Episode 283 of the Letters Page: Writers’ Room: Cosmic Tales Vol. 2 #391-396

Bunker in space!

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Physical therapy is much like mental therapy, in that it is great and more people should get it.

They have a lot of info and stories on Crisis Man, as though he might be an important figure in an upcoming edition of a lore-heavy card game or something…

I’ll repeat a comment I made in stream yesterday, which is that I always pictured Crisis Man as an older guy in a bad suit.

Everybody’s just like, who is Mason Galt?

How can you talk about Ed Harris and not mention King Koopa? Oh my god, career defining role, that!

“Deep thinkers here on the Letters Page!” Okay, this is the philosophical discussion I am here for. XD

And now I see why they like Crisis Man so much.

Oh wow, an actual interesting turn for Bunker? Unheard of! Looking forward to the variant!

What a dumb yet oddly realistic way to trick an AI. XD Why is something with ‘intelligence’ in its name so stupid?

Crisis Man’s problem is just wants friends, poor guy. XD

Yeah, Bunker really did need a lore glow-up. He’s always been a little on the uninteresting side as a character for me.

“Katie Vance is a couple years old/younger than Tyler Vance.” Direct quote from Christopher Badell, thanks for clearing that up. XD

F5 all in Bunker suits sounds amazing, do want.

I believe you mean “most Capitans La”.

something something, construct more pylons

The Oracle of Discord is made up of Schrödinger’s tentacles.

Yeah, Rambler fucking with the Oracle of Discord sounds like a good time.

Shear Force game conf-- dammit! D:<

I’m only a third of the way through the episode, but already my mind is blown that Bunker and AZ have suit-related nemesis stories at the same time, one of them being AZ letting his suit act autonomously without his direct involvement, and the other being Bunker letting his suit act separately from him under his direct control. Really playing with the idea of how much of the hero is the person vs. the suit.

I’d love to see a Bunker variant with two hero character cards, but I’m having a hard time imagining how it would function. Then again, a couple of Cauldron heroes pulled it off, so it’s not out of the question.

Probably similar to how the SW Sentinels work (and Darkstrife and Painstake, eventually). Two HP pools and two powers to choose from. Tyler’s could be something like “draw a card and play a one-shot” (Maybe “summon a one-shot”? Might be too good – maybe “salvage or collect a one-shot”?) , and it would have fewer HP. Bunker’s card could be “do damage -OR- choose a target and reduce damage to that target by 1 until the start of your next turn”?

Arg. I need to stop avoiding doing work…

I had a hero PC in Villains & Vigilantes way back when that was literally an empty Iron Man-style power suit. Not run by an AI, the thing was haunted/animated by the ghost of the hero who’d died in it. Actually really handy to have on the team when it came to hostage rescues and that sort of thing, since it could just open up, let them get in, and then evac them in relative safety. We pulled that trick a few times and got overconfident about including it in our planning, and then ran into issues with a VIP who was so obese we couldn’t squeeze him in.

There was also that one time when we jury-rigged a villain’s shrink ray to micro-size the rest of the team so they could all fit inside when we had to take an unexpected spacewalk. Good times. I should try to build him for the SCRPG one of these days.

That’d put Bunker up to what, 8 different CCs when DE is finished? Wild.

whisper That was Dennis Hopper, unless I’m missing a joke (which is def always likely). (As a weirdo who unironically likes that movie.)

Also I will be That Person and say that yeah, they’ve stated at a few points that Katie is the younger sister and Tyler is a few years older than Maia. I don’t think either actually matters that much as far as retcons go, mind you, but somebody’s gonna be That Person so I’ll take one for the team.

Because data is data to a computer. And everything getting marketed as “AI” these days isn’t. It’s just bluster.

He’s got the highest number in EE too, it’d make sense!

dammit XD

I mean… listening to C&A talk about things, I would not be surprised if, after all the sets are done, they continue to release event and variant packs for years after.

Yeah, I’d give it a coin toss at worse whether we’ll get more than the promised 6 boxes. But I don’t think they’ll be mini-packs, those just don’t make economic sense these days. I think they need to aim for enough content to be worth a $20 box at absolute minimum. And that means decks, not individual cards.

Or just tons of individual cards!

Too. Many. Choices.

If Christopher ever announces a box containing 300 Hero variants/Events/Principles, don’t expect to hear anything more about it for like 5 years.

He’s got an RPG kickstarter to fulfill first, and I do mean first.

they named the Gen Con adventure- have we heard the word “Shard Born” before?
part of Tactics or Prime War futures?

I kind of like Mason Gault himself being a “tech bro” villain, possibly a little anachronistic for when the issue came out but a growing archetype nowadays. Also, why Vance could trick the AI so fast “Crisis Man” worships technological advancement but is not a programmer… or even a realist

I also picture when Bunker fights Crisis Man in the last act some of the alien warlords leaving since the sale is over but one or two just hanging out eating space popcorn watching the humans fight.

We’ve not heard “Shard-Born” before, but we knew Dawn was collecting OblivAeon shards in Tactics. It would make total sense for her to be creating new superhumans using OblivAeon shards. And extremely bad news.

I don’t recall if they’ve said anything definite, but how many of the “regular” Citizens showed up for the Oblivaeon fight, anyway? Some of them wouldn’t be much help beyond cleaning up minions or briefly annoying a Scion, but given how much of an all-hands callout it was every bit helps.

I don’t think any of them did? IIRC Dawn herself reluctantly showed up, threw out one Devastating Aurora, and left, and that was it.