Ghost Archer

Re: Adult themes in gaming, a rant of sorts This subject never came up for me until I started playing online. For sixteen years my games, the ones I ran and the ones I played in, never really had an adult overtone. In fact I can only think of one instance in all the time that where sex was even an issue and that was a total disaster. As a group we were interested in being superheroes not super studs and studettes. Since I have gone exclusively online, all that has changed. Maybe its the anonymity on maybe its something else. Since going online I have had one of my characters, a male character, raped. I have had the girl-friend so-to-be wife of another of my characters kidnapped and gang raped. I have had my primary character’s future wife’s clone pose in Playboy and generally given the original a ‘slut’ label. Strippers, drug addict prostitutes, child molestation, teenage hookers . . . I as a GM I haven’t introduced a single one. My co-GM is female and she can be truly evil. In the case of having my male character raped, he was in a coma and it was a girl that did it, she screwed up an outstanding game, one that came to a total stop not long after that. On the gang rape thing I had to tell her I’d never play in another game with her if that ever happened again. So far she’s left that one alone. And on the ‘wife the centerfold and slut’ thing, my character pretty much ignored it, that being his nature. I am glad she never imported the clone into his life; it would have trashed that game too. Adult themes are fine and I enjoy the emotional side of it but I guess I'll never be comfortable in the Dark Champions type of world she seems to prefer.

Re: Greatest Western Movies of all Time In no particular order, save The Searchers. It is in the correct position The Searchers Rio Bravo High Noon The Outlaw Josey Wales My Darling Clementine The Ox-Bow Incident Shane Shenandoah Ride the High Country The Big Country Man Without a Star

Re: Goofy Disadvantage / Power Ideas I really gotta use that for Blurr.

Re: Goofy Disadvantage / Power Ideas Chiquita: Looked like Carman Miranda, dressed like Carmen Miranda, danced in battle like Carmen Miranda, sang in battle like Carmen Miranda and each fruit in her hat was a weapon of some sort. If she looked pregnant, it was a watermelon under her dress . . . a very big bomb. (For those of you too young to know who Carmen Miranda was, suffice it to say she wore a lot of fruit on her hat.) Bud Man: Complete with beer farts and burps. Looked a lot like Mr Incredible. Goofy Disad? Ninja Beaver: Short legs (-3" of running) , Very Light Weight (+3" knockback: (Shrinking at the time)). I don't think I ever saw him hit anything. He could never get back to the fight after the first knocked back. Goofy Disad 2: Ninja Beaver: Every time he passed through a portal, a Big Gulp appeared in his hand and he had to take a half-phase to drink some. I don't remember the game terms on that one. Goofy Disad 3: Chameleon: Coward. He was a shape shifter with a high STR TK who usually looked like a trash can or something. Once he was disguised as R2D2 and was scared so bad he 'leaked' oil. Actually, this character was played with a great deal of gusto and a large amount of imagination. Randy is a hell of an RPer.

Re: Power Writeup help? Why thank you, sir. The 5" x 1000k fits his max range and it doesn't have to be 'curve of the earth', I figured he'd t-port in a straight line, through the Earth. I guess the 5000k total might not hit anywhere on Earth the first jump but a second time should. Okay, so it's gonna take two or three phases. How fast does he want to be getting there? The 10k one would fix that and it could be scaled down to 5k so the points are right for that.

Re: Lets cut the crap... You could be right but I have played a couple of dozen other game systems since I started D&D in '77. The one thing I love most about Hero is the ability to create a character exactly like you envision.

Re: Most Feared Disadvantage Most feared? Vulnerablity. No one likes them, everyone avoids them like the plague even to the point of taking large chunks of Unluck (3+d6). I think the problem is my players don't want to risk getting taken out in one or two phases. Vulnerabilites never bother me in character creation, and no Disad scares me as a GM or player.

Re: Lets cut the crap... Wow! Tough act to follow, Nadrakas. My method is somewhat simpler. If I play the game system, it Passes. If I don't, it Fails. Hero Passes, everything else, Fails.

Re: Power Writeup help? 47 Long Range Teleport: Teleportation 5", Safe Blind Teleport (+¼) plus MegaScale on Normal Sight (1" = 1,000 km; +1), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+¼) for up to 25 Active Points of Normal Sight; Linked (Teleportation; -¼) plus MegaScale to Teleport (1" = 1,000 km; +1), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+¼) for up to 12 Active Points of Teleport; Linked (Teleportation; -¼), Linked (Teleportation; -¼) 5 END The teleport can be used for normal short-ranged t-ports, per your description of being able to t-port five feet. The mega-scale vision doesn't really need to be linked but it fits. And the MegaScale on the T-port give you the effect you want since the 'linked' power doesn't HAVE to be used if the base power is used. 54 Long Range Teleport: Teleportation 5", Safe Blind Teleport (+¼) plus MegaScale on Normal Sight (1" = 10,000 km; +1 ¼), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+¼) for up to 25 Active Points of Normal Sight; Linked (Teleportation; -¼) plus MegaScale to Teleport (1" = 10,000 km; +1 ¼), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+¼) for up to 12 Active Points of Teleport; Linked (Teleportation; -¼), Linked (Teleportation; -¼) 7 END Decided to show the same power with 10000 k megascale.

Re: Speedster and Metamorphs:which are you looking forward to most? Speedster is the one I really want but I think Metamorph will be far more useful. I am the only player in my group that loves to play a speedster and I think I am pretty dang good at it (even if the other GM won't to let me play him according to the powers I designed for him. Something about being able to take gadgets apart in a split second bothers him when everything I meet is a robot or man-in-a-can with Accessible foci or a vehicle. And that 'Dizzying Spin' thing? You know, the DEX drain, he REALLY hates that and does everything he can to keep me from doing that . . . to the point of cheating and giving everythig I meet Power Defense after I used it for the first time. And forget the power to grab a the foci, OAF foci, from a bunch of agents . . . I'll stop the rant now). OTOH EVERYONE wants to play a metamorph and I am so tired of trying to build them. (Actually they sorta bore me.) So I need all the help I can get with design. I'll buy both, but Speedster is mine I tell you, all mine!

Re: newbie - thinkin of getting these rules You might want to note that you can pick up the Sidekick PDF for a mere $7, if you don't have objections to a strickly electronic copy. But then, you could print it if you'd like. Also I am suprised no one has mentioned Hero Designer. For a newbie Herophile this program is a god . . . er . . . Dan-send. It makes every part of character generation AND magic spells generation simple as heck. You can also purchase the HD packs that will give you all the spells and powers Hero has published, a real time saver. I hear talk of 'steep learning curve' all the time but you'd be surprise how quickly you will come to understand the system simply be building characters. Welcome to the fold.

Re: Scenario up for review It's a Seawolf...that doesn't count They only made two.

Re: Scenario up for review USS Thresher lost in 1963, I believe, due to a a weld flaw. The boat started taking on water and they blew emergency tanks. Compressed air when released gets very cold. It froze the value and the boat couldn't get to the surface. The pressure hull collapsed. USS Scorpion was lost in 1968, as I recall. A torpedo in the torpedo room went runaway, no one knows why. One of the safety features of a torpedo is that if it for some reason, reverses course, it goes enert so it won't hit its own ship. Apparently the captain tried to swing the boat onto a reciprical course when the runaway started and only got part of the way around before the torpedo blew up. Edit: I got the boat backwards.

Re: Scenario up for review You want opinions or corrections? And can I ask questions? Fast attack or boomer? Boomers are named after States, fast attacks after cities. Carriers are named after presidents and admirals. How did the heroes get down 12000 feet to find the sub? Subs had distress bouys I believe, not black boxes like a plane. When Scorpion and Thresher went down nothing was ever found remotely like that recording. If it's not 'manmade' and not 'natural', what's left? One or two torpedoes would destroy the sub...19 would vaporize it. Not 'ascend' it's 'surface' and maybe 'Emergency blow' to get to the surface as fast as possible. Normal tactics would probably include launching torpedo counter-measures, noise makers and such. Maybe full ahead to drive rthe boat toward the surface faster. I doubt anyone would have time to scream...just a sudden 'krump' as the pressure hull collapsed. SOSUS would pick that up in the Atlantic. What depth, by the way? Opinionwise . . . sounds like a good one to me.

Re: I want to play Hero, While it is no substitute for a face to face game, why don't you give http://www.webrpg.com a try. I am on there nearly every night. Look for the Wild Hunt room and forgive me if I don't respond immediately as sometimes I have it running in the background while I work on other things. If you can't get a hold of me there, my Yahoo ID is ghost_archer. Ping me even if you don't see me online, I'll get the message. Currently my group is sort of in a lull but somethings a new face sparks my GM fire back into life.

Re: CU question for the developers Wonder if this is a design philosophy question?

Re: Mary Russell, the Beekeeper's Apprentice Having read all of Miss Russell's adventures, I don't think it would be all that hard to write her up. I doubt there anything, physically, that would exceed a normal young woman of her age and social circumstance. She does have a very keen mind and a considerable, for a woman of her era, ego. She also would have an exceptional presence, again for a woman of her era. For skills? Deduction and increased perception but not much else in the beginning. She IS a young woman in a very male dominated society. It is under the tutelage of Holmes that she begins to fufill her potental.

Re: Question from a new GM One of my players had much the same idea. Her power is gravity control. The problem with TK is that a character with a STR greater than the STR of the TK, can get out. So . . . Gravity Cancellation: Flight 5", Ranged (+1/2), No Normal Defense (Flight or Gravitic Powers; +1), Usable As Attack (x65,536 maximum weight per inanimate target; ; +5); Vertical Movement Only (-1/2) In her case she can only move something, all be it a very HEAVY something, up or down, just to counteract gravity. In one scenario, she was on a date with her brick boy-friend, sailing down the Seine on one of those cruise boats when the boat was taken over by terrorists. They blew the bottom out of the boat at one point and she used her powers to keep it from sinking. Trouble was she couldn't move it away from the river. Her boy-friend grabbed the anchor chain and leaped to shore then pulled it in. Paris police were a little upset about the boat blocking traffic for a while but they saved quite a few lives. Not bad for a first date.

Re: Returning to Champions Suprised no one has mentioned Sidekick. Hey, for $7 for a PDF from our friends here at Hero, you can have all the rules you need to get back into the swing of things.

Re: Travis Mcgee Damn, now I am going to have to read the whole series again . . .

Re: Travis Mcgee McGee a detective? I think I missed one. McGee's a 'salvage expert' not a detective. Just a point of clarification.

Re: Critique and Help... I think your excellent art is the reason I just got started with Daz. I have Poser 4, it was a gift years ago but I never took the time to figure it out. This Daz program is so much better you got me looking into it again. It's not quite as easy as Sims 2 nor does it have the huge array of free downloads, but hopefully that will change as more people use it and begin to share their work. I have a couple of characters I would really like to get into Daz and I hope I can get up to your level someday. BTW, how long have you been using it?

Re: How can an Napoleonic Era frigate fire a broadside every 12 seconds? Like all of you, I have been playing Champions for a very long time and you know? I all those years, I have NEVER used a vehicle in actual combat. Anything that happens involving a car or plane etc, is taken care of in a cinematic style. Who has actually done a complete car chase or dogfight or starship battle? Sorta makes my whole question moot. I think my main problem with the '12 second broadside' is that it is a glaring inaccuracy.

Re: How can an Napoleonic Era frigate fire a broadside every 12 seconds? I think that's the second time I have heard this. The gun crew (about a third to half of the crew) only fires the guns, other members of the crew are splicing lines, carrying the wounded to the orlop, bringing up shot and powder, manning the sails, cutting away rigging, and conning the ship. There wasn't any time for real damage control until the firing stopped. A 90 second reload is a ballet of motion for the gun crew. They don't have time for anything else. Just as a point of interest, it takes 12 seconds to load and fire a broadside from a frigate but 5 minutes to fire a trebuchet, according to Fantasy Hero. That's pretty amazing.

Re: Why does the USS Iowa only have a 10 Defense?