Avengers: Age of Ultron

In addition to renting Jurassic World the other day, I also managed to pick up Age of Ultron.

Entertaining but...

To me, Age of Ultron is some well written character drama filled with long fights that probably would've looked better on paper as opposed to the long drawn out mess they were. Sometimes a fight scene is just TOO long.

Now I'm not a purist. In the comics, Hank Pym, the original Ant Man, is the creator of Ultron. Here, it's a combination of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. In the comics, the Vision is purely the creation of Ultron. Here it's a cross between Ultron, a mad scientist, Bruce and Tony.

Do I think they missed some moments that would have come across fantastic in the movie? Like Thor telling Ultron, "We would have words with thee?" (From Avengers Vol 3 by Kurt and George)

Yup. Understandable though. Ultron has been around for decades.



It's not that the movie lacks and 'quip' moments. Captain America and his whole "language" bit has already been made into numerous memes including a great one with Dead Pool.

And it's not that Ultron voiced by James Spader isn't highly entertaining. He almost steals the show, much like Loki has in whatever movie he's appeared in. He's funny and crass, seemingly hyper intelligent yet way overconfident and unsure how he fits into things.

Perhaps it's just that there are too many characters? Hard to say.

Now for gaming purposes though? Fantastic movie. Hell, I can't tell you how many times a long drawn out fight saved my bacon in Champions using 4th Edition Hero back in the day. The rolling of dice, the calculation of damage, all time sucks that I could then use to hope I did a better job of prepping for the next game.

So what can you steal from the movie for your game? Well, if you've playing a superhero game and it doesn't already have a version of Ultron, there's Ultron. He's a robot who in this version at least, wants mankind to 'evolve' or die. Kind of like a real mean version of the older comic character, the High Evolutionary.

In the comic though? Ultron is all about eliminating mankind. All about the end of organic life. All about being the ultimate bad ass. In Champions, that would be Mechanon. Pretty much a straight motif take save for his origin.

For other bits?

There's the whole "don't show a gun if you're not going to use it." In this instance, Hawkeye is injured early on and is healed with some amazing technology. That technology is then the showcase of how the Vision gets built.

Then there's give the players enough rope. For instance, the Scarlet Witch goes around messing with people's minds in this movie. Thor in particular suffers a bad vision. But in this instance, he seeks out further guidance on that vision. If a player has a background that allows him to incorporate it into his character and into the ongoing game? Take it and run! One of the potential problems with a 'group' session is that the 'group' is too much in the spotlight.

The villains turn! One of the bits this movie has, is actually rooted in the comics. When first introduced as mutants way back in the day, The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were minions of Magneto! They later joined the Avengers.

Here, the duo have a hate for Stark because Stark technology was being used to bomb their country and they hold Tony personally responsible for the death of their parents, undergoing intense treatments to become augmented enough to fight against the Avengers.

Their quest is personal. When it turns out Ultron wants an extinction level event... well, they are less than pleased with it.

Minions! One of the things that Mutants & Masterminds did well was the one hit villains and their minions. Sure, you could do the same in Champions if you wanted to really low ball the point creation and character ability and in Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, they never really used it effectively, but it's can be mighty satisfying to have a lot of villains around that everyone can take out. This can allow characters like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Captain America to be useful while the big guns such as Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk do the heavy lifting.

I enjoyed Age of Ultron more than Jurassic World. It's a bigger setting, it has more characters, it has more going on. It has a feel of continuity that Jurassic World acknowledges was there, but is self contained overall.

Age of Ultron works better when you're familiar with the rest of the characters and their franchises and all of that is going to lead into bigger movies down the road. It's an interesting way of making movies and I'll be curious to see how well it plays out and hopefully continue to mine it for ideas.

Leftover Soup Webcomic and the Class of Setting Creation

I tend to read a lot of web comics. One of them, Leftover Soup, http://www.leftoversoup.com/, has some gamign involved along with the other bits.

In the current series, the group is sitting down and discussing their characters and the background of the setting itself is coming into the forefront of the game. Mind you, this is even BEFORE they've started their characters or started out down the road of playing.

It's not going well.

There are certain assumptions built into the campaign that some of the players find distasteful for different reasons and none of their reasons are inherently bad in and of themselves, they just clash with the assumed nature of the campaign.

This is interesting to read as both a GM and a player. As a GM, I'm currently setting up a super hero setting for Hero 6th edition. I had the players start off with 500 points (includes 75 for disadvantages) but depending on what they make, may kick it up higher.

It's a  world where it assumes a lot of things in comics are correct.

Like what?

Well, world population would be down, in some instances fairly dramatically from invasions from space, other planes, alternative universes, etc...

The technology level would be higher, almost universally sci-fi. Heck, if you look at the things they are testing NOW in 2014, it seems that things are very sci-fi.

Massive surveillance state which effectively ends the ability for players to have secret ids unless they have a really good reason/excuse for it. Part of this may be living in Chicago where speed cameras, red light cameras, and dozens of other bits of surveillance technology are a hated, but well, accepted part of daily life.

Magic and psionics and gods are known to exist. Most of these are still 'unknown' for the most part as I've decided that most pantheons left Earth for the stars as mankind continued to move up the ladder and magic never lends itself well to mass consumption.

Fights between groups of supers are potentially very damaging to the nearby environment. Imagine if in Man of Steel, that was a weekly, or a monthly thing. How many billions would it take to repair? Would it even be possible? Would society itself be set back to the stone age after enough such battles?

Bit of 'false utopia' going on, nicked in part from movies like the recent Captain America Winter Soldier, to shows like Minority Report and Psycho Pass where society is able to use predictive technology. I know that again, it may seem sci-fi, but a lot if it is actually in use now: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/09/tech/innovation/police-tech/

There are some other bits I'm working on. I'm thinking that I'd snag a bit of the recent Guardians of the Galaxy storyline where Earth was essentially marked off limits. The reason being is that in most comic series, it has WAY more value than a dirt ball should and I think Green Lantern's take of things, during the whole Black Lantern War, is a good reasoning for the significance of it.

The 'fun' part? I told the players to be inspired by the Fate system and come up with what the current menace is, what the future menace is, and how their characters know each other and how they'll be working. I've left a lot of options open to them ranging from fighting against the system to working for the system to being agents of Earth on the reaches of outer space.

So yeah, as I read Leftover Soup and see the players arguing, intelligently, their points, I wonder what I'm going to run into with my own players. Mind you, as I've giving them a bit of the world building handles in terms of characters, NPCs, etc..., I think it'll be a little smoother.

As a game master, have you ever run a campaign where you had conflict with the players about it? I find that I try to appreciate a campaign for what it is as opposed to what I think it should be. I'm not always successful mind you as most fantasy campaigns, especially as I get older and read more, tend to make me annoyed. Vikings alongside English flavored Bowmen alongside German styled knights in full plate alongside sword and sandal barbarians alongside wizards and in most cases, it's 'guns' that are seen as too technologically advanced.

Ugh.

Still, I tend to keep that part of my brain off and admit that when I do my own in house writing, I tend to avoid them as well. I think it's just the dissonance of the gun versus the sword.

Ah well, back to enjoying a lazy Sunday!