Rene

Re: Authority supplement cover shot

Re: Authority supplement cover shot The Authority leaves me cold, even though I'm a fan of other stuff Ellis has written (such as Planetary). It's not that I necessarily dislike dark heroes, it's just that the series seems to be all action, no feeling. And I wouldn't take his statements so seriously, Ellis likes to be inflamatory, sometimes just to mantain his bad boy image.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? Reading yours and Lowly Uhlan's posts, I'm glad to know I'm not alone. I forgot to mention, but I dislike even more those games where every man, woman, and child in the planet hates your guts than those where everybody on Earth thinks you're Jesus. OTOH, unified origins for all superpowers (such as mutation) don't bother me none.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? I have all the 16 Wild Cards books, and have read them multiple times. Most of the time, Aces aren't worshipped as gods or despised as abominations by *everyone* they meet. And I agree the books do a wonderful job in showing people's reactions. In some time periods, Aces are *celebrities*. That is quite different from being worshipped as a god. Sure, *some people* are fanatical in their adoration, but by no means all people. Some people see them as aberrations, but again, by no means all people. And the bunch of the populace don't kneel before them or shot at them whenever they see an Ace! There is a whole spectrum of reactions in the novels. I also agree that *initial* reactions to supers would tend to be more extreme. As people get used to supers, these reactions would cool down a little in a considerable portion of the populace.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? No, God forbid! Maybe you've misunderstood me. I'm quite alright with settings where the reactions are *mostly* favorable or *mostly" unfavorable toward superheroes. The key world here is "mostly". What I dislike is when this reaction is taken to extremes both in frequency and intensity, do you see? For instance, I quite enjoy most of the Marvel Universe, most of the DC Universe, Astro City, and Wild Cards. I like it when there is at least some variety in people's reactions, even though there may be a prevalent oppinion. But when *everybody* seems to have identical reactions to supers, and these identical reactions are always extreme, I don't like it. I usually prefer game settings where reactions aren't monolitical. I also happen to love settings where reactions CAN shift with time. That is the beauty of settings like Astro City and Wild Cards. You have time periods where supers are viewed more negatively than others.

I was thinking about posting this in the superhero concept thread, but I thought it maybe merited it's own thread, since it involves game worlds, not specific characters, and the topic seemed interesting on it's own. Particularly, there are two background concepts I'm tired of seeing. The first one is the "International/UN superteams". I'm still not sure why it ticks me off. Maybe because it's such a obvious liberal wet dream, or maybe because I think it unrealistic as hell (I mean, I don't think the UN would ever have the political balls to assemble and coordinate an effective pro-active superteam). And it's even worse when the GM makes the UN corrupt and evil, and then all the good supers in the world are forced into the role of rebels or dupes. Yes, I know the superhero genre isn't necessarily about realism, still... And it may be weird, since I'm not American myself, but the more I play supers, the more I think it's an American genre, and I've been feeling weirder and weider trying to wrap my head about international supers as protagonists. I know, I know... realistically superheroes should be spread all through the world (Hehe, and I was raving about unrealism before, so I'm a contraditory person...). Still, sometimes I feel it's like playing a western/cowboy game and setting it in some other place but the US. So nowadays I mostly stuck with American supers. The other thing that I've come to dislike is the reaction to superheroes taken to absurd extremes. You know what I'm talking about. You've got worlds where superheroes are viewed as saints who can do no wrong in the eyes of the public, and in other worlds they're dirty muties to be shot on sight no matter what. I find both extremes somewhat ludicrous and annoying.

Re: What character concepts make you cringe? Well-said. If the player doing the "translating" has a good grasp of and a good deal of sympathy for the supers genre, I usually don't mind. For instance, there is a vampire character in Astro City that is perfect superhero fare. Sadly, many such characters are proposed by players who are hostile toward and/or ignorant of the supers genre.

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing?

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? I think a anime clone is very nice in a anime game. Just don't bring your Goku clone in my Silver Age Justice League/Fantastic Four game. That is the problem I have with some anime fans. They want to take over everything.

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? 1) Undead half-demonic angsty loner with kewl darkness/KA/psi powers (it's worse when the player actually thinks he is being so much more original than the silly old timer with his Superman rip-off). 2) "I have the power of manipulating reality itself!" Makes for nice mega-villains, but poor PCs. 3) Neo clones. They manipulate reality, but for some reason they also carry guns and know karate. Go figure. Eh. I quite like clones of the classic characters (everybody in the JLA, Avengers, or Fantastic Four is ripe for cloning), so call me prejudiced because I approve of some clones and not others.

Re: DEX vs. CSLs 8-pt combat levels can be used in all kinds of combat. Can come in handy when you're fighting mentalists or magicians, boosts your DECV.

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field Hmm... I think I've read in the rules's FAQ that it's not advised.

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field Just wanted to thank you all for the help.

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying 1) Develop her background, past, family, day-to-day life, likes and dislikes, everything that makes her a person, not a pair of breasts. 2) Avoid two dangerous pitfalls: making her unbelieavably "butch" or making her so cloyingly girly that everyone will puke. IMO, those two caricatures are more annoying than the nymphomaniac bimbo. 3) Be ready to deal with two kinds of players (usually young and/or unused to cross-gendered RP): the guy who is completely grossed out by you, and the guy who becomes completely obsessed with having sex with your character. The later is easier to deal with, because you can do it in-game, the former there isn't much to do but wait for the player to get used to it. 4) Of course, forget the above if the game is hack'n'slash, or played for laughs and caricatures are the whole point of it. If your friends are playing no-brained square-jawed goons with guns, there is no reason you can't play a big-breasted nympho bimbo with guns. Not my kind of game though.

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field I like it. Still a bit more expensive than I think it should be, but much more affordable than buying this huge power and linking it to a normal self-only Shrinking. Still... can you apply both AE and UAA to a power? Isn't this slightly unofficial? I think the book-approved mechanic would be the x2 mass/targets thing.

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field

Re: What character concepts make you cringe?

Re: What character concepts make you cringe? The character concept that I really have come to hate in Champions is the out of genre wonder. The more common varieties are anime guys and White Wolf refugees. I don't have anything against anime and White Wolf, but if I wanted to run games based on them, I'd inform the players. Somewhat related to the above is the "weird powers guys". It's the player that is so afraid of being accused of lack of originality that he ends up with a extremelly bizarre concept. Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with weird power guys (or even out of genre wonders) when they're *in the minority*. After all, one vampire in a group of otherwise conventional superheroes can spice things up, adds variety, and actually has some precedent in the genre. And it's always fun to have one super with really strange powers in the mix. The problem is, whenever I allow these kinds of characters, I find that *all* the players take this route and I end up with a group where the vanilla superhero guy actually is the minority. "Er... any of you PCs can actually fly? No?" Almost as annoying are the players who insist in trying to convince me to let them play selfish, crazy, psychopaths in a "classic" superhero game. One guy I used to play with was so completely stuck in White Wolf mode that it was painful to see. He also was somewhat obnoxious and rude, to make matters worse. When I kept rejecting his characters and asking him to make them a little bit friendlier, he finally lost his cool and made a long speech about the silliness of the old-fashioned superhero ideal, and how society should be changed through economic reforms and not by individualistic hypocritical heroism, and how moral relativism was the bomb, etc. What could I say but: "Man, this in only a game. Not my own personal political statement." I'm happy to say it's been some years since I last saw this guy. Good riddance.

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field Area of Effect don't automatically converts Self-Only powers into Attacks. And Transforms can't be used to change yourself.

Re: What character concepts make you cringe? I think playing characters of the opposite sex is fine. I've both GMed for and played such characters, and never had any significant problems. Actually, in Champions games I think it's very handy to have some male players willing to play superheroines. Female superhero gamers are still somewhat rare, and all-male supergroups aren't the norm in the comics. And yes, the inhumanly beautiful, flirty lesbian played by a teen male gamer can be annoying, but no more annoying than several other wish-fullfilment types taken to extremes by clueless players.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but humour me. I was wondering how to build Ant-Man's shrinking gas in HERO. He can shrink himself, he can shrink other people and objects, and he also can do both simultaneously. At first one might think that something like the Usable Simultaneously Advantage would be the ideal answer, but Hank Pym can shrink opponents against their will, so it's Usable as Attack. But I've read that you normally can't use Usable as Attack powers on yourself, and even if the GM'd allow it, I don't think you could shrink both yourself and your enemy in a single Phase. So we'd have to buy two different powers? I was thinking about a Multipower, but problem is, that would make it hard to use the two slots at the same time. The right way then seems to be to buy the powers completely separated. It's just that it seems ridiculous to pay 400+ points (when you consider it's also lengthy Continuing Charges, and lots of them) for this ability.

It's all in the SFX. There are several "powers" thar are quite adequate for normal humans to represent "training", even agents. Small amounts of Running, Enhanced Senses, Damage Reduction, Hand Attack, and Mental Defense are the most common.

For once, I'm in complete agreement with Tesuji. That is how I see things too. But I admit that that is a GM style thing. Part of the old Storytelling x Simulationism divide. Batman's villains are crafted by the writers with Batman in mind. They're quite different from Superman's villains. That is the storytelling way of crafting an adventure. To the simulationist though, "realism" is a more pressing concern. And there is no realistic reason for the rest of the world to be crafted taking the PCs's traits into account. You got a lot less headaches when you take the storytelling view.

Superman can't vibrate through solid stuff, not since the John Byrne rewrite. But it's possible they gave the power back to him recently, I'm not keeping up with the character, so I wouldn't known. As far as I can remember, the Vision only used his partial desolid trick to attack people. I'd call that a NND attack. Though in theory this new Desolid could be in keeping with how Density Increase and powers like that are dealt with it in HERO, I don't remember ANY fictional character with the power to become desolid enough to pass through light materials but not through metal or something like that. DC Heroes and SAS deal with Desolid this way, but I never liked it. In their attempt to break ALL powers into "levels" they did some weird stuff with powers like Invisibility and Infravision too. Some powers in fiction usually ARE absolute.

Cool thread, and Houston's answer was cool too. But I think coolness, sex appeal, and trust have more to do with the character's personality, history, and style. It's true that certain sets of powers seem to influence the character's personality and style to a degree, though. And there is also comic book tradition. I'm saying the obvious here, but 99.9% of comic book superheroines have A+ in sex appeal. Is there anyone with COM lower than 18?