Redside Heroics

You laughed! See? You really are a villain after all.

I pretty much ignore the setting blue side and red side. I think the storylines in this game are pretty thin, bordering on pathetic. The amount of input we have into those storylines in terms of what our actions actually affect is nil. It's not fun. If that was all there was to the game I'd hang up my cape and quit. Seriously.

Luckily, I find the actual smashing of the bad guys entertaining. So I pretty much don't even read the text the contacts give. When I'm scanning the paper or the radio I pretty much automatically see nothing but objective and enemy group. After that I make up my own story. The game is vastly more fun that way.

But also, I hardly ever do missions from the static contacts anymore. My blue side characters do the sewers and then run radio missions and AE missions until 50, unless I feel like doing Task Forces. Red side, I pretty much run nothing but paper and AE missions, and hang out in RWZ and Cim where I can team up with other heroes a lot. I make a lot of my own little story arcs in the AE and play them out.

I honestly don't see the point in subjecting myself to substandard, completely non-interactive storytelling. But that's just me.

Ah, I see where I made my mistake. Sorry about the misunderstanding, but since the thread started out about existing Redside Heroes, when I read something about Going Rogue clearing the Rogue Isles of that kind of character, I made the assumption that you were talking about moving those characters.

And I can't really see that story in Paragon, since with the exception of Dark Astoria the entire city is a beacon of Heroism. The civilians AREN'T being crushed by an oppressive world. Certainly not to the extent of those in the Isles.

EDIT: So you know where I'm coming from, when you said this: That's what made me think you were talking about moving existing Redside heroes to Paragon.

Right, my bad. I meant to say that, with Going Rogue, people will have much less of a reason to make villains but claim they are heroes (that is, they'll be able to use all ATs everywhere), so we'll see fewer of those being made, in much the same way as City of Villains put serious cramp to the "I crawled out of help amid bile and blood so that I could eat dead babies!" characters that used to be so prevalent. I doubt people deleted theirs, they simply shifted their focus red-side and both made and played fewer of these characters blue-side. Obviously, none actually moved, as that's not possible, but the net result was the same - we saw fewer evil heroes and more evil villains.

I view the city, at least as concerns player characters, less as a place where heroes and villains exist and more of a place where heroes and villains are made, played and removed from circulation, ensuring a consistent churn of characters. That's not necessarily true, but for the purposes of the argument, it's close enough. That means that once an alternate path is opened up, these specific concepts ought to churn in that direction, hence shifting their numbers.

Well, even just looking at face value, we have quite a few "run-down" zones. Kings Row is your typical "gangsta" ghetto where street gangs rule, it's always dirty, always gloomy and the people are poor and desperate. It does have one large Police HQ, but the place is so far gone that this has little impact.

Beyond that, Independence Port is your typical 1930s mob turf, with Mafia thugs extorting people, Mafia-owned businesses making up the majority of the real estate and "family wars" between the Family and the Tsoo - the ambitious newcomers - basically turning the place into a very large ghetto. Plus, the port is always dark, always cloudy and always gloomy.

Brickstown is a bit less run-down, but it's easily the most crime-ridden area in the city, with prisoners breaking out of the Zig every day and running rampant. The "Do not pick up hitch-hikers" signs are there for a reason, and one can almost imagine what it's like living next to a violent criminal vending machine. And, of course, it's perpetually cloudy.

Faultline could probably count, as well. It's much brighter, true, but the whole zone has been broke to crap and it's basically infested with everything but the kitchen sink. Even in the city where police have some say, the Lost and Clockwork are harassing the people, and out into the building areas and beyond, it's no-man's land. The whole place is constantly under siege by both the Lost and the Clockwork, who have their own encampments further in, to say nothing of the constant sabotage by Arachnos and the Sky Raiders.

Yes, I agree, the rest of the city zones ARE kind of bright and shiny and...

Oh! Skyway City! That place is just depressing. Trolls rule the streets, pushing drugs, and everyone lives in a practical underworld, with their little buildings shoved in the crevices and spaces left by the titanic, useless elevated highways. It's as run-down as they come, full of abandoned construction sites, empty lots full of garbage, streets that go nowhere and darkness under the concrete slabs. The whole place is kind of a monument to the folly of over-ambition.

But, yes, I agree. The rest of the city IS kind of bright and shiny and hopeful despite crawling with criminals. But those few zones really DO feel the part.

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've played two villains to 50, I've got quite a few up to the 30's. I don't really like being a villain. I don't like the villain contacts, story arcs or roles. I don't like the villains zones except for Port Oakes which is quaint, and St Martial, because I like neon at night.

I don't know that I would mind being a villain as much if I had any choices in the matter. I can only portray my villains as lackeys, errand boys, mercenaries, etc. I can't be the archvillain, because every story has me doing chores for someone else. Heroes work for the greater good, and don't mind filling requests from their contacts, but villains should be more arrogant, working for another should annoy them. I sure does annoy me red side.

I wouldn't mind being a gritty hero cleaning up the Rogue Isles single handed, but I would have to avoid contacts and mayhem missions, and be very selective about newspaper missions. I would mostly street sweep to 50, and that would get dull fast. So while I considered it, I didn't do it.

But I really do prefer the villain archetypes to most of the heroic types. I only like Blasters and Scrappers. I play more Tankers than Scrappers simply because I prefer the power sets available. Hate the low damage. Can't get into Defenders or Controllers at all.

And I'm tired of waiting for Going Rogue to come out. A few weeks ago, I had an idea that should occupy me until GR is out. I created five new villains, one per archetype and origin. I gave them all similar back stories.

Most of them began life in the Rogue Isles, trapped into working for an evil organization. Each of them either had or developed moral objections to what that organization is doing. Each of them fled the organization, adopting a new costume and name to hide from the agents of that organization. And each of them has chosen to hide in the AE building, running heroic mission simulations to train their powers so that when the evil organization that is searching for them finds them, they will be strong enough to defend themselves.

My natural origin stalker is hiding from a clan of ninjas after refusing to kill.

My tech origin brute is hiding from Crey, after breaking free of brainwashing. (Yeah, Crey is part owner of AE, but the brute is in disguise.)

My science origin mastermind was a chemist making Superdine for the Family, before fleeing and taking her group of friends.

My mutant origin corrupter is hiding out from the Malta group. Weak back story here, as I've never seen a Malta agents as mutants but I wanted to make a dual pistol/kinetic corrupter and Malta has those teleporting gunslingers...

My magic origin dominator is hiding from the Circle of Thorns.

Character concept aside, playing Heroic missions in AE with villain ATs has been a lot of fun. I tend to forget that I'm playing villains, except when I have to visit an arbiter to level up.

I'm not just doing whatever they ask, though. I do get to choose my contacts. This isn't real life, and there's no slippery slope.


Unless going for Ouro badges, I don't think a character is ever going to see even half of the story arcs on one run to 50.

Also, in my specific case, my proper villains have done most of the "evil" arcs already (via previous research). Doing the blander ones will actually be new to me.


You don't have to ignore it. It doesn't matter to me or my character whether or not Silver Mantis had her fun and money, I just wanted to beat down some Sky Raiders. It doesn't matter whether Ice Mistral is in or out of Sirocco's favor, I just saved the whole world from the CoT. It doesn't matter whether Black Scorpion succeeds in making anti-Ghost Widow weapons or not, I still furthered self-destructive infighting in Arachnos. It doesn't matter whether the mob casino got money for me beating Carnies, I still stopped a bunch of soul-eating psychos from running amok (and it's not like I won't be beating down that same mob personally in the near future).

You don't have to ignore or hand-wave the contact chatter because it doesn't reflect negatively on your character's motivations in the first place (assuming, again, that you skip a few things like Stone Cold or Doc Buzzsaw).


My point was and is that there is very little hand-waving if you pay attention to which arcs you do.

Missions seem to suggest otherwise. Yes, not all of them do, and no, not many do in their direct briefings, but they do in style, in approach, in clues and pop-up messages. It doesn't have to be anything directly stated as such. At lest to me, it's clearly evident these stories are intended to be done by a villain. Yes, you can claim that your villain does all of this not for the money but because of something else, but you're still going against the grain of the narrative.

You don't see half OF HALF of the game. Remember, villain-side is only half of the entire package of City of Heroes and Villains. Missing half of that doesn't put you at more than a quarter of the total game, and even then I seriously doubt you won't see even half. I run through practically every contact on my villains, and I don't try very hard.

My point was that if you ignore everything, you basically ignore all of City of Villains.

I still don't see how you can explain GETTING those contacts in the first place, since I really don't think you can claim you don't care that your Broker wants to get rich, you just wanted to knock over a bank. And then again, what do you do 30-35, when practically all missions are against Longbow? Ret-con them into bad guys? What of the times you have to travel to Paragon City and fight heroes in the name of Lord Recluse? How does that work? Or when you fight heroes in the Isles. Abyss missions are practically all about kneecapping dogooders.

Look, I don't want to argue concepts and I don't want to tell you which characters are good and which aren't. But I just don't see helping one bad guy beat another bad guy as the definition of a "hero." You may end up beating on bad guys and "not care" that you're actually helping make other bad guys that much stronger. You're basically pulling a Grand Theft Auto 2 here, and I have a REALLY hard time seeing the protagonist in this game as a good guy.

Again, your concepts, your call and I don't want to judge them. But that still doesn't answer the question - what's stopping you from doing this blue-side?

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.

Umm...

You don't have to try and present Steel Canyon as a den of evil, when you can try and present its counterpart - Skyway City - as one and not be too far from the truth. The whole zone is basically abandoned warehouses, empty lots, giant depressing overhanging highways and trolls and mutant beggars. How can you present it as anything else?

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.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that really can't be done Blue side is have a character who's heroically standing against an Evil government. Well, that and play Red-side content. I can't speak for anyone else here, but in the past when I've talked to folks with Heroic Redsiders, it's mostly because they can't see themselves as the bad guy. I can think of three people off the top of my head in that state, and my flaxen haired Forum foe of late doesn't count, as she doesn't roll any other characters.


Warehouse district in a big city? It's actually not far off from some areas I've seen in my own life. There's a huge gap from the bad part of town, to a place where even the government is actively trying to crush your will, if not your lives. Recluse throws people into slums infested with contagious spider monsters! In even the darkest nooks of Paragon (again, not counting Dark Astoria) the police haven't completely given up, and there's always a Hero or three on patrol. Hell, even though I keep making exceptions for it, even Dark Astoria hasn't been completely abandoned. At least Heroes still head in there to keep the Monster population thinned out a bit.

(going to apologize here for this post. Just realized that it's like an hour past when I'm usually asleep, and I've been listening to the ranting reviewers I follow for the past couple hours or so, so the tone here may be adversely affected. I'm going to bed now.)

OK, that makes sense. It's not just a question of settings, it's a question of evil government. All right, I can roll with that. Question answered.

Well... It's more than JUST a warehouse district, you know, and American movies have never had a problem representing run-down American Burroughs as horrible, crime-ridden places where gangs rule and violence is lawn. Hell, even Las Vegas. Hell, something like Sin City is still an American town that's still within US borders and, presumably, under US law, but it doesn't really strike me as a nice place.

In Paragon City, the police EXIST, but it's up to heroes to take a bite out of crime. And even though there are, like, a million billion of us, that doesn't seem to make a dent in the number of gangsters still roaming the streets, pushing drugs and killing people. Sure, you don't have the actual government trying to eat your soul, but the actual government doesn't really have much of a say in, for example, Kings Row. Yeah, they have that large gleaming plaza, but go down the stairs and down the slope and you're in no-man's land where gangs rule life is cheap.

Of course, that's one interpretation, but if one can spin a noble villain, why can't one spin a less-than-noble Kings Row?

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 don't have to do any retconning of Longbow, they're already barely a step away from bad guys as it is. Remember that officially speaking they're an invading force, since The Rogue Isles is a sovereign nation and no one has declared official war on them (as far as I know). They are at the very least overzealous vigilantes. Have you not noticed that they tend to shoot first and ask questions later? Get ambushed by them sometimes, they may yell "Stop right there!" but then they'll break out the gatling guns and grenades first thing. Mechanics-wise obviously that's all they CAN do, but you can certainly RP that factor in if desired.

As far as beating up named (non-Longbow) Heroes goes, you can always go the route of "Well, officially I was told to kill [x], but I used less-than-lethal so I could get away with feeling less evil". I've been known to land the actual finishing blow with Brawl JUST for this purpose, Martial Arts and the equivalent have it even easier.

Perhaps it's not totally good-aligned, but bad guys fighting WORSE guys can still wind up being a net positive, relatively speaking. There are different shades of gray, unless you're GG-level Always Lawful Good. It's true you don't want to overuse this idea, and I recall other posters here expressing disdain for it as being too wishy-washy and soft, you might've been one of them. Others like this concept a lot, I actually enjoy those kinds of stories the most.

Oh you're referring to the microchip the CIA implanted in my characters skull after they recruited him into the blackest of black op programs. The same program that was hijacked by an unscrupulous traitor who then proceeded to use the brainwashed sleeper agents in that program to unwittingly do his evil bidding. And when GR goes live my character will finally be able to break that conditioning, return to Paragon City and bring that traitor to justice.

It does if you expect me to need to hand-wave. Unless something villainous on my part is more than just hinted towards, the general theme retains the "light in the darkness" feel of a good person working in a corrupt environment. If blandly stating "real life" as an example of this isn't clear enough, there are plenty of examples in entertainment. The first thing I think of is Russel Crowe's character in the first half of American Gangster, where the rest of the police force being corrupt thugs does not reflect poorly on the protagonist, it highlights him. You'll also notice he doesn't just bust out a machine gun and murder all the law enforcement in the entire area; he actually works around them until he can do enough good to surpass them.


This is just as true for most villains, though. Are you some sort of outcast seeking some sort of nonspecific revenge? Nope! Mercenary thug. Megalomaniac? Nope! Mercenary thug. Anarchist seeking to topple society? Nope! Mercenary thug. They could just as easily have called the game "City of Hirelings," but the acronym was taken already. If you go out and read some "Villain" back-stories, you'll notice that most of them are going against the implied theme as well. The saving grace here is that the theme remains implied, which doesn't require any real hand-waving.


Really? o_O Maybe you do fewer large teams and repeated SFs than I do, or set your mission difficulty lower, or something like that? I often have a checklist of contacts I want to hit that's only half to 2/3 of the CoV content, and I don't normally even fill that without Ouro.


Other than skipping a few contacts, I'm not ignoring anything.


It's a good way to provoke attacks by Longbow. Also, if some Villains are knocking over the bank anyway, I may as well make sure as few PPD get seriously injured as possible. (Mostly, though, it's to provoke Longbow. Strictly speaking, I don't have to keep the money, either.)

Also, as mentioned, that's the single hardest part to justify. I don't see that one outlier as crushing the entire experience.


Ret-con? Go read their official backstory! They're like the Hitler Youth combined with Al-Qaeda! Ms. Liberty goes around duping "zealous, idealistic young people" into joining an organization that's a hair's breadth from earning the U.S. a bunch of U.N. sanctions, then sends them unprepared into a foreign country for use as cannon fodder--it's explicitly stated that most of them don't survive their first encounter with a Villain--just to stoke her ego battle with her uncle! I feel bad about the ones you fight below level 10 (which is fine since I don't have to kill them), but after that you fight a bunch of extremist invading foreign terrorists who habitually use high school girls as bullet shields (which is even a bit soft, since actually a lot of them are being eaten alive by zombies and stuff like that).

Again, that's canon!

I do. Just as long as...

...you're not making your patron any stronger. The immature back-and-forth fighting in CoV isn't getting anyone anywhere, but you rescue a few hostages and save the world a few times in the process. I like to think of it as the "hysteresis curve of villainy."

Obviously, there's a lot of that because the assuming narrative in CoV is one of its chief failings. I do end up either ignoring or ret-conning much of the CoV storyline to shoehorn my villains as they are intended to be placed, but I'm still trying to put villains in the city designed for villains. I consider putting a hero in a storyline designed for a villain to be at least one step beyond what most villains do to NOT be poorly-written mercenaries.


I mostly play solo and don't do almost any TFs as a result. I obviously don't manage to do every contact's missions, but I'm usually at around 70-80% content done by the time I move on to the next level range. I do skip a LOT of the low-level contacts simply because we level up so fast, but past the 30s, "most" is what I usually do. Mind you, that's CoV-side. CoH-side has so many contacts I DO skip most of them, but City of Villains just doesn't have enough locations or contacts for me to skip much of anything, especially when so many are locked, too.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that. Unless you want to cite your source material that paints them villains, you're just hinging your entire point on your interpretation that an unambiguously POSITIVE group is fair game to be shot at and stabbed. How can you even make the argument that Miss Liberty is evil for sending unprepared kids to die on the one side, and then go out of your way to "provoke" them by shooting them in the face and still try to claim the moral high ground?

Longbow protect innocent people from murder and kidnapping. Longbow protect the streets of the city from villains and criminals. Longbow basically go out of their way to do the right thing, even if they end up presuming too much. Even their very WORST portrayal, as found in the various Vanguard story arcs, is still far removed from anything even remotely approaching a negative light. They might not be the Superman type heroes, but I have a really hard time accepting a character as "heroic" if he'd ventilate Longbow agents like they're any common gang.

But then I guess that answers my question of why make heroic characters villain-side, doesn't it?

That's quite a leap inferring that working for people and doing exactly as they tell you isn't tantamount to helping them. You do realise that Black Scorpion is the only Patron whose entire premise is infighting, do you not? All of the other Patrons have visions and ideas far and beyond the confines of Arachnos. Ghost Widow wants to be alive again, Scirocco wants to change the world and replace evil with good, and Mako just wants a lot of power for whatever he plans to do with it. It's twice as bad, in fact, that these stories basically threaten you with "Arachnos, arr!" and force you to betray your contacts, despite at least half of them having purely noble intentions, Scirocco especially. And, yes, you can spin those intentions to be not as heroic, but you can spin anything into anything else. It doesn't change how it's WRITTEN.

And even contacts aside, let's look at what you do for the various "non-committal" contacts. For Operative Kirkland, you find information to serve Arachnos. For Operative Vargas, you prevent a hero from stealing Arachnos tech and save Arachnos from having to deal with misguided villain reprisals. For Moongoose, you rob a bank and protect a few illegal legal casinos. For Operative Ruthger, you take out an intelligence officer spying on Arachnos for authorities and help Arachnos strike out against Agincourt. For the Shadowy Figure and Lt. Demitrovich (That's DIMITROVICH! With an I!), you do odd jobs to help forward Arachnos' interests. For Kelly Uqua, you help the Rikti and cover up a Rikti spy. For Billy Heck and Lorenz Ansaldo, you basically help the mob strongarm poor, downtrodden people and act as muscle to clean up in-fighting, streamlining their operations. For Terrance Dobbs, you cover up an Arachnos mess and help them contain the PR damage. For Vernon Von Gurn, you end up giving Arachnos one more brilliant scientist and launching their knowledge of the Devouring Earth years ahead. For both Shadow Spider and Abyss, you handle problem heroes (real heroes you can't spin as quasi-villains) that allow them to run their operations more easily. For Johnny Sonata, Hard Luck and Basse Croupier, you're basically helping support an illegal casino that not only rigs its slot machines and cooks the books, but also has people murdered if they can't pay their debts. BY YOU!

And that's not even getting into the league of creeps like Boccor, Thermai or Phipps. I'm really, really, REALLY not buying how you're not actually helping villains with practically everything they do. Specifically because I don't buy the idea that helping one, then helping his enemy somehow evens things out. It doesn't. It's like putting more and more weights on both sides of a scale to keep it even. Sooner or later, you'll snap the axle. This is not a zero-sum game where an advantage for one villain is equal to a disadvantage for another. The stronger all the villains are, the more the people who get caught in the crossfire. And the more you "provoke" villains (and heroes) into armed conflict, the more lives you're putting in danger.

Look, I'm not trying to dictate how you should write and play your own characters. I don't even want to claim your designed heroes shouldn't really be heroes. I mean, who the hell am I to pass judgement in you? All I'm saying is that you are making a SERIOUS stretch here, and while you are well within your right to make it and give me the finger (as you probably should), that actually serves to depict the problem - you need to ignore a LOT of the game's actual canon, writing and apparent intent to shoehorn a hero into the Isles, at least comparable to the amount of such that you'd need to put such a hero in the Paragon City settings. It would take no less bending of the rules, and I'd bet money on this one.

*edit*
Something I feel I have to append:

I do not mean to judge, criticise or presume. Your characters, your subscription fee, your game, your call. You can and probably should disregard my opinion when it comes to actually making and playing your characters. I don't mean to dictate what you should do or think, not in the slightest. I'm merely illustrating a specific point, specifically that it takes a fair amount of ignoring, rewriting and tuning out aspects of the game to get a heroic hero in the Rogue Isles, and that it's unreasonable to deny that much the same can be done to Paragon City, perhaps even to fit in a similar character. It's not a question of who's right and who's wrong and who's heroic and who's villainous. It's a question of spin, and spin can, and should, go both ways.

In short, I can see why someone would want to bend the rules and have a heroic villain (which I assume will go Rogue with Going Rogue), but I can't see why one wouldn't want to try to make the exact same concept on the hero-side. The game supports it no less, put it like that.

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.

Maybe people are bored of the heroside content from doing it over and over and over against for months or even years on end. So instead choose to head villainside for an atmosphere change, though they still want to be Heroes?

As I've said before a few times, I don't like playing villains. I was brought up with a pretty hard moral streak (not saying anyone else wasn't!) that makes it -hard- for me to enjoy villainy for the sake of villainy. I can take it, in small doses, through the filter of someone else' actions being shown on a TV screen. But if you put the choice in my hands, even if it's pixelated pretendy time fun; I won't have fun with it.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy First Peron shooters.... There's just no character to those. It's a faceless nameless mannequin going from point A to point B and shooting another faceless nameless mannequin to protect a flag, rack up kill counts, or some other inane game. It's no more violent to me than ranged tag in a virtual world. Tag! Go back to the spawn point.

As for the List of zones you could use for a "Hero in a Dark Place", heroside; You should add The Hollows, Crey's Folly, The Sewer network, the Abandoned Sewer Network, Warburg, Siren's Call, Recluse's Victory, and Bloody Bay as well.

But it still doesn't account for new (to the player) content, different enemies (find me Sneaky Freaks, Wailers, or Corallax, blueside in -missions-!), a different atmosphere, different -music- (sure it only changes between districts, but that can mean a lot for tone), and a different style of story when you alter it slightly.

It also doesn't help when you have to pass through shiny happy city zones to get from one of those locations to another to play your Darkity Dark Dark hero...

Villainside, however, EVERY zone is dark. I'm already doing a pile of handwaving. To make a Heroside Point of light Hero I'd be doing more handwaving, seeing more of the same content, same enemies enemies, hearing the same music, etc. There's less of a lure to do it Heroside and less of a reward to doing it, too.

There's a lot of perfectly good reasons that you've accepted and agreed with, Sam. if they're not enough for you to "See" why we do it by now, i doubt you ever will, Hon. =-(

-Rachel-

I agree with your reasons (again ) and I'm not questioning why people would want to make heroes villain-side. The way you explained your motivations made perfect sense to me last time and little has changed since. I accept the premise, but just because I do, it doesn't mean I have to accept all the arguments used to support it, specifically when they're given as exclusives.

Well, yeah, but that's something I find to be a MAJOR problem with City of Villains. Everything is always dirty, dark, disgusting and d... Dunpleasant. City of Heroes offers me some places that are dark and foreboding, some that are bright and cheery and some that are kind of in-between. If my hero is a borderline recluse, he'll hang out in Dark Astoria. If my hero is a paragon of justice, he'll hang out in Atlas Park. If he's a modest crime fighter, he may hang out in Kings Row. Villain-side, though, I have a choice between dark depressing brown town, dark depressing black town or the other dark depressing brown town. In a sense, that kind of setting is what makes people hand-wave so much to begin with.

To be honest, I don't think everyone is cut out to enjoy villains, just like some people just CAN'T enjoy heroes because they keep wanting to punch the contacts in the mouth. For me, it comes down to finding the kind of villain you would really like seeing as the antagonist to a really cool hero. The kind of villain who's a threat and evil enough to want to see fall, but at the same time seems to kind of make sense in what he wants and what he's trying to do. I do very much turn my nose up at engaging in acts of pointless malice and brutality, but any good story needs a good villain, and I just happen to enjoy using my own

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.

Dun-colored? Or you could've accented the D in and for the illusion of alliteration? We also would've accepted Dank (with all the water around you have to imagine it would be!) disheveled, dreggy, dingy, discolored, despised, dim, drab, dusky, dull, doleful, damnable, dour, dismal, dreary, disheartening, discouraging, dispiriting, or depressing!

Thanks for playing. =-3

-Rachel-

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.

Actually, it's not so much when you compare it to the incredible amount of ret-conning needed to make this an actual city, and not an MMO setting. Here's a list of stuff I regularly ret-con away:

Security/Threat Level
Combat level
trainers
contacts
security zones (thankfully lifted with I16)
ambient crime (would any hero be willing to pass blithely by several dozen muggings every day?)
everything remotely affected by Influence/Infamy

Compared to all this, ignoring the little window that tells you how you're role playing your character (essentially God Moding from the DM) isn't that big a stretch. And I wouldn't be surprised if I missed a couple of items

Something tells me that these "heroic" redsiders will just LUUURVE Praetoria then, because the morality will be a lot muddier over there.

You must have missed that big thread a couple weeks ago. The one that finally decided that Heroes make more sense in the Isles than in Praetoria, as Recluse is actually the LESSER of two evils when compared to Tyrant.

Really? Then shouldn't the heroes be going over to fight the greater evil instead? Greater evil does, after all, imply greater threat.