Lago PARANOIA wrote:That's nice. Were you going to refute my statement, or were you just trying to hope that if you defeated my sperg-fu with your sperg-fu I'd overlook the fact that you didn't have a point and were going to focus on trivial shit that doesn't disprove the overall point?
Are you fucking kidding me? Not only are these heroes possible but they're also common. Hell, even Justice League Unlimited had one.
Are you going to accuse someone of "sperging out" every time they know more about a subject than you do and call you on your uninformed bullshit? For fuck's sake.
Your point that Frankencastle was terrible despite you not actually saying anything about it other than lolbad? No, you're a condescending douche who didn't read anything about it other than what other condescending douches wrote about it based on previews.
Your point about the Punisher and gun heroes? What point are you making? There are a handful of heroes who used guns who aren't gun heroes, but almost all of them are legacy characters or explicit throwbacks to pulp or Golden Age characters. You bring up the Phantom, which is
forty fucking years older than the Punisher. (Also, largely printed in one parallel market, then another, which is fascinating but mostly irrelevant.) Yes, you could trivially remove guns from the Phantom without doing any damage to the character. The Phantom is not what I'm talking about. Likewise Vigilante, a callback to cowboy comics of the 40s. (Well, technically a reference to Seven Soldiers, which is a callback to Seven Soldiers of Victory, a crossover from the 40s, but what the fuck ever.)
The reason why The Punisher's gun seems so important to his character is because of myopia or trying to push a square peg into a round hole. There are tons of characters who superficially resemble the Punisher (wears dark clothes you'd find in the real world, unshaven, uses real world guns, etc..) who are still way different. The fact that they exist at all should be ample evidence that when you get into the meat and potatoes about why The Punisher or The Phantom exist and how their characterization affects the stories they're in the fact that they use a gun is a secondary concern at BEST.
It's not even real world guns or dark clothes or being unshaven. It's guns (fantastic or real), a willingness to kill carelessly, and an abstract goal rather than a rogues gallery of villains. That is a gun hero. They go together all the fucking time, at all sorts of power levels. Punisher, Cable, Grifter, (certain versions of) Deathlok, Super Patriot, et fucking cetera.
It does more damage to take guns out of that character than it does to take katanas out of samurai. Luckily, "guns" is pretty broad, and gun heroes work just as well with
mundane pistols as
outrageous sci-fi shit.
Now, you can argue that the characters could exist without guns. I suppose you'd probably be right. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, guns go with the other two qualities of gun heroes almost inescapably, even when you ditch the dark clothes, street-level power levels, gritty tone, "realistic" tone, present-day setting, etc.
The comments about the skull shirt are kind of dumb. He'd need some identifier because he's a superhero character (even if he's not really superpowered or even plot armored beyond being a protagonist), and it makes a lot of sense for it to be something that is black and white and goes well with plain clothes and has something to do with death. But the Punisher would still be the Punisher if it was something other than what it is now.
Are you seriously listing that as a schtick? Jesus Christ, that's so common and generic a thing that any asshole, even if they're not badass enough to even be a mere VAH, can do. Every action hero hides. Every action hero can do the vent escape bullshit.
Among Samus's other abilities: walking, picking her nose, and reading a newspaper.
Every character
can do the vent escape bullshit, but Samus will do it every time if it will solve the problem. Every character
can woo the alien babe, but Kirk will do it every episode. Every character
can wheedle a better deal if it's somehow important to do so, but Scrooge McDuck will do it every episode. Likewise, if only a specialist can solve the problem (really small and twisty vent, alien babe gives the cold shoulder, trader dude strikes a hard bargain), only the specialist will.
Samus is a spelunking bounty hunter who was raised by now-extinct aliens who did weird shit to her. There are your plot hooks.
Now, if Samus could force Chozo technology to pop out of the sky that'd be something, but just stumble across it when the DM decides that the plot is moving too slowly? Give me a break.
Well, every game has Samus conveniently stumbling across Chozo technology whenever shit gets ugly in order to have convenient power-ups, but that means we're headed down the "players get deus ex machina powers" path again.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:Oh, you mean like how Snake has to announce that he's putting a silencer on his gun? Or how Chewbacca has to put on cuffs and announce he's posing as a prisoner?
Kind of tangental: I would think that Snake would have a silencer on his gun all the time as part of his schtick. He's shooting silenced shots all the time until he pulls out the assault rifle. Do you think some other arrangement is preferable?
And that's my problem with the whole weapon fetishism concept. People are saying that they need Boba Fett armor in order to be an intimidating badass. They need to use a gun to be a murderous street level vigilante. They need to have an axe in order to roleplay a rampaging barbarian properly.
No, the problem is that Boba Fett's player expects the armor to do the work for him. These players are confusing the symbol for the structure, you're right. They think that just by having Boba Fett's armor, that they are an intimidating badass. Or that by having a gun, they're a grim antihero. Or that by having an axe, they're an unhinged barbarian. To get that player to participate in the game, you need to get the player to think about the other parts of being intimidating/grim/unhinged other than the prop.
They don't need the prop to do the things that they want the character to do, but taking the prop away from them won't encourage them to do those things and it'll still keeps them from having the character they actually wish they had. The symbols aren't obstructive, but taking them away can be, because both people who can and can't roleplay are going to say, "I'd like to play a [archetype] in this game, but there's no way I can reasonably have a [signature weapon of that archetype], so fuck this shit."
You're right. Boba Fett's player isn't going to be happy even if you give him the armor, because his character isn't going to be properly intimidating because the player isn't putting any effort into playing the character as being intimidating. Taking the armor away doesn't fix that, and institutionalizing a "No Mandalorian armor!" rule just annoys the shit out of the Jango Fett player who actually totally can pull off an intimidating badass who can hang out with Jedi despite just having guns and gadgets and a jetpack.
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FrankTrollman wrote:Even within the context of "guns", Punisher doesn't use the same gun all the time. He uses a vast arsenal of various different guns in various different situations. And considering that he's a modern world non-super character, that's a pretty big weapon range.
I was pretty sure I was defending the idea of "gun guy" like the Punisher. Shotgun guy would be pretty stupid unless you're playing a game where the entire party is a fireteam or something, and even then you're going to need more to differentiate people. That said.
The Punisher has been using technology derived from super-villains and other costumed characters, such as the Green Goblin's pumpkin bombs,[34] a modified Goblin Glider,[35] and a Doctor Octopus tentacle that he can shrink down for easy storage via Pym Particles.
Take Wikipedia with a titanic grain of salt (especially with anything that tends to be edited by fanboys), and
always check the references. Reference #34 is a comedy comic, reference 35 is (IIRC) from a story about everyone getting random Spider-Man-themed superpowers.
I wish in the past I had tried more things 'cause now I know that being in trouble is a fake idea