Matt the Bruins

Re: The Secret History of America.

 

I'd definitely recommend making Manly Wade Wellman's fiction a priority if you're planning on having a folklore-based occult angle to the hidden history of America. DVDs of the TV series Carnivàle might also be a useful resource, more for mood and style than the actual mythology explored (though there is a Masonic angle to some parts).

Re: Suggestions needed: Animal super villains

 

The Platypus. People might laugh at the comical appearance of this egg-laying aquatic mammal, but that's before she gives them a taste of her venom spurs—dripping with agonizing poison that has no antidote!

Re: What Are Your Hero's Most Embarrassing Moments?

 

My DC Heroes ninja-esque martial artist was facing off against Batman knockoff villain Catman, who was holding a hostage. My character, never one to balk at bloodshed, lobbed a throwing star in a difficult trick shot intended to maim Catman's weapon hand and break the deadlock. Then I rolled double 1s.

 

The GM must have been feeling particularly cruel that day, as he ruled that my miss resulted in a bullseye to the hostage, who fell down stone cold dead.

 

It did make Catman retreat from the field of battle, convinced that my character was considerably more hardcore (and apparently psychopathic) than was actually the case. But I ended up playing out "on the run from the authorities" subplots for months afterwards before I could clear things up with the police and get exonnerated of murder charges.

Re: Surviving fall from orbit

 

Terminal velocity for a human in the horizontal position (face down or up) is 120MPH or so. I know I have no trouble breathing when traveling that fast on a highway with the wind in my face. The problem with breathing at higher altitudes is the low partial pressure of oxygen. This is why HALO skydivers carry oxygen tanks and masks with them.

 

Doesn't that speed assume a fall within fairly normal air pressure? If you're falling from 20+ miles up, there's going to be a much longer period of 1g acceleration with almost no friction to brake your speed until you're within a few miles of the surface.

 

In any event, to take one of our movie exampples, since Johnny Storm is both immune to any reasonable level of heat and routinely able to withstand the pressure stresses of flying at what appears to be much more than 120 MPH I'd guess the impact at the end is really all he has to watch out for.

Re: How many points does a person have?

 

I recall getting into a big disagreement with someone over the Storyteller system and what an "average" person would be like. My argument was that even the average person generally has a few things that he or she is better than average at, counterbalanced by other things they're worse at (witness the two left feet attached to my clumsy ass, which would argue for a lower-than-average base Dexterity offset somewhat by skills like Archery and Artistic Expression for specific tasks in which I have good hand-eye coordination). His argument was that the average person would have exclusively flat average attributes and skills across the board.

 

I pity him the restaurant and auto mechanic experiences that must inform that world view.

Re: Hulk vs Superman

 

If they get to call their relatives for help, the Hulk wins hands-down: Jennifer Walters shows up, reminds Superman that the Siegel and Schuster families won their lawsuit against DC for the Superboy trademark, and with his past gone he retroactively ceases to exist.

Re: Hulk vs Superman

 

The thing that mystified me about that big Superman/Wonder Woman fight is that the tiara isn't supposed to be magic as far as I'm aware. Now her bracelets and lasso both are, so I could see Diana taking Superman down with a maneuver using either. But given that he's survived multi-megaton hydrogen bombs blowing up within arm's reach, I don't think she'd be able to get past his invulnerability on brute force alone.

 

Ditto for the Hulk, by the way. The post-Crisis Superman has been shown to have a pain threshold WAY below his actual resistance to injury, so he can be hurt or staggered by a blow orders of magnitude lower than the aforementioned nuke. But I don't see the Hulk working up enough of a head of steam to get into the actual injury-causing range in the course of a fight that would fit in a single issue.

Re: Doctor Who - Time Lord Regeneration

 

Indeed, the amount of damage it take to trigger a regeneration varies wildly (from Sixth to Seventh it seems to involve falling over and getting a bump on the head).

Don't forget to factor in the collective ill will of millions of Doctor Who watchers—the Doctor is a telepath of sorts, after all.

Re: Who are your favourite Superhero Artists?

 

Mine would have to include (order depends on what mood I'm in):

 

Neal Adams

Frank Brunner

Michael Golden

Gene Ha

Scott Hampton

Bryan Hitch

Adam Hughes

Stuart Immonen

George Perez

Alex Ross

J. H. Williams III

Re: Heroes and Nukes!

 

52 kg for U-235, 15 kg for Plutonium 239. Hope he's cool with walking up and hitting the villain over the head with the arrow.

Re: Humans are "Special"

 

Maybe go Farscape style, with the human having mainly the ability to sell his plans to otherwise better educated, stronger peers.

Don't forget the other arena the human on Farscape outdid all others in: going batshit insane. For conflicts strong is good, tough is good, fast and smart are better, but in my experience the fight often goes to he who is craziest and least predictable.

 

In a way, irrationality/faith may be a big human advantage in the major comic book settings. It always seems that Earth's diverse cultures have spawned (or attracted) a huge smorgasbord of gods and other supernatural entities whereas if alien cultures have religions with tangibly extant divinities at all they tend to involve at best a small handful of such beings. Earth tends to be the nexus point where multiple dimensions are most easily accessed, and in most cases the practice of magic seems more developed there than anywhere else. Humans dream, and in fiction those dreams often provide inspiration and foresight of the proper course of action. Similarly, humanity tends to get earmarked for vast latent psychic or evolutionary potential, though there are usually advanced alien races (the Guardians, the Watchers) that outdo us in that respect.

 

Having rendered the galaxy deaf mankind conquers the stars!

They'll be grateful for their ruptured auditory receptors when the mass suicide-inspiring wave of "It's a Small World" radio broadcasts hits 10 years after the first Rock & Roll signals.

 

This is true. If Scifi has taught us anything, it's that all alien races want to have sex with us.

Really, who can blame them if we're always sending Sigourney Weaver and Ben Browder into space? :whip:

Re: What was your best plot twist

 

I think the best plot twist I ever sprang on players was when I was running a DC Superheroes game with an extended story arc about a group of Asian super-villainesses. At one point, a Batman-esque vigilante gadgeteer PC was kidnapped for his knowledge of Apokolips technology, met the villains' mentor—a conquest happy Zamaron, and had his gender switched (she explained it as a both a vengeful blow to his male ego and a way to remake him as a superior being).

 

Eventually the character escaped, rejoined his/her teammates, and after finding out that the transformation method involved complete rebuilding on a genetic level and precluded simple undoing, began adjusting to life as a woman. Adopted a new civillian identity, revamped costume and weapons to the new physicality, etc. Wacky "my eyes are up here, bud!" hijinx ensue.

 

Cut to several weeks later, when we rejoin the PC as he wakes in a sensory deprivation tank, escapes with the help of a turncoat in the villains' operation, and returns home to find out that his teammates haven't been trying to find and rescue him, but instead have accepted a female imposter version of him into their ranks as the genuine article while he's been held captive for weeks on end.

 

I believe the player in question shouted an admiring "You bastard!" at me when the big reveal happened.

Re: Best and most Pointless superbattle of all time

 

Most pointless fights? Doomsday Annual #1, where Roger Stern wrote a moronic retread of Emerald Twilight with Doomsday attacking Oa.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

 

I recently saw Pan's Labyrinth and The Last King of Scotland in theaters, and rented Little Miss Sunshine. All great movies, though I must note that the last is basically National Lampoon's Vacation with much better dialogue and acting and the Little Miss Sunshine pageant substituting for Wally World.

Re: The Godzilla Scenario

 

Now I want to see a cartoon with some giant lizard thrashing a city and a little Pikachu-style cute furry pet electrocuting it.

Re: The Godzilla Scenario

 

Remember also that in the original Gojira, the monster wasn't so much presented as a lizard grown to giant size by radiation as some ancient ocean spirit that was awakened by nukes and started wreaking destruction when pissed off. The English language cut treated it as a more straightforward natural monster. That might serve as a basis for giving reasonably high mental defenses, or even some very nasty surprises to a mentalist who tries a psychic attack. Put the god back in Godzilla, so to speak.

 

"Mentat, were you able to make contact with the monster's mind and knock it out?"

 

"ダイス、私の先祖の故国の妨害者! RRRRRAAAAARRRRGHHHHH!!!"

 

"Oh $&!#!":eek:

Re: Comics are getting too steamy...

 

I suspect my GF would really like the Anita Blake series; since she also likes vampire stories.

Does she like somewhat kinky author-surrogate hardcore pornography? Because that springs to mind before vampire stories as a description of Hamilton's work in recent years.

Re: Archetype Twists

 

talking dog master villains...

Man, I so want to play in a superhero game that has one of these!

 

I've tended to play pretty standard secondary archetype characters in comics-themed games (ninja, magnetic hero, absent-minded gadgeteer), but I did have one fairly original rookie hero for a game from another company (which shall remain nameless) that played on the prodigy athlete stereotype:

 

Cossack, a character based on those Russian gymnasts that were collecting medals at the Olympics back in the early 90s. He thought he'd just been lucky enough to avoid training injuries and didn't realize he had super powers at all until his passenger flight crashed and he survived both an exploding jetliner and a 20,000 foot fall without a scratch. (Instant fear of falling and PTSD flashbacks to go with the origin!)

 

Character design involved making a talented athlete with loads of acrobatic and athletic skills but no combat training or crimefighting experience, and then tacking on physical invulnerability that would stand up to anything short of a multi-megaton H-bomb.

 

It was fun playing a character that could be shot with antitank weaponry and be unhurt, but get knocked out by gas or judicious application of an ether-soaked handkerchief. I wish that campaign had lasted long enough to acquire some big enemies that employed assassin-type henchmen—think of the frustration of a hired killer who can't find the knife or gun that will take down his intended target, but is unaware that he could do the trick with a pillow if he knew good holds to immobilize someone for a few minutes.

Re: If they get better, is it actually murder?

 

Think of the old Spectre or Solomon Grundy stories.

I don't know that I'd hold up Spectre stories as an example... the character's whole raison d'etre was lethal vengeance, and methods like turning people into lit candles on the ends of your fingers and watching them burn don't exactly come across as accidental.

Re: GMs: Funniest Character Sheet Mistakes You've Seen.

 

OK, now you have me visualizing some mad scientist villain hitting the super heroines of a group with his fiendish Parthenogenesis Ray and making for some very worried trips to the doctor a few weeks later..

Re: Time Travel and Potential Plots.

 

Perhaps it will save him some trouble if he just concentrates on two words?

I am.

Re: GMs: Funniest Character Sheet Mistakes You've Seen.

 

One of my favorites was a character who had the maneuver: marital dodge.

Let me guess: Runaway Bride?

Re: I want to build my base out of plastique

 

I see it more as a coating material, like stucco.

Apparently,the building method the Romans used for the Coliseum if you've seen The Core.

Re: Galactic Champions

 

As for the Golden Age hero teams... the JSA had several street-level costumed vigilante types, but it also had Dr.Fate and the Spectre. I don't care how many Redundantly Survived Krypton's Explosion Lads the Legion recruits, it's not going to get near that sort of overall power.

Re: WWYD - Marvel's Civil War

 

I believe they stated that Strange was getting an "exception."

 

Which is a fancy way of saying "For once, we're going to acknowledge reality, that there is no way in hell we can coerce this guy."

I would LOVE to see Stark or Reed Richards go to check on the prisoners in the Negative Zone and find out that all their holding cells are occupied by magical simulacrums that fool all the monitoring gadgets into reporting that everything's hunky-dory. As in, Strange decides to work against the pro-registration forces nonviolently by spiriting away all the conscientious objectors who've been imprisoned without due process.