Spence

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. You don't have to set the game timeline in the bronze to run the game feel in the bronze. My players are keying off the feel more than the setting for who the PC's act. I chose '65 for the tech availability. Primitive computers, no cell phones, no DNA testing (as we know it) and so on. Secret ID’s are much more plausible and many things we take for granted are super-science.

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. To be fair most of us that do are older and remember good comics. If you grew up with the recent stuff my guess is you would like them.......but they also like fake wrestling and reality shows......

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. I'm going to have to stop reading these boards..... Now I have to get yet another DVD set.....sigh.....

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur.

Re: I am a comic book dinosaur. ARRRGGGHHHHH! Danger Will Robinson! Danger! You are not a dinosaur! Stay in the past. I like you had stopped reading when comics were comics. I too realized what I knew and liked had changed. and I too read many of the "great" books of today. and I will never be able to erase them from my mind again. essentially "modern" comic have shifted from being stories about iconic heroes to be stories about people with regular normal ethics and mindsets with superpowers. You have the re-tooled once iconic heroes whacking and killing like they were crack heads or drug dealers in a drug war. The new fans say it is more realistic and that may be true. But if I want realism I watch the news or a crime drama. I had tried to start several games based on the "new" stuff and they fell through. Recently I said to {beep} with it and am running a game with the feel of the old style comics and it is going strong. I had to lean on the players during character creation to get superheroes instead of "dark vengeful vigilantes who walk alone in the darkness and angst" clones. It took a couple sessions for them to let go, but now instead of just enjoying themselves they are having FUN! Don't sell us dinosaurs short, there is a reason all the new superhero movies are based on the events and timelines from the 80's and earlier. Yay Team!! :D

Re: Humans are "Special" Thinking about it, I have discovered the real reason! We are stupid and lemmings We will try anything even if it is the most stupid thing in the world, and no matter how many people get killed at it, there will always be someone to try again. Even if you rely on pure luck, eventually someone will succeed.

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? Actually, if you play the basic game with only the basic options it really isn't that bad. We used to take 4-5 Federation cruisers against a like number of Klingons and wrap things up in 2-3 hours all the time. But a lot of people just don't understand the word option, and have to add the other 300 pages of stuff. Then the game can get so bad it takes 3-4 hours just to plot the movement. Kinda like Hero. If you just play the game it is the same or faster than any other game out there. But if you insist on using 100 options it really slows things down. I always get a chuckle when someone insists that something in Hero is broken, and then cite a supplement like the Ultimate Brick or Dark Champions. Hero 5th is the rulebook everything else in an option.

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

Re: Hero Funding

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? Amazingly, or not so amazing , I have had the exact opposite experience. In the Hero games I play in each player has their character, a combat tracker/summery sheet, and a notepad. There is usually one rulebook and maybe a sidekick on the table. Since we are not creating characters as we play all information is on the character sheet, the books are irrelevant. In every D&D 3.X game I have ever seen, whether I played or not, each player has the players handbook, at least three supplements per player (for the 4-8 Prestige/special whats its they have) and occasionally a monster manual or two. That is per player! Every single combat I have been in or watched has involved at least 20 minutes of arguing/discussing AOO interpretations and which “special” ability takes precedence over the other one for every 20 minutes of combat played out. Every time the momentum gets going we have to stop so play #4 can flip through all his books to find the reference on magical gimmegaw #24 because player #2 says “it can’t do that” and the DM is in melt down because he can’t remember the entire content of the 65 books that the group owns. In the Hero games all skills and combat related items are clearly labeled on the combat tracker/summery sheet, and there isn’t a problem of supplement #35 contradicting #25 so that kind of discussion never comes up. We cycle right through the combat in an unbroken flow of superheroic butt kicking. Now I fully understand 90% of the problem is how people approach the games, but for me Hero is cleaner and easier to bring to the table. Mostly because everything about the characters capabilities can be listed on a single sheet. For D&D, once again from my experience, it is virtually impossible to play out a combat without referring to at least two or three charts meaning at least two books PH and DMG.

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? Two of the players in my current game are new to Hero and one hasn't even flipped through the rules. They are having a good time. Just because the option exists, doesn't mean you have to use it

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? Hear! Hear! Well said!

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? How does that work for you in Supers games?

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? I do the same thing. It never dawned on me that people would do it differently. The only way someone changes things in game would be like a gadgeteer. And then they can only do like to like. For instance a gadgeteer who make his skill rolls could modify an active sonar device into a sonic weapon, etc. But the sonar device would have had to be defined prior to the session.

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it?

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? This is how I handle this. Not telling anyone what to do, but this works for me All of the PC's abilities are on the character sheet. Before the session I review any new powers and therefore already know what they can do. I make any notes on my GM copy of the character sheet. In play the players simply indicates what they are trying to do. If necessary I will rule on the fly. After the session we can discuss it, but during actual play cracking the book equals “hero is dithering in indecision” and play moves to next player. A point though, we will and do take time outs before a combat to run over things for new players and make sure they have a handle on things, and in combat the GM and other players will prompt new players if they seem to be lost about something. But the D&D 3.5 standard practice of having 25 books with half a hundred book markers open in front of each player just doesn’t fly in games I run. For a supers game the only “books” I keep out are the game shield from the resource kit and the Combat Hand Book. Everything else is on my notes pages, scenario write-ups, and PC/NPC/Villain characters sheets. I actually don’t get this one. Hero 5th Revised came out in 2002 (I believe) and it didn’t actually change any rules, just clarified some and fixed typo’s and such. Hero 5th came out in what 2000? It has been over 7 years since anything really changed. I was tripped up a few times by a couple of things. But that was way back in '01(?). Overall, there really weren’t that many “changes”, and unless you have been playing 7+ years that is. As far as rules arbitration, when in doubt I make a on the spot call and then we discuss it later.

Re: Hero Funding Err.. not legally.... But have two different paint schemes. Be a part time villain, non-violent of course, and steal the money

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? I am running a new Champs game and frankly this hasn't been a problem. The players just PLAY. They never count hexes till after decif=ding the action, it has just never occurred to them to stall and try to milk time while computing the best possible factor for everything. They just say what they are trying to do and we go. Since it is four color supers I am not using too many of the options. So even if the player doesn't know the rules 100%, the combats are still fast and furious. So far lack of coordination and plain old mistakes have made the battles fun, with the added bonus for the GM of the villains getting away clean The two plot lines I have in place right now have the Heroes trying to figure out what GRAB is up to and a not too flattering encounter with my sup'd up version of Penny Dreadful. She is morphing into the Joker of my world and has up to this point successfully out maneuvered the Heroes All in all it is shaping up as a good game. The only thing it lacks is any bogging down. The sessions have all been fast and furious

Re: Humans are "Special" Plus they will most likely convince themselves it was theirs by "right" and it is your fault they had fight you for it

Re: My Cool Color Hudson City Map

Re: My Cool Color Hudson City Map and a one and a two and a three Waaahhhhaaa! wwwwahahahhahaaaaa I wanna mapppp p p ppp :weep: wwwahhhaaaaaaaa :weep:

Re: Humans are "Special" Well I have returned and discovered that all of the threads I followed are now so long I will never catch up. So. New threads To answer the question. I read a book many years ago that had an answer to your question. We are the only species able to "go native" practically anywhere. We are able to adapt to and use pretty much everything from customs, ethics, technology from just about anywhere. Even if you conquer and human world, at first the surviving humans may be slaves or servants, but 50-100 years down the line you discover they are the primary movers and shakers of 99% of your soldiers, banking firms, trading companies, etc. One day you wake up and they took over from the inside. Kinda like cockroaches

Re: Best superhero titles of the 70's

Re: Best superhero titles of the 70's I agree with all of it. I enjoyed X-Men, New Mutants, Teen Titans, Alpha Flight, DNAgents and a number of others until somewhere in the late 80's possibly 90-91. Then the comics all seemed to forget they were for entertainment and thought they were on the philosophical high road to social engineering or something. Whatever they thought they were doing almost everyone I knew moved on from being die hard comic readers to other things. Can't do much more than say Yep.

Re: CHAMPIONS OF THE NORTH -- What Would You Like To See? A city. Overview and general detail. I would like to see enough to support a GM and at least a mini campaign. But I don't think that is practice. So I guess the City Book should come out in 2009 Solo villains. More solo villains. A primer for: Canadian law and legal system. Canadian civil law enforcement agencies. Canadian federal law enforcement agencies. Canadian Military.