"And when worlds collide", said George Pal to his bride

tldr; - What classic themes/stories from film/pulp/comics would you enjoy seeing as storylines in CoH?

Look at the pictures of the upcoming Retro Sci-fi costume pack, I couldn't help but think "Wow, if only there was a story that required these outfits!"

It got me thinking about all of the really classic old iconic stories (helped along by the song implied in the title, heh) of the sci-fi and adventure genres. It was helped along by the fact that Dink was more or less caught channeling Ann Francis and Leslie Nielsen from Forbidden Planet in her designs. :-p

I would have a hell of a lot of fun playing out a Flash Gordon story arc, for instance. Something where it begins innocently, and then some crazy guy with a home made rocket who thinks he's the only person in the world who knows the truth about impending disaster ropes you into blasting into space (requiring those nifty space suits as part of the adventure) and then discovering that Crazy Scientist Dude really wasn't entirely crazy after all.

Implementing that in a way that was truly a surprise (and then preserving the surprise for new players) would be a monumental task, but hey we're just wishing here.

I've always felt that Holsten Armitage has been a character with some really wasted potential in this regard. He's basically Doctor Zarkhoff. He's the crazy guy with the wild hair and the outlandish claims yet he can prove enough of them that me may not be as crazy as he appears. He has a time machine in his basement instead of a rocket in his garage but otherwise he's a perfect launching point. You can't even say that he's wrong - his timeline may be a potential future or it may be a different dimension or something else entirely. Who can really say for certain?

Many of the big name villains at launch were created to be iconic of classic themes. Doctor Vahzilok is Doctor Frankenstein and, more generically, Scientific Knowledge at All Costs. The Clockwork King is Donovan's Brain reimagined. The Freakshow is your classic post-apocalyptic amoral anarchists, just moved into a pre-apocalyptic setting.

There's a ton of iconic literature, film and comic stories that are iconic of plots that drive a genre. I'm curious what iconic stories would get other players "fired up", so to speak, about seeing a City of Heroes adventure written along a similar theme?

Creatures of Light and Darkness

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

I'd love to see the storyline of "The 47 Ronin" in COH.

Especially if done villainside, and it revolves around the fall of one of the patrons.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

The original Shivan story (which occurs mostly in the background, like most of the game's lore) probably contains a nod to Flash Gordon.

From Flash Gordon on wikipedia: "The story begins with Earth bombarded by fiery meteors. Dr. Zarkov invents a rocket ship to locate their place of origin in outer space. Half mad, he kidnaps Flash and Dale, whose plane has crashed in the area, and the three travel to the planet Mon.go, where they discover the meteors are weapons devised by Ming the Merciless, evil ruler of Mon.go."

In the Shivan story, scientists discover a threat to Earth in deep space, a year out from Earth. They send a hero team in a spaceship to destroy this threat with a nuclear weapon. The heroes are never heard from again, but a year later meteors rain down on Bloody Bay.

Also related to comets, the hero known as Cassiopeia is honored for saving the world from a rogue comet. (Has this info been altered at some point? I thought original text may have mentioned that it was in the 1950s, and there may have been mention of aliens or more comets.)

Another in-game reference to aliens comes from a low level Kings Row contact: "Paula Dempsey moved to Paragon City as a child, when her parents were killed by an invading space armada in the late 60's."

I've always had a thing for tales like Neverending Story / Alice in Wonderland / A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court / The Song of Albion / Flash Gordon, where the main protagonist is just a normal person suddenly suddenly brought to a fantastic world full of crazy adventures. With a little creativity, I guess you can pretty much twist the game to your favorite type of adventure (novel, movie, comic, whatever suits you), as long as the lore and the NPCs you "interact" with are left a little vague and distant. For instance, I picture the Praetorian tutorial opening with the sound of a high-pitched voice inside the PC's head, shouting "Rusty, Rusty!! Please wake up! Rusty!!" - Warden Path follows.

Anything involving the moon. preferably filled to the brim with Zeerust.

I've got an arc that's about 80% done collecting dust right now that's about "strange things afoot at the Martian base"; it's based on old rocket movies from the 50's (and a bit of Lovecraft). Once I heard about the retro set I decided to just wait until it came out, as the space suits would fit it perfectly.

Does that count?

Now I just have to fight past my lethargy that comes from the way the devs have pretty much abandoned the AE.

Damnit...now the song is stuck in my head!

Damn you and all your kind!

But yeah I'd love me a bit of the old zeerust, something to bright things up with all the doom and gloom we're getting what with Heroes being killed and Praetoria being blown up.

I wasn't really looking to literally require a space suit costume piece, though I'd be impressed at a mission that put a costume power on you as a temp power (like the various missions where you don a "disguise") to simulate it. (If your character can survive exposure to a vacuum, then just click it off, heh.)

Likewise, while the sci-fi pack was the inspiration I was thinking more generally about any classic theme. I think that after all of the doom and gloom, that I'm ready for just a good, old-fashioned adventure story and the retro sci-fi pack kind of clicked that for me.

One of the things that drew me to the game initially was that the game's content covered a wide range of themes and it put interesting twists on them that made them not-so-black-and-white once you knew the whole story.

I'd like to get back somewhat to short story arcs that deal with broad themes that make you sit back and look at the whole thing in a new light when you're done with it. Something like Ubelmann the Unknown. Specifically something that doesn't involve cosmic beings, the Well, or Praetorians.

I think I miss the days when Requiem was considered a big bad guy and a volcano base was considered to be a pretty nifty and fun idea. It might just be that my personal game has never really been about being the most powerful or about saving the world twenty times in a row. I'm more about the small stories that happen every day while the heavy lifters are out doing all of that world-saving.

I think what I really want, and what I probably can't get just because I'm jaded, is that sense of surprise when something seemingly small, leads into something larger and then something altogether unexpected that challenges my preconceptions. The stories in the original game were all about that kind of story writing, although some were more successful than others.

I'm ready for a good old-fashioned, pulp-style adventure where the settings are outlandish, the morality is clear cut, and the themes are painted in broad strokes.

Show me a Lost World, or Science Gone Wrong, or Hard-boiled Detective Work, just a Kitten Up a Tree. Flash Gordon? Sure. Buck Rogers? Yeah. The Shadow needs my help? I'm there! The Evil League of Evil is attempting to steal all of the ice cream in the city in order to make children cry? Lemme at 'em! (Sorry, bad guys, there are better ways to raise awareness about lactose intolerance.)

I'm ready to play some stories that are fun romps and don't necessarily involve any cosmic significance. Only one of my heroes is even level 50, and none of them have any interest in becoming a deity. It would be nice to accomplish something more down-to-earth.

Any sort of dinosaur island type adventure.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

A time travel medieval zone would be awesome - Night Ward sounds like it might have some medieval-ish bits, but I'd love a full on medieval zone

shrunk hero world

heroes are the size of mice type of thing. Everything is huge. The enemies are bugs, cats (which are giant monsters) etc.