@Member 00492 I believe they called it the Historical District, it included the theater and alley were Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered. Shriek was contracted to kill/incapacitate Bruce Wayne as part of Derek Powers bid to buy the Historical District so it could be bulldozed for apartment complexes. Shriek made his first attempt against Wayne in that district and knocked down one of the buildings in the process.
What's the scale of the map? Even being smaller than New York it seems it's a fair ways from the Titan Bunker at #11 to either of the waterfronts which puts us in rather significant danger of not making it to the hostage situation in time if we're taking public transit. Not to mention how weird it would look to the public to see a fresh hero team on the subway, or how easy that would make it to track up back to our base of operations.
@Member 00492 So I did some superficial research on the organization of the New York City Police department to get a better idea of how Gotham's police function. Aside from getting the impression that it is majorly complicated I came away with a couple things that I wanted to clarify. With the NYPD the city is divided into 8 boroughs which further divide into 77 precincts. Gordon is in charge of the department that regulates a single borough, so her jurisdiction exists only in about an 8th of the city? That's more or less right I believe, correct me if I've made a mistake. What I wanted to ask about is her title. Near as I can tell the Police Commissioner is a civilian organizer appointed on behalf of the city's mayor to govern the policies of the entire police department. That doesn't exactly fit with what you described as Gordon's role so are we changing the meaning of that title or...?
Some other questions after looking at the map.
Where exactly is the Titan's bunker located?
Do we have some form of transportation, flying Titans car, motor cycles etc cause none of us have really mobile powers and I can't imagine taking public transit to stop of crime to be very effective.
@Member 00492 Thank you, the Gotham info is most useful.
@Demon Shinobi I think the setup for Batman Beyond was very good. An inexperienced Batman with a great deal of raw talent but no training apprenticed to the elderly Batman who's got a massive amount of training but in his age his talent is severely faded. The problem was that as a result of meddling, attempting to make the show more kid friendly and sort of a lack of overall direction Terry almost completely stagnated. You set up a character that has much to learn but shows promise and you've got a great foundation. Unfortunately Terry never seemed to actually learn that much that he was missing. The first season was gold but the second season sort of started to fall apart. Basically as Member 00492 said Terry is inexperienced to give Bruce a purpose but in the second season because Bruce was dark and brooding and not very kid friendly his function was almost entirely taken over by Max. That function however in the long run should have become irrelevant as Terry grew into his own as Batman. The result was that you went from Terry learning the tricks of the trade from the extremely experienced and gifted Bruce Wayne to Terry being too stupid to grasp basic principles that his mildly gifted friend then had to do for him.
The show also in an effort to become more appealing to kids focused way too much on Terry's high school. The chronology of seasons 2 and 3 are all messed up because if they each represented a year he should have graduated awhile ago. They had lame episodes like "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot" and "Hidden Agenda". Some crime focused around the school makes sense particularly stories like Willie Watt, a suppressed nerd finds a dangerous way to lash out, or the Venom episodes which makes even more sense as high school athletes are a huge part of the steroid clientele. It just seemed like they were reaching further and further and further to make things tie back to Hamilton Hill High which seemed both improbable and kind of boring.
Don't get me wrong the later seasons had some excellent episodes such as the second appearance of Shriek which highlighted really well the growth of Terry as Batman and his relationship with Bruce but the problem was the growth wasn't shown in previous episodes and seemed to disappear in following ones until it was suddenly there again like in "The Call" which made Terry feel kind of inconsistent. It sort of reached a point where the show wasn't capable of both being what it was as a Batman story and appealing to the target audience with what the suits thought they would like. Not surprising it got axed. A real shame to, had amazing potential.
I'm sort of hoping that a Batman Beyond show makes it into the CW's network of DCTV (preferably with writers that aren't spread quite as thin since Flash, Supergirl and Legends are suffering from the lack of specific focus) but given their odd instance on avoiding anything directly referencing Batman I rather doubt it'll actually happen.
@ProPro I liked Terry, he was a very compelling character and at least in the beginning he was written very well. I just don't think he made a very effective or unique Batman. It always seemed to me that anyone with the suit, a modest amount of combat skills and the willingness to do everything Bruce told them to could just as easily have been Batman. Which disappointed me because the one thing that should never define Batman is generic.
@Member 00492 Don't take this the wrong way because I am a huge fan of "Batman Beyond" and I don't want to ruin it for anyone but are we going to be dealing with any of the rather poor narrative and logistic choices made (particularly in the later seasons) of the show? Just to be clear about what I am referring to and because I'm a bit of a critic I'll outline what I'm talking about. The problems that I believe need to be dealt with are the ones that arise as a result of inconsistent writing or a failure to develop aspects of the Beyond universe. These as far as I am aware are centered around four categories: The Police, The City, The Suit, and The Batman.
The first problem is Neo Gotham's law enforcement. The biggest problem with them is that we are given almost no real information or exposure to them. This is basically a result of catering to the intended audience gone very badly. Batman Beyond was intended for children and in our society we need to teach kids to trust the police, that they keep everyone safe. Unfortunately the only setting in which Batman is necessary is a setting in which the police are unable or unwilling to do their jobs effectively. Essentially for Batman to exist the police have either be incompetent or corrupt. The animated series represented this with finesse by making it a combination of corrupt officers and such a large volume of crime that the cops were overwhelmed thus needing the Batman. Batman Beyond didn't handle it as well, their solution to the "how can we need a Batman and represent the police with dignity" problem was to represent the police as little as possible. In the first episode when Bruce tells Terry to take the proof about Powers' nerve gas to Commissioner Gordon he expresses his disbelief that the cops can actually help. Assuming Terry is correct and not just biased as a former juvi kid that means that the cops are ineffectively on the whole, either due to incompetence, understaffing or more likely because they're under Derek Powers' thumb. Problem is the few times we see the cops in action they are largely more effective than Batman himself. By dropping in to foil an arms deal Batman blows a sting operation that seems well thought out and has more than enough personnel attached. When they turn on Batman it's no more than a day or two before he's at their mercy (mostly due to Barbara's training and inside knowledge but still). In fact the only time it seems as though Batman is more effective than the police is during his one on one with Curare and with Gordon at the helm they were only a couple steps behind him. Now as commissioner does Barbara Gordon seem like the type to tolerate corruption in her department? I'd say absolutely not. So if the police are effective, well staffed, organized, and by all accounts skilled why are they never where they are needed? The ill defined police department brings us to another of Batman Beyond's vagaries, the city itself.
The Gotham City of "Batman the Animated Series" had a very distinctive presence to it. It was nearly a character unto itself. The different districts had different atmospheres to them and while I will admit that I never watched "The New Batman and Robin Adventures" and so don't know how the city was redesigned Gotham was a hugely important part of the first iteration of the animated series. It almost acted as a reflection of the Batman that protected it. In contrast Neo Gotham has very little definition or personality. It could literally be any futuristic scifi city in any story. It is mostly viewed from the high rises and skyscrapers leaving largely to the imagination what the ground level looks like. Even when we see the city from street level it very rarely gives us any significant information on good neighborhoods or bad, what is typical and so forth, we just see street corners and alleyways, nothing more. Given the futuristic setting we can't even be sure what a good household looks like. Take Max, many people thing she is poor because her home looks like a cement bunker but for all we know that is a typical working class home. We're not even told if Hamilton Hill High is a good school or effectively Gotham's delinquents school. (I have some circumstantial evidence that suggests it's a relatively rich private school but we're given no hard proof one way or the other). The only real exposure we get to Gotham as a city is Bruce and Terry's excursion to the historical district but as we are shown the remains of Crime Alley it's less a view of Gotham and more a "Hey look how decrepit the bits of Gotham from the animates series are thirty years on." Bruce's Gotham acted as an ally to him, he knew ever inch, the passages, the shadows, how to get around. Terry seems to need Bruce in is ear to act as google maps for almost everything he does. Which incidentally brings me to I think Batman Beyond's worst failing, it's use of technology, or more specifically Batman's use of technology in the form of his super suit.
When Terry first examines the suit he remarks about how it is still cutting edge fifteen years after it's creation his exact words are "synaptic controls, neuro muscular amplification, flight capability... ...I bet it amplifies your strength 10:1" While I'm not a scientist to me this essentially means "faster, better reaction times, flight and increased strength". That is perfectly reasonable. Given that this is a Batman for the new age and that new age has a significant amount of advanced technology it would make sense that Batman would have to have a means of combating that technology. The original Batman fought with his skills as a martial artist and his intellect. The suit was basically meant to power him up so that Terry could fight with his skills as a martial artist and his intellect while being able to combat things like synthoids and other advanced weaponry. That is all fine and perfectly understandable. Unfortunately the suit became a crutch that the writers and animators relied on. For a suit that ripped to pieces after a ten story dive during Terry's first encounter with Spellbinder and was again severely damaged when Mad Stan detonated a grenade near it the suit seems by the middle of the second season almost indestructible. Terry falls several stories, busts through levels made of concrete and is somehow just mildly dazed. He takes a massive number of laser blasts with what seems to be only a mild amount of discomfort. It gets to the point where the writers seem to forget that Terry himself isn't invulnerable. In "Terry's Friend Dates a Robot" Cynthia knocks Terry off the school roof, he falls about four stories, does a back flip and walks away without a scratch. Even worse they seem to forget that everyone in the Beyond universe isn't immortal as Stalker drops Nelson off a three story parking garage, he lands on his car and is not in any way injured. This is obviously a problem as a hero that can't be easily hurt has no stakes and is thus not very interesting. Which brings us to a related failing of the show, I do hate to say this but it is "Terry as Batman".
There's a rather heavy amount of debate about whether Terry could even be the Batman with the Beyond suit and to be completely honest I think the answer is that he couldn't. Never mind that the flight capabilities of the suit are important to being able to navigate Neo Gotham. In his fights he doesn't often show more than an average amount of skill and almost never deduces a more effective way of dealing with his target, 90% of the time just keeps punching till they go down. Without the suit I doubt he'd be able to do that at all. Yes I am aware that there are a couple examples that contradict that statement but they aren't very numerous. That aside Terry does very little of the work that makes Batman truly Batman. As far as hero style and method go he's actually a lot closer to Superman than he is to Batman. He flies around above the clouds and is never really seen by the common man, he deals with the big problems. Not the everyday muggings and holdups. One of Batman's defining attributes is that he's a great detective. He uses forensics, logic etc etc, to tie the method and circumstance of a crime back to its perpetrator and then goes in for the kill. Terry just flies around till he hears crime going down and then blindly goes in for the kill. Bruce used fear and terror amongst his other skills, some criminals didn't risk committing crimes because they feared "THE BATMAN!" would appear from the shadows. He was like a ghost, a vengeful demon that would punish wrongdoers and could be lurking anywhere. Terry is as far as we are aware viewed basically as slightly more badass auxiliary law enforcement. Someone to watch out for but I never got the impression that any criminal was afraid of him while with Bruce just the sight of his Batman sent many criminals running in terror. Don't get me wrong, I like Terry as a character but the show didn't do enough to develop him as a unique Batman or to show off his skills beyond that of beating people up. His allies did almost all of the work for him. First it was Bruce and then when they started cutting his screen time cause they couldn't find a way to make him more kid friendly Max took over that role. Yes I am aware that Batman had a large support system in the rest of the Bat family, but they were built by him after the fact. Any task that he had Oracle or Robin or Alfred do for him he was perfectly capable of doing himself (aside from making Alfred's English biscuits apparently). Terry on the other hand can't even do basic triangulation. When there's a bomb in Gotham and he knows the transmitter to reset its timer has a specific radius and he knows three places where the transmitter was used Max has to explain the math of using that information to find the area the bomb must be in. Similarly he doesn't even know what a spectrographic analysis is and instead asks the computer to "do the thing were you figure out what something's made of". For someone who can recognize the machinery the Batsuit is made of from a glance and effect repairs to it that seems kind of odd. Now all of that is sort of understandable in the first season when Terry is a very new Batman but the following seasons did nothing to address or rectify it. You would think Bruce would insist Terry learn some of this stuff considering Bruce's age, he's not going to be around forever.
That was an exceptionally long winded account of what basically boils down to a couple of questions. What is the standing of Gotham's police force, how effective and staffed are they and what is their stance on vigilante heroes in their city? What is Neo Gotham like on the ground level and descending into the seedy underbelly. What are the capabilities and limitations of the Batsuit as we are using them for this RP (never mind the crazy things it could do towards the end of Batman Beyond)? And (for lack of a better way to phrase it) has Terry become a more effective, unique and independent hero compared to how he was represented in the show?
I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass I just like things to be clear and organized. You are however the GM, if you rule that this stuff isn't important I'll shut up about it. Unless it becomes incredibly IC relevant.
@Demon Shinobi About the closest Katty would get is pity. She'd feel bad for his plight but be firmly of the opinion that he brought it on himself and that he does not deserves mercy simply because he's had a rough time.
@Member 00492 Here's what I'm thinking. If gravity is the only force that applies to Peek, at the end of his episode what would happen is that he'd continue to fall through the earth, gaining velocity till he hit the center at which point his momentum would slingshot him to the surface of the opposite side of the world. He'd then sink back into the earth and the process would start again indefinitely.
Over the course of a significant period of time, say two or three years, Peek figures out how to control the vibra-space vibrations that Nabuo Taka's belt imposed on his body. He used this control when closest to the Earth's surface to drag himself up and out. He is able to control the intangibility but he is still trapped in the vibra-space state. He needs to exert a constant force of will to keep from sinking into the Earth again. Desperate both to be able to rest from his powers and to not be bright blue covered in Kirby dots he kidnaps a scientist to help with a cure and begins stealing various components needed to aid in concocting that cure. The Titans run into him during a robbery and as he blames Batman for his journey to the center of the Earth he vows to destroy Batman's hero team.
@ProPro Yes but that was (if Terry is now 21) four, maybe five years ago. People can change a great deal in that amount of time and think about what being slingshotted back and forth from the Earth's core to the surface just to be pulled under again would do to a man's psyche.
@Member 00492 What are the chances we could see a return of the Batman Beyond villain Ian Peek. I know it's a bit of an MCU cliche but I'd be really interested in an intangibility v intangibility fight.
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