Mentor

Re: Overwhelming PRE attacks I agree with the posts appealing to the genre and maturity. I am assuming that there is a vetting process for PCs to determine if any of their values are cheesy and metagamish. Character concepts only work when something besides merely fighting supervillains is involved in a campaign. You might remind them that it is hard for player characters with 60 PRE to get anything else done when average citizens stop everything to notice them, get in car wrecks because of rubbernecking, forget the information the Heroes need because they are so taken with the impressiveness of the PC, etc.

Re: How much attention do you give to powers' Senses visibility rules? Let us bring up the trust issue again as it applies to interraction between the player and the GM and the players themselves. The issue of degree and extent of visiblity ought (IMHO) be based on SFX, concept and honesty. The GM needs to remember that the heroes are driving the "title" and thus if they are detected, it should be for a reason, not just to show his superiority. The GM has more points than the player so screwing him over is no great accomplishment. Likewise, the player needs to remember that if hedefines a SFX that supposedly grants the equal of 30 points worth, he needs to buy the powers, not just claim them. A superhero succeeding within the limitation of their character ability is far more impressive than Omnigirl, the Queen of Everything. On Star trek, TNG, "Q" was only interesting when he had his powers diminished or taken away somehow.

Re: Super Prisons without Super Tech I have to go along with X Drug as well. Cold/hot sleep is OK too, IMHO. The other methods seem too anti-heroic. Our campaign world uses a judges to sentence the Supes to our Super Prison, but the occasional escape has not been ruled out.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Good point on the future human culture, Michael. Of course, the present locale which time travellers might want to visit would be more important to the look and sound of the hypothetical time travellers than their time and place of origin, don't you think?

Re: Media resources of the era Thanks, Jak. The look of a telegram is perfect for simulating early 20th century communications. Keep 'em coming.

Re: Supervillains and the death penalty In our campaign, support for the death penalty is dependent on the concept of the characters involved and the nations in which the adventure takes place. Cyberknight: US Air Force fighter pilot/billionaire scientist/power armor superhero knows that the death of his oponent is a possible, even likely outcome of his encounters, but tones down his attacks against normals. He is quite comfortable with the murderous villains being executed if sentenced by a democratic government and not if the jury/tribunal/judge so decides. Prodigy: Immortal former Templar/secret society Mentalist involved in numerous Crusades and wars until he decided that there must be a better way. He completely renounced killing and will even go so far as to advocate against execution of captured criminals. He has no problem, however, with performing permanent psychic surgery rendering the criminal unable to execute the evil thoughts percoltaing in their sick minds. This method creeps some people out worse than execution. Our campaign has its multinational super prison located on an old RAF base on the Isle of Mann, which being on UK territoty, has no execution.

Re: That way lies only madness... It is certainly working on me, Sean. Seriously, though, I would have no problem at all in our campaign if the player requested a price break for IPE because of his SFX, but he/she would not necessarily have total control over or even complete knowledge of all of the ramifications of the "limitation" on the advantage.(This last paradox being where the madness you refer to kicks in) I don't much go for GMs who say "can't do that" simply because of a lack of rule specificty. The players should have real input into the campaign world and GM means they should be the Master of the game.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign. Another solution. As the mad scientist replied when being warned of the problems inherent to flying a spaceship to the sun, "You fool! We shall only travel at night. Bwahahaha."

Re: Damage Reduction While I understand Sean's concerns, I feel, and the other posts seem to confirm, that Damage Reduction is a completely concept dependent power, more so than many others. Forgive me if I sound like I am repeating fundamentals, but, here it goes. The biggest problem with players unbalancing a game by using DR improperly is usually because the GM didn't say NO. The only Damage Reduction in our campaign PC team is possessed by our energy projector, Thunderbird. He has 25% Energy Damage Reduction, Resistant. It means that he can stand up to almost any energy attacks, but he deliberately focused his PC so that flat footed on the ground, he is much more vulnerable. Granted we have very loose attack and defense caps for certain types of PCs, but the concept trumps numerical values. In other words, the play of the character and the appropriateness to the campaign are more important than the mathematical values of the defense.

Re: How to Write (or run) a Pulp Story Kiiler site, UltraRob. Thanks for posting it.

Re: The cranky thread Cool. That means everbody is the Man. Even women. There is something downright egalitarian about that. Ooops my bad. I am far to optimistic by nature to even be in the Cranky Thread. Stop glaring, Old Man, I'm leaving, I'm leaving.

Re: New Power: Desolidification Interesting. I have some concerns with the cost vs. current version of the power but I don't hate where you are going at all. Differentiating the SFX and defining more precisely what is going on is a very worthy idea. Repped.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I third (or fourth) that. It will be my next order.

Re: Firearms granularity Your point is well taken in that there are times when you want the guy with the .25 caliber pocket pistol to be intimidated by the guy with the .45 1911. The only real way to indicate sufficient granularity would be to use more dice for the larger calibers. Using 1D6-1 for a .22 and (using an arbitrary number for arguement sake) 5D6 for a 7.62 NATO, which would possibly more correctly indicate the potential spread of damage would create numerous balance issues for the rest of the system, such as 10 or 12 BODY would be nothing and the infamous STUN lottery issue would be even more greatly exagerated. My point is that I have seen and participated in many attempts at tweeking the system to reflect how an individual or group prefers to game and sometimes they are OK for a specific campaign or game. I have not seen them satisfactorily address all issues for all games. At some point, one must accept that these are the parameters of the system and play within those parameters. Please do not take any insult at this approach. This is not a slam at your efforts in any way. If your tables work for game then I commend you and your efforts. Having seen them, they are not optimal for our group. But neither one of us is wrong, we simply want something different out of the system and ultimately that is why I prefer the open ended nature of the Hero system.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Going to the gym to work out. I will either be really fired up or feel like crap the rest of the night. What the hell.

Re: Firearms granularity That is a perfect reason to do so. If you and your gaming group enjoy the realism and specificty of the number crunching, then nobody should tell you different. That having been said, those to whom the genre of fiction and fantasy depictions reflect what weapon effects they want to occur do not deserve to be told that they are stupid, that their games and rules are flawed and that they are doing it wrong.

Re: Firearms granularity The first problem with just using caliber to determine damage is that there is more to the equation than the diameter of the round. For example, what differentiates the .22 long rifle bullet from the .223 is certainly not the .003 difference in diameter. Bullet length and shape, amount of propellent, and weapon from which the weapon is fired are the other characteristics determining damage. Hit location would be the other main factor. Unless the GM and the players want a reallt deadly campaign, I hardly recommend true granualarity. The second problem is that of gaming genre. Do you want every PC hit by a bullet to be laid up in ICU for the rest of the adventure month or for one or more to possibly rest up for a bit in the Femme Fatale's budoir turning her to the side opf good, Dr. Spectre's Andean mountain stronghold where the nuclear weather control ray is about to be powered up again and only our heroes can stop him or the Comanche chief's lodge, possibly becoming an unofficial warrior sub chief after the Indians witness the heroe's bravery and honor? Realism is the stuff we do every non game day, so why be so insistent on including it in all of our games as well?

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? As many in our group have always liked the turn of the century era for story lines; Holmes and Dracula, Teddy Roosevelt vs. Fu Manchu, Tarzan takes on the Mole people, we decided to use 1905 as the basis of our campaign. The Pulp Hero source book will still be invaluable, but we are just doing a lot of our own research which we did for our 1935 pulp hero game in the 1980s.

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign. Great minds think alike, although the ability to cleverly harness otherwise dangerous compounds is being used by my Champions rather than Pulp mastermind villain.

Re: Doc Savage Write-up?

Re: Lack of Fully Developed Worlds

Re: Doc Savage Write-up? If you follow the link that Oddhat (and I redundantly;) ) posted earlier, the list of resources is huge.

Re: Doc Savage Write-up? I seem to recall it in a double volume entitled The Mad Goblin/Lord of the Trees. Is that not the same source?

Re: Doc Savage Write-up? Thankfully, no. Those, um, peculiarities were from the Mad Goblin, IIRC so I will attribute them to exageration for the purposes of our campaign.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER