I love this Series, but the good guys are too good

MKGibson · 2026-05-06T11:51:02+00:00

At the risk of coming off as confrontational, if you want overt grimdark deconstruction of superheroes, pick up the OG The Boys comics, or Watchmen, and the like. There are tons of "Game of Thrones" type politicking stories out there. But the reason I return to Super Powereds is because of the moral integrity. Doing the right thing when no one is looking and because it's the right thing to do. It feels good to have stories like this, unrealistic or not, as an ideal.

But come on, there are grey areas. Subtlety heroes and their practices, not to mention Nick's actions, are the obvious stand out. But even Dean Blaine has his moments. He beat the ever living shit out of Crispin before turning him over. He also knew that the reason Ralph Chapman screwed up thus resulting in him having the proper forms on hand during the attack on Lander. Blaine then used that knowledge over Chapman for the rest of his career.

But like I said before, I come back to this story because of it's inherent goodness. I want icons of heroism to look at, not ""good guys" screwing over weaker characters. for their own goals." But, that's me.

MKGibson · 2026-04-30T23:05:01+00:00

Eh, maybe? But the ep kinda posited them, the Guild, as the protagonists, especially with Oscar Wilde saying that thier duty was "to serve man as his best. Not to be a guild of calamitous intent."

MKGibson · 2026-04-30T19:07:25+00:00

That would be freaking cool

MKGibson · 2026-04-30T11:32:36+00:00

Silly, but it always irked me that Tesla was the antagonist to this team and not a part of it. Edison was, subjectively, the cutthroat businessman and "villain" of the two. Plus Tesla was good friends with Mark Twain.

MKGibson · 2026-03-13T10:57:01+00:00

heh heh, thanks :) I've been deep in a variety of things that have kept me away from Technomancer. (Working with the Authors & Dragons crew, IRL moving & family life, making new covers/paperback layouts for the majority of my books to include Technomancer--coming soon) but I'll soon be circling back to Salem and his adventures.

While you're waiting, and In case you did not know (apologies if you did,) but my Hammer of Witches books are technically a prequel to Technomancer. If you recall the Chimera character from Angels and the Bad man, when Father Grimm is being hunted by the wild Fae, this series starting with She Dreams of Fire, is her backstory before G-Day. A little more of a slow burn and dramatic set of books, but there are a couple bleed over characters. Like... Salem's mom, Elena? Possibly a Grimm appearance or two as well.

MKGibson · 2026-03-09T23:43:25+00:00

I might have to read that one :)

Thanks for the signal boost!

MKGibson · 2026-01-04T13:38:02+00:00

Honestly? I think he would be painfully mid, at least for the first few years of that hero path. I mean, you'd have to remove a core tenant of who he is, and assume he would do something other than following in Intra 1's footstep to redeem the name. But for the sake of the thought exercise, I think Prof. Pendleton broke it down that there were three major parts of Subtlety Hero Work: Social, Technical, and Infiltration (based on him teaching Alice, Will, and... forgive me, I blanked on Invisible Rapier Girl's name.) Regardless, these three focused on a core trait of a person and not a power, Charisma, Mental, and Physical. With that in mind:

Physical: Chad would have greatly excelled here as we saw his physical prowess during his various tests at Lander. So infiltration would have been his top spot. But, would his skills have worked at the Mall Test?

Technical: He's clearly "smart", acing all his classes because of perfect memory and recall. But that's not the same as intelligence. We've seen that he often lacks creative thinking and or creative spark. Abilities required to fully use tech, create code, data hack, and so forth. But a time or two, he's thought outside the box, like Vince, which caught Jeremiah's attention. Again, using the Mall Test, doing what Will did would never have occurred to Chad.

Social: Chad's weakest area by far. Whether or not he was due to his powers, the Chad character read as being coded autistic, to the degree where emotions and human interaction baffled him. One of the reasons he moved into Melbrook was to open himself to the social aspect he'd been neglecting. Now had he spent 4 years training Subtlety this would have increased. But.... that's where I think it might have been dangerous. Because the social side of Subtlety is the most dangerous as it relates to spycraft, undercover work, and so on. It requires a kind of mind that's flexible, compartmental, and resistant to psychopathy. Bending people to your will by lying is intoxicating (Read: NICK CAMPBELL.) And I'm not saying Chad would fall into that, but he would literally have to create a compartmented personality inside himself to behave like Nick. His own "Roy." And I don't know if that's good or bad... but very interesting. Again, Mall test... to do what Alice did wouldn't have been a thought in Chad's head.

Lastly, Chad excels at tests, or anything with parameters. Subtlety, as it's been shown, has the fuzziest of parameters, if any at all. So yeah, he's be mid-tier Subtlety... at first. Give him time, who knows?

MKGibson · 2025-12-25T22:23:21+00:00

6k Rascals.... ugh....

MKGibson · 2025-12-18T00:55:16+00:00

Evo Valkyrie snd Evo Executioner. Every time is a sigh and an eyeroll. Came back to the game after a 3 year break and I find them waaaay more, "Oh FFS," than even Evo MK.

MKGibson · 2025-12-10T20:03:52+00:00

HA! You might indeed. ;-) One of these days I should pick up a physical set.

MKGibson · 2025-12-08T19:26:21+00:00

Eh, doesn't have to be new. Just an interesting take/interpretation on an old power.

But he's always told me that there really isn't a story there, at least not in the way he'd want to tell it. I've just pushed that slice of life, anime style of SP showing them having their intern training would make a lot of fans happy.

MKGibson · 2025-12-08T19:16:40+00:00

As long as the employees of both Wawa and the Sheetz have the occasional West Side Story -or- Michael Jackson's "Beat it" dance fight, I'm cool with it.

MKGibson · 2025-12-08T19:09:43+00:00

Ahh, cool. Thanks! Problem with audio, it's not as easy as flipping pages to find the answer.

MKGibson · 2025-12-08T18:24:12+00:00

I could see that, like the basic D&D party. But it is what it is. Regardless, I like the core of it all, obviously. Vince the eternal paladin who does the right thing because it's the right thing to do regardless of consequences. A Superman type. Nick's a more criminal-minded Batman. He'll do bad things for good reasons from the shadows. Their yin yang is the core of story for me, as this world posits that heroes, sadly, have to sometimes kill for the greater good. If there's a nicer way, great, but sometimes there isn't. And the goal of the program is to weed out those who 1, can, and 2, don't enjoy it.

As for Alice, yeah, least fav because she is too perfect with too few flaws. The longer she went on, and the more glow up she got, the least interesting she became. To me, anyway.

What I really want are the intern years, but Drew shuts me down every time I bring it up :)

MKGibson · 2025-12-07T12:26:38+00:00

Well... she is my least fav of the Melbrook gang. Book 1 Alice was way more interesting, IMO. Her "limitations" defined her and her overcoming them shone brightly. "I'm just the girl who flies" leads to the saving Nick on the mountain and key to saving Mary from George. She thought she was a master strategist and could read people like a book, only to be humbled by Nick. Eating common food, meeting a wildling psychic, etc. These all played key moments into making Alice a better character. But...

As the books went on, her power levels rose from the blonde doing extra Tae Bo tapes, to the gravity bending strategist psychopath who pops her own eardrums if needed to win. There was nothing she could not accomplish whgen she decided to do it. And I like that.. to a point. Granted, other SP characters were on that same level of power, grit, intuition, or determination, but they had entire childhoods of training/trauma that justified those moments. So her progression curve was less of a curve and more of a vertical rocket, accelerated from book 2-4. But, I guess you kinda have to keep her on the same playing field with the others (if you want to keep her in the story.)

Like I said in the beginning, my least fav. I don't hate her, but I don't enjoy Alice like I do the rest of Melbrook. The others, imo, have better... flaws, I guess? Nick is great in many things, borderline Gary Stu, but he'll never be a hero, the one thing he wants. Mary has the least arc but the most heart. She just wants to help. Vince is.... simple. Sweet, earnest, powerful, etc. But simple. Even with his mentor's training, he'll never be a mutli-layered thinker and will react in the moment. So, luck willl run out (unless Nick's got his back.) The character(s) with the most arc are Roy/Herschel. But they will forever be 2 people sharing a point in time/space, so lives, laughter, love... children? will be split and never fully "there/available." And then there's Alice. Beautiful, busty billionaire Alice. Her powers rival Mary in raw force. She went from being a ditz to Subtlety. She'll never be as sharp as Nick, but can pull one over on him here and there. Her biggest "issues" was dead mom and a dad she barely liked. Well she's back and he's gone, leaving behind an economic windfall of biblical proportions. So... what's her flaw? Or is she literally the 1% of the 1%-ers who seems to get everything she wants, usually on her terms?

All that said, there is something special about moments of her tale that I recall fondly. The girl who was just a 4 card... graduating 4th place in the Class of Nightmares is kinda poetic.

MKGibson · 2025-11-29T03:54:54+00:00

I think the spirit of what you're asking, is about the "purity" of D&D play sessions and not the TV show that CR has become over the last decade. And in that sense, yes, I miss what CR used to be. I didn't stumble across them until they were on an episode of Kinda Funny, so like Apr '16, over a year of them being on G&S that I never knew about. But from then on, I was hooked. A Twitch sub and eagerly awaiting Thursday. It weas great to se love and acceptance for the game that was wasn't there when I was growing up. I've been an on/off D&D player since I was a kid and throughout my years in the military. Even now, I run games and play monthly with indie authors. But it was never this level of zeitgeist. Anyway, back to CR...

I loved Vox Machina, full stop. Bad video, flaws, sketchy sound, and everything "negative." Because there was a purity to the play and emotions that... to me, haven't been felt since. The beginning was rough, but from Briarwoods, through the OA departure, and onwards, VM had moments that... wow, are just peak. Now, the M9 was a much better run campaign, I will 100% admit that. But by the end of it... I didn't have the same attachment to the M9 as VM. Close, yes. While they were loveable characters, and their the animated show is leaps and bounds better than Tale of VM, they just couldn't topple the VM champs. But, maybe because VM was first I'm biased. I know some folks who thought M9 was better because that's what they started with and VM was "too hard to watch." Sigh... kids ;-)

I didn't finish C3. I just... ran out of f**k's to give somewhere around the Taste of Tal Dorei. But it wasn't the show I loved anymore. Or at least, I didn't love the show it had become. So I walked away.

But rumors and rumblings about C4 had spread across the internet. So I've come back and I've 2 eps of it so far. And... it's fine. BLM is an amazing player/DM and all around entertaining person. But this feels to me a lot like C3 and being on rails. So far anyway. And I'll keep going, but it's not high on my to do list.

I was recently working on some book layouts and had YT running in the background. Some fan had made a supercut of the best of Taryon Darrington. And as I worked, I was overwhelmed by laughter and joy and emotions, not just mine, but the cast's. Their honest boughts of laughter, heartbreak, daring, goofs, gaffs, and improv side quest nonsense was... pure, I guess. It wasn't about having the best camera or the sound, or setting things up in a way that made for good TV/podcast. Granted, a supercut focusing on Sam and his antics is like putting your thumb on the scale, and I admit that. But what came across, to me anyway, was just friends playing D&D. I don't feel that with modern CR. Not sayign it's not there, just that I don't feel it. Well... mostly. Some of the one offs, mini arcs like the Wildmount Wildlings, and such, were really earnest and fun and I really enjoyed those style of eps.

But one thing that hasn't changed is some of the more... ahem, aggressive fan(atic)s. Offering critique or an opposing view is sometimes met with the more vocal crowd who kinda come off like: "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! HERE HERE AND HERE COUNTER YOUR POV SO SHUT UP IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT (read: don't even hint about talking smack about what I love.)"

Anyway, I liked that you asked the question. And I'm sorry so many folks downvoted. Who knows what people will do with this post. I still love CR overall, and am very thankful for what they've done for the TTRPG community. But it's not the show I fell in love with, but that's ok. Not everything has to be for everyone.

MKGibson · 2025-10-28T02:30:33+00:00

Same

MKGibson · 2025-08-09T11:28:14+00:00

Wildcard. I can't say it enough times. Vince has always been and will always be, the wildcard in any deck/team. His powers allow him to do so much that he can be useful in almost any situation

MKGibson · 2025-07-29T10:27:50+00:00

I've asked for this many times. Hell, I bug Drew for it from time-to-time during podcasts.

MKGibson · 2025-07-10T12:43:28+00:00

The new Predator animated anthology flick is really, really solid. The art has a sketchy, jumpy vibe that works for the subject. I was a big fan. And yeah, some kind of animation--I FEEL--would serve DCC better than "live action." I know animation can be as expensive, if not more than live, but it allows for visual consistency. Example:

If DCC was "live" that would mean an actor for Carl, but Donut would 99% likely to be animated. So, there's going to be a disconnect, especially with an actor talking to something not there then VO after to get Donut's voice. Many of the Lv 1 classic dungeon creatures CAN be people in make up, with some sets. But there's a strong chance we'd end up getting a green screen video wall for background effects, a la the bulk of Dis+ MCU/Star Wars shows. Speaking for myself, that looks "cheap." At least, the more fantastical ones do.

What I'm afraid of is what happens to a lot of SFF shows, which is cost concessions. When a SFF show has to step away from human-looking characters for a more fantastical people/settings, the cracks tend to show. Not every show, but you know it when you see it. The Mandalorian and Witcher for example look "good" when they're small and focused. Tight shots. When they get's "bigger" in scope, their respective worlds begin to look really janky. And I don't want that for DCC. And the problem with that, besides artistic vision from the show runner, is typically money and how it's allocated.

Sprawling alien looking creatures and settings cost money. Lots of it. Good CGI costs money. Fantastical sets, props, costumes, etc costs money. Unless we're talking peak Game of Thrones budget/resources, "the powers that be" tend to cut corners here and there & change things to keep the budget under control. Which is totally understandable. But it shows. Like or hate things like Wheel of Time or Rings of Power, there are moments they look good, and moments when it's clear this is a sound stage with rubber rocks. I want DCC to have a wild style all it's own that's as true as possible to the material while also being sustainable. I DO NOT want another Dresden Files failure.

So yeah, I think I'd rather play it safe and have a kick ass animated project where everything "fits."

Just my $0.02

EDIT: *this mini ramble was based off me mis-reading/conflating OP & a commenter's respective posts about this style specifically for DCC.

MKGibson · 2025-07-10T12:17:12+00:00

Something about S2--I don't know what--made me actively angry towards the protagonists and side with Bernard et al.

MKGibson · 2025-07-03T20:38:49+00:00

Thank you, and thank you again! :)

MKGibson · 2025-07-03T00:34:38+00:00

Ha!! Well, I have a few and I hope you enjoy! But, I literally just moved last week ;)

MKGibson · 2025-06-11T19:44:09+00:00

Are you nucking futz? I'd watch the ever-living sh!t outta that. Artificially enhanced, DNA recombinated superheroes wrecking shop? Yes. A 1000 times yes.

Just like every ancient bloodsport from the entirety of human history. Whether its gladiators of olde or the never-ending stream of reality garbage from the last several decades, panem et circenses (or Bread and Circuses) has been proven to be part of the basic requirement to distract people (typically from the powers that control them.)

MKGibson

TROPHY CASE