The Pilot

We do. We're planning for most of the team to each have a gun as a backup weapon.

Doubtless this is aimed at Murky. Part of her original character was extensive weapons training. We found this too overpowered, so we singled it out to her having the feat for Naginata proficiency. Nothing wrong with that. It's part of her character.

If we make it glocks across the board (Murky has the sizeable sword as well, cody has the knife instead and Matrix doesn't get trusted with firearms) then we can have ammo sharing issues.

Pilot monster should be impressive enough to show off the tropers as seen through Hikari's fanboyish eyes. We need to understand why he thinks they are cool otherwise he looks like a fool. Also helps to get the audience thiking they are cool, otherwise why would they watch. If in doubt, err on the side of awesome.

Hydra isn't actually that bad. It's a being of water and thus will tend to enjoy some swimming time in the River Charles. In the Disney Hercules movie, Herc was swallowed by it and then cut it out from the inside. Having them reference the tactic and then try it with Arks. They give him Murky's sword. Unfortunately he loses it in there and they forget that it was a tactic that didn't actually work. Or something like that.

Also would be good if they had a tactic before that which went horribly wrong. Shows that they are morons but that now ther are stuck. Say they tried to use Arks as bait, Cody sneaks around to the other side and attacks to confuse it and make it stay still long enough so that Murky could get it knocked by some water while still on the shore and covered just enough so that Ironeye could try freezing it. But then say that didn't work because it just ate Arks and then same off and before it leapt into the water Murky had to cut him out, which unfortunately meant its head split. Uh oh.

That was their plan, then they have plan 2 which involves Ironeye heating up the sword but , oh no, there are three heads so you need to get it at the base of all of them (because it'll be hard to get more than one swing) so then they come up with the "Arks get eaten tactic" (with or without trope reference) but then they lose the sword. Murky is pissed emotionless.

Plan 3, they use Hikari.

Actually I was keeping my eye more on Ironeye's glock, everyone has guns but different styles? And thus different sorts of ammunition and then you have to know something about guns and so on and so forth. Yet if they are all the same backup gun, thus same ammo type, then ammo sharing can be an issue.

Sooty, the guns are backup weapons. The tropers would only bring them out when they have absolutely no other option, mainly because of the scarcity of ammunition.

Exactly.

I don't know what it is, Sooty but I have difficulty figuring out what the hell you're trying to say half the time.

OK, I'll tell you why I wanted Cody to wield a gun. I felt that it was a weapon he would plausibly have experience wielding, given his background. A knife most likely isn't. Cody is not a thug.

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That's fine, Bobby, but he won't be able to use it often, and thus he will be mostly useless in a fight unless he has some kind of melee weapon.

Yeah, OK. Hence the knife.

I mean, my intention is that he's a character with a reasonable amount of fighting competence. He should be able to master something straightforward like a knife without difficulty. I was just stating my reasoning for preferring to give him a firearm if we could, but if that's not allowed, then OK.

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Ok.

The problem isn't giving him a firearm—the problem is that if he uses it as his primary weapon, he'll be running out of ammunition really quickly.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

All right, then. Knife it is.

Or, you know, whatever's best.

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SSOT, I think it's funny that because Murky's weapon was too hard to come by, you thought it would be a good idea to give her an everyday weapon like a sword. And that despite knives by far being the easiest weapon to come by, and the most practical to boot, only Cody should wield one. And that if anyone other than Murky has a gun, it should be a Glock-17, despite me choosing that weapon in part because its 9x19 mm Parabellum rounds are reasonably common handgun rounds (though, all things considered, it would be pretty easy to get your hands on a Glock-17 in a post-apoc USA—relatively speaking, of course). And that, you know, you thought we were going into snowflake syndrome despite Murky being the only one wielding a weapon that would be at all difficult to come by.

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

~Weapons~

Cody: Primary: Powers, Secondary: Knife

Ironeye: Primary: Powers, Secondary: Glock-17 Handgun/Knife

Murky - Primary: Naginata (pole sword), Secondary: Handgun or Rifle

arks - Primary: Powers, Secondary: ...Baseball Bat?

Kara - Primary: Healing powers, Secondary: Handgun

Matrix - Primary: Catform/Bare Claws, Secondary: Good looks (not trusted with firearms)

Something like that.

A hydra would be interesting as a first monster, abet I think that the tropers would somehow piss it off first to awaken it.

edited 13th Jan '10 7:25:56 PM by CorruptDropbear

Help! I'm stuck in these tabs!

Umm, if we're specifically talking combat, Cody's power isn't very useful without a weapon of some kind. Primary should be power+______,

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Swords are everyday weapons?

The point is that they are not: for all your complaints about the naginata being too rare, a sword still counts as an exotic weapon and thus is not much of an improvement, if any.

edited 14th Jan '10 12:04:56 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

I didn't say that the sword was too exotic. Optimus Prime, do I have to wait for a mistake to happen to advise against it? Must I repeat my points? The Big Guy can have an additional combat edge. The group shouldn't have a wide variety of guns within them. You can go for rounds that are common enough to work as a sort of new trading currency, weak enough to leave at home when fighting a freakin' dragon. Why does Cody have a knife? Because somebody said "Hmm maybe Cody could have a knife?" and I incorporated the idea for a short time pending justification. Next stage in the creative process: trying to think of potential justifications and then discarding them if they don't work.

Potential justifications:

• They are down one gun and nobody wants to share.
• Cody lost his gun in The Noodle Incident.
• Cody likes to hoard his bullets so while he has a gun, he is much more inclined to use the knife.
• Cody is a guy whose powers are entirely built around sneak attacks and not being noticed and he can actually just walk up behind someone in a room of other people and cut their throat silently and not be noticed. However if he uses a gun, the bang gets noticed. Thus it is worth his while to get good with the knife.

edited 14th Jan '10 1:01:08 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

No, you didn't. I'm saying that it's still an exotic weapon. You're missing the point. This is what we had (my original, with both arks and Bobby making additions):

Character	Primary Weapon	Secondary Weapon
Kara	Knife	Gun
Hikari	Knife	Gun
Ironeye	Knife	Glock-17
Murky	Naginata	Big gun
Matrix	Himself
Cody	Rifle
arks	Aluminum Bat	Gun

Your arguments:

• Let's avoid assigning everyone unique weapons based on personality (I agree)
• Bullets are very valuable After the End (I agree)
• Let's give the team a signature weapon (Wait, what?)

Your proposal:

Character	Primary Weapon	Secondary Weapon
Kara	Gun (Glock?)
Hikari	Gun (Glock?)
Ironeye	Glock-17
Murky	Sword	Gun (Glock?)
Matrix	Himself
Cody	Knife
arks	Gun (Glock?)

So, avoid personality-based weapons means change The Big Guy's weapon so that it's more cliched but otherwise has the same problems and ammo is valuable means make all but two of the team members use guns as their primary weapons—and take away the gun from the one guy who actually wanted one as his primary. I mean, what the fuck, man? Sure, I understand why you think it'd be good to give Cody a knife, but everything else? *headdesk*

edited 14th Jan '10 1:24:50 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

See that's the thing that chart there. Imagine that there is a Communal Cache Of Weapons trope. I want to use that trope rather than an individuall assignment of weapons. To my view that chart doesn't exist. They'll use weapons out of what they have found and just what they feel comfortable with at particular plot points.by using the cache of weapons trope we can show off things like team parents taking care of them, the lock and load sequence, the comparison to someone else cache.

The characters are already unique by their powers and personality. A shared cache can actually show those off more because its several characters reacting to the same thing.

Originally we made all the characters separately thus with separate weapons but now, as part og the teams tone, think of the teams weapons as one thing. Exceptions would exist on the basis of being in a very different combat league.

Also, I guess I'd just like to see more of the powers eg arks mostly just relies on himself as a weapon but we can now justify that with him just not being very good with guns and feeling no fear at just giving his ammo to murky or ironeye and then running forward.

Sorry I'm stuck doing this on my phone so apologies for any lack of clarity.

I get what you're saying, but it's not like all of these characters have the same background—they're certainly not going to be equally skilled with each weapon. Additionally, some weapons are better suited for some characters' roles than for other characters' roles. And, once we get beyond that, there's still the matter of personal preference. So, sure, even if the aluminum bat isn't ark's personal weapon, it'd be really dumb to give it to anyone other than him, to the point where it might as well be "his" even if it technically isn't and he doesn't always use it. And I'm sure that Cody is going to think of the rifle he brought as his weapon, in part due to formerly owning it and in part due to being the one with the most experience with it. Even if they get other Glocks (which they probably will), the Glock-17 that Ironeye took from the corpse of the LAPD officer will always be his Glock—if anyone else wants a pistol, they choose one of the others first. Now, by all means, if there are only three pistols to go around and Ironeye isn't one of the ones who will need one for the current engagement, there won't be an issue if someone else takes the gun, but that's a far cry from having a communal pot without any hint of ownership.

Obviously, I picked some obvious cases of ownership, but I think these show that this isn't necessarily a matter of combat league. People are going to identify certain items as "theirs" even if those items are technically part of the group stash. I mean, with all of the knives they've probably gotten their hands on (I'm guessing somewhere in the realm of one or more per person), it'd seem silly if no one claimed a particular knife as their favorite, even if it's for such superficial reasons as having a gray handle instead of a black one.

So, uhh, yeah: this is all mine, don't touch my stuff is stupid in-universe, while it is all the property of the collective is unbelievable due to human nature. You shouldn't be so afraid of Weapon Of Choice that you stupid yourself off the other side of the scale.

edited 14th Jan '10 3:47:19 AM by Ironeye

I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.

Wow hey, realised something on the train- Naginata. Naginata! I was confusing a naginata with a wakizashi. Hence sword should be replaced by halberd.

May I ask why? Both the halberd and the naginata are exotic weapons, alien to this setting. There's no obvious reason why either would be more plausible than the other; if anything, the naginata might actually be likelier, given the current popular fascination with Eastern weaponry and martial arts. If we're going to employ Rule of Cool here and give Murky an outdated but visually impressive mêlée weapon (and since she's our main combat character, I see no reason not to), then a naginata seems to me as good a candidate as any.

Regarding Cody, if he has brought a rifle with him, he absolutely won't be sharing it unless it's an emergency. I imagine he'd be quite protective of something like that. I have no objections to him having trouble finding ammunition and either running out early on or using it sparingly, or even losing the rifle by accident. He'd be unlikely to be similarly attached to a knife.

Cody is not supposed to be a sneaky evil guy. I get the impression that people might be misinterpreting the character, which would be entirely my fault for not making his profile clearer. I'm going to put some more details about his personality and abilities in the Character Holding Bin today, which should hopefully clear up any confusion.

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I would prefer to avoid the "bullets as currency" idea. They would be harder to come by and hence much more expensive, but I think if people were literally using them as money, it would give the show a sort of Mad Max vibe that I would rather not get into. We're not supposing that civilization collapsed that badly; most Americans will still think first of the Almighty Dollar when it comes to a medium of exchange. People want to get life back to normal; that's why the Tropers go around and fight off fictites that threaten the rebuilding efforts.

edited 14th Jan '10 7:21:20 AM by Karalora

Halberd as in "I couldn't be bothered to write naginata each time so I wrote sword halberd".

I'm not sure how almighty the dollar would be with the federal reserve bank and several of the US mint facilites destroyed. Hilariously C-day might actually cause the placement of more gold and weaponry to appear at Fort Knox meaning that the remaining government is forced to go back to the gold standard.

Also most of the World Half Empty examples are in fact really messed up. Possibly because if the society is fractured up enough then individual localised good can have a stronger impact at its level.

edited 14th Jan '10 8:03:15 AM by SomeSortOfTroper