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Publius

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Posts posted by Publius

  1. How would you convert the characters from Adult Swim's "The Venture Brothers"

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: How would you convert the characters from Adult Swim's "The Venture Brothers"

     

    My Venture game will be in an upcoming convention for the Amber Diceless System (end of March-like 2010), sort of. I'm actually thinking the Guild of Calamitous Intent is a better vehicle for a fun Con-style game of mass destruction and brutality masked as a social commentary with philosophical highlights.... Or is it the other way around? ;) The working title is: "Killinger softly, with his song..." (the lyrics to 'Killing me softly with his song' will have to be finalized first of course)

     

    I wouldn't attempt to wrap my head around the Ventures in HERO at the moment, but I might someday.

  7. The Atlantean Age

    in HERO Games Product Line

    Posted

    Re: [Review] The Atlantean Age

     

    [Review] The Atlantean Age <<>>

    Art Issues - Good Character and Theme, but Maps are too small to be useful.

     

    What do you mean about the maps? I haven't seen the book myself yet. Are the Maps themselves shrunk down too small, do they cover an area that is too small?

  9. Pulping the Renaissance

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: Pulping the Renaissance

     

    Thoughts for influences.

     

    The Three Musketeers.

     

    Sharpe.

     

    Master and Commander.

     

    Pirates of the Caribbean.

     

    Brotherhood of the Wolf.

     

    The Lion of Venice. (Novel).

     

    Gothic horror such as Frankenstein, Dracula, Carmilla, Varney the Vampire, Mysteries of Udolpho and Zofloya.

     

    Casanova. (Film).

     

    The Count of Monte Cristo.

     

    Any more?

     

    Leonardo decrappio's Romeo + Juliet

     

    Okay, how about the Man in the Iron Mask? Ironically, in which I liked Leonardo DiCaprio (see, I can spell it correctly when I like the film), but I loved that guy channeling Malkovich who played his son. Not the character but the channeling itself. Close your eyes, he sounds just like Malkovich in tone and cadence. Eerie.

     

    The Count of Monte Cristo is the most pulpy goodness of all of them I think (opinions may of course vary). A nice revenge piece, Cristo has the skills and advantages of an era-appropriate Doc Savage plus a killer origin story.

  10. "Slick" Hero?

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: "Slick" Hero?

     

    How about a game where you devise characters that appear to have this idyllic life but are really seedy, no-good, lying backstabbing deviants when not around the dinner table with those dopey soulless grins. The point of the game is for the characters to achieve an abhorrent deed set by one of the other players ("Write the most nasty thing you can think of; pass it to the left"). The one with the most breathtakingly obscene character who looks like they are the most Rockwellian despite wading through the filth required by their vile task wins.

     

    Call it "The Aristocrats"

     

    Fun for the whole family.... the Manson Family.

  11. Soon I Will Be Invincible

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Soon I Will Be Invincible

     

    Actually, I read the book when it was released months ago and talked about it in some thread or another elsewhere on the forums at the time.

     

    It's not as fresh in my mind as then, but from my perspective Dr. Impossible wasn't as smart as he claimed to be (notice that everything about him ultimately really derived from the evil genius of the previous era, whose name I no longer remember). Also, Dr. I is really the only truly sympathetic character in the book. Everyone else has at least one pretty unsympathetic characteristic, and some characters have many. However Dr. I is an unreliable witness; events as told by him don't always match up with how they are perceived by others. Ultimately Dr. I doesn't really want to take over the world or blow it up or any other such thing -- he really wants _recognition_ and _acceptance_ -- to be cool enough to be in the "in crowd", to be appreciated for his amazing intellect and accomplishments. That's why he never really pulls the trigger on anything and allows himself to be defeated.

    In a lot of ways your assessments are very much like mine about the doc. His being the sympathetic character and at the same time an unreliable narrator, but especially his mental state. You hit the nail on the head: Doctor Impossible does not really want to take over the world and I emphatically agree as to your view of his ultimate objective. In a way, I think his intellect actually hurts him here, he has created a web of rationalizations that refuse to allow him to see the obvious because of his ego. That sort of thing actually blindsides a lot of intelligent people. His comment on the end about re-thinking the whole situation is actually very hopeful, but I think that his bad habits are far too well ingrained and his cognitive dissonance will kick in eventually.

     

    I wouldn't say he isn't as smart as he claims however. He demonstrates his intellect on multiple occasions: how much he can do with radio shack parts, how fast he brings his island online, etc. The fact that the plan he embarks on here (his 13th) is originally the Baron's is more hero worship than anything I feel. The fact that he needed some other gear just shows how he solved the problem he had read about so long ago using existing resources (the power supply he ultimately does build himself). Remember the circumstances: he conceived of all this in prison, not at the drawing board; he was operating under something of a time crunch; and this is his 13th time at conquering the world, he's already used up his own best plans and doesn't like to duplicate himself. In the end it comes down to two things: Doc's aforementioned hero worship of the Baron -- a Silver Age villain idolizing the Golden Age villain while facing off against Iron Age heroes -- and the fact that the story works better when it involves a series of egg-hunts rather than the Doc pontificating in his lab, plus it allows the author to connect him with the Baron and several of the other bad-guys (I mean the Supervillain Bar thing is almost painful, but unless he was searching out those components there would have been no reason for him to go there at all, and if he had all the time in the world she would have been better prepared thus less sympathetic).

  12. Hero System 3rd Party Products

    in HERO Games Product Line

    Posted

    Re: Hero System 3rd Party Products

     

    No, I've found another copy in my FLGA to compare. The watermark on the entire page is the bad part. The print itself is just fine.

     

    It's just fecking unreadable design.

    Agreed in general (cannot say about this specific book). There is so much bad layout design out there it is not funny, and I am not speaking HERO here. I have not picked up a great deal of the HERO 3rd party stuff, but where I have -- such as the Algernon Files, I have not really run into the problem. I liked Algernon's layout.

     

    So the rrest of my rant pertains to layouts outside of 3rd party HERO material. Rocketship Empires for example is a neat setting and all but the layout -- yech. The book has some black reversed print pages, which are sort of okay in the abstract but when you pile them on (two page layouts with nice maps by Keith Curtis -- nice job Keith!), it makes the pdf tougher to print out. And the background of the pages is a light grey which means that you're using a heck of a lot of ink/toner, plus all of that gobletygok all over the tops and bottoms of the pages.

     

    And don't get me started on Widows and Orphans or realllly bad layout jobs that look like a printed Word Document rather than a professional layout job. Recently, I picked up one of Basic Roleplaying's settings and was frankly horrified enough to contemplate sending the author a note that I would be very happy to re-do the layout free of charge. No real way to make that sound nice though, so I didn't.

     

    Myself, I prefer a nice clean layout when I do them, such as: simple over cluttered in general; fonts which are both appropriate and selected for maximum reading ease; a final product that can print out nicely in black and white as well as Colo (Serenity RPG I am looking at you). But that may not be what is sellable at this point given the state of the market. Maybe Buyers want books to look like Mickey Mouse threw up on the page, with color everywhere whether it needs it or not; or they enjoy tragic choices like watermarks that look very cool but render the whole text unreadable etc. I shudder to think.

  13. Some questions about Stronghold

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Some questions about Stronghold

     

    Personally, I think that sacrifice is worth it, because the omni-negation field strains the bounds of believability in anything Bronze-Age or later.

     

    However, there is an effective compromise. In addition to the customized cells, there could be a portable version of the cell's power negating properties (a belt, armbands, etc). The power supply on the unit would only last for an hour or two before needing a recharge, so that would allow for limited periods of interaction with the other prisoners.

    I think that works quite well. The golden rule for the Champions setting stuff has always been use what works isn't it? The modifications you suggest here, along with the tailored suppression techniques for each prison-cell discussed, in lieu of a general field certainly make sense and change relatively little in the actual book in terms of the prison's facilities and functions (i.e. the book is still 99.97% applicable). I think that is an excellent option.

  14. Some questions about Stronghold

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: Some questions about Stronghold

     

    Logically, I'd probably rule that Technology based powers aren't affected. Since most tech based powers can be removed, power negation on them seems like a waste. Now, as far as how this handles cybernetic bad guys...you guess is as good as mine. I felt the power negation thing in Stronghold was WAY too hand wavy...so I'm using tailored individual cells instead.

     

    Rob

    Sure, there is plenty of room to use individually tailored cells using the existing maps. There is also room to have service provided for the supression tech in the "trench" that runs along each one of the Blocs (aka the lower sublevels). Alternatively, you could say that the suppression equipment is located in the gap between the various levels and is accessible from the Secure Area for regular maintenance and replacement. That will also give you some nice "Jeffries Tube" areas which are darned handy in a breakout (or better yet a "bug hunt") scenario.

     

    Keep in mind as well that the general suppression field is supplemented by more specific technology in some cases (Stronghold Page 57 under "Customized Power Negation" makes explicit mention and Stronghold page 64 under "Escape Risk" alludes to some of the cases when it is required).

     

    The only drawback to eliminating the suppression field is that it makes the allowance for prisoner interaction much much more difficult from a logical standpoint. If you had to build a prison but had no suppression tech, you'd not have the Level One Prisoner Service area, or if you did it would be much more "cell like" and not allow for interaction. Were I a prison official, I'd personally be extra-jumpy if the guy in cell 5 could melt my face if he weren't inside the cell 24/7. That would effectively make all nearly all incarceration in Stronghold a Supermax situation. It sort of kills the "Escape from Alcatraz" vibe and replaces it with the "Man in the Iron Mask" (before, you know, they break him out). O'course if you want that feel for your games, I say go for it.

     

     

     

    As for the tech-based powers issue, tech-based supers (which according to some researchers should be labelled as "TSH" or Trained Super Heros per Champions Universe pg 33) are usually held in normal prisons after they have been stripped of their toys, unless of course they present a threat to escape from standard facilities. At that point, they are subject to the standard Risk-level classification system (Stroinghold pg. 64). I'd presume that most the advocates of the TSH theory would tend to feel these individuals should be placed in Stronghold lest they come up with some weird yet oddly effective junktech means to escape from a normal prison. Considering the bewildering way in which real-life prisoners have used things like everyday chemicals it isn't that far-fetched.

     

    Of course, as GMs (and to a lesser extent, players) we don't want the system to be perfect anyway. Put the TSH's in regular prisons so that they can break out easily and become challenges for future games.

  15. Secret Of The Incas

    in Pulp Hero

    Posted

    Re: Secret Of The Incas

     

    Never saw Secret of the Incas, but there is a Heston film, my favorite in fact (although Omega Man... okay, just kidding) which is also set in the South American jungle that I really love: The Naked Jungle, with Elenor Parker and a slimmed down William Conrad. Not that it is great art film or anything, and maybe it qualifies more as a guilty pleasure, but I like it and would recommend watching for light entertainment.

     

    Plus you know, Chuck gets to blow stuff up and fight off ants. Tres cool for a Hestonite like myself.

  17. [Character] Zombie Herve Villechaize

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: [Character] Zombie Herve Villechaize

     

    Neat-o,

     

    The only thing I'd add is PS: artist (Herve was the youngest artist -- at 18 years old -- to ever have his work displayed in the Museum of Paris) and maybe some gruesome ability to make artwork out of his victims (a PRE attack?? EGO??? Change Environment to reduce PRE??? I dunno about that but something which is Indirect "attack eminates from splatter-artwork" and conditional "Must have previous victim's body to work with")

  18. T5th give me a break

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: T5th give me a break

     

    Actually looks pretty good to me. I don't like the way that the owner of Traveller treated those who had previous permission to put out product, but the Mongoose system actually looks pretty good -- The two-die rolls (Timing and Effect) is actually rather nice, as is the Augments and such.

     

    My biggest problem with the original system has long since been the fact that characters can be very lopsided, one individual might have a ton of skills and another might have little if nothing useful. The use of their Skill Packages system and the optional Point Allocation rules look like good ways to remedy that sort of thing.

     

    It was supposed to be Open Source, that still the case?

  21. SFX Question... What's in those blaster clips?

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: SFX Question... What's in those blaster clips?

     

    Personally, I'd go with superconductors (I got yer Blaster gas right here George, next they'll claim the force comes from Bacteria). So that you could jury rig it. And frankly, if they want to use that sort of thing to power a toaster let 'em. When they run out of clips they can always throw the toaster.

     

    However, if you don't want them to use the toaster, that is no problem too. The superconductor is extrmely compact becuase it does not release the energy which is stored within slowly, but all at once. I've seen a air compressor for an automobile tire blkow out a bike tire when the kid tried to use it. The sudden massive charge just bursts out because it was designed to function that way. If they want to toss in a huge amount of spare parts, sure then but it would take a long time and require an awfully finicky roll.

  24. Traveller Hero - A concern

    in Star Hero

    Posted

    Re: Traveller Hero - A concern

     

    I agree about the OGL, if that happens, Comstar could just produce material with both HERO and OGL Trav stats. I say this of course by the Word of Blake.

     

    BUT, I read something that led me to believe that other licensees would not be given the opportunity to get a new lease on their "life" or at least their games.

     

    Personally, I'd love to see them come up with their own setting too. I was very impressed with their work, I ahve bought several things from them and Avenger and I would like to see more in the near future.

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