GadgetDon

Absolutely, they're not supposed to be. But there's a difference between "heroic" and "irredeemably evil and can only be treated as mad dogs and put down".

And that's what most of the discussion has been, the redeemability. Is the only possible next bit in their story a trip to the zig (where they'll eventually escape, twirling their mustaches) or being on the wrong end of a blaster with their medtransport disabled?

Yes, there are some who are irredeemable. If MOM isn't considered to have been fatal to Mother Mayhem, something fatal needs to be arranged, she's just too crazy and too powerful to live. (I wouldn't leave her for Hamidon - that just oozes with "that could go wrong".) Marauder is a candidate for the zig, his personna demands a mustache to twirl. Neuron is another candidate for a mustache.

But for the rest, there could be some fun. Here's what I'd do if I was asked to write it:

Dominatrix - she and Flamebaux should team up, they're both vain characters who are the heroes of their own story in their own mind. They'd probably wind up trying to kill each other. Let me fix some popcorn for that.

Siege and Nightstar - I can see a philosophical question about them. Are they just machines, dismantle them and take them to the junkyard? Can they be reprogrammed, and is it moral to do so? Citadel and Luminary would be involved in the discussion, having fought for their rights in those cases and other mechanical sentients. In the end - I'd have Malta capture Siege and reprogram him to serve their idea of a properly controlled America. And Nightstar becomes a lieutenant of Lord Recluse as he promises to eventually find and fix Siege.

AntiMatter - I'd give him a short tragic path to redemption. He has neither the history nor the internal strength to be a hero, though he may want to be.

Tyrant - I'd start with a "permanent" trip to the Zig. And then start the path to redemption.

It's worth remembering that Marcus Cole started in Praetoria as a hero, like our Marcus Cole. The break came when he decided that the way to solve problems was take over - and he wasn't very good at it. Given time to think about "man I screwed up" and how Primal Marcus Cole got it right, he could be inspired.

Now add to it that this is a universe without a Marcus Cole, who for decades has been The Man Who Steps Up.

Something happens that would otherwise require Statesman, but he's dead. Maybe it's part of Battalion, maybe it's Praetorian Hami coming to Primal Earth, maybe it's something else, MacGuffin to be decided later. But its bad, really bad. In the Zig, prisoner Marcus Cole decides it's Time To Step Up. He breaks out, crafts a Statesman costume, and heads for the threat. In the process of an arc, he turns the tide - and pulls an Omega Squad. He goes through, taking the battle to the foe, giving everyone else a chance to block them off. Final status unknown, presumed dead.

BTW, the various redemption arcs would take place against the backdrop of reactions of the refugees and those from Primal Earth who were involved in the war. Many Praetorians are afraid of the idea of some Praetorians being allowed to run free, some want to take up their banner again and win. Malta wants to kill them all - anyone not born on Primal Earth needs eliminating, it's the only way to be safe. There are a couple of heroes agitating against any mercy shown these people, maybe model them after certain player heroes

I think you could write some very interesting stories around this. Tricker to write some interesting arcs about them. But the potential is just too good to either toss them in the dustbin or yet another group of super villains going through the revolving door at the zig.

The ones that aren't dead, or won't be able to be evacuated before being devoured.

Yeah, after we destroyed the agreement keeping Hamidon at bay.

Can you honestly say Praetoria is better off because the Primals went there? As opposed to, say, a message sent from Statesman to Emperor Cole, "Look, we don't want a war, I'll do my best to keep anyone from my dimension going there if you don't send any of your guys here"?

True, that didn't happen and might not have worked, there was a war and we needed to take it to Praetoria to avoid Praetoria conquering our dimension. But let's not pretend we did it to "liberate" Praetoria or that the net result of the war was in any way whatsoever good for Praetoria.

So we destroyed the village to save it.

Actually, there was one time, pretty soon after the WST was added, that the Statesmans TF was the WST. Most of the missions are entered by clicking on a hatch on the top of a nearby sub.

On Virtue at least, some people found it funny to drop ouroboros portals on top of the hatch. At the time, you clicked on the ground of the portal, so clicking on the entrance to the sub would send you to ouroboros. I don't think it was ever officially said so, but I believe the reason the "clickable" area of the ouroboros portal is now above ground was because of that event.

I don't know of anyone who said "hey, we'll jam it all day long", just "cool, I drop a portal once and it's a prank" - but enough people thought it was a cool prank to keep it going.

And there used to be regular griefing of the Hamidon Raids. In those days, DE monsters hung around once hami spawned. You had 200+ heroes plus pets right next to hami, causing lag and draw problems so a monster pulled into crowd wouldn't be seen until people started dying. And worse of all, you had to maintain a high magnitude hold on Hami or you got a yellow mito for every hero in the goo, so all you needed to do was kill enough of the holders and the raid failed - and stayed unreadable until the server was respawned.

Monsters used to be pulled to the central area of Portal Corp. In those days, you'd have a lot of low level characters pleading for power leveling there, and they were easy pickings for the monsters.

And of course the trick for making Kronos spawn in a low level zone.

So we have had griefers. Not as many as other games, when the game really retracted a lot went looking elsewhere for more fertile grounds for their games. The ones left are both fewer and seem more "let's pull a prank" as opposed to "let's ruin other people's fun".

Someone suggested a rebuild of Baumton (Boomtown) as a refugee settlement zone which works for me (and I've used it as an example in some suggestions).

Keyes is a Spark. (Both Keyes are Sparks, our Keyes is just more grounded than the Praetorian Keyes.) In the Keyes trial, he's deep in the madness place.

Like it or not, Praetoria is a world where might made right. By the time a Praetorian gets to level 20 and jumps to Primal Earth, they've done some pretty rotten things, and yet the record is wiped clean, they're granted the same respect as a Primal born hero whose worse crime ever was running past a mugging in order to get to a mission to save the world.

And even with Primals - there is a path to redemption. In game terms it's 11 not-so-bad deeds followed by 11 good deeds. But even granting that's a simplification for the game - you can have wiped out longbow and policemen by the score, robbed the bank in almost every part of Paragon City and setting buildings on fire and robbing stores and releasing villains just for fun, turn innocent civilians over to Dr. Vahz, and worse - and still have all that wiped clean and get a clean slate.

Is Praetor Keyes that much worse than a player character that did all the red side arcs and strike forces? Particularly given the standards of the world he lived in, and the history (I have a theory he figured out Cole's bargain - and that if the Primals win, human society on Praetoria is doomed).

So it wouldn't be inconsistent with Anti-matter coming to Primal Earth and being forgiven. If I was writing it, it would be a short heroic career, story wise no real reason to have two heroic Positrons around. I'd give him a valiant death, "I couldn't save Praetoria, but I can save this world."

Actually, the point is to have different people have different asynchronous goals within a mission.

Yes, heroes and villains teaming up to stop a greater threat is a time-honored staple in comic books. But it's usually an uneasy alliance, both sides looking for a double-cross (which I'm not asking for, having the coop mission turn into PVP in the middle) and differing motives for achieving the end.

There would be tricky parts to work out in play testing. Are hero players aware that there are villain specific goals (and vice versa)? On a mixed team, if the coop goals and heroic goals are completed but the villainous goals aren't, is it "MIssion over" for the heroes or some message of "Some of your companions seem to be busy with something". What to do with Rogues and Vigilantes, do we just treat them respectively as villains and heroes for the coop missions, or do they see both sets?

I'm not saying it would be easy, but going back to my Boomtown scenario, it could play out like this:

The coop arcs are about some parts of Praetorian Hamidon sneaking across the portal and regrowing here, with the final step being a league battle to take out the forming Hami and keeping him from taking hold.

In the missions, the villains unlock clues pointing to some serious stashes of treasure accumulated by Cole and his Praetors, both valuables and extreme tech. It leads to a raid on the Praetorian Vaults

Meanwhile, the heroes are unlocking clues of random killings of the refugees. The big finale is stopping a plot by Malta and some rogue Vanguard to wipe out the refugee camp (under the basis that "these creatures from other worlds are a threat, we've got enough problems already").

I'll go with that. Most of my heroes tend to be urban crime fighters - Green Arrow, Batman, Wildcat as the icons. Damnit, this is my city, these guys are messing it up and I'm going to stop it. I like the RWZ arcs as "these yahoos came and attacked our city and we're going to stop it", and I play the new DA arcs as "I follow a simple crime and suddenly it takes a left turn through the twilight zone".

I buy that as we've become more powerful, we deal with bigger issues. (There's some great scenes in the first episode of the Justice League Unlimited series where Green Arrow gets convinced to join, that applies with this.) But the biggest earthbound challenge in the game, the STF, both has gotten long in the tooth and made somewhat trivial from the power inflation in the game.

Of course, to be done right, it requires doubling up the new content, heroes stepping up against the latest depredations of the NPC villains, and villains committing depredations against NPC heroes. (Which is another thing that's gotten worse - "OK, this is so big it threatens the earth so villains will just join up with the heroes".)

And for some specifics - love the new arcs in Steel Canyon, like the writing, nice and interesting. But I've only done First Ward once and have no desire to go into Night Ward - doesn't fit my characters background, plus I like my heroes heroic not forced into evil acts because the alternatives are worse.

Actually, may have been fairly cheap, the value to the companies being advertising rather than actual money.

In the original Toy Story, Pixar couldn't strike a deal with Mattel, so no Barbie and no G.I. Joe. If memory serves, the little green soldiers were thrown in because they couldn't get G.I. Joe.

Then the movie was released, the real toys that appeared in the show had a nice boost in sales. So when it was time for Toy Story II, Mattel was there saying "hey, about that permission thing... let's revisit that."

So if you're a video game publisher - would you want your characters to be left out?

And yeah, I'm looking forward to this too.

Yeah, got an iMac, looking forward to that feature. Actually, was most disappointed that the rumored apps for AppleTV didn't happen, a native ustream and now twitchtv client would be best.

As for the puns, well, No Phule like an old Phule.

For the record, I did it five times, all the way through, and got five common components.

No, Tyrant did not try to take out humanity on Praetoria Earth, that was done in the wars between non-meta humans and the war against the Devouring Earth.

He definitely views himself as a superior being, and that superiority gives him not just the right but the duty to take action.

He sees himself as a "shepard", keeping his flock, putting down the rabid ones, culling the infected ones. It's the same madness that drives bad acts in portions of the Middle East, perhaps.

I think it's clear in this thread I'm not a big fan of his methods or his reasoning. He went down a dark road and appeared somewhere very bad. But it's far more nuanced than "I hate them and want to kill them all" (or dare I say it, "He hates us for our freedoms).

I'm not a fan of the first SSA series, and thought the death of Statesman was handled remarkably badly. But there's some relevance here... in many ways, Marcus Cole in either dimension had left his humanity behind (as had Stefan Richtar). Powers beyond any mortal ken, immortality, the belief that one will live for generations and see all you ever get close to age and die (assuming you don't step into an obvious booby-trap). Praetorian Marcus Cole was in a world where humanity had really and truly messed up, was busy destroying each other war, and then spawned the Devouring Earth, he became the master and the protector, doing what was necessary because they could not be trusted. Stefan Richtar's inhibitions were tossed away as something for lesser beings.

But Primal Marcus Cole had kept his connections with humanity, personal connections, held them close, and saw the good in man, the possibilities as well as the weaknesses. Those connections are what carried him off to the afterlife, resting after a long life.

I think that's not true. If he despised and feared humanity and wanted to commit world wide genocide on primal earth - why not start on Praetoria, leaving behind a small cadre of followers and minions to do things.

I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt that he does do what he thinks is necessary to protect what survives of humanity from Hamidon. Like Malta, he thinks he's doing the right thing. And like Malta, he's not big on checks and balances and has an expansive view of "acceptable collateral damage". Like Malta, he's not wrong about the threat, just so desperately wrong in the ways of dealing with them.

When the established order falls apart, there's a battle for power. Good things and bad things will happen, and when the dust settles, there's a new order which may or may not be better. Unless you were a member of the upper class or the clergy, life wasn't good under Louis XVI. In the United States, after our revolution, we could quite easily have fallen into our own tyranny but for the remarkable men called the founding fathers. (Human and thus flawed but still remarkable.)

If there was to be a issue 23.5 where we tackle Praetorian Hami and end his threat once and for all (This would seem to be a morally justifiable situation for mucking with the time stream and taking him out before he became a world killer), there's no guarantee that a Representative Democracy would break out. (The desire of the writers to dip into that well for more stories would argue against that.) Death to Tyrants is desirable, but "Replace the tyrant with rule of law and establish a recognition of the rights of the individuals" is important. Pity it doesn't fit on a protest sign well, though.

Modern Monarchs are constitutional monarchies, their powers are limited, and most importantly there is rule of law. That wasn't always true. I'll admit my knowledge of Spanish and Swedish history is limited, but England's monarchy was limited by a number of legal documents, among the earliest was the Magna Carte. And it was proven necessary because, even though England had a number of remarkable kings with a goal of creating a society of might for right as opposed to might makes right - just as many subscribed to might making right.

Most of the traditional monarchies had revolutions that either greatly restricted their powers or completely removed them from power. A few were smart enough to see the change in the air and gave up some power voluntarily to head off a revolution.

The title isn't that important, "President for life" is a popular title for tyrants of one form or other. The oppression happens, simply enough, when the legal and social environment provides no barriers to it happening. "Rule of law". "Checks and balances". If there's no penalty for being a monster, a monster will step up to fill the void.

And I'd challenge a statement. The Praetorian technological advantage makes it possible to prove a higher standard of living to its citizens, but that's NOT the same as a better society. The Roman emperors provided bread and circuses to pacify its peasants while the emperors destroyed the civilization. Mussillini made the trains run on time. A good standard of living is part of a good society, but by no means all.

The difference is that in Primal Earth, corruption is something that heroes fight and, if caught, the corrupt individuals get arrested and at locked up. In Praetoria, so long as they're keeping things quiet, you get your head patted.

Even if you want to claim Cole didn't know about what Tilman was doing, what the other Praetors were doing (which would require a remarkable level of blindness and stupidity), there was one law: Cole's. His power was absolute. If history has shown us anything, this is a BAD THING. Even if things are temporarily good on some measurements, it's going to go bad, and it's really really bad for some people (those who aren't willing to be happy drones serving the queen).

Except Powers Division is a creature of the government of Praetoria. The INSTANT anyone in Powers Division even thinks about investigating Cole and his Praetors, they are enemies of the state (what do you think the seers are there for). I know you say "Cole didn't know how crazy Tilman was" - but what did he think the goal of the seers was except to make bad thought a crime.

Yes, freedom is messy. Some people will misuse their freedom to do bad things, sometimes really bad things. Even in a group of reasonably well-intentioned people, there will be disagreements and friction. But freedom is intrinsic to the human creature. Praetoria would only work long term if it was ruled and populated by something other than humans (and I can't quite imagine what that something would be).

So yeah, Praetoria is pretty, and if you never go anywhere near the electric fences things are good. But the fences are there, they are deadly, and the open area will shrink every day.

A crime was committed, helped on by the historically corrupt mayor of the time, and got shut down. Comic books were born in the 30s, the age of Prohibition and all that came with it, so dealing with corrupt politicians and mobsters and such is a staple.

And even now, yes, crime and corruption happens. Run the new Penny Yin TF for an example (two thumbs way up). There are people who break the law, among the high and mighty as well as the low and scrabbling. Heroes stop them. In Praetoria, it happened from the top and was at a minimum winked at if not outright encouraged.


Other than the part of targeting minorities - sounds a lot like Praetoria's Powers Unit, a core part of the control mechanisms in Praetoria. Except in our world, the streets were filled with protestors opposed to the Might For Right Act. In Praetoria, any protesters would be rounded and disappeared or "adjusted".

Yes, high officials in the Malta conspiracy had wormed their way into the CIA and risen to a high level. That doesn't make what they were doing government policy.

In many ways, Malta is one of the more interesting groups in the game. They have zero doubts they believe they are the good guys in the fight. And the comments you get from Crimson rip that view to shreds. In one of the DA arcs you work with Malta (definitely with the help of a Malta contact, and based on your choices) with Malta assistance.

Malta is an example of the same thinking that empowered Emperor Cole, and yes empowered Hitler. The risk to the people is so high that any action is acceptable to save them. (Post World War I Germany was bad - in addition to suffering from the worldwide depression, punitive reparations were crushing Germany.) Malta, though a powerful connected conspiracy, is only able to set plots in action through stealth and deceit. Hitler had an army to command. Cole got a whole world.

Is everything great in Primal Earth, is everyone in power utterly trustworthy, smart, and brave? Of course not, because a world like that wouldn't need heroes (and be pretty boring to play in). But the good fight continues here, there are those who fight to protect those without powers and consider themselves bound by the same laws that all men, women, aliens, and self-aware technical devices are held to.

I'm tempted to start an STF tonight, but not finish it. With a character that I don't mind if it's unplayable for a while

Math is hard (when I'm in de madness place)