sinanju

Re: Disadvantage I like this a lot. I've created a lot of characters to submit to online games, and typically they have 150 points worth of Disads, with a limit of 50 points in any one category. I hate that. I can pile on Psychs and Social Limitations all day--I use them to flesh out the character's personality. But I quickly hit the limit on those and then have to hunt around for the least troublesome mix of other things I can invent. Just limiting it to 100 points of Disads and/or no cap on a particular category (though of course the GM is free to reject Fugitive Guy and his 150 points worth of Hunteds) would go a long way toward making ME a happy camper. And in the end, that's what matters, right?

Re: WWYCD: Attraction Loop Hell's Angel -- With COM and PRE both at 25, this pretty much par for the course for her. In her heroic identity, that is. If it starts happening to Gayle Roark, mild-mannered novelist, she'd be surprised and a little alarmed. She'd also want to find the cause, and would enlist her fellow heroes in doing so. But in the mean time, being something of a hedonist, she wouldn't be averse to letting those attractive men have their way with her...as long as they're single (no homewrecker, she!).

Re: WWYCD: Ignorance is Bliss This actually happened in-game to Hell's Angel in a PbEM game I'm participating in. She stumbled upon a website devoted to her. It included news reports of her appearances, photos, speculation about her background...and fanfic and fanart, including a great deal of very explicit sexual fic (and photoshopped pictures). She was shocked and angry at first, but--given that in her real identity, she writes fanfiction and is well aware of how pervasive it is, including the explicit stuff--she eventually got over the shock. Now she's mostly just amused by all the attention. --Begin Excerpt-- Gayle knocked on the door of Rachel's apartment. She heard Rachel approaching the door, and then it swung open. Rachel was still dressed for work in an elegant and expensive skirt and blouse, though her legs were bare and she was wearing an old pair of sneakers. Black dress shoes and a pair of nylons lay in a jumble by the door. "So," Gayle said, stepping to the apartment, "what's so important that you wouldn't tell me about it over the phone?" "I can't tell you. You need to see it for yourself," Rachel said. "Will I like it?" "I dunno," Rachel replied. "Some of it. Maybe." She made a show of studying Gayle. "Other parts--no." "C'mon," Gayle insisted. "Give." Rachel shook her head. She gestured toward her office. "Go sit at my computer," she said. Gayle gave Rachel a long, appraising look. Rachel put on a poker face, giving nothing away. Gayle sighed dramatically and then walked into the office. Rachel followed. Rachel's office was crowded. The walls of the room were lined with bookshelves, and every shelf was filled to capacity and then some. Hardbacks filled the lower shelves, with loose books laid horizontally across the tops of others wherever they'd fit. The upper shelves were double or triple stacked with paperbacks. The computer desk itself was buried under mounds of paper, piles of short story manuscripts, various drafts of novels, printouts of webpages, chat logs and text files. There was barely room enough for the keyboard and mousepad. A Matrix-style screensaver filled the room with a green glow. Rachel stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame. "What am I looking for?" Gayle asked, sliding into Rachel's swivel chair. She heard Rachel start to speak as Gayle reached for the mouse. Her touch was enough to turn off the screensaver. Gayle gawked at the image on the screen. It was the splash page for a web site. An image of Hell's Angel filled most of the screen. Gayle recognized it as an image lifted from a news photo of one of her first appearances. It had been manipulated to eliminate the cityscape and leave only the brilliant white, red and orange of the fiery heroine against a matte black background. Letters in similar colors below the picture spelled out the name of the website: The Hellfire Club. "Oh my God!" she said. She looked to Rachel. "Did _you_--?" Rachel was quick to deny it. "No, it's not my doing. I only found it today. That's just the home page. Keep going. There's more." Gayle turned obediently back to the screen and clicked on "Enter." She spent the next few minutes exploring a site devoted to Hell's Angel. There were links to the few news reports of Hell's Angel in action, to a few more photos, and a discussion board with several topics. One was for reports (and discussion) of verified sightings, including news reports. One was full of rumors and innuendo about the heroine's identity, background, origin, intentions--pretty much everything about her. Following a few links at random assured Gayle that most of it was little different from the ramblings of the tabloid press. Then she spotted the "Fiction" links. There were two options. G-rated and NC-17. Gayle felt the shock like a blow to her solar plexus. She'd read enough fanfic to know what to expect here. Hell, she and Rachel had been writing fanfic since they were in high school, though never about real people. "Have you looked at this?" Gayle asked Rachel, without taking her eyes off the screen. "...yeah," Rachel said after a moment. Gayle clicked on the first link. It was just as she'd suspected. Mostly very short, very badly written action/adventure stories. The sheer variety of backgrounds ascribed to her was remarkable--she was variously portrayed as a repentant demon, fallen angel, mutant, sorceress, alien, robot and occasionally other things that weren't quite clear. It had never been as clear to Gayle as it was now how little the public really knew about her, after twenty minutes spent perusing this archive. Gayle took a deep breath and then clicked the second link--and found herself looking at a thoroughly pornographic photo of a nude Hell's Angel crouched over an equally nude man sprawled on the hood of some kind of sportscar. The photo left no doubt about what they were doing. Beneath the photo was a long list of links to stories. As she stared at the image, Gayle felt a prickling on the back of her neck and heat rising in her cheeks and ears. She realized that Rachel was speaking to her. "What?" Gayle asked. She stared at the image for a long moment, still struggling to process what she was seeing, before dragging her gaze away. She turned to look at Rachel. "What did you say?" "I said, it's a hell of a Photoshopping job. It's almost a shame it's so obscene." Gayle looked back, recognizing now that Rachel was correct. It wasn't a real photo--she knew that. It had never happened. But it was awfully damned convincing. Gayle looked at it and realized she was angry. It had been mildly flattering to see the rest of the website, but this-- The list of story links was no better. The one line synopses told Gayle all she needed to know. She knew that prurient material like this was inevitable. It was all over the internet. But she'd never been the subject before and it felt like a slap in the face. The thought of men like Jimmy Carlyle or the others getting their jollies by reading these stories.... Gayle closed the browser and sat quietly for a minute, taking one slow deep breath after another. "Sorry," Rachel said. "But I thought you should know." "You were right," Gayle said quietly. "But now that I've seen it I want to forget it for a while." She looked at Rachel and mustered a smile she didn't really feel yet. "Let's go out to dinner and talk about something else, like your love life." Rachel returned the smile. "Oh, so its horror stories you're wanting, is it? I can do that...." --End Excerpt--

Re: Super Prisons without Super Tech

Re: Overwhelming PRE attacks

Re: Overwhelming PRE attacks 1. Give every NPC some PRE Defense...or a LOT of PRE Defense, if necessary. 2. Subject _their_ characters to opponents with insane levels of PRE and see how they like it when THEY'RE the ones reduced to sobbing, cringing wretches begging for mercy. Then tell them that the GM can win any arms race with his players, so maybe they'd like to actually, you know, LISTEN when you tell them not to go for outrageous PRE scores.

Re: Annoucing: The reopening of Seeds of Change Heh. I started lurking just in time to read that. I may have to submit a character, as soon as I figure out what to DO with 750 points! The possibilities boggle the mind!

Re: Alternate History The reviews are accurate. I loved the first book, endured the second one, and thumbed thru the last one to find out what happened to the bad guy...and then never bothered reading it. I was fascinated by seeing how the people of modern Nantucket coped with finding themselves in a Bronze Age environment. As the story progressed, however, and it became more and more the story of the Nantucketers and their allies fighting wars...I got bored.

Re: HEROs of Heaven One of my all-time favorite novels is based on this--well, and the whole biblical story of the revolt in Heaven by Satan and his followers. TO REIGN IN HELL, by Steven Brust. Read it.

Re: Seeds of Change: Repercussions

Re: Seeds of Change: Repercussions Well...they'll _try_. But a boycott is hard enough at the best of times; successfully boycotting one of the biggest economic powers on the planet will vastly more difficult. And it gets even _more_ difficult if the American government starts cannily suggesting that governments that ignore the attempted boycott might be rewarded with a little of that oh-so-valuable ultra-tech....

Re: Supers and the law That argument isn't likely to get you very far if the "dead man" was a regular contributor to the Mayor's reelection fund and whatnot.

Re: Supers and the law

Re: VPP Nightmare! Oh, I totally disagree. Making up new uses for the VPP is the whole point of having a VPP. In my opinion, anyhow; I enjoy working out new wrinkles on the fly. But then, my gaming groups have typically consisted entirely of rules-lawyering munchkins, including the GMs--who are ready, willing and able to stop rules abuse in an instant. (We've occasionally had GMs who weren't willing/able to do that, and it was never pretty. But as a rule, it's worked well.) Or just pin her down as to how exactly the VPP works, and what sorts of things she can do. Unless it's a Cosmic VPP, it's going to have limits. If she refuses to go along with that, _then_ you let her bury herself and effectively take her character out of the game....

Re: WWYCD: Life is but a Dream Hell's Angel - Given her background, Gayle trusts her own judgment above anyone and everyone else's. If she remembers being a superheroine in real life, she won't doubt that it's true. If she can convince any of the other supers she knows (not many, she's a relatively newbie superhero) of the truth, she'll work with them to find out what happened; if not, she'll go it alone. In the mean time, given that her day job is as a science fiction novelist, she'll make good use of her memories as fodder for more novels until she can make things right again. Outlander would be horrified and appalled to discover that she is now a merely human being. So much for her superhuman strength, agility, toughness, intellect, nanotech subdermal armor, regeneration and immunity to aging. Not to mention her pheremone power. This really, really sucks! And whoever did it will die a horrible, painful death as soon as she can figure out who to torture and kill...after getting her powers back. And while she may not have her powers, she still has two centuries of soldiering experience and habits of command, and her knowledge of ultra-tech to help her build up the wealth and power to get the job done.

Re: Limits to Superhuman Intelligence?

Re: Limits to Superhuman Intelligence? Yeah, but a kindergartener's brain hasn't fully developed, either. So that comparison is invalid. A high INT score doesn't represent a Doctorate, or a comprehensive grasp of hyperdimensional physics. Perk: Doctorate and PS/KS: Hyperdimensional Physics represent those things. A character with an INT score of 7 can still have a doctorate or a PS: HD Physics. He'll have to spend more points (i.e., work harder) to attain the same skill roll, but that's because his INT score actually is lower. A character with INT 25 and no degree doesn't, in fact, have a doctorate; and unless he's studied HD physics, he has no skill at it. But that's really getting away from the argument. Any particular individual may be smarter or dumber than any other particular individual, past, present or future. But the average human IQ (raw intelligence) is unchanged from 5000 B.C. to 2005 A.D.

Re: Limits to Superhuman Intelligence? Mmmm...no. I still don't agree. I'll stipulate that more humans today _reach_ their potential, thanks to good nutrition and medical care. But I don't believe that their potential is any greater. A well-fed, healthy human in ancient Egypt or China would be just as intelligent as a well-fed, healthy human today. When we reach the point of truly understanding intelligence and how it arises from the combination of genetics and environment, we may be able to truly increase the average intelligence of humans...but we aren't there yet.

Re: Alternate History Don't forget teaching a Roman moneylender about arabic numerals and the concepts of ZERO and decimal notation...in return for a share of the guy's profits from using this knowledge. It's a hell of a lot easier to do quick, accurate financial calculations with those tools than with ROMAN NUMERALS....

Re: Limits to Superhuman Intelligence? I wouldn't. I don't believe that modern humans are any smarter than humans thousands of years ago. There can be individual geniuses, of course. But the average human is no smarter now than the average human thousands of years ago. When someone invents a revolutionary microchip or a fantastic new medical procedure, he's simply standing on the shoulders of giants. His innovation is possible only because he starts out knowing far more than those guys in the past, because he had the good fortune to be able to learn by studying what they had to discover the old fashioned way. Had he lived in the past, knowing no more than those in the past knew, he'd do no better. I think a superhumanly intelligent character in a Champions game would qualify as an individual genius, but he still has to start from what the scientific community as a whole understands. Reed Richards is a supergenius. Tony Stark is a genius. Victor Von Doom is a supergenius. INdividually, they can all create wonders--but put them all in the same universe, where they can cross-fertilize one another's understanding of the universe, and suddenly they're all going to be that much more productive. That's my view, anyhow.

Re: Firearms granularity Well, yeah, if I was using guns in Champions, I'd probably point my players at the Dark Champions book. If they want to quibble over how accurate the stats are, they're out of luck. But that's as far as I'd go in that direction. As for how many points Dr. Tornado's weather machine costs...as many as it needs to fulfill its plot function, so why count? Now THAT'S a reason I can understand. I've done my share of that too. It's when they start off by saying that they need a plot device for an adventure or a campaign, but they don't know how to go about building it that I start to wonder. If it's a plot device, it doesn't need a point cost IMHO.

Re: What Would Your Character Do #33 Hell's Angel (superhumanly gorgeous and charismatic female with feathery white angel wings...and fiery powers) would probably roll her eyes at the whole argument. If pressed, she'd say that if there is a God, she doesn't doubt that he considers everyone his children, metahumans included. More importantly, being a superheroine with both an angelic and demonic schtick, she'd probably be embarrassed to find herself appointed the poster child for the fanatics. Gorgeous and superficially angelic with fiery powers and a libertine philosophy, she'd be just the thing for leading the righteous astray. Clearly, she's untrustworthy!

Re: Firearms granularity Amen. Repped! I agree completely. I'm boggled by the number of threads I see here asking how you'd build this, that or the other thing. Most of the time, if I were the GM, I'd simply handwave it as necessary to the plot or "since I'd give the NPC enough points to get the effect I want anyhow, what difference does it make how many points it would take? It's not like he's on a budget!" Which is probably why, though I'm playing a couple of online Champions games, the game I'm _running_ uses Fudge for the game engine.

Re: Freeform Magic

Re: Campaign Ideas: Why are they on this ship? I say screw the whole idea of an kind of military system or ranking structure. Use the PIRATE approach. The crew gets to vote on who the Captain will be; IN BATTLE (or other emergency situation) the captain's orders are to be obeyed without question. But at any other time, his decisions are open to debate...and he might find himself voted out of the Captain's chair if he really pushes it when he's in the minority. Since most gaming groups (in my experience, anyhow) tend to decide things communally anyhow, this should work well. It also avoids the tendency to fall into Trek-oid behaviors by sheer inertia. Plus, you can start with an NPC captain (a good one or a twit, your call) and let the PCs figure out that they can vote him off the island....