Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

[Guest PenguinKiller]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I'm not really a newbie because I've been here for a little while (just a few weeks) but the way I got interested was because my brother's on here and stuff. I just hang out in the NGD board, so no need to tell me that I have to sort things out. I'm just random usually, so the NGD board is great! (because of how random it is. Just take a look at Mightybec)

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Now' date=' D20 does have its place in the world...[/quote']

 

I use it as a doorstop.

[Basil]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Ah' date=' Synnibar. The game where every shopkeep was a retired 50th level character, and you could get equipment like "Radioactive Black Sunstone Armor". The creators of EverQuest were obviously fans.[/quote']

 

Oh?!????

 

Well, that tells me all I need to know about EverQuest.

 

I'm not shuddering at the memory of Synnibar. No o o I''''m nnoottt.

 

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hx88g

n,b

 

 

 

 

GAKK

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I'm not shuddering at the memory of Synnibar. No o o I''''m nnoottt.

For the love of God, don't remind me.

 

Reading Synnibar is a very bad experience, but I have a bad Synnibar experience that probably trumps you all. When i was touring the Northwest con circuit to promote the first edition of HeartQuest, I happened to run into the game's designer, Raven S. McCracken. A leather-clad, hypersexual man who was pormoting his next game at the same cons and seemed unaware of both his poor reputation in the industry and his own complete lack of talent as a game designer. (He was promoting a collectible board game that rivals his earlier work in its sheer awfulness.) Not only did he start lecturing me on how to be a success in the RPG bsuienss, but after reading HeartQuest he uniltaerally declared himself my biggest fan.

 

How that's for a ringing endorsemnt? The designer of the worst RPG in human history loves my game. I was contemplating suicide for the next three weeks. It's like being told your screenplay is great by the author of Super Mario Brothers.

[RPJesus]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Gentlemen,

 

 

Take it easy, I sadly enough was one of the 10 foolish long beards to purchase Synnibar at Gen Con in 92' and the only two game modules to come out for it(the wound is still to deep for the heart to forget) and before you slam Gary Gygax's "Cyborg Commandos" I roleplay tested that game and gave it to thumbs up. In my defense, I was young...and needed the money!

RPJ

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I sadly enough was one of the 10 foolish long beards to purchase Synnibar at Gen Con in 92'...

 

Same here. After all, it included everything you needed to play the game in one volume!

[tracer]

I maybe a newbie to this message board, but I'm hardly what you'd call a newbie to the Hero system.

 

I've been playing Hero in its various incarnations, off and on, since the FIRST EDITION of Champions came out in 1981. That's the FIRST edition, you young whippersnappers. The one where hexes had a DCV of 0 for purposes of Area Effect attacks, and the rules for Multipower were impossible to decipher, and the pages looked like they were written on George MacDonald's typewriter. In the early 1980s, I once dressed up for Halloween by taking a foam rubber "group therapy bat" and taping a piece of paper to its side on which I'd written "OBVIOUS ACCESSIBLE FOCUS." The high point of my life came when my name appeared in the "Contributors and Playtesters" credit at the beginning of Champions 4th Edition in 1989. In the years and years I actively played, I accumulated a stack of self-made Hero-system character sheets an inch-and-a-half thick.*

 

I joined this message board because (A) I've transcribed most of my old Champions characters into HTML and put them all on my homepage earlier this year, and ( the Challenge of the SuperFriends complete season DVD came out.

 

 

 

 

*) That's "inch" as in 2.54 centimeters, not "inch" as in 2 meters, wise guys!

[RPJesus]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Yeah!! "Brick killed a guy!!!??"

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

The high point of my life came when my name appeared in the "Contributors and Playtesters" credit at the beginning of Champions 4th Edition in 1989. In the years and years I actively played' date=' I accumulated a stack of self-made Hero-system character sheets an [b']inch-and-a-half thick[/b].*

 

We're not worthy! We're not worthy!

 

What's your homepage URL? I have to see what an inch and a half of Champions characters looks like.

 

(And welcome!)

[lemming]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

For the love of God, don't remind me.

 

Reading Synnibar is a very bad experience, but I have a bad Synnibar experience that probably trumps you all. When i was touring the Northwest con circuit to promote the first edition of HeartQuest, I happened to run into the game's designer, Raven S. McCracken. A leather-clad, hypersexual man who was pormoting his next game at the same cons and seemed unaware of both his poor reputation in the industry and his own complete lack of talent as a game designer. (He was promoting a collectible board game that rivals his earlier work in its sheer awfulness.) Not only did he start lecturing me on how to be a success in the RPG bsuienss, but after reading HeartQuest he uniltaerally declared himself my biggest fan.

 

How that's for a ringing endorsemnt? The designer of the worst RPG in human history loves my game. I was contemplating suicide for the next three weeks. It's like being told your screenplay is great by the author of Super Mario Brothers.

I can say that Heartquest is a much better read. Granted I have Synnibar and have reread it and find it a hilarious read. HQ is a decent read for it's intended purpose.

[lemming]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I maybe a newbie to this message board, but I'm hardly what you'd call a newbie to the Hero system.

 

<snip> The high point of my life came when my name appeared in the "Contributors and Playtesters" credit at the beginning of Champions 4th Edition in 1989.

Hey tracer, did they spell your name right? I opted out which at the time was rather silly. I don't know if it was just the people at the Sunnyvale meeting that got their names mangled or if others did as well.

[lemming]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Gentlemen,

 

 

Take it easy, I sadly enough was one of the 10 foolish long beards to purchase Synnibar at Gen Con in 92' and the only two game modules to come out for it(the wound is still to deep for the heart to forget) and before you slam Gary Gygax's "Cyborg Commandos" I roleplay tested that game and gave it to thumbs up. In my defense, I was young...and needed the money!

RPJ

There were two modules! Damn, I only picked up one of them...

[Ehreval]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I'm a newbie to the board, but I've been playing in Hero system on and off for a number of years now. I joined the boards because I've been running my first supers game in Hero, despite the fact that I'm a die-hard GURPS fan in general. Frankly, though, Hero is the only system I've ever found that adequately represents what I love about the genre. (GURPS Supers *might* represent it well, but if you can parse GURPS Supers, you're either a better man than I am or very, very bored. )

 

That being said, Synnibar is, perhaps, the best read I've ever had from an rpg book. My first exposure to it was sitting up late one night in the early 80's after a lengthy gaming session (I can't remember whether it was Star Fleet Battles or Magic the Gathering) with a friend who shall be known here only as Smileylich, who showed me all the "best" portions of the book, and mutated me forever in the process.

 

Ah, the glories of logarithmic stats, and flies that rewrite your dna with each bite, and supersonic flying bears with laserbeam eyes... I cackled for hours. My personal theory is that the kind of brain damage Synnibar represents can only be caused by extreme cold digging its way into your gray matter. Good times.

 

As for being the worst RPG ever, as some have charged, well, it's not any worse than any of the other completely unplayable rpg's I've seen, and there are many.

[tracer]

What's your homepage URL? I have to see what an inch and a half of Champions characters looks like.

Well, okay, some of those characters were transcriptions of the characters that appeared in the Champions comic book (with a few personal revisions to bring 'em in line with the 4th Edition rules), so I didn't bother to copy those characters onto my webpages. Most -- but not all -- of my Champions characters are transcribed here:

 

http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/champions

 

Since the transcription process required me to type in all the character info by hand, I also took the opportunity to convert all those characters to 5th Edition rules. (Except for Blue Shooter. His powers depend on a loophole in the 4th Editon rules for Multipower. )

 

Of course, keep in mind that not all of my characters were the epitome of clever design. That huge slew of characters in "The Sanders Group" at the bottom of the page, for example, consists of folks like "Physical Defense Woman," who spent all 100 of her points on PD and nothing else.

[Susano]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

What's your homepage URL? I have to see what an inch and a half of Champions characters looks like.

 

http://surbrook.devermore.net/index/archive.html

 

This was something like 3" of character sheets the one time I printed it out (and that was years ago).

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Since the transcription process required me to type in all the character info by hand' date=' I also took the opportunity to convert all those characters to 5th Edition rules.[/quote']

 

You should check out Hero Designer. It's the most useful chararcter creation program Hero Games has ever released, and it has excellent export options.

[Amoeba Man]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I have found Hero Designer to be a wonderful tool to help me make characters that eventually find flaws with and discard. But I'm sure that's just me.

[tracer]

Re: Wolverine

 

http://x-men.the-wild-hunt.org/wolverine.html

Now hold on -- since when does Wolverine have a 30 STR?

[tgaptte]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Don't know if someone said it...but "The Incredibles" was a huge hit...that's gotta have some pull.

 

Tim

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Don't know if someone said it...but "The Incredibles" was a huge hit...that's gotta have some pull.

 

Tim

I think you were the first.

Good Call!

 

HM

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I happened to run into the game's designer' date=' Raven S. McCracken. A leather-clad, hypersexual man who was pormoting his next game at the same cons and seemed unaware of both his poor reputation in the industry and his own complete lack of talent as a game designer. (He was promoting a collectible board game that rivals his earlier work in its sheer awfulness.)[/quote']I had the misfortune of purchasing said collectible board game at DunDraCon a year or three ago. A kindly-seeming old lady was repping it in the dealer's room, and seemed vaguely stunned by the teeming masses of unwashed gamers with rough social skills. Taking pity on her, I let her kill five minutes by giving me her spiel about the game. Although it seemed only moderately interesting at best, I felt bad for this grandmotherly woman adrift in a sea of sleep-deprived, overcaffinated dorks... so I bought a couple of starter packs and two or three expansion packs (whatever their convention special was).

 

Only after I had retreated to my hotel room did I discover that He Who Must Not Be Named had designed the thing. Curses! Not only had I been hoodwinked into buying the notorious World Of Synnibarr years before (by interesting cover art and Christmas money aching to be spent), but now I'd been duped once again into giving my hard-earned cash to Mr. R. c.s. McEgo.

 

D'oh!

[AlHazred]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

Since the transcription process required me to type in all the character info by hand' date=' I also took the opportunity to convert all those characters to 5th Edition rules. (Except for Blue Shooter. His powers depend on a loophole in the 4th Editon rules for Multipower.)[/quote']

FWIW, I don't know if that was a "loophole" per se. I think it may just have been an unclear description. We always played as if it said "Active Points" in our group. I don't have my errata in front of me, though, so I could be mistaken.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Wolverine

 

Now hold on -- since when does Wolverine have a 30 STR?

 

I've seen some depictions of Wolverine as nearly superhumanly strong, especially during the Claremont-Byrne era. Note that under 5E definitions, 30 is the upper limit of Strength for non-super humans.

 

It's all a matter of individual interpretation, of course. Comic books are notoriously inconsistent sources for benchmarking characters' abilities.

[secretID]

Re: Wolverine

 

I've seen some depictions of Wolverine as nearly superhumanly strong' date=' especially during the Claremont-Byrne era.[/quote']

In the fight with Dark Phoenix, she turns Collossus back to flesh while he's holding a huge tree, and Wolv jumps in to help him catch it - that's pretty strong.

 

^^^Knows everything from Claremont/Byrne X-Men, virtually nothing of any comics since.

[Ehreval]

Re: Hooray for Newbies! why are you suddenly here?

 

I have a few of questions about the character construction for Wolverine:

 

1) I know you're simulating two different powers here, but what's the sense of buying both Extended Lifespan: Life Support (Longevity 800 Years) and To Tough To Die: Life Support (Longevity Immortal)? The benefit of having both seems marginal, and along the same vein of "you can't get something for nothing" I don't think a character should get nothing for something.

 

2) What is your rationale for having Sabretooth both as a hunted and as a rival? They both boil down to the same thing: Wolverine and Sabretooth want each other dead and will periodically go gunning for each other in addition to pulling off the kid gloves any time they see each other around. Maybe it's just my newbishness, but it looks like the character's getting points twice for the same enemy without any additional effects. I also wonder at the definition of Sabretooth as a "rival" since the two aren't in competition for the same jobs, money, fans, etc.

 

3) I've seen Wolverine question subjects before, but I'm not sure I would define what he does as "interrogation". Am I misinterpreting the skill, or would threatening to cut someone's family jewels off with adamantium claws be better modelled as some sort of intimidation rather than the highly-honed skill of interrogation practiced by some police, military intelligence and reporters? (Yes, I understand that some sort of coersion is always involved in interrogation, otherwise there'd be no significant difference between interrogation and conversation, but in interrogation there are tactics and strategies employed beyond the "tell me where the secret laboratory is before I poke out your eyeballs".) Of course, having not read the entirety of Wolverine's appearances, I might have missed something.

 

4) Does Wolverine's secret identity really come into play that often? I can't remember a single time that it specifically mattered whether or not the discovery of his real name caused a problem, let alone such a high percentage of the time. If it did, he'd be spending significant time in well over half of his adventures protecting his secret id, perhaps more since he often doesn't bother wearing any sort of mask.

 

-- Ehreval