Commentary on Chapter 12
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Commentary on Chapter 12
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Logan, I just read your post, but it's late and I'm zoning; I'll do up a reply to it tomorrow some time (I hope).
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. 
> Hey, don't knock the Lost in Space movie -- if I hadn't
>seen it, I'd never have come up with the idea of casting >Lacey Chabert as Sailor Mercury... Out of curiousity, what's the rest of the main cast list? Blessed be. -n (Not a movie fan, but enjoys silly speculation.) =========== =============================================== "V, did you do something foolish?" "Yes, and it was glorious."
One last quick post before I crash...
Quote:That is surprisingly correct, since I never thought of it that way, and it still turns out so. For example, in the plotting that exists for DW1 he's treated as a kind of honorary Herald, because that's the closest analogue to his role back home. The societal framework around the concept of "Herald" certainly affects his behavior and his choices. (Not limiting them, though.) -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.  Quote: When I saw the movie, I thought Lacey would be perfect to cast in the role of Alita/Gally from Battle Angel/Gunnm. -Logan
It's mentioned in an early scene where we see Lisa sitting down to watch the Anime Channel's "Sailor Moon" marathon: Chapter 3, not quite halfway through:
Quote:Dunst was Usagi and Richards was Minako; I didn't have anyone in mind for Rei or Makoto. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Quote:Huh. Now that you mention it, yeah, she might be able to do it. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Quote:It had it's moments. It was very pretty, which partially distracted viewers from the plot holes that you could fly that spaceship through. And it had Mimi Rogers in it. Mmmmm.... Ebony the Black Dragon Senior Editor, Living Room Games www.lrgames.com Ebony the Black Dragon http://ebony14.livejournal.com "Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you." Quote:Your choice. But you lose so much of the effect then. Quote:Well, to absolutely honest, so do the Warriors. And while it's on my mind, this seems to be a good place to reiterate something I know I've said elsewhere, both here in the forums and in other places. The Warriors and Warriors' World as you see them in Drunkard's Walk are not precisely canon from the campaign. The individual Warriors are on target (a certain three women would not have let me make it otherwise, even if I had wanted to), as are the tactics and such I describe, but in general the team's style is far more comic book than it appears in my writings. To accomplish what I wanted in the story, I needed certain things to be true about Doug, and those required certain things to be different about Warriors' World. As it appears in DW, it's about 75% original campaign world, and about 25% the GURPS I.S.T. world. The campaign's Japan is not the hotbed of radical racist nationalists that it is in DW, for example, and the Warriors are closer to a traditional superteam than we are the story's paramilitary organization. re: Other Warriors' character sheets Quote:Well, it's pretty much a case of "are you cool with this?", along with an implicit promise that if they weren't, away it would go. I didn't negotiate any kind of extended rights. Quote:Well, the issue is complicated. There's a lot more going on with these characters than just their stats, as I think I made clear in my earlier reply. And because they are in some cases literal self-insertions, there is a certain proprietary interest in keeping them "safe" and personal. For example, Kat has refused in her usual gracious manner, partly for that exact reason. (If she gives permission, I may post part of her reply on the topic here.) Quote:So you might think, yes. Quote:If I keep my cosmology consistent, yes, she probably could. In fact, she probably does -- and the folks at home in WW just don't see it that way, given that in the original material we (occasionally) see AT fields used for stuff other than simple force fields. Quote:Ah. Now I can picture it. Thanks. Quote:Well, at least we got to see Alicia Silverstone in tight-fitting rubber. I know what you mean; despite the occasionally clever dialogue ("I guess we'll just have to kill her", "it's the car, chicks love the car"), it seems like it's starting to slip inexorably back into Adam West territory. Gods, anything but that. re: Arcanum Quote:That he was. We never actually nailed the bastard, just his various henchmen. And we never got definitive proof that Gideon Manley actually was Arcanum; not before he bailed from the planet. And John ("Skitz"/"Major Canis") Freiler and Helen did such a good job GMing him that even now, years afterwards -- and out of game -- we still aren't 100% sure that Arcanum and Manley were one and the same. 99% sure, but there always is (and probably always will be) a hair of a doubt. What makes it more frustrating is that they never put definitive information on Arcanum's identity in the Big Binder of WW GM Info. So despite the fact that the GMship has rotated through several other players since then, we still don't know for sure. Quote:Well, that was my intent -- I mean, what Doug did, even with his declaration of intent at the end of chapter 11, was so far beyond "believable" even given their knowledge of his abilities, that to have it happen had to have been a big shock. (Of course, if Doug hadn't called for a Hexe simulacrum, he'd've never succeeded, but that's neither here nor there...) That's the purpose of Linna's one line after the Warriors manifest but before they fight. It was intended to sort of sum up the "uh-oh, this is the deep end of the pool, isn't it?" feeling they all got at that moment. And btw, for the people who think the Sabers are anything but "just battlesuit goons", well yeah, that's part of the point, too. Doug is, in his own personable way, a bigot -- he's very mildly contemptuous of "mundanes" as a collective group, although it rarely affects his day-to-day interactions with individual mundanes -- like, say, Lisa, for instance. And he's very contemptuous of "mechanics" like the Sabers. This is far from fair or reasonable in Warriors' World (or any other superhero world -- I'm sure Iron Man would gladly have a word or two about it with him). Doug's characterization of them as "goons" doesn't say anything about the Sabers -- it says something about him. After all, one of those "goons" handily took down his wife... Quote:Oh, the current GM is quite understanding about these matters. And with one catastrophic exception, an incoming GM rarely overrules anything that was established or accepted by the outgoing GM -- because these things are often informally decided as a group anyway. Quote:The bad guys would boggle, too... Hm. I was about to say Doug couldn't actually do a Hexe simulacrum without the same results as he had in chapter 12, but if she's there on the field with him at the time, well, there's no need to invest so much belief in the sim, so I would suppose there would be no "summons" effect. She'd probably be less effective than the original, though. Quote:You and couple other people I've heard from. Quote:Sye no more, sye no more, a wink is as good as a nudge to a blind bat, eh? Quote:Actually because the sonar runs at a considerably lower volume -- Nene didn't have to use nearly as much power to make her jamming "louder" than the active signal part of Maggie's sonar. Quote:Actually (and I think someone has already posted this elsewhere in the thread), but the Norse pantheon is the only pantheon in UF -- all other gods worshipped in that universe are either non-existent, or just different names for the real ones. Quote:I've covered this in a separate post on this thread, but I'll expound a little more here. Belldandy, in any of her manifestations across an infinity of timelines, is an incredibly small subset of the member of the Three whom I've described as having a voice like the chiming of bells. In most of those universes, she is effectively autonomous and not being "puppeted" by her Overself although at any time the Overself can "look through" or "step into" her. All that Belldandy is, is part of "Bell-tones", but "Bell-tones" is not only Belldandy. Another way to look at it is as a vastly more sophisticated (and complicated, and sincere) version of a chatroom identity. This doesn't make what Belldandy feels for Keiichi false by any measure. But the sincere and intense emotion that Belldandy feels is far from the only component of the emotional state felt by "Bell-tones"; it gets averaged across what's being felt by all the Overself's avatars and vessels. (Still, given how many Keiichi there are in the multiverse, it's no surprise that "Bell-tones" isn't exactly a dour deity... ) Now, on the subject of filters and viewpoints. A given deity may play several roles in a single given universe, in different guises. And their "rank(s)" may vary from universe to universe, depending on the ineffable rules by which these Beings govern their insertions. This is why the Three may be the ultimate authority on destiny in one universe, and the notably weaker "daughters" of a Supreme god in another. Or saints, or angels. (Or Vorlons... ) Or all at once. They're not linear to our timesense, and they aren't limited to being in one place at any given time. Or behaving consistently between vessels. There is an exception to this: Occasionally a "protogod" gets spawned by a universe -- they are often limited to their initial form/vessel/body until they reach a certain stage of development/power/control, at which time they make a quantum leap to a "higher form" -- what I've been calling an "Overself", which is almost always in the "metaspace" with the other Overselves. And that becomes a new level of "sink or swim". Most protogods don't last long (gods have high infant mortality rates ). Quote:I'll just say that Evangelion universes tend to spawn protogods. Quote:True. Well, maybe I can do something about that. Quote:And initially not planned for. Finding all these nicely consistent subtexts in what I write (most of which I didn't actually plan), I'm starting to believe some of the crap I used to write for English papers in college... Quote:The material over her "eyes" is like the cloth on stereo speakers. It's opaque but it doesn't interfere with the sound going through it. Quote:Yeah, that's it, really. It's evolved a lot from their early relationship in the late 1980s, when Doug at least perceived it as very adversarial. He felt that Hexe was holding a grudge against him because of the "audition" attack he made on Dwimanor, and kept holding that grudge for a long time. Helen will say it's not the case, and it probably wasn't, but Doug saw it that way. The relationship between them started to change for the better when he found out that (contrary to his expectations) she was his primary advocate in the long discussion/argument that led up to the vote that ended his probationary status. It was about that time that he stopped being an obnoxious jerk simply for the sake of it, and started relegating that to his "combat persona". I'm glad Hexe comes across so well, btw. Helen wrote (or rewrote) much of her dialogue, and offered bits of business and description for me to include in the text. It's very much the case here that I was more of a director for an actor working in text than a writer. Quote:Well, protectiveness and territoriality. Quote:No comment. Although I'll forward that to Helen. (I really ought to try and talk her into joining the forum.) Quote:I know how that feels. I've been getting exhausted and drowsy by 10 PM every night this week. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Summoning Hexe could be really interesting for Doug, I think. Not (just) because of combat power, but rather as a moral compass. Since she would be herself (at least as long as she is not there in person as well) she could provide him with insights and critique unfiltered by his own mind. Might be worth a thought -- and a try. And since she would be essentially herself I'm not sure her warning about the use of simulacra and identification of them with the real persons would apply.
With the other simulacra -- I think they would act the way Doug believes they would. They are basically powered and controlled by him. So if he has not had any contact with the originals over an extended period of time the simulacra might just get a loony taint behaviourwise, couldn't they? The human memory has a tendency to drift, after all. Traits perceived as positive become even more so and stronger up to dominant while negative traits will diminish over time. And some nuances will probably disappear or perhaps never be there in the first place, if they were not noticed by the remembering person. Just a thought ... -- Cal Quote:They would probably become his idealized versions of the real people... faults would become less, strengths would become more, etc. I doubt that they would take on his personality traits unless there was something like that there to begin with... On a side-note, does Doug have a song to generate a simulacra of himself? Such a trick may be useful for a variety of things... -Z ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programms, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. -Z, Post-reader at Medium ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Re: summoning Hexe
12-15-2002, 07:38 PM (This post was last modified: 10-21-2017, 11:23 AM by Bob Schroeck.) Quote:Hm. That's an interesting idea. I hadn't thought of that, but it might be something to use in a Step further on down the line... Quote:Not a single simulacracum, he didn't... I've speculated that the Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show could let him bring in multiple real instances of himself from up and down his personal timeline. And for the longest time I was planning to use John Fogerty's "Centerfield" as an excuse to do the old Bugs Bunny baseball game schtick against a large group of boomers -- which would involve generating at least nine simulacra of Doug and possibly more. However, I never found the right place for that in the story, and when the strength cost of creating only four simulacra became a plot point, I abandoned the idea of the song entirely. (I could do it in V&V -- it costs remarkably little to generate a solid energy illusion and set it on its merry way -- but it was clearly Too Much for Doug's prose counterpart.) I have seen the post over in "The Game" that offers a good song suggestion for a single self-simulacrum. He might well add that to his repertoire. -- Bob ("Eh, watch me paste this pathetic palooka with a powerful paralyzing perfect pachydermous percussion pitch.") --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
I can picture that very easily...
Superboomers in the place of the Gashouse Gorillas. Classic.
I do regret not being able to include it, I really do. And even more I regret that the plotline evolved such that I can't ever do it in another Step, not without violating internal consistency. Ah well.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.  Quote:I dunno about that... Ok, so Doug can't do it on his own. However, as also seen in the same fight, a Goddess(or es) could provide the extra sort of energy boost needed... And lets not forget what seems to be Doug's quest in H^3. Perhaps instead of superbuma, why not a team of Deamons, ala a certain Ghostbusters episode I saw once, the concept of which was also used in a gatorade commercial earlier this year. Given the urgency of the quest, I could see one or more of the DW5's triune lending him enough power to pull off 8 copies of him. Perhaps they could actually multitask and two of them provide enough power for 4 each. ![[Image: smokin.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smokin.gif) "I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate. Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky? That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry- NO QUARTER!!! -- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children
Interesting idea... DW5's fully plotted at the moment, though; it'd be hard to work that in.
I think you'll like what I have in store for the moment when 8 of him would be handy, though... -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Well, we know that Doug primarily powers his effects off internal energy, but is also able to pull power out of a node when needed.
How about setting up the world's paradigm so that either there's _lots_ of "ambient" mana for him to use, or a world where belief is all that's needed to power magic. Either way, that would get around the current limitation by changing the rules of the game so to speak. The issue with consistancy is more important within each paradigm, and not between them... Offsides Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large Quote:Hexe (and Doug) mention that he normally powers the simulacra himself. He can, apparently chug raw mana to summon them (something he really needed to do with Hexe) but he's the battery for these little RC units. More ambient mana may let him summon more simulacra, but then he'd still have to power them all... and apparently he just doesn't have the juice to do that and chew gum at the same time... The belief angle is interesting... as long as he believes he can power the doubles, he can but once it's pointed out that he shouldn't be able to, either he collapses from exhaustion or they fade... kind of like Bugs walking off a cliff and not falling because he "never studied law" ![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif) I don't know of a convinent universe for that, though... except maybe Escaflown...-Z ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programms, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. -Z, Post-reader at Medium ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Mage: The Ascension pretty much runs its magic system around belief: you have to have an internally-consistent "philosophy" or "worldview" that lets you do magic, and you have to believe in it thoroughly; then you can do magic.
Geeze, Doug in the WoD. That'd be just so wrong. Everyone would be out to get him. It'd be almost as bad as the one GURPS World Championship multigenre tournament I wrote where Toons got loose in the WoD. (The Prince of New York put Count Chocula on trial for breaking the Masquerade; the Count's Malkavian defense "attorney" based his entire case on the statement, "My lord, the dude is cool.") -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Quote:True, but I was thinking more along the lines of books/movies/anime/ comic books/etc. There are no really well known characters in the WoD... It'd be almost like writing a WoD book with a guest star... Quote:And he let the Count from Sesame Street get away with it?? -Z ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programms, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. -Z, Post-reader at Medium ---- If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization. Quote:Let me just state for the record that if you decide to do this, I for one won't be helping with (or even reading) that step. WoD is not something I voluntarily associate with anymore... Quote:Perhaps stating the waaaayyyyy too obvious, but what about Doug landing in the world of Roger Rabbit or Warner Brothers proper. Not as a full step, but just a short interlude... After all (especially in Toon Town), a human/non-toon who acts like a toon is bound to be fun... Offsides (who lived in a WoD campaign for 5 years - NEVER AGAIN.)Drunkard's Walk Forum Moderator and Prereader At Large Quote:That wouldn't really be a big hindrance, depending on the plot. But I don't think it's likely that I'll ever drop Doug there. There's just too much "behind the scenes" for him to end up dealing with. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
How about Star Wars? If his kind of magic is even remotely compatible with the Force in SW Yodas advice might apply to him as well -- There is no try. There is only do or do not. (on Dagoba, when Luke fails to lift his Xwing out of the muck hole. Freely quoted from memory :-) In a way what Yoda asks here is belief, the absolute certainty that something impossible can be done with relative ease.
He might become something of a really interesting figure there, too -- neither on the light side of the force nor on the dark, more something like lurking in the shadows, in the twilight. As for 'In a Galaxy far, far away ...' -- well, in several respects but not necesarily in all :-) Cal
Star Wars would be fun, but for the moment I'm not considering it. Basically, Doug has to be ignorant of transfictionality until at least DW10. To this end, he's not an anime fan, nor does he know any more about Science Fiction than can be found in general pop culture. Star Wars is one of those things that, especially at his age, with his family in the movie business, and generally being immersed in American pop culture, he couldn't help but know about. Throwing him into that universe would put him somewhere he would easily recognize as "fictional" back home; so if I do write something like this, it would have to be after DW10 -- which is to say, not to be written for a long, long time.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
Oh, and Cal and anyone else -- let's put any more discussion of new universes to visit over in the "Future Steps" forum, okay? Thanks.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. |
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