Author Topic: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents  (Read 680317 times)

Claive

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #600 on: April 12, 2013, 03:48:49 PM »
The cards all came tumbling down last night. We ended up ending the campaign.

Bummer of an ending to a mostly fun campaign.

It was awesome while it lasted.
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Leviathan

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #601 on: April 12, 2013, 03:50:49 PM »
Sad to hear the game went sour, Tad. Sounded like a fun campaign, otherwise. Planning to run some Wild Talents for my own group as my next campaign.
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clockworkjoe

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #602 on: April 12, 2013, 04:20:31 PM »
That kind of sucks - how many sessions did it last?

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #603 on: April 12, 2013, 05:00:18 PM »
About 20, I think, from beginning to end. Longer than alot of campaigns do. We started in late October 2012. I used to alternate weeks with another game but eventually this became the weekly game.

clockworkjoe

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #604 on: April 12, 2013, 05:20:57 PM »
Did the players have fun with the campaign?

Claive

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #605 on: April 12, 2013, 05:25:36 PM »
Did the players have fun with the campaign?

*One vote for yes*
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Tadanori Oyama

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #606 on: April 12, 2013, 05:37:47 PM »
Quote
Did the players have fun with the campaign?

It's honestly difficult to tell sometimes. I know that they enjoyed parts of it a great deal and they had some fun when they did actually choose something to do and go about doing it. On reflection they would most likely say that they enjoyed the campaign as a whole. Actually, knowing my players, they would say 'yes' and then likely begin pointing out especially fun parts while ignoring the boring or yelling ones.

A different group of people would've liked it better and if they'd had a more unified vision than they might have derived more from it.

Flawless P

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #607 on: April 22, 2013, 01:53:37 PM »
After the short conversation had about James' identity on New Arcadia, and Aarons comment about how the Pangloss family could call him their "sibling unit".

I was just wondering, does James have a male gender identity even though his current form is genderless?

Or is "it" moving on with a more neutral attitude?
« Last Edit: April 23, 2013, 11:32:27 AM by Flawless P »
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ThadExMachina

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #608 on: April 23, 2013, 03:19:05 AM »
That's something I thought about quite a bit, actually. James traditionally identifies as male, which made him somewhat uncomfortable in the Pangloss clone body. And, though this never came up in game, I also considered him asexual, so far as orientation goes.

As far as the sexless green goo form is concerned, I definitely think his perception of being male has diminished a great deal by that point. Once his biological functions had been shed, James spent most of his time researching, running experiments, and making things. And with his "universal data port" power (or whatever I called it), I imagined him (or part of him) as pretty much always being online, browsing journal articles and super science forums on the darknet. As he takes in more information--and he takes in a lot--the percentage of his hard drive taken up by his original biological memories gets lower and lower.

He still has memories of being physically male, and of being raised as and considering himself as such. If you asked him when he was in the Pangloss clone or even the robot, he would still have said he was male. But he's probably more comfortable in the goo body than he's been in a long time (though it takes some getting used to).

At the end of the day, while James is aware of psychology, sociology, and gender studies, his primary mental focus is always on technology, so his own gender isn't really on his mind that much. If somebody straight-up asked Green Goo James if he still considered himself male, he'd pause briefly, cock his head and say, "I suppose not, no," before either returning to what he was doing, or engaging the person who asked (or just himself, thinking out loud) in a philosophical discussion as what it might be like to be born as the substance he is now, never having the biological sex mechanisms that we tend to tie to gender roles. Then he'd probably wonder if he could track down the giant shoggoth/godzilla at the bottom of the ocean and ask it. Well, not ask it as such, but plug in and translate its thought impulses into something human-readable. Then he'd wander offer, muttering about research methodology for inter-species direct thought translation...

Wow. I just realized how much I miss playing James. He was fun.

Externally, I just keep calling James 'him' to keep from coming up with separate nomenclature. Calling him an 'it' would seem kind of rude and objectifying. To me anyway. James likely wouldn't care too much.
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Flawless P

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #609 on: April 23, 2013, 11:47:17 AM »
It seems to me that he is on the fast track to becoming the first ex-human of the new trans human utopia.

Well unless we consider Mayhem as an ex human.

Either way James has been my favorite character since he told the police who he is, just straight up not even attempting to lie. It was awesome.

I might've brought that up somewhere on here before.

So yeah, huzzah for James!

(My appreciation for James might also be because of my super scientist character named James Porter who built himself some tech armor. Made him years ago, but the name James Porter has been very popular for my characters over the years.)
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Tadanori Oyama

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #610 on: April 23, 2013, 12:28:38 PM »
I enjoy that James is in on the comic book super science masquerade of convenience. When one of the players, often Adam (Aaron's character), proposes using super science to circumvent a problem James states it can't be done or has a ready excuse as to why it can't be done.

ThadExMachina

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #611 on: April 23, 2013, 03:17:43 PM »
As much as I love trying to solve a problem by "rubbing science on it," I wanted to avoid having James attempt to "do science" to things if it didn't make sense to him to do so (within the admittedly nebulous bounds of super science).

There's a good example in the latest episode, where Chirop asks if James and Adam can help him transfer money to his son without his son knowing who it came from. The transfer could've been done easily, but keeping a trained investigator from questioning it falls well beyond the bounds of science (unless you get out into mind control, but that's not a reasonable solution).

Also, with this incarnation of James I really wanted to exercise my high-speed technobabble... 'cause it's fun.
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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #612 on: May 01, 2013, 06:03:35 PM »
A question about Charon and other similar deal making characters (ie any that Aaron has made a deal with):

Do their powers/abilities have stats or are they treated as a narrative device? Do they merely have conditions to get things from them?


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Flawless P

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #613 on: May 01, 2013, 06:44:44 PM »
A question about Charon and other similar deal making characters (ie any that Aaron has made a deal with):

Do their powers/abilities have stats or are they treated as a narrative device? Do they merely have conditions to get things from them?


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Or something like that.

At least that's what I do.

Then again I don't even stat up enemies, I usually just set a fixed hp and damage value then wing the rest.
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Tadanori Oyama

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Re: The Heroes of New Arcadia - RPPR Superheroes campaign - Wild Talents
« Reply #614 on: May 01, 2013, 06:45:26 PM »
When I was running game I started to try to stat out my Charon substitue. I got through the Stats before I realized how pointless it was. The guy was never gonna fight the PCs or even really oppose them so why have stats to try and focus on? After that I stopped stating any NPCs I didn't think would end up fighting the characters.