dbsousa

Re: Astroman (Superman Tribute) Nice job. I have a couple of questions. What is the effect of the Fly in Amber? I can't picture it. I agree with Wanderer about adding a Cosmic beam (Variable Advantages). This allows for flexibility without being a Green Lantern Ring. Does he convert Solar Energy directly into his powers, or does he store the energy like Superman? If the Latter, I would consider an Endurance Battery with the only in Sunlight Lim instead of limiting the powers. That way, he can make the heroic decision to fight on even though it will make him vulnerable to attack. The dependence, does that include all powers? does he lose his Lack of Weakness and DR? All in all good Icon of Truth , Justice , and the American Way...

Re: Cool Names for a Superman Tribute Character? Zenith, Kid Zenith, Zenith Girl? Victor, Kid Victor, Victoria?

Re: Implications of single-aspect magic on game worlds If every peasant had the ability to gate a letter to a destination of his or her choosing at will, the effect would be like the cell phone or e-mail explosion of today. Many letters, sent locally, more out of habit than convenience. Every household would receive dozens of letters saying "Increase thy Manhood without Darke Magickes." and "Sende this letter to ten friendes to avoide the plague." each day.

Re: New Writeup Game! Fix the "Weaklings" Fixing Doug Ramsey. Douglas awakes in a hospital ward, having vaguely remembered being shot by Dr. Animus. The robot nurses attending him do not speak as they monitor his condition. When he is well enough to walk, he is led to a room with only a speaker and a chair. He sits down and the speaker crackles. "Good morning Mr. Ramsey. Your comrades think you are dead, as I had always planned. my underling was a small sacrifice for the prize you represent. Allow me to explain why you are here. some months ago you defeated some encryption on one of my many research facilities. My cryptographers assured me that no one could break their code, but you did so as if it were a child's primer. They have payed dearly for their hubris. I have been paying some attention to you, and have felt that your full potential has been...untapped. I plan to tap it. It appears that your ability to read code is hampered only by the speed at which your eyes can take in information. My nurses plan to remove that barrier to your potential..." As the nurse-bots hold him down, and surgically prepare his eyes for removal Doug struggles futiley to escape. "Be stilll, for no man can resist the will of Victor Von Doom"... 5 years later, Cypher lies in a hospital bed, his eyes long ago replaced by data sockets. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Doom feeds him raw data, and Cypher sends back information. the virtual keys to the Baxter Building, Avengers Mansion, and the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters lies in Doom's hands. But Doug has been busy. As the world around him disappeared. his internal world became amazingly sensitive. Doug has compiled and correlated every piece of data known to man about the workings of the human body, and has built an operating system for it. Every cell in his body can be controlled by the code he has written into his hippocampus. One day, his heart gives out. As the Nurses remove him from the data sockets and prepare him for the defibrulator, he bolts up, grabs the paddle, and shorts out the nurse. Blind, but with a data memory of his surroundings more accurate than sight, he plugs back into the data feed. With a thought, he re-encrypts all of the codes he has given Doom, and sends a virus that spreads throughout Dooms elaborate network. He knows the dimensions of his cell by heart, and runs blindly, but with a memory map in his head far more accurate than sight. He emerges from a cellar in the middle of Mexico City. Running for hours, he collapses in an alleyway. before he drifts off, he relays the following thought to his autonomic nervous system: "run regeneration routine/ subroutine: eyes." Doug Ramsey has all the world's secrets compressed in a file in his head. He has studied every martial art and combat tactic ever recorded, and has ingrained them into his muscle memory by hacking into the X Men's danger rooms. He has hacked his own body, and can generate any tissue he can imagine. He is Doug Ramsey, and he can read you like a book...

Re: CSLs and upkeep... Here is a Axis & Allies style chart I keep meaning to use, but never get around to. My plan was to use tent minis for each NPC's STUN BODY and END, OCV and DCV, and a marker for the phase. Mostly, though, I just do the math in my head. I have almost completely internalized the system over the last 2 decades...

Re: I Need a Plot, and Fast! Whenever I start a new story arc with Good Guys, Incorporated, I have Yo-Yo and his Theme-bots rob a bank. Yo-Yo is a villain whose main attack is, of course, trick Yo-Yo's, and who builds robots based on whatever television show or bit of pop culture he is obsessed with that week. GGI has faced in the past: [*]Stooge Bots [*]Brady Bots [*]Ape Bots (Planet of the...) [*]Reservoir Dads (Mr. Petrie, Mr. Cosby, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Riccardo, Mr. Addams, and Mr. Munster ) [*]Duke Bots (w/ Exploding Arrows) [*]Giant Underdog Bot (at the Macy's Day Parade) My favorite trick (which you can only use once) is to have Yo-Yo challenge the Heroes in a public place, where he knows they will be. When they trash him, he reveals that a mysterious stranger paid him to attack them. The Mysterious stranger also paid someone to steal something valuable from a nearby building , under the heroes noses. (In that game, the speedster ran into the building to build up momentum, and caught the bad guy in the act. The villiain was prepared to barely hold off the whole team if necessary, and clocked the speedster before getting away...)

Re: What is Evil? I suspect Socrates would disagree with you. Aristotle would probably be right on board, though...

Re: Language Trees: Do you use them? People who speak Sign Language as a native tongue (native thumb?) would tell you it is a separate language. I found it at least as difficult as Russian to learn. I would make it a separate language entirely, with no similarity to anything, and no Literacy.

Re: Trying to write a magic system... This is a Partially Limited Power. I think you can find it at the beginning of the Limitations Chapter. I think it works something like this: Let's imagine the generic Hero Power, the EB 6d6 EB (RSR: Matrix) 20pts +2d6 EB (RSR, Extra Time-Full Phase) +2d6 EB(RSR, Extra Time-Extra Segment) +2d6 EB(RSR,Extra Time-Full Turn) I don't have my book here and will leave the cost as an exercise for the reader...

Re: How many is enough?? I find the ideal number is four. If there are three, I plan more side stuff. If there are five, I cut to the chase. Six to eight I can GM at a con, but would prefer not to every week... But four gives everyone a starring role in the adventure, IMHO.

Re: A spell that shatters swords Here is my first draft of such a spell. 48 Simon's Shattering Sunder: (Total: 90 Active Cost, 48 Real Cost) Major Transform 3d6 (Blade into Shrapnel) (45 Active Points); All Or Nothing (-1/2), Limited Target: Metal Blades (-1/2) (Real Cost: 22) plus RKA 2d6, Area Of Effect (One Hex; +1/2) (45 Active Points); Linked (Sunder; -1/2), Limited Power Damage cannot exceed DEF + BODY of blade (-1/4) (Real Cost: 26) I used Transform instead of RKA on the blade for two reasons. Negative Energy, in my opinion, would ignore Normal Defenses, and Transform allows the All or Nothing Limitation. You could just as easily define this as an RKA with All or Nothing as a Custom Limitation... To this spell, add whatever Limitations your setting requires (Magic Roll, Concentration, etc.)

Re: Is anyone gaming the Iraq war? I haven't touched on it yet, but that is where Slug will be found, exhorting both sides to escalate the violence and humiliation.

Re: Answers & Questions Q. What did Roman Hairdressers say before fighting to the death in the arenas? A. A ten gallon jar of mustard.

Re: -0 Limitations and Zero point disadvantages I generally just include the flavor into the power. For example, I let a character use a "mental" Ranged Killing attack, and said that he didn't have to worry about firing into melee, but he couldn't target hit locations either. no writeup, just flavor.

Re: Raw STR: Marvel

Re: Character Challange: Superman Clones In my game background, The Ambassador is found in an egg in a field by Kansas farmers in 1910. He had been planted there Aeons ago by the progenitors who first surveyed this world at the dawn of Man. They placed the egg at a spot far removed from early homo sapiens sapiens birthplace. Basically he is a 2001 Monolith in human form. His DNA appears human, but his mitochondrial DNA are not found in any other terrestrial species. He grows to adulthood on the farm, then moves to Chicago to pursue a career in Journalism. The Ambassador makes his first appearance in 1929 saving "jumpers" after Black Monday. by 1935, he has formed the Embassy, a Chicago based Superhero Group. Members of the Embassy include: Galatea: a "female" robot, designed by Proffesor Pygmalion to destroy the Ambassador. She instead falls in love with him. Sasquatch: A Neanderthal Ambassador, he was activated in the Pacific Northwest at the same time as the Ambassador, and raised by bears. Red Mantis: a justice-seeking pulp hero, who channels the spirit of Rhadamanthys, Judge of Hades. Kid USA, (later Captain USA, later Commander USA) a street urchin who broke into the embassy on a dare, and entered the Ambassador's rejuvenation chamber. Polymer Man, a scientist working on a "miracle fabric" whose body was transformed when Bundists set fire to his lab. He can alter the properties of his body to become hard as diamond, or pliable as rubber. At the end of WWII, the Ambassador is present when the U.S. drops the bomb on Hiroshima. He survives it, and his power jumps fom Golden Age to Silver Age...

Re: Please review this new advantage I Think it is high. Selective on an area effect attack is only 1/4. I would go with a 1/2, if it required a skill roll of some sort. I might even allow this as something that could be done with a Power roll...

Re: Need small starship deck plans I do everything in Campaign Cartographer, from maps, to illustrations, to player handouts. For the price, it is cheaper than buying autoCAD and Adobe Illustrator. It used to have a high learning curve, but I was amazed how quickly my friend picked it up when I sat down with him. The only hard thing to grasp is its interface, which follows a CAD-based "Action-Object" rather than a Windows-based "Object-Action". e.g. in Powerpoint you would select an element on the page and then click delete. In CC, you click delete, and then select an object. My favorite map in CC involved creating a number of symbols that represented the "footprint" of a Jenga Block on any of three sides. Using these like stamps, I built my maps, and used them as blueprints when it came time for combat...

The "Evil Race" topic suggests to me a wider (and perhaps more interesting) topic. In your fantasy games, how do you represent evil, if at all? I have, in the past, represented evil as: [*]A faction of elves. When the fairie lands were corrupted by an Evil Dragon, the inhabitants fled to the Mortal Coil, where they took either the innocence of fairie land, or the taint of the dragon with them. Each elf or pixie or sylph became good or evil upon entering the Mortal Lands, and when the last elf appeared, (a PC, of course) The battle to determine the final fate of Fairie Land began.) [*] A virus. Fallon Anglo was created aeons ago by ancient sorcerers who grafted a thought ("worship me") to an "animalcule". This virus would infect people, who would then worship the sorcerers. The virus mutated, so that people began worshipping the virus itself. In the present, the virus has subsided in the old world, but a virulent strain from the new world had re-created the cult of Fallon... [*] Prejudice. In my current game, the conflict between the species is the only evil, and the world itself will decide to turn its back on the sun unless a brave group of Men, Beasts, Changelings, and Angels can complete a quest without tearing each other apart... I am interested in hearing how you define good and Evil in your games, and how you feel about personifying (or not) the conflict...

Re: If magic cost full price... When I ran a Fantasy Hero 4th ed game (That took place 500 years after a 2nd Ed D&D game I ran years earlier) I used Full price spells with at least -1 in Lims. The results, If I remember, were as follows: 1: Low active point spells 2: Few spells per character 3: Not many Advantages on any given spell. If I were doing it in 5th, I would allow Elemental Controls for one reason: It makes Dispel Magic truly harrowing.

Re: Character Challange: Superman Clones Here's a tweak. Jor-El sends his only son to earth. Before he does so, he contacts the Kents with a telepathic drone, who asks them to raise his son as their own. The side effect of this message creates a vision in the heads of anyone on earth with psychic powers. Corporate Leader Lex Luthor gets wind of this, and fears this alien child will take over the world. He announces the discovery of a cancer vaccine and funds a world-wide project to document and vaccinate every child in the world. before Cal-El arrives, more drones insure safe passage, landing in a cattle field 10 miles from the Kent Farmhouse, and announcing to the startled cowboys "Fear not, for on this night a child comes to earth, he will grow strong, and perform many miracles, but he will be one of you in every way that matters, and love mankind as he loves himself and his father." Again the message is received by every latent psychic, and some of the strongest travel to Smallville, Kansas to await the spaceship...

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? I would include our slaughter of the Native Americans and our slaughter and enslavement of Africans among the atrocities above.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Breakfall Lab: Turns upside down at random intervals. Trading Lab: Garage full of Junk, EBay-dedicated computer. Oratory Lab: Open mic, Brick wall, Drunk audience Animal Handling Lab: Room full of underfed hyenas. Analyze Martial Arts Lab: Kung-Fu Theater, 24/7

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept? I do see the parallel, and reject it. Good people need to stand up to the evil in themselves. You can't identify evil people from good, because the ability to do good or evil exists in each of us. As this pertains to Gaming... I have been thinking about this topic long before I read the thread. In my post apocalyptic fantasy game My group's characters come from four races (Cribbed heavily from Savage Earth and Gamma World), each with enmity towards the others. My goal, (and I suspect my player's goal as well) is to tell a story in which racial enmity is the evil in the land, and their rejection of it will save the world and all its races. This is an intrinsically difficult foe to personify, but he will definitely have a kick-ass Laser Beam for an arm...