The Letters Page! Episode 7 Discussion (Kismet)

Time for Lady Bad Luck to take the center stage ! I had to do her well since she is connected to setback

Episode is available now.  

That was fascinating. Lots of questions from the other thread answered. However, I really wish that Alex could have been on the podcast too to give us his views.

The big takeaway for me this time was actually her being Native American. I've kind of always wondered: I thought she might be Middle Eastern when I first saw her, then I read somewhere that "adhin" is Irish for "luck" (which it isn't... though it is Hindi for "under"!), so I've been all kinds of confused. Seems obvious in hindsight!

Also love confirmation of the shark being the same in both decks. :D My mom hates those cards, she's afraid of sharks. I enjoyed all the talk of the various Vengeance and Villains Nemesis characters, too. There's an awful lot of them, and I'm very interested to learn whatever I can about them all.

(...Also Belarusian for "open", Bengali for "dominated", Gujarati for "undermost", Javanese/Malay/Sundanese for "brother", Kannada for "subsidiaries", Marathi for "subject", Punjabi for "conveyed", and Tamil for "thereof". According to Google Translate.)

We did get the information she was Native American when Jean Marc did the music for her in the video game.  

Based on the flavor text it was known to be connected just not how you get from the Ra scene to Guise riding it.  I found the story on it to be great. 

Pretty sure we knew that a lot earlier than that, possibly from Alex, or around the time that Kismet was officially declared the winner.

That was the point at which it was confirmed for me.   I wasn't aware of this game when that villain contest occurred.  

I sent them email saying I was available if they wanted me there, but they didn't respond. Ah well.

If you like, I could answer questions here.

Wait - If Kismet does not exist in the Tactics timeline, how did Setback get his powers in that timeline! I feel this was missing from the Setback episode!

Tactics and the RPG still have backgrounds from SotM.   Just because Kismet isn't there in Tactics has no impact on Setback as he got his powers long before the Tactics timeline occurs.  All it really means is that there is no one going by Kismet in the Tactics timeline yet.  

Presumably, Kismet doesn't exist, but Gabriella Adhin still does.  She could have easily accidentally cursed Pete as a teenager without also having become a villain.  So there's room for him to exist and a hero without her as a villain.

What this does make me wonder, however, it just how many differences there are between the two timelines.  I had always assumed that they shared the same "past" (past meaning the events leading up to OblivAeon), and only diverged at some point during the OblivAeon event.  But if Kismet never existed as a villain at all in the Tactics timeline's "past", how many other differences are there?  Which one is a continuation of the "primary reality"?  So many questions!

Perhaps I misunderstood the way that it was phrased, as my understanding was as yours (That both come from the cardgame)

There has never been a 'Kismet' in this timeline, you would take to mean 'since this timeline began' then? It was muddied for me by, 'presumably there is a Gabrielle Adhin, but we don't know if she has powers'

They just say Tactics doesn't have a Kismet which has no impact on what happened in the SotM timeline.   I would more chalk it up to being that we don't know what happens with Gabrielle in that Timeline instead of it meaning her entire past in the SotM timeline never happened.  

Hey, would any of you be interested in seeing what the original email submission looked like? I still have it saved somewhere.

Yes that would be neat to see.  

OK, here it is:

Going with the "Alternate Realities" theme, my villain has the power to distort the multiverse of minute possibilities to give herself incredible luck.

  For generations, the Adhin clan has been blessed with uncanny luck. The sons and daughters always found loving husbands and wives, the family farming business always seemed to have exactly what goods were in highest demand that season, and when a deadly disease was plaguing the town, one of them just happened to notice that a stray cat which had been drinking some spilled water around the well was now dead.
    The Adhins believed the source of their good fortune was a small talisman they'd been passing down over the years as a family heirloom. It was thanks to this, they claimed, that they could always find the best uses for their talents.
    Then came Gabriel Adhin. Ever since childhood she had felt odd, indistinct sensations from time to time. Like she was moving in a hundred different directions at once, but in directions there were no words for. When she inherited the charm, suddenly it all made sense. In her mind's eye, she saw countless, branching possible realities, all different. In time, she used the charm to hone her psychic abilities, learning to bend the miasma of minute possibilities to her will. Her powers fully realized, she began wondering what else she can bend to her will...

    And that's my villain's backstory! Still haven't thought of a good villain name for her yet, but I have a good idea of how she plays:

    She has the power to distort probability. In-game, this allows her to get the more powerful cards( signified by a "lucky" keyword) in her deck out more often.

    On her starting side, she's an incredibly smug trickster who tries to confound the players by scrambling their actions and blocking or dislocating their attacks. She has her charm in play, which gives her the end-of-turn ability to, if the top card in her trash is not "lucky," reveal the next few cards in her deck, shuffle all the non-lucky ones back, then shuffle the lucky ones and put them on top.

    The "lucky" keyword has other uses, too. On her "smug trickster" side, she can sometimes prevent cards from being put into play immediately. The way it works is something like, "the first time each turn a player plays a card, reveal the top villain card. If lucky,
shuffle that villain card into the deck, and shuffle that hero card into the villain deck face up. When a hero card is on top of the villain deck, put it into play."
    Delaying the actions of hero cards like this might be too powerful, so maybe it should be limited to a certain type of hero card, or one type chosen randomly somehow. Another possibility would be to have the revealed card put in the trash, so players might try playing cards just to get more lucky cards out of her deck.

    Because she fights by manipulating luck, a lot of her attacks don't deal damage directly from her. She'll probably have attacks that redirect environment damage at heroes, and cards with things like,"All hero targets deal themselves 2 projectile damage. Any hero that dealt the villain damage last round deals him/herself 2 melee damage." She'll also have ways to increase damage dealt to heroes.
    But her favorite way to attack is to turn the attacks of heroes against themselves. For example, she could have a card that says, "All heroes must play a one-shot now that would deal one or more nonhero targets damage. Any damage that would be dealt in this way to a nonhero target is redirected to the hero who played that card."
    Other cards are designed to mess with players' plans and setups. She might put a jinx on the player with the biggest hand that forces them to, if they try to play a card, pick the card to play at random( actually, having several different kinds of jinxes she can curse players with could be a cool idea).
    Maybe she'll play a one-shot that has each player reveal the next 3 cards in their deck, and discard the ones that each player doesn't already have in hand or play. She also probably has cards that destroy all the hero cards mixed into her deck, so they won't go off at all later. She could sometimes steal peoples' equipment, and keep it under the charm card until it gets destroyed. If the charm isn't in her possession at this time, she'll just reclaim it instead.
    And here's a few miscellaneous ideas for cards or abilities she could have:
    -Something that involves making a player guess what card is comming up next
    -Something that causes heroes to attack each other
    -Tarot-themed cards! I've always thought tarot card designs were pretty cool. She could have a few of them, possibly as villain targets( since she really doesn't have many yet):
        =Ace of Wands: Could pull out jinxes or something. Maybe deals fire damage whenever a lucky card is put into play?
        =Ace of Cups: Heals her whenever a lucky card is added to the trash.
        =Ace of Swords: Probably straight melee damage, or maybe it "cuts" peoples' hand size?
        =Ace of Pentacles: Something to do with playing extra cards, maybe? Like "play and extra card the first time a lucky card is put into play each turn."

    But let's get back to the flip mechanic. It's based around her lucky talisman, an object so important it might end up being a second villain "character" card. While not necessary for her to use her luck-stealing powers, it gives them much better foresight and she relies greatly on its timeline-adjusting abilities. She may be pretty smug and playful when she has it with her, but manage to steal it and she'll become desperate, panicked. NOBODY ELSE must ever be allowed to use it, and she will now stop at nothing to get it back!
    A hero can steal it by dropping its HP to 0. It is indestructible, however. At the start of the villain turn, flip the charm, flip the villain, and place the charm in front of the last hero to damage it. Reset its HP. On its other side, the charm is now considered a hero target, and it grants a special Power to the hero it's in front of:

POWER: Reveal the top 3 cards in any one deck. Re-order them in any way you like, then put them back.

Now the heroes have a chance to turn the tables and use its power against her! Ha-HAH! But as mentioned before, she'll stop at nothing to reclaim it. On her "desperate" side, she'll cease her mind games and start attacking furiously. Possible attacks on this side include causing self-inflicted damage to the holder of the charm and playing the BOTTOM card of the villain deck at her turn's end.
    Oh, and I think revealing a face-up hero card in her deck should do something different this time. Maybe instead of playing it, she puts it on top of that hero's deck and deals a bunch of psychic damage to them.
    At the end of the villain turn, the heroes may play "keep away" with her charm, passing it to a different player to more evenly distribute the damage it attracts. If she manages to reduce it to 0HP, it flips back to being in her possession. She calms down, flipping back to the "smug trickster" side( hmmm... wonder if it would be more interesting if she didn't always flip with her charm...).

    I haven't put a whole lot of thought into her appearance so far, but my general idea right now is some sort of Carmen Sandiego-esque suit and hat. There's a picture of her attached. Heh, I was actually planning on submitting a whole mini-comic about her, where she keeps making heroes' attacks backfire. Then she tries it on Absolute Zero, and things don't go so well for her. Oh, and beforehand, she mocks him for thinking he can beat her when he's had such terrible luck his entire life to begin with. It would've been very dramatic.

    ANYWAY, that's pretty much it! Hope you enjoy reading through all these submissions, and thanks for this opportunity. As a game design student, I greatly enjoyed it!
 

     -Alex Franklin

As you can see, things changed a lot mechanics-wise from the initial concept. I was surprised they basically kept the first few paragraphs of the backstory word-for-word when they put it in the website. It's not, like, terrible, but I think everybody feels a little bit embarassed looking back at their earlier writing. It's probably fine.

Well, I'm gonna go actually listen to the episode now. When I'm done, I'd be happy to answer any questions people have for me about how she got to the final version we have now and stuff.

So, am I understanding it correctly that Kismet's promo isn't showing a specific evolution or fight involving her character, the way Mad Bomber Blade or Skinwalker Gloomy does?  Or is that Kismet from her big fight at the Carnival?

Also, Peter, what were you doing in a casino?  You should know better than that!

(Of course, should doesn't mean does, especially considering Pete's steadfast denial.  I imagine that Peter likes casinos a lot, and all of his friends are like "No, that's a terrible idea!  Why would you possibly think this is a good idea?")

The Kismet variant is her second major appearance when the heroes fight her at the Carnival.   I don't think she evolved in any way.  

Not sure about that… if I’m remembering the episode correctly, their exact words are: “That reality has never had a Kismet. There is presumably a Gabrielle Adhin, she maybe had powers, she maybe doesn’t.”

That seems to indicate that there’s a significant impact on the primary/SOTM timeline, since Gabrielle maybe doesn’t even have powers in the Tactics timeline.

well, on timelines/realities. Look at it this way.

There was Sentinels of the -Multiverse- - The Multiverse was open, active, possible to move between timelines/realities (As per Shattered Timelines, Ivana Romanof, XTREME Prime Wardens, O-X, Be The Gate, Ect, ect... ect...). We have a central timeline/reality (that of all the heroes and villains of the card game) but there is a lot of crossing over back and forth between timelines/realities. Lots of weird things around that, so its very muddy as to what is the 'real' timeline/reality. In fact, in essence the overall story of The Multiverse is that ALL of the timelines/realities are real, all of them can be crossed over into by various abilities, powers, spells, and all of them have an impact on the cruical point (a 'Fixed Point, perhaps?) of OblivAeon assaulting.

This multiple timelines/realities P'O'd OblivAeon, who idenitified the crux of the multiverse at Earth. He starts collapsing timelines in an attempt to destroy the Multiverse.

After the fight, the timelines/realities are cut off from each other. We know of 2 that stabilize and remain.

1) - The end result is that Rook City is only damaged, and things go on (The RPG)

2) - The end result is that Rook City is destroyed, and its a bad place (Tactics)

There is nothing to say that either of these timelines has its origins in the exact same 'Centralized' timeline as Sentinels of the Multiverse. It is entirely possible that the Tactics timeline/reality grew from a point where Kismet did not become a villain or have powers, beyond a simple curse of Setback (or even Setback's origin is slightly different, we don't know - for instance, his good/bad luck is a natural power, not a curse) It is simply one of the stabilized timelines that is cut off from the others that we know of, and that we pick up from some time after the OblivAeon event, where Rook City has been majorly destroyed. 

Nothing at all states that it is the exact same up to the point of OblivAeon as the 'centralized' timeline of SotM. Only that it is one of the timelines we can follow story wise after OblivAeon. Given how muddy the timeline/reality cross over is in SotM, this is entirely possible that a side timeline, without Kismet being a villain goes along just fine until the OblivAeon event (where ALL realities and timelines cross into one fixed point) and then goes its own way afterwards. Perhaps being affected (by gaining Setback, if he didn't exist as a hero before) or perhaps just having its own reasons for things (ie, Setback got his luck powers a different way)

3 different timelines/realities, for instance all come together at the OblivAeon event. ALL timelines/realities come together at the OblivAeon Event. Thats kinda his point, he's collapsing them all together to destroy them.

|   |   |
\    |  /
  \  | /
 OBLIVAEON
  /  |  \
 /   |   \ 
|    |   |

and that in turn means that one of those side timelines/realities could have been Tactics before OblivAeon, meaning that its entirely possible Kismet never existed in the Tactics timeline/reality

Alternatively, there is another possible reason.

Something Kismet does during the OblivAeon Event helps cause the Rook City destroyed, Sentinel Tactics timeline/reality and that same thing also erases her from that timeline/reality. So that it goes on, but she never existed in it.

(sorry, tripple post cause of editing bug shenanigans)

And that something that she does, the universe automatically rights itself after, so that in that timeline things continue the same just no Kismet, not meaning that the 'Centralized, Proper Canonical' SotM timeline/reality is different, just that she did something to erase herself from the Tactics timeline/reality. 

Truthfully, i find my first reasoning to be easier to except, though story wise I could totally see Kismet having her 'Moment of Heroic Glory' that erases her from the resulting timeline/reality

Umm, there’s the possibility she doesn’t exist because of how she forced the portal to the block closed.

They did say that would have repercussions but never said what.

@Lynkfox - What threw me for a loop was that I had always assumed that the Tactics/RPG timelines had both branched off of the same orginal timeline (the "primary reality" as Adam calls it).   As a result, both timelines would have shared the same pre-OblivAeon "past", having diverged at some point near/during OblivAeon.  While true (as far as I know) that Christopher/Adam have never expressly stated this to be the case, the format of the podcast definitely suggests it: We cover the history of the primary reality leading up to OblivAeon, followed by the OblivAeon event itself, and then discuss what the two distinct future timelines are.

If, as it now appears, the two realities do not share a common past, I have so many questions!  If Kismet does not exist in the RPG timeline, what other differences are there?  How many other villains (or heroes) simply don't exist?  Are there new ones?  As has already been asked, if it's the case that Gabrielle Adhin exists but doesn't have powers, how did Pete get his luck powers in the RPG timeline?

On that last question, I'd like to advance one more theory: When Gabrielle cursed Pete, some strange interraction occured between her powers (and the specifically great power behind the curse) and OblivAeon that resulted in Gabrielle cursing Pete not just in one timeline, but in multiple (possibly even all) timelines.  Since her powers already deal with threads of reality and OblivAeon allows timelines to merge and people to cross between them, I don't think it's too huge of a leap to believe that she could have somehow cursed every Pete.  Or perhaps it was somehow caused by "reality bouncing back" as Christopher and Adam describe in the episode?

I still don't Kismet as not existing in the Tactics timeline to be a big reveal.  Since you could say the same about the Matriarch and Harpy as only Pinion exists in the Tactics reality.   I think the bigger deal is what happened with the Block during the OblivAeon events as I think that leads up to why Kismet doesn't exist in the Tactics reality as Bluedarky suggested.   You also have to keep in mind that some events occur regardless of the universe in SotM as all of them at least has a matching Vanessa Long event since that is the Fixed Point OblivAeon is trying to destroy.   

I am surprised no one has mentioned or discussed this reveal yet: Christopher likes root vegetables, while Adam is a little bit more selective.

I think i view it more as Pre OblivAeon all the timeline/realities are fluid. They cross over, a lot (at fixed points like Vanessa and the oblivAeon event for every timeline/reality, as well as other times in just a choatic random fashion for random timeline/realities) - Pre OblivAeon, a timeline/reality where Kismet does not become a villain is part of the 'Main' timeline/reality bundle that makes up all of Sentinels of the Multiverse. Sure, there is a Primary Timeline/Reality - that being the one the readers view point originates from, but all of the others are still part of the same whole - ie, the Multiverse. Remember, after OblivAeon there is no more Multiverse. They don't mean that as just there is no more card game, but that travel between timelines/realities is impossible. There is no more overlapping, fluidity.

The Multiverse as a whole contains both a timeline/reality where Kismet is a villain and one where she isnt.

Honestly, i feel like it is just leaving room for them to add and remove characters that are not from the card game into the other two as they wish without having to explain where they where during the card game

That part of the podcast made me irrate for the first time in the Letters Page. They quickly mention, then glance over, a pretty major story point in that she sealed some kind of portal or timeline behind her from escaping the block, said they will talk about it more in the future section, then never mention it again.

1. This action seems to have major impacts on the current SotM multiverses AND future universes

2. She has this kind of power to even do something like that? Closing breaches in the fabric of time and space I thought was saved for the strongest of the strong, like Visionary, how can Kismet even do that and with her specific power set, what was the backlash from such a huge exertion of power?

I'll be real honest with you all. This episode was pretty bland. Nothing new or interesting or particularly juicy, though some background on the character was fine. But the ONE major interesting story point in the entire episode gets passed by and never touched on again kinda urked me. Hopefully, if >G reads this, they will consider doing an interlude once back from their trips re-visiting this topic and expanding on it.

Have you ever met Adam? This doesn't surprise me haha

I agree it deserved more explanation and they said they would during it.   However, I liked this episode.  Least satisfying episode for me goes to Setback because they stopped his story pretty much with his origin story before they went into questions which only added a bit more of his story.  

Didn't they say she was just living an ordinary life in tactics, that she never became Kismet?

I think the Talisman might be significant and she somehow removed it entirely from time when she sealed herself away, causing her to never become Kismet.

Here are their exact words on the matter of Kismet in the Tactics timeline:

That reality has never had a Kismet. There is presumably a Gabrielle Adhin, she maybe had powers, she maybe doesn't.

And the talisman itself never had any power, she just projected her power onto it.

That's the only tie I had to the two though, what changes?  Why would Kismet sealing herself outside of reality and time cause her to still exist, but without powers.

Maybe the Talisman didn't have power, but helped her realize/access her own.

When I taught Sentinels to a friend from India, I opened up the box and he suddenly laughed and pointed: “Woah! In Hindi, ‘Kismet’ means ‘fate!’”

That seemed to fit with her character, so I figured it might be the actual reason for her name. But she’s Native American. I wonder what “Kismet” means in the languages of the Dakotas?

I'm guessing that it doesn't mean anything.  Just like "Tempest" surely doesn't mean anything in M’kk Dall’ton's native tongue, Gabrielle is equally capable of choosing a codename from a language unrelated to her heritage.  Besides, it's entirely possible that Kismet didn't choose her name - someone else gave it to her, and it stuck.

I think about "kismet" as an English word, which indeed means fate (and obviously of Hindi origin). It's in Merriam-Webster, for instance.

It traces it back to Turkish, meaning your portion or lot.

It has spread to pretty much the entire world.

They used the word kismet in the first episode of Feud on FX (the short show about Bettie Davis and Joan Crawford). It may not be as uncommon a word as some folks may think