sinanju

Re: Monster Squad Ideas

There's this new restaurant in town, see. Damien's Deep Pit Barbeque. And Damian ain't just whistling Dixie.

See, Damian is a servitor of a demon (or some other other-dimensional monster) which has dominion over...cannibals. There's more than just pork in the delicious pork barbeque Damian serves.

Unwitting cannibals simply open themselves to the demon's influence--they endure bad dreams and increasingly hard-to-resist temptations to indulge in various depravities. But those who eventually succumb to temptation and knowingly and willingly eat human flesh become vessels of the demon.

The demon can possess them at will, shifting from one vessel to another with a thought. And the demon, while in a mortal body, can work magic.

I ran this once in a GURPS-based "World of Darkness" campaign. My players were scared out of their socks because they had a devil of a time (har har) figuring out what the hell was going on. It didn't help that some of the victims of this scheme included various cops and city bigwigs who'd developed a taste for the very special "long pork" barbeque....

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen

I think that we are missing one thing of the original LXG. Most of the characters where Villians in thier original stories. So Lechter isn't far from the mark...We need a reformable villian with supertech to match Nemo.

Villains with Supertech:

Ernst Blofeld--yeah, Bond kept beating him, but he kept coming back.

HANK SCORPIO from the Simpsons, for sure.

Mr. Gordons (robot villain from the Destroyer novels)

"Friend" (computer villain from the Destroyer novels)

Other possibilities for the Modern LXG:

Modesty Blaise & Willie Garvin (they're a bit long in the tooth, but they definitely qualify as "reformed villains" given their histories).

Nuihc (villainous Master of Sinanju)

Re: Global Guardians - Champs by email (review)

And to listen to people talk on here' date=' you would think building a background for a character is akin to a root canal. I'm having so much fun preparing Omnipresent for the possibility of the Legacy campaign right now. If it isn't accepted it isn't going to be the end of the world for me.[/quote']

 

Well, clearly there are gamers like you (and like me, to an extent) who can enjoy the process of creating a character. Having it accepted and playing is even better, but we can enjoy the creation process.

 

Then there are gamers like my wife. She views character creation as a necessary evil, a chore that precedes the fun. She's just as happy to have pre-gen characters handed out, or--as we've been doing lately--playing Fudge and generating the characters on-the-fly, while we play.

 

Different strokes for different folks.

Re: Global Guardians - Champs by email (review)

I'm not really ready to reply to the other stuff on this thread. Maybe I will another time. But I wanted to put a vote in here for the audit system. I like the fact that all the characters go through the same process. It certainly diffuses any hint of "well' date=' such and such GM let me do X--why won't you?" Plus, it opens the door for later opportunities for characters to migrate from game to game and facilitates crossovers. I'm glad that we'll be able to start playing pre-audit, but very glad that the audit system is still in place.[/quote']

 

The problem there--with maintaining the possibility of characters migrating from one game to another, or crossovers--is that it's already essentially impossible for characters in some (perhaps many) games to move over to other games. For instance, Jack's GLobal Guardians game gives players 350+150 points, with up to 75 point Active Cap on powers, and each PC gets one 90 AP power. By comparison, Venture Institute (Mutant High, basically) is a 50+50 (40 AP cap) game. Phoenix Rising is a 50+100 (35 AP cap) game.

 

There's no earthly way to move a character from one of these games to another without changing the character unless you're prepared to let the new character either find himself seriously underpowered or overpowered by comparison to the others. (Crossovers aren't such a problem, because if Stone or Gunmetal of the GG visit the Venture Institute, well, they ARE horribly more powerful than the kids.)

 

Yeah, a lot of the games are in the 200+150 (or 250+100) range, but a lot of them have background requirements (Redemption--truly repentant Supervillains doing good, and Damocles Directive--the "Suicide Squad") that mean these characters can't reasonably transfer to another campaign anyhow.

 

On the other hand, Jack obviously considered dropping the universal audit requirement but met resistance from some players and/or GMs. Given that he takes a lot of flack sometimes, and that allowing individual GMs to audit their own games would invariably give rise to claims of injustice (or outright favoritism), whether the claims were just or unjust, I can understand why he decided not to fight that battle. He's going to get flack either way, so why stir up _new_ trouble?

 

He's also announced that starting today, once the characters have been _given_ to the auditors, the GMs can start their campaigns immediately rather than wait for the audits to be completed. If an audit later requires changes in a character, the changes will happen--even if the previous storyline has to be declared invalid. (But in my opinion, since the alternative is not to play at all until the audits are done, that's fine. We'll still have gotten in some playing time, even if the adventure ends up "non-canon".)

Re: Global Guardians - Champs by email (review)

But I’ve learned an interesting lesson, one that took a long time for me to get through my thick head. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t get too attached to the way things are in GG because they’ll change. Write and play, but control your passion and attachments. Don’t limit yourself to only playing here either. There are other places out there. Go, play in them. Hopefully while waiting to get in to GG, you’re taking advantage of other gaming opportunities.

I second this. I am, in fact, currently playing a Yahoo-group based Champions game. A post seeking players was posting the GGU Chat list (and Worldbuilder has explicitly blessed such posts there), and I joined the game. I wrote up a character (background and character sheets), sent it to the GM, got a note back asking me to change a couple of things, and I did. And then I started playing. I'm still looking forward to playing in the two GGU games I've got queued up, but in the meantime I'm playing another game right _now_.

Re: Global Guardians: My Audit Experience

Okay, here's the complete audit of the character I'll be playing in the Z Optima campaign (soon, I hope). As emailed to me by Worldmaker, which my comments added.

Total Cost: 365

Disads Total: 325

 

The player needs to cut 15 points from the character, while simultaneously

adding 25 points of disadvantages. This will balance the character at

350/350 and end the audit. Le Fantome will be on the website shortly.

 

 

The following issues were discovered:

 

Given the nature of the character, the limitation "Not While Desolidified"

is worth -1/2, rather than -1/4. This change does not affect any of the

slot costs in the Multipower. It does, however, reduce the cost of the

"Grappling With a Ghost II" and "Grappling With a Ghost III" powers from 9

points apiece to 7 points apiece.

I deliberately chose the lesser of two possible limitation values for just this reason--I'd rather spend more points than necessary than fewer, and get them back after the audit.

Well, darn. He's right. I missed that. I can't legally link those two powers. I'd rather have been given the option to revise the MP slot somehow, rather than have them simply moved out of the MP entirely, but that wasn't an option. Or rather, maybe if I'd suggested it, but as Worldmaker can be touchy sometimes and I frankly didn't care that much, I left it alone.

The "Self Only" limitation has been added to the "Gaseous Reassembly" power, as this properly reflects the description of this power given in the background.

Another error on my part. I'd intended to include that but didn't.

Given that this character's native language is English, and given the

presence of the Linguist skill enhancer, Language Skill: Arabic - Fluent

Conversation costs 2 points rather than 1.

 

Given that this character's native language is English, and given the

presence of the Linguist skill enhancer, Language Skill: Bantu - Fluent

Conversation costs 2 points rather than 1.

 

Given that this character's native language is English, and given the

presence of the Linguist skill enhancer, Language Skill: French - Fluent

With Accent costs 1 points rather than 2.

 

Given that this character's native language is English, and given the

presence of the Linguist skill enhancer, Language Skill: Setswana - Fluent

With Accent costs 2 points rather than 1.

 

Given that this character's native language is English, and given the

presence of the Linguist skill enhancer, Language Skill: Swahili - Fluent

With Accent costs 2 points rather than 1.

I didn't know the optional rule making languages outside the character's native "box" cost more was in use. I don't recall seeing it written anywhere on the website, but I might have missed it.

Science Skill: Anthropology 12 or less costs 3 points, rather than 1.

 

The Z Optima package costs 10 points rather than 9.

 

Reputation: Avenging Spectre 11 or less, +/- 2d6 has a cost of 2 points,

rather than 4.

 

Minor Talent: Knows Someone in Every Town, City, and Village has been

disallowed, since its not all that minor a talent (and is in fact a rather

large one). The character should instead take Contacts to reflect this ability.

The GM of the campaign and I had discussed this in email, and agreed that just because I knew someone in every town didn't mean I'd know anyone _helpful_. It was just color for a well-traveled, outgoing character. So I figured this was okay. Apparently not, but since it _was_ just color, having it disallowed wasn't a big deal.

Dependent NPC: Innocent Bystander of the Week has been disallowed because the character must have some connection to the DNPC that would allow the DNPC to be a burden on the character. A random person on the street who just happens to be in danger does not qualify.

I was a little disappointed that this didn't pass, but not surprised. It was an attempt at creating a disad that replicated the tendency of characters like Modesty Blaise to find people in need of rescuing wherever they go.

Dependent NPC: Girlfriend of the Week is worth 10 points, rather than 5.

 

Le Fantome does not qualify for the "Easy to Find" adder. Thus, Mystery

Hunted 8 or less (Hunter is as Powerful, Harshly Punish) is worth 10 points

rather than 15.

 

Please submit a writeup for "Physical Limitation: Trouble Magnet" for

inclusion in the Master Lists of Limitations.

On the other hand, I wrote up "Trouble Magnet" to be the pulp-style disadvantage I described above and the disad was accepted, so I got what I wanted in the end, and so did the auditors.

"Reputation: Interfering Do-Gooder to Be Eliminated Pre-emptively" has been disallowed because this would fall under the "Duh, he's a hero" doctrine.

Again, disappointed but not surprised. It just seemed so pulp-like.

Vulnerability: 2 x Stun from Fire is worth 20 points, rather than 10.

Another math error on my part.

In the end I added two disadvantages to the character and dropped two HTH Combat Skill Levels and 1 3-maneuver combat skill level and a background skill to balance the character out. Moving the two powers out of the MP and making them stand-alone powers cost 14 points that had to be squeezed out somewhere else. It hurt to lose those combat skill levels, but that was the least painful way to do it. Because, frankly, if my prior experience in the pre-reboot Anchorage Embassy campaign is anything to go by, combat is gonna be the least of my activities.

So, overall impressions?

It was a little over two months from the time this character was initially accepted for a campaign until it was audited, and the campaign still hasn't started yet. It should be soon, though. I spent a lot of time creating characters and submitting them for other campaigns without getting chosen by the GMs, which was frustrating. But when I finally get to play these (two) characters, I think it'll be fun.

I'm also playing in a non-GGU Champions game. Joining that one was MUCH faster. Several turns a week, so far. It has it's own difficulties, though. Background info is much less voluminous, for one thing. Some of the participants write...oddly (bad spelling and erratic punctuation, which can make posts hard to decipher sometimes). Still, we're playing, which is what it's all about.

Re: The Government went and took my Power Armor- A villain's lament

Originally posted by Hermit

Okay, assuming the Powered Armor is the sort that can be used by anyone with a little practice, and, again assuming, that most villains spend some time in Stronghold or jail...

 

What happens to the Power armor that some of them were wearing?

My view is that, even if the government confiscates the armor, the government's "Top Men" will examine it for a while, scratch their heads, and when asked how it works, say "Hell if I know."

Not to mention that as far as I'm concerned powered armor is like any other high-tech military toy. It requires a lot of maintenance to keep it operating, and not just anyone can operate it. (No, no low-IQ morons operating powered armor in MY universe.) Even if the government can find somebody to operate it, it will soon break down and become useless without the tender loving care of its creator.

Originally posted by Mark Rand

On Stargate SG-1, it's been stated that the gate breaks down matter into subatomic particles, sends it, as a charged matter stream, through another dimension, to another stargate, where the matter is reassembled....

Which is, in my opinion, one of the stupider, Trek-influenced retcons they've made on that show. The gate was originally a womrhole--you know, a shortcut around normal space. Now it's a big, cumbersome, fixed-focus Trek-style transporter. Boo! Hisssssss!

But then, they've succumbed to a lot of Trek-type generic technobabble (and lots of spaceships) in the last two or three seasons, so I guess I'm not all that surprised.

Or interested, anymore. I've watched like one and half episodes of hte current season.