sinanju

Ponce De Leon was looking for the fountain of youth in Florida. He never found it (or so history reports, anyhow), but that doesn't mean it's not there. In true Clasic Pulp fashion, your heroes could discover it only to see it destroyed by some catastrophe (either natural or manmade) before they can do anything with it, or maybe just after they do (a la Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail). Or it might be overrated, or it might do what it is reported to do, but only under the right circumstances, or at some cost.

You are correct, sir. I played a character like that once. It was a Round Robin game (each player acted as GM for 2-3 sessions, then passed the baton on to the next) in which we routinely gained 25 XP after each 2-3 session arc. We started as standard superhero level characters, but rapidly acquired ridiculous point totals*. I was playing a "genie" more or less--a VPP with the "cosmic" attributes. I was far more adaptable than anyone else, and for a while I was probably the most powerful because of it, but as the game went on, I fell behind the power curve for exactly the reasons mentioned. I had so many points locked up in the control cost of my cosmic power pool that while I could almost anything, I couldn't do any single thing as effectively as someone who specialized in it. *And we agreed to let one another use rules gimmicks and builds that none of us would have permitted if we'd been running a single-GM game. But part of the point of this campaign was to see what we could do, what broke the game and what didn't.

...and shortly afterward, all the Vampires come out of the closet.

Try having the "rules lawyer" tell you what sort of character he wants to play and YOU build the character. Or let him describe three, and you build them all and he can pick one to play. That way, you know whatever character he plays is acceptable to you. (If he isn't satisfied with any of your designs, maybe the two of you just aren't compatible and he should find another game.) But frankly, making rule calls is part of being a GM. It is and always has been, in every system. No game system can provide perfect balance and anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you a new one. It's not as much fun as designing NPCs or plots or building a world, but it's part of the job. And of course I've had players ask where the line is and then build right up to it. Or build something utterly overpowered and hand it to me. (I had a player once produce a doctor in GURPS with a medical skills in the mid-30s. I took one look and told him that he had to build a new character because THIS ONE had just been drafted as the President's personal physician and would not available to go adventuring. So he built another doctor with more reasonable skill levels.) You have to be willing to say no. If the player never learns (the rules lawyers of my acquaintance did, though), maybe you _can't_ game with him. Not everyone fits with everyone else.

To some extent, that's true. But a friend of mine who worked for many years as a jail guard (and other similar occupations before that) and now does a lot of seminars on violence (real world vs the comforting myths of the media and too many martial arts schools), use of force rules, and the like has often talked about how rookie cops aren't really considered true peers until their first real conflict. Because until you're confronted with up-close and personal violence (or the threat thereof) nobody--including YOU, no matter how well you think you will handle it--knows how you'll react. Some people run toward the sound of violence; some people run away; some freeze up; and some (mostly in jobs where they're supposed to deal with it) dither and _walk_ toward it, hoping the meat-eaters who ran ahead will take care of things before they get there. But at that point we're talking about the messiness of real world violence as opposed to a workable way to represent it in a game.

This. I know I've posted about this before, but I've played with whole groups of power-gamers/rules lawyers. It requires a firm GM willing and able to enforce limits to make that work, but with a couple of exceptions (guys who did, in fact, end up presiding over complete chaos like B.A. in Knights of the Dinner Table) we made it work. The thing is, all of these guys were power gamers/rules lawyers, but if you were able to tell them "Yes, that's legal under the rules but you can't do it in my game (explanation of why was optional)" they might grumble a bit, but then they'd come up with something more reasonable...and then settle down to role-playing. Champions is the most obvious example of this sort of thing, but it can be a problem in most rule sets. Ultimately, the rulebook is meaningless if the GM is unable or unwilling to set boundaries for his game and players.

Combat Paralysis. Not everyone, of course, by a long shot. But many, many people have seldom or never experienced real, in-your-face violence because they live in a remarkably safe society (despite the fearmongering of the news media and politicians). When confronted with it, they often freeze up--at least initially.

1. Recognizing when a piece of music from Film A has been lifted for use in a trailer for Film B (before the original score is completed) from just a few notes and 2. Recognizing a film score's composer by his distinctive sound almost instantly likewise.

I've used the "stun resistance" effect in a game. I was playing the Black Knight. His sole superpower was that he healed virtually instantly from even the most destructive attacks. The GM collaborrated on building the character. W gave him a moderate amount of armor, high damage reduction (all of it resistant), and the "takes no stun" automaton power, plus regeneration. The idea was that he had no actual armor, he actually TOOK all that damage, but most of it (what was accounted for by armor and damage reduction) healed instantly; the rest of it healed very fast (i.e., regeneration), and because he healed so insanely fast, he wasn't even slowed down by most attacks (i.e., takes no stun). End Result: a character who could be machine-gunned at point blank range, producing a spray of blood and viscera on the wall behind him...then punch out the guy who just shot him.

Well, that would be a GM call. You should check with him to see if you're on the same page about that. If _I_ were a GM and a player wanted "a sword I can summon and use at need and dismiss when I'm done" and bought it as a power (no Focus limitation or Summoning), I'd be fine with him using like an ordinary sword for martial maneuvers (as long as you had the martial skills necessary for the maneuvers).

Unless you want the Focus limitations (it can be taken away from him), I wouldn't bother with either approach. I'd just buy the power like any other innate ability. It "appears" when he wants to use it, vanishes when he's done (i.e., when he stops paying END if it costs END). Rather like the swords the Highlanders use. The only limitation I might put on it would be the "Schrodinger's Sword*" limitation--normally he can produce it at will; however, if he specifically puts it down somewhere and walks away from it, he can be ambushed and would NOT be able to manifest it unless he could get back to where he'd left it. (I came up with that after an episode of Highlander where Duncan left his sword in his car while jogging and was set upon by the bad guy and his dogs. Ordinarily he could always whip the sword out from "under his coat", but not that time.) *Unless it is specifically established that he left the sword somewhere else, it is assumed he has it handy.

I think you're on the right track in writing things down from the villain's point of view. I know I long ago stopped plotting adventures based on "what the characters will do" because player characters NEVER EVER do what you think they'll do. I'm not alone in using this approach, and I think it's helpful. I decide who the bad guys are for the plot. I decide what they want to accomplish, and how they plan to do so (what resources they have--men, material, information, etc), and a rough timeline. If the plan goes perfectly, how do they think it will play out? How will they avoid arrest? How will they prevent a successful investigation after the fact? Since no plan survives contact with the enemy, I decide how they'll respond to interference. How will the bad guys react when the heroes get involved? Or the cops? Will they patiently retreat, regroup, investigate these new players and plan anew? Try to bribe/scare off/extort/murder them? Run away? (It depends on how experienced/motivated they are.) I work out a few possible plot hooks so I can bring the players into the adventure. And then...I play it by ear. Since I know how the bad guys will react to most likely complications, it's fairly easy to tailor events to what the players decide to do. It also means I don't have to hope the players will follow any given lead or path. If they go chasing off after a wild goose I will give them a nudge in the right direction to avoid a boring, pointless session, but otherwise I let them choose their own path. If you have a number of plots in play, sometimes the players can't stop them all, or must choose which ones to focus on. Sometimes that means the bad guys succeed at something; and that's not a bad thing, it gives your world some verisimilitude, and shows the players that their decisions have consequences. And it's a lot easier on the GM than trying to anticipate the wacky thinking that PCs often engage in.

Transform seems like the obvious choice. Just add a power limitation that defines when it can work and when it can't. Duplicate isn't a good choice, since it's intended to duplicate a character, not inanimate objects. Transform really works better.

I'll second the recommendation of Eclipse Phase as a source for good transhuman idea. Also, the GURPS Transhuman Space books by Steve Jackson Games. If you want actual PC-starships, you'll have to work that out for yourself, because Eclipse Phase doesn't have FTL (other than the Gates left behind by the departing Titans, which humans use but don't understand in the slightest). I don't think Transhuman Space does either. On the other hand, at least one Eclipse Phase book (Panopticon, I think) does discuss "sleeving"* into a habitat. The solar system in Eclipse Phase is chock full of artificial habitats, from floating cities on Venus (literally, entire cities built on/into/around giant gasbags/dirigibles that float on the upper Venusian atmosphere) to toroid (donut-shaped) habitats to O'Neill cylinders to more sophisticated habitats, and hollowed out asteroids, pressure vessels deep in Titan's oceans, and on and on. And in a universe where ubiquitous computing is, uh, ubiquitous, and the human mind can be copied, saved, hacked, uploaded into inert (or "cold") storage, into an artificial reality, or downloaded (sleeved) into various (or multiple) bodies of every sort...someone playing the part of the central control of a large habitat is certainly doable.

Given that I tend to wind up gaming with (other) power-gaming rules lawyers, an open-ended "as many disads as you want"--even with diminishing returns after the first couple) would be a non-starter. Sure as shooting, SOMEONE would build a high-point-cost monstrosity and overpower all the other characters. Assuming I could trust the GM to winnow out such characters*, I'd probably buy somewhere between 50-75 points of disads. Exactly how many would come down to a balancing act between taking disads (or complications) I didn't really want just to get the points and shaving down my initial concept of the character to something affordable that maintains the flavor I want. *A group of power-gaming rules lawyers can be a lot of fun as long as the GM is willing and able to ride herd on them. He has to be enough of a rules lawyer himself to recognize an exploit when he sees one (preferably while vetting the characters before play), and willing to say no to a player when necessary. The players have to be willing accept "no" from the GM in the interests of everyone having a good time. Given those two things (both of which I've been lucky enough to find in more than one gaming group over the years), it results in a lot fun.

I don't dislike Complications. I dislike games in which I'm forced* to take Complications I don't really want to play out just to get the standard number of starting character points. If I was given 400 points, period, with no requirement for (and no extra points for) Complications, I would still take some. I'd just take the ones that fit my character concept and play them out. *For certain values of "forced"--your mileage may vary.

Speaking of Inability to Advance Further : One possibility for that scenario: a lack of resources. Specifically, in the Ringworld novels by Larry Niven, the natives of the ringworld are limited in what they can achieve by the utter lack of raw materials. They live on a ring of indestructible (by any force _they_ can generate) metal into which the landscape was sculpted by its builders, with no more than a few meters of topsoil. So: no oil, no coal, no metals to mine, no stone to quarry, etc. The only workable materials they have access to are plants (including trees for wood), and whatever they can scrounge from the remains of the ultra-tech civilization that ruled the ringworld before its collapse. It doesn't matter how smart or innovative you are if you simply don't have the materials you need.

I've never liked campaigns where I was expected to (required to, if I wanted to build my character on the same number of points as everyone else) load up on disads/complications until I was a quivering wreck of neuroses, with several severe physical limitations or weaknesses (like Kryptonite) and enemies Hunting me and on and on and on. So I liked the change in 6th Edition to generally not needing to accumulate so many disad points. But I would go one better: Don't require ANY complications of players. If the game is 400 point Supers, everyone gets 400 points. Period. If you want to take Complications, feel free. But you get no points for them...up front. (So don't bother with setting point values or frequency rolls or any of that.) When and if they come up IN PLAY, and you roleplay them, the GM should give you some XP for it. THAT'S how you get extra XP out of Complications. If they actually come up and you actually roleplay the consequences, you get a cookie. Metaphorically speaking. If they don't come up, or you don't roleplay them (meta excuse: you made your saving roll not to go beserk....) you don't get a point. It still gives the GM plot devices to use against you, but it doesn't require you to take any complications unless you really WANT to role-play them.

Wow. This sucks. I loved his novels, Galatea in 2D maybe even more than the Doc Sidhe novels. And, of course, I still own several of the Champions books he wrote. He'll be missed by a lot of people.

I agree--"carriers" seem extremely unlikely to me. Every ounce of additional weight required for a) the pilot and life support and c) control interfaces for big, blunt human hands and human eyes and ears...is an ounce that could have been devoted to additional fuel, payload, armor, etc. And a human pilot places strict limits on the accelerations and manuevers a fighter can employ, limits that a missile or drone doesn't have to accept. I've read recently that in "drone vs manned fighter" combat, drones generally lose. But we're in the earliest days of drone technology still. Given advances in computer power and "intelligence" and given drones built to make full use of the accelerations and maneuverability human-occupied craft cannot match, I think the day when robots rule the sky and human-manned fighters become obsolete will arrive, and probably sooner than we think.

And I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that. Batman's whole schtick is that he is crazy prepared. I'd probably allow that. (On the other hand, anyone else who wanted to get that deal would have to create a character just as skating-on-the-edge-of-sanity obsessed as Batman to justify it as well.)

Oh dear deity, Stargate Universe was ten pounds of **** in a five pound sack. (Takes a long, deep breath. I could rant on at length--and have on other fora--but I'll stop with that.) On the other topic...I'd forgotten about Space Above and Beyond (I also didn't like it), but that gives us three models for space militaries--the navy, air force, and marines. What about the army? Anyone? Buehler? You'd think that the navy would be the most likely model, given (as someone else mentioned) their experience at operating and fighting crowded warships in hostile environments. To say nothing of experience with fleet-style battles. But we used Air Force pilots for astronauts. So who knows? And it might be that we'll have to learn so much about building, maintaining and operating spaceships in a whole new environment that whatever experience the Navy has will be mostly irrelevant anyhow.

I loves me some space opera. I like David Weber's Honor Harrington universe*. Every book involves ginormous fleets of warships slugging it out with missiles, lasers, and whatnot. He pays lip service to Newtonian physics. While his universe boasts three--THREE--different ways to travel FTL, space battles still take place at sublight speeds mostly inside star systems, and often involve hours of maneuvering (often just closing the distance to weapons ranges**). The Mote in God's Eye (Niven & Pournelle) shows us an even more Newtonian-based universe (and warships). There is no such thing as artificial gravity. No FTL except naturally occurring jump points between systems. All the battles take place between ships moving at human-survivable speeds, and they use actual Newtonian propulsion systems that burn through huge quantities of fuel, which is a frequent issue for rapid travel. For my tastes, the Stargate: SG-1 tv show become less and less interesting the more it aped (in later seasons) all the tired Hollywood/Stark Trek tropes. They largely abandoned what made SG-1 unique and interesting (contemporary Americans exploring the universe, mostly on foot, via the stargate, using contemporary weapons and gear...for all the tired old cliches of Star Trek. A command crew fighting by pushing buttons on the bridge of a ship; force fields...always on the verge of failing. Ships always on the verge of catastrophic structural failure. Transporters. Space battles at knife fighting range. Et cetera. As far as realistic SF goes. I suspect we'll be living in a ubiquitous computing, augmented-reality cyber-future full of transhumanism (electronic AND biological) long before we have anything resembling convenient, high-speed space travel either in-system or FTL. If we ever do. Cyborgs and computer implants and a functional illusion of AI*** are looking a lot easier to manage than cracking the nut of getting around Newton's third law of motion or the speed of light. *Though my taste for his...excessively wordy writing style has waned. I mostly just skim his books these days for plot and space battles. **Though the ranges are nothing like the knife-fighting distances we see on tv and in the movies. They routinely fire missiles moving at way more than 800 gravities of acceleration that still take minutes to reach their targets. ***Is that machine _really_ self-aware and sentient? Or is it just incredibly cleverly programmed to seem that way? How would we know for sure? Given that philosophers still argue over whether WE are truly self-aware or just think we are, I don't know that there can ever be a definitive answer. And anyhow, it won't really matter. If my personal version of Tony Stark's "Jarvis" speaks and listens and behaves like it's truly self-aware...that's good enough.

I've not had much experience with PC vs PC fights, but if they're of the classic "two heroes stumble across one another and fight until they figure out they're on the same side" type, I'd probably dispense with the rules. Assume that they don't do any real damage to one another and just let them narrate an entertaining fight. "I punch Jim's character through a wall!" "I come flying out of the hole and pile drive Tony's character into the sidewalk." And so forth, until the inevitably realize that they should be working together. At which point, they brush themselves off, shake hands, and go after the real bad guy.

Kamikazi--based on the literal meaning of the words (divine wind). A divine (or semi-divine) super with wind/weather control powers.