sinanju

Re: Freeform Magic I'd recommend a Variable Power Pool limited to effects of a given Special Effect (or set of special effects). You could require certain limitations be taken, or leave it truly freeform and let different characters (PCs and NPCs alike) decide what limitations exist on their magic. Which would result in a world of mages with idiosyncratic magical abilities. Mage A must cast spells using classic techniques: he must use a wand (focus), gestures, incantations and so forth. Another mage does his work by urging spirits to do his bidding. He uses incantations (to talk to the spirits), along with Requires a Skill Roll (he has to convince/persuade/threaten the spirit successfully), and probably extra time (arguing with spirits may be timeconsuming); possibly he has to do (or not do) certain things to keep in the good graces of the spirit world (various Disads or limitations).

Re: Taking Names

Re: Comic books I figure that Marvel & DC exist and that all their real world superhero comics also exist (but I seem to be in the minority in that I do NOT have any existing characters from comics/CU/etc) in my games. There may be comics based on "real" heroes from the gameworld, but they're about as realistic as tv movies in the real world that are based on the lives of real people--some passing resemblance to the truth, but modified to make for better stories or just because the producers can't help changing stuff to put their mark on it. Plus, of course, superheroes with REAL secret identities aren't going to cooperate with the comic writers...so the "real" characters are mostly fictional to begin with.

Re: Taking Names "Fred...your little black book--" "Yeah?" "It's...mostly GUYS' names. Something you want to tell us?" "That's my lifetime list of asses kicked and names taken." "Oh. That's all right then."

Re: Altered time perception No extra levels of SPEED? Hmmm. OKay.... Additional levels of Perception to reflect that he can spend extra time studying events as they happen in slow motion (to his perception, anyhow). Some Overall Skill Levels to reflect his ability to "take extra time" while employing skills. Speed Reading Eidetic Memory etc.

Re: to map combat or not to map combat. I don't map combats, and haven't for years. At most I'll sketch out a quick and dirty map to clarify a situation if the players are confused. But mapping tends to turn role-playing into wargaming and that's not what I'm interested in. It also tends to slow combat to a crawl as players count hexes and plot and calculate and minimax and generally (again) treat the battle like a wargame rather than a fast-paced combat in the tradition of comic book superheroes. But I also believe in quick n' dirty combat resolution, so I don't pay a lot of attention to the sort of nitpicking details that make mapping necessary. YMMV, IMHO, etc.

Re: Powers--by Bendis I've read a lot of the POWERS trade paperbacks and I like them. I think you're wrong about supertech, though. There's at least one "Iron Man" character (Rocket Red or whatever his name was), though he's not seen much--if at all--after the initial storyling, Who Killed Retro-Girl?

Re: Disadvantages of being Undead Social Limitation: Inanimate -- meaning that whenever he's not CONSCIOUSLY moving, he appears...dead. No heartbeat or pulse, he doesn't breathe, his eyes don't move. He doesn't twitch, itch, scratch, stretch, change posture, etc. When he's just standing or sitting, he's as inert as a corpse (I'd give him bonuses to stealth for being able to be so utterly motionless, in fact). If he sleeps, people will think he's dead. If he's stunned in combat, he'll seem dead. If he's knocked out in combat, he'll seem dead. If he sits as a sidewalk cafe thinking, he'll look...dead. (And in all such cases, when he DOES move again, he'll scare the hell out of all the people who thought he was dead.)

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... Dude! Cyclops and Rogue ARE wearing technology that lets them switch their powers on or off at leisure. What do you think the ruby quartz visor (Cyclops) and the gloves (Rogue) are for? Heh. It's funny because it's true! (Okay, kinda funny 'cause it's kinda...I got nothing.) Yeah, you've got it. If they could control their powers, they'd have to find something else to agonize over.

Re: Best example of role-playing a disadvantage A fellow player in a "Traveller" (kinda-sorta) game many, many years ago. He was playing a ninja. He wound up fighting the Beta Villain (minion of the Alpha Villain, but more than a match for the entire PC team) alone. He had no chance of defeating the guy ordinarily, but felt duty-bound to stop him. So when the Beta Villain took a swing at him with his uber-weapon, he told the GM, "I'm not defending." "What?" says the GM. "I'm not going to try to defend myself. I'm going to let him hit me while I strike HIM." Everyone was shocked (we were a bunch of rules-lawyering powergamers)--but he was, after all, simply playing his character. So he didn't defend, he died, and he stopped the bad guy.

Re: Greatest Western Movies of all Time For me, the list would have to include: El Dorado - Classic ranchers vs farmers conflict with gunfighters getting involved on both sides. Quigley Down Under - Proves that "the western" isn't limited to the traditional West. Silverado - If for no other reason than the climactic gunflight, with the town and church framed behind Kevin Kline while the villain stands with nothing but desert wastelande behind him. Subtle? Not at all. But as a 1000-word picture it was right on.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out...

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... He just needs a ruby quartz mirror (silvered on the back side, see...). The eyebeams won't harm that, and he's immune to his own eyeblasts, so he's scott free!

Re: Campaign length The longest running campaign I've played in has been running continuously since 1978 (twenty-seven years!), though I moved away in 1991 so I was only there for the first 13 years. And the early years were nearly non-stop, gaming all evening (or all day on weekends) four or more days/nights a year. How we got thru college I'll never--oh yeah, I remember now. My grade point average clearly indicates how. Poorly. The gaming group I joined when I got to Portland was at the other extreme. Campaign started, ran for anywhere from a single session to a year or two at most, with most running 2-6 months. Lots more variety, and we've all got notebooks full of character sheets, many of which characters were created but never actually played because they were generated at the merest HINT of an idea for a campaign.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... The "hairs" are a movie addition. In the comic he has no such things--he just sticks to things. (And while the power appears to work through gloves, or the presumably fairly think soles of his costume's boots, traditionally Peter has to take off his street shoes if he's going to do any wall-crawling. Removing his socks may be optional.)

Re: Home-town HERO - wide-spread plot seeds Portland, Oregon. The Columbia River and its many dams and locks are not far up the gorge from here. There's the LNG storage facility on the Willamette River right in the middle of town. I think about _that_ occasionally. Several volcanoes nearby (Mt. St. Helen's, of course, but also a couple of dormant--not extinct!--volcanoes right inside the city limits). A major Intel fabrication plant in the area. Smashing that up could put a hurtin' on the computer industry, at least for a while.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... The same way I've stumbled across some...amazing (and not in a good way) slash fanfic. When you go trolling thru the net, you never know what you're gonna find. Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of it will be crap, but that other 10% is what keeps you digging--and stumbling across things that make you want to clutch your head, bellowing, "My EYES!" and then scrub your brain. I'm sure it applies to searching for anime or hentai too.

Re: Superpowers that haven't been thought out... "Yer sure you want to do this?" Rogue asked. "You know it!" he said, almost trembling with eagerness. Rogue was HOT. "Okay," Rogue said, hiding a grin at his enthusiasm. "Me too," she conceded, as if she were doing him a favor. It wouldn't do to let him think she was too eager. Rogue dropped her uniform on the floor. "Just one thing. Don't mess with my collar." "...okay. Is it--I mean...is it some kind of BDSM thing?" "No. It'll be the only thing keeping you alive. Remember the story of Blackbeard's wife." "What?" Blackbeard's wife? What the hell did that mean? Rogue sighed. He was illiterate. Cute--but illterate. "I mean, really don't mess with my collar." His mouth said, "okay," but his expression said whatever. Alas, history records that his enthusiasm overcame his good sense. In a moment of passion, he grabbed at the necklace, pulling it off. After at least sixty seconds of agonized gasping, gurgling and wheezing, a sadder but wiser Rogue was heard to mutter, "...damn."

Re: Campaign Creation

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper Not a hidden homosexual relationship, a subtextual _attraction_. There's a difference. They don't have to act on the feelings; they don't even have to _recognize_ the feelings. (And, yes, for that matter, it can sometimes all be in the eye of the beholder.) Some of them, yes. I see it and I'm not a fan of slashy stuff. But it wouldn't surprise me if the actor(s) and/or writers and/or producers (or some subset thereof) aren't putting some slashy-goodness "spin" on their efforts. Nor are they necessarily going to admit it if they are--Superman is an iconic character. Warner Brothers wouldn't like that. It's definitely there; but by necessity it remains subtext. Thus, those who see it (whether they enjoy it or not) see it, and those who don't can watch a perfectly straight (no pun intended) relationship between Clark and Lex. No offense taken. But you might consider that you're _not_ seeing something, rather than everyone else seeing something that isn't there.

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper

Re: Where is Professor X when you need him? I have to take issue with this. That's one way to create an efficient multi-power. But I often build multi-powers with slots of varying sizes such that slots I expect the PC to use simultaneously add up to the total points available in the multi-power. F'r instance: Black Mask, a Matrix-esque martial artist I'm playing currently. He can bend the laws of physics to do seemingly impossible things. His 60 point multi-power has a number of slots, but two of them are Hit Harder: +30 STR Move Faster: +3 SPEED He can't boost his STR by 60 points or his SPD by 6, but he can put 30 points into both of them at once. Most of his MP slots are like that; it gives him a lot of flexibility.

Re: Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration? Here's a Big List of RPG Plots from S. John Ross: Big List of RPG Plots

Re: Default Waterproof Computers? Water? What about OIL, huh? Oh. Wait. Here's experimental evidence. Computer submered in oil works just fine!

Re: DEX: and the Marvel Universe Reminds me of a line from one of Robert Parker's Spenser novels. "He wasn't strong--but he was slow."