zakueins Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 That's the question-in your game universe, when do you know that things have gotten REALLY bad? The sort of "Destroyer Stomping Detroit" kind of bad? In the Third Age setting of the Six Ages Universe (coming to a game store near you...hopefully before 2010...), things are BAD when the Joint Metahuman Task Force calls in more than two Section teams, a couple of operational companies of JMTF troops, and at least one AC-130J "Nightmare Spooky" Spectre with the multi-megawatt laser cannon and the eight railguns on the left side.... (For reference, Section One is the "show the flag" team, about in terms of power level as the Champions. Many of the other teams are about 5-10% more powerful...) This probably means that Ra has come out himself and at least three other of his fellow deities (and that Horus is probably going to come in spitting fire and farting thunderbolts) or Lord White has really decided to cut loose... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JmOz Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? For my world it is when the main team all show up somewhere. The team is called the Centurians, it is 100 members strong, in function it is actualy more like 11 smaller teams (10 have 7 members, one has 5) and some reserve/freelancers/retainers. SO when all 100 are together (actually 99, one of them never leaves the main base) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Comic Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? An old gaming group of mine was quite handy at _never_ realizing it. Dr. Destroyer, on a floating island, in control of the world's nukes? Let's get him! Cthulu in downtown New York? Load up the trucks with dynamite, we got him cornered, now! Clown Commander and Foxbat in a pie factory? Wait. Do we have forks? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Usually it's more a case of situation, rather than who turns out to deal with it. After all, the PCs don't only turn up at apocalypic crises. Otherwise, they would spend a lot of time sitting around watching TV on the TroublAlert. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? In the Marvel Universe, it's whenever you spot the Watcher. He always comes early to the Apocalypse to make sure he gets a front-row seat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zakueins Posted November 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? And, when he gets really settled in, and has the Gigantic bowl of popcorn and the 20,000 galleon soda...worry. In the Marvel Universe' date=' it's whenever you spot the Watcher. He always comes early to the Apocalypse to make sure he gets a front-row seat.[/quote'] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clsage Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? In the Marvel Universe' date=' it's whenever you spot the Watcher. He always comes early to the Apocalypse to make sure he gets a front-row seat.[/quote'] I can't recall for certain but I think it was in a recent story arc in The Fantastic Four that had a panel where there were....six or eight watchers standing there. I believe Ben Grimms' reaction was something along the lines of "Well. THIS can't be good." -Carl- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? I like the Watcher reference! Who is the Watcher of the Champions Universe? A Time Traveller perhaps? Hmmm... QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psychonaut_raz Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? In the old Marvel game I played, it was usually when Dr Doom rocked up because it meant there was something WAY bigger going on than a standard superhero/villain fight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Badger Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? I'm thinking if a King of Edom appears, something bad might be coming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Certified Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Special guest stars, when we're in a game and the GM feels the need to bring in other heroes to aid us we know what ever we're going into has got to be extremely bad. Shameless plug below: The following is an excerpt from the project I have been working on. It's an older draft of one section of the introduction but hopefully it gets the point across about the fan and the stuff and the connecting. The Storm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karmakaze Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? In my old University of Hellenback games, it was when the departmental secretary to the Parapsychology department was on vacation. The PC's would drop in from time to time, and the only times she wasn't there was when something really awful was on the horizon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Most of my past CU-based campaigns have included Nuada of the Silver Hand, from Kingdom of Champions. He was a good weathervane for coming catastrophes, since he normally only went into action if he detected major extradimensional incursions. I like the Watcher reference! Who is the Watcher of the Champions Universe? A Time Traveller perhaps? Hmmm... QM Closest analogue would be the Witness (Hidden Lands), sort of a blend of the Watcher and the Phantom Stranger. Per your Time Traveller suggestion, one could certainly use Captain Chronos (Conquerors, Killers, And Crooks) to warn of disasters. As written he's somewhat comical, but he is supposed to be in this era to prevent some future catastrophe. However, he's always concerned about disturbing the timestream by saying or doing too much, so he'd be good for providing enigmatic clues and then disappearing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkham Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Rarely do the players realize when the feces has struck the rotary oscillator. Only when it is accompanied by a large neon glowing sign and bullhorns screaming "This is a major event!" do they start thinking, "Hmm, perhaps this is a bigger problem than we thought." example: Me: "You're in the middle of lunch in San Jose with their superheros when you notice a mushroom cloud growing over San Francisco. What do you do?" Player of time traveling PC: "We should probably do something about that, shouldn't we?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? There's the proverbial ramp-up. Typically it's the last game of the current run of the campaign and all the other games have lead up to it. They know that if Godzilla shows up on the shore in game two of the campaign that they're going to meet something bigger later on Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hfergus Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? The main way my players know it is big s**t is Olorin has stopped smiling and has black lightning coursing over his body. It means he is really p*ss*d, and likely to do something rather violent (as in heart flying from foes body, going to Olorins hand and bursting into flames. Olorin then normally yells "NEXT!") Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkfire Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? When superman shows up. In the Archons' Campaign Usually when Jade and Darkfire agree on a course of action, or the party decides its time to call in reinforcements(its happened once in years of playing). In the Campaign I GM its when Paradox (metamorph) exclaims its time for a move through anybody see a news van. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaras Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? When players start wondering whether placing Thanos in hotsleep was a bad idea- just look at what turned up in his abscence! When the GM announces that China is airbursting nukes above its own cities in order to take out alien invaders. In a moment of introspection you realize that, all in all, you work more with Destroyer than against him....and you think you are doing the right thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkfire Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? In a moment of introspection you realize that, all in all, you work more with Destroyer than against him....and you think you are doing the right thing. HA! thats the truth! rep to you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JmOz Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? When players start wondering whether placing Thanos in hotsleep was a bad idea- just look at what turned up in his abscence! When the GM announces that China is airbursting nukes above its own cities in order to take out alien invaders. In a moment of introspection you realize that, all in all, you work more with Destroyer than against him....and you think you are doing the right thing. HA! thats the truth! rep to you. As darkfire has no rep power, and I so agree, I have also given you rep Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jkwleisemann Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? Varies from one game/setting to another. Things that make the characters say "oh dear... this is bad." Colton High North: When either Heartbreaker or Outsider cut loose with their powers, property values are about to go down. It's been debated which of the two is more dangerous; Heartbreaker only really cuts loose when he's lost control, and so the devastation will generally cap out when he gets it back, but unless he does there's a solid chance he'll end up detonating everything within a mile or so of his current location. Outsider, on the other hand... he only cuts loose *very* intentionally. And when he does... well, see the prior "things have gotten bad when a King of Edom shows up" post. Defenders of Colton: The Backworld version of the team shows up - the one that happened when Heatwave went bad and *let* the Dragon make him his avatar in a divergent timeline. Most any other game I run: When Dr. Destroyer dies. They may not realize it yet, but it's *never* a good thing when Zerstoiten bites the big one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Radar Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? When the aliens land and you see they're wearing a power belt that looks the same as the one around your waist. Only they're wearing it on their thumb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metaphysician Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? I don't think I've really had a nice "oh shit" moment yet. I suppose if Tir Numen ever actually openned up and girded for war, that'd be such a moment. . . but I can hardly think what would get them to do so. *Maybe* the imminent destruction of the Milky Way. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BcAugust Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? *coughs* In Ancient Aberrant, it's when Artemis gets knocked out of the fight, though that's only happened once(Main brick... and Healer for the rest). Hasn't happened in Vanguard yet, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinecone Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Re: When Do Your Characters Know When The S**T Has Well And Truly Hit The Fan? That's the question-in your game universe, when do you know that things have gotten REALLY bad? The sort of "Destroyer Stomping Detroit" kind of bad? In the Third Age setting of the Six Ages Universe (coming to a game store near you...hopefully before 2010...), things are BAD when the Joint Metahuman Task Force calls in more than two Section teams, a couple of operational companies of JMTF troops, and at least one AC-130J "Nightmare Spooky" Spectre with the multi-megawatt laser cannon and the eight railguns on the left side.... (For reference, Section One is the "show the flag" team, about in terms of power level as the Champions. Many of the other teams are about 5-10% more powerful...) This probably means that Ra has come out himself and at least three other of his fellow deities (and that Horus is probably going to come in spitting fire and farting thunderbolts) or Lord White has really decided to cut loose... The players get nervous when I get real cheerfull... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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