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Lemon-Lime posted:It's really weird that there's basically zero mainstream superhero comics about superheroes using their fantastical control over elements or their superhuman intellect to actually improve people's lives. Even something as basic as disaster recovery barely ever shows up. I was reading Invincible recently and they have Atom Eve give up being a superhero so she can use her molecular re-arrangement powers to end hunger and aid the sick and needy in Africa and show her go about turning Savannah into lush valleys and develop methods to increase the nutritional value of food so you can eat less and get more from it.
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Oct 31, 2017 17:59
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's really weird that there's basically zero mainstream superhero comics about superheroes using their fantastical control over elements or their superhuman intellect to actually improve people's lives. Even something as basic as disaster recovery barely ever shows up. Yeah, because that's not exciting on the page. This is referred to by the shorthand "Reed Richards is Useless". This is one of the many things that Worm got right. There were loads of examples of capes using their powers for relief efforts or civic improvement. But then, Wildbow is a single author with complete control over his universe and doesn't have to stick to any status quo to either A) sell books or B) collaborate in a shared universe with other creators.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:04
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's really weird that there's basically zero mainstream superhero comics about superheroes using their fantastical control over elements or their superhuman intellect to actually improve people's lives. Even something as basic as disaster recovery barely ever shows up. It's not that weird. Superhero comics are incredibly conservative as a whole, and addressing systemic problems would mean admitting that they're problems and that they're within the power of individual people to help fix (even if those people are portrayed as demigods.) Much safer to just stick with super-policemen who maintain things as they are against external threats and internal malcontents.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:05
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Does anyone have that amazing post from the tv tropes forums where some guy was looking for help with his novel because his main character needed to regain hitpoints but a healing potion would be inappropriate for a character of that level?
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Oct 31, 2017 18:05
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Splicer posted:Does anyone have that amazing post from the tv tropes forums where some guy was looking for help with his novel because his main character needed to regain hitpoints but a healing potion would be inappropriate for a character of that level? I need this in my life. I need to feel that I'm not a bad author.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:06
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Zoro posted:I need this in my life. I need to feel that I'm not a bad author. Just because there's someone worse doesn't mean that you're not also bad. (There's always someone worse) Though, seconding this request because I'd love to read such a ridiculous article.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's not that weird. Superhero comics are incredibly conservative as a whole, and addressing systemic problems would mean admitting that they're problems and that they're within the power of individual people to help fix (even if those people are portrayed as demigods.) Much safer to just stick with super-policemen who maintain things as they are against external threats and internal malcontents. I said weird, not inexplicable. The fact that it's explained by mainstream superhero comics being poo poo doesn't make it less weird.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:21
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13385072550A94591300&page=0PuppyDogGrinder6870 posted:So, at the end of Issue One of my current story, the main character has been injured by various fights with Mooks and also a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere. He then gets into a fight with the Big Bad (of issue one). My problem is that the main character doesn't have enough health potions to recover enough health to win this last fight. Furthermore, it's absolutely vital for the plot of future Issues that he win this fight, because he gets his Yandere girlfriend as a Random Drop at the end of the fight, completing the Battle Couple. So how should I fix the discrepancy?
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Oct 31, 2017 18:24
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Wasn't one of the ideas of Ultimate Marvel that stuff could change in major ways since it wasn't the main continuity? I vaguely remember something like that. I mean, yeah, we got Miles Morales and the whole dumb "Magneto kills several million people through natural disasters", but I don't remember if it was an idea from day one.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:24
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'yandere girlfriend as a random drop' is sadly too long to be an SA username
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Oct 31, 2017 18:28
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quote:Furthermore, it's absolutely vital for the plot of future Issues that he win this fight, because he gets his Yandere girlfriend as a Random Drop at the end of the fight, completing the Battle Couple.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:28
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It's not that weird, though. DC and Marvel both try to maintain a semblance of real world relativity, which becomes harder if you have someone using their super-genius to create a utopia or anything that moves the default setting from "Our Earth, but with superheroes and some extra cities/countries". It probably doesn't help that when stuff like that does happen (like Metropolis literally becoming a high tech sci-fi future city in the early 00's) the fanbase hates it. It's something that's a lot easier to do if you don't have a shared universe with a focus on maintaining a recognizable world build, which is why you see it pop up a lot more in self-contained creator owned books like Ex Machina or the new Wildstorm stuff (which granted isn't creator owned but has one writer in charge of the books). Blockhouse fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 18:29
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Lemon-Lime posted:I said weird, not inexplicable. I mean, there are many comics and comic writers in the big two that are willing to call out bullshit in their books, but they're under ton of scrutiny by management who have "heard the writing on the wall" from "internet people" that "comics are too political." Doesn't stop some, though, for having two pages devoted to a Muslim man discussing Islamophobia, police discrimination, and the such as well as other things. But the conservatism inherent in superhero comics win out. That and the fact people pay to see people punch faces, not solve real problems. And, if problems are solved, then the comic is over and thus no more for rich fat cat corporate overlords. Sure, on one hand, some of that actually works: the X-Men's fight against oppression never ending and their seeming ends being destroyed by the reality that it was only ever a small victory (or the really on the nose one where Grant Morrison had a terrorist attack do it in a comic published in 2002). But, then that's ruined by the comics often being written by people who don't get social issues and keep trying to make "solutions" like "let the X-Men have their own country" (also, the X-men are A HORRIBLE oppression metaphor, even more so if you try to stay in the middle of it like Mutant City Blues RPG does and accidentally comes off hyper racist because of it).
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Oct 31, 2017 18:30
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fool_of_sound posted:It's useless because it focuses on categorizing literally everything rather actually discussing the use thereof. I don’t think it has to be useless even though A) It is effectively useless for the majority of users and B) It appears to be designed for stupid usage Everything is (over)categorized for you in one place so you could certainly use it to consider those categories, their usage, and their relative importance (or even if the categories are valid since many are not).
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Oct 31, 2017 18:30
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's really weird that there's basically zero mainstream superhero comics about superheroes using their fantastical control over elements or their superhuman intellect to actually improve people's lives. Even something as basic as disaster recovery barely ever shows up. It's just baked into the idea of endless serial superhero stories, that the universe doesn't ever change all that much because of superpowers (or if it does, it's only for a short time, and then the status quo is returned).
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Oct 31, 2017 18:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:Wasn't one of the ideas of Ultimate Marvel that stuff could change in major ways since it wasn't the main continuity? I vaguely remember something like that. That was the IDEA and they certainly did play around with that more than people give credit, but fan backlash, editorial push-back, the desire for "recognize-ability", the success of movies, and lazy writers who either "just went with 616" or "didn't bother to check if 1610 already had a different take" killed that until there were some major differences, but not so much. Yes, the mutants were now a government experiment (which actually lead to Jean pointing out the Hulk is technically a mutant), Spider-man was miles morales, the Reed Richards was evil, the X-Men had no icons (good or bad), the government had literal mutant concentration camps which you either submitted to or died, etc., but it was still pretty similar. Zoro fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 18:34
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FMguru posted:It's because when you start doing that - using superpowers to change the world - the world quickly becomes unrecognizable. There were a lot of comics in the 1980s that explored this (Moore's Watchmen and even more so his Miracleman being two of the most significant). Once you start poking at the implications of superpowers, the world changes and becomes very different. Greg Stolze's Progenitor explores this side of things as far as superhero RPGs go.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:34
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Oh. My. Gott. The. Stupidity. Of. It. All. It's. A. Story. For. God's. Sake. Just. Make. Something. Up.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:36
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Hostile V posted:Thanks! I hate this!  Man, I just ate and now I have regrets from reading that.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:39
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It feels incredibly dated now but JMS's Rising Stars was an attempt to do 'superpowers in a real world' and parts of it were okay, the heroes did ultimately try to help the world and partially succeeded. Stormwatch and The Authority also sorta kinda tried to do the world-changing thing, but not very well--though they were hampered by just about everything that can go wrong with comic publication. Oh, and WildCATS 3.0 in which some dude whose name I can't even remember attempted to change the world by selling batteries made with alien supertech...that last forever. I think it made it to like twenty issues? Changing the world just requires a universe that can be allowed to become unrecognizable or at least fairly different from our own through heroic events. It also has to explain why punching Dr. Poverty will end world hunger, or maybe think of a better solution to those kinds of issues than violence, and as someone else mentioned, people like seeing fights. It sticks out more with superhero stories because they are so very powerful, but the same jankiness is at work in most 'modern' settings with supernatural elements. What vampires, I see no vampires! Certainly not dueling in the streets with werewolves! ETA: They're Not Like Us is the reverse of all this, in which people with special powers go out of their way to avoid being noticed or changing anything so they don't get hunted down or otherwise hurt.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:44
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Blasphemeral posted:Yeah, because that's not exciting on the page. This is referred to by the shorthand "Reed Richards is Useless". fool_of_sound posted:It actively inhibits discussion through their proliferation of categories that are so specific as to be meaningless.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:46
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Thank you, it was even better/worse than I remembered.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:47
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 New blogpost is up, for "The Next Project"I've been working on crunching out some new mechanics, just to give myself a few more tools in the toolbox when I go to tune up classes for the next draft of the rules. Some discussion on the math, and design direction pertaining to that stuff is today's topic; if anyone can critique what's there, or would like some more specifics, ask me here or in a PM  I'm also on discord: pd0t#1282 P.d0t fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 18:50
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FMguru posted:It's because when you start doing that - using superpowers to change the world - the world quickly becomes unrecognizable. You don't need to turn the world into a futuristic utopia to fight wildfires or hurricanes with your elemental powers, at the absolute bare minimum.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:50
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Now that I think of it, I think Planetary does a good job with handling the "why doesn't the existence of metahumans affect the world in general" issue.
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Oct 31, 2017 18:52
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Lemon-Lime posted:You don't need to turn the world into a futuristic utopia to fight wildfires or hurricanes with your elemental powers, at the absolute bare minimum. oh if you're talking about that then that poo poo happens all the time, it's just usually either lead-in to something else or a background thing. Usually because nobody wants to be writing the hurricane story and then a couple months later when its released an actual hurricane tragedy happens and you look like a dick.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:13
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I am now obsessively following this series. Also, the pokemon story in this one is messed up to me. Like, when your friend suddenly dies of a heartattack and falls on you, it's okay to freak out. It's actually sort of worrisome to instead play pokemon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNX6uQ7jJAE
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Oct 31, 2017 19:31
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Halloween Jack posted:This is why the Moon Knight series that Ellis began is the only Big Two superhero book I've enjoyed in the past two years. Ultimately, Moon Knight's nemesis is the Marvel editorial staff, who will always smash him back down into "White Batman who's crazy!" regardless of any character development undertaken by any writer I always want to push back against these kinds of statements but then I realize that's because I'm usually not reading the current stuff myself, and then I end up going back and reading what turned out to be good. Ellis on Moon Knight being followed by Brian Wood was particularly painful. occamsnailfile posted:Broadly, categorization of culture is bullshit, and even a lot of reputable scholars think this. Campbell's "universal motifs" are not universally present, for instance, and TVTropes is no Campbell. I always liked how Glorantha kinda both embraced and rejected Campbell at the same time, via heroquests and the Godlearners respectively
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Oct 31, 2017 19:34
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Lightning Lord posted:Ellis on Moon Knight being followed by Brian Wood was particularly painful.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:50
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The Saikoro Fiction rolling mechanic is really nice but I can just picture some rear end in a top hat GM ruining it. The main concept is that every action skill is on a grid, and roll difficulty is determined by the number of slots between the target action and an action your character is trained in. If you have that skill the difficulty is 5 on a 2D6. Then for each slot between your skill and the target skill you add 1 to the difficulty. Which is fine, but most of the games suggest enforcing an RP element. The player has to justify how the action they do have could resolve a check for another action. So the required action is climb but the closest action the player has is run. Some GMs may go ‘oh sure you run up the wall, that makes for a cool scene!’ while another may say ‘lol this isn’t the Matrix, guess you’re screwed and can’t even roll for this check. Bad luck.’
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Oct 31, 2017 19:51
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The "This Troper" videos on Knee Socks (while being creepy) make me want to find that youtube channel again where an athlete went to Japan on foreign exchange and did a daily vlog about it and it was slowly obvious that the family's other son was a super nerd that was teaching him only otaku poo poo. Like, by day 5, he was going "Yeah, the other kid here in the exchange family decided to show me around the neighborhood and taught me a new word I never learned in class: "moe." He kept calling this girls in thigh high socks that. Told me it meant 'cute.' Must be slang, I think I might use it going around town." Edit: I swear at one point he even had a vlog where he was like "he called the girl I was talking to in class a 'tsundere' when I was telling him about it and told me to stay away. Guess it must mean 'crazy bitch' in their language.' Still gonna try to hit it."
Zoro fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 19:54
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Halloween Jack posted:Nah, I enjoyed the Wood and Bunn issues, too. The whole volume. I personally dislike Wood for his deficiencies as a writer and person so YMMV I guess.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:54
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What? Can't anyone just not be a rapist?
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Oct 31, 2017 19:56
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Zoro posted:The "This Troper" videos on Knee Socks (while being creepy) make me want to find that youtube channel again where an athlete went to Japan on foreign exchange and did a daily vlog about it and it was slowly obvious that the family's other son was a super nerd that was teaching him only otaku poo poo. Like, by day 5, he was going "Yeah, the other kid here in the exchange family decided to show me around the neighborhood and taught me a new word I never learned in class: "moe." He kept calling this girls in thigh high socks that. Told me it meant 'cute.' Must be slang, I think I might use it going around town." could be an otaku or could be a really genius way to troll the foreigner
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Oct 31, 2017 19:57
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Getsuya posted:The Saikoro Fiction rolling mechanic is really nice but I can just picture some rear end in a top hat GM ruining it. The main concept is that every action skill is on a grid, and roll difficulty is determined by the number of slots between the target action and an action your character is trained in. If you have that skill the difficulty is 5 on a 2D6. Then for each slot between your skill and the target skill you add 1 to the difficulty. Tbh I do like how simple it is and how it avoids the whole skill stacking chore (like rolling 2d6+3+2+4+whatever). I'd actually say a table of sample stuff for difficulty checks would help with that.
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Oct 31, 2017 19:58
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Yawgmoth posted:I think you meant the latter here, unless I'm missing something huge. You are completely right! Thank you. To make this more tabletop game related, there is 100% a link between TV Tropes and ttg "simulationists;" they don't have a venn diagram, they have a straight up circle.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:49
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ProfessorCirno posted:You are completely right! Thank you. which seems kind of ironic when a lot of the games simulationists hate are those that are most aware that genre tropes exist and delve into rules about bringing those out in play
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Oct 31, 2017 20:57
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Evil Mastermind posted:In the post-"Ultimate Marvel" Ultimates (the team run by Carol Davners), Galactus actually stops being the big purple planet-eater and becomes an avatar of life...who then has to fight some of the other cosmic entities who want him to turn back into the Devourer of Worlds because that's who he's always been. Nope they actually avoided returning Galactus to being what he used to be, he's still The Life Bringer, heck The Ultimates ended with a lot of status quo changes sticking, albeit most of those changes not involving the actual members of the titular team Also I want to like Squirrel Girl's book, but the art in it is pretty much the worst of any ongoing book they publish that doesn't involve Greg Land Evil Mastermind posted:Wasn't one of the ideas of Ultimate Marvel that stuff could change in major ways since it wasn't the main continuity? I vaguely remember something like that. The problem with the Ultimate Universe is they went too far in the other direction, like Ultimatum ended up basically killing the Ultimate Universe almost a decade before it was officially killed off cause that event killed too many characters off and ruined the story arcs of most of the characters who survived it Similar problem happened to their Mangaverse imprint, last series they did with it killed off almost every single character leaving it an unusable universe, to the point when it's Spider-Man shows up during Spiderverse they heavily imply that they're ignoring most of the comics in his universe after the initial wave of them FMguru posted:It's because when you start doing that - using superpowers to change the world - the world quickly becomes unrecognizable. There were a lot of comics in the 1980s that explored this (Moore's Watchmen and even more so his Miracleman being two of the most significant). Once you start poking at the implications of superpowers, the world changes and becomes very different. Yeah I've been fiddling with an alternate Marvel Universe that is heavily different from real world history after a certain point(the first big divergence is "What If Atlantis, Latveria, and Wakanda all entered WW2 as part of The Allies" for example) There's also a Public Domain Superheroes setting I've been working on that also goes heavy with changes(like JFK's assassination being prevented by Stardust The Super Wizard)
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Oct 31, 2017 21:14
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re: Gillon's run on JIM, it's hard to easily summarize except that it involves Loki. Yeah, that guy with the cheekbones and soulful eyes from the movie. re: the superheroes thing, I have no good answers but I am completely fine with the prospect of a universe where the superheroes do not drastically alter society in the observable time frame - though it would be great if, for instance, Dr. Bio's heal serums could produce a spinoff to help trauma victims and similar setting elements. However, I feel you ought to own it. I also think that in general the "deconstructive" take of supers books is at this point pretty close to the norm.
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Oct 31, 2017 21:43
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Getsuya posted:Golden Sky Stories is all about helping people, being nice and using magical powers responsibly while keeping them hidden from everyone but your best friends. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much fenagling at all to make a super hero themed spinoff. You could just replace the ‘reward anything cute or helpful anyone does’ mechanic with ‘reward anything heroic/pure-hearted anyone does’. Can we call this like devsplaining or something? Ewen was the translator on GSS, I'm pretty sure.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:03
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