Can this Detect even work?

[Jaxom]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

No-one said it was going to be easy!

 

If you want to take the lazy GM road then that's up to you...

 

I take your point though. Personally I would rule that there is a generic teleport shining thread thingy that can be detected and that you might have a mind scan type roll to determine whether it is a particular teleporter's trail that you are following - perhaps a specialist tracking skill or something?

 

No-one said it should be easy for the players either!

 

I have not been following the other thread that Sean mentioned but because I have another character who is a teleporter I would take exception to this idea specifically because of the SFX I have written for the teleport. Specifically, my floating locations are local offsets stored in a suit of power armor. There is *clearly* nothing linking me to any of my destinations unless you can jack in and hack my suit or read my mind.

 

I think my answer to this one has to depend entirely on the SFX. If you're "memorizing" a location that shifts like a person or a vehicle as a reference then there has to be some kind of "shining chord" which may be as simple as a radio frquency signature. Anything that can be viewed as a "fixed" location, though, can be located using computer power. No need for anything external to the PC in order to get to something like that.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Isn't this idea exactly how the SFX for Star Trek's transporters work?

 

Especially since their communication devices can be used to "tag" the target.

 

Just An Observation

 

- Christopher Mullins

That would be a good example of the Tech Based Teleport I mentioned - there is an object that allows one to track/target the Floating Point.

 

And a good example of how to let a Detect Teleport Location into the game where Teleport has a specific defined method of use.

 

It gets harder in games where Teleport can have any number of SFX attached to it.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Jaxom's point comes back to my concern about this as a single 'detect': it is a metagame detect construct that ignores sfx and in-game reality. In the power armour example you COULD build it so that it records the position you are in every 5 minutes (for example) to allow you to backtrack, if necessary. In that case the character might not even know where the floating point is located, and if the position is recorded as a vector to a point reoorded by (say) a gyroscopic compass, all the armour is going to have stored in it is a string of binary that you would need to be able to understand before you could interpret it even if you COULD hack the armour systems.

 

That's the problem with Hero (or the joy of it ) - an enormous amount of choice.

 

In any given game world, memorisation, silver strands, retrocognition, beta muon emission and so on and so forth can ALL form part of the way in which the power works: it doesn't make sense (to me) to have a single detect that cataches all of them.

 

Here's a thought: if two teleporters DID tag an area with a magical emission, or a radiation source or somesuch, and used identical sfx: could one 'accidentally' teleport to the other's floating location.

 

Sounds like the start of a scenario to me.....

[ghost-angel]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Jaxom's point comes back to my concern about this as a single 'detect': it is a metagame detect construct that ignores sfx and in-game reality. In the power armour example you COULD build it so that it records the position you are in every 5 minutes (for example) to allow you to backtrack, if necessary. In that case the character might not even know where the floating point is located, and if the position is recorded as a vector to a point reoorded by (say) a gyroscopic compass, all the armour is going to have stored in it is a string of binary that you would need to be able to understand before you could interpret it even if you COULD hack the armour systems.

 

That's the problem with Hero (or the joy of it ) - an enormous amount of choice.

 

In any given game world, memorisation, silver strands, retrocognition, beta muon emission and so on and so forth can ALL form part of the way in which the power works: it doesn't make sense (to me) to have a single detect that cataches all of them.

 

Here's a thought: if two teleporters DID tag an area with a magical emission, or a radiation source or somesuch, and used identical sfx: could one 'accidentally' teleport to the other's floating location.

 

Sounds like the start of a scenario to me.....

Perhaps if you require the Detect to be defined at the 10pt Level with a mandatory Extra Time to "adjust to the correct SFX" and possibly even another -0 Limitation "Only Teleports previously encountered"

 

Thus allowing the power, slightly metagameish as it is it's not horrible, and a realistic (that word always looks funny when talking about things like this) reason you can Detect a large number of different kinds of Teleport SFX.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Perhaps if you require the Detect to be defined at the 10pt Level with a mandatory Extra Time to "adjust to the correct SFX" and possibly even another -0 Limitation "Only Teleports previously encountered"

 

Thus allowing the power, slightly metagameish as it is it's not horrible, and a realistic (that word always looks funny when talking about things like this) reason you can Detect a large number of different kinds of Teleport SFX.

 

I tend to be overly paranoid about these things anyway: I doubt whether (in practice) the ability to detect other people's floating loactions is ever going to be too much of a problem, so I think your solution: throw more points at it and call it good - works well for me

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

I have not been following the other thread that Sean mentioned but because I have another character who is a teleporter I would take exception to this idea specifically because of the SFX I have written for the teleport. Specifically, my floating locations are local offsets stored in a suit of power armor. There is *clearly* nothing linking me to any of my destinations unless you can jack in and hack my suit or read my mind.

 

What do you mean by 'local offset'?

 

The problem here is we are talking about something that is currently impossible and so we have absolutely no reference for how it works beyond the game mechanics!

 

Good job we're only talking about playing a game!!

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

What do you mean by 'local offset'?

 

The problem here is we are talking about something that is currently impossible and so we have absolutely no reference for how it works beyond the game mechanics!

 

Good job we're only talking about playing a game!!

 

What?

 

This is only a GAME?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

What?

 

This is only a GAME?

 

 

I keep forgetting.

 

 

Sean, Santa Claus is real and will be visiting you in less than 50 days if you are a good boy....

 

 

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

I keep forgetting.

 

 

Sean, Santa Claus is real and will be visiting you in less than 50 days if you are a good boy....

 

 

 

 

Whew!

 

Another existential crisis averted by the Doc!

[Jaxom]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

What do you mean by 'local offset'?

 

The problem here is we are talking about something that is currently impossible and so we have absolutely no reference for how it works beyond the game mechanics!

 

Good job we're only talking about playing a game!!

 

Actually, it is done in real life all the time today. For things as passive as astronomy where you really kinda need to know your relation to the night sky all the time so that you know where to point your telescope to active things like laser-guided projectiles and missiles targetted using GPS satellites.

 

So instead of worrying about how to teleport there, we're doing other things but the point remains the same. Do you have a radar tracking beacon? An active signature? A static signature which relies on knowing all your momentum vectors relative to a fixed point in space or even something that simply broadcasts like GPS satellites?

 

Heck, you could do teleportation *today* simply by storing one set of GPS coordinates and then calculating an offset to another and jumping. GPS navigation is exactly the same thing but with limitations Delayed Effect and Must Pass Through Intervening Space. Perfect example of something with no form of "shining chord".

 

In the case of GPS navigation you'd find destinations by mind-reading. For a laser-guided missile you'd use some kind of optical detector and for a radio beacon target you'd use a radio reciever. Sure, I'm fine allowing a "Detect" for any one of these, but I am not going to allow any general detect for this, even with limitations.

[Jaxom]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Sorry, by local offset I meant exactly what someone else mentioned above. A suit-based gyro allows the suit to know it's exact position relative to last stored coordinates based on gyro movement. Like I said in the last post, you can do the same thing using a set of GPS sats though. Anything where you have a fixed reference like reliable Gyro data or GPS signal will allow the same kind of calculations.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

So far what I'm getting is a fixed location. I can see how a fixed location works with GPS - you know where the original location was and you know where you are now.

 

What about the floating location, for example the team bus? Obviously the bus could be broadcasting its location (the detect becomes metagamish but then so are affects desolid and armour piercing). What about teleporting to two feet behind a particular person - I presume that you'd disallow that for the powersuit character (a disadvantage) but then not allow for the detect to work versus the floating locations that is used by powersuit (an advantage) - it balances out.

 

I'm fine with people not allowing the detect in their game - I understand and even agree with the arguments against it. I just think that for superhero rubber science I'd be inclined to allow it.

 

 

Doc

[zornwil]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

As stated by some here, I can see allowing it, so long as the rational seems okay in a comic-book (or other genre as appropriate) world.

 

What I'd add, in fact, is if the detect is built largely dependent on OTHER characters' SFX (e.g., "I only detect if it he teleporter leaves a mark on te object, not just some psi-print (btw, I agree, nice idea from McCoy) or anything that relies on retrocognition"), it's worth a Limitation (what that value is depends on your game!).

[OddHat]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

What I had in mind was something more along this line:

 

Say there's a charcter (let's call him Sensor) who has the power Detect Fixed and Floating Teleport Locations as Sense and as part of the Sight Group. He has no special extra range (no Telescopic or Megascale) on this sense -- just what comes with the Simulated Sense Group.

 

If he's walking down the street and passes a lamp post that Globetrotter (the long-range teleporter) has "tagged" as a Fixed Location, will Sensor 'see' something about the lamp post (a glow, or whatever his chose special effect is) when he looks at it?

 

Why or why not?

 

Suppose that Globtrotter is in Tahiti, and the lamp post is currently outside of Globetrotter's range, long though it may be. Will that change the answer?

 

 

Haven't read the rest of the thread, but sure.

 

Mechanically, "Detect Floating T-Port Location" is a legal build.

 

From a special effect point of view, retrocognition, precognition, "magic", and psychometry could all do this regardless of how the object was tagged. It's more of a stretch with other SFX, but it's always harder to justify some effects with some SFX than others.

 

The SFX of the tag come into play as well. If Tagging is just memorization, then some kind of psionic or mystic SFX would be the easiest justification for the detect. If the tag is a micro-radio transmitter, then even HRRH might have a shot at detecting it.

 

As much as we try to divorce mechanics from SFX in Hero, they do interact.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

I would say yes; though some SFX might indicate otherwise.

 

And in fact, this is one of those cool "odd" Powers that rarely comes up for a character, but when it does its a fun character defining "remember that time" kind of thing.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

One of my players is developing a new character, mostly teleport-based powers, so while thinking about suggestions I could make (or problems that I, as a GM, might run in to), this came to mind; since I could see an argument both ways, I decided to ask for a 2nd (and 3rd and 4th and ...) opinion.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Another thought would be allowing the detect, but with a caveat that it only works on Locations that have been used at least once.

 

In effect not detecting the "memorized" location, but detecting the traces of previous teleports themselves.

 

just one more way to look at it.

 

by much the same token, a character with precog as part of a suite of enhanced senses could do it just fine... he "sees" that someone will use the location to 'port to eventually.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Mechanically it is legal -- the real question is if you as the GM want such an ability in your game. All else is of secondary concern, really.

[i3ullseye]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Mechanically it isn't illegal. Just more expensive than a basic detect.

 

Detect: Temporal Anomolies (teleports)- 5 pts.. Sense +2 pts... Transdimensional (any dimension including future and past).. +1

 

Total cost... 14 points.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

On a practical level.....detecting TP locations is all well and good, but often they are going to be in places that are not easily accessible, and unless you do some spiffy stuff to detects, the range is not going to be long enough to spot, except by GM fiat or sheer luck, most TP locations.

 

This also comes back to a 'senses' bugbear of mine - the fact that N-Ray is defined in terms of what you can detect rather than as a seperate adder - is your detect, in effect, N-Ray? If it is then this would be a potentially very powerful way of potting TPorters bases...which could be a bit of a game breaker...

 

My main problem with this though is that, unless you have some very cleverly defined sfx, this feels like a meta-game construction.

[i3ullseye]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Well, it certainly is a Meta game construction. sometimes they are the only way to get to a specific concept however. I would say if this doesn't sit well with the GMs particular style, you could then also add Megascale to this. +1 1/2 should cover just about anything. Thats here to the moon. The total cost now jumps to 24 pts... still resonable. If you want it just enough range to cover the local state perhaps, then you are going to keep it considerably less.

 

Now if the idea of the detect seems off, we can then model this on Clairsentience. At a base of 60 pts for the past, present and future, at base range, it can be pricey. But if we apply a decent limitation to it since it is only teleport spots, it will still probably be reasonably in the 20 to 30 point range when done.

 

Is that alot for a sense? heck yeah. But it can also be crippling to your opponent if you can sense his movements before he makes them, or after he has made them.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

On a sheerly practical experience POV, looking at it from a GM's perspective, it could set a WAY dangerous precident.

Example:

From my perspective as a player...

If I had thought through this kinda detect before and thus could justify it SFX wise, I sure as hell would have worked up something like this with my gadgeteer when we went up against Zodiac. After about the third time they ALL escaped with their mass badguy t-port "bad guys get away" power, if I could've come up with something that would have been able to snif out t-port locations, I EVENTUALLY would have figured out a way to correlate the data together into some targeting coordinates. Followed by a barrage of small yeild fission weapons... I used to get VERY frustrated at being yanked around by bald-faced plot devices.

 

One of the resasons why I've never been to fond of modules.... I hate the "Something happens so you respond, but alll the bad guys get away and so you have to wait and do it again. Repeat." Plot style the sometimes produce. As is, after the third enstallment, the plot kinda petered out. I think the GM realized how frustrated we were... I literally think we KILLED 3 or 4 members of Zodiac in that 3rd fight. We morphed from Bronze age to the hardest of Iron age we were so determined that these F*&kers wouldn't get away clean again. It was interesting to see just HOW insane we were able to get with creative teamwork, pulling out all the reasonable stops, and making sure that various powers (VPP's & MP's) were configured in the optimal ways.

 

Granted a lot of the teamwork consisted of "set them up so the gadgeteer can lock on with his computer, analyze their defences and then blow big fri&&n holes through them with his big a$$ed anti-super gun."

Like I said... we went Iron age all over those mothers.

 

Sorry... derailed with a little warstory there...

 

Yeah, anyway... IF we'd have been able to trace T-ports in any fashion, bad things probably would've happened.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Sounds like more of an issue of an adversarial mindset on the part of the players and / or the GM rather than a storytelling mindset.

 

 

The classic supers genre doesnt work well as an adversarial game, IMO, for just that sort of reason -- ultimately extreme "final solutions" start to happen, and that breaks the genre. If the players are do not allow the campaign to play out in a fashion similar to the way comic books are written -- the simulationist / storybuilding approach -- then every thing boils down to who can kill who. Personally I find that sort of a scenario to be a travesty of the genre and incredibly boring to boot.

 

 

Personally, from my vicarious impressions of Dr. Anamoly's posts I think his group is more storytelling based, in which case the ability would definitely be an interesting story hook and allow the GM and player(s) to collaborate to create an interesting series of events. I could be wrong however, and if the group is more adversarial then the capacity for such an ability to frag over opponents w/ TPort should certainly be considered.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Sounds like more of an issue of an adversarial mindset on the part of the players and / or the GM rather than a storytelling mindset.

 

 

The classic supers genre doesnt work well as an adversarial game, IMO, for just that sort of reason -- ultimately extreme "final solutions" start to happen, and that breaks the genre. If the players are do not allow the campaign to play out in a fashion similar to the way comic books are written -- the simulationist / storybuilding approach -- then every thing boils down to who can kill who. Personally I find that sort of a scenario to be a travesty of the genre and incredibly boring to boot.

 

 

Personally, from my vicarious impressions of Dr. Anamoly's posts I think his group is more storytelling based, in which case the ability would definitely be an interesting story hook and allow the GM and player(s) to collaborate to create an interesting series of events. I could be wrong however, and if the group is more adversarial then the capacity for such an ability to frag over opponents w/ TPort should certainly be considered.

 

The odd thing about the whole situation is that by and large we all WERE a storytelling based group of players. I don't know if it can be chalked up to a case of ourr friends GMing style being off, or from the way the book was written (I still haven't ever read Zodiac Conspiracy), but when we were trying to go the high road in genre, we got exactly NOWHERE. after several sessions, 2 of which involved fights that resolved NOTHING, and led to us getting our heads handed to us... to the point that my gadgeteer was out of both fights not from damage, but because he was triaging our downed members trying to stabilize them (Yeah, lots of negative body), we had had enough. If we had been able to come up with ONE lead, we would have been on it like pirahannas, trying to take the plot anywhere other than "Wait for the badguys to show up again so we can go try and get killed again".

 

In retrospect, it was a bit of an overreaction, but not an unexpected one. Nor totally unjustified.

And to be clear... this gadgeteer started out as a street level character. Most of the rest of the team was pretty straight up Bronze... I was the token "killer" character to provide the proper moral squabbles among the team

I was also the team leader, largely because PRIMUS prefered the team to have a more militant leader. So a lot of what went on, interaction wise, was the endless haggling as the team came up with plans and reasons for acting in ways that weren't as final... kinda how SG1 always has to wrangle against their orders. It generally made for a good game and a fun to roleplay dynamic.

This time tho, everyone just went along with my plans...

not a good sign in and of itself.

[BoneDaddy]

Re: Can this Detect even work?

 

Sorry' date=' by local offset I meant exactly what someone else mentioned above. A suit-based gyro allows the suit to know it's exact position relative to last stored coordinates based on gyro movement. Like I said in the last post, you can do the same thing using a set of GPS sats though. Anything where you have a fixed reference like reliable Gyro data or GPS signal will allow the same kind of calculations.[/quote']

Arguing that your SFX renders perceiving your teleport locations impossible is sort of funny, given that teleporting is also impossible.