May 292011
It’s Take a Break Sunday, which means chillin and grillin. Today you won’t get any cool RPG content or insightful gamer musings. In my relaxed state I can barely even get this computer to fix my breakfast. Stupid computer. However, as I was sitting here contemplating whether I should eat a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast – or a bottle of Gummy Bear Vitamins, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a player, oh about a decade ago…
- Me: “Dude, this is Spycraft, not Flycraft. I don’t care what you made your Speed out to be, you can’t run full speed through all that terrain and obstacles. Your PC is a spy, not Spiderman.”
- Player: “But I have all these feats…”
- Me: “I don’t care! It’s not possible, not even plausible!”
Then, later that week I watched a video clip, probably this one…
Chris Stevens
In Chris's opinion, the very best vices are dirt bikes, rock music, and gaming, while the very best medicine is fatherhood. If he could just learn to balance them all, he'd live forever. He's much more creative than intelligent, often wakes up belligerent, and ponders many things insignificant. Lastly, in an effort to transform his well-fed body, P90X, Roller Blades, and Food are all laughing at him. And the pain continues.
I remember that video. It’s one of the things that started the parkour craze in gaming. The amazing fact is, there are a lot of things that seem impossible that are actually quite possible in reality. Hell, Myth Busters proved that you can skip a car across water to get to the other side safely in one episode. That is just insane.
If you want to see more craziness, do a YouTube search for “People Are Awesome”. Some of the feats in that video are just nuts.
That video changed my idea of “peak human,” and in turn my perceptions about characters like Batman and Captain America. Blew my mind the first time I saw it, too.
I guess it goes to show that reality (and people) is (are) weird and wild enough to justify almost any character concept. Which is pretty awesome.
There used to be this gimmicky show where Stan Lee would send some dude around the world looking for “superhumans.” Even before that I had a lot of perspective on how durable and maneuverable humans could be because I both knew a guy who fell from four stories unharmed, and also knew somebody who did Parkour. But some of the stuff on that show was so wild too. We really vastly underestimate what human beings are capable of.
Oh how often I have been proven wrong in this regard. It is quiet easy to fall into the trap of only believing possible what we assume is in our own ability. Nowadays I try to be more open and just say “Go with it”. If it is fun it is the right thing to do.Thanks for reminding me though! 🙂
I don’t really understand the ending to that video though…. LoL. I like how the guy totally fails at standing on his hands in bw. Good stuff.