TheDarkness

Flash died in the Crisis. Continuity is nonexistent in the comic, I'm pretty forgiving of it in the show. The show would have to work hard to have less continuity than a comic where the second flash, many decades later, is written to have created the first flash, all revealed after the second flash has died and come back. And the entire world the first flash is from has ceased to exist in the same form.

And then the speed force. The speed force could simply be renamed speed midichlorians.

That said, I love both the comic and the show.

I totally see what you're saying. At this stage, and for the same reasons, I'm using CIDs more for world building than for plot. For plot, there are so many variables, a CID would be unwieldy, but the existing CIDs can help, by way of knowing, well doing this would suddenly involve this other person, who players may or may not want to get involved in what's going on.

It also works well for the game I'm getting ready to run. The characters are in a city that, if you are aware of the ins and outs of the city, you have an advantage over outsiders who may not know the balance of power and 'gentlemen's agreements' in place between the major players to maintain that balance of power.

However, it is also a city fiercely proud of their incredibly spicy, but still wonderfully flavorful barbecue. Meatphistopholes would do best to stay away! If he doesn't want to end up burnt ends...

That's true. But, as a gamer who has been railroaded into being the designated game-master for 20+ years now, I will say that a lot of players don't advance their own agendas or ideas. I strongly prefer players, and groups, that are willing to ask questions, insert their own presumed details, or make assertions about how a scenario will play out. I also like characters that have agendas that inform future plots. Those games are more dynamic, there is more give and take, and we're actually collaborating as I push the plot forward (though, sometimes they are pushing the plot forward with the impression that I'm some kind of super-genius mastermind who foresaw their perfect game. Ha!). With may players, especially inexperienced ones, you lay out an open-ended situation, or a scenario with multiple possible avenues to pursue, and they don't do anything. You end up having to prompt them with potential courses of action. When I do this, I'm 100% open to their proposing a completely different solution than the quick ideas I threw out, but they usually just go with "multiple choice." While some game-masters are rail-road engineers, often the situation you describe is created by the players.

No, you must be mistaken. Players never create problems. You know this by the way they say "I'm roleplaying my character," just after doing something that their complications just don't explain.

It would be interesting to actually remake the character they think they made for them. The thief who steals from the group, but only when in a room with good lighting and lots of mirrors while other characters are actually able to see him from every angle is really just a kleptomaniac who can backstab. The overconfident character who simply charges into battle even when there is no chance is clearly suicidal. The character who always has to wander off, obviously they are actually autistic. I'm sorry, you cannot fight this round. You are not wearing your Tuesday shirt. It is bothering you too much to even consider fighting. You must find your Tuesday shirt.

Could have been this old thread of mine, point 5:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/87378-translating-characters-from-fiction-and-the-secret-of-having-fun-in-roleplaying/?do=findComment&comment=2312223

But I never formulated it as well as you did, especially not with real life examples.

 

Choice is the important part and what seperates this from Railroading.

A Railroad leads from A, via B, C, D to E.

A CID instead would have A branch out into 2-3 options (instead of and three options for C and D as well. E in turn will change (slightly to heavily) based on wich path was choosen. The big issue here is - there will be a lot of unchoosen paths. So you end up developing ideas that may never actually see the light of day.

 

I often find the unlimited choices overwhelming. It can be nice to have a few options to choose from, knowing that the choice will mater end. More then having unlimited choices, with no or no clear effect on what will happen.

Having written that, it does strike me as an issue of Hero Character design. Indeed it is very common to use certain guidelines when developing a character: You make a Gadgeteer, Blaster, Brick, Mentalist, Mage, ...

The character class or archetype is the very first step in the CID that is Roleplaying. Even if that step is just choosing a premade Character from a set of Demo Characters*

 

 

*Note: Always have more Demo Characters then intended players. That means there will always be at least some choice and you might have room for one more player.

Totally agree on the railroading thing. I also think as the players realize just how far the GM is willing to go to let their decisions count, especially the good ones that they know totally mess up the GM's plans, they will occasionally be quite willing to oblige the occasional direction from the GM that leads to an interesting place while not sacrificing the players conceptions of their characters.

As for the difficulty of CID complexity, I think you are spot on there. It is a nice tool to flesh out a number of elements, and can give the gm who values being able to deal with unseen circumstances without railroading an added tool that gives them flexibility and gives the world depth, even if all the elements don't come into play. It definitely requires more front end work, but I feel it will save work after by making consequences and options much clearer for all. And it doesn't pigeonhole the players or the GM into preconceptions, but gives a format for individualization of lots of aspects.

And yes, that was the thread I found it in, definitely a good find for me, I really needed a tool like this.

Right now, I'm thinking it may have good applications for complications. What does the CID of a dependent look like? The rare substance that can hurt the flying brick probably doesn't come from only one source or location, or maybe it does, where does it come from, how is it obtained, how is it synthesized?

My latest thinking on the earlier CID examples, especially the KS: Area underworld(or supers, whatever) is that there will be times where the GM isn't even filling in the added spaces, the player with the skill and the CID is adding in details and links in the chains, for example, after realizing that this contact is stuck working for someone who is a contact for an underworld boss, they must take into account that their own contact may be receiving bad information where it relates to that boss. As the player learns this, they can simply add it on. As GM, I could see it as necessary to occasionally check the the CID charts players have for their skills, as they might end up having more info on them than the GM personally remembers. Or natural errors and assumptions that could spark ideas for future scenarios or subplots.

I don't like David Tennant, or more specifically, consider him a character actor of no particular note.

Can't stand Heinlien's juvenile fiction(meaning, the stuff written for young boys).

Don't like Star Trek DS9.

Have yet to see a sequel to a comic book based movie that was not worse than the original, and always derivative of it.

I am only tolerating the very idea of something called a speed force because I'm enjoying the flash show.

Oh, yeah, the last time I liked Wolverine was in the 1980s.

And I don't have any particular opinion either way regarding the back to the future movies, which is apparently unheard of.

Finally, I can't stand Stan Lee.

Randomly putting this out there in case you find it useful.

I like Lucius' build.

I don't care for the dragon style kung fu template in the ultimate martial artist book, but that's because I'm nitpicky and have done a fair bit of dragon style. That said, I also don't like the touch of cotton balls, so I'm obviously odd.

Anyway, in case it's useful.

Actual dragon style kung fu has seizing, throwing, striking, and raking attacks. There are also kicks referred to as relating to the dragon's tail. All of those tend to work by working the entirety of your body against only a segment of your opponents.

Now, I must go. If I stay too long in one place, the cotton balls will find me.

I have a very basic excel file I use for vehicles, but it's only set up for things up to tank size.(Since size determines other stats, there's a dropdown selection for size, I've been meaning to add a worksheet for vehicles the next six sizes up, but life being busy, and me not needing larger vehicles...)

Basically, you select the size on the sheet, it automatically fills in the determined stats, then you set the stats at what you want them at, list the powers and their costs, buy the speeds up or down depending. Anyway, I'm not sure where to upload it, but if someone can clue me in, I'll upload it, it's basic, but if someone finds it useful, I'd be happy to put it up.

I like both Daredevil and Flash. Flash, a bit of a romp much of the time, and  is lighthearted, which is faithful to the source material. Daredevil is not, which is also faithful, at least to the more popular eras of DD.

As for mind control and games vs. shows, I'm pretty sure there have been a score of issues of Flash where Flash came up with a variety of one offs to deal with the mind control. They've only been fighting for years. Heck, the 'willpower' answer is always kind of lame. Mind Control is the only power that occasionally gets totally neutralized in comics by 'I try really hard not to be controlled', but that is true to the source material. I actually prefer that the show used the guy who made cold guns, fusion guns, friction resistant suits, etc., to build mental defense. Heck, they're pretty fragile, I'd say that's worth a disadvantage.

In most source material, be it sci fi, comics, or Champions, the answer to mind control is often "try hard not to be controlled and be a lead character'. This is the equivalent of Daredevil arm wrestling the Abomination and winning due to an adrenaline rush. But, I will take it, because mind control as a plot device is highly problematic.

Mind you, I AM NOT doing the build for any of this. I just want to watch Flash.

I loved the scene of Cisco coaching Wells on being evil Wells. It was funny watching the same actor play not being able to play the character he played all last season.

I'm thinking Pinecone meant DCV, Defensive Combat Value.

And, to be clear, Link IS NOT male, Link has been males. Link is not an "established male property", Link is a reincarnated spirit who so far, has been different males.

And I really think that you are basing your argument on its own narrative. Sales were lackluster AND feminists apparently said something. Your narrative is that the latter, not the former, is causative to the creation of Linkle, while the game's creator, based on his own words, seems to be trying to expand a market of buyers, which would suggest the former has some role. If we're going to examine your narrative, we must compare it to other narratives.

Additionally, I'm curious how much influence feminists have on a Japanese company and Japanese game designers. It's been some time since graduate school, but at that point, feminism had not had nearly the influence in Japan that it had in other places. Perhaps this has changed, as I said, it's been a while.

Lastly, one game with a preponderance of female supporting characters, that then gets a female lead, in an industry in which this is highly atypical, is not spite or an unfair situation, it is just a game that has mostly or entirely female characters. If the whole industry suddenly got rid of male lead characters, and switched to female supporting characters, this would perhaps fit your narrative, but that is not the case.

Additionally, playing up the resurrections that are Link could open new opportunities. Doctor Who is a good example of a story that used multiple incarnations(regenerations) of the same character in the same story.

Re: TheDarkness post 1982.

 

I am glad you and I agree on the Pacman and Mrs. Pacman issue. 

 

I think your citing of the Batgirl and Supergirl examples are not as clear cut as you would want them to be. While I can not claim any particularly strong knowledge of the origins of those characters (I am not old enough to have witnessed their respective births nor interested enough in them to have invested time to memorize them), I can claim a stronger set of knowledge of the modern characters. And since we are talking about Modern Feminists discussing modern issues, having modern claims I think is only advisable, if not mandatory. 

 

So, lets look at Barbara Gordon - Batgirl (Pre-Killing Joke). Is she a less effective version of Batman? Well, only in so much as the Robins are less effective versions of Batman. And even less so than the first two Robins. We have a young woman who, of her own volition, decides to don a costume and fight for her city. She comes from a healthy family (or as healthy a Gotham family can be) with loving parents. That is fairly different from Batman. She is intelligent and independent - eschewing any desires to seek her father's approval or most any man or woman's approval. She is a capable fighter, too. While I can't in good conscious say she is as hyper-capable as Batman, I can't say in good conscious that ANY DC character is - even Superman! 

 

So if we are setting the gold standard as her needing to match up exactly with Batman, then we are asking too much, I think. But if we set it so that she parallels other male characters in her category (Bat-family members), she is just as capable and impactful as any of the Robins. Comparing apples to apples, I think the issue falls apart. Essentially what I am saying here is that when we look at the character critically and not through pre-conceived notions of narrative, we see a strong young woman who made an active and personal choice to become a hero. A woman who originally did show without the input of Batman and without the approval of her other male role model. It would be tough to say that she is somehow not a good role model for women everywhere; even if she doesn't punch as hard as Bruce. 

 

Following the Killing Joke events, she becomes an even stronger role model and diverges a lot from the original Batman knockoff. We get a character who is instrumental to the Bat-family, a woman who has overcome extreme anguish to be an even more effective warrior, someone who commands respect and someone who actively controls her own destiny. There are occasions she when directly disagrees with others (Gordon and Bruce specifically) and forges her own path that works out well for her. She, as much as Nightwing and perhaps more so, broke out of the Batman-sidekick role. That is a powerful role-model for anyone - girls most certainly included. So again, I find the narrative that diminishes Ms. Gordon just because she isn't punching in Superman's league, much less The Bat's (cause his is higher) to be missing the whole point. Such rhetoric is too self obsessed with its pre-established talking points to see what is in front of them. 

 

The Supergirl bits I know far less about (that is saying a lot since I don't know THAT much about Barbara, either). But I have seen Supergirl do incredible feats. And compared to her name-sake, Clark, she only lacks in one area: experience. But is that a bad thing? It lets us tell a fresh and new tale; a more relatable tale. And lets not forget that Supergirl is a character that has done things that even superman hasn't like removing a Red Lantern Ring from herself and surviving the ordeal. 

 

There is the follow up point that we can ignore all of my above points by driving home the idea that the above are "knockoff [characters] never intended to compete with the original." And it is here that I say we are trying to have our cake and eat it, too / that there exists no solution to the modern Feminist demand here. Why so? Well, we can look at every character who has in-universe 'clones'. This would be Batman with his Robins and Batgirl, etc. and Superman with the various other Kryptonians (Kara, Krypto, etc). These characters are not normally designed to "compete" with the original character. But is that because they are female or because they are not the original character? I think it is deeply flawed to assume the former and ignore the latter. None of the Robins were designed to compete with Batman. But we don't claim any level of issue with that. But the critique, if applied to the other male characters would mean that Tim Drake should have replaced the Batman or that if he was given a spinoff, it should have been designed to somehow "compete" with the original title. Sure we could cite the fact that a lot of these characters are given their own spinoffs that do "compete" with the original titles and that it is true for male and female characters, but that never seems to be enough. So, what is the demand? And how exactly is Batgirl not meeting them? 

 

In the case of Linkle specifically, we have a new and unique Female character. She is one of many female heroes (Impa, Sheik, Lana, Zelda, Ruto, Agitha, Midna, Fi). I believe all of them are fully playable with their own story arcs - I know for sure half of them are in the original title. So, she is joining a field full of unique and dynamic female heroes. But there is only one male hero in the original and three in the follow up assuming Toon Link and King Hyrule get an independent playable story arc. So, I repeat again that we have a game series that is not lacking for really positive female appearance - indeed, it is extremely weighted in favor of positive female roles. But that isn't enough? No, the sole positive male role must also be taken away? Is that not a bit extreme to ask of a game series that is positive and empowering? 

 

As to the exact role of Linkle, is she part of the Link Continuum (my words)? I don't know. Nor does the author of that page. We do not know the plot of the series yet. But assuming it runs like the original, there will be some baddy who is such a threat or does something extremely stupid and forces all these distinct characters from different timelines to be mashed together (Not all the Heroes are from the same game - despite being from the same franchise - and most games take place generations apart from each other). It could be that Linkle, Toon Link, and H.W. Link are all independent reincarnations of the Link Continuum. 

 

But lets assume she is not part of the Link Continuum and just an independent character: why is that a bad thing? We have a character who is unique, independent and, if done like the other female characters, fully capable. She will also be a character, who if done like the other female characters, will be playable and whose independent quests are needed to save the day and complete the game. Is she the title character? Well, no. But neither is Link ^^. 

 

All that said, could Link be a female character in the main franchise? Yeah. I have little issue with this. It would be different. But if we are simply doing it to be different are we actually achieving feminist goals? "The newest Link is exactly the same as all the old ones but sans the penis! Enjoy" is exactly just a reskinning of the character. It isn't empowering to just penis chop a character cuz rezonz. And your argument in all of post 1982 I think reflects that when we talk about how simply doing a gender swap isn't good enough - there needs to be something more. 

 

What is that something more? That something more is having a character who is independent of the title character. So independent that she stands on her own without referent because once there is referent there is naturally going to exist some stupid pissing contest. No, there can't be a referent. Thus the real ideal isn't that we reskin a character but create new ones; ones like Wonder Woman. Female leads who are leads because that is their normal and natural state. Ones who never have to worry about being less than "--man" because there is not comparison to draw. 

 

It is in this regard that I think Linkle falls apart. My real criticism of Linkle is that the character was created simply to appease a group of people who can't be appeased. And the real solution was simply to make an already existing female character a bigger part of the series. Zelda, for example. She is the Title character in the series for a reason. But of course when (counter) requests were made to just elevate Zelda, self described feminist railed against that too. There is no happy medium and there is no possible solution that doesn't breed more into this misguided attempt to put disempowered-woman-narrative ahead of the truth. 

 

 

Soar

A few things.

The reason I used the examples of Batgirl and Supergirl before retconning(something I tried to make clear, but probably understated) was because they are more germane to the discussion. Linkie is not a unique character. Linkie is a Link knockoff. Aside from the weapon, nothing has changed, except that the character is not the main hero of any story, but a skin added to an already existing game ported to a game system.

Further stories involving later writers writing Batgirl and Supergirl dealt with changing markets and changing views. That Linkie more resembles the sort of attempt at this done when Wonder Woman was the Justice League's secretary(because, you know, there couldn't be a better use of someone who can get the truth out of anyone) suggests that this is a fair criticism of the Linkie character: the fact that it is decades behind similar media in how the attempt was done.

Now, I totally agree with certain aspects of what you are saying. As soon as we make 'Bat-Amerasian', the referent is always going to be the main thing.

Markdoc addressed the issue of derivative characters(not clones at all) far better than I could. The main difference I will cite is that, while you are correct, the derivative characters will not be able to compete, the original characters have other characters that, from early on, both in their parent company and outside, there would be heated argument whether they could beat them. Batman or Captain America, Captain America or Wolverine(before Wolverine became ridiculous), Hulk and Superman. If Batgirl can't beat Batman, we know she can't beat other characters that assume are on a par with Batman. In this manner, the female characters, for decades, were never the equal of the male characters in their same category, because as soon as Supergirl is seen as tougher than the Hulk, she is tougher than Superman. So the problem becomes, if you use derivative characterization to market to women, you place a clear ceiling on their effectiveness to prevent harming the main property, the character they are derived from*. Now, if later, they turn Linkie into something more, they will have to more and more differentiate her from Link.

However, on another related point, Link was never one person, so it is not 'penis chopping' if SOME incarnations are not male, it's true to the character as written, if not yet realized.

Yes, there are many female heroines. BUT, Link is the primary hero, the lead hero, the flagship of the brand, as it were. There are plenty of stories with many female supporting characters/heroes, and a male lead, and there are no shortage of those that are entirely sexist in tone. To use another example, there are plenty of stories of indigenous people saved by white heroes whose characters, at least the heroic ones, are mostly indigenous. There's also Tom Cruise saving the samurai. This has generally been rightly criticized for similar reasons. You can have plenty of heroic characters of one type in a story, and still end up making them window dressing for the lead character.

As for what Linkie is, the game designer, as quoted in that article, is quite clear, that this is a market test of whether a larger female role in the future will sell. And, I would say, if she is Link, there is really no reason not to just call her Link and show some daring.

Either backing a new female character that they were going to put in as the lead hero in a big game(not a ported game with the character added as a market test), or simply making Link incarnate as a woman, would have been better than making a knock off of Link.

Finally, the character was not, according to the sources as far as I'm aware, made to appease to anyone(the appease argument is, itself, a bit of a narrative, I would point out, not that it does not ever happen). It was made to test the market to see if a larger role for female characters was economically viable, using women who buy the games as a test market. Since, as you point out, there are already many female heroines in the story, the only thing they could be testing is a female main hero. Except they had no reason not to use Link. Other than fear of loss of revenue for making Link female. So they made a knock off. They may very well later turn Linkie into something more, but as it stands, Linkie is entirely a knockoff, derivative character used to make their own customers prove whether or not they will buy game if they make the lead hero a woman sometimes in their flagship games. If we are referring to what is modern, we can only discuss Linkie as she has been presented, not the Linkies that may yet be. And what we have is a woman in a Batman outfit in a non-flagship character role with a few small cosmetic differences from the main character, but totally wearing his clothes and bearing his name.

*A totally unrelated point, but the Supergirl/Superman thing always bugged me. The difference in mass between men and women has certain physical effects, but there is no reason to assume that, if your powers are derived from yellow suns, that your pecs have any bearing whatsoever on your strength. Supergirl should totally be on equal footing with Superman unless he's somehow getting more yellow sun. /rant

Frozen: Song of Fire and Ice

Back to School Musical

Sid and Nancy Drew

Malcolm X-men

Being There and back again

On the Ms. Pacman thing, I agree, though I think that's more a case of picking a bad example. If they just went with Supergirl or Batgirl as the example, they'd be on the money: a character who is originally written as a less effective female version of the original(all retcons aside). Pacman and Ms. Pacman are not good examples. I question the sanity of anyone who sees themselves in dot eating spheroids beset by ghosts.

As for the Link/Linkie thing, the article begins by pointing out that Link is a spirit reincarnated into different heroes. All of whom have been male. Linkie is not a female Link, but a copy. The article then goes on to point out that the game she is being released in is "a ported 3DS version of a spin-off game of the original Zelda series." When they could simply make the next Link female.

The article then quotes the creator discussing this as a test of whether the main game might be able to support a female protagonist by way of seeing if women will buy it(assuming they don't already own the game it is ported from). I understand that they must make money off of their products, but the problem with this logic is that it assumes that, if there aren't enough, then the main game cannot support a female Link(being a reincarnated spirit and all), not because the women who do buy games won't buy it, this seems fairly unlikely, but because men won't, which may or may not be true, but if so, goes beyond narrative into actually a measure of the gaming market and attitudes. When the men making the games take seriously that the narrative is correct, they may very well be right, though I hope they are wrong.

The article actually does state that Link is a blank slate for the player. But it is not immaterial that it is a male blank state.

I think when the article discusses wanting a real female 'Hero', the capitalization is on purpose. There are other heroes, both male and female in the game, but Link is The Hero. And is a reincarnated being. While Linkie is not a female Link, but a knockoff, without question. I really don't think this is a case of feminists getting what they asked for at all, this, in every way, appears to be a Batgirl, when The Hero is actually a disembodied spirit that apparently can be placed into any worthy hero, and so the whole knockoff is not necessary to make a female Link, The Link spirit can simply be put in a female hero.

They are criticizing using a knockoff when they could make the actual character female or male any time they wanted. I think it is a fair criticism. Generally, the Batgirls are not a case of a gender swap, but a knockoff never intended to compete with the original. There's a real history of this with comic books and video games(and movies, and TV shows). By seeming to do exactly that, the game's designers(or more exactly, the add on to an already existing game's designers) open themselves to fair criticism.

So, the main point is that Linkie is a knock-off that exists solely to market test, using women as a target group, of a character that could be any gender. The test market bit is off of the game designer's own statement.

Putting a dress on a popular male character and calling that equivalent investment to the amount of work into making the male character compelling has a very poor history. There is 'has equivalent powers, and is thus equal' and 'the company has actually invested themselves to develop compelling female characters that hold the central role'.

Usually, the only time those characters become good is when people other than their 'creators'(the people who put a dress on Superman) take those lame characters with little investment into making them compelling, and actually invest in their development more than 'hey, she has all the same powers(usually just a little less)'.

Putting a dress onto a character and giving them weapons just like every other character in the series is not the same level of investment, which tends to be what feminists would like to see.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai

The Golden Child

Dark City(more noir than pulp)

L.A. Confidential(noir I guess, not really pulp)

The Mouth of Madness(Lovecraftian, perhaps more noir and horror than pulp, but, as far as I'm concerned, one of the few stories to come anywhere close to getting anything like the Lovecraft feel)

I've been struggling with the same thing(the relative strangeness of combat speed for vehicles). I toyed with the idea of using "relative speed" as a benchmark, but that might prove hard, at least for those segments where the uber quick and people of varying speeds are in the same area.

 

I think it depends on the version - as I said it's years since I played, but I seem to recall that you needed to make various morale tests due to combat results, or special effects like fear, but not due to circumstances. So if a warlord charges into a unit of greatswords and tears them to shreds, the village levy will still march cheerfully to certain doom if you want to "hold him up for a turn"

 

cheers, Mark

 

That is correct for the more recent versions as well. Unless the warlord causes fear or terror, which require a roll to charge, the village levy will charge until the levy's gonna break.

Sorry, had to.

Well I haven't played Warhammer in many a long year, but as far as I know, it doesn't have morale rules as such. Warhammer first ed. had a stat called cool, which was used for a variety of things, including morale checks induced by fear-causing monsters, getting beat up in melee and similar specific cases and another called willpower which was used to recover if you failed a cool test. It also had a stat called Leadership which was used for characters to help lead units and for performing maneuvers. It's been even longer since I played the roleplaying game (though I still have the rules and the first campaign they put out) but if I recall correctly, it had the same stat.s.

 

Cheers, Mark

In Warhammer, if my memory serves me correctly, if a unit loses cohesion due to losses or other circumstances, or suffers losses over a certain percentage, a Leadership roll is required to prevent a rout.

Also, in regards to magic, it seems to me that someone investing in a number of trained pikemen, feeding them, listening to them go on and on about their pikes, would also invest in magical protection, even a spell user or more of their own.

Never mind the thought of how much more damage a formation could do if one of their lines were spell users.

EDIT: also, magic may entirely change livestock movement and taxation in new and exciting ways!

Comic book storylines that have existed for more than ten years, with or without time travel, have equal or less continuity than time travel stories.

The Darkness one thing to bear in mind is that the martial art maneuvers originally were developed to represent cinematic style of mainly kung fu of the Chop Suey style of movies. It took me alonh time to get that concept my head. Its not impossible to have maneuver that are more realistic, its just going to take more work.

Yeah, I had noticed that, and I'm okay with that. I'm working on two campaigns, one a superheroic one, one a Dark Champions, gritty one.

The goal with the ground fighting, with the first, is not hyper-realism, but still broadening hth for variety and a fun challenge(yes, your hero is a great martial artist, but on the ground, this guy you're fighting is better, and let the struggle begin). Towards that, I think I may be able to do it by mirroring the stand up fighting rules. So dodge and block might have their own terms, locks and chokes will be largely unchanged.

As I said, striking is the biggest hitch. As it stands, the better striker will, given the chance to strike, maintain that advantage, and that's going to kill the ground fighting feel. (It doesn't help that a number of the people who will likely be playing are martial artists, myself included. We all know how hard it is to actually strike on the ground. It doesn't need to be detailed, or even realistic, but it does need to 'feel' right).

The other issue I appear to be facing is that, while I see the point values for the maneuvers and how to build them according to the point values in the build a power section of The Ultimate Martial Artist, I'm playing sixth edition, and I'm not sure if those values still apply. And those values seem somewhat arbitrary and divorced from the system, but that's probably because I don't grasp the build behind them. I suppose I could build the maneuvers like powers and see how they compare. The values in the martial maneuvers seem arbitrary to me, but I could be wrong.

Once that's done, I think it will suffice for the Dark Hero campaign, because it will not be unusual to have to decide whether it's a good idea to try to go to the ground with that guy with the knife.

Sometimes it can be a pain though too especially if you're a GM. Version A you may have accounted for but version B technically they found a loop hole.

Yeah, I can totally see that. I'm kind of notorious for my hatred of people gaming systems to have an edge. I work hard to make the fun of my game being the combination of people creating a fun story. I do not cater to people wanting it to be about infantile wish fulfillment and sad little dreams of power. Escalate and I have to escalate, and only one of us doesn't have a point limit. And, all points earned and spent on new things still need to be role played at some level wherever possible.

Which means I tend to have a stable player base for a campaign, but woe to he who undermines role play by pursuing roll play. I will go to bat for the player who does builds that don't necessarily make him or her more powerful, but that add atmosphere and fun, or simple builds that are just intended to make their hero the hero they picture. Trying to play accountant, specifically constantly doing so, gets old fast.

Back on topic:

I'm really leaning toward the trip manuever for the trip wire. It seems like an exact fit that is intended to do exactly what the object does. Entangle on it's own does not(the falling part specifically), and the roll for environment change also seems a bit off in effect for me(yes, if they fail the roll, they fall, but the roll itself feels off to me). The key with tripwire is the perception roll, making it a DEX roll seems to lessen this to me when there is an actual maneuver that exactly does what a trip wire does as is.

As a point of order, why did E1 Wells vanish when Eddie killed himself?  Eddie was Thawne's ancestor.  If Thawne never existed, he would not have offed E1 Wells, who would have proceeded onwards.  Of course, if Thawne did not take over E1 Wells, Flash should not exist yet anyway.  Time Travel tends to fall apart when looked at too closely.

Stephen Hawkings wrote a short essay a long time back explaining that, according to his understanding, there was nothing to prevent you from going back in time to kill your grandfather before your father was conceived. And succeeding.

He hated that there was nothing he could find to prevent it(other than the whole traveling through time bit), but he said that, according to his understanding, there was nothing to stop it.

Ooooh, missed the damage negation build above! Nice! You're absolutely right, that would solve the striking issue!

Thank you!