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Spence

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Everything posted by Spence

  1. Thanks I finally figured it out a while ago, plus I started a new profile and make sure I NEVER click on anything even remotely related to Bollywood
  2. You were correct. I had it running on my D drive and even though I used the administrator login it gave me the electronic finger. So I just moved the folder to the C drive and everything is fine. So I'll just leave it there. Thanks for the quick reply.
  3. I have a quick question that is computer related. I do not want to post this to the Hero Designer forum because this is a computer issue not a HD issue. When I load HD6 on the laptop I carry around the font is simply too small to see. The solution is to launch HD from the command line (or create a batch script) with the following: javaw -jar HD6.jar [font size] for example, the following would set the default font size throughout the application to 18pt: javaw -jar HD6.jar 18 Full thread here: https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94648-hd6-issues-under-windows-high-resolution-screens/ My problem is I cannot get my Windows 10 Home computer to let me change to the directory I need and if I modify a shortcut in the directory it will not start. I know I did this on a different machine a few years ago but apparently I cannot duplicate the feat. Any input welcome.
  4. And since we are speaking about MLS. The Sounders have won their first two games of the season 4-0 and 2-0. Heber has hit the field and opened his account with one goal each game. Morris is back with three goals in two games.
  5. Not completely correct. Yes Apple+TV is the system that is hosting the MLS matches, but you do not need to actually get Apple+TV. You can get just the MLS part. If you do NOT want the full AppleTV the cost is $14.99/month or $99/season. If you already have AppleTV or get a subscription to AppleTV you can add MLS for $12.99/month or $79/season. I have it (the MLS only part) and it is actually pretty good. Real commentary and good pre and post game shows plus a back catalog. AND no blackouts. You can watch the local games live.
  6. I just figured out why so few people I know have watched SNW. You can't stream it without subscribing to their service. As bad as STD was, it is no wonder people are not subscribing.
  7. I don't really know. The people I know that have seen it aren't giving glowing reviews though. I haven't seen it myself, but they say two things. 1) It only resembles Trek when compared to STD and STP deep dark grimness. 2) It is basically old TOS scripts given a slight rewrite and shot as "something new". I don't know personally because as I mentioned, I haven’t seen it.
  8. I know a young guy that games at my FLGS. By young I mean in his 20's, in the Army and recently back from a stint in Poland. He had never seen Star Trek or really heard of it more than in passing. He was blown away by later TNG and and later DS9. Yes, the first few seasons of each were a little rocky. And then I had a good laugh when he tried Disco and came back with a firm WTF happened?
  9. Yep, JC is a hard sell. Very few people have heard of let alone read the books. The movie, while having a few good points, was "improved" into a disjointed mess. I used the Conan game to bring in players. I personally think the Star Trek game is better executed, but most of players these days have never seen Trek. Worse, they think the grim dark murder blood fest of Disco and Pukehard are Trek. Sad but it is what it is.
  10. OK, 2d20 in a nutshell First is that the game runs on a Momentum/Threat. Threat can also be called Doom depending on Genre of game. In Conan it is Doom, In Start Trek Adventures it is Threat. The Momentum/Threat economy is the core of what makes drama and action flow in 2d20, whether it is a Cimmerian Barbarian battling a horde of Picts or a Star Fleet Engineer racing against time to stabilize the warp core. But before we get into those details let’s look at the resolution system. The system uses d20’s and modified d6’s. The d20’s are straight up but the d6’s have the following: 1, 2, blank, blank, 1+effect, 1+effect Success and failure is determined by rolling a d20 dice pool to achieve enough “successes” to equal or exceed the “test difficulty”. A d20 dice pool that maxes out at 5d20. Normal everyday NPC’s and creatures (minions) start with 1d20. PC’s and non-minor NPC’s and creatures start with 2d20 (hence the name of the system) Additional d20’s can be purchased by spending availed Momentum or buying them by giving the GM Threat. This applies to any resolution regardless of being combat, social conflict, skills or attribute tests. Getting a “success” is achieved by rolling under your target number with a d20. Each incarnation of the 2d20 games has a slightly different take on how you determine that target number. A small detour to explain two versions of Attributes & Skills In Conan: You have 7 Attributes (Such as Agility, Awareness, Braun, etc.) and skills that are linked to attributes. Each Skill has an Expertise (skill level) and may have a Focus. A PC’s attributes are usually in the teens and expertise starts at 0 and slowly works up a point or two at a time. I have rarely seem a Focus exceed 3, with 1 being the norm. For example: The Attribute Agility has three linked skills. The agility score is the Target Number for a basic agility roll and is also the base number for each skill below it. If Agility was 10, then all skills under it would be at a TN of 10. Skills can be improved and make have focuses which are a then of specializing within a skill. Agility: 10 Acrobatics: +0 = TN 10 Melee: +4 = TN 14 Long Sword (focus 2) Stealth: +1 = TN 11 In Star Trek: They take a simpler approach since all Star Fleet Officers are supposed to be inherently competent and it is a space opera where you do not want to stifle the technobabble. Star Trek Adventures (STA) has Six Attributes and six Disciplines that replace Skills. They are: Attributes = Control, Fitness, Presence, Daring, Insight and Reason & Disciplines = Command, Security, Science, Conn, Engineering and Medicine. Like Conan, attribute tend to be in the teens but Disciplines can be anywhere from 1 to 5 or 6. There is nothing that says they cannot go higher, but I have not seen any in game. A discipline can have a focus. For example TOS Captain Kirk has: Control 09 Fitness 09 Presence 10 Daring 11 Insight 09 Reason 08 Command 05 Security 03 Science 02 Conn 02 Engineering 03 Medicine 01 With focuses in: Hand-to-Hand Combat History Leadership Persuasion Phasers Starship Tactics Now back to how to get a success. In Conan it is pretty straight forward. If the PC is in combat and wants to hit the enemy they look at their skill Melee. In our example Melee has a TN of 14, so any d20 that rolls 14 or lower is a success! But wait!! If our intrepid hero in the example is using a Long Sword (Focus of 2) that any d20 that rolls 2 or 1 counts as TWO successes. So if the PC rolls 2d20 (the base number available) they have the ability to get from 0 to 4 successes. For STA it is slightly different. The TN is generated by selecting an Attribute and adding a Discipline. The landing party is locked in a brawl with a group of Orion Smuggles on Cestus 3. Kirk wants to knock out his opponent as soon as possible. Which combo is used? Daring and Security? Or maybe Fitness and Security? It all depends on how the player describes their intent and actions. It is flexible. Lets go with Daring and Security, it is Kirk after all. So the TN is 14. If the player takes the time to use it in their narrative, the Hand-to-Hand Combat could apply. In STA a if a focus applies than any roll that is under the Discipline counts as two successes. So in this case with Security being 3, every d20 that gets a 1, 2 or 3 is two successes. As I mentioned before every PC starts with 2d20, but how do you get more? The two primary method are either to spend available Momentum or give the GM Threat/Doom. If available you get one additional d20 for each Momentum spent or alternatively you can give the GM one additional Threat/Doom for each additional d20. Up to a maximum of 5d20’s. In the example, it is the beginning of the brawl so there is no Momentum yet, so he gives the GM 3 Threat and rolls a full 5d20. So we now know how many dice, but how many successes to be able to hit? Task Difficulty (TD). The GM sets a number of 0 to 5 (in STA, can be higher, 0-6 in Conan). If the number of successes equals or exceeds the TD you succeeded. The exact TD depends on how Dramatic the scene is. The brawl is taking place in a dark alley so we will set the TD at 2 rather than the normal 1 for unarmed combat. Using his famous two handed hammer blow, Kirk attempts to strike the Orion thug. Rolling 5d20 he gets 14, 11, 10, 5 and 2. All are successes but with the focus the roll generates 6 successes easily landing the blow. Unarmed Melee is rated at 1d6 plus Knockdown effect with +d6 equal to Security so Kirk’s blow does 4d6+Knockdown. But wait! We have 6 success and only need 2! What happens to the “unused” 4 successes. While there can be several options based on exact game, the basic option are spend each success to add an additional d6 or let them go into the Momentum pool. Kirks player knows that one of the PC’s is a science type with very little ability in a physical fight, so they opt to buy one more d6 and put 3 points into momentum. Kirk rolls 5d6 getting: 2, blank, 1+effect, 1+e, 1=e. For a total of 5 plus 2 effect. Since the only effect available is knockdown, Kirk does 5 stress (damage) and knocks the thug to the deck. Effects with a Disruptor can get nasty, while an effect in an extended task to stabilize the reactor can be pretty beneficial. The next PC can use those three Momentum to buy dice or even trigger effects if their d6’s rolled bad. The Momentum pool maxes out at 6 and losses one for each complete turn (all characters have acted). I use big 2” d6’s to track momentum since everyone can see them. The die gets passed to the acting player. Threat/Doom is pool that is used by the GM for practically everything. Instead of initiative in Conan the players always act first in whatever order they wish. The GM spends Doom to “interrupt” and allow an NPC/Creature to act. Want to roll more that 1d20 for a mob, spend Doom. Cast a spell, Doom. Trigger an effect, Doom. STA uses Threat the same way. PC’s tracking a group of Romulans through the coastal hills and need sudden rain squall, Threat. Pretty much everything a GM wants to do runs on Threat/Doom. Each specific game has its differences. Take the brawl above. In the example Kirk was just rolling against a TD. If the opponent had been a Notable or Major NPC, the roll would have been an opposed roll where you compare successes. While Conan has the same sword swinging vibe as many games. STA can actually make non-combat activities feel as dramatic as combat. I ran a STA game for a con that feel on Halloween. It was a Star Trek meets Eldritch Horror cross over where there were three simultaneous momentum pools running. One team of PC’s trying to stabilize the outposts reactors long enough for the crew to escape, one team trying to repair the damaged archer class starship so it could be used to escape and the last team trying to hold off the swarming spider horrors long enough to let the other teams get done. It was a non-stop roller coaster with as many groans for a missed engineering roll that generated a setback as for a Redshirt Extra getting swarmed. Once everyone understood that their action narrative directly affected things and that Momentum and Threat were meant to be spent with wild abandon the game really took off. Everyone had a great time and the rest of my games that con were filled with me squeezing in extras. All in all, it is a great system. But it does rely on the players being able to let loose and realize it is not D&D or PF where your PC’s are limited to specific and rigidly defined abilities. In STA and John Carter especially where skills have been replaced by broad categories that are open to interpretation limited only by the players imagination.
  11. Sorry for the super late reply. Modiphious is the company and they have several games sporting the 2d20 system beside Conan and John Carter. Achtung! Cthulhu, Dune, Fallout, Dishonored, Homeworld, Infinity and Star Trek Adventures. Cohors Cthulhu is in development. I really enjoy the Star Trek game. I am running short on time and have to get on the road or I'll be late. I will give rundown on the mechanics tonight.
  12. Given the names of the people that have taken over key positions in Hasbro/WotC, my personal belief is that they are going to be moving D&D to be a 100% online game. There will no longer be dead tree products in a few years. The game will resemble a CRPG with an online tool-kit that will allow a DM to create and populate maps/locations/campaigns in the D&D server and the players will create their PC's on line. And then you will all dial into the D&D virtual world and play the game with the DM controlling the creatures/monsters/NPCs with the system automatically resolving the mechanics. For a fee of course. The $30 they mentioned for basic access. The more to "buy" the virtual books. and even more for a "DM's" account. And so on. Sure they will lose a lot of traditional D&D gamers. But they will be replacing a lot of people that only buy a single book with people on a monthly subscription. At $30 a month they will get $360 a year from a player. How many of the players, not including DM's, at your table hand WotC $360 a year? The DM's will also need to pay extra for DM content such as monsters and setting books. And any mappers and campaign tools that are stored and accessed through the program will of course have its own subscription. And don't forget all the cool in system micro-transactions you can purchase in game to make your characters virtual miniature look cool. Nope, I think TTRPG D&D is going away.
  13. I've come to realize that while I really miss a great game of Hero, GUMSHOE and Call of Cthulhu have become my go to games. And I am recently finding a lot of goodness in the 2d20 system. Hero is a great system, but it is very hard to get people to play it and it is simply not readily available at the FLGS.
  14. Ah yes, the classic Halfling-Thief-on-a-rope trap detector.
  15. Sad. Far too many people I know or know about are passing. Good wishes for the family and friends.
  16. I think that is why the Star Trek and the FoDG games seem to go so well. Even if they are not fans of the shows most players know enough about Star Trek and super spies along the line of Jason Bourne to be able to get into the game. SuperHero games are hard when there has been so little superHero and some much People/Killers with powers in the last decade or so. I'm sure you're not shocked when you ask someone what their favorite superHERO is and they reply with something like Venom or Deadpool and then look puzzled when you tell them they are not heroes.
  17. Outstanding, it is great when that happens. I ran three sessions at Dragonflight. 1st was a Star Trek Adventures (STA, 2d20) game titled A Small Matter of Glory. 2nd was a Hero 5thR Fantasy game titled Shadows over the Darkwood 3rd was a Fall of Delta Green (FoDG, Gumshoe) game titled Containment. All the games went well and once again I was surprised about the current quality of players. One of the many reasons I had stopped GMing at cons years ago was that players seemed to have been replaced by, for lack of a better term, "munchkins" who weren't interested in actually role playing as they were in just messing with things. Last year when I decided to return to conventions and even run I was pleasantly surprised at how different the experience was with the players actually playing the pre-generated character in their actual role while still giving it their own flavor. It took me back to the 70/80's when players wanted to be part of the story rather than trying to twist it to be all about one player. This year the con was the same and the players were great and conquered the challenges in very interesting ways. Most of my adventures, especially one-shots, don't have written endings. I usually bullet out a few general outcomes and any possible NPC reactions if needed. But a good group of players will always resolve things in a way you didn't think of. And this years players didn't disappoint. I felt they were far more comfortable with STA and FoDG than Hero. I run my games more on a narrative angle than maps & math meaning I only have them role anything when it would be dramatically appropriate. All three games were pretty similar in play until we hit the action. Hero was different enough it took a little longer to click, but everyone had a good time and there enough laughs and jabs at the table to show it. All in all a great time and I will need to do some tweaking to see if I can come up with an easier presentation for Hero 5thR at a con table.
  18. You know that was extremely cruel, right? Showing a picture of such gaming coolness without a link...... So cruel with a side dish of mean...
  19. I've never been a fan of the grim dark Casual-Killer Man movies that replaced Superman under Snyder. But the Snyder cut was 100%....no 1000% better than the theatrical version. Everything I read or listened to indicated that Batgirl was brutally bad and provoked a very very negative reaction from test audiences. Initial statements announcing it being canned mentioned that. Then suddenly it was it was all about tax write-offs and "it was a good movie but..." statements. I think they are just saying that so they can try to avoid any possible legal repercussions. After all modern movies have a lot of stake holders.
  20. That's a real....er...bummer. Trying to watch my language these days I just dumped DTV a couple months ago and haven't even noticed it, except the $ I've saved. Right now I either go to the home games or watch on Amazon Prime video, they currently stream live games unless carried by something like ESPN. I really don't want another subscription. All, and I mean ALL of the services like Disney+, Paramount or HBO are simply not worth it because of decent content being so rare and spaced out. Pretty much all of my entertainment is movies and shows from outside the US. Apple does have a few shows I'd like to see, but they are not so important that I'd want to subscribe. Generally the 7 day free trial is more than enough to watch the entire catalog of decent shows. It has been true for all the streams I've tried. I have Amazon Prime because it is already there and Netflix because it has a good catalog of international fare and Kdrama. I guess older single people with a good amount of disposable income is no longer their target audience.
  21. I thought there would still be local broadcast like Fox13 or 13+ I've seen a fair share of acting on the field by women players in matches. Just not as over the top as some of the leagues.
  22. Maybe. I can't remember the series. There were good ones and bad ones.
  23. Finally had the opportunity to watch thr Snyder cut of Justice League. While the whole Snyder'verse is too grim dark for a Superman movie in my opinion. But the Snyder version was definitely a better movie. The theatrical release was a disjointed mess and was more meh than movie. The SC made far more sense even if they grim/darked Supes. Barring a completely new movie series, hopefully by someone who actually read a Superman comic. Yes, I understand that would require finding issues from the 80s. But if they actually read Superman, they could do a fantastic movie with current technology. But if we can't get something actually good, then the SC is a passable substitute. It gets a firm OK from me.
  24. So I submitted my games for Dragonflight. Three games 1) A Small Matter of Glory. Star Trek Adventures Klingon (2d20) 2) Shadows over the Darkwood. (Fantasy Hero 5thR) 3) Containment (Fall of Delta Green/GUMSHOE) Looking forward to it again this year. I had a blast at last years con.
  25. Think of the "Plot" as the PC ships "radar" screen. The center is your ship and the targets are things you have detected. I usually use the outer most ring for undefined nebulous contacts. Something may be there or not, perhaps just beyond detection range. "Captain, I have and intermittent contact at 230. It keeps dropping off the scope." The next ring in will be firm contacts, but not clearly defined. "Captain, I have a firm target at 230. It looks to be somewhere in the 400,000 to 500,000 ton range. A Klingon D7 would fall in that range, but it could just be a big rock." Note: Exactly how much displacement for a D-7 is still argued. I have seen sources claim 470,000 metric tons and others say 125,000. So??? The next rings inward would be based on ranges of the game. For Star Trek Adventures the "ranges" are Contact, Close, Medium, Long, Extreme. I generally do not use Hero vehicle/ship rules. I tend to use a simpler system that serves to allow exciting action but focuses on individual PC actions over the vehicle. Rather than moving the PC's ship around. I move what they can see around their ship. About Starfire. It was and is the only game I have ever played that allowed a game with literally 100+ ships to be played and resolved in 4 to 5 hours. A ships control sheet is a string of letters arraigned left to right. Damage is applied by marking of letters left to right. Some code are S=Shield, A=Armor, (I)= Ion Engine, H= Cargo Hold, L=Laser and so on. Some higher tech weapons ignore certain defenses. Here is the entire control sheet for a frigate. DISCOVERY-class FG (AC) HS 20 TL 1 [2] SSAA(I)HL(I)(I)RMgQsX(I)(I) [7/3] The long and the short is you could put 20 or more ships per regular sheet of paper and mark off damage form a salvo in minutes. Ships tended to go away fast in fleet actions, even small ships actions didn't take long. 20 points of damage will cripple even a light cruiser and severely limit their maneuvering or weapons. It was a hoot, and when combined with the campaign system was a great game that didn't get buried in rules. Classic Starfire. Not the new version that seems to believe incomprehensible complication is a virtue.
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