sinanju

Re: (somehow) realistic Secret IDs

Example: Contrary to the long-standing claims made by the people selling it as a security panacea' date=' facial recognition systems still pretty much suck at recognizing faces.[/quote']

 

Something which I think gets overlooked a lot when people contemplate computers which can recognize faces or voices, or computers that can respond to spoken commands is...how often do PEOPLE make mistakes at all these things? And we're doing it with brains that have been specialized for those tasks for billions of years.

 

Of course facial recognition software is going to make mistakes. And computers which take verbal orders will sometimes say, "pardon me? what did you ask me to do?" or worse, draw incorrect conclusions as to what you told it to do. (Which is when you hope the computer also has 'common sense' and can recognize that the order it received makes no sense and it asks for clarification.)

 

Nonetheless, I think you're _underestimating_ the effectiveness of surveillance and investigation. Take Spider-Man, for instance. It's fairly clear that--unless he can teleport or something--he lives in the NYC metro area. So you can focus all your efforts there. He wears a more all-concealing costume than a lot of heroes, but you can still get a good idea of his size by studying photographs of him.

 

You can plot Spider-Man sightings by location, time of day, day of the week; do any patterns pop up? That narrows your focus even more. You question anyone who has interacted with him. What can you learn of his accent, conversational level, choice of words or slang? What does this tell you?

 

What about "crime" scenes. He's been injured. His costume has been torn. Any blood or other CSI-style evidence? Maybe.

 

Throw in aerial surveillance or satellite photography (if it is the US Government or equivalent doing the investigation). If you can spot Spider-Man appearing or disappearing in a particular area at a given time, you're a step closer.

 

Yes, you might well end up not identifying him. That can happen. People can remain unidentified and at large for years or decades sometimes despite the best efforts of the authorities. But not always. And if you're applying this effort to numerous heroes (or villains), you will identify some of them.

Re: Character concept: Viable? "Caffinated Man"

Not to mention that he'd have to go to the bathroom every third phase after 50 cups of coffee.....

MP Slot: Watersaw: 2d6 Physical Energy Blast (vs PD), Armor Piercing. Possibly costing END with a coffee-powered END Reserve. Maybe expendable continuing charges with a limitation that it requires excessive coffee consumption to recharge.

...just a thought.

Re: (somehow) realistic Secret IDs

Have very general powers' date=' and change names/costumes from time-to-time.[/quote']

 

I've submitted a character like that to a couple of online games, but it hasn't gone anywhere yet. A guy with telekinetic powers (flight, forcefield, TK, energy blast, entangle) with variable special effects. By selectively using his powers and employing different special effects with different costumes, he can pretend to be lots of different heroes (or villains).

 

Flight alone is great--he can fly, he can "superleap", he can "cling to walls", he can "levitate", he can fly with a (fake) jetpack....

 

With a forcefield and using TK at touch range only, he can pretend to be a brick.

 

That kind of thing could make secret identities a lot easier to keep. If someone gets close to one, you just abandon it in favor of popping up as an (apparently) entirely different guy with different powers.

Re: Character concept: Viable? "Caffinated Man"

Heh.

I've got an NPC based on this concept, but with his

'unique physiology' any amount of caffeine will send him

into super-speed mode.

 

And his name is Javaman!

( And his sidekick, err, partner is Fidget )

 

I just gave him Continuing charges on some extra Dex with

a focus and defined that as his Hero ID. Everything else is OIHID.

Heh. I created a speedster once named "Speed Freak" whose mutant metabolism responding to, well, speed (meth) by becoming superhumanly fast. He took speed to kickstart his powers, and downers to sleep at night. He had a bunch of physical and psychological limitations as a result, not surprisingly.

Re: Stargate Hero

A note about the SG-1 teams--the 9 years experience versions should have a tad bit of presence defense. They've about seen it all. Plus O'Neil seems to have developed mocking the System Lords to a fine art--a few choice words, and they can't see straight, especially through yet another SG-1 bluff.

System Lord Ba'al: "You dare mock me?"

O'Neill: "Ba'al, buddy, you should know...OF COURSE I dare mock you."

And let's not forget--this is the System Lord who tortured Jack to death (and revived him in a sarcophagus) several times a couple of years ago....

Re: Orson Scott Card To Write Ultimate Iron Man...

Tony Stark already had a tragic background. His father was an alcoholic and his parents died in a car crash.

Allow me to rephrase my objection, then. WHY must everthing in Tony's life revolve around armor and high-tech angst? An alcoholic father and a parent or parents who died when he was young are fine by me--these things happen. But why must they tie his parents into the armor schtick at all?

We've already got ultimate Spidey, whose father invented the webbing and the black goo that eventually turned into Venom. ENOUGH ALREADY!

I'd much rather just have Tony Stark, Suuuuuuuuuuuper-Genius, from a fairly normal background...with a brain tumor that will eventually kill him in his prime. There's yer tragedy, pal! Why is he driven? Because a) he's a genius and the ideas just come to him, and he wants to make his mark on the world before he dies young.

Re: Psionic-Focused Campaign/Plot Idea/Musing

Secret Goverment projects always works too' date=' both the US and former Soviet Union both studied Psionics at one time or the other during the last 40 years.[/quote']

 

Or secret NON-government projects. I like Octavia Butler's approach. In her "Patternmaster" novels, a few humans have always had marginal psionic abilities. But these tend to have serious drawbacks--like madness, or at least serious twitchiness, as a side effect--or they get you shunned or abused or killed as a witch/sorceror/possessed/whatever.

 

Then Doro comes along. He's immortal. He exists by possessing one person after another and consuming their life energy. And he realizes early on that people with a hint of psychic power taste better. So he begins collecting them and breeding them, culling them as necessary, in exactly the same way humans breed animals for specific traits. Over the course of thousands of years, he creates communities of gifted individuals and some very powerful individuals. They stay out of sight out of self-interest, not wanting the government to know about them (and not wanting Doro pissed off at them for causing trouble).

 

Eventually, they do become known--but by then they've essentially taken over the world. Funny how a network of amazingly powerful telepaths can do that....

 

So, there you are. Remarkably powerful psionics exist because they were the object of a long-term breeding program by...someone or something. Just because they've been around for a long time doesn't mean anyone knows about them (pretty much by definition, anyone who claims publicly to have psychic powers is NOT one of them).

Re: Orson Scott Card To Write Ultimate Iron Man...

Personally I was elated at this new.

Card is a fabulous writer (most of the time) and I like the character.

I agree that Card is a good writer. What I'm not happy about is the apparent backstory they're going to do--how Tony Stark's parents were working on some kind of armor tech (and his mother is killed in the process). Geez. Must _every_ superhero have a tragic background?

And, anyway, I thought they'd already created an "Ultimate" version of Iron Man. He's part of the Ultimates, after all.

Re: Being creepy and Bodyguard skills

Is there such a thing as high presence only for negative emotions? How would you work it so he might use it for interrogation?

Well, there's the detective Lee Emry (the former Drill Instructor, from Mail Call) played in the film "Hexed." He was interrogating our hero about a murder which our hero was suspected of committing. They'd been at it for a while and detective said:

"It's Saturday night and I'm divorced with no charismas. I've got NOWHERE TO GO!"

--as a threat to continue the interrogation for a very long time, it was highly effective.

Re: If your character played an RPG...

Le Fantome wouldn't be interested in role-playing games, though he might sit through one just to be friendly. He's too much of a people person, more interested in meeting and interacting with real people in real places.

Hell's Angel undoubtedly plays RPGs, though she's more of an internet junkie and a fanfic writer. Whether she'll continue to play RPGs now that she's become an actual, real-life superheroine (she's new) is a good question.

Outlander would scoff at the idea as a pathetic pretense. Why pretend to hunt dangerous animals, engage in combat and dominate your environment when you can do it for real? Only one reason: because in real life you can't. Hanging around with such posers does not constitute a good use of Outlander's time.

Re: A little help with a power construct? Shaman of Alpha Flight

My first idea is just VPP with all the right advantages/limits. But...he can lose the whole VPP by someone just disarming the bag....

Last thing first--yes, he can lose the whole VPP by losing the bag. That seems right to me, given what I remember of Shaman. It sucks to have your whole bag of tricks (har har) bound up in a single OAF, but that IS why you get the big discount for taking that limitation.

You _could_ go with a multipower, I suppose, but that severely limits the range of effects he can pull off. A VPP might be the best way to go.

Re: Highlander HERO

Just one question: how do you plan on handling a dual Quickening (like the one

that happened when MacLeod and Methos killed their Horsemen opponents at

the same time in the last part of the Horsemen episode, and it looked as though

they were experiencing some kind of link as a result) in your game?

 

Major Tom

I think you could handle it pretty much however you like. The series didn't go on long enough after that episode to really set down strong rules about it. You could decide that it _was_ just a special effect with no lasting repercussions, or you could take it as far as having them both experience the effects of a quickening when either one takes a head (and hint that if one dies, both die).

Re: Crazy idea for a magic "system".

Here is Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall and all the rest of the staff, but they have to wait on the hat.

Dubledore can't do what the hat does.

Even he leans forward to hear what it is going to say.

That is the feeling I want.

Just because someone is a powerful wizard, that doesn't mean they can just whip up a spell to do the same thing as you.

Your spells mean something.

There may be an occasion where the whole kingdom depends on your particular spell.

I think you could get the same effect far more easily by simply requiring mages or wizards to buy their spells up front. Whether it's a multi-power or not, you decide at the beginning what spells you're capable of casting, and then you're done. They might become more powerful as you gain XP, but you can't add new spell effects just because they'd be useful or cool and you saw someone else do it.

If characters get a break on spell costs if they specialize in a particular special effect or school of magic, you'll probably find a lot fewer generalists and a lot more specialists, which also makes each wizard's spells more individualized.

Greyfell Firebinder is a fire mage; everything he does is fire-themed; Far-Seer is a wizard who specializes in perception spells, including clairvoyance and precognition. If you need something incinerated, Greyfell's the go-to guy. If you need some hints as to what nameless horror is lurking in the wings, Greyfell can't tell you, but Far-Seer probably can.

Re: Weird Conspiracy Hero

I feel a part of my brain that cries out to run the Weird Conspiracy Hero game that I've never had an opportunity to run (since many of my players are complete fantasy buffs).... So' date=' since I can't run it or play in it myself, I thought I'd ask if anyone else has had the opportunity to play or run something like this? Tell me what it was like, if it worked, if you'd do it again.[/quote']

 

Dude, that's pretty much all I seem to run!

 

What can I say? I really _like_ Mystic Wierdness in my campaigns. My campaigns, whether contemporary, pulp era, pirate-age, or long-ago fantasy, all seem to have a lot of magic and wierdness lurking in the dark corners.

 

It also has a practical benefit. Namely, my powergaming munchkinoid players (who all tend to be extremely pragmatic about handling potential dangers) can't instantly destroy the opposition until they figure out who/what/where it is. No matter how magnificently muscled or heavily burdened with city-leveling firepower they might be, until they puzzle out the mystery, they can't stomp the bad guys.

 

I'd also like to point out that there's no reason you can't throw some wierdness into a fantasy game. Cthulhu-esque horrors work just fine in a fantasy game, as do cultists trying to unleash or ressurrect some nameless Old One. One fantasy campaign I toyed with but haven't actually run yet was going to be set on Yrth (from SJ Games' original fantasy world). That world has a great desert, the site of the Banestorm, a gigantic magical ritual that went very badly. Canonically, it's just desert where it once was a lush forest (the elves had this mishap).

 

I decided that instead, it was going to be more like the weird west of Deadlands. A blasted landscape from which horrible THINGS were frequently emerging to terrorize neighboring lands. The PCs were going to roving agents of the King, empowered to deal with such things. They could have more traditional fantasy adventures too, but as often as not they'd be playing Mulder & Scully in a fantasy environment.

 

And really, once the PCs think they've got the magic system in a gameworld worked out, that's the perfect time to teach them that the world is not only stranger than they imagine, it's stranger than they CAN imagine. When the most learned sorcerors of the land go pale and remember urgent appointments elsewhere, that's when the fun really starts.

Re: Miniatures and mapping

I don't use miniatures or hex maps. At best, I'll occasionally draw a quick and dirty map or set out some dice to clarify relative positions. I prefer keeping combat moving to precise mapping of moves and strategies, and not using maps really cuts down on the wargaming mentality. Distances can be summarized pretty much as "arm's reach," "spittin' distance," "across the room," "across the street," "down the street" and "far away." Players can ask about penalties if they need a number, or suggest actions that might give them bonuses, but exact distances are more trouble than they're worth most of the time (in my opinion).

Re: Why super tech never goes mainstream

As for reverse engineering' date=' sure there is a lot that would take years to figure out... the more advanced and alien, the longer it takes... but when the inventor is making money off of advanced machines and tooling, well it isn't like dropping an ICBM blind into the Manhattan project. That simply isn't an appropriate metaphor.[/quote']

 

It was a cruise missile, not an ICBM. And my point was only that simply having a working model to study doesn't mean you'll be able to do anything with it. If the tech is advanced enough over what you're capable of, you simply don't have the tools or the paradigm necessary to figure it out.

 

Taking it further, even if Stark/Doom is twenty generations ahead, they had to develop their tech a step at a time. They'd have to develop and refine the tools that make the tools that make the device. That kind of thing takes resources and production and funding, and that kind of thing leaves paper trails and ex-technicians and industrial espionage, etc. All of this would be useful in reverse engineering things.

 

On this point, however, you're right. A single cruise missile appearing out of nowhere is one thing. But unless Stark is making the tools to make the tools to make the tools to build the armor, and building _all_ the pieces himself, he's got to be working from the general tech base, and making use of standard techniques, tools and possibly even parts.

 

All these excuses just seem like a lot of effort to maintain a trope from the comics that is pretty stupid in the first place.

 

It's not stupid, it's just not what YOU want to do. You see it all the time in movies and television as well. The _real_ reason why the secret of Immortals (Highlander), Stargates (SG-1), invisible men, bionic men, witches (Charmed) must be maintained at all costs is not because the public will panic or they'll be arrested and dissected. It's because they want to set the stories in the real world, and in the real world we know these things don't exist, so they have to justify public ignorance.

 

And as for the time issue... well Marvel and DC have been around for decades. If the didn't reboot all the time and maintained a consistent continuity like they should, they could actually address these issues in a fantastic, literary, dramatic way that spans years of stories. Since my game has been running almost 18 years... well, I've been able to do what the lousy comic companies can't.

 

No, you've done what the comic companies don't WANT to do.

 

They're doing stories about fantastic characters and events in today's world. They "reset" the background and continuity on purpose, not by accident. As years or decades pass, occasionally this requires them to revamp the background. Character origins don't fit anymore (chemical accident, then radiation accident, now it's genetic engineering or nanotech); character backgrounds don't fit anymore (WWII vet, then Korean vet, then Vietnam vet...). They're also writing for new readers, not the vocal but smaller crowd of long-time fans. New readers mostly don't know and don't care about the last 40 years of Spider-Man continuity; they're perfectly happy with a rebooted version who is a teenager again.

Re: Why super tech never goes mainstream

Another example is steam, Inventors were mucking around with steam powered locomatives at the start of 19th century, but it took decades before trains became a common mode of transportation.

 

Heck look at airplanes, it took two major wars to really get aviation off the ground and into something more than a toy for the ultrarich or adventuers into something relatively commonplace.

 

So fifty years down the road for the starting story people would be hopping in and out of teleport booths to travel the globe, or just down to their local gaming store...

I remember reading some (by G. Harry Stine, I think) many years ago. In the article he described the likely results if a modern nuclear cruise missile were to land in the middle of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.

They'd be able to figure out that it was a nuclear weapon, and they'd probably learn a lot about _that_.

But the computer chips that guide and operate it? Not a chance. Even trying to test it with contemporary tools would destroy them. They wouldn't have the tools to make the tools to begin to reverse-engineer much of what they saw. And even if they could figure out what it was supposed to do ("all the wiring to control the flight systems leads to this mass of slightly impure silicon, obviously that's the 'brain' of this device, but....") they couldn't possibly recreate it.

Sure, Tony Stark is a supergenius and can build a suit of powered armor. And, yeah, Dr. Doom could undoubtedly replicate it, but that doesn't mean the US governmetn could reverse engineer it even if they had a working model to start from. Not for years and years, anyhow.

Re: The "Whoops" Thread

Does your super team suffer from a decided lack of something? Perhaps... knowledge of magic, an able egoist, a team vehicle to get from place to place?

 

List here the things that upon assmebling your team and playing a game or two, were noticable holes.

Not a SUPERteam, but...

I was running The Expendables (Stargate-like exploration of alternate dimensions through a circular metal gateway). The PCs could only take what they could physically carry with them thru the gateway.*

They got clever and carried a UAV with them. I was annoyed because I didn't want them to have it, but had no legitimate (in-game) reason to prevent it. They set up their camp, got the UAV prepped and launched it to do an aerial survey.

I asked, "So, who's remotely piloting the UAV?"

Turns out...nobody knew how to do it. I had them make a default roll anyhow. They rolled an 18. Critical failure! The UAV crashed and burned! Yahoo!

*No vehicles, no pack animals. Only what they could carry. So they got together, figured out how much 12 strong men (6 PCs, 6 NPCs) could just barely lift and shuffle through the gateway with. Then they assembled an (inflated) liferaft piled high with everything but the kitchen sink. I got a five-page, typed, single-spaced listing of everything they had (complete with weights). Clothing, tools, and equipment for every sort of environment, rations, water, medical gear, surveillance equipment, weapons, ammo, repair kits, mountain bikes, etc etc ad nauseum. They would D-ring themselves to the raft, pick it up, shuffle thru the gateway, drop it, secure the area, and then take what they needed for the current environment, leaving the rest with the NPCs at the base camp while the PCs went off to explor and have the adventure du jour.

I looked at this list, and realized that in the battle of powergaming munchkin GM vs powergaming munchkin players, I had just gotten my ass kicked. I had to admire that.

Re: Self-Exiled Angel -- Character Background Brainstorming

In the history I'm using' date=' there was a vaguely-detailed War in Heaven, that she fought in, and I'm thinking that maybe that's where she gained the appellation "The Scourge of Heaven." However, she wasn't on the side of those who lost and "fell". Her [i']self-imposed[/i] exile happens in the modern era, sometime after WWII. She is in no way a demon.

Have you read "To Reign in Hell" by Steven Brust? If not, you should.

Perhaps your Angel is simply embittered. Just because her side won the war doesn't necessarily mean that she's happy about it, or about how it was done, or about the presence of some of the winning allies, or about concessions made to certain allies to enable the victory.

If, for instance, God (or whoever) made a deal with a neutral but powerful Angel to aid him, or even persuaded/bribed an opponent to betray the enemy/come back to his side, our Heroine might not like having to share Heaven with this guy.

Re: Immortal Questions

Well' date=' like my statement on "there should have been only one," considering the movies couldn't keep continuity, the show didn't appeal to me at all.[/quote']

 

I liked the series very much (up to the end of the fifth season, anyhow). They did a very good job of maintaining internal consistency on the series, though the producers themselves admit that the series isn't consistent with the films, which aren't consistent with themselves....

 

Adrian Paul (played Duncan) is even credited with suggesting that they keep a timeline of Duncan's travels. On the other hand, by the end of five seasons, they were wishing Duncan were older because they'd pretty much filled in his entire backstory with flasbacks.

 

In Highlander But, with the movie, they talked about people being burned at the stake and coming back, so I don't think lost limbs would be forever, or even a long time.

 

I agree. "Immortals can't regrow lost limbs" is arrogantly, aggressively, abysmally stupid. So I ignore that bit of canon. (So do some fanfic writers. One had Methos remarking that regrowing a severed spine was more painful than regrowing an arm, but quicker. Duncan objects, "But we can't do that!" Methos asks, "How do you know? Have you ever tried?" and points out that it does take a while (hence St. Cloud still having a prosthesis months after losing his hand), but that most immortals who lose an arm don't survive the fight anyhow. Which is a good point, really.)

 

Yeah, but Lucas has more continuity with Star Wars than there was in the Highlander movies.

 

/Ross Perot: That just ain't right!

Re: Immortal Questions

As for "Highlander" immortals, I don't recall any that had severed limbs.

Xavier St. Cloud lost a hand to Duncan MacLeod one season. When he returned the next season, he had a prosthesis.

Kalas got his throat cut by Duncan MacLeod in the 1930s(?). Forever afterward he had a jagged scar on his neck and the wound had ruined his voice (being obsessed with singing, he was...annoyed).

One can argue that lost limbs grow back very slowly, but the canon answer is that immortals don't regrow lost limbs. I think that's stupid. I can scoop out MacLeod's brain with an ice cream scoop, or carve his heart out on an Aztec altar and those will grow back, but he can't regrow a finger or a hand?!

But it's the official answer.

Re: End Of The World... Details At 11

My favorite would be the novel LIFTER by Crawford Killian.

THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE NOVEL IN THIS POST. IF YOU WANT TO READ IT (AND I RECOMMEND IT), YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS MESSAGE.

LAST WARNING!

In this novel the hero, a teenage boy living in Santa Teresa, California, learns how to fly. He spends time experimenting with this new ability and finding out what the limits are (he can "run" very fast, and seems to have something of a Champions-type forcefield around him when he uses his newfound ability. He gets recruited for the football team when his amazing and previously-unnoticed speed are noticed. When his girlfriend gets pissed off at him for his behavior (being secretive and unreliable--shades of classic comic book secret identity stuff!) he shows her what he's been doing.

Her reaction: "Teach me!" He does (and I was surprised, I figured he wouldn't be able to--that he was the only one who could do it). She has a bad leg and so really likes being able to get around easily without wearing her brace. He urges her to keep it secret. He's obsessed with fears of what would happen if a) they were found out, and psychopaths and other undesirables learned to fly too. His girlfriend disagrees, thinking of the many people who could benefit from learning this apparently _teachable_ skill.

In the end, his decision is moot. His girlfriend has taught several others people how to "lift" (as he calls it) secretly--and they hint at the ability while cheerleading at the big high school football game (doing inhumanly high and slow flips in the air, etc). After the game, they drop down out of the darkness into the lights around the field to hover over the field and announce via bullhorn that they learned to do this (lifting) from our hero, and that starting tomorrow, they'll be teaching anyone who wants to learn how they can do it too!

Our hero is both horrified and relieved. His secret is out. He hands his football helmet to the coach (also the school science teacher, who knew there was _something_ hinky about this nerd's sudden amazing athletic ability) and swoops up into the air to join the others.

Re: Immortal Questions

An often overlooked tool is GM Fiat. If you want characters to be immortal, just make it so. You can leave it to the players, if you like, to determine how fast they regenerate by how much healing/regeneration they buy, and so forth. But if the PCs are really-o, truly-o Immortal--just say so.

Re: Speeding things up

I always draw maps' date=' because I'm a visual person. Some people are; they can't easily visualize something, or miss key details (since we game at a friend's house and they have kids, the noise level sometimes gets out of hand). I make them in advance and often fairly detailed, and I've found it helps the players get into things and come up with some interesting tactics.[/quote']

 

There's nothing wrong with using maps, but I switched to a more freeform no-map-use style after we had been playing map-heavy for a while. The results made a believer out of me; my players tend to be wargamers as it is, taking away the props and the temptation to minimax helped speed up my game immensely.

 

At GenCon, I was in a game where the GM didn't draw anything, and he sucked at describing things. When we were getting our butts kicked in the big battle and finally convinced him to sketch out the layout, we saw things he failed to mention, and managed to work together (instead of acting almost randomly) to win.

 

Well...yeah. If the GM sucks as describing the situation, using maps can help a lot.

Re: Speeding things up

My favorite technique for speeding up combat is NO FIGURES and NO MAPS (aside from a quick sketch, maybe, to explain a complicated situation). Describe the situation, let the players respond to it without getting bogged down in exact hex counts and ranges. I'm more concerned with speedy play and simulating a comic book battle than wargaming the exact results of the rules.

"Am I close enough to punch the Man-Bear?"

"Close enough for a half-move and attack, sure."

"Okay, I'll do that."

"I throw a flame blast at Patty Neutron (one of the Neutron Sisters)."

"She's pretty far away, you'll have a minus to hit."

"Okay, I'll spread my blast by 4d6."

"Is there something big and heavy I can throw at Mr. Fusion?"

"Sure. A big mailbox is a couple of steps to your right."

Yeah, occasionally you have to stop and sort out who's where, when the players' mental picture of the battlefield diverges too much from the GM's. But even so, the time saved by not moving figures and calculating exact distances (and the minimaxing wargaming mentality that tends to go along with such things) is worth it.