John515

Go ahead. I dare you.

Re: Killing Charachters/Villians in your games. Do you do it? We nearly had a death yesterday in our game run by Argus of these very boards. Our resident Brick had a spot of bad luck and ended up at about -5 BODY. I fully expect it to happen to one of us sooner or later if we don't stop her again.......

Re: Review: The Ultimate Brick TUB is a really good book. Lots of good stuff. While there was a fair amount of material in it that had already been covered, I don't feel it was excessive. It helped to make the book better as whole and put various topics in the right context. It was unavoidable. The recycled artwork was a little bit of a bummer, but I also understand the realities of comissioning artwork-it ain't cheap. Thanks for keeping it reasonably priced, too. As far as the page count is concerned, I think it was adequate for the price. How much really needs to be said, anyway? TUMA needed the extra pages, because it covered a wider subject. I expect the TU Armor, and TU Energy Projector to be about the same size as TUB. Still well worth the money, though. As usual, the "fit and finish" is top-notch. I love the overall look and "feel" of the current HERO line. Keep up the good work! John Kohn http://www.superock.com

Re: We're Gonna Need Guns So long as the terms "clip" and "magazine" are properly used, as well as "automatic" and "semi-automatic", I'll be happy. (I seldom see these two terms consistently used properly in gaming supplements....) As far as ideas for guns and other toys: Check out the Kalashnikov site. They've got all kinds of neat stuff there. A write up for the M134 minigun, as depicted in the movie Predator, used by Jesse Ventura, baby! The ULTIMATE street sweeper! How about UAV's? There's some really cool stuff on the horizon with these little babies.....some of them are going to be VERY small More to follow....

Poor guy never seems to get a break. Did the actual character get beat up a lot in playtest or something? Just curious......

Re: Your Character's Greatest Fear? My GM reads the boards. I am not crazy enough to put my character's greatest fear(s) where he easily find them. However, being the novice hero he is, he would certainly be upset if he were to fail to live up to the standards set by the world's greatest heroes before him. The Imagineer very much wants to become of the history's greatest heroes......

The basic idea of the character is that he was near-obsessed with the supers world as a child and early adolescent. James collected piles upon piles of books, newspaper/magazine clippings, videos, and photos of both heroes and villians. About halfway through high school, he was witness to a large supers battle and moved in to get a better look. As the battle progressed he began to see that the heroes were getting the worse of it and their numbers began to dwindle. "I can believe he just didn't use his TK to hit him from behind with that dumpster like (hero) did last year!", he thought to himself. When that dumpster began to move on its own and clobbered one of the viillians, he knew something was different. "Coincidence. Someone is using their powers from behind cover". Someone was....... Before long, the street itself had reached up and encased one of the baddies and another fell unconcious after his flight just stopped working and he fell about 200 feet to the ground. This was enough to turn the tide of the battle and the heroes on the scene emerged victorious. As James left the scene, he began to wonder what else he was capable of. So he rode out to the outskirts of the city to test himself in solitude. Before long he began to see that he could do just about anything he could imagine, just like the supers! He could become a superhero and join the ranks of those he had admired for so many years. He knew that he had to prepare first, and develop the control and skills he needed to use his powers reliably. After finishing high school, he set out for the big city to begin his career as a superhero. My GM, Argus, has been good about keeping a balance as far as abuse of the pool. I am fully aware of the potential for abuse here, but I also don't want to harm a perfectly good game, so I police myself. Believe me, I've had my share of skill roll failures at inopportune times. The best one was the forgetting to buy down the END cost on an autofire attack I used. I blasted the villian (who stayed up, BTW), and I fell into a very deep sleep. Power Pools are very flexible....like rope, if you catch my drift.

A character can base a KS on INT for 3 charater points, giving a base (9+(INT/5)) roll. Each +1 to the skill roll costs +1 character point. - HERO 5th Edition HERO Designer calculated everything correctly.

thanks! there's a whole bunch of background stuff too that didn't come up. how do i post that?

One more time!!!!

Let's try this again.....

This my first attempt at posting a character. Hope it goes well: This is the character I am currently playing (first one since '89). I am open to suggestions/critcisms/comments. I value the community's input!

Nevermind.... 20"/PHASE with a 4 SPD = about 60mph That would be about right. My mistake!

20"/segment, 4 SPD = 80" turn(12 seconds) Seems a bit slow, to me. High end production model PWCs ("jetskis") routinely do 60-65 mph out of the box (despite what the speedometers read). Am I miscalculating something? Is acceleration taken into account (it takes about 4-8 seconds to hit top speed on a production boat under ideal conditions) I am assuming that by factoring in acceleration, less-than-ideal water conditions (chop), and typical operator error, one might arrive at that figure. Any thoughts, herophiles?

We all had much fun. An actual RP scenario that didn't automatically become a battle. I am proud of our group and how we all worked together to to solve the mystery. BTW, for those of you who are hesitant to game with women, get over it. My original plan, while it would probably have worked, wasn't nearly as good as the way an actual mother of two handled the situation. The scene really required a mother's touch.

Here we go again..... My god, it's come to this: he said, she said..... Fine. DISCLAIMER: This post in in no way meant to offend, insult, or in any way cause harm to any person/s who decide to read it. While those involved in it's creation are probably going to be anyway, I wish to reiterate that I bode them no ill will and bear no grudges for any actual or perceived actions which may or may not have occured during the campaign in question. (I hope that about covers it.) 1. I will concede that the players probably did not intentionally set out to undermine the game out of spite. I never actually believed that anyway. I am certain that the reasons for their doing so had more to do w/frustration at their supposed inability to affect the game in the way they saw fit. That being said, I will readily admit a GMing shortcoming of mine that I will not repeat in any future game I run: "The gold in Champions is....Respect". I should probably have backed off of the "The city is corrupt and the players are the only one's who aren't" aspect of it and given them an oasis in the form of public adoration or something. Point taken, folks. 2. The "adversarial" relationship that "existed" had more to do with my inability to make the players understand the reasons behind setting campaign limits and why they are important to gameplay. Can anyone else explain to these guys why a 20d6 double knockback attack is unbalancing in a standard 350pt game? How about 50pd/ed? 80STR? How about all at the same time? 3. No one was "forcefully manipulated" during character creation. You said so yourself in another post under HERO system discussion>Rules question follow up: "There is good balance in our group and no Min/Max going on. No power-gaming. John515 created characters with us and made sure we did not stray by concentrating on unbelievable stats or broken power combinations(even though I looked for them). I must applaud him at every turn. I even liked the way he ran the situation that this post is about. I just didn't understand it. I do now." My efforts in helping the players create their characters were my best attempts to marry the concepts with established guidelines and game mechanics. The biggest issue seemed to be that since HERO is a point-based system, as long as the character is built on the same about of points, it must be balanced! Quoting Mtinaro again: "All characters were created with the same pool of points and the system is a point buy system, thus all players should be somewhat balanced no matter what they put the points into. This being the first thing we did not agree upon as players and gamemaster. I had hoped this was just a lack of insight but alas it was a game master flaw that could not be repaired." If someone could please explain it, I would love to hear another side of it. Apparently, Fred doesn't do an adequate enough job of it on pages 338-339. Neither does Champions on pages 57-58, nor in chapter four in it's entirety. 4. One character in the game (the only other one to have ever played before) was going to play a ghost....as a hero. Fair enough, I explained to him that it would be very difficult to do it, but we could try. I SUGGESTED another type of character (as did the rest of the group), so he did. What's the problem? The other players were as puzzled as I was about his original choice. You will note, however, that I made an attempt to fish for ideas regarding how incorporate a character like this into a game in my post entitled "One of my players wants to play a ghost". This thread was obviously started as an attempt to railroad the player into playing something else and was by no means an attempt to make the players character conception work within the campaign. Yeah, right. 5. The Third character you refer to to in your post, Mtinaro, was a really tricky character to pull off, even for an experienced player. I spent HOURS on the boards and in the chat rooms talking to DOZENS of players about the best ways to put the player's concepts into character form. His initial build was not as effective in combat due to his inability to damage his foes. In hindsight, I should've just added damage classes to his sword attacks and let it rip. The redesign was the players idea, not mine. 6. Of course the villians had tougher attacks than you did. Defenses, too. So what? You still beat them, right? Do you remember why? Because you all worked together AS A TEAM to bring them down. Combined attacks are a wonderful thing. Coincidence? I designed every single encounter with two things in mind: to advance the plot and teach you game mechanics and tactics. Guess what? It worked. You guys got to be pretty effective very quickly. You're welcome. 7. Game play was a little rough for the first couple of weeks. I told you it would be, but to bear with me and I would work hard to shake all of the rust off. Yes, I went to the boards for what you called "comforting" on a weekly basis as I was "struggling" with how to run a game. I spent the time on the boards and in the chat rooms asking for advice on how to be better at what I was doing for YOU, the player. I correctly figured that the more insights I had, the better the game would evenually be. What a bastard I must be, to spend so much time trying make to the game you simply show up to (at your home) that much better. Apparently, you were still pleased with the results, as evidenced by the quotation above. 8. Mtinaro probably should not have posted a response to my original thread, even though I invited you to. While I attempted to express my dissatsifaction with how the game went, I did not resort to "warning other players (to) take note of this before attempting to game with (me)". Nor did suggest that anyone seek "therapy he so desperately needs". Sounds like a flame to me, Marcus Tinaro. Gary Shatraw's response to my post(as RandomPlayer01) seemed to have a different slant on things. I will address his post as well: 1. Your point about heroes rewards are mentioned in the earlier part of this post. Your criticism, while late, is dead-on and duly noted. 2. The "suggestions" about what was flawed had more to do with most of the same things that I discussed earlier in this post. Perhaps a reread of the suggested pages/chapter would be better than my telling you. I am 100% sure that it would clear everthing up. As you said: "We discussed a great many things which were always bottom lined by him as we didn't know enough about what we were talking about." I am assuming you are referring to rules and how they were applied to a given situation or about the genre itself. I'm not totally sure what you mean here, so forgive if I have taken your quotation out of context. 3. I absolutely do not feel that you guys are unable to play heroes. Of course I have done some underhanded things in other games we played in, I was playing the characters. An ambitious Nosferatu, who was being actively undermined, a Rogue in charge of the local underworld (with you as the knowing mayor ;-)). I also played a Paladin who disobeyed her god by refusing to deny your character what I felt was rightfully yours to keep. I would love to see a game where we were all playing a heroic campaign. 4. Yes, I did mention that a villian game would be interesting to run SOMEDAY. Fer' chrissakes, I didn't think you would actually just do it on a whim! The leader (Mtinaro) was, in fact, the one who initiated the whole villian thing, tho.... 5. Yes, Gary, the posts were made from frustration. At having spent literally days doing nothing but try to create a game for the players to enjoy only to have it trashed on a whim with no apology or remorse. We are, of course, friends. Which why it pissed me off so much. Until this post I have kept the ID's of those anonymous, so as to keep from pointing fingers in "public". Your roommate seems to think otherwise. At long last, the end of this post is just around the corner. I have only this say and will leave it all behind me for good: These players are still buddies of mine, regardless of what happens in the game. IT"S ONLY A FRIGGIN" GAME! I look forward to gaming with them again in the future and hope they feel the same way. Thus endth the post.

Don't read too much into the "your" game thing. I certainly had the pc's backgrounds in mind when creating many elements of the campaign, as well as asking such specific questions as: "What kinds of things would you like to see in this game?" and "Do you have any suggestions?" and the ever-popular "Are you happy with how the game is going thus far?". How much more prodding does it take to get an adult to express an opinion or offer an opinion? Bottom line is this: if they were even remotely dissatisfied with THE game, then they should have said so. Given the numerous opportunities they were given to offer input, it would seem that I was doing an at least adequate job on my end. Who knows? I could be wrong, maybe they were just shy and unable to assert their opinions. But I don't think so.

Quite frankly, the pattern of behavior was such that I don't think that giving everyone a mulligan would've fixed it. Having played in a few previous campaigns in different games/settings I think that it would simply happen again sooner or later. I spent a LONG time getting the campaign together and realized after having it undermined, that it was better to just put it away and save it for another group more willing to play in a superhero campaign. I regularly asked for input and got none. As far as I'm concerned, if they didn't like the campaign, they should have said something to me. By hijacking the game and turning to villiany, my players proved that they have no desire to play the game they agreed to play and, quite frankly, showed an utter lack of respect for me and for the work I put into the game. Too much work for too little fun. Better luck next time.....

The campaign is now officially scrapped. Many thanks for your input. I will be sure to keep it in mind not only as I assemble players, but as I run my next campaign.

VIPERwear I am thoroughly convinced that "swag" would be a big seller, provided it was more than just the HERO logo. VIPER, UNTIL, and various villian shirts would sell for sure. Some new artwork for them would be cool too! Who among you would not love to own a shirt with the VIPER logo on the chest? Hell, I'm about an inch away from having a few made up for myself......

Tonight was a night that turns a whole campaign upside down . My players have decided to change sides and become supervillains. They have blasted the city mayor with a 14d6 EB and kidnapped a local businessman with ties to the Russian mob, asking that he bring them on board. The mob boss accepts their offer and put them on the payroll. Why did they do this? The reason has to to do mostly with the frustration with the local and federal govt. One of the players stated that he is simply tired of being a hero for no pay and decided to become a killer for hire. If my players are reading this, perhaps a more detailed explanation, in your own words, would be better..... So, fellow HEROphilles, what now? How would you run a supervillian campaign. Ideas are welcome here, but I would prefer that you email them to me, since my players read these boards. Thanks in advance! p.s. Villians have a lot more enemies than heroes......

Personal Watercraft ("Jet Skis") Have you done those yet? I am very familiar with them and specifically, what they're really capable of. I used to race them (qualified for the world finals, thank you very much...) and have a lot of experience with the day to day use of them. Let me know if I can help! John

I've already started down that path with my players by introducing a former petty criminal super villian turned vigilante. He showed up ready to pick a fight just after the PC's peacefully resolved a hostage situation and accused the PCs of interfering and "stealing all the glory". So they just publicly thanked him during interviews and greatly downplayed their roles in the crisis and left him there with the press to finish everything up. As a GM I was amazed at well they did it as a group with even discussing it. They just played off each other and let it roll. Good stuff... They have not, however, seen the last of him.

Aw, shucks!... Thanks mtinaro! (I have been a player in his last 3 games, so I have big shoes to fill. His partner in crime, Gary, doesn't cut me any slack either- so they keep me on my toes). The decision to have the NPC recover was a cinematic one, done purely to spice up the encounter a bit. Glad you enjoyed it! Now, what next?.......

There are some great write-ups in the old Adventurer's Quarterly magazine that included The Lone Ranger, Tonto, The Man With No Name(Clint Eastwood), and Kwai Chang Caine(Kung Fu). The American Indian Shaman magics stuff was also good. Somebody out there still have it? Help a HERO brother in Sweden out! John