... with my City of Heroes characters is to give them some quirk that addresses, but at the same time steps around, the standard expectations of the genre.

Take my newest guy, for instance:

When I set out to design Clawdy here, one of the things I wanted to do was make him as unlike Wolverine as possible. I don't have anything against Wolverine, he has his place, but, unlike about 152,000 players I've spotted since I started playing the game, I don't think he has any place in City of Heroes. (Yeah, I know, if I'd really wanted to do that I'd have gone with one of the other claw models. Sue me, I like the Wolverine claw style. The others just look lame to me, except for the flat blades, and those don't really go with Clawdy's style.)

So yeah, I know he looks different, and that was part of the goal (his costume is actually a Crey Juggernaut store display that he stole and gussied up with some Rust-Oleum and Super Sculpy), but the real difference is that he's crazy, but in an entirely different way. (He's also a lot of fun to play as. Perhaps because of his color scheme, he quickly developed a rather Deadpoolian personality. Yes, I know that's ironic.) He firmly believes, for example, that if you rub Infernal's belly, you get good luck. (He used to think that applied to Numina, until someone pointed out that that is, technically speaking, not possible.)

As an aside, Clawdy got the most appropriate pedestrian comment I've ever seen yesterday. Someone walking past in Kings Row as he emerged victorious from a mission said, "Any city protected by brightly colored weirdos like Clawdacious is a city you can feel safe in!" Right on, baby! Clawdacious would ask for your phone number, but he knows you'd make him run like four street sweep missions before you'd give it up and frankly, he hasn't got the time!

Other examples, off the top of my head:

- Captain Photon, mutant hero at large. Originally a member of the same fake-tech-hero school of thought as Clawdy, though for different reasons, he doesn't care who knows he's a mutant now and everybody loves him anyway. Seriously, passers-by on the street yell "We love you, Captain Photon!" Take that, Chris Angstmont. :)

- Prof. Neutrino, trapped in a containment suit and loving it. Sure, without the suit he would fatally irradiate any normal human being in the vicinity, but he's cool. No massive surges of woe here. The suit has many advantages, and hey, it's Paragon City. You know his love life hasn't suffered. As he's put it himself, "Do you have any idea how many invulnerable women there are in this city?"

- Norma Dinsdale, teenage avatar of an ancient Meso-American blood god. Sure, one of her battle cries is "My teen angst burns your flesh!", but really, I mean, she's mostly joking. Her powers are gross and stuff, but in certain circles - such as when you're surrounded by sledgehammer-wielding Skulls - gross is the new awesome.

- The CryoPhreak, thrown out of the Freakshow for being too nice. His hobbies include tinkering with his cryogenic battle gear, taking one for the team, and exploiting weaknesses in the telephone system to avoid paying for calls. He likes children, small animals, and sushi, and always feels bad about clobbering members of the Knives of Artemis 'cause his grandma taught him he should never hit a lady, even a horrifyingly annoying one with caltrops and a cloaking device.

- Tom Townshend, standard brick (Invulnerability/Super Strength Tanker) with a brain. Intended to become a Technology hero anyway before he had his Science Origin. Doesn't really need his gadgets now, so he makes them available to other heroes (like his Tech-origin kid sister Tara, who has no idea how most of her super gear works) and goes along to punch things.

Norma and Tom are going to need proper superhero names someday, but right now neither can be arsed. It's not like either one of them could successfully sustain a secret identity anyway; Norma explodes into a mass of bony spikes and Tom is green.

I do have characters who are just straight-ahead comic-book tropes - They Saved the Brain, for instance, is a standard evil genius brain in a robot body, reveling in his mighty new form's capacity of mayhem and destruction - but whenever I can, I like to throw a twist in there someplace.

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

Now that's fun. All of them.

So... what server are Clawdy and his buddies on? If it's Virtue, any chance we can recruit one of them into The Legendary?

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

LAST EDITED ON Mar-02-08 AT 01:20 PM (EST)
 
>So... what server are Clawdy and his buddies on? If it's Virtue, any
>chance we can recruit one of them into The Legendary?

Most of the characters I named here (which is by no means all the characters I have, which is why my highest-level character is level 45 when I've been a player for more than three years) are on Virtue. Tom is on Infinity, though I've been toying with the idea of moving him. (Trouble is, to get all the moves done I'd like to do, I'd need about a hundred bucks. Micro-transaction my ass.)

I think all of my Virtue heroes are members of the Paragon City Justice Guild (the Silver Spectre is one of the original 1938 founders, and both Cap and Prof are "charter members", so to speak, of the reactivated version), but it's possible one of them could be pried loose. VORSICHT, maybe, or the Szechuan Sage...

--G.
(alas, VORSICHT!s name is slightly wrong, because the game won't let me spell it correctly)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>I think all of my Virtue heroes are members of the Paragon City
>Justice Guild (the Silver Spectre is one of the original 1938
>founders, and both Cap and Prof are "charter members", so to speak, of
>the reactivated version), but it's possible one of them could be pried
>loose. VORSICHT, maybe, or the Szechuan Sage...

Well, I wasn't intending on poaching from another SG, but we'd be happy to welcome you into the Legendary family. Next time you're on with someone you'd feel okay about moving over, look for Evangelia, Lora'Lai or Shizuru and ask for an invite. (Well, there are a whole lot more you could look for, but do you really have room for a list of seventy names or so? <grin>)

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

>I think all of my Virtue heroes are members of the Paragon City
>Justice Guild (the Silver Spectre is one of the original 1938
>founders, and both Cap and Prof are "charter members", so to speak, of
>the reactivated version), but it's possible one of them could be pried
>loose. VORSICHT, maybe, or the Szechuan Sage...
>
>--G.

...d'you still have Roosevelt on Virtue? Because with him, The Legendary would be halfway to a full Mount Rushmore... :)

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

>...d'you still have Roosevelt on Virtue? Because with him, The
>Legendary would be halfway to a full Mount Rushmore... :)

I do, in fact. He doesn't get played all that often, because I've generally found Assault Rifle to be kind of underwhelming, but I could never delete him. He's Theodore Roosevelt, for pete's sake!

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

>I do, in fact. He doesn't get played all that often, because I've
>generally found Assault Rifle to be kind of underwhelming, but I could
>never delete him. He's Theodore Roosevelt, for pete's sake!

We've got to suck it up at some point and get him the Tommy Gun. :)

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

>I do, in fact. He doesn't get played all that often, because I've
>generally found Assault Rifle to be kind of underwhelming, but I could
>never delete him. He's Theodore Roosevelt, for pete's sake!

Ah, geeze, yeah! As Lurker said, he should be the one to join, just so he can team with Lincoln Memorial. I have no doubt that should that happen, we'll have Washington and Jefferson in the group in no time. <grin>

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

>Ah, geeze, yeah! As Lurker said, he should be the one to join, just
>so he can team with Lincoln Memorial.

Lincoln Memorial, you say?

http://www.superdickery.com/other/230.html

I assume you and Cap patched things up afterward. :)

>I assume you and Cap patched things up afterward. :)

I would presume that the real Mr. Lincoln had nothing to do with that unwarranted assault.

-- Bob, who is brainstorming a tech-origin Jefferson so that the Rushmore subgroup will be 3/4 complete...
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

>>I assume you and Cap patched things up afterward. :)
>
>I would presume that the real Mr. Lincoln had nothing to do
>with that unwarranted assault.

LINCOLN: Indeed not, I was still working behind a desk in the Archangel David's political affairs department in 1978. (And in another universe to boot! That affray was the work of Vamp, a treacherous SHIELD agent.)

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

LAST EDITED ON Apr-04-08 AT 01:42 PM (EDT)
 
>-- Bob, who is brainstorming a tech-origin Jefferson so that the
>Rushmore subgroup will be 3/4 complete...

Yeah, of all of them Jefferson is the logical choice for the techie, the same thoughts were runnign through my mind but put away after reminding myself I dont DO MMORPG

But what about George, Darnit?

LAST EDITED ON Apr-07-08 AT 12:02 PM (EDT)
 
>>-- Bob, who is brainstorming a tech-origin Jefferson so that the
>>Rushmore subgroup will be 3/4 complete...
>
>Yeah, of all of them Jefferson is the logical choice for the techie,
>the same thoughts were runnign through my mind but put away after
>reminding myself I dont DO MMORPG
>
>But what about George, Darnit?

My guess would be a willpower/axe tanker with the presence power pool (even if tankers don't get a lot of benefit out of it). But then, the mechanics are the easy part...

-------------------------------------
Chris can't handle chemicals

So awesome.

That's one of the greatest things about City of Heroes, yes.

One of my newer characters is a model hired to promote Crey's new line of chewing gum, Technomint®. She was given superpowers as part of her contract and became Minty Fresh Lass. (Not being from Paragon City, she doesn't quite believe some of the crazy "conspiracy theories" about Crey.) My "looking for team" macro includes a cheerful little sales pitch.

>One of my newer characters is a model hired to promote Crey's new line
>of chewing gum, Technomint®. She was given superpowers as part of her
>contract and became Minty Fresh Lass. (Not being from Paragon City,
>she doesn't quite believe some of the crazy "conspiracy theories"
>about Crey.) My "looking for team" macro includes a cheerful little
>sales pitch.

Heh. Captain Photon still misses Crey Cola. Sure, it was probably toxic, and it was definitely part of some nefarious scheme or another, but it was tasty. On the other hand, he'd have a serious philosophical problem with actually paying for it at this point, since he has a tendency not to want to give his own money to someone who has framed him for murder. :)

(I sometimes wonder if the Crey Cola thing is a reference to Crystal Pepsi, in the test marketing area of which Paragon City would've been located if it really existed. Mind you, I'm talking about actual Crystal Pepsi here, the test-market-only soda that was just Caffeine Free Pepsi without the caramel coloring. Not "Crystal from the Makers of Pepsi", the mass-market version, into which, for some unfathomable reason, the Makers of Pepsi injected lemon-lime flavoring on top of the cola flavoring, and then had the gall to be baffled when it failed spectacularly. Ugh. God. I liked Crystal Pepsi. I would routinely drive from Worcester down to Providence to buy it. CftMoP, on the other hand, was nauseating.)

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

In a similar vein, I wasn't going to make an Archery character unless I could think of an origin story that was as far afield from Green Arrow and Hawkeye as possible:

I can see this guy ending up in, say, the Giffen-era Justice League, and not quite knowing why, other than the obvious fact that those guys were desperate. :)

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

>I can see this guy ending up in, say, the Giffen-era Justice League,
>and not quite knowing why, other than the obvious fact that those guys
>were desperate. :)

<chuckle> I like. I could just see him teaming up with one of my Virtue heroes, Some Random Schmuck, who's only in the hero biz because he accidentally snagged an incompetent villain's power gizmo and decided it was kinda fun to use.

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

>As an aside, Clawdy got the most appropriate pedestrian comment I've
>ever seen yesterday. Someone walking past in Kings Row as he emerged
>victorious from a mission said, "Any city protected by brightly
>colored weirdos like Clawdacious is a city you can feel safe in!"
>Right on, baby! Clawdacious would ask for your phone number, but he
>knows you'd make him run like four street sweep missions before you'd
>give it up and frankly, he hasn't got the time!

Heh. The citizens make some of the best comments. I'm still snickering at one I got earlier. "Forget those post-modernist deconstructionists! Knight of the Peace is an example of a real hero, plain and simple!" You said it Sharna! No angst or childhood trauma here. He annoyed his genius sister into making him a battlesuit because he can hit stuff, feel good about it, and get flattery from the babes he rescues!

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

On reflection, I'd also like to point out how happy I am that this post did not involve the phrase "Cover myself with nutella and..."

>On reflection, I'd also like to point out how happy I am that this
>post did not involve the phrase "Cover myself with nutella and..."

That would be more appropriately posted to private-mail.

--G.
o/~ not really private, not really mail / it's eyrie dot private-mail! o/~
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>o/~ not really private, not really mail / it's eyrie dot private-mail!
>o/~

and your letter's next!

>On reflection, I'd also like to point out how happy I am that this
>post did not involve the phrase "Cover myself with nutella and..."

Clawdy does have Deadpool style crazy... O_O

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

LAST EDITED ON Mar-12-08 AT 07:58 PM (EDT) by Gryphon (admin)
 
"img" tags unnecessary, and in fact slightly break DCF --G.

In a somewhat similar vein, Piz here isn't a backwards-talking idiot. He just has... unusual priorities. :)

(...and he's going to look SO much better once i12 hits and the Roman costume parts are available...)

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

>In a somewhat similar vein, Piz here isn't a backwards-talking idiot.
>He just has... unusual priorities. :)
>

>
>(...and he's going to look SO much better once i12 hits and the Roman
>costume parts are available...)

snorrrk.

The preamble in the bio reminds me of the time I made one of the Silver Spectre's costume slots "Silver Age Silver Spectre", by analogy with the deeply regrettable Silver Age habit DC had of taking Golden Age suit-wearing heroes (the Sandman, the Crimson Avenger, etc.) and putting them in fin-headed spandex.

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

>"Silver Age Silver Spectre"

Now that is a classic. :)

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

LAST EDITED ON Dec-21-11 AT 03:40 PM (EST)
 
> - Prof. Neutrino, trapped in a containment suit and loving it. Sure,
>without the suit he would fatally irradiate any normal human being in
>the vicinity, but he's cool. No massive surges of woe here. The suit
>has many advantages, and hey, it's Paragon City. You know his love
>life hasn't suffered. As he's put it himself, "Do you have any idea
>how many invulnerable women there are in this city?"