Question of the Day!

General GTG Off Topic
#1082

I used to listen to The Cracked Podcast, but it eventually lost my interest after Jack O’Brien left the company, shortly before the company left itself more or less (it’s complicated). There was however a spin-off podcast called Kurt Vonneguys which ran for 25 episodes, and I have all but one of them downloaded and regularly re-listen to them.

Other than that, I mostly follow a few podcast-esque YouTube channels, with minimal relevant video content, devoted to things like Star Trek, gender politics, and the aforementioned SCP Foundation.

#1083

QotD #124 Reply: I haven’t listened to anything other than The Letters Page, really. If I had the time, I might try The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, though.

Question of the Day #125: Wings or a prehensile tail?

#1084

Are the wings instead of arms or in addition to them. If it’s in addition to them, wings, otherwise the tail. (I like using my hands.)

#1085

I’m afraid of heights, so definitely the tail.

#1086

I was imagining the wings or tail in addition to all your other limbs, Pydro.

QotD #125 Reply: I don’t really need the mobility offered by wings; I have a car for that. However, holding three things at once would be quite useful. (But, to be frank, I find the idea of any extra limbs unsettling, and I’d prefer to keep my current loadout, thank you very much.)

Question of the Day #126: If you play roleplaying games, do you play them to roleplay a character in a fictional world, or to optimise your character to be the best it can be?

#1087

I don’t fully optimize, but I do try to achieve a high degree of system mastery (and I prefer complex systems that take a lot of mastering), because IMO it isn’t fun to be consistently useless unless the GM throws you all sorts of fiats in your favor. My primary goal isn’t necessarily to roleplay a character, or even to explore a fictional world, though both of those are sometimes desirable; I figure that those two goals, plus the semi-competitive aspect of trying to dominate a combat or other challenging encounter, plus my desire for selfish wish-fulfillment and power-tripping and other such vicarious experiences through a thinly-veiled Author Avatar type character (which hardly deserves to be called “roleplaying”), can all be mixed and matched to various degrees as befits my mood. I try to come up with a fun backstory for my character, but sometimes I end up forgetting it, or not being able to translate the personality I wrote down into a set of actions befitting a particular situation. In such cases, I tend to default to having the character act the way I myself (or a fantastically idealized version of me) would act in that situation, even if it contradicts what I wrote down as my theoretical character. It’d be nice if I could go full Method Actor with every character I dream up, since I’m certainly good enough at building a diverse stable of them…but the bottom line is, I’m playing the RPG so I can indulge my somewhat chaotic whims, and so I only maintain a consistent roleplay character for as long as it still amuses me to do so.

#1088

QotD #126 Reply: Both, really. I like making a fictional character and telling his or her story. But, I can’t tell that character’s story if he or she is not effective at what the character does. Thus, optimisation is necessary for roleplaying.

Question of the Day #127: Which Sentinels character do you think would be the best candidate to star in a movie adaptation?

1 Like
#1089

You’d want someone who doesn’t invite too many comparisons to existing franchises (this kills Guise, who would otherwise be the obvious choice), and isn’t too far down the rabbit hole of Christopher’s specific interests (sorry, Argent Adept). My choice would probably be Absolute Zero, I think his story is pretty darn cinematic, plus you set up for an easy sequel with Tachyon, who’s a strong runner-up choice (it doesn’t seem likely we’ll be getting a movie for the Flash character from Justice League after all, and anyway that take on the character is very far away from Tacky personality-wise). I could also see doing Ra though, or maybe Parse if you can get the right writer to do her justice (and handwave her backstory so you don’t have to explain either Omnitron or OblivAeon).

My personal favorite characters are unfortunately mostly not the right ones for this…too many people would dismiss The Naturalist as a Captain Planet ripoff, fail to gel with Nightmist, or be scared off the Chrono-Ranger property because of the Jonah Hex movie that everyone said was terrible (although Mastadon wrote an awesome theme tune for it). And of course, Captain Cosmic would have a crazy special effects budget if you didn’t want it to look totally unbelievable, which it probably would anyway (the same problems, minus a drastically miscast Ryan Reynolds and some terrible writing, that made it a huge struggle for me to enjoy the 2011 Green Lantern movie, although I did manage to enjoy it on some levels).

A few characters like Bunker or Fanatic have a lot of potential that I can see, but I’m personally turned off by them, so the ones I picked above are a compromise between my own wishes and the likely opinion of The Market.

#1090

QotD #127 Reply: Huh, when I thought of this QotD, comparisons to existing films hadn’t come to mind. If we’re talking about what The Market might like, what about a Slaughterhouse Six film? ('Cause I hear people like Villain-centric things.) Or maybe an Anti-Heroic Expatriette shooting up everyone. Or the whole dark and gritty Dark Watch (sans the upbeat Setback. Replace him with . . . oh, The Wraith or Writhe.) Or what about a Legacy film where he has to deal with the corruption of FILTER before it splits off from the US Government? Okay, maybe I’m accentuating the negative aspects of what I think The Market is like.

Hmm . . . folks seem to like team-ups against big cosmic threats, so any of the Villains from Wrath of the Cosmos or Voss or Cosmic Omnitron versus the Freedom Five (but replace Bunker with Nightmist [because I think Bunker is the least popular of the FF, and Nightmist is a pretty popular-character?]) could have potential. No, not “Cosmitron,” that would only work as a sequel. Out of those, I think Deadline could work the best.

But wait, Sentinel Comics exists in a Reality other than ours. We don’t know what other franchises there are to be compared to. Nor should we assume all these hypothetical films take place in the present; they could have been produced before several of the films we’re comparing them to!

So, as for characters that I would actually like movies about (compared to The Market), I think The Southwest Sentinels could have potential for a fun, light-hearted, family film that has no connections to other SC properties. (It could still be fun to have the Tachyon Easter Egg, though.) Mister Fixer or Black Fist could also be pretty cool. Ra and The Visionary also have potential to be good films.

Okay, I now realise that several of my above suggestions are more than just one character, like the Question asked . . . eh. Also, oh boy was this a long reply.

Question of the Day #128: Darkvision (the ability to see in darkness) or “X-Ray Vision” (the ability to see through non-transparent matter)?

(On a completely unrelated note, today I realised that this Forum does not support indenting via the tab key.)

#1091

Question of the Day #129: What media/entertainment franchise/work do you dislike the most?

#1092

128 answer: Depends on whether we’re talking comic-book X-ray vision, where you look at a woman with a blouse and instead you see the bra she has on under it, or realistic X-ray vision, where you look at the same woman and you see all her internal organs. If it’s the latter version, I’ll take darkvision.

129 answer: Oh jeeze, I hate so many things, but the absolute WORST? That’s hard. Off the top of my head, the worst thing I can come up with that I’ve ever experienced (having avoided most of the things that I would definitely really hate) was a 2009ish movie called “The Covenant”. The trailers made it look like it would be cool…it was not. Absolutely godawful. I also hated the movie of The Spirit, but that one I could at least give a little credit for trying to do something unusual; the Covenant wasn’t just crap, it was cliched crap.

#1093

Justifier, I meant cinematic “X-Ray Vision” (thus the quote marks and parenthetical clarifying note), not realistic x-ray vision.

QotD #129 Reply: Well, as I said earlier in this thread, I dislike Anti-Heroes, so the Punisher is a strong candidate. However, I believe that my top choice would be the Potter franchise. (Yes, I dislike it so much that I will not type his full name or link to the Wikipedia page about it. I assume that it is popular enough that you will all know what I mean.) I have various reasons that I dislike that franchise and its eponymous character, none of which I will elaborate on here (unless asked). If you greatly like the franchise, we must simply agree to disagree.

Question of the Day #130: Do you know any languages other than English? Do you want to know any?

#1094

If you wanna unburden yourself about those reasons for hating the franchise, you’re welcome to PM me. I’ve never read or seen it, but cultural osmosis has given me reason to think I would have a mostly negative opinion, so you’re welcome to bash it in my presence and give me more information to support my existing lack of enthusiasm.

130 answer: Never learned a full language, though I know assorted words from a dozen of them. I’m most interested in, and closest to having a partial understanding of, Spanish and German, the former because I live in a heavily Hispanic neighborhood and the latter mostly because of their cultural fetish for board gaming. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to sitting down with one of my Berlitz books and finishing the proper learning process, but if my life would stop applying its steel-toed boot to my nether regions, perhaps I just might.

#1095

Yeah, I might do that, Justifier, if I find the time.

QotD #130 Reply: I know broken Danish, and will begin learning Latin in a few weeks.

Question of the Day #131: Would you rather want Magic to be real or not?

#1096

I lean strongly toward “yes” on that, although it would depend a lot on the specifics. Obviously, a magic system such as that found in Call of Cthulhu, where spells don’t do much other than ward off invading entities, and casting them destroys your sanity almost as much as the entities themselves would, isn’t very useful to us. I also wouldn’t want something childish or saccharine, such as what little I know about the magic from Harry Potter or MLP:FIM. Probably the best portrayal of magic I’ve seen was in the Doctor Strange movie, apart from the widespread use of a mystical device known as a “sling ring”. That was dumb, but almost everything else with the portrayal of spellcasting in that film was just about perfect by my standards. Comic book magic in general, as long as it’s not being done in a super-dumb way (eg Zatanna’s backward-spoken spells or Etrigan the rhymer demon), tends to agree with my preferences a little more than most of what we see in the various fantasy pastiches…the Dungeons and Dragons spell system is pretty robustly constructed, but still hangs on the anachronistic concept of “prepared spells”, while something along the lines of World of Warcraft might be a little more to my taste (I’ve only played Warcraft 3, and that was a long time ago, so I forget exactly how they handled it, but I think it was more of a magic-based system).

Special mention must be made of the Magic the Gathering card game, which is by far the most involved fictional magic system I’ve ever seen explored, although a great deal of what it does is rather sabotaged by the considerations related to the game’s real-world status as an E-sport and a financial empire. If you could manage to purge those influences and get to the “real” magic, as opposed to the version that the company creates in order to sell more cards and create a robust tournament environment and so forth, the result would probably be the best illustration we can get of what actual magic “should” be like. The power originally comes from the land, rather than the caster, which helps to limit how solipsistic and narcissistic the mages can be, and it is mostly used not to directly alter reality but to call creatures and objects from other locations, which results in a somewhat more sustainable approach. Again, the version which we see in the game requires heavy editing to be something we’d find useful in real life, but a great deal of potential exists there, and to a lesser extent the D&D system could similarly be worked over into something we could use effectively.

#1097

So long as the magic was available to the oppressed and downtrodden, yes. :+1:t2:

#1098

QotD #131 Reply: Hmm . . . Magic could be used to end starvation and poverty, cure cancer, et cetera, but it could also be used to cause destruction greater than that of the atomic bomb. Any tool can be used for great good or great evil. There’s also the matter of whether the Magic is Sorcery or Wizardry, or both. For non-D&D players, Sorcery is innate magic one is born with, whereas Wizardry is Magic that is gained through study and learning. Sorcery has the potential of dividing the population into Sorcerers and “normals,”* which could lead to conflict. (I’d definitely want to be on the normals’ side of such a conflict.) Wizardry seems more fair; it’s merely a skill to be learned like any other, albeit quite a powerful one. Magic does offer a world of adventure. Ultimately, though, Magic is the antithesis of Science, and I like Science.

Question of the Day #132: What would you do if you could live forever?

*Not “muggles.” I’ve always found that term to be an insulting slur.

#1099

I mean, everything. Or at least, try. I’d have literally all the time in the world.

#1100

QotD #132 Reply: Learn all the Science and History, bring all my RPG characters to max level, and, like Trajector said, pretty much everything else.

Question of the Day #133: The power to possess people, the power to control the minds of people, or neither?

#1101

There’s no real reason to assume that magic is the antithesis of science; I’m not a full proponent of Clarke’s Law, but there is some truth to it, so magic could be an extension of science as we understand it, rather than an opposite thereto. Although I personally prefer it when they are indeed opposites.

132: Immortality is a curse, not a gift. I might want to live for hundreds, even thousands of years, but more likely not, and definitely not forever. I can’t even remember being 35, I certainly don’t want to live to be 31415.

133: Not sure if you intend for possessing a person to include controlling their actions, or if you just mean a “skinride”. If the latter, then it’s no choice at all, and even if it’s the former, controlling minds probably means controlling more than one at once, so I’d be likely to prefer that option. But I would rather enjoy leaving my body, so possession isn’t off the table as an option, particularly if it’s the version where I never have to go back to my original form.

Sorry, what was that last word, “neit-her”? I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar. :slight_smile: