Best posts made by The Tree of Woe

I am late to the Nazi party but I once wound up sitting next to a Neo-Nazi on a Greyhound for a trip to another city to take a class (that's another story... a boring one).

He asked me what I thought about National Socialism. Since there weren't any other seats, I dissembled a bit. Then he asked me what I thought about Dark Shadows. I like Dark Shadows, OK.

This Neo Nazi went on for the rest of the bus ride about how he and his father loved Dark Shadows and used to watch it together and he talked at length about the tattoo of Barnabas Collins he was going to get.

It was the oddest bus ride of my life.

The problem is that some characters are very strongly defined by events in their canon. Take Cypher, who I played.

Cypher was a plucky kid who had super-translator powers, a lion's heart, and was into a woman who was way too old for him. Then, however dubious the writing itself was, glossing over loincloth scientists and giant chickens... he took a bullet for his friend. Bang.

That's a ton of character definition in one decisive action, and sometimes you don't WANT to throw things like that out, because you see the dramatic potential in them, and in the fallout, even if in some ways it was never fully realized.

To me, that's part of the point, and why canon is not such a terrible thing.

Thank @Silver for this one. John Cleese hosted a televised seminar on trolling.

I have a hard time engaging with OCs sometimes, because I tend to lean on established dynamics between characters to guide me going forward. But I'd never try and restrict people from playing them.

@arkandel It was Superman in 'Cave Carson as a Cybernetic Eye' that sealed the deal for me -- Superman understands that he does not have any sort of divine right to his power -- possessing it does not make him automatically deserving of having it. The paradox of power is that you can only show that you deserve it after you have it.

I can get an SF grid yes but it would need to be redesced because it's originally built for a WoD vampire game and the owner who wrote all the descs considers them proprietary to her. Fair warning. It is perhaps not ideal but it is something.

Also, I would prefer working out something other than the usual 'write a gigantic app' -- again, intent prioritized over knowledge is what I want out of a superhero game. A lot of X-Men villains, even some of the big bads... are entirely playable in a demi or non-antagonistic compact with the X-Men (Sabretooth IS an X-Man RIGHT NOW, or at least allied with them, as is Mystique at least until her next Sudden yet Inevitable Betrayal) but doodz like Sinister (and I loves me some "Sinister Wilde", best version of the character ever) or Apocalypse, no. And you can even play a freakin' non-evil Apocalypse if you go with recent canon... I kinda like Genesis/Evan. He's a good kid.

Because those individuals are stupid.

I've been trying to think of a good descriptor for them, because "Uncle Tom" is outmoded.

In the Utopia era different X-Teams had different jobs.

New Mutants: Take this list of loose ends and missing persons and tie them up/find them and either give us a status update or bring them here.
X-Force: This can not be allowed to exist. Get rid of it.
Etc.

No alts on the same team seems fair.

The Amazing World of Gumball.

Wiccan and Speed are also Magneto's grandchildren, which is their third connection. They have strongly alluded that Wiccan will inherit the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme from Stephen Strange and become an X-Man at the same time in various recent media, which is a smaller pip, but still a pip.

And honestly splitting hairs about who to exclude isn't really a good idea in any event. If someeone wants to play Hulkling and their explanation is his declaring 'Where Billy goes, I go' then that's that. If Speedball shows up and says 'Can I crash on your couch, somebody stole my wallet' he's not exactly bringing the whole Avengers roster with him.

The X-Men themselves are winding up further and further afield these days (Rogue, Cannonball, and Sunspot are all serving as Avengers right now) and the X-Men to me have been Mutant-flexible. Warlock is not Homo Sapiens Superior but they let him in anyway (it's because he can turn into a spaceship, always handy).

Oh, she's very real, and she's been in the game longer than my mother's been alive.

But really, what I would like to see isn't grilling people about characters or asking a series of questions... more akin to a conversation. I love talking about the characters I play; I could do it all day. But I understand the unease about sitting down to an interview to see whether or not you can play a bit.

Over at Eldritch, the Demons are doing a really crappy job keeping on top of their shit, yo. If this was vampire stuff somebody would've yelled "MASQ BREACH" and we would've been like fucking fire ants.

I don't care what system you use, as long as I get to punch the Crane Clan in the beak.

Well, somewhere along the line for awhile (5e's attempted to reinforce the point) it became lost that hit points are an abstraction and that one "attack" for the round is actually a sequence of blows and parries.

THAC0 was nice because it revolved around a fixed point which was influenced one way by strength, weapon bonuses, etc. and the other by dexterity, armor, etc. Your level gain just changed where the fixed point was.

Of course, I still believe in re-rolling initiative every round.

@Collective Lion, thank you very much.

American society still has a frontier philosophy about food. Eat all you can and eat it fast, because you need to get back to work and you might not get to eat again until tomorrow. Compounded by the Depression, when for a lot of people it was "who knows when you'll get to eat again period."

When you have that mentality toward food combined with an abundance unprecedented in human history... yeah. It's changing, but slowly.

I like food too much myself. Sigh.

Which is why you don't duel a Crane, you trample his fields and burn his castles. I hate how they're essentially treated like they're invincible, because they're pretty.

@Cobaltasaurus Lucy is making noises about wanting to get the ownership issues settled so she can get the band back together and do more Xena. A TV movie, at least.

It won't be the same without Ares, though...

@collective Burns your crops with his army, but spares your tea... your peasants can eat tea, right?