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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: City of Heroes
Topic ID: 18
#0, Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Zack on Sep-16-04 at 11:04 PM
I dunno, it just seems like something you would see on the Paragon City evening news.

Kudos for a cool little character piece; the Silver Spectre is inspired by Will Eisner's the Spirit, or maybe the Gray Ghost, from Batman: the Animated Series?

I dig the Spectre's fashion sense, too.

Zack


#1, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Gryphon on Sep-16-04 at 11:20 PM
In response to message #0
>Kudos for a cool little character piece; the Silver Spectre is
>inspired by Will Eisner's the Spirit, or maybe the Gray Ghost, from
>Batman: the Animated Series?

Oh, he definitely owes a great stylistic debt to the Grey Ghost, and from there back to all the characters the Ghost owes debts to - the Spirit, Walter Gibson's The Shadow, the original Crimson Avenger...

>I dig the Spectre's fashion sense, too.

Thanks. I'm very pleased with the way his design came out. His hair actually ended up staying white because of a mistake I made in character generation, but I decided I liked it. And the character generation system had the perfect pair of goggles, too. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/


#2, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Zack on Sep-16-04 at 11:46 PM
In response to message #1
>Oh, he definitely owes a great stylistic debt to the Grey Ghost, and
>from there back to all the characters the Ghost owes debts to - the
>Spirit, Walter Gibson's The Shadow, the original Crimson
>Avenger...

Right after I posted, I realized that the Grey Ghost was inspired by the Spirit, and I hadn't even thought of the Shadow (to say nothing of the Crimson Avenger, who I'm not familiar with).

I don't have the time, money, or computing power for City of Heroes, but from what I've seen of it, it looks like a pretty badass game. Out of curiosity, what kind of superpowers does the Silver Spectre have? Similar to his forebears (sneaking around in the night; scaring the crap out of, then beating down bad guys)?

Zack


#3, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Gryphon on Sep-17-04 at 00:08 AM
In response to message #2
LAST EDITED ON 09-17-04 AT 00:13 AM (EDT)
 
>Out of curiosity, what kind of superpowers does the Silver Spectre have?
>Similar to his forebears (sneaking around in the night; scaring the
>crap out of, then beating down bad guys)?

He's what the game calls a Natural Scrapper (Natural because he didn't get his powers from a scientific accident, genetic mutation, technological gizmo, or magical study, although the last could be argued, since he has a Shadowesque "trained by ancient mystic monks in Tibet" background; Scrapper indicates he's a hand-to-hand combat specialist with no ranged attacks).

Thus far (the in-game version is up to Security Level 10, which is senior enough to found a Supergroup but still not particularly badass, relatively speaking), he has a range of spiffy martial-arts moves, a number of powers based on Super Reflexes which enable him to avoid damage of various kinds, a machinegun punch power which is the precursor to Super-Speed (he'll be eligible for that at SL14), and Stealth, which is partial invisibility.

So, yeah, basically he sneaks around looking for trouble, then suddenly appears and clobbers the bad guys with his fists and feet. The game's basic advancement design, where you earn new powers as you advance in level, works very well with his "rusty, but it's coming back to him" character concept; the more "super" powers he's starting to develop, like Stealth and the beginnings of Super-Speed, I explain as the ongoing recovery of the secret techniques he learned from the monks of Lakan Pakor as a young traveler in the early 1930s, before his first hero career began. (They may call it "Stealth" in the game, but I know it's really the Power to Cloud the Minds of Men. :)

None of that is actually important to the mechanics of the game, but it is a role-playing game, after all, even if 95% or so of the people playing it don't seem to get that part.

(Oh - and the Crimson Avenger was another of the Golden Age "masked hero in a nice suit" type of comic-book hero, like the Spirit or the Sandman, until the spandex costume thing became all the rage and he ended up in a goofy red outfit with a fin on his head. The original version had a cameo appearance in the Justice League Unlimited episode "This Little Piggy" as the guy in the dark suit and red cape who knocks on the door of the suburban house and tells the person who answers that he's looking for a pig.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/


#7, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Zack on Sep-17-04 at 01:21 PM
In response to message #3

>
>(Oh - and the Crimson Avenger was another of the Golden Age "masked
>hero in a nice suit" type of comic-book hero, like the Spirit or the
>Sandman,

I wish I was a better artist, because this conjured up an image of GQ: the Best Dressed Superhero issue, with the Shadow, the Spirit, and maybe the Green Hornet, on the cover.

Zack


#8, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by trigger on Sep-17-04 at 01:31 PM
In response to message #7
>I wish I was a better artist, because this conjured up an image of GQ:
>the Best Dressed Superhero issue, with the Shadow, the Spirit, and
>maybe the Green Hornet, on the cover.

Nice list, but shouldn't it include Zorro? He was always up to fashion before it was cool. And while we're being multicultural, should we include Yuri Daniels and Carmen Sandiego?

t.
thinks something like that would be a pretty neat piece of fan art for any of the Eyrie productions.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"If we are marked to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater the share of honour
God's will I pray thee wish not one man more" - Henry V, Act, IV Scene III


#5, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by NeoRavenK7 on Sep-17-04 at 12:35 PM
In response to message #1
When I get the time, money and machine for it I definitely plan on playing CoH. How good is it at letting you style your own character?

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisen bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."


#6, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Berk on Sep-17-04 at 12:36 PM
In response to message #5
I have never seen two characters in the game that look alike.

The character design system is, to put it simply, robust.


#13, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by StClair on Sep-22-04 at 05:21 PM
In response to message #6
>I have never seen two characters in the game that look alike.

Except for those designed to look that way, like the Henshin Squad.

>The character design system is, to put it simply, robust.

And how.


#14, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Berk on Sep-22-04 at 05:57 PM
In response to message #13
Henshin Squad?

Dare I ask?


#15, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Kitsune1527 on Sep-22-04 at 08:51 PM
In response to message #14
>Henshin Squad?
>
>Dare I ask?

Though I myself do not play it, it sounds like a riff on Sailor Moon.


#16, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Berk on Sep-22-04 at 10:27 PM
In response to message #15
The scary thing is, I used to play CoH for a while..

I can think of several ways to create the Sailor Moon-style seifuku in that system.


#17, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Gryphon on Sep-22-04 at 10:47 PM
In response to message #16
LAST EDITED ON 09-22-04 AT 10:47 PM (EDT)
 
>I can think of several ways to create the Sailor Moon-style seifuku in
>that system.

No; they're a sentai team. They're named after Japanese foodstuffs (Soba and Yakitori are the only two I can remember right now).

Here are four of them posing for a photo in Atlas Plaza:

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/


#18, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Berk on Sep-23-04 at 01:24 AM
In response to message #17
...

words fail me

...

They really do.

Wow.

*shatter*


#19, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Kitsune1527 on Sep-23-04 at 07:02 AM
In response to message #17
It was either BSSM or sentai. I just went with whichever seemed more wrong, and chose that. Cause I figured it was the internet.

But that's pretty damn funny.


#20, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by NeoRavenK7 on Sep-23-04 at 12:51 PM
In response to message #17
*Blink-blink*
*Snarfs*
You know, I've been accused of having no life, but this is something I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisin bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."


#21, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by WengFook on Sep-25-04 at 04:30 AM
In response to message #20
>*Blink-blink*
>*Snarfs*
>You know, I've been accused of having no life, but this is something I
>wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

hey give them a little credit.. it takes guts to go out and fight crime wearing that..... o.o


#22, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by NeoRavenK7 on Sep-25-04 at 09:36 AM
In response to message #21
>>*Blink-blink*
>>*Snarfs*
>>You know, I've been accused of having no life, but this is something I
>>wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.
>
>hey give them a little credit.. it takes guts to go out and fight
>crime wearing that..... o.o

Point. Still... *Shakes his head*

>Necropotence, Viagra for zombies.
>For those days when you just cant raise the dead.

W... T... F...
*Breaks*

-NeoRaven
Hobbes: "I've never seen raisin bran do that before."
Calvin: "I put in an alcaseltzer."


#4, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Edenclaw on Sep-17-04 at 05:57 AM
In response to message #0
Heh, I'm really enjoying this game. My L11 scrapper is a blatant Guyver rip-off but it seems to be a less common clone than, say, Wolverine or Superman. Sadly I have to rebuild my machine before I can play it tonight...I suppose I should get to work on that.

#9, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Dranger on Sep-17-04 at 02:22 PM
In response to message #0
I liked this one...I haven't played CoH myself...but I'm glad you portrayed this universe well....even if its a one shot. ^^

#10, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Blob on Sep-19-04 at 01:11 PM
In response to message #0
This story makes me want to play CoH even more, but it won't be released here before sometime next year. And I have to get a job, before I can even consider buying a game like that. Thats the bad part about leaving home to go to a university, you have to pay things like rent and food yourself. ^^"

#11, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Norgarth on Sep-19-04 at 10:27 PM
In response to message #10
I liked the story as well. I'd be interested in playing it, if not for the problems of lacking a computer that can handle it, insufficint funds to pay for it, and too many things to do as it is. 8P

I hear that the company that make CoH are coming out with an expansion called City of Villains, so you can the bad guys too.


#12, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by jpublic on Sep-19-04 at 11:30 PM
In response to message #0
LAST EDITED ON 09-19-04 AT 11:31 PM (EDT)
 
Well done, Gryphon. A very nice piece.

My _only_ criticism is that variants on that "origin" have been used too often to count by other players. Of course, none do it with the same panache...

*shrug* Just shows the validity of it as an origin story, I guess.


If you're ever on the Freedom server, look up Paradoxe, Entropic Avatar, Unseeing Eye, or VLSI. Paradoxe is always happy to take a fledgling out on his adventures against the Rikti.

Edit: When I'm not badge hunting, that is. :D
--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
From first to last, the peak is never passed,
Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes.
One moment's high, and glory rolls on by
Like a streak of lightning that flashes and fades
In the summer sky.
-- "Marathon" by Rush


#23, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Meagen on Jul-09-05 at 09:12 AM
In response to message #0
I finally got the game a couple weeks ago (got the 14-day free trial and was *hooked*). Makes me appreciate this story that much more.

Also, are the Sky Raiders the Teen Titans fought in UF taken from the game? They're pretty cool as bad guys, although of course it immediately made me picture New Avalon as Paragon City.


#24, RE: Mostly sunny, with a 50% chance of Alien Invasion
Posted by Gryphon on Jul-09-05 at 01:48 PM
In response to message #23
LAST EDITED ON Jul-09-05 AT 01:48 PM (EDT)
 
>Also, are the Sky Raiders the Teen Titans fought in UF taken from the
>game?

More or less. They don't have the same motivation as the City of Heroes Sky Raiders, but they use similar equipment, and the name is the obvious choice for any such group. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/