Super Squirrel

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 

he's quite a good GM atleast online. GO for it guys.

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

 
All you need to say is "Yes, master," followed by "I'm ready for you".

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 
Wow, this went even more wrong that I imagined!

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
I'll start with one. I'll see about sharing others from the photoshoot later. Those with good eyes can also see a glimpse of the other half of our anime collection and our movie collection.
 

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
Weird... oh well. I'll upload it directly.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
I love her smile. While beautiful in pictures, it is something that needs to be witnessed in person to fully appreciate.

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 

For specifics you need to know what governmental agency you will be looking for. Here is what I pulled from the USDA:
 

So I would guess one year experience above a college education, or a graduate degree in the field they are looking for.

Re: Aging Campaigns
 

A lot of this has actually been done by my players. My players have gotten so interested in their characters lives, that I enocurage them to look for pictures online of their workplace, coworkers, house, car, stuff like that. Some players enjoy more that you expect, and you should see the look on their face when the get in an auto accident...
 
The pictures are usually placed on an Excel sheet, where they are really easy to manipulate, and printed out. They are kept in a three ring binder.
 
 

Well, my campaign has been going for 10 years now, the original 200 point characters have become very powerful.
 
One thing that I have done, is do some scenarios where players meet future or alternate versions of themselves. This can be a lot of fun, as it gives the player a window into their possible future. It also allows you to suggets possible directions for characters, without it looking liking you are forcing them anywhere.
 
One way to deal with a lot of experience, is to have some time pass in the game world. Send all the characters off to superhero training camp for three months, they come back with new skills/powers.
 
Lastly, consider coordinated attacks. Can two (or more) characters combine their powers, creating a more powerful attack? Make the power, split the cost between them.
 
You can also require the players sarifice some of their experience, that goes into a pool for that character. When it gets big enough, something happens and they get a new power/ability.
 
 

Have a few superhero "social events"
 
~The heroes are about to get government funding (of some level), and need to recruit some new member(s) so satisfy a requirement. The new members have to compete against each other, and the PC's get to have the fun of performing background checks.
 
~The heroes are invited to a superhero wedding, where they meet various other heroes. No supervillain attacks, but they get to have the fun of being accepted by a larger community.
 
~A hero kills an NPC, thorough accident. Now he/she must deal with supporting the victims family.
 
~Look into family backgrounds for characters, and consider developing them in someway. Relationships exist in many levels, and not all family members are DNPCs.
 
~You can always have a team meeting...
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11977
 
~Or got to therapy...
http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12541
 
Good thread, btw.

Re: Aging Campaigns
 
SS, sounds you like you already have a really good game, but want more. Cool!
 
Take the bluebook idea, and expand on it. I'm a notorious diary writer. Almost every character I play keeps a diary.
I distribute it by email, usually. Now one of the other players keeps one too, and we all have a good laugh comparing what happened (in one of our campaigns) from the 2 characters' differing points of view.
 
Our GM depends on my diaries; he re-reads them for dangling plot lines, which eventually come back to bite us.
 
When I run, I encourage my players to keep diaries by rewarding them, either with XP (which you already note as a potential problem) or with money, contacts, etc. I also like to give "Fate Points" which are essentially 1-use Luck Rolls. Everybody LOVES getting to re-roll that one lousy roll that messed up the story.
 
If you have the time and the opportunity, role-play with your players outside the game. Our group often communicates by IM or email, and role-plays through scenes between our weekly games.
 
In the short-term Champions game we're starting tonight, I wrote a short story of how my character meets his DNPC girlfriend. The GM and I wrote it a sentence or two at a time, exchanging the doc over email until we finished the scene. It was MUCH better when we finished than the version I had written alone.
 
As for the problem of too much XP, I can only commiserate. In my PA Hero game, we were afraid of just that, so we're using an experimental XP award system based on what you use. I give 1 or 2 points a week, and it gets apportioned among the skills abilities the player used. I keep a spreadsheet of what each player used, and it calculates when they've accumulated a full point.
Not sure that would work well in a Super game, but it works great at the Heroic level.

Re: Aging Campaigns
 
Super Squirrel, I'm going to give you some of the ways my campaign's survived for so long and still is interesting. Hopefully, some of it might help you.
 
1) Don't give out too much experience and allow the freedom to spend it. Yes, heroes may do lots of wonderful things but giving out 3 - 4 xp each episode will hurt the heroes rather than help them if you're looking for a long campaign with those heroes. They'll reach a saturation point and then you have to prevent powergaming. (i.e. Hey, I've got no where else to spent my XP. Can I go beyond the 75 pt limit?) Experience pts can be spent on alot of things players may not think of. Does a particular hero like to play Chess in her spare time? Buy a KS: Chess. Does a hero like to spend his time putting monster cars together? Buy a PS: Monster Car builder with KS: Cars, Monster Cars with Mechanic skill. Does your light-based-hero understand his powers? Make him buy KS: Light. These may seem like skills just to throw points at but a good GM will use them. Have your heroes bought a base yet? That is a wonderful place to spend points by making the heroes buy it. Need a supersonic jet to travel to other countries? You better start spending those points heros.
 
Example:
I have one hero who spent a pt and bought PS: Plumbing 8 or less. Why? He has a part-time job of plumbing and is terrible at it, but that's the fun part - because he's so bad we spent 20 minutes of the episode just discussing his plumbing accident when he tried to fix a fellow heroes plumbing. He also has KS: Robotics on 11 or less. Yeah, he can create robots but the results are less than perfect.
 
2) Develop NPC's that the player characters may consult on a semi or regular basis. Let's face it: despite all the narrowing adventures and interesting skills, no one know everything and when heroes are stuck what to do, a normal person will certain skills can help. Don't underestimate how much influence a good NPC can help your campaign. Eventually, friendships occur between NPC and heroes. For a long time, NPC's were treated as 1-shot occurances until we finally realized just how much fun they add.
 
Examples in ours:
* Dr. Abigail Sinian (sound familiar anyone?) - a curator of the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. She never dreamed she'd be helping out our local heroes on so many weird cases but manages to help out the heroes alot. If she doesn't know the answer, she can always consult her colleague(s). She is now, THE person the heroes seek out when something unusual happens.
 
* Deputy-Mayor of the city - the Deputy-Mayor has set up a secret communicator between herself and the heroes. She believes in the heroes whereas the local police don't quite. She is starting to have feelings for the leader of the herogroup but doesn't know who he is, complicating matters even though he's saved her life a few times.
 
* Cindy Bradley - wife of hero. Helped design the heroes suit and occasionally comes up with new designs or prototypes to throw at the hero. Some work, most don't. Knows who all the heroes are in Secret Id's and meets them in their civilian id's.
 
3) Allow more than one hero group in the same campaign. The heroes currently in your campaign don't have to be the only ones nor do they have to retire. Instead, pick a different city and have a new group of heroes pop-up. The campaign I'm in now has five different hero groups in it, all in different areas and all are active. Ok, Mechassassin walked over Team 1, let's see him go up against Team 2 a week later. (The players will enjoy getting back at the villain.) Some of the most fun episodes we've had involved pitting our own heroes against another group of our own heroes. You don't have the GM running an entire group against the collective minds of the players; you have each thinking player against another thinking player - each trying to win.
 
Another team means the campaign has continuity; what one hero group did to help a Senator is noticed by the unknown hero group. Hero Group 2 reads in the paper that Group 1 busted some crime deal and wonders if it's related to an ongoing crime problem in their city.
 
Better yet, the star reporter of Chicago (job of hero from Group 1) travels to report on a theft at the lnternational Science Show where a scientist (job of hero from Group 2) is to speak to said reporter. There is so much you can do!
 
4) Allow relationships to happen. Heroes are people. They meet people, talk to people and yes, even fall in love. It requires good players to handle it without them acting ridiculous, though. I've had two of my heroes get married in years past. Both are still active heroes but they now have to be considerate of their family as well. It helped that they married superheroines, of course. Bora of Eurostar is still alive in my campaign; for a long time, a hero was interested in her and she in him but the hero/villain thing made for many stressful meetings. Years later, Bora still wonders if she should leave Eurostar for him. NPC's can meet the heros in their civies and go to parties, dances, the local gala event or whatever and get to know each other.
 
5) Let the heroes see a villain or two turn from their ways. Don't be stuck on keeping all your villains around forever. Some of the villains are confused and have made bad choices; with some talking to, they might turn away from crime or even become part of the hero team or a least, a friend. Is a particular villain or three becoming stale to you? Create an adventure where you kill off the villain and the heroes see it happen. This shows that the campaign is indeed changing and not static. Heroes begin, villains begin, heroes retire/die, so do villains.
 
6) Allow changes to the characters. Is a player stuck on buying anything new for a character? Allow the 'radiation accident' that lets a hero add a new power or even completely redo his powers. The player keeps his skills and levels but allow the player to write up a new sheet of powers for you to approve.
 
A couple examples:
* My older brother's character had telekinetic abilites (not mental) but ran out of ideas. After an accident, his powers changed to light powers and he had to relearn how much power he could use without hurting people.
* I had one character who essentially changed completely three times but the powers were more or less the same. He was a cyborg but was almost killed when his cyborg parts were destroyed. He was healed and essentially became a normal person though skilled. He created a powered suit to mimic his abilites but eventually, that got destroyed. Finally, he contacted someone to give him abilities that couldn't be destroyed ala superbionics (ala The Bionic Six cartoon.)
 
7) Allow input from the players. Doing a campaign no one likes, finds dull or otherwise don't care for will kill a campaign in no time flat. Ask players for input on your GM'ing or what they'd like to see happen in the campaign. Ask them for ideas they'd like to see happen with their heroes. Let them write down all their ideas and give it to you. You basically then have an almost limitless supply of new adventures you can do that the players want to do because they suggested it.
 
I don't have time to mention all the possibilites. You, as the GM, can invigorate your campaign to new levels and still keep it alive. You can make it have a history where the players where say 'Remember the time we did..' and someone else will say, 'Yeah, but don't forget..'

Re: Aging Campaigns
 
Regarding XP:
 
1) Points are very effective at lower levels, and get marginally less useful as a character advances. 10xp can help a 200pt character out a great deal, but doesn't help a 500pt character out nearly as much. And as mentioned, the villains advance too.
 
2) Focus XP, as suggested. If you would normally give out 3xp, let the players get one to play with, dump one into the team's base/vehicles, and dump the other one into individual or team contacts/favors, improved reputation, etc.
 
3) Restrict the xp you give out. Do more multi-session adventures, and only give out xp at the end. Instead of 3 2-xp adventures, do one 3-part 4xp adventure.
 
4) Any disadvantages that have outlived their usefulness? Have folks buy them off.
 
5) Any limitations that can be reduced/removed?

Re: Aging Campaigns
 
Some possibilities:
 
1. Give assigned experience points to buy wealth, reputation, and contacts - or give bonuses to contact relationships - for people who role play it well. In other words, all those "background perks" develop with roleplaying, not just expenditures. Players will generally jump on board if they think they can get a freebie. And remember that those contacts are two way streets. Anyone the player has a contact probably has the player as a contact - so let the contact call up and ask for help. For example, I'm running in a comined Marvel/DC world. One of the characters had Spidey as a contact. As a plot hook recently, I had Spidey call up and ask for help with Carnage. Since the PC group came running right away, I gave the player +1 to his relationship with Spidey when the night was over. Reputation perk is another good place to give freebies. If they roleplay it well, maybe give them +1 to their wealth.
Perks can be very useful, but also very easy to control.
 
2. Suggest putting points into a group base or vehicle(or improving the current one). For 8 or 10 points each, the group can have a vehicle which is much faster than any of the chracters and can get them all there at the same time. You can buy a VERY basic base for 18 or 20 points total, but X-Men style danger rooms and Avengers level security can get very expensive, very quickly.
 
3. Don't forget that villains get experience too. Everytime you use a villain, give them a few points at the end of the night to buy a couple more DEF, another MP slot, or an extra die on their EB. Just make sure to keep it balanced. And you can always give them a tougher class of villains. After all, you've got stats for Dr. Destroyer, Firewing, and the like. So maybe it's time to use them.
 
4. Another thing I try to do in my campaigns is use a "paper trail" which is twofold. First, we have a "newspaper" of sorts which details not just the PC's latest adventure(if it was public enough and noteworthy enough) but also details what other heroes/villains were doing(handy excuse for a contact not being around even if the character makes the roll) and can be used to introduce plot hooks for adventures(a spate of robberies, etc). The other is what we initially called "bluebooks"(because we used college exam "bluebooks" until they became too expensive, now we use cheap folders with notebook paper). At the end of each night, or between adventures, the players write down what their characters are doing "between sessions" this gives the player a chance to develop a contact, improve their business, etc without it taking time away from the main session with the other players...and can be a good place to start adventures involving the character's personal life(their store gets robbed, someone infilitrates their company, a hunted kidnaps a DNPC, you've got all kinds of possibilities here).

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 

She also has offended the military for using night vision technology and film in such a combination.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
But he turns Pizza into Social Awkwardness? So he battles Paris Hilton how exactly? Making her uncomfortable or something?

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
^^ i AM known for my pig-headedness...
 
i swear, sometimes i get in such moods that if a person told me to breathe, i'd stop and glare at them...
 
just don't like being told what to do, i guess. ^^
 
*is a spoiled little brat neko* XD

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
And one more batch for tonight. Remember the line "money feeds my music machine?" Well, posts feed my "pic machine"!
 

 

 

 

 

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
Mightybec, go to:
https://www.livejournal.com/create.bml

Re: Musings on Random Musings
 
Florida politics: The modern Roman circus.

Re: The cranky thread
 
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
 
STOP CREATING 6-8 NEW THREADS A DAY ON NEWS STORIES THAT ARE NOT INTERESTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
There. Better now.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...
 
The Greek informed me, pre-game that her character had discovered "porn" and so I should announce something about spyware on the computer. The Greek, if you aren't aware had been sleeping since the Trojan war.
 
Me: "And finally, it was recently discovered that the base computer had 19 spyware applications running and over 1000 cookies. They were all porn related."
 
Voltage: "It wasn't me!"
 
MJ: "What? I would think we had the top of the line spyware program on our computer."
 
Me: "You do, however, in all instances, these were the ones that were not in the program's definitions."
 
MJ: "I'll update the program and get them all removed. The last thing we need is a Trojan on our computer ruining the entire system."

This is an experiment. What we have is an attempt by me to create the longest running, NON game thread. Our record to beat, is the Catsuit thread. Quite a challange. And we are going to have to keep this thing as best we can. Threads and Tangents are welcome. Getting it locked is not desired. Now all we need is a launching point.
 
What does everyone feel about the Red Sox "Curse"? And are you aware that this year Stephen King is going to every game and will be writing a book about the season.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
Squirrel Minion #11: Photoshop a better avatar for Josh.
 
Squirrel Minion #12: Implant random people with subliminal messages that television is evil and to vote Libertarian while they're sleeping.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
Squirrel Minion #2: Call every pizza joint and have them deliver pizza to the next nearest pizza joint!
 
(I'm bored too)

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER
 
How To Clean Your Toilet - The Fun Way
 
Instructions on how to clean your toilet
 

 
1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.
 
 
2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.
 
 
3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. You may need to stand on the lid.
 
 
4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.
 
 
5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a "power-wash" and rinse".
 
 
6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.
 
 
7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids.
 
 
8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off.
 
 
9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.
 
 
Sincerely,
 
 
The Dog
 

Re: A Thread for Random Musings
 
I have this vision of Soulcatcher as one of the robots from the Dark Tower series. He is slowly running out of battery and as a result his programming is messing up. So he keeps posting random information in the nature of his last assigned program.