RDU Neil

Suggestions... if you like Stranger Things... check out a German show on Netflix called "Dark" One episode in you'll be like, "Oh... this is the German version of Stranger Things," but if you stick with it will become something WAY more complex and really, really good. I enjoyed Into the Badlands by the end of Season 1... is Season 2 out on Netflix, because I've been waiting for that?

All the best, man.

Halfway through Jessica Jones Season 2. Still excellent, and a solid noir series with the right amount of "super in the real world" vibe for me. Daredevil and JJ have, IMO, effectively merged the gritty, realistic drama with the super heroic touches quite well. First half of Luke Cage was outstanding, probably the best of any of the Marvel series, but second half was too disjointed. Iron Fist was crap, and Defenders was mostly crap, because of Iron Fist. Punisher was really good, but had nothing at all to do with the Marvel Universe, which is a miss. You finally have kind of world to justify a badass, Jason Bourne like action dude, but they strip it completely down to a very realistic level, taking all the "super" out. I liked it, but scratched my head at that. Jessica Jones is still the most interesting and funny of all the main characters, and I'd watch Ritter swig booze and mumble one liners all day.

I've never liked Bane either... which is why I probably enjoyed Dark Knight Rises more than most. I loved Hathaway's Catwoman and the broken down Bruce Wayne, and Joseph Gorden Robin, and the Talia twist. The movie was needlessly complex and had major plot holes, but Bane was just a big thug that was distracting from the real villain, which I was just fine with.

The book title was way better. "'Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda"

I can see both sides of the W'Kabi issue. On one hand, he was politically and personally at odds with the established rule from the beginning. OTOH, he never SEEMED angry enough to openly fight and kill his own people. I found W'Kabi completely believable in so much as he argued very logically and reasonably for Wakandan aggression both before and after Killmonger showed up. What we didn't see was his reason for being willing to sacrifice Wakanda for his revenge. First, Killmonger gives him his revenge, and gets him to present him to the court. All on the up & up. They make their argument to the court. T'Challa accepted the challenge from Killmonger and died... unfortunate, but them's the rules. Now, Killmonger was never intending to lead Wakanda in any kind of reasonable way... he was out for the power to enact his revenge, no matter what he destroyed along the way... but W'Kabi was willing to get him into power for his own agenda. BUT.. once KM started burning the sacred herb and when T'Challa showed back up alive, and said "The challenge is not over..." then W'Kabi had a choice to make. This is where I think the movie wasn't wrong, but could have given us a much more emotional scene. When W'Kabi chose to fight with Killmonger in the final battle... let us, the audiene, see some kind of conflict. He knows that now, the rules ARE being broken. Killmonger is no longer the accepted King by law. W'Kabi has to decide to fight with him and sacrifice his country, love and friend/King... or he can decide to say, "Ok... hold on. As much as I want you to kick the world's ass, the law of Wakanda is paramount, so we have to resolve that first." This is W'Kabi's true thematic moment... and we don't get to see more than a minor hesitation. It is completely logical that, having gone as far as he has, W'Kabi couldn't back down at that moment... but we never got to see or really feel (as the audience) any personal struggle. If this was a Shakespearean play (which it resembled in some ways in structure) that moment would have had a long monologue from W'Kabi of anguish and introspection, so we could have known his internal thoughts on betrayal and vengeance, etc. I'm wondering how much of that was just left on the cutting room floor, since there is supposedly a four hour version of this movie out there that I hope we get to see, one day.

Just reading this argument over, as I inadvertently started it, I like it because it is exposing some of the hidden assumptions about the game. 1) That there is some universal, perfect way to build a character from a set of common mechanical denominators... which there isn't, no matter how reductive you make the mechanics, even though it is heavily implied by the design. 2) That builds can be divorced from SFX and still be meaningful/coherent in actual play... which is never the case if you are actually role playing, and not just doing abstract calculations. 3) That building a character is separate from the game you are playing in, and that there is some kind of generic way the characters are portable to every other Hero game. Simply not the case. 4) That Limitations are rules for helping to "define" a specific power, rather than what they are, desired methods/situations in which a numerated power is reduced or made ineffective IN GAME PLAY, and the player WANTS IT THAT WAY! (A whole different thread) 5) That game play can somehow be purely mechanical and not exist on a rule and judgment level, where "what makes sense and feels right" is decided in a shared imaginary moment between players, not on paper, in numbers or programmed code. Hero has always been a war between two games... the game of building a character, vs. the game of actually role playing the character in a group, with a story, a shared world, etc. There are many things that can be mechanically pure and consistent in the former (adjustment powers mechanically affecting other powers) that can completely break the latter ("What? That makes no sense?!")? Hero has spent so many years and words and pages on the former, but very little on the latter... so it makes sense that people think of it this way. I know there are people who love just messing around with the rules and seeing what kind of builds they can come up with that are "legal" and cram the most in for the least. I also know that just because it can be done by the rules, doesn't mean it makes it anywhere near a table or actual play. The mechanics will surely affect the play experience, but people seem to balk at it going the other way around, that actual play should affect how mechanics are interpreted and used. Hero is still stuck in these horrible arguments because it was built before game designers understood that rule and mechanics are judged by the resulting game play they help manifest. Game play is the goal of the game creation. Hero is still in the old school model of mechanics first, with the expected game play nebulously defined at best. It tried, pretty well for its time, to have aspects of mechanics built to reflect a certain outcome... the idea of nine panel pages and actions that reflected it... and the idea that the mechanics at the time were specifically written to reflect a Bronze Age style of comic book fighting... but it was limited, and still had too many war game aspects, and the more genericized the system became, the more it lost touch with its resulting game play. If you are going to build a house, do you... 1) Look at the tools and materials you have, and build whatever kind of house they allow for? 2) Design a house, then get the tools and materials that will best help you make that house a reality? Too many Hero arguments exist with the former mindset, instead of the latter... which is where it really gets dicey. Hence why I used the word "interpret" in the title of this thread. The only way you get the house you want (the role playing experience) is to allow for interpretation, not just "This is what the rules say."

Fair... I didn't watch the entire second video until you pointed that out. I think that clearly points to "both weapons drawn, gun wins unless knife guy is already on top of him"

And agreed as well, if the knife guy and gun guy both had their weapons out and ready. If one attacker has the weapon out, and the other has to draw it... that is a major issue. While ten feet or less if both had the weapon out, I'd see that getting into "gun guy gets cut/stabbed, knife guy gets shot (maybe multiple times)" and then it comes down to how well they hit, lucky blow, vulnerable spot hit, etc. If gun guy and knife guy both have to draw their weapons, I'd be interested in that as well. In this case, charging while drawing a knife MIGHT be easier than backing up while drawing a gun... but I'd like to see it. At what range (I'd think less than 21 feet, which is 6 meters, basically, which is close range by Danger International range mods) with gun drawn and knife drawn, can gun guy fire multiple shots before getting hit with the knife? I'd like to see those tests as well. Surrealone speaks to that at a 3 meter/5 meter/7 meter spread... So 3 meters, ten feet, gun out, you are emptying your clip into the guy, especially if he is trying to close. If he gets to you first, that is more a matter of better DEX, faster SPD, than weapons speed.

The MCU has had a very "low key" response to supers and aliens and gods, that make it feel like "super stuff" is at least accepted to an extent. Sure, a new Hero pops up ("Ok... I am Iron Man!") and it makes a big deal... but so do new Pop Stars or a big athletes in the real world, and we've had them before. This is a world that handled "the Event" from Avengers as another 9/11... not something that undermines fifty thousand years of religious and social dogma around humans being the center of the universe. Clearly this is a world where "out of this world" stuff is at least known. I'm sure it has its "chemtrails" and "false flag" crackpots as well, and those opinions of the Event or Sokovia would be interesting, I'm sure. Ultimately, having heroes that have existed in the past that aren't well known or referenced every day is completely fine, IMO. Most people don't keep detailed records of every event that happened in the past, and if they were even mildly obscure, people could easily have overlooked or forgotten them. Real world example... I was recently talking to a couple young women at work. In their 20's, smart, educated... and neither of them had ever HEARD OF the Beatles or U2. I'm not saying they didn't listen to them... they had never HEARD OF THEM! If it is possible for a generation in the US or UK to have no idea about two of the largest pop culture/rock bands ever to exist, it is easily possible for a series of off events twenty or more years ago to have been missed. There are people who don't know about 9/11, or have very vague ideas about it at best. IMO, it would be fully understandable for most people in the MCU to not have a super detailed history of every person in a costume for the past fifty plus years as a common reference point. Unless you spend time researching stuff, I'd say most people these days couldn't tell you much about the Syrian war, or the fascinating facts on the YPJ's role in battling Syrian rebels and Turkey, or the current War in Donbass, or the status of Brexit, or the Catalonia separatists... or even much about the shooting in Florida a few weeks ago and the resulting protests, etc. The world is a big place, with a lot going on, people get on with their lives if not directly impacted, and it is very easy to not know a lot about the world. I'd assume the same is for the MCU.

On the subject of range modifiers... I just read the following about the XM17 tests... "The handgun should have a 90 percent or more chance of hitting in a 4-inch circle out to 50 meters consistently..." from the Wikipedia article. Uhm... while I'm sure there are some very good, highly trained pistol shooters who can hit four inches at 50 meters... that still seems like a nearly impossible shot for most people, especially in a combat situation. Is this some kind of "standardized" or automated test of the "gun" instead of the person firing it? Like... the gun is set on a mechanical stand and ranged to hit such a target in a locked position, and then mechanically fired in the same locked position several thousand times to see if the bullets keep going to the same place? That is the only thing I could think of to make sense of this. Do you have any insight, Surrealone? Thanks!

We have used freeform in the past as part of "blue booking" though that usually ends up with me as GM writing short stories between sessions to help bridge things, provide context and scenes that give the players insight into the bigger picture, etc. Some of our online/email games have basically become writing workshops in some instances. When 9/11 happened, we had a team of NY Supers (and some players who lived in New York at the time) and we had a big discussion on how/if to incorporate it into the game. In the end, I provided some basic guidelines, but it came down to each player writing their own short story about what their character did that day. We all decided that despite rescue efforts, the towers still fell, and it was still a tragedy, but it put the PCs in the thick of the horror and they saved a lot more people than happened in the real world. I'd love to do this kind of thing, but generally the guys I play with are gamers before writers, so they prefer rules and structure to free form story telling. You just need to right people, just like for any social engagement.

"Soon I Will Be Invincible" by Austin Grossman. Absolutely hilarious, but at the same time, completely honest portrayal of comic book characters and stories. Excellent novel.

Most maneuvers are conceptually "learned" actions... but the game allows some to be free to all characters, while others are paid for. Usually paying for something indicates that it is a more rare/difficult/hard to learn action... but then you get "Move-By" for free, and I'd say that realistically, moving at speed and clothes-lining a target as you pass by is actually pretty hard to do effectively and would require practice at least... but whatever. The game makes certain assumptions and that's fine. Usually paid for maneuvers have more benefit than countering disadvantages. I could see particular maneuvers being built that cost skill points, and some that could be just added to the "everyone can do them" list. Still working out what these might be, but I'm leaning toward defining some free ones.

This I agree with. Funny thing, I usually enjoy less granularity at the high levels, where you just have a bunch of points and hand wave details. It is the lower level, where small, incremental differences in maneuvers/actions really mean something. Coming up with some core maneuver/mechanics that can be used based on the situation appeals to me there. I dislike specific power builds to reflect something that could be "learned" so I am more likely to come up with a skill or a combat maneuver to add in.

I laughed. Out loud and stuff.

So it doesn't have alternative rules for making more "realistic" gun fights... but likely more over-the-top gun craziness? Yeah... I'll skip that.

Personally, if they don't get Kathryn Bigelow to help script and then direct the movie, they are totally missing out. Zero Dark Thirty, Hurt Locker and going back to Point Break and Near Dark... some of my favorite movies. I'd love to see her technical precision and emotional weight to a Marvel film, and just think of what she could do with Black Widow. If they can go gonzo, psychedelic comedy with Thor... they can go dark, brutal and traumatic with Black Widow. A pipe dream I know, but I can only hope. (Can you imagine Jessica Chastain as a nemesis? Holy crap that would be most excellent.)

I'm interested in what you know on this, because from my POV, AoU suffered because of everything that was forced to be in it by the studio. It seemed to be height of studio interference (aside from GoTG2, which was abysmally stupid). I'd read that they tried to axe the farmhouse scenes, which I thought were the best part of the movie, forcing in the infinity stone stuff with Thor, etc. Granted, Whedon has never demonstrated any belief in a working romantic relationship, even to juxtapose it against other drama, but what else was he supposedly going to do that you didn't like?

IM3 was highly flawed, but I frickin' loved it. I'll take Shane Black rewriting "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" as an Iron Man movie, any day. I think the big piece that didn't work was that the film seemed to be designed to write Stark out of the forefront of Marvel movies, but then... that didn't happen.

Agree with almost everything but "small" amount of skill. I may be wrong, but I still believe it takes way more skill and practice and experience of cutting an actual living, struggling human being, compared to pulling a trigger. Having done plenty of martial arts, where simply punching/kicking, grabbing, throwing someone is hard, slippery, inexact work that takes a lot of practice to do it well... I just feel the simplicity of a gun will win. Granted... a shooter with zero experience in hand to hand may just forget all training when someone is on top of them, slicing away. Knives are surprisingly scary in ways a gun is not. I've always attributed it to the psychology of "everyone has been cut, even just a little bit, accidentally, as a kid, in a workshop, in the kitchen, whatever. Everyone knows what a knife is and there is a visceral "That thing can f*** you up!" intuition that guns don't necessarily have. Many have no experience with a gun, and it is almost an abstract thing unless you have shot one, felt the kick/recoil, seen the bullet hole, etc." Kinda like "Fear of guns has to be learned. Fear of knives is practically genetic!" That certainly factors into any real combat equation.

Ok... and stop me if this is beating a dead horse, but this is just an interesting concept to wrestle with for me... 1) Think about how shooting training has changed (from my little understanding of it.) From standing square, both hands, arms extended... or cops going in doors with just a revolver in a hip firing position... to the tight combat pistol stances (ala John Wick), and cops going in military style with guns up, sighting/covering as they move, etc. New techniques wouldn't have caught on if they didn't provide some benefit... so a practiced gun combat maneuver that provides an advantage should be more than a standard, no advantage, 1/2 move held action to fire. 2) Scenario: Two people, both with assault rifles on a harness/sling. One is a guard, walking the halls with hand on grip, alert, but barrel pointing down and field of vision wider, looking across hallways and doors, etc. Call this "Alert Carry" Second one is walking the halls, also alert, but has rifle up and leveled, sighting as he goes... field of vision more narrow, but focused. Call this "Targeted Sweep" When these two meet, even if the Alert Carry guy is not surprised, the Targeted Sweep guy has WAY more advantage in terms of speed and accuracy of firing, only having to pull the trigger, instead of raise the gun aim and then pull. While the Alert Carry guy might have the advantage of a less constrained field of vision, maybe catch site of the other guy a split second before his sweep turns the right direction... etc. There are real world benefits to both... so how do we reflect this difference in Hero combat? Which one is a maneuver, which one is simply a half move held attack action?

And people get his helmet... happy now? (Though that is in the flashback, I think.) Pretty damn cool, if you ask me. Going to be fun.

Interesting. I've never read 6th Ed in depth, and have used my interpretation since 3rd Edition. So, if not Brace, what "maneuver" is the "Readied/Firing Movement" that is pretty typical, as I described above. Moving deliberately, while siting, vs. your weapon pointing down, and moving full out, or at least faster without aiming?

Interesting... I'd never interpreted "Brace" as being stuck in place, since it doesn't take a full or even half action. I just assumed it meant you are in a deliberate stance, and not moving as freely, but can still move. Example, the classic, walking forward while siting down your pistol or shotgun. You aren't fully "actively defending" so you are at 1/2 DCV, but you've got a much steadier shot available, should a target reveal itself. To me, those classic scenes of room searching and "Clear!" "Clear!" are where the cops are all half-moving while braced, holding an action to fire as they scan each room. The soldier with his rifle up, with sling or without, moving house to house in a slow, deliberate way, siting along his rifle... that to me is the Brace maneuver in action. Now the "Set" maneuver, yes, that one has always meant being stationary to me. Takes a full action to get into place to get a full +1 OCV. This is the hunter/sniper lining up a shot. This is the SWAT guy kneeling down at the edge of a door to cover a hallway. I usually consider the first action a 1/2 Move Brace (initially lining up shot), then if no immediate target, uses next action to Set on a specific area (a hex in game terms) and any target entering into that hex, they can attack with +2 vs Range and +1 OCV over all, plus any bonuses from the gun, scopes, etc. So when it comes to "optics" it so rarely comes up in the games, it usually goes un-addressed. Usually it comes up if there is a sniping scene, where I basically say a character has to be Brace at minimum, often Set, in order to get any bonuses from a Scope. I consider typical iron sites to simply be part of the built in bonus to the gun if any. I've never understood the use of reflex sites, though I see them in video games all the times. I have no idea how useful, if at all, red dot/laser sites are... I'm assuming mostly it is Hollywood "lasers look cool with a fog machine" kind of thing.