artemis_san

Re: Naruto characters ^.^ I apologize in advance if someone's aleady posted the characters somewhere ... I've spent the last couple days looking for them. John B.

^.^ Has anyone come up with a HERO System or Hero Designer character set for Naruto (either the character, or any or all of them from the series)? My friend is a HUGE Naruto fan, and I would love to be able to show him how the characters would look in the HERO system. Thanks much, John B.

Re: Transporter Accident ^.^ Someone once wrote a Trek story where Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelly all switched places with their characters in a transporter accident. Now, as to my most recent characters... "Bones" - cult researcher in ghostbusters-like campaign - might fill journal after journal with information about the various aliens and artifacts that can be found pretty much anywhere in the Bajoran star system. Zim - just like the cartoon character, only COMPETANT - Oh my Gawd, Zim with real weapons... John B. Laramie, WY

Re: Help with plot ^.^ About the player backgrounds... I am just about to start up a campaign again, and I handed my players background sheets and they started working away. Some of this will suggest to me additional skills or perks that might fill out their characters a bit more... But one player simply sat there and looked at the sheet. When we asked him what was up, he said he had never had to do one of these for any of his characters, that he just wanted to play the game and was not interested much in the background. Well, I was stuck for a bit. I didn't want to push him away from the game because of something that is actually optional, but at the same time, I wanted to see if he could THINK about what his character is...I am SO sick of games where you are basically playing World of Warcraft with your stat sheet in front of you. However, then he mentioned he wanted to play a character similar to Tom Paris (helmsman on Star Trek Voyager, for those who don't know). I was then able to supply him with a background based on Paris, who was assigned to Voyager after being in prison. Our character was recently released from the Longshot Cryogenics Facility, where he did time for a crime he did not commit... John B. Laramie, WY

Re: Help with plot ^.^ Yeah, while I am not a great fan of railroading, at times, it has to be done...and it sounds like this is one of those times. A lot of the responses so far have been along the lines of smacking the players with a big fiish, then an even bigger one, and then an even BIGGER one. When listening to the most recently posted episode of the Game Master Show podcast, they mentioned the use of dark secrets and dark pasts and the point that either the players develop or go along with whatever the disadvantage is, or they pick something else. Not to be a complete jerk here, but it doesn't sound like the players are getting too involved in the dark secrets area of their characters... So for the short term, do some railroading. Smack the characters with big fish. However, once they are on the trail of whatever it is you are looking for them to be going after, ease up on them slowly and allow them to continue driving the plot forward. Also, consider giving an extra XP point or two for good roleplaying. John B. Laramie, WY

Re: How To Create Star Trek Plots ^.^ "And I honestly don't care what RIAA or MPAA defines as "legitimate", "copying", or "piracy", any more than I care if a sociopathic rapist defines what he does as "love"." Wow, good one. John B. Laramie, WY

Re: How to organise space ^.^ Subspace signals are also vulnerable to interference. In Star Trek's "The Immunity Syndrome", the subspace signals were being basically jammed by the nearby EM backwash being thrown off by a giant space amoeba. Basically, feel free to muckity-muck with the radio as much as you like in games. As to the provinces rebelling against the central government, without using the example of the South during the Civil War (oh wait...I just did...), wasn't that the central plot behind Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series? John B. Laramie, WY

Re: Serial Campaign Episode ^.^ PTA is a pretty good resource for how to arrange a campaign that is specifically designed as a television series. PTA was also featured on The Game Master show podcast. I've ran a game called Nexus, using alternately GURPS and HERO System. It has ran for going on 14 seasons and 275 episodes, and I will echo a lot of what has already been said. Perhaps the biggest point I can make is don't let the Overplot squish everything else out of your campaign. Take a look at your campaign world and see what all might be going on. Take some elements of the Overplot and throw them in, but feel free to weave perhaps one element into a story that otherwise has nothing to do with the Overplot. In my own experience, it's actually feasible not to even have an Overplot. There might be a subplot that turns the episode into a two or three-parter, but Nexus has been run without an over-arching Overplot, and in a way, this gives you the freedom to do a lot of different things without feeling like you have done nothing to advance the over-arching storyline. It also allows for guest GMs to do their own thing without wrecking your plot. Feel free to use OTHER campaigns for ideas! For example, our group is currently running a modern-day ghost busters-like campaign. SO, my first episode of Nexus in Season 14 will have the characters assigned by the agency that was in the ghost busters campaign to track down a missing ship that has been infested with vampires and zombies and what not... Since the vampires are a historic enemy of Nexus, I can have a group of them come back later and put them in the role of helping some Hesperian refugees, and put the players in the awkward spot of dealing with a group of bad guys who are actually doing a good deed. Music can be nice, if it is done well. It can emphasize a scene, or a genre. If it's done poorly, it can become a distraction, and I've had both happen to me. Try it out, and see what the players like. It might be the case that the music saves the episode. I had one episode called "Ahrlohn" where the music was what gained a four-star rating for the episode, in part because the music meshed so well with each scene. That was an episode where a player will prolly be forever remembered for nearly destrying a castle by lighting off a fireball in the castle's sewers (all that methane...) John B. Laramie, WY

Re: How to organise space ^.^ This all assumes that your empire is not set up like the US, with a strong central government, sitting atop a territory administered by smaller, but loyal provincial governments. At that point, it wouldn't matter where any rebellion happened, the provincial government, or even the planetary government would have the first crack at putting the rbellion down, and Oh, By The Way, the provinvial government would call up the central government and inform them, so that the reinforcements can be on the way sooner. Think about it this way, notice how secessionist groups never really get going in the US? Conspiracy theories aside, the fact that the Feds are willing to come in on families and religious groups that in no way threaten the stability of the nation as a whole, shows me that on a galactic level, a rather large empire can be created through the use of a federal/state bureaucracy and power system. Now if a nation gets extremely large, like the Imperium in Traveller, the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, and such, the biggest threat is either systemic corruption in which case, the government system breaks down under its own weight, or the threat of MULTIPLE revolts in disparate areas of the empire, which strains the resources of the state. Artemis_san Laramie, WY