Olantern

I hope it's Batman. The fan reaction would be amusing.

I presume it won't be Batman.

That's about all I have to say on this issue.

It was an issue of what I think was Turok, Son of Stone, from the late '70's. I made my mother get it for me at the grocery store because it had dinosaurs in it. I must have been between three and five, probably closer to three or four, because I couldn't read any of it and had to have her read it to me. I always liked being read to with prose, but I felt it didn't work as well on a comic. I remember thinking at the time, "I'll have to be so old before I can read this stuff!"

About the only thing I remember about the comic itself was the characters constantly referring to the dinosaurs as "honkers." (For you younger folks, you could get away with stuff like this in the '70's and '80's without everyone pointing and laughing.)

There are really two issues here, the EULA/culture of enforcement and why names of existing characters are generally off-limits. The EULA, as enforced by the GM's, is just an agreement between player and game provider. It could be written to require or prohibit almost anything. But for our purposes here, what's important is that it's written to provide that (1) players can't use the game to infringe other people's intellectual property rights and (2) to make sure they don't, GM's can generic characters that they think might do so, even if a court might make a different conclusion.

It's that second part that brings in the second issue, and it's one about which a lot of misinformation is flung, so let's consider it now.

Elaborating a bit on what ClawsandEffect said, Do Your Part To Keep Geekdom Popular Culture Accurate and distinguish between copyright and trademark. Most characters that get described as "copyrighted" are covered by both.

A "trademark" is the right to use a word, phrase, or more or less single image in connection with some specific use. For example, Taco Bell has a trademark on the name "Taco Bell" in connection with restaurants. If a bellmaker decides to market his bells as "Taco Bells," Taco-Bell-the-restaurant-company would probably either demand they pay him for the use of the name or sue him to get him to stop, despite the fact that their use is ostensibly limited to restaurants. If the case made it to court, the finder of fact would consider whether there is a "likelihood of confusion" between Taco-Bell-the-restaurant and Taco-Bell-the-bells such that a person might think the two were connected.

A "copyright" is a group of rights that cover a specific work of art, such as a comic book, movie, novel, or video game. The right in question here is probably the right to make derivative works. Say that, in a fit of total insanity, I want to make a movie called Ben-Hur Part II: Ramming Speed! I cannot do this without buying or otherwise getting the right to make a derivative work of whoever holds the right to the original work, Ben-Hur. (This is an especially interesting example because the original movie itself is an adaptation, another derivative work, from a novel.)

Now, finally, we can come around to the discussion of what these fora mean by "copyrighted character." As the discussion above should show, you can't really copyright "a character" in the abstract because copyrights apply only to specific works, not the elements of which they're composed. "But if that's true, Olantern," I hear you cry, "why can't I make Ap0calypse as an in-game character?" There are two reasons.

The first, simpler one is that you're potentially violating Marvel's trademark in a superpowered character named Apocalypse, even if your Ap0calypse has a zero in his name and looks nothing like the Marvel one. Would a reasonable, non-comic-maven person think your character and Marvel's were connected? It seems likely.

The second, subtler reason is that by taking a character who's appeared in a copyrighted story whose rights are owned by Marvel, you're potentially making an unauthorized derivative work of that copyrighted story. Note, too, that the fact that you're presumably not trying to take any of Marvel's business away doesn't enter into either of these considerations.

There are lots of exceptions and permutations to both these bodies of law, but those are the basics. One exception mentioned already in this thread is that works can fall into the public domain over time and thus lose copyright (though not trademark) protection. I'd just like to say here that popular culture tends to misunderstand and often overstate the scope of exceptions to those rules, so don't rely on them without consulting an attorney. (In fact, that last bit of advice goes for everything in this post.)

Now, let's bring this back to Thor, since he comes up so often in these discussions. We're dealing with three things. First, we have the "idea" of Thor, a Norse god of thunder with power over lightning and such. No one holds any enforceable rights in just that idea. (While there is a body of law called the "law of ideas" that theoretically covers this kind of thing, those laws are weak, and Thor the thunder god is presumably public domain or its equivalent for purposes of this discussion.) Second, we have Marvel's trademark on Thor, a blond-haired Asgardian superhuman quasi-deity who fights villains and appears in comic books and derivative media. Third, we have the zillion copyrights on every Thor-the-superhero story ever published in any medium. For instance, Marvel holds a copyright in the story contained in THOR #350, "Ragnarok and Roll!"

With all that in mind, imagine that a player makes a character named "Thor." This Thor has blue skin and is a villain earth/forcefield controller, and his biography states that he's an alien from the planet Zarx using his natural powers to steal all the gold on earth. Very different from any of the Thors mentioned in the last paragraph, right? So why does a GM generic the character when he spots it?

Hopefully, based on the rest of this post, you can see why. First, while the player could argue, perhaps successfully, to a court that no one would confuse villaintroller-Thor-from-Zarx with Marvel Thor, it's just as easy to argue that someone could. (Think about your non-comics friends, the kinds of people who say, "I don't go to those movies because they're so silly.") Second, even if the player wins that argument, villaintroller-Thor-from-Zarx might be derived from one of the copyrighted works about Marvel-Thor that are out there. (The argument might run something like, "Why else would someone call a supervillain 'Thor' except to reference the superhero Thor?" I'd call this a losing argument, but it isn't a frivolous one.) And, most importantly for the player, the mere possibility that those arguments could be raised are sufficient reasons for a GM, who probably doesn't even know this legal abstraction stuff anyway, to generic the character, because the EULA allows for exactly that. A concern is all the GM needs, not an airtight legal argument.

Those are the issues in a nutshell. Sorry for the long post; I didn't mean to write a treatise when I started. I hope people found that interesting, or at least helpful. (Disclaimer: Nothing contained in this post should be taken as legal advice. If you actually need legal advice, consult an attorney. I just read recently that there's one for every 256 people in the U.S., so there are plenty out there.)

I remain doubtful that anyone can do a really good Superman movie in the Age of Batman, but I'll see it when it comes out to find out if I'm right.

However, I'd like to say again how much I loathe, loathe, loathe this slow-motion/fast-motion, grainy, stuttering battle footage that most movies with fight scenes seem to use these days. (In the Avengers thread, I noted that the thing I enjoyed most about it was that all the fighting, even the outlandish stuff, took place in "real" speed and focus [i.e., the same as the rest of the movie]).

Since this thread is about names I'm amazed I got, I won't include names from Exalted, for whose launch I was present and able to snag things, or names created after name purges.

I flatter myself that I've come up with some clever names over the years, but the only one I've ever been surprised to have available was "Emissary," a character I created on Liberty around the time Titan Weapons came out. He's a sort of Herald of Galactus/angelic/cosmic entity type of character I'd been trying to create but unable to get into up until that time. I'd been planning on making him "Emissary of" Something if "Emissary" wasn't available.

Interesting. The Agent 13 Sourcebook remains my favorite RPG supplement of all time.

An additional question about the list: I get the impression from reading it that individual costume pieces aren't likely to receive the art time necessary to make them, while costume sets might. (This seems logical, given that costumes are a source of game income these days, and it's much easier to sell $5,000 worth of Magic Packs than the same dollar amount of Wizard Beards.) With that in mind, is it unrealistic to suggest individual pieces, since the art time to create them may not be available? Or am I reading too much into the whole thing?

I have a question about the list. While I have nothing against a cheongsam, NPC ports, or thigh high boots for male models, I'm a bit confused as to why those things are apparently more important/high-priority/easier than the list of items that are "feasible, but not at this time." I may be misreading the list, since in the past, "not at this time, but it could be done in the future" has been a phrase devs have used to indicate that something is never happening. Essentially, I'm asking, what do the categories mean? Thanks. Also, thank you for making the list.

Some suggestions:

- More uses of the bolero/trenchcoat rig, especially more usuable by all three models: a trenchcoat made out of cloth rather than leather, perhaps ports of some bolero coattails to the male model (these would make good wizard-robe-like-things), a furry coat or furry-lapeled coat, as seen on Cossacks, etc.

- A turban, perhaps with an optional huge jewel or feather stuck in the front. (Throw someone whose main character has been a genie since 2005 a bone! )

- Sash part for male models. This need not be a dynamic system, as the female one is, at least for me, though that would be the ideal.

- For female characters (heck, for male, too, I suppose, though it only exists as a female part now), make the flower from the Leaves with Flowers hair, or a similar flower, an option in Detail 1, which would allow a character with "ordinary" hair with a flower stuck in it.

Aside from all the other things mentioned in this thread, another thing I really liked about this movie was how blessedly free it was from the constant slow-motion/fast-motion/slow-motion leaping around that has come to characterize most movie fight choreography since the rise of the wire-fu movie as an American cultural phenomenon. In The Avengers, in contrast, even when the characters were leaping about wildly, it was presented in a relatively straightforward fashion. This made things like the Hulk sliding down buildings or Captain America bouncing his shield off things much more impressive, since they were presented within a framework of otherwise fairly realistic-looking movement.

Some things I enjoyed that stood out to me:

-Loki having three different costumes and using them all, as well as the way his "earth" clothes looked like his Asgardian outfit.

-Having the Helicarrier show up.

-Dying Coulson thrashing Loki's ego.

-Captain America's line about gods.

-I hadn't really thought it through until this thread, but you all are right; the Hulk did get a lot of good scenes. Banner is low-key for the first half of the movie that I barely noticed the combined performance of Ruffalo and the CGI Hulk accreting into an interesting character.

I saw it. While I'd say it was perhaps the weakest of the recent Marvel-produced movies, it was still quite entertaining. Personally, I felt there was a bit too much focus on the "charming" Iron Man, but then again, I can't stand that guy.

Also, while I don't think he's bad, this seems like as good a place as any to raise something that continues to mystify me. Where did this worship of Joss Whedon in geekdom come from, given that similarly one-note content producers get unfairly savaged all the time by the geekdom fanbase? The man's abilities are vastly, vastly overrated. That doesn't mean he isn't skilled, though.

Okay, I just got back from seeing the movie, and I still don't know what the OP is referring to.

If it's something along the lines of "split up and fight various aspects of an event," I don't think that can work because our characters and their enemies are powered by game mechanics, not the story's plot. In a movie or a comic book or a novel, the content's creators know a great deal about the characters and can tailor challenges not only to their abilities (or their weaknesses) but to their particular personalities. City of Heroes can't do this. The game cannot, and I would argue, should not, distinguish between a Titan Weapons/WP brute who's an anime-inspired school/cat-girl and a Titan Weapons/WP brute who's a genetically engineered, raging monster bashing enemies with a roadsign he picked up. To the game, the characters are only their attributes, not the rest of their aspects that are layered in by the players. Similarly, it cannot have enemies like the cetacean-things from The Avengers that can be beaten single-handedly by some kinds of characters and are vastly beyond the weight class of others. "Why can't my Blaster solo the Giant Monster when all the Tankers can?" I hear players crying in such a situation. This goes beyond the buzzword of "game balance" and enters the touchy-feely realm of what feels "fair."

In an unrelated matter, I hope the Paragon Studios gang enjoys it.

Now that's what I call technological progress!

Perhaps the guy who did it can now work on building that volcano-lair.

I would prefer to the see the Kings Row contacts revamped and have their arcs run from 5-15 or 5-20. The zone itself is all right as-is, though I suppose some areas could spawn enemies (in the same factions and configurations as now) up to 15.

I would also like to see Steel Canyon's level range raised dramatically, with the change to Kings Row missions, along with the Hollows and possibly a revamped Perez Park, filling the gap that the change to Steel would leave.

I do not want to see another starter zone. There would not be sufficient time to appreciate the zone were it to be home to a 1-5 arc. I also get the impression that an important dev shares this opinion and would veto any attempts to create another starting area. I believe the stated opinion was that it "splits up the player base," but it's been a while.

I also don't want to see Kings Row become a co-op zone, which is, honestly, the only way any zones are likely to experience signficant change from now on.

When I used to work in Washington and see protestors wandering around on the streets, I'd always then start looking for the ghost.

1) Rework the defense, resistance, damage, accuracy, etc. stacking systems so that, say, Super Reflexes characters don't take a bunch of set bonuses and other Defense-related powers. To continue the example, defense should start off working really well, considerably better than the base powers we have now, but layering in more on top should be less effective. The scales on which these kinds of diminishing returns happen should vary based on archetype, so that you can have, say, Tankers who get lots of resistance out of only their primary powers. It would also allow for things like Maneuvers and Weave to provide decent base amounts of defense to, say, Blasters, since they wouldn't be stacked on top of even more base defense.

2) Greatly reduce the amount of status effects thrown out by enemies (e.g., only three to five enemy types in the game would have it) and remove status protection from the game.

3) Ban some forum posters and police complaint threads particularly harshly.

4) When the higher-ups want to shut off funding for the game "because it's 8 years old when we could be funding [what have you] and all your 'fans' do is criticize it," give up. Then I'd post about the exchange on the fora and let the players know what the results of all their complaining turned out to be. It sure would make people hate me, but at least it might cure some people of the bizarre belief that "the squeeky wheel gets the grease." It doesn't get the grease. It gets the whole vehicle junked and replaced with a new model.

That's all for now.