Armory

new one up!
 
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1196.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/22/819840467/sen-rand-paul-has-tested-positive-for-the-coronavirus
 
karma.

That's two people who self-poisoned versus the reportedly 100% success rate of doctor-supervised patients on the Chloroquine + Azithromycin cocktail.
 
Sadly, more panic-buying in that story.
 
Humans are awful when they're in herd-panic mode.

Given there's an unknown, but probably vast, amount of people who have it and have little to no symptoms and/or haven't been tested, the mortality rate is probably lower than reported.  That's what our doctors told the wife and me.

Personally, I'm loving all the fear. My flights have been far less crowded. I'm expecting to get first class upgrades for my flights next week, but we'll see.

I love the look of that Batmobile! Like Starlord said, it is a car not a one-man APC. Batman is supposed to be a crime-fighter, not a black ops special forces operator.

Wow, an actual...y'know...car.  Not a tank or battleship with wheels.   Interesting.

Why play a game based on the results of die rolls if you can ignore the die roll results on a whim?

Role-play the failed role.
 
Role-play the fudged success.
 
Not seeing a difference outside of fudging a die roll for your benefit.

Equals?  No. 
 
The possibility of a bad turn of the dice / happenstance of fate being considered beforehand, and a character / player basing his decisions and actions on that possibility?  Creeping closer to reduce his range penalty; spreading his attack to up his chances; forming a plan of action that includes his comrades for better odds or as a distraction--   now that _is_ role playing. 
 
Setting up everything, doing everything in your power to adjust the odds (in meta terms: reducing your penalties and upping your bonuses) by doing everything your ability and wits let you do in the situation at hand, and failing anyway--
 
And then _dealing with that failure in-character; reacting to and interacting within the world where that failure happened; deciding how to cope and how to move on? 
 
Yes; that's role playing, too. 
 
Buying all the vowels and consanants and slipping Vanna a fifty to accidentally turn over the only missing letter before guessing the word? 
 
Not so much. 

Role-playing and character development. Have you ever tried it?

Hmmm.... 
 
It seems I can only rep you one of those little trophies. 
 
Reckon I will just have to mail you a couple of real ones or something.
 
"i can't use the rules and situation to formulate a plan advantageous enough to give myself a die modifier.  But now I do t even have to try!  I'll take a 'plus 2' for a thousand, Alex!" 
 
Damn but those "random points to ignore the dice" things have been nothing but irritating every time I read a rules system that uses them-  and Scott, let's remember that I _am_ a narrative-heavy guy.  I _still_ think they suck.  And cramming those things into a game system that was never actually designed around them was a flat-out terrible idea that just oozed this cringe-inducing sense of desperation:  'look!  Look!  We're cool!   We're hip!   See?  See?!  We're doing it, too!  Just like all the cool kids!  Look at us!   Love us!  Love us!   Dear, sweet merciful God!  Somebody, please!  _LoooOOOOOOoooovvve uussss..... "
 
 
This will probably be the most hated thing I will ever say:
 
This has been the only game system I have ever used since 2e for anything more than a single test run of something that seems interesting.  If I like it, I throw it on Champions running gear and keep on.  It is the only system I teach, and I believe it will be the only system I ever play-  that's not a guess; it's a reasonable assumption.  I've been playing since 81 or 82, and like I said, converted everything I liked to it.  I haven't got many years left, and a change at this point seems unlikely. 
 
But I would rather have seen the entire system wither away, never to be heard from again than to go out in the shameless desperation of this grand lady grabbing baubles trinkles and bobbles from the cheap floozies at frat parties or the shallow whores that disappear within a few weeks, plastic beaded jewelery and gaudy colored powders only two-shades-removed from circus clowns, so desperate to regain popularity as to imitate those who were and are far more fleeting, if only because in the moment she looked, their flash was still glowing amber, the pan not _quite_ empty....
 
There is a depressing little vision that comes to me from time to time--and it has for almost twenty years now.  I am sitting at a game table at some unspecified event, books open, character sheets, maps, dice-  waiting for a few people to be interested enough to want to play.  Sadly, everyone who asks just says "sorry.  Never heard of it.". It's remarkably easy to learn!  I've got some pregen characters and a scenario, if you're up to trying....  "Im sorry, I'm trying to find a Savage Worlds game...". "I'm sorry; you looked a bit depressed; I thought maybe this was a White Wolf game....". "Sorry, Man!  Gotta go find me some nat twenties!" 
 
Hero points and other borrowed crap shoehorned into a system never meant for it, just because it's the flavor of the day?  Why not ditch the dice?  Playing cards for all!  Here's a chart! 
 
Anyway, that sad vision went away a couple years ago, and I miss it terribly.  Not because I lkjed it, but because it was replaced by one where I've made it to the table, I'm unloading my books from my saddlebags, and then two security guys come up to me.  One begins to shove my books back into my bags and the other starts dragging me toward the door, cold but polite "I am sorry, Sir; we have _standards_ here! 
 
 

"Can't have bad things happen to my character", "can't crit fail, that's not heroic", blah-blah-blah. If they have them as a resource, the players will (ab)use them.
 
I had a player whose character was a Batman-type. Lots of gadgets and training. Wasn't adverse to using the guns of downed thugs when he could. Only downside was, every time he picked up a dropped gun, his dice hated him. Every time he shot, he missed. He missed badly. Up to and including hitting a hostage he was trying to save. Had we used hero points none of that would have happened.
 
Dice don't mess with your game flow. The dice ARE your game flow.

Anti climactic sounds like a GM problem rather than a dice problem to me.  The Hero points to me break the flow, and the solidity of the environment. Sometimes you just have bad luck.  Better to blame the dice than someone else at the table. 

Yes, exactly.
 
I also want to agree 100% with what Scott just said above.
 
It is important to acknowledge that Champions is, at its core, a superhero combat simulator. It isn't a superhero story generator. You aren't producing comic book scripts, you are simulating panels of comic book combat in a wargame format. Everything you do to impose meta-narrative control over the simulation makes the game less of a (war)game, and the whole thing ceases to work as designed.
 
I think if you want a more narrative-oriented superhero RPG, then you'd probably have much more success using a different system to start with, rather than trying to turn Champions into something it's not.

I hate the “fate points, bennies, luck” mechanics that have come into vogue lately. It is too narrative focused, and makes dice results transactional, rather than final, and I have found slows down the game.  I also think the mechanic tends to both push things into a narrative formula, and remove the true fear of failure, encouraging the PCs into thoughtless actions, because of, “I saw them do it in that movie”, or “Pizza Man did this in Issue #134, against the Purple People Eater”, rather than looking at the map and weighing the situation. I think that the fate point mechanic also doesn’t as much emulate a narrative, as much as it emulates a lazy narrative. Genre conformity, and a formulaic results to me are the products of lazy or timid writing. Superheroes start with a premise and a tradition, but the good writers explore the implications, and push the state of the art forward, rather than retell the same bedtime story every night to stroke nostalgic feelings.  Now I play and accept the results of the dice without modification. If the dice don’t lie, one takes the situation more seriously. In a recent Pathfinder game, a character of mine was blinded, and rather than complain about it. I took the minuses, and where the party was, and the membership of it, my character had no access to a Restore spell, or Remove Curse. So it looked like the blindness may be permanent. My plan was to try and survive long enough to justify the Blind Fighting feat. I play the hand I am dealt. 
 
Now, people have the right to the games they choose, so if one has the desire to play within a fairly narrative focused style, then so be it. Mechanically, in the systems was built for, it it does work (see: Savage Worlds) to simulate a narrative progression, but lot of those systems are more for the theater of the mind, rather than the tactical clarity of Hero.  The mechanic, to me doesn’t fit Hero. 

I've found the opposite, that systems with metacurrency make it a lot harder to have the down-then-up pattern common to comics.  My experience is that players are very prone to blowing through their bennies to avoid the down, then power through the up without them.  This defeats the mechanical purpose of the down (providing metacurrency for the up) and the narrative (since they're not losing due to all that metacurrency they're burning). 
 
It works a heck of a lot better to establish an understanding with your players of how a plot arc "should" go and get them playing along. 

New one up!
 
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1192.html
 

I can't remember what he was doing in that particular scene, but at the least, the entire costume doesn't look like plate armor. I also remember him having the conversation about the bright colored bat logo on the dark suit, because it made a target for the bad guys that was armored. Not sure it was DKR or another title. (As an aside, that argument assumes thugs can hit that small of a target when it's moving around trying to pummel them . . . so maybe it's just for guys like Deadshot.)
 
I generally don't have a problem with Batman wearing armor. He does wear armor in the comics. But he only tends to wear armor that has a bulky appearance for a specific purpose. He typically wears something that's flexible.
 
Speaking of movie Batsuits, and DKR . . . I think Batflek's Dark Knight-inspired suit in Batman vs. Superman and Justice League is my favorite movie suit so far. It splits the difference between mobility and light armor, is thicker material without being bulky or plated, stops handgun rounds but not knives, which is consistent with being some kind of higher-tech bullet resistant fiber, and has some texture to look good on camera. Story-wise, having some armor but not too bulky is consistent with a Batman who's starting to feel his age and all of his past battles.

I just did. I typed it right up there. As far as movie audiences go . . . what does that have to do with idiots armoring up an acrobatic fighter who's been shown for decades to avoid gunfire rather than tank it have to do with whether it's in character? It's not. It's fine as an alternative interpretation of the character, but it's just not the same character. Of course, by falling back on to the "normal audiences wouldn't understand Batman not wearing armor" argument, you've ceded the "it's impossible to do comic book costumes right on screen" argument. So, that's progress.
 
And, as I said earlier, why not do a costume the actor can actually move in, and be flexible, with a little added texture for the camera, and still say it's lightly armored? Sheesh, it's comic book tech anyway. No need for thick armor plates. Black Panther's costume is a good example on film.
 
 

Aaaaaand . . . there's a HUGE middle ground between this and armoring up characters who don't wear armor.

Sure, but Iron Fist still relies primarily on his fighting skill to avoid getting hit, just like Batman. Making Batman rely on body armor to mitigate damage, rather than avoiding it with his fighting skill like Iron Fist does, is a contemporary re-imagining of the character that is as conceptually misguided, IMO, as would be putting Black Widow into Iron Man's armor as her standard mission load-out.

I would argue that in a broader sense, the two characters are equivalent: hand-to-hand specialists without any super powers. Taking down armed thugs is what they do, and without much difficulty I might add. The only meaningful difference is one of aesthetics/style. And let's not forget that Batman in the comics is a highly trained martial artist; you lose the elegant fluidity of movement he normally given if you put him in body armor (just look how awkward and stiff every actor who's ever been put into these modern Bat costumes has looked).

I did really like Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent. He radiated that salt-of-the-earth, all-American earnestness and decency. But I hated the message he tried to sell his son.

See, I think the script and acting for Man of Steel are pretty good.   It's the somber, emo tone and nonsensical, casual destruction that brings it down for me.  IMO that falls on the director.