Everybodies Kung Fu Fighting!

But you made it sound like the mutant ability attracted robo-geniezilla. Now you've gone and confused me.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

actually tony has shown time and again without his armor he's even MORE dangerous

Hmm... I wasn't aware he could shoot lasers out of his bare hands.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You never read the Ultimates, when he makes a black widow armor, she poisons him and he crippers her by taking remote control of her nanites without his armor anywhere in sight...

or you know

the President Green Goblin thing...

I was very deliberate in picking a specific instance of the Batman, to dodge these sorts of hypotheticals. As I said: "I would say the only time a downstream act can redefine origin is when its dramatic enough to redefine the character itself." You're suggesting that under certain circumstances, Batman could have been very different. And that would satisfy my own caveat that if the act is dramatic enough in terms of altering the character, it could qualify as a different origin.

"Is it the tools or the man who uses them that makes the hero. Take away Batman's batarangs and he'll still be able to outsmart his foes even with more spartan methods. Take away Iron Man's armour, and he's helpless." Its not quite so simple. Some beings aren't helpless when they have their defining superabilities removed, sometimes because prior to that they had *other* defining superabilities. See: Frankie Raye. And sometimes the tools are necessary but not the source of the ability: see (albeit not a hero) Bullseye.

I think you need to look at what abilities are core to the character concept and which are ancillary (which is sometimes subjective), and then look for the root cause of those abilities in terms of the origins CoX includes, until you find the best possible match consistent with the definitions in the game. I don't think its possible to simplify the process more than that without creating an overabundance of special cases.

I actually DO agree with you, and I actually see no reason to simplify the process at all, not in practical terms at the very least. These contemplations are intriguing purely as a discussion, but in a very practical sense, with origins as loosely-defined as they are, it's often possible to drive an argument for at least three of them on any character you pick.

But that's part of the fun. It's not a mechanical process of picking the right answer, it's a creative process of coming up with a concept, picking an origin for it and trying to explain away why that concept is of that origin.

Anecdote: a friend of mine complained about a character he'd accidentally made Science when she should have been Technology, as her power came solely and only from her power gloves. She was too high level to reroll, so we sat down and tried to macgyver some middle ground between spin and ret-con that would retain most of his concept but fit the Science origin anyway. My suggestion was to shift the source of power in her body as the result of a scientific accident, with the gloves acting only as amplifiers and focusing devices, which would have shifted her origin far enough to call it Science. Even though Positron has much the same origin and he's Technology, but that was the point - simple methods for picking the right origin are fun to talk about, but in practice, they're loose enough that you can just explain them away even if they're "wrong."

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

It's with the Everybodies.

Singular: Everybodies
Plural: Everybodies
Plural possessive: Everybodies'
Plural possessive as a contraction with 'is': Everybodies'
Singular possessive: Everybodies'
Singular possessive with... you get the idea, and it would just get sillier from here.

Ah. So he gained... Experience with his abilities, then?

Would you say he did it by... Experimenting?

Perhaps he took things to a new... Level?

Okay, let me step back and put down the snark before more innocent people die. Three things:

1) City of Heroes uses "origin" in a very Gamist sense. Your origin has the effects it does because the rules say so. Now shaddap and look at the colorful baubles, 7/11ths of which you can't use because the rules say so.

2) I am a Narrativist. Exactly how hardcore I'm not sure, but I like the cut of its jib. "It only has to be true for long enough."

3) I would not shed a tear to see Simulationist gaming take a long walk off a short pier. I have no problem with its practice between consenting adults, or its sealing away inside the confines of a computer, where it can be the endless series of algorithms it's always dreamed of being. But if I ever again have to define the 99% of the universe the PCs don't give a rip about, I will rip and tear the relevant tables from the relevant book. It will be a huge book, so it will have huge tables. Rip and tear.

This idea of mine about what Origin "means" is old. Older than little ranged plinky powers, older than temp powers where your origin gives you a bonus to damage. Just about old enough to enter kindergarten, and I have no idea what kind of lunchbox to buy it.

Back then, what relevance did Origin have? Your starting contact, who matters for five levels if you really push it -- none at all if you join a sewer team -- and the enhancements. Identical in every way except for the gloss on 'em and the dudes who dropped 'em. Since then it really hasn't grown much. If anything, with the various invention sets picking up where trainings left off, it's gotten less relevant.

But I never asked myself what origin and its implementations were supposed to simulate. I asked myself what stories they'd let me tell.

The story of "how I got my powers"? No, that doesn't work. That story is dead. It's sealed. In some cases it's ossified. And it likely doesn't fit the bio box in any case.

The story of "how my powers get better"? Well gosh, son, that's where the game happens already! Let's go!

So: how do you enhance your hero's capabilities, above and beyond the experiences that give you practice?

Do you call on forces outside yourself that you may not quite understand? (Magic/Science. Yes, I conflate them. Super Science is what makes that technology indistinguishable from magic that you've heard so much about.)

Do you look at the potential inside yourself, which can grow in ways you can't give voice to? (Mutant)

Do you draw upon the experience of others, whether in the devices they've built (Technology) or the insights they pass on to you? (Natural)

And the Superman I knew was all the time doin' Super Science. The original Superman Red and Blue were offshoots of an experiment he did to increase his intelligence by bombarding himself with 31 flavors of Kryptonite. He built time-traveling Popemobile bubbles and Bizarro Rays and robots that were designed to smash your camera.

And they're automatically Natural origin, because that's consistent with experiencing an enormous life-changing event and deciding to reinvent yourself, and they're all Technology origin, because that's consistent with having your gear overcharged and being inspired to use it in new ways, AND they're all Magical origin, because Maxwell's Demon saw what you did there (why did you think your face wasn't melting off when you got that close to a nuclear furnace?) and put in a good word to the boys upstairs.

Or, y'know, take the story you're telling about how your powers are getting better and pick the explanation you like.

So that is my interpretation of "origins", which now qualifies for a senior citizen discount in Internet years, and why it probably won't do a thing for what you want out of an explanation of how Superman isn't Natural origin.

Okay, and now let's take that extra step and write the thread title as it should have been: Everybody's Kung Fu Fighting.

I did that with a few alts.
One is a ninja with a water theme, but she was kidnaped and turned into a catgirl. The catgirl was via genentic alternation but has no toes to her ninja arts but i made her science.
Another I made natural but she uses a (high tech or magical) power suit to enhance her strength, i made her natural since her suits origin changes.

This is irrelevant to the discussion. The Origins themselves have an actual stated set of definitions. Its legitimate to ask what Superman's best-fit origin is given those definitions.

If you want to get into a discussion of the role that enhancements play from a game design perspective, just say so. However, its obvious that while the original game design intent was to have origin have an actual developmental meaning, the eventual decision was to make enhancements redundant. In other words, Origin doesn't determine what kind of enhancements you can get so much as it determines the labels they have. The only real difference is who sells them (at times) which is hardly any difference at all. They are distinctions without a difference (which is normally a sign of a game design error or compromise, actually).


Also totally irrelevant, because the question was never "is it possible to define origin in such a way to make Superman be <fill in the blank> origin?" The fact that CoX has extremely loose narrative connections to its underlying mechanics has always meant people could justify almost any cosmetic decision (and many non-cosmetic ones besides). But that's completely irrelevant to the discussion of which origin's definition best matches Superman. Interpreting that question as a narrative challenge is substituting the question for a completely different one.

It would be no different than if someone asked "what origin are Kheldians" and I said "Natural" and you said "wrong, they are magic, because" and then proceeded to give a twelve page personalized backstory that you use to justify a divergence from the canon description. Interpreting the question as "what origin are Kheldians [i]in whatever personal narrative you've invented for yourself" is willful side-tracking.

Now, if you do want to side track into a discussion of whether the game design would be better served with evocative game mechanical devices or simulative ones, that's cool also. Its a topic I don't find many opportunities to discuss in the thirty odd years I've been thinking about that particular topic.


You're right: it does nothing. Because I never challenged the assertion that personal narratives are limited only really by creativity. In fact, I've asserted that for essentially as long as I've been on the forums to assert anything. It is, as I said, irrelevant to what origin's definition Superman best matches. If you want to personally justify his origin as magic leprechauns, be my guest. I'm not denying you the right or questioning your ability to do just that. It just has nothing to do with anything I'm talking about.

That's about all I need to read. Your whole poin hingest on that, and that is simply not true. You're still cherry-picking to ignore what the text says about origins, yet not ignore what the text says about enhancements, and while you're free to do so for your own characters, it's not something you should try to extend over OTHER PEOPLE'S characters.

As far as I'm concerned, Origins already have written definitions. As long as they're going to mean anything at all, they're going to mean that. What the actual word "origin" means is irrelevant, because we have a definition of what the TERM "origin" means in City of Heroes.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And distinctions without a difference are useless.

If you use the listed definitions of origin to work out that Superman and Batman are both Natural-origin, okay, you've solved a problem. But what then? What does it let you do? I'm totally with you here - from a mechanical standpoint, your origin is a meaningless choice. You may as well close your eyes and pick at random.

But what if you don't want to?

I mean, I'm assuming (perhaps unreasonably) that people who wonder what origin applies to a particular backstory are actually genuinely confused. Choosing an origin means something to them, but based on the information available to them they can't decide. If "close your eyes and pick at random" worked for them they'd have done it already. And they can't actually play the character they thought up because they have to pick an origin to do that.

I mean, maybe I'm just completely off base here, but that's the only reason I can think of for why someone would have a problem with picking out their origin.

So, "here's another piece of information: the SOs reflect different approaches to getting better at what you do. Which one best fits how you see your hero developing?" And as part of providing that information, I call Superman a Science "origin", because it's contradictory to what everybody up the thread has said and people tend to remember contradictions.

Come to think of it, I actually came up with it largely because it's not what people think of when they think of "origin" -- because it's not associated with backstory at all. People can often come up with their own backstories, but that's where they stop. They don't write the whole story of how their hero develops and matures and then step into Paragon City to act it out.

So "how the hero gets better" is a blank narrative space, and working out how to fill that in will usually work better than trying harder to cram a giant unwieldy backstory into one of the provided bins.

Must it always come back to catgirls? Why? Why? WHY?

Because the signature says Virtue. Duh.

Supplementary ideas and concepts are all fine and good, but they CANNOT override written descriptions in their official capacity. Going off what SOs do to you is not a BAD idea (provided you actually use them at all), but it should only ever work IN ADDITION TO the definitions of the origins as stated. You can use any and all tools at your disposal to spin and interpret origin definitions in whatever way you can manage, but you should not outright contradict these definitions.

What "origin" means as a term in this game is already defined within the game's own caption boxes. If you contradict that on purpose, then you may as well close your eyes and pick at random, because once you disregard the rules, there's no point in accounting for them at all. Any story which picks and chooses which rules it upholds and which it disregards is no better than a story which disregards ALL rules.

I keep using the word "spin" because that's exactly what it was. The definitions of the origins are vague enough to where you can explain anything three different ways and still follow the definitions to the letter. You don't need to disregard the definitions as given and replace them with definitions of your own choosing, because you can EXPLAIN around the problems, rather than just kicking them out of the way.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I hear their fast as lightning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcszkJBYeSY

I cannot? I should not?

Or what?

If people get stuck in character creation trying to pick an origin, it's because origin is a meaningless but necessary decision. For purposes of getting them unstuck, why not replace the meaningless decision with a meaningful one?

Chaos? Anarchy? Riots in the streets? Dogs and cats sleeping together?

PEOPLE MIGHT BE WRONG ON THE INTERNET?! Oh no, anything but that!

Seriously, or what?

This is what that says to me: "I never turned invisible and saw a weird, shadowy otherworld when I put on a ring, and neither has anyone else. Therefore, Lord of the Rings is semantically equivalent to RANDOM NOISE."

Picking which rules it disregards is what makes a story a story, and not, say, a history.

What good does it do you to explain? I'm just not seeing it.

fix't!

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Come on now, let's fix it all the way. There. Internet status quo and all.

That's *also* not the question. And in fact, elsewhere in the thread its already been stated by me and others that the question of "which origin should I pick" is generally only restricted by personal narratives as well.

Somehow, you've stumbled into people discussing who's older, Luke Skywalker or Yoda, and attempted to turn it into a discussion about whether teenagers can be Jedi Masters.

Your alternate viewpoint of origin is interesting, and would be an interesting point of discussion if we were discussing "what role should origin play in City of Heroes version 2.0?" But we were not talking about the limits of origin, just the simple academic exercise of fitting Superman's origin to the definitions of Origin currently in the game.

Derailment? I thought we were supposed to be Kung Fu Fighting?