizen in Gotham _not_ to have lost someone to the Joker.  Frankly, I have to feel (and it could be where I live: a place where people _do_ periodically take shots at criminals on the courthouse steps-- to the point that we built an entirely new courthouse specifically to create a tunnel from the jail to the inside of the courthouse.  No; seriously.  Google courthouse, Lyons, GA if you don't believe me) that Rich's idea of someone deciding enough is enough makes _way_ more sense to me than what routinely happens:
 
"I am Batman.  I am better than them.  I don't kill.  I just let the same group of mass murderers kill over and over and over again.  Eventually (and it's been what?  Seventy years?) people are going to start (whether correctly or not) that the problem actually _does_ seem kind of like it might be Batman himself....
 
So what makes the joker an especially good or well-developed character?  A deformity?  A chemically-induced change to his DNA that prevents his skin from healing a to a normal skin tone and keeps his hair green?  The fact that he kills people- even lots of them- for no particular reason makes him zero different from the majority of Batman villains.
 
The fact that he kills Robins?   Well the writers are the only thing stopping anyone else from doing it: I am sure a quick perusal of Batman comics will result in a couple of dozen villains who would _jump_ at the chance to kill a Robin or two (especially that one from LEGO Batman.  That Joker, too).  Only the writers stop them, keeping Robin just out of their murderous reach.
 
So what else might be cool?  The random "deep" commentary that sounds like it was written by a fourteen-year-old Edgelord?  "Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?  Wanna know how I got these scars?"  Dude, no.  I have to pay rent to amd work for him!  I sure as heck ain't gonna dance with him!  And the only thing I have _ever_ wondered about those scars is why the director _gave_ them to you, seeing as how there is, as far as I know, no canonical reference to them _ever_.  (That's important to the Batman guys, right? Canon?)
 
 
Actually, that fourteen-year-old edgelord thing seems to apply to a disproportionately large number of Batman villains: "you merely adopted the darkness.  I was _moulded_ by it...."  Ich.
 
Still, there is the ever-popular, ever-bland Joker.  What is it?  What's the appeal?  Must be the purple suits; it can't be the Anakin-ized version of him from that Pheonix movie, and it certainly wasn't the  nineteen-year-old gangbanger version of him from that God-awful Doom Patrol movie.  Actually, I am pretty sure that was a God-awful version of everyone in that movie except possibly the Will Smith character, who at least got almost  four minutes of character development.
 
The Joker remains, in my own useless opinion (remember that Doc _is_ correct: the tiny bit I know about comics comes from these boards, period), an unoriginal, uninspired generic mass murderer with a Schtick that has worn really, really, thin, but since the absolute inviolable "must" of comics-  the part that keeps the fans comfortable- is absolute adherence to the status quo.  If the status quo goes to far adrift, boom!  Reboot.  While they all _talk_ about how great seeing new directions and new ideas and broad expansions of serrings and characters, but what they _buy_ is the same stories, the same settings, the same characters over and over; it is what they want.  It is their comfort zone.
 
And _this_ is the secret to the Joker's staying power:  they liked him years ago; they are comfortable liking him now.  Plus, he can be exactly what they want him to be: he is so blank-- so absolutely generic mass murderer _and_ generic slasher flick villain that the fans can easily drop whatever motivation, whatever head canon they hold, on top of him and there is nothing to counter it.  It fits because absolutely anything will.  The bumbling comical buffoon played by Ceaser Romero, an Hanibal Lector-esque manipulative psychopath, the self-amused Jack Nicholson version, the "tortured soul" character that Ledger played-  even that Leto take--  they _all_ fit.
 
That is the second-most hateable thing about the Joker: there is _nothing_ there that is uniquely Joker except for his appearance, and if a purple suit was a personality I would have been Prom King instead of helping my date keep her face hidden all night.
 
The most hateable thing?  His _persistence_.  I don't mean that as a personal trait; I mean his constant existing, being in the background and the foreground, and being essentially unstoppable, unreasonable, always one step ahead _forever_.
 
I think it is important to note that it isnt just Batman, and it isn't just me. 
 
My wife, for whatever reason, like pretty much _every_ "and here is MI gimmick" crime show- from Bones to Almost Paradise to the Mentalist--  every stinking one of them.  Fortunately, I don't watch a lot of TV, so I don't have to pay any attention to it.
 
I have noticed a trend in all of them, though.  At some point- if not by Season 3, then during Season 3, there is some uncatchable Mastermind (and a disproportionately large number of them are named "Jack," for.... reasons?).  Sometimes he is invented on the spot and will stay until the show runs itself into the ground; sometimes he is retconned in ("this case is so much like that case we had from years ago" or some such thing).  Either way, references- maybe even actual crimes or other misdeeds-  but they never, ever quite manage to catch him or stop him or in anyway end his reign of terror......
 
And an interesting thing happens-  it _always_ happens; it happens so much that I can't figure out why they still try it!  But What happens is people stop watching.  Some folks like a two-parter; some like a three-parter.  _Some_ like to carry on the adventure for a whole season.  You can actually see it-- or you _could_, back when people still published their ratings.  You could see when the cliffhanger had enough and stopped watching.  You could see when the multi-part and full-season people stopped watching.
 
And within a season or two, the show died.
 
Why?  Because _no one_ likes it.  What is there to like in an infinite evil that our staunch and beloved heroes are always, always powerless to stop.  Of course, it could be that the unstoppable monster is always the same cookie-cutter super-intelligent monster, but absolutely  without a hint of uniqueness or originality.
 
They are all the Joker.  And people _outside_ of comic culture get bored with it and move on, because they want a story, and the status quo prevents that story from ever being resolved.  If it is, then we reboot immediately.
 
And the constant,Batman / Joker dynamic is the absolute epitome of maintaining an endless status quo, the key to witch is a character generic enough to be the perfect villain in the mind of every reader, because they can make him who and how they want him to be, and know that they will always right.
 
Popularity, the comfort of the status quo--  none of these justify a 'perfect villain' who has had zero character development or norable change in what?  Fifty years or so?
 
No, Sir.  With absolute respect and genuine friendship (you know I love you, Dude.    ), I submit that the Joker is one of the worst characters still in use, and only survives specifically because  the fans do not want anything that upsets the all-important status quo of comics.
 
 
 
I took that to heart; hence all that above. 
 
 
 
 
Again, _definitely_ not,a comic book guy, but _even I_ have seen him presented as 'certifiably insane' or given other mental illnesses as 'justification' for his actions and not- you know, locking him up for life or strapping him to the warm uncomfy chair.....
 
 
 
 
 
I won't rule that out, but I will add a rider that the most chaotic thing about him is every writer's refusal to actually develop the character yet use him as every possible type of villain, just to make certain no other writer can create a functioning character out of all this, either.
 
 
 
Yeah.  As an outsider looking in, I one-hundred percent agree with that.  However, that doesn't really do anything to bolster the idea that the Joker should continue to be used, incorrigible; unobtainable. 
 
 
 

Real men RIP their shirts open before jumping into the fray!
 

The thing is dealing with the martial arts world, heroic and super heroic is muddled.

That outfit just _screams_ "waiting for the police to arrive and tell me that my wealthy husband has died under mysterious circumstances...."
 
 

Greetings everyone. I wanted to announce the official start of my work on Strike Force Organizations, a sequel to 2016's Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.
  The book will focus on three groups, the Blood, the Circle, and METE (all previous presented in Champions Organization products for early editions of Champions. My intent is to combine the content written for the PDFs with content Aaron wrote for his proposed (but never complete) Strike Force Universe series of books.
  I intend to update the content to HERO 6e, update the text to correct any errors and issues, and update any references to current game mechanics. I will not fill in any gaps -- I am not so arrogant as to assume what Aaron would have wanted, but I will acknowledge areas where content is lacking (if such a need arrives). I hope to find updated character sheets for many of the early NPCs, but will work with what I have.
  I also intend to present bases, vehicles, scenarios, and villains, just as they all appeared in the early releases.
  I will change names (for example, METE will be called Alien Research Laboratories) in accordance to Aaron's wishes and per his list of corrections for setting names.
  This product will be released as a collaborative work between Surbrook Press and High Rock Press.
Finally, the book will contain stats for Prowlers & Paragons UE and I hope to have a P&PUE add-on detailing all of the characters from Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.

PS: that last item has already been discussed with Jason. I am seeking to support two systems that I greatly enjoy and I hope to draw both fan-bases together to support this product.

PSS: I will endeavor to provide frequent updates. Please bug me via this thread if I forget.

I'd be happy to run HERO again, assuming my players aren't expecting a superhero game. I'll do fantasy or scifi instead.

Yep.  The ads have gotten so bad that I grab the link and PM them to myself here and watch them later.
 
 
😕
 
 

OH MY _GOD_, YES!
 
 YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYWSYESYES
 
YES, YES, _YES_!
 
Sign me _straight_ the #\'( up, _PLEASE_!
 
 

I feel that. We can't even have our own take or spin on things, because there are a thousand pop culture police who think it has to be a certain way, who are invested in it. Feels like a church sometimes.
 
I honestly felt that way with 5th edition, when Steve was dispensing advice and rules questions on the forums. I mean it was kind of nice, but once there's an official written word and an official ruling on everything, and someone you can ask... it kind of takes a lot of the creativity out of it.
 
As a python programmer I find that too. Programming is a lot of fun when you can roll your own solutions, but when there's one true way, and mechanical tools to enforce that one true way, and a legion of fanatical rage-nerds who will criticize anything that they don't consider a best practice, it sucks a lot of the joy out of it. Even when the language has official support for a feature, I can't use it because "not supposed to".
 
The most fun part of a geeky hobby is doing your own investigation, acquiring your own learning, developing your own interpretation. You can't really do that with a pop culture juggernaut, and the more complete the canonical corpus is, the less freedom there is.
 
I guess you were talking more about the whole subculture thing. The social side of it was never that big for me, because I knew relatively few people who were into gaming and I always wished there were more, or that people around me were more accepting of it than I perceived them to be.
 
I guess the proverb is true: be careful what you wish for!

If you're looking for a particular cell phone, by trying to ping all the phones, then you'd probably want Mind Scan with the Computer class of mind. 
 
If you're trying to replicate the "police looking for a cell phone based on its IMEI and which tower it pings", that would more likely be Computer Programming for its "connect to the internet to find X" aspects, and having a subpoena or a good relationship with the cell phone company would help.  In this case, you're not finding the phone itself but looking through someone else's records of where the phone is.
 
Generally speaking, if you're detecting an (edit) Active (/edit) analog signal and trying to locate its source, get two directional receivers (Detect Radio Transmissions), put them in two different locations, then do some trigonometry.  (Here's an interesting question: in this particular case, would you need to buy Ranged on those receivers?  I would say no, because you're detecting transmissions where you are.  The transmission is coming to you, and you're trying to find which direction it's coming from.)

Soooo, where do I send my resume

The only youtube I watch any more is through forum links.  I refuse to turn off adblockers and have them shove deeply offensive idiocy into my viewing (especially in 2024, which will quickly become a Hell Year for that as the election nears), nor will I pay for the "privilege" of not doing so.  Thankfully most of my old favorite channels are mirrored elsewhere already, and some of the other ones have announced they're doing the same soon.  They can have my money directly through Patreon and the like.   

Mind you. the hubby and I both sing this when looking at bourbons or wines...

That outfit just _screams_ "waiting for the police to arrive and tell me that my wealthy husband has died under mysterious circumstances...."
 
 

You can go longhand:
 
Shape shift, regeneration, maybe some personal defense that doesn't help the guy in the costume--
 
Or you could claim "instant change", only into one outfit-  _this_ outfit, and handwave the altered shaoes of stretchy people and morphy people.
 
Or you can do what I do and declare it sfx of  havibg a super suit, available if you want it.