Tales of the Rambling Bumblers

Paul suggested to me that the “Virtue” server was the unofficial server for roleplayers, i.e. people who actually like to talk in character while playing and bother to make up origin stories, etc. so I headed on over and made up a character (a 7' tall Axe-wielding Barbie doll called Barbizon. Battle Cry: Cleavage? I'll show you cleavage!) and lo and behold, Paul spoke sooth. I was invited to team several times over the course of the evening (it was gym night, so I wasn't at the keyboard the whole time), and my teammates mostly did stay in character. One of the characters was a robot and somebody asked who made him (which at first I thought meant which RL player), but he had his whole back story worked out about his manufacturer and purpose. It was pretty cool, if you ask me. Certainly a change of pace from talking about aggro, rooting, mobs and the like.

I finished the night at 5th level. The Battle-Axe tanker has pretty slow attacks, and they take a lot of end, but it is very satisfying when they send the target flying backwards. Another thing I found out was that the server bleeps out (replaces with cartoon $^&%! symbols) God, but not Goddess.

I also had the misfortune to team up with someone who was either more of a newbie than me, very young, or just not too bright and ended up getting killed when she ignored my warning and jumped a bunch of guys much tougher than us. I got shot to pieces, and as my character was lying face down on the street I looked around and realized that she had run away and quit the team. You live and learn. Fortunately I was only 2nd level at the time, so there was no penalty for dying.

I made a new City of Heroes character last night (so what else is new?) called RadStorm, a Mutant Wind/Radiation Controller and teamed up with Doug's Violet Anger and a friend of his playing a Magic Fire/Ice Blaster and by the end of the evening we were all 6th level. Boy that was a lot of fun.

Then I went and tried to bring Mighty Midge up from 5th level to 6th solo, on a mission in a cave full of zombies, and didn't make it. After almost dying twice, I was out of Inspirations with plenty of zombies to go, and had to flee the cave. Freaking radioactive goo that the zombies regurgitate seems to go right through Temporary Invulnerability. Does anybody know whether if I go back in the cave all the zombies will have respawned? That would mean I could maybe whittle them down, running out to get more Inspirations (basically CoH's version of potions), which is a little cheap (not that I wouldn't take it to clear the mission so I could get a new one). If they do respawn then missions like this would basically become an EP farm: as long as you didn't complete the mission you could run through it again….

Brawnwen is now 5th level, and Thudmilla 4th. Magma Maid and Dark Betty are still 3rd, so I'll probably take one for a spin tonight, while Thunderella languishes in 2nd. I actually started Thunderella over again to change her costume a bit–I'm still not completely satisfied, but I didn't realize the first time around how much the bottom looked like a thong…hey, most of the time you're looking at your character from the rear, you know, so it makes a difference…It was also an experiment to see if you could re-use a name of a discarded character. The answer is yes, so I'm probably going to experiment a bit more with costume design on any new characters. Before I was afraid I would be using up decent names just to get a look at the character in the game (where most of the time you're looking at a much smaller, less detailed view than in the character creation screens.)

Jeff and Andy were over last night, and I helped Andy make up a character on a different server (all mine so far are on Pinnacle). Andy created a Mutant Blaster with Energy Blast/Energy Control, and a pretty eye-catching red and yellow costume with a hood and facemask so all you can see are the yellow goggles. His name is “Star-Blaze” Note the hyphen, since “Starblaze” and “Starblazer” were already taken. After I set him up, he played through the tutorial and got to second level. Of course, with all the video games he plays, it's not too surprising he's good at it.

“Ding” by the way, is what those who sling the lingo call going up a level. It's both a transitive and instransitive verb: “Crimson Cuckoo just dinged!” or “I dinged 5!”

Since it's my current obsession, and nothing else is happening on this blog (or at least nothing until after next week's session), I thought I would ask Doug and Paul to step up and tell us a little about their characters. I'll kick it off by telling you what little I know

Update: I've copied the information from Doug and Paul's comments into the main entry…

Doug:

• Relaxer: Lvl 14 Controller Mind/Empathy Teleport
• Dr. Henry: Lvl 6 Defender Empathy/Radiation Teleport
• King of Diamonds: Lvl 5 Tanker Invulnerability/Axe (Leaping)
• Violet Anger: Lvl 4 Scrapper Martial Arts/Agility (Super Speed)
• Force Bolt Lvl 5 Blaster Energy/Energy (RIP)

Paul:

• Malabranca: Scrapper Broadsword/Reflexes/Superspeed
• The Law Man: Blaster Assault Rifle/Electric
• John Henry: Tanker Strength/Stone
• BTU: Tanker Fire/Fire
• Jackson Volt: Blaster Electric/Electric

I scrapped my Purple Rose MindControl/Empathy character, after Doug's comments made me realize that it didn't really fit my style of play/level of skill (I am not up to keeping track of everybody's current status to see who needs healing–I can barely keep track of which way I'm facing!).

So instead I created a Defender with Darkness Powers…ooooh, scary! So far her powers are a Darkness zap that damages the enemy and lowers their defenses, a Dark mist that drains the enemy's health into her (shades of the Necromancer in Baldur's Gate 2!), and a create Tar Pit power that roots the enemies to the spot so they can't come pummel her. Pretty fun stuff, although she does spend a lot more time running away than my Tankers do.

I'm proud of my character design for her–I really was able to get a pretty good likeness of Betty Cooper, with the blond hair in a ponytail. The first time any other player has actually commented on my any of character's names or appearances came when somebody asked “Do you have a friend named Dark Veronica?” I don't know if they thought they were being funny or not, but I was satisfied.

Thanks to Doug's and Paul's mad mentoring skillz, my initial character, Magma Maid, has “dinged” third level! Woohoo! Actually, I probably could have advanced faster than that, but making new characters is too much fun. I now have five characters, all on the Pinnacle server:

• Magma Maid: Fire Tanker
• Thunderella: Electro Blaster
• Purple Rose: Mind Controller — I need some more advice from Doug on this one, I think, 'cause I really don't see how I'm going to survive the training mission
• Brawnwen: Super-Strength Tanker
• Thudmilla: War Mace Tanker

I played around a bit with making some male characters (in particular the character that became Thudmilla was originally going to be male, as a change of pace), but somehow I just didn't think they looked as cool. Something about the male body template just looks a little goofy to me; it's not the exaggeration–that's the way superhero comics are, and the female template is no less exaggerated. I think it's I'm looking for a Gil Kane, Curt Swan, or Alex Ross anatomy, and the game designers have more of a Rob Liefeld/Todd McFarlane thing in mind. Maybe a Huge would work better. Or maybe I should just not be as picky. But designing the character's look is mega-fun, and I think all of mine turned out pretty cool. I do wish I could tweak the looks a little now that I've seen them in action. Oh, well.

I also briefly tried a Claws Scrapper, but I found it difficult to play and the claws looked stupid (I thought)– I'd really like it if you could adjust the type of claw, so you weren't stuck with metallic back-of-the-hand Wolverine claws. I was looking for something more like, you know, claws. Oh, yeah, I saw my first real “lamer”: somebody actually made a Claws Scrapper and called it Wolverene.