Random Chat

Now, I’ve never said that people needed to lose, because truth be told I do think that it’s the job of the villain to lose. Mame & I were watching the DC special Necessary Evil, it talks all about the villains of the DC universe and why they’re important and why we like them and just generally about them for a couple hours, and one of the things it points out that I think really struck Mame and that makes perfect sense is that: The Hero has to win every time, the Villain just has to win once.

And it’s true; if the villain wins the game is over, heroes are dead, but that’s not to say that villains can’t have victories. Joker kills Jason Todd, Major Force brutally murders Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend, and characters can die.

But I really feel like when we were RPing we were doing it in this really, flippant happy-go-lucky way. We were more concerned with personal awesomeness than collective awesomeness and I think we missed out because of it.

Edit: though on the original subject, the video itself is more about how a few good, or bad, rolls can make or break an encounter and how ability was actually earned.

One of the things that I never particularly cared for was the fact that our 'parties' almost always ended up with some huge power-variances, or totally inappropriate for the adventure. *coughApokolipsIsInvadingLet'sCallRobincough*

The basis of the video is about an encounter where three radically weaker characters (wizards) take on six much more powerful characters; and do some serious damage, purely because of how the dice landed, and how the players involved didn't take the encounter that nearly killed them seriously, until it nearly killed them. It's a great example of why, in a Dice Game, you have to take every encounter seriously because there's always that threat of death, no matter how small it might be. The Titular encounter was designed not to kill the party, but with a few tweaks and a couple lucky rolls it nearly wipes them out and makes them take the rest of the game that much more seriously.

Right and if we had a dice roll in Hub, I probably would have been more smart about the Aquagirl/King Crab encounter. She was clearly outmatched, and it seemed in retrospect ridiculous. If I were to play it again, I'd probably have Aquagirl brush off the fact that King Crab just pushed her.

And yeah, I saw that Necessary Evil documentary. The point you brought up also brings up a thing I read in Pixar's rules of Storytelling, stating that we care more about how much a character tries, verses their success. Just an interesting point, I thought I might bring up.

I’ve always thought the characters who keep on trying despite regular set backs were more interesting than the guy who succeeds through mystical (plot) intervention. It’s one of the reasons I can’t stand a lot of shows these days; the characters aren’t dedicated to anything. Either they’ve got genius-level intellects and ace every class or they’re totally naredowell delinquents who might as well drop out of school to fight demons full time.

They only try to do something if it naturally comes easy to them and any actual effort given to developing a skill is brushed off as a trait for satellite characters. It’s the secondary character who gets to have the story about working hard and developing their culinary talent to make the main character some valentines day chocolate or some-rot like that. They’re the ones who work hard at improving themselves. Main characters are just ‘naturally gifted.’

And it's because everything is required to work out for main characters. They don't have to struggle to do anything, because apparently that wouldn't be interesting to watch.

And if they do improve something, it’s almost always something that they were naturally good at to begin with. I hardly ever see someone who defeats this season’s boss monster by developing a new strategy for facing him/her/it, they always just muscle through it by improving upon something they were already super-good at.

You know what would be interesting? The super-strong guy who learns to apply his super-strength in new ways, or just flat out takes like, a wrestling class, can you imagine if Superman put Darkseid in a headlock?

But no, it's always just 'punch him harder.'

Speaking of Darkseid, this whole thing just reminds me of the ending of Justice League Unlimited.

Superman gives this whole, and rather intimidating, speech about how he lives in a world of cardboard, how he has to hold himself back to keep from seriously injuring someone or something; and how, because Darkseid is so strong, he doesn’t have to do that with him.

He thus removes his mental barriers or whatever and proceeds to Hit Darkseid Harder than he had been previously; and what does Darkseid do to combat this new stronger and possibly too strong superman?

He changes strategy and traps Superman in some weird Apokoliptian Darkseid Pain-Energy Net thing... Darkseid doesn’t go ‘oh well I can hit you harder too.’ He changes up the game, he makes it so that who can hit who harder doesn’t matter anymore, because it’s no longer a physical battle, its Superman vs crippling debilitating Pain. Not physical pain, just plain old regular, stimulating your nervous system pain that Superman probably has no more, if not less, resistance to than anyone else.

True, not a lot of characters or shows do that, I mean Superman vs. Doomsday kind of showed us that, that is pretty much all Superman does. He just threw punches until he dropped dead. Or went into deep sleep. Whatever.

But an anime of recent that does sort of do that I think would be Kill la Kill. If you haven't been keeping up with it, it's a pretty basic story in the beginning, girl trying to find their father's murderer, very boring place to start. There is this one episode where she is facing her main antagonist's cronies for the first time, nearing the end of the first half of the season, where she realizes that she can't use brute force to beat them. Instead, she constantly adapts to her opposion. At times, the hero doesn't know how she's going to adapt at all because her talking uniform pretty much does it for her, but at least she does change tactic in a way that she had the upperhand when crunch time came.

There's also this episode of Powerpuff Girls where Blossom and Buttercup insist on trying different stratagies to beat an unstoppable monster, Blossom pushes for a stronger stratagy, and Buttercup wants to just beat the tar out of it. The anti-climactic ending is when Bubbles asks the monster to leave, and it just does.

I suppose when it comes down to it, to an extent, a change of stratgy needs to work in your favor, like it did for Darkseid. Although, if you just have Lex walking around with the anti-life equation, I suppose you're good.

See even that doesn't really seem like the same thing; there's one thing to be said about a character who is made to adopt a new strategy, and there's another for a character who develops a different strategy on their own. It's kind of like saying, there's the Green Lantern Ring generating something for you, and then there's using the Green Lantern Ring to generate something yourself.

I mean the Green Lantern Rings are basically items that can create anything you can clearly visualize; but most of the stuff you see being made is like, A Sword, A Shield, A Rock. Now granted things are complicated are hard to make, but the whole point of like, Kyle Rayner is supposed to be his imagination. He's supposed to be imaginative, that's supposed to be a part of who he is. It just doesn't make sense for him to use an object that can make literally anything he can imagine to make A Sword. I mean technically the Green Lantern Ring could make anything from Bactria to a Space Station, and still more often than not it comes down to giant fists and laser blasts.

I suppose I've always had a soft spot for characters who's main ability is less their actually abilities and more how they utilize them, but it just seems like that they're more and more being regulated to talking bikini-suspender support characters and less and less being given center stage.

PS: I watched the Green Lantern: The Animated Series recently, and it's actually really good. I didn't know that it was made by Bruce Timm like Batman: The Animated Series, though now that I know I do realize it fits his naming scheme.

So your ideal character would be Batman?

He has a set number of tools in his utility belt that mainly serve one purpose, yet Batman can find other uses for said tool. I suppose it also goes into him being a genius detective, like how in one comic he has been trapped underground for a week getting tortured mentally and physically by this cult whilst drinking water laced with drugs. During that time, the cult has been mocking him by taking pictures with an old fashioned camera. Batman's resources were pretty much sapped dry, he wasn't fighting right, but he used the chemical film and the marble floors to create an explosion leading to his escape.

He changed his strategy from trying to fight off this cultist ninja dude, to an escape plan by using his surroundings. Just as an example, but this seems to be Batman's constant MO when it comes to taking on challenges, obsticles, and foes. Wheather it's a new attack pattern, or even thinking outside the box to solve a case. He finds a way, because he's supposed to.

When he's written like that, yeah.

But listen to all the set up that required; in order for Batman, a character defined by his intellect and ability to improvise, to believable rely on his intellect and ability to improvise he is first removed from his equipment and tortured for a week.

More and more Batman is being written as a guy who doesn't so much improvise as overcome. He analyzes his enemy and uses his money to build some special gadget to deal with him specifically.

The Adam West era gave us the Batman with a gadget for everything, from Bat-Shark Repellant to Bat-Doggie Treats, no matter the situation Batman had a gadget to deal with it.

Characters, even characters who are defined by their intellect, aren't really written intelligently very often; because it requires the writer to think intelligently about the situation. I'm not begrudging them anything, when you're writing a thirty-page comic for six different titles once a week I can see how your creative juices run out, but think about it; in order for Batman to be believable in 'not having a gadget for everything' or basically in order for Batman to be believable forced into a corner to where he has to change his standard operating procedure he has to be, essentially, de-powered by being drugged, tortured and deprived of his gear.

Batman; a character defined by being clever and ingenious, has to be robbed of his stuff before he can believably rely on being clever and ingenious. His stories are getting more and more drab like that. Batman vs Bane=Bat-Mech less than Batman vs Bane=Brain triumphing over brawn. (Granted some part of that is that Bat-Mechs are far more marketable than 'Bat-Brains') Batman is being played more as a character who can come up with a winning strategy given a day, or a week, or a year, and less as a guy who goes out there every night with no idea whether he's going to be facing Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze and has to plan as if he'll face them both, and still be able to deal with the Joker and/or Black Mask while doing it.

But I think what really gets me is that it shouldn't take these 'extreme' circumstances for Batman to be forced to rely on his intellect instead of his gadgets; all it takes is a little thought and a light speckling of realism. Realistically, how many smoke pellets do you think he carries? One, maybe two compartments full? Figure he can fit maybe 20-25 pellets in one compartment. If he throws down 3-4 pellets in one move, that's a full 5th of his total smoke pellets! He does that five more times in one night and he's o.u.t. out of smoke pellets until he hits the cave or one of his stashes for more, and frankly; this sort of thing could come back to bite him if he happened to find the Joker robbing the rubber chicken factory at the end of his patrol instead of the beginning or if he gets trapped, basically anywhere.

I mean he can't really have infinite bat-a-rangs.

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I don't know. These rants of mine always end up making me feel like an old fuddy-duddy going 'things were better before _____!'

I know everyone has their own interpretations of their favorite characters, and maybe for some people Batman is defined by his ability to nut-punch bad guys, but for me he's always been the Odysseus of the DC universe. He doesn't blind the Cyclops with his specially formulated Cyclops-blinding-powder; he lures it into a situation in which he has the advantage (asleep) and then strikes. Batman is this character who, almost because he's become The Batman, he isn't really thought of as a regular man anymore. We don't really realize that one day, The Batman could be killed by some dumb mug who got in a lucky shot. All it takes is a single stray bullet that hits him in his unprotected chin and wham, no more Batman. No grand scheme from the Joker, no epic struggle of good vs evil, just some thug who rolled a natural 20.

And Batman has to respect that. He has to realize that every fight he goes into could be his last no mater who his opponent is. He can't over-equip himself with gadgets designed to fight Joker or Riddler or Jason Todd, because it might not be one of them who ends him, it might be that dumb thug who got lucky. So Batman doesn't really need to be de-powered to be pushed into a corner, he's already in a corner just from being Batman. He's out numbered, under-equipped, never knows who or what he's facing, and never ever knows what to expect.

Well I can understand your point of view, it seems most of the examples I bring up about characters who overcome an challenge by switching stratagies doesn't seem as smart as you'd like. Other than the Darkseid fight, which seemed rather quick when it came to him just pulling a device to just stop Superman from punching, what would you consider a great way that doesn't seem too deus ex machina?

In the Apocalypse animated feature, Darkseid was beating both Superman and Supergirl near the end , and they ended up using a boom tube to portal him in the middle of space.

Story-wise, I'd like to know how you would handle a situation.

One of my all time favorite fights has got to be the Batman Vs The Mutant Leader fights in the Batman Returns storyline.

For those not familiar the Storyline is essentially the Watchmen of DC. Superheroes are asked politely to go away by the government, while Superman becomes the attack dog of the Government. Meanwhile Gotham is slowly being overtaken by 'The Mutants' a hyper-violent gang lead by someone called 'The Mutant Leader' who is basically the love-child of the Joker and Killer Croc.

In the first encounter between The Mutant Leader and Batman, Batman loses and loses hard. The Mutant Leader has basically every advantage over him. He kicks Batman's ass, such that Batman is basically willing to lay down and die until the latest Robin shows up and Batman has to act to protect a life other than his own.

Now in the first fight, Batman still technically wins; he gets beaten to within an inch of his life, but basically just throws glue over the Mutant Leader's face. ML can't get it off, and he passes out; presumably it is then cleaned off before he suffocates. But Batman still got his butt handed to him by this guy, he got broken and beaten by him and its something of a problem because; while the Mutant Leader is in prison, the gang at large is still supporting him and is basically threatening to turn Gotham into one big riot if they don't get their Leader back.

So Fast Forward to the fight that I actually love. Batman is preparing to go toe to toe with the Mutant Leader again, and he basically tells Alfred 'last time I just tried to punch him out, this time I'm going to be smart.' And he does all this stuff to stack the odds in his favor. He picks the location, so they're fighting in a giant mud-hole; he even comments in the movie-adaptation "Everyone's slow when they're knee deep in mud." He knows that he can't match his opponent's speed; remember in this story Batman is something like a 50y.o man fighting the 20-ish love child of the Joker and Killer Croc, his opponent is bigger, younger, healthier and more vicious than he is.

So Batman does all sorts of things to take away his opponent's advantages; and yeah, some of them are pretty Deus Ex like using 'nerve clusters' to disable the guy's arm; but I'm pretty sure that's just because the censors won't let you show ripping a guy's arm out of its socket (and this was a Frank Miller title so it came close). But he does much more reasonable, and simple, things as well such as cutting his enemy above the eye so they have to constantly wipe blood out of their eye/not see very well, dislocating the enemy's shoulder so they have to fight one-handed, literally slinging mud, just taking a handful of mud and throwing it in the guy's face.

He has a line after it becomes clear the Mutant Leader has no chance at victory; "This isn't a mud hole son, it's an operating table, and I'm the surgeon."

Batman has arranged it so that not only does this guy have to fight him at every disadvantage, but he has made certain that when he beats the snot out of this guy, in a a fair fight I wanna stress that; Batman has all of his gadgets he's just foregoing them because the whole point is that when Batman beats this guy and beats him bad the entire Mutant Gang is there looking on and every one of them is forced to admit "Boss got beat." Not that he lost because Batman had some gadget or some trick, but that he got beaten because Batman fought smart and just tore their Leader apart.

And it's not like Batman needs to be forced into a corner to do this stuff. He's supposed to be trained in the way of the ninja right? Isn't like Ninja lesson #3: throwing dirt in the other guy's face? In this situation Batman is deliberately foregoing his gadgets because he needs to not only defeat, but humiliate his opponent; where are all the hundreds of instances of Batman not-needing to humiliate his opponent so he just says 'Screw it' and choke-holds a guy into unconsciousness?

Is it so much to ask that just once Batman gets the drop on the Joker and, instead of announcing his presence to the Joker beginning some long-villain hero chat he clocks him in the head with one of those baton-thingeis Nightwing uses, immediately rendering him unconscious and carries Joker off to a holding cell wherein he interrogates the mad clown about the details of his latest scheme, like a responsible person. I don't care what the Joker's scheme is 99% of the time he's going to need to be not-locked up to do it. Heck even if it's 'I'm going to call Harley and she's going to blow up the Dam' then is a good thing there's not phone signal in the Bat Cave holding cell! Heck, even if it is 'If I don't call Harley she's going to blow up the dam.' Batman is a guy who regularly tangles with The Riddler, you think he can't figure out what Harley's cellphone number is when, in all likelyhood, has the phone Joker was going to use to call? Knowing Joker he's got the number dialed already. Knowing Harley she'd call him 10 minutes after he was supposed to call just to double-check that she's still supposed to blow the dam up, cause we all know the Joker is a whimsical creature, he could have just come up with something new and forgotten about Harley and the diamante.

Where's the story where Batman just cuts plain ol' Killer Croc above the eye? Or kicks ups stand when Black Mask is suiting at him, deliberately and rudely taking advantage of his enemy's deformity; that Black Mask has no eyelashes (in some cases eye lids) and therefore can't keep dust out of his eyes easy?

Heck; where's the storyline where Batman just straight up maces a dude in the face? All those crime fighting gadgets and he couldn't spring for one of the most basic self-defense items in existences? That stuff stings, Joker wouldn't be laughing after getting maced; neither would Killer Croc, Black Mask, Riddler, Scarecrow, Penguin... basically any of your Batman Rogues who aren't Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze.

Well true, I can't recall Batman ever using a can of mace to stop a baddie, but I do know that Batgirl emptied a can of mace into Blockbuster in my favorite Batgirl story, Batgirl: Year One.

Blockbuster had been terrorizing a subway car, when Batgirl lures him out them depletes an entire can into his face. He crawls out and even gets the upperhand until a concrete structure smacks his face because of his size. Batgirl took advantage of his size knowing even if he ducked, he would get pummeled by the low hanging concrete structures, and blinding Blockbuster made him oblivious to that fact. The problem was resolved rather quickly now I think about it.

Yeah, and that's the sort of thing that the 'master strategist' Batman should have thought of. But if he were in a fight with Blockbuster he'd probably rely more on Judo than the environment

He probably would, come to think of it. When it came to fighting Deadshot in a similar situation, his big plan was run up to him head on, in the Gotham Knight animated feature.

Oh, also I forgot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOkPaSwXC6s

All I picture is him developing the 'Sad Pill' and the ordeal that experiment put Alfred through.

"Master Bruce?"
"Alfred... I'm sad."
"I'll make you some soup Master Bruce."
"No Alfred... this means I have succeeded. Yay..."
"Oh. Master Bruce." *Face Palm.*

I think I want to make that into a comic.

Name it "The Invention of the Sad Pill"

Where is the like & favorite button? I need there to be a like & favorite button.

I just really wanted to see Batman's face when he said "Yay..." to be honest.

Hey kids do you like Superheroes and Science? (Specifically Chemistry)

And in other, unrelated, news it's my birthday this weekend.

Two-Five.

I've had D&D characters who didn't live this long.   

Ahaha, is someone asking for a birthday gift?

Most assuredly not. I don't really do the whole birthday party thing. My plans are just a nice dinner with Mame.

I just thought that the super chemistry table was cool and considering that some of our members might be of chemistry-class-taking age I thought it would be worth mentioning.
personal I took chemistry in high school. I think I got an A.

I made it about halfway through this before giving up.

Some of those words I don't think are words.

Thought this was pretty interesting, more so the opening regarding 'everyone indulges'

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Normally I'd text y'all, but thanks to a phone crash I lost all my numbers. Again x_x