Venture

Thanks for the review. I'll get those typos mopped up.

Further comments directed to the arc's thread, as usual.

Nominating for Best Unknown Author:

Arc Number: 118690
Title: "Sibling Rivalry"
Author: @Sister Flame

Why: This arc is a solid entry from a very young author and deserving of recognition.

As I read it, Wrong Number's point is that the order to drop the atomic bombs is qualitatively different from the order to commit genocide. I agree completely.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets. An order to bomb a legitimate military target cannot be compared to an order to massacre helpless civilians. The Japanese government knew that civilians living in cities of military importance were at risk; we were already bombing them. Japan's leaders knew the war was a lost cause; they chose to refuse American demands for surrender. Those leaders decided those civilian lives were acceptable casualties. When the enemy decides a cause is worth dying for, it is the duty of our military personnel to oblige them. One million enemy civilian casualties, women and children included, are worth less than one drop of American blood.

The simple fact is there are no rules of war, and all talk of "war crimes" is nothing more than a thin veneer of legitimacy applied over a seething mass of revenge. War is uncivilized behavior and as such necessarily rejects all rules, laws, treaties and other artifacts of civilization. The only good thing about war, to quote one James Tiberius Kirk, is its ending. Given that casus belli requires that the enemy be the aggressor in strategic terms, the least amount of force that brings a war to a rapid conclusion with the least loss of American life is a just and necessary response.

Pro Payne just published a review of "Blowback" in his thread. Replying to some of his comments:

Thanks for the review! I've posted replies to the arc's thread.

Please take the dead-horse beating elsewhere....

Another triumph!

Arc #266877, "The Most Important Thing"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: Timey Wimey Ball, Woobie Contact, plot issues

Reviewed on: 12/28/09
Level Range: 46-54
Factions: Custom
Architect's Keywords: Challenging, Drama, Mystery
My Keywords: same
Character used: Agent Cerulean/Justice
Difficulty: +1x2+B-AV

Amy "Slipstream" Callahan, a mutant with temporal control powers, needs your help. Someone named Dr. Albright is pressuring her to help him by threatening her family. He's already blocked her attempt to call on her superhero friends (if he's able to outmaneuver her, her powers must be pretty limited, but moving on....). She's already committed thefts for him, and now he's asking her to kill someone. She wants you to hit the site (a tech map, no real explanation as to what it is or where you are) at the same time and make it look like a coincidental hero action. You'll have to fight her, and Albright, and his mercenaries. Amy spawned frontloaded as an EB with Energy Blast/Kinetics...she stayed at range, which suited me just fine (24% melee Defense, 34% ranged....) The mercenaries had War Mace and Archery attacks, no visible secondary (so probably Regen). They all had the same /info, which was a bit of a letdown. Albright was a Robotics EB, likewise with no visible secondary. Unfortunately, you find that he's already killed Amy's mother and sister. Albright's defeat Clue, a voice recorder dropped when he mediported, makes it clear that a) he's right up Recluse's alley on the "survival of the fittest" issue, and b) he's a super-genius level idiot. Amy, understandably, has an emotional collapse when given the news.

The next day, Amy asks you to check out the lab she was working out of with Albright, hopefully before he has a chance to cover his tracks (which means we're probably about 23 hours too late, but whatever...) She feels sick and is afraid Albright has done something to her, but she gives you a "Communications Link Uploading Equipment" (/em rolleyes) to help you stay in touch with her and hack into any computers. This is used to have Amy continue a dialog with you during the mission, which is clever but might make some players feel micromanaged or de-emphasized. You're sent to another tech map to find a few Clues and run through a largely gratuitous course of triggered objectives. You get two triggered Boss level mercs, one with Assault Rifle and the other a Mercenaries Mastermind. Eventually you find that Albright had a small shard of an Aspect of the Pillar and computer files showing that Amy's powers are the result of experiment's he carried out on Amy's mother while she was in utero. Amy goes emo again on your return and says she feels like her powers are fading.

Another day later (Albright is clearly the slowest supervillain on record) Amy's health continues to degrade but she now knows why, thanks to Albright's files: he planted a device inside her that's siphoning her powers into another Aspect shard. If the device is removed she'll die (leaving it in doesn't seem like much of a bargain, either). She now knows Albright is planning to go back in time and change history. She's already using what's left of her powers to protect the two of you from any changes and wants to use the shard you recovered to send you back after him. You're sent to the university tutorial map in 1998 (with a pop-up saying you appear "in a wash of cerulean light"...convenient...). Amy can still use the CLUE to reach you thanks to her powers. You get another list of triggered objectives to navigate, starting with defeating Albright again, then clicking glowies, then fighting a younger version of Albright (Radiation Blast/Electric Blast), then finding another glowie. Amy evidently gets nabbed while this is going on, but when you get back you find she was attacked by a hero because somehow she's being blamed for the murders of her mother and sister. This was, frankly, a completely pointless plot development seemingly intended just to kick Amy while she's down. Anyway, she sends you back again to a run-down hospital (yes, the Mother Mayhem map...sigh) in 1990. You get to fight Young Albright (again) along with a map full of his "test subjects" (retasked Praetorian crazed), free some hostages (including Amy's mother) and find some Clues, which tell how Albright invented a nerve gas for Arachnos but accidentally killed the operative in charge of the tests, leading them to kill his family with the gas, which left him a few cards short of a full deck and led to the creation of this time-travel plot.

Amy, who is now near death, figures out that Albright is creating a causality loop. He's going to cause the death of his family while trying to prevent it. She has enough strength to send you back, and protect you from changes in history, but not enough to retrieve you. For that you'll need to defeat the uptime version of Albright and take his crystal. You get sent to the burning Arachnos lab map to save Even Younger Albright and his wife (the kids haven't been brought in yet) and defeat Albright, thus breaking the loop. When you get back Amy is gone, having allowed herself to be erased to prevent a potential paradox.

I really wanted to like this but it just had too many problems. It has all the usual baggage found in time-travel stories. There are plot issues unrelated to time travel as well, such as why Albright conveniently moves so slowly. The custom mercenary faction is uninspired at best. My biggest issue, though, is the Woobification of Amy. This is yet another case of an author going too far to avoid writing "just a bunch of stuff that happened". The abuse heaped on this character could be cut considerably without negating the story's impact. I hate to say it but this one is a great try that falls short.

Replies to Sister_Twelve's comments, posted to her "One a Day" thread:

Thanks for the review, and the good marks. So as not to threadjack I've posted a more detailed reply to the arc's own thread.

Wouldn't throw another one of mine into consideration so soon normally, but this one is a Christmas arc: "The Christmas We Get", #356477.

Arc ID: 356477
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama
Length: Long (5 missions)
First Published: 12/22/2009 08:01 AM
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: Generic, Council, Arachnos
Description: Ramiel, a new player in the Rogue Isles, is looking for a hero's help for an operation against Arachnos. Longbow is looking for a volunteer to step forward, if only to find out if this newcomer is friend or foe. Are you that volunteer...? (No enemies above Boss rank.)

Notes: I just pulled an all-nighter writing this and haven't tested it extensively, so I can really use feedback. As it is a Christmas arc I probably won't leave it up very long, maybe until mid to late January, unless it gets DCed or HoF but I'm not betting on that.

Despite the scary warnings, you don't have to fight anything over Boss rank or any custom mobs. All the enemies are stock. It shouldn't be terribly difficult. As usual I was more interested in letting people experience the story than in trying to kill them.

Thanks for the review. There are a few errors in it but I won't belabor them.

One thing: I squishy-tested this mission with a level 30 Storm/Electric Defender (no sets) on +0x2+B-AV (Tenacious, at the time). I'm sorry you had trouble with it but it's just not that hard.

Thanks for the review!

It's OK to say that Kobushi lived. Everyone else who reviewed the arc did, and it's mentioned in the arc's thread. As for him being a Bane Spider, I don't feel constrained by "Bane of the Heart"...as far as I'm concerned, the devs rendered that Canon Discontinuity with the introduction of the VEATs.

I know Livingston annoyingly tends to spawn too far from the door. It just doesn't seem worth editing the arc over.

Arc Name: "Splintered Shields"
Arc ID: 253991
Length: Long (5 missions)
First Published: 7/7/2009 04:35 PM
Morality: Heroic
Description: An Arachnos agent makes a daring raid on Paragon City...business as usual, one might think. Or is it?
Level: 45-50
Forum Thread: Link

Or, if you'd prefer something lower in level....

Arc Name: "Two Households Alike"
Arc ID: 126582
Length: Long (5 missions)
First Published: 4/28/2009 01:52 AM
Morality: Heroic
Description: Feuding families, star-crossed lovers...you've heard this story before. The ending sucks. Maybe you can blue-pencil in a better one.
Level: 25-29
Forum Thread: Link

I'd love to hear about a team's experiences playing "Two Households Alike" (#126582).

I have posted a review of "The Destroyer of Worlds" to my thread. I'm afraid it only got three stars....

Arc #352820, "The Destroyer of Worlds"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: Did Not Do The Research, underdeveloped, assumes too much about the player, not evil enough for the goal


Reviewed on: 12/16/2009
Level Range: 15-25/15-25/15-25/50-50
Factions: 5th Column, Custom, Shivans
Architect's Keywords: Drama
My Keywords:
Character used: Fleetblade/Guardian
Difficulty: +0x2+B-AV


There had better be a really good reason for that level jump....


This arc, written for Dr. Aeon's recent challenge to write an arc in which a heroic PC must do evil for the greater good, is set between May and August of 1945. General Groves needs a "mystery man" (or woman in this case) to stop a 5th Column takeover of a sub base. The 5th hasn't acknowledged the German surrender and is trying to seize U-Boats whose crews have turned themselves in. One in particular was carrying advanced weapons to Japan, which can't be allowed to fall into the 5th's hands. You're sent to the underground sub base map (of course) to recover 3 secret weapons and defeat the raid leader. One of the patrols gives up a little info: "Do you really think those weapons will turn the war around?" "SHE thinks so. That's all that matters." The weapons turned out to be a box of "yellow dirt" labeled U-235 (which confuses you because the sub it came from was U-234), a disassembled Me-262 jet (the arc says it would have changed history if it had been deployed; in real life the 262s racked up hundreds of kills but went into service too late to matter), and a Hs 293 guided missile (again, the text implies it was never used, but it was). The jet and missile are really too low-tech for a universe that really did have Stupid Jetpack Hitler, but moving on.... "She" turns out to be Schadenfreude, a Prussian noblewoman who used her social connections to get into the States before the war and the Golden Age predecessor of the modern villain of that name.






She was Assault Rifle/DiedTooFast, Boss rank. Groves re-iterates the notion that the jet and guided missile were major advances (Did Not Do The Research) and swears you to secrecy about the yellowcake. He has that shipped off to "Site Y" for research.


...and, promptly loses contact with Site Y. Thanks to your efforts you now have a high enough security clearance to be told that Site Y is the Los Alamos research facility, and you're needed to find out what "got out of control" over there. When you arrive (5th/Council map), the place is overrun by Shivans. You have to recognize Oppenheimer and Teller (if you don't recognize the names, shame on you), who tell you that they were experimenting with a meteorite brought over from Roswell when it spit out green goo that absorbed soldiers and turned them into monsters. You have to shut down the experiment and destroy the meteorite. Groves is waiting for you with reinforcements to mop up when you get out, and lets you in on what's going down at Site Y: the Manhattan Project.


Which needs your help again after Little Boy is built. 5th Column saboteurs take over the airfield as the bomb is being loaded. You're called in to take it back. The map used is the Arachnos airfield from Burke's newbie arc; I suppose we have to grant some creative license on that. However, one of the bosses in the mission is Wolfgang Ubelmann, and this is another case of Did Not Do The Research -- Ubelmann does not know how Rommel died in "Ubelmann the Unknown", and Rommel died in October of 1944. Schadenfreude is back for seconds as well (and didn't do any better). As she faceplants she tells you they've disabled all the bombers, a fact you confirm when the dust settles. You also find that Colonel Tibbets, who was slated to fly the mission, is injured. Groves says they have to consider other options now.


That option is: you. There isn't time to train another bomber squadron for atomic warfare. Groves wants you to set them up the bomb, saying that only your $origin abilities can do it in time.






...which I did. (She's one of two characters I've decided to just use Ninja Run on.) Anyway...Groves tells you the target, Hiroshima, and that you'll have to strike the bomb to force the uranium into a supercritical mass, and they think your $origin abilities will protect you from the blast but they're not sure. (They won't, she's DB/Willpower....) The last map is an instanced piece of St. Martial with a few level 37 Civilians (grey cons) and the bomb (a Rikti Bomb, of course). Destroying the bomb spawns a bunch of Storm Elementals as "Radiation" and ends the mission. The exit clue gives the sound-bite version of the historical event, and Groves tells you they've got another bomber wing ready to hit Nagasaki if the Japanese don't surrender.


The arc has a number of issues, mainly addressed above. Additionally, I'd have to say that the arc isn't nearly evil enough for Aeon's challenge, or (and this will torque off someone I'm sure) really evil at all. It was an act of war. The game play is good enough, but the arc does have a lot of problems that detract from it.