Tjack

Give it a while, you’ll see it. Three Minutes Later I just realized that Archer was talking about a Solar power system for his house and not some game mechanics thing. In the words of Emily Littela Oh, that’s very different....Never mind.

Fan4tastic Four. Written and directed by men who said they don’t like and don’t read Comic Books. And it shows. Take one of the most upbeat books and concepts around. “A family explores the unknown for science and adventure.” Now turn it into body horror, disfunction and BTW keep the group apart until the last ten minutes or so. For all the beatings the other FF movies have taken at least they were fun. And it’s not like the concept is impossible, the best FF movie yet is The Incredibles.

I had an idea to toss at you, if you don’t mind. A decorated highly trained combat veteran loses his family to a slaver raid and decides to “punish” the guilty instead of following the more civilized forms of justice. To this end he recruits others who have exceptional skills (Karate Kid) or racial abilities (Chameleon Boy or Phantom Girl) he believes could be useful. In order to keep any friends or family from retribution he encourages the members of his team to conceal their identities from everyone...including each other. It’s basically the Punisher forms the Avengers. But it gives you a few things. A reason for the group to exist and characters to have differing skills and powers, an NPC to hand out assignments and equipment, and a reason for masked heroes to exist in a universe that’s never seen them before. Use it, don’t use it, just trying to help. Best of luck.

There’s a line in a Spider Robinson novel where one character is told that another character has never read the novels of John D. McDonald. He says something like “You lucky bastard, to have all of that in front of you.” That pretty much sums it up for me.

It has to be my first one, Babylon Squared. I was flipping channels by hand standing in front of my 16 inch black & white set when I hit a scene of a firefight and a guy with what looked like an M-60 telling his friend “Get outta here!” “This is my stand!” This is the fight I was born for. I WAS HOOKED. Babylon 5 became my show, and Michael Garibaldi was my guy. Every week I was glued to that tiny dimly lit screen. No cool spaceships to be seen, no flashy special effects. It was the dialog, the characters that held me. I had been watching for about a year when I saw the show at a friends house and realized that Garabaldi’s uniform was a different color! That show kept me sane during a very hard time in my life. Bad job, worse apartment, I had broken up with someone I cared for. But for one hour watching that show and for about an hour after I was happy. Things got better but I always loved that show. I had a chance to meet Bill Mumy years later at a convention and tried to thank him and tell him to never think what he did for a living was small or unimportant. I probably wasn’t making much sense, but I think he understood. He was a truly nice guy.

I did and it was yummy.

A sneaky trick I lucked into happened when I brought some mood music (Tubular Bells kind of stuff) to play for a horror episode on my boom box for a session. I turned it on very low before the game started while people were coming in and still talking and getting set up. I forgot to turn it back up when we started and was at an almost subliminal level. After the session everyone said the mood was much creepier than usual, I think if it was at a volume where the songs could be easily identified it wouldn’t have had the same impact.

Thank you, now I’m going to have ramen for lunch.

Guardians of the Galaxy (Movie version) is a good starting place for a rough and tumble universe (You may also want to check out Firefly, Babylon 5, and Andromeda.) but you still need a point of reference for the masked vigilante part. There have been superheroes in far future settings before but they generally aren’t operating outside the law. Such as the Legion of Superheroes working alongside the Science Police for example. Whether you call them Urban Superheroes, Vigilantes or Mystery Men, they have an internal logic set of rules that makes the idea work. Criminals in comics and the real world basically have two things in their favor. From street mugger to drug kingpin these are violence and anonymity. The first allows them to do whatever they want while the second keeps them from paying the consequence for their actions. “What happened sir?” “Someone hit me and took my money.” “Do you know who they were?” “No.” “If we find them will you testify against them?” “No, if I do they or someone else will take revenge.” This is the basis of all crime. The masked hero uses these two concepts against the criminals. They use the violence most people cannot muster to stop crime and cannot be identified or located by the criminal element who would retaliate. Now we have to move this to a Science Fiction setting. The only masked crime fighter in that genre I can think of is the more serious versions of Space Ghost. An unidentifiable person working from a secret location who targets pirates, drug & “human” traffickers and other criminals. Each of your characters will have to have a real reason to want a justice they can find no other way. And a method for making that happen. I wish you well.

You are exactly right, and that is the point that the entire writers room made to Gene repeatedly. Even pointing out to him that friction between characters like Spock and McCoy made the original series as great as it was.It was only after he stepped back from the day to day overseeing in later seasons that the writing got better. The series with the most interpersonal interaction, Deep Space Nine was in fact the best in the bunch. But the basics of the perfect, moneyless, “more evolved” society were mandates from Gene in the very beginning of TOS.

I’ve had this debate with others; The Federation’s economy is based on two things. First is the assumption of a source of infinite free energy and the second is an infinite source of free goods (via replicator technology) The rest of the Alpha quadrant is on the Latinum standard. This dichotomy is one of the things that leads Federation citizens into the “saints in paradise” mindset. The idea that humans are “more evolved” is bull. The common racial intolerance against other species and life forms shown by Starfleet officers, supposedly the best and brightest humanity has to offer is shown in every series. I enjoy Star Trek very much but the idealistic viewpoint Gene Roddenberry pushed for Next Gen doesn’t hold up.

Doesn’t he have a cousin who’s a reporter in Chicago?

Acid Rock.

You caught me putting on my headphones to listen to Jungle Boogie at a volume guaranteed to crack concrete.

“It’s time to land the Motherfucking Mothership!!!!”

Business.

To supplement what Oruncrest wrote, I would say that while all the cases mentioned have Hero Mode Only, that only Peter has only that. Billy also has the limitation of incantation, Don has Gestures and Focus and Bruce has an Activation Roll. These can lessen the total cost of the power set.

Instead of the all Shulkie all the time of the Comics ‘verse. The MCU’s She-Hulk, like the Mark Ruffalo portrayal may shift back and forth. If so having a talented actress in the role will be more important than finding a female wrestler with enough bulk.

Didn’t you ever hear...”Don’t pay the ferryman, till you get to the other side.”

Lunar.

I’m more into the Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan stuff than the hardcore Shaw Brothers but it always looked to me that they must have had some way of soaking up the damage. Possibly something like D&D’s Mage Armor or a low level force field based on Chi. I’m imagining something like “the Glow” from The Last Dragon (Bruce Leroy has “moves”.) Good luck and have fun.

Ya’ know it takes a pretty healthy ego to get on any stage in the first place. Then spend a good sized chunk of your life having casting people and directors tell you you’re not good enough while always being able to tell yourself that they’re wrong, until the day comes for your big breakthrough in an episode of CSI as a corpse. Then another bunch of years plugging away in indie films, when somebody notices and likes what you did. If you cram several people who’ve been thru this together at a location shoot over a few months....s#!t is gonna fly.

You do all realize that this topic has drifted into a bunch of middle aged white guys trying to decide the viewpoint of around a billion different people of color. Let’s just stick to the things we know...comic books, movies and role-playing games. So, I hear Kat Denning is going to play Darcy as a permanent supporting character in WandaVision.

I just watched a video on YouTube of sports figures from all around the world; English and Italian soccer, African rugby, American basketball and French tennis players, all giving the “Wakanda Forever” salute. It seems to have become a gesture of pride for people of color everywhere. I believe whatever Marvel decides to do, be it recast or replace the character, they better treat as carefully and respectfully as handling nitroglycerin during an earthquake.

“Haaaaaaaaaave you met Grond?!? You really need Neil Patrick Harris to do the line, but you get the idea.