Meet 'N Greet #9!

This particular feature of my blog has gone fallow ever since 'City of Heroes' went away, and I think that's kind of a shame because it was fun to talk about the concepts I had for my characters. I know that "please don't tell me about your character" is one of the standard jokes in fandom, but generally I feel like it applies more to people for whom the phrase "let me tell you about my character" means "let me tell you exclusively about the absurdly large/small [delete where applicable for gaming system] numbers I wrote down on my character sheet and the way it makes me better than everyone else at playing the game". Because numbers aren't inherently interesting, but characters frequently are.

Take for example today's entry, Paintboxer. He was a mad scientist, and when I say "mad" I mean "totally barking". His big moment of revelation came when he saw a truck passing his lab with the Sherwin-Williams logo painted on the side:

That was when he had his moment. This was no coincidence. It was a message, a coded message from the secret masters of the universe. This was his directive, his command, his all-consuming imperative from this day forth! He would design special gauntlets that could inject nano-engineered self-replicating paint droplets, and defeat the enemies of the secret world order by punching them with endless gallons of paint! He would design his own spacecraft, stealing to get the money if necessary, and he would put a bucket the size of the moon in geostationary orbit! And then...then, armed with his self-replicating paint and his massive paint-generating bucket, he would do the impossible. He would fulfill his orders. He would....

COVER THE EARTH

That was Paintboxer. You can see why I disagree that people who talk about their characters are boring.

City of Heroes Update: Next Year in Jerusalem!

If you're reading this, you might very well share my interest in 'City of Heroes', and my frustration with the shutdown of the game last November. (If you're not reading this, then you have no taste in literature and you probably hunt puppies for sport. So nyeah.) I've been following the efforts of various fans to restore the game in some form or other, and thought that those of you not in the loop might appreciate an update on the matter. Because, of course, I totally have a bigger audience than the Titan forums and it entirely consists of people who don't know how to use Google.

There are three basic plans being advanced at this point. The first, which is probably the most desired outcome, is a plan to purchase the property from NCSoft, rehire the most essential Paragon Studios staff, and restart the game. This is probably the plan with the lowest chance of success, as everyone involved is aware, but it's not hopeless by any means. Acclaimed fantasy author Mercedes Lackey, who was a long-time member of the community almost since its inception (she even wrote a short story set in the CoH universe) is using her contacts in the science-fiction and fantasy industry (and within the former Paragon Studios) to craft business proposals that actually stand a chance of being listened to. The current target is Google Play, who have already expressed some tentative interest in the idea. We should know more on this in a month or so.

The second plan, which is probably the most likely to see results first, is a plan to "reverse engineer" the servers using the data from eight years' of gameplay and the client saved to the hard drive of each player. The idea behind this is that while NCSoft owns the intellectual property, and they own the code on the servers, each player owns the software that they bought and paid for and still have on their hard drive. So if you can make a server that uses none of NCSoft's code or IP, and people interact with it using a legally-purchased copy of 'City of Heroes', then you can make a CoH clone and NCSoft can't do squat about it. (Of course, some people have pointed out that frivolous C&D letters are a common tool of big companies, but it's at least worth trying to follow the copyright laws in a situation like this.) The coders involved have already made big progress; you can apparently log into their server and move around the first city zone, albeit as a translucent ghost-person who skids around through the air like you're sliding on invisible ice. But for three months of work, that's hellishly impressive progress.

The third plan, which is in some ways the most interesting, is what started as "Plan Z". It's an attempt to create an entirely new game from scratch, one that retains no aspects of CoH's code, mechanics or IP, but retains a similar "feel" in its gameplay and theme. There are currently two projects going on under this banner, "Project: Phoenix" and "Heroes and Villains", and while both of them are still in very early development and unlikely to be playable even in an alpha state anytime soon, they are both moving and could result in an embarrassment of riches if they turn out to be as good as the game that inspired them. In short, while this is a frustrating time to be a fan of the best superhero MMO ever, the future does have a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel!

Meet N Greet #8

In honor of the end of 'City of Heroes', I once again introduce you to another of my characters. This one was  the creation of a mad scientist with a love of the works of Roald Dahl. The creature had a perpetually shifting bodily structure, allowing it to rapidly grow razor-sharp spines from its body and slash (or fling them at) enemies with them. The beast's warping, semi-liquid flesh could recover from just about any injury within moments, making it a formidable foe.

But the scientist was surprised when the monster turned out to have a conscience. Somehow, its primitive brain understood the concept of right and wrong, and joined the side of the angels to bring justice to Paragon City. It could understand a few words, even if it only ever figured out how to morph its malleable flesh into a mouth long enough to speak one: "SCRAM!" (It never did figure out what it meant, but it was terribly proud of knowing how to say it.) This creature became a legendary hero, known only as...the Vermicious Knid!

(The best part of playing this character was when they installed the "Day Job" badges. The Vermicious Knid was a Shop Keeper, a Scientist, a Professor, an Architect, and a Fashion Designer...all without ever saying anything other than, "SCRAM!", apparently.)

End of an Era

This appears to be the last week ever for 'City of Heroes', which I think it's safe to say is my favorite video game of all time. I've been a member since about the first month (my friend let me play his account for a few weeks to try it out) and it is genuinely saddening to me that NCSoft seems determined to kill the game. (They said they "exhausted all options" when it came to keeping the game alive, but even the tiniest leaks of information belie that statement.)

This game has meant a lot to me. A lot of the good times with my friends over the last near-decade involved 'City of Heroes' LAN parties, and a lot of my characters have developed a life of their own in my imagination. (Suffice to say, a lot of the early genesis of 'Self-Taught Superheroes' has its roots in 'CoH'.) I think the game was an excellent piece of design work, very casual-play and casual-gamer friendly, and I think it was influential all out of proportion to its playerbase. You can see, scattered through my blog, some of my character ideas...I've backed those characters up using the Sentinel+ tool, but that doesn't mean I'll ever get to play them again. Paragon City might have been a virtual place, but that doesn't make it any less real to me.

I'm going to spend the last week of the game's existence playing; there's still at least one character I'd like to see hit 50 before they shut the servers down. After that, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears open for good news...because I believe that a game like this is too good to die forever.

Meet 'N Greet #7

Today, ye scurvy dogs, we be talking about another City of Villains character I made. This sea dog were once another ordinary pirate like you and me, until he ran afoul of cursed treasure that forced him to sail the seven seas for all time, doomed to search endlessly for the man he stole from so that he can return it!

His ailment, Cursed Treasure Syndrome or CTS, strikes a pirate every thirty seconds. CTS is the single largest cause of undeath for pirates, swashbucklers, privateers, and buccaneers across the Spanish Main. The CTS Spokes-Pirate is stealing, maiming and killing to raise awareness of CTS throughout the Rogue Isles. Your involuntary donation could help remove an unlucky seagull from around a sailor's neck, return cursed gold to its rightful owner, or just let an unlucky pirate have a night on the town (inasmuch as he can, given his inability to taste real food and drink.)

CTS can strike anyone at any time. So please, give before it hurts.

Worth Mentioning (A Minor Shameless Plug)

Just a brief post today, because they can't all be Shakespeare (yes, you in the back there, stop laughing or leave the room.) It did occur to me that some folks who read this blog might also play 'City of Heroes', given that I have, you know, mentioned 'City of Heroes' several times and made a semi-regular feature out of describing my characters' biographies. And as many/some/a few of you know, 'City of Heroes' has recently added a feature where people can design their own story arcs that anyone can play, complete with custom villains!

So I thought I'd mention, for the benefit of those who do play 'City of Heroes', that I've got up two arcs. The first is "The Alternate Armor Assaults" (sorry, I don't know my Arc ID numbers off the top of my head--I'll edit the post when I get a chance to find them out, but in the meanwhile you should be able to find them by searching the titles.) It's designed for heroes in at least their 20s, and is about Positron (one of the major heroes in Paragon City) needing your help. See, like all good technological heroes, he's designed a whole bunch of specialized armors--almost as if he had a toy line to worry about--and someone's managed to sneak past his security systems and steal them! So you have to recover his Gladiator Armor, his Volcano Armor, his Dynamo Armor and his Chrononaut Armor, all while trying to figure out who's behind the theft and capture them.

The second arc, "Get Real!", is designed for a team of high-level villains (let me stress that, a team--the first mission features a giant monster. You cannot solo this arc, or at the very least I wouldn't recommend trying.) It's about the Television (the best contact in the game, seriously), which is suffering from a little problem--with so much reality television on TV, the boundaries between Television and reality are breaking down completely. How do you solve this problem? How does any supervillain solve a problem? With violence against society!

I'm working on a third arc (you can't have more than three at a time, at least not without a near-deus ex machina happening), featuring a mass invasion of Paragon City by an alliance of all its villains, but that's still in progress. In the meantime, feel free to leave feedback on the arcs in the comments section here, or in the game!

Meet 'N Greet #6

This time, I'm actually going to focus on two characters for the "Meet 'N Greet" (an irregular feature that describes the backstories of my 'City of Heroes/Villains' characters, as silly as that sounds. Hey, they let you put a lot of detail into these characters' biographies, so I'm going to share them.)

But the question is, are they really two characters? On the one hand, you have Mary-Sue Quantum, a high school student from the 30th century with an A+ in telepathy, an A- in telekinesis, and a potential F in history staring her in the face. Clearly, there's only one thing for her to do--travel back in time to the 20th century and learn about events first hand by becoming the super-hero known as...Millennium Girl!

But Millennium Girl doesn't spend all her time in the 20th century, and sometimes when she's gone--especially after big, earth-shaking events--another time traveler shows up. Marisu Neutron, a nuclear mutant who's one of the last survivors of a dying human race, claims that for all their good intentions, it was heroes who caused the atomic holocaust that produced her future. The only way to stop World War Three, she claims, is to unite the world under a single leader, Lord Recluse (Statesman's arch-nemesis, and ruler of the Rogue Isles.) So, taking her cue from the last few ancient historical records she found with the time machine in the underground lab she stumbled into, she fights for Lord Recluse's cause as...Dystopia Girl!

Many have noted the remarkable similarity of appearance between the two women (once mutations are accounted for), but only the top temporal physicists have began to suspect what it might mean...and even they aren't sure what to do about it. But they suspect that despite the presence of two time travelers, time might be running out.

Meet 'N Greet #5

A little something different for this one--this is a character I actually deleted, because I didn't like the way it played, but I love the concept, so I'm keeping him alive in some small way by blogging about him here.

We all know about the famous secret bio-weapons projects the US government runs. They're well-known for concealing plans to make the ultimate living weapon, some sort of perfect killing machine with, say, razor-sharp claws, and perhaps some sort of, oh, I don't know, healing factor. Just as a hypothetical example. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

But what's less known is that there are also Brazilian secret bio-weapons programs. They use the molds from the American bio-weapons programs, and then repackage the resultant living weapons under a generic name because they're cheaper. Sure, it violates trademark and copyright, but nobody really cares about the kind of cheap, imported killing machines you can buy in the dollar store, ones with bad paint jobs and the chest logo put on with a sticker. (Damn, lost the subtle thread of the analogy there...)

That's what this character was--the generic Brazilian knock-off of a famous mutant super-soldier. Created from a different secret weapons program, made for cheap with a bad costume and no real personality, he's not Weapon X...

He is...Brand X!

"Not My Day" (in fact, not my week)

Friday already, huh? It's not been a pleasant week. Frankly, I'd skip blogging altogether this week if it wasn't for the fact that those "Storytelling Engines" posts look silly right up next to each other. I'm exhausted, I'm feeling decidedly uncreative, and in those situations, there's really only one thing to do: Put up something old that was cluttering up my hard drive and never got published anywhere, but that I sort of like. This is a very short story I wrote to submit to the 'City of Heroes' comic book, back when there was such a thing and they took fan submissions. It's about life as a low-level superhero, and it's called...

Not My Day

Kevin stepped off the tram slowly, his armor still heavy and unfamiliar on his body as he walked the streets of King’s Row for the first time. Everything felt new to him—the sounds of gunshots in the still dusk air, his freshly-laminated I.D. card that proclaimed his new identity as “Neutrino Man” to the citizens of Paragon City, and the tip his friend Paco Sanchez, who worked in Galaxy City’s hospitals, had given him.

“The Circle of Thorns,” Paco had said. “They perform rituals on the rooftops in King’s Row at night. I don’t know what they’re doing, but I know they kidnap people to do it…and that those people are never seen again.” Kevin was still a bit new to the hero gig, but he knew that was exactly the sort of thing he had to stop.

He looked at the setting sun, then at the tenement buildings that rose up all around him. “Rooftops,” he muttered to himself. “Good. Very specific.” He picked a direction and started walking.

He didn’t walk long. After only two blocks, he heard a scream from up above him. It was a woman, shouting, “What are you doing to me?” A deep, sepulchral voice responded, “The ceremony must continue!” It sounded like what he was looking for. Kevin looked for a quick way up the building.

There was a fire escape about halfway along the building, and Kevin quickly jumped for it…only to find that his armor weighed him down just a little too much to do more than brush against its lower rungs. “Stupid nuclear regulations,” he gasped, making another futile jump. “I tell them and tell them, I could get by with half the lead shielding, but…” He carefully hopped onto a nearby fence, balancing tenuously. From there, he leapt to the fire escape…but took a step too many, and plunged back to earth.

“Not my day,” he grumbled, leaping back to the fence and then back to the fire escape. This time, he managed to hold his position and started his way up the ladder. Ominous rumbles filled the sky above him as swirls of green lightning flashed overhead.

Three stories up now, and Kevin was really hoping that whatever this ritual was, it took awhile. He was also mentally redesigning his armor to drop seventeen pounds of redundant systems, and making plans to join a gym.

At seven stories up, the fire escape simply stopped. Kevin looked up, and saw three more stories between him and the roof. “Why didn’t I just go inside and ask if there was an elevator?” he asked himself. He made a desperate leap, grabbing at a window ledge ten feet above him, and managed to just barely hook it. Another leap put him on another window ledge, and another…was just slightly misjudged. Kevin saw the ground rushing up at him, and plans for boot-jets unfolded with desperate clarity just before the impact knocked them right back out of his head.

The armor’s chronometers showed he’d only been unconscious for a few minutes. He could still hear the ritual overhead. Thankfully, the armor also protected him from the seven-story fall he’d just taken…and that ‘unnecessary’ lead shielding had protected King’s Row from the effects of a portable backpack-mounted nuclear reactor hitting the ground.

Another jump to the fence. Another jump to the fire escape. Kevin wasn’t sure how long he had, but he knew he was running out of time. ‘Running’ had featured far more prominently into his day than he’d planned it to, given that he only started this superhero gig as a way of promoting his portable energy sources. But as he reached the top of the fire escape and started his wild jumps again, he knew that there was an innocent woman up there depending on him. As he clung to an air conditioner nine stories above the ground, pulling himself up for the last jump, he at least hoped she was cute.

Finally, he crawled onto the roof. He staggered to his feet, preparing for battle…and saw the flash of light again, thirty feet to his left. Easily misjudged from ground height. Across the alley. On another rooftop. He looked over, and saw three hooded figures in dark robes. He looked out over the alley, did a few quick velocity calculations in his head, and came up with an answer he didn’t like. He looked two stories down, at his probable landing site on another fire escape. He backed up.

“Not my day,” he muttered, as he sprinted across the roof and flung himself into space…

The End

(People who don't play 'City of Heroes' are sort of saying, "Huh," right now. People who do play 'City of Heroes' are saying, "Omigod, that is totally what I was like that first time I had to do that!")

Meet 'N Greet #4

Once, he was an ordinary clown. His was a happy lot, entertaining children, loving his beautiful wife (also a clown), and looking forward to teaching his young son the craft of circus entertainment.

Then, one day, all that changed. A group of renegade mimes from the infamous 'Cirque du Soleil' crime family gunned down his whole family with invisible bullets. With no ballistics to trace, the police could do nothing. But he could.

Now, he's no longer a clown. He's a clown with a gun. And he's going mime hunting. No invisible box can save them. He's a one-man force for justice, an unstoppable white-faced, big-haired torrent of revenge...

No. Not revenge. Funishment.

He is...the Funisher.

(True story: This character was inspired by a "wannabe" on the 'City of Heroes' game, someone who'd simply made a copyrighted character and changed his name slightly to avoid being deleted for copyright infringement. He had made the Punisher, but had added an "h" so it was the "Phunisher". Apart from being appalled at the lack of imagination, I was quite irritated at the poor understanding of phonetics. That wouldn't sound like "punisher", it'd sound like...and then I realized it was the Best Character Idea Ever.)

Meet N Greet #3

(Ironically, this entry was delayed by a day because I was checking out the new patch for 'City of Heroes'...)

Colonel Meyer Hagen walked into the dimly-lit lab, already mentally biting his nails. Doctor David Flagg wasn't the worst scientist he'd ever had to deal with in his five years as liason with the civilian technical personnel on Alpha Base, but there was just something so irritatingly...childish about the man. No, not childish. Childlike. Flagg just needed to grow up, that was the problem. Put away childish things. He--

"Colonel Hagen! Good to see you down here again!" Flagg enthusiastically slapped the colonel on the back, receiving a tight-lipped smile in return.

"Doctor Flagg. I believe you said you had a breakthrough for me?"

"Oh, better than that. I've got a completed prototype, ready for field-testing." He flipped a switch, and banks of lights illuminated a corner of the laboratory. "Allow me to present the ultimate in human-operated exoskeletal technology...the Human-Occupied Law-enforcement Computer, version 1.0!"

Colonel Hagen looked at the seven-foot tall metal form for a long moment. Finally, he said what had been in his mind since the second the lights went on. "It's...green."

"Yes. Now the breakthrough came when I realized that instead of attempting to integrate a weapons system, you could simply focus on increasing the strength and durability of the HOLC system to levels that make it effective in combat without needing--"

"I'm sorry, the what?"

"HOLC. Human-Occupied Law-enforcement Computer."

"So you want us to test a giant green robot...called the HOLC. Which is super-strong and indestructible."

Doctor Flagg nodded enthusiastically.

"You've got issues, Flagg."

"Every single one since 'Tales to Astonish' #67. Now, I've increased the leg strength, so it should be able to jump great distances. The arm strength allows it to clap its hands to create giant sonic booms..."

Meet 'N Greet #2

It's, um, still Thursday, right? (Seriously, yes, I know this is late. Had some stuff to deal with that couldn't wait and took up a good chunk of time. But it's not every day one gets a free car.) So, only two days after it was supposed to be up, the origin of another fabulous super-hero/villain!

Karin Colbert was out jogging in Paragon City one bright spring morning when she had the seeming misfortune to turn down the wrong street at the wrong time. As she rounded the corner, she heard the sounds of chanting, and spotted an eerie green light--all of which stopped as she practically bumped into a group of three men in dark robes, their eyes glowing under the hood.

"So," one of them said, "the prophecy is true! Our ritual has, indeed, been interrupted by the legendary Champion of Light!" He raised his sacrificial dagger. "Speak, mighty Champion! Tell us the name of the hero we are slaying this morning!"

"...eep."

"Very well, Eep, prepare to die!"

Karin flung out a hand, attempting to block the dagger...and was stunned when a mass of whirling cinders flew out from it into the face of the cultist. He collapsed, choking, and the other two cultists quickly fled. The would-be victim stood up, and walked over to her.

"Congratulations, Champion," he said. "From this day forth, your karmic destiny is set. You shall battle evil. You shall fight the darkness. You shall be our Champion of Light. You shall be...EEP!"

"But I don't want to!"

"Too bad. Sucks to be you." And he vanished.

And ever since that fateful day, Karin Colbert has accidentally run into evil wherever she has gone, unwillingly fighting it with magical powers that she doesn't know how to use and doesn't want to, as...EEP!

Geek Alert!

Warning: The following anecdote requires, at minimum, a mild degree of science geekery to understand. If you cannot dredge up your memories of high-school science, specifically the unit on temperature, you will not only not get the punchline, you will not even understand that there is a punchline present. You will assume that I'm missing the last paragraph, or worse, that I'm one of those people who just blogs random incidences of their life on the assumption that everyone is interested in me and what I do. Warning over.

So Tony, one of my room-mates, has had a character on 'City of Heroes' for a while now by the name of "Calvin Zero". He's an ice/ice blaster, and if that doesn't make perfect sense to you, go re-read the warning at the beginning of this entry. (Calvin was based on an old RPG character he had back in college, and I think the origins of the character go back further than that, but I digress.)

Tonight, we were playing 'City of Heroes' (Tony was not logged in as Calvin Zero at the time, more's the pity) and we passed another ice/ice blaster, this one named "Celsius Zero". He had a decent costume, and a good bio entry...

...but even so, we all had to agree that Tony's character was way cooler.

Meet 'N Greet #1

As previously noted, this blog is here for little creative bits that I don't think will make me any money anywhere else, but that I want to share with other people because I'm immensely egotistical and think I'm very clever. So, in that spirit, I thought I might share some of the character concepts I've used on "City of Heroes/Villains", because if there's anything that fits the above definition, it's that.

Today, we meet Isaac Barnes. Isaac was an ordinary man, a homeowner who paid off his mortgage quickly due to a bit of luck with the lottery. He found himself with some spare cash, and decided to build a deck in the backyard. As it turned out, the project was a great success--aesthetically pleasing, increased the value of his home, and nice for barbecues. The people at the local home improvement store were a great help.

So he decided to add on a bit more, expanding the master bedroom. It turned out to be another easy, economical project. Isaac started to suspect he had a gift for this sort of thing. He then moved on to expand the living room, widen the garage, and he was thinking of adding a spare bedroom when he realized there was a small problem. He was out of property. Naturally, there was only one thing to be done.

Isaac built himself a suit of power armor, an army of robot followers, declared martial law, and annexed his neighbor's house.

From there, things spiralled out of control pretty rapidly. Now, Isaac Barnes is no more. Obsessed with home improvement projects, he has become...The Home Despot!