Blind Man's Bluff
I suppose that I am finally able to retort the serving that I got on the Drivler's blog, in response to the serving he supposed I gave him on mine. I say, "suppose" because my version of the story is, in fact, the accurate one, and yet it was not meant to act as the exemplary model of conversations with the Drivler. In many cases, ye olde Drivler is a very intelligent human being. His conversation is engaging. His stories are interesting, often hillarious, and definately worth the trouble of shutting up for five minutes to hear one. This story, however, rested far outside the realm of anything but the trivial. The moral: a blind guy on TV can shave. His head? No. His face. What did that have to do with the crazy woman the Drivler once new? I still don't know. The fallout is miraculous.
I say that because it is quite possible that the Drivler, whose intelligence far outstrips that of mere mortals including myself, may have been having a conversation on some higher plane where connections of this sort only seem trivial to, we, the lowly creatures who cannot comprehend the connections, but herein is the irony. The intelligence required to make such a connection renders the analysis unfit for the rest of humanity, and thus, it appears as Drivle.
Nonetheless, it was I who was engaged by said conversation, and so I feel some responsability to rise to the occasion--to do more than merely nod in the hopes that it will appear as if I understand, but to actually make the attempt to understand, and in doing such, act as the intermediary between Drivler, Drivle, and the humanity urged to listen.
Which brings me to Ganth. Many years ago, I played a role playing game called Champions. Now, Champions, as a system, is designed to create the action of comic book heroes and heroines, and as such, must be able to simmulate nearly every aspect possible in reality. Why, you may ask? Because superheroes are likely to employ whatever consideration is available from the known spectacle of human endeavors.
Let me try this another way. In Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, there is no "rule" to determine how many pull ups a character can do. Quite simply, it never comes up, or does not come up often enough for there to be a rule concerning such a feat. But in Champions this is not the case at all. Consider a character who's power is to force people to do pull ups and to exert a certain ammount of damage based on not meeting up to some standard of pull ups. Now, admittedly, this is a lame character, but it's possible that someone will come up with this crazy character and then the rules will have to elucidate the number of pull ups possible. Champions is a great system because it gives a ruling on this, and an infinite number of other possible feats by relegating all of this to meta-rules which can be universally applied. It was incredible.
Eric, our GM in this game, created a Champions world called Ganth. Much like the creator of DC, he did not put the super heroes and villains in our world (in DC, there are the added cities of Metropolis and Gotham). No. Eric set the entire campaign on a world in the space faring future. A cyberpunkish type place called Ganth, famous for its natural deposits of the most valuable resource in the galaxy: Dresselrock. It was a mining world, rough and tumble, beyond the confines of the galactic patrol and the imperial forces of the Preeminence, and on that world were every sort of vagabond, alien refugee, cyber-soldier, and trans-dimensional monstrosity that one could imagine. Think of the cantina from star wars, and then populate it with creatures from other dimensions as well as other planets, then give everyone nanotech and cybertech upgrades and you'll start to get the picture. Anything and everything was possible.
Here's the catch though: what exactly is a super hero in such a place? Or a super villain for that matter? If we think of Star Wars, is Luke Skywalker a super hero? What about Han Solo, or Boba Fett? I hope that you see my point.
Into this world, we players created our characters, and great characters we did create. I played a midget martial artist gadgeteer named Freelance. Admittedly, I stole Puck from Alpha Flight and put some rocket launchers on a pair of bracers. But when you're running around a world like this, theft is not really a crime. I met so many variations of Wolverine that I cannot even name them all, and yet, each one seemed original.
And the backstories Eric wove...
Anyways, as a gadgeteer, and also as the guy who understood the rules the best, I was constantly beset by the other players to make stuff, often their characters, and that's where this story connects back to the Drivler.
You see, I would make a character and Eric would look at the character and he'd say, "why does he fly?" Flight being the big no no power. You could sneak teleportation by Eric, but never flight. "Why does he fly?"
"Because, he's called the flying plumber?"
"No. I've got that. Your powers are all based around plumbing, but how does that imply flight?"
"I don't know. He's a super hero. Super heroes fly?"
"Super heroes fly because their powers are somehow related to it. You control winds, you can fly. You have telekineses, you can fly. You plumb, no flight?"
"What if I had a magic belt?"
"So, you're a super-plumber AND you have a magic belt? That's kind of lame."
I could never think of any character conception that included flight. Never. One of our characters controlled the weather through a magic mace he had (yes, Thor). He could fly. Eric took the mace away.
In Eric's mind, these conceptions all had to have some sort of explanation. He didn't need a physics report or a blueprint. He would accept vague concepts, but he wouldn't accept, "just because." There was a logic to this, and it was necessary in order for him to keep up the gritty feel of his world. You cannot have supervillains with acid for blood and Mixilplix. Yes, Ganth held every kind of weirdo, but it wasn't humerous. The feel of the place was rust and oil and blood and silicon. And oh by the way, Eric drew all of this at an expert level, and the last thing he was going to draw amongst the ruined world of Ganth was a silly jack ass flying around for no reason.
But these reasons, began to get a bit honerous. I am always ammused by The Tick because it is essentially the funny version of Ganth. If everyone is a super hero, you can make a superpower out of anything. We had a character who could make inanimate objects come to life, but here's the kicker, they were never any good. You couldn't make pencils come to life and fly at a supervillain's eys, because "pencils don't fly." The most effective characters--villains anyway--were guys who were really good with a gun. THAT WAS THEIR SUPERPOWER.
Now, one must ask just how super Eric believed his world to be. The answer to that question is sort of strange. For instance, if a character could generate electricity across the surface of his skin and a simple handshake would send 10,000 volts through you. I'd consider that a super power, but in a strange way, if someone is said to have an extra-electron in each water molecule in their body and this generates the electricity, it is sort of not super anymore, but rather sci fi. And it is on this point that I think the Drivler was intrigued.
Consider the Blind Justice guy. Is he a super hero? He's blind and he can shave. In a Ganth-ian sort of way, yes, he is a super hero--as super as Ganth would ever get in its definition. More to the point, he has extra-ordinary control over his faculties (whatever they may be), but then isn't that the exact nature of Batman's superpowers.
And by extenuation, an extenuation that Eric would have allowed, Blind Justice super-control, allows him heightened intuition. Now, we are bordering on the truly super, or the sci-fi. After all, the crazy woman the Drivler knew never gained this sort of perception nor this control. Blind Justice has powers above and beyond her pale.
But to my mind, none of this matters. You see, I played that campaign for three years, and I learned something. The guy with a few extra electrons gets shot. The girl who can pull the sins of people out of their souls and attack them with it gets shot. The guy who could control the weather before they took away his mace gets shot. The guy who can cause inanimate objects to come to life and talk gets shot. These people aren't superheroes, because superheroes, at the very least, ought to be able to laugh at the dime store thug with a .38.
Herein lies the difference between the Drivler and Monstro. The Drivler, in announcing the superhuman nature of the blind man who can shave, has demonstrated the way that he sees the extra-ordinary conditions of the day to day translated into a world of super power. Blind Justice is super because he can shave without seeing in a way that an average, or even outside of the average, person cannot. Their relation: the normal to the super. I, on the other hand, see no such thing. It isn't super because it cannot fly and cannot stand up to gun play. I have criteria, and when I apply my criteria, the blind justice guy is just a blind guy who can shave; the crazy woman is a woman who could not. Their is no relation between the two, and any attempt at establishing such a relation seems...well...pure drivel.
I say that because it is quite possible that the Drivler, whose intelligence far outstrips that of mere mortals including myself, may have been having a conversation on some higher plane where connections of this sort only seem trivial to, we, the lowly creatures who cannot comprehend the connections, but herein is the irony. The intelligence required to make such a connection renders the analysis unfit for the rest of humanity, and thus, it appears as Drivle.
Nonetheless, it was I who was engaged by said conversation, and so I feel some responsability to rise to the occasion--to do more than merely nod in the hopes that it will appear as if I understand, but to actually make the attempt to understand, and in doing such, act as the intermediary between Drivler, Drivle, and the humanity urged to listen.
Which brings me to Ganth. Many years ago, I played a role playing game called Champions. Now, Champions, as a system, is designed to create the action of comic book heroes and heroines, and as such, must be able to simmulate nearly every aspect possible in reality. Why, you may ask? Because superheroes are likely to employ whatever consideration is available from the known spectacle of human endeavors.
Let me try this another way. In Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, there is no "rule" to determine how many pull ups a character can do. Quite simply, it never comes up, or does not come up often enough for there to be a rule concerning such a feat. But in Champions this is not the case at all. Consider a character who's power is to force people to do pull ups and to exert a certain ammount of damage based on not meeting up to some standard of pull ups. Now, admittedly, this is a lame character, but it's possible that someone will come up with this crazy character and then the rules will have to elucidate the number of pull ups possible. Champions is a great system because it gives a ruling on this, and an infinite number of other possible feats by relegating all of this to meta-rules which can be universally applied. It was incredible.
Eric, our GM in this game, created a Champions world called Ganth. Much like the creator of DC, he did not put the super heroes and villains in our world (in DC, there are the added cities of Metropolis and Gotham). No. Eric set the entire campaign on a world in the space faring future. A cyberpunkish type place called Ganth, famous for its natural deposits of the most valuable resource in the galaxy: Dresselrock. It was a mining world, rough and tumble, beyond the confines of the galactic patrol and the imperial forces of the Preeminence, and on that world were every sort of vagabond, alien refugee, cyber-soldier, and trans-dimensional monstrosity that one could imagine. Think of the cantina from star wars, and then populate it with creatures from other dimensions as well as other planets, then give everyone nanotech and cybertech upgrades and you'll start to get the picture. Anything and everything was possible.
Here's the catch though: what exactly is a super hero in such a place? Or a super villain for that matter? If we think of Star Wars, is Luke Skywalker a super hero? What about Han Solo, or Boba Fett? I hope that you see my point.
Into this world, we players created our characters, and great characters we did create. I played a midget martial artist gadgeteer named Freelance. Admittedly, I stole Puck from Alpha Flight and put some rocket launchers on a pair of bracers. But when you're running around a world like this, theft is not really a crime. I met so many variations of Wolverine that I cannot even name them all, and yet, each one seemed original.
And the backstories Eric wove...
Anyways, as a gadgeteer, and also as the guy who understood the rules the best, I was constantly beset by the other players to make stuff, often their characters, and that's where this story connects back to the Drivler.
You see, I would make a character and Eric would look at the character and he'd say, "why does he fly?" Flight being the big no no power. You could sneak teleportation by Eric, but never flight. "Why does he fly?"
"Because, he's called the flying plumber?"
"No. I've got that. Your powers are all based around plumbing, but how does that imply flight?"
"I don't know. He's a super hero. Super heroes fly?"
"Super heroes fly because their powers are somehow related to it. You control winds, you can fly. You have telekineses, you can fly. You plumb, no flight?"
"What if I had a magic belt?"
"So, you're a super-plumber AND you have a magic belt? That's kind of lame."
I could never think of any character conception that included flight. Never. One of our characters controlled the weather through a magic mace he had (yes, Thor). He could fly. Eric took the mace away.
In Eric's mind, these conceptions all had to have some sort of explanation. He didn't need a physics report or a blueprint. He would accept vague concepts, but he wouldn't accept, "just because." There was a logic to this, and it was necessary in order for him to keep up the gritty feel of his world. You cannot have supervillains with acid for blood and Mixilplix. Yes, Ganth held every kind of weirdo, but it wasn't humerous. The feel of the place was rust and oil and blood and silicon. And oh by the way, Eric drew all of this at an expert level, and the last thing he was going to draw amongst the ruined world of Ganth was a silly jack ass flying around for no reason.
But these reasons, began to get a bit honerous. I am always ammused by The Tick because it is essentially the funny version of Ganth. If everyone is a super hero, you can make a superpower out of anything. We had a character who could make inanimate objects come to life, but here's the kicker, they were never any good. You couldn't make pencils come to life and fly at a supervillain's eys, because "pencils don't fly." The most effective characters--villains anyway--were guys who were really good with a gun. THAT WAS THEIR SUPERPOWER.
Now, one must ask just how super Eric believed his world to be. The answer to that question is sort of strange. For instance, if a character could generate electricity across the surface of his skin and a simple handshake would send 10,000 volts through you. I'd consider that a super power, but in a strange way, if someone is said to have an extra-electron in each water molecule in their body and this generates the electricity, it is sort of not super anymore, but rather sci fi. And it is on this point that I think the Drivler was intrigued.
Consider the Blind Justice guy. Is he a super hero? He's blind and he can shave. In a Ganth-ian sort of way, yes, he is a super hero--as super as Ganth would ever get in its definition. More to the point, he has extra-ordinary control over his faculties (whatever they may be), but then isn't that the exact nature of Batman's superpowers.
And by extenuation, an extenuation that Eric would have allowed, Blind Justice super-control, allows him heightened intuition. Now, we are bordering on the truly super, or the sci-fi. After all, the crazy woman the Drivler knew never gained this sort of perception nor this control. Blind Justice has powers above and beyond her pale.
But to my mind, none of this matters. You see, I played that campaign for three years, and I learned something. The guy with a few extra electrons gets shot. The girl who can pull the sins of people out of their souls and attack them with it gets shot. The guy who could control the weather before they took away his mace gets shot. The guy who can cause inanimate objects to come to life and talk gets shot. These people aren't superheroes, because superheroes, at the very least, ought to be able to laugh at the dime store thug with a .38.
Herein lies the difference between the Drivler and Monstro. The Drivler, in announcing the superhuman nature of the blind man who can shave, has demonstrated the way that he sees the extra-ordinary conditions of the day to day translated into a world of super power. Blind Justice is super because he can shave without seeing in a way that an average, or even outside of the average, person cannot. Their relation: the normal to the super. I, on the other hand, see no such thing. It isn't super because it cannot fly and cannot stand up to gun play. I have criteria, and when I apply my criteria, the blind justice guy is just a blind guy who can shave; the crazy woman is a woman who could not. Their is no relation between the two, and any attempt at establishing such a relation seems...well...pure drivel.