Peregrine

Re: Genetic Tribalism? I'd recommend GURPS Bio-tech for an interesting discussion of this sort of thing. While it has the requisite GURPS mechanics, it also has some interesting discussion about the state-of-the-art (circa 1997, the publication date) and speculations based thereon.

Re: Villianous Code Name for a Emotion Manipulater How about gender-bending the character? Call it "Typical Woman"

Re: The Harbinger of Justice Thread Steve, Thanks for not giving in to the 'low power' crowd whose rallying cry seems to be "No Harbinger of Justice!" I'm glad to see that DC is going to cover the full spectrum of play and not just be a 'real-world genre' book.

Re: Jedi Ghosts and fade-to-deaths? It's a plot device, nothing more - no need to write it up. And, except in the most unusual of circumstances, any PC Jedi who died and came back as a spirit would be an NPC at that point anyway.

Re: Should this be called Dark Champions? Hear, hear! There's a lot being said on various threads about making this book "realistic". I, for one, would rather see this exactly as Archer described it - modern pulps. Equal shrift given to the full spectrum of the relevant power scale, rather than focusing on the lower end.

Re: Codename: Kids Next Door Since you put it that way... I concur completely. Good catch!

Re: Dark Champions That kind of ubercompetent polymath is as much a part of the greater genre as the normal-caught-up-in-matter-not-of-their-own-design, and a part no less interesting. I think the full range of what the genre can be should be a part of the core book. Appropriately presented as such, of course, rather than as part of a hodgepodge 'supragenre' presentation.

Re: DARK CHAMPIONS: What Do *You* Want To See? A broader range of point totals and 'power levels' among characters built under Heroic parameters than that given in FRED. While some of this will be handled in The Ultimate Skill, many characters of the genre are nearly (if not fully) polymathic in depth and breadth of ability. (Independent of 'earned experience'; how many game campaigns contain as many stories/adventures as some of the serial novel characters have had? If you start 'small', you'll never get 'large' over the course of the average game campaign, and you won't accurately model the genre you're claiming to be emulating.)

Re: The car from Damnation Alley Yeah. Morrow Project really went over-the-top with the MARS-1 and Science-1 vehicles. Cool setting, though.

Re: Silliest Disadvantage Ever This one is legitimate as a limitation on the Life Support, not as a Disadvantage.

Re: Gaming Historical Zeitgeists Don't preach. Seriously. Especially given the inspiration for your campaign (not the subject matter, but the kind of inspiration, a philosophical idea), don't turn it into a 'bully pulpit' for the philosophical concept. Have the story, not the dialogue, present the idea, in the context of a conflict between the PCs and their opponents. And the conflict doesn't necessarily have to fall along the lines of the opposing forces in the philosophical debate.

Re: Star Wars in HERO Let me kibbutz, if I may... The first student Luke trained was Leia. From Endor, they traveled to Tatooine (the world Luke knew best), and there Luke passed on to his sister the way of the Jedi. Upon completing her training, Leia returned to the galactic scene, not as a politician, but as the consummate diplomat, restoring the tradition of Jedi mediators and smoothing over many (though by no means all) of the simmering disputes that arose from the events of the Fall of the Republic and the Rise of the Empire barely a generation before. Luke, meanwhile, quested throughout the galaxy to rediscover lost records from the Jedi Order (which would ultimately lead him back to Dagobah to discover the records Yoda had hidden away). Both Luke and Leia took and trained padawans during their sojourning through the galaxy, in some cases beginning a candidate's training and then passing them to their sibling for the completion of their training, to prevent a schism in the nascent Jedi Order.

Re: Lightsabre Combat! Many thanks.

Re: Star Wars in HERO

Re: Lightsabre Combat! Sweet! Now, a request - can you write up Lightsaber Combat as a full martial art in UMA format, with the various forms as sub-styles?

Re: What comic book villains would make cool heroes, and vice versa? And this would be a change how?

Re: Things We'd Like To See:PRIMUS Not only that, but there's PA going all the way back to WWII, if the material in the last Golden Age Champions isn't going to be set aside in the new one. The only reason for PRIMUS not to have the Iron Guard (or some derivative thereof) is a policy decision by the Powers-That-Be.

Re: Things We'd Like To See:PRIMUS The nature of the Cyberline serum was one of my favorite bits from Shelley's PRIMUS, though I share the distaste for the origin. Your suggested tribute is a nice one. I also like the idea that the Cyberline treatment is not a static product, but is regularly undergoing reevaluation, fine-tuning, and 'improvement'. You can Iron Age that easily, if that's your taste, and have failed test subjects as villains and/or monsters, or you can Silver/Bronze Age it and have a single character who's origin is that of having been the sole recipient of 'Cyberline II', which, while it didn't work quite as expected, gave the character powers at a later time. (That's a modified version of the origin for one of my stable of unplayed characters.)

Re: Campaign Advice: How to Enforce Style? Here's another suggestion: Have one entire 'gaming session' dedicated to discussing the campaign, the genre, what tone you're trying to set, etc. Have each player express to you in their own words what they understand the campaign to be about, and what kind of character they plan to play, the latter without using game mechanics in their description. Don't proceed with character generation until everyone is on the same page to your satisfaction.

*yawn*

However, I can definitely see adding DCs as a Jedi improves over time, representing a combination of greater skill and use of the Force.

Well, I can't argue with these points; after all, Traveller is a damned popular game. But the insistence that the only correct way to play is "down'n'out" is particularly noisome to me, and when I've enountered the philosophy, there was always a strong current of 'control the players/PCs' as well.

A GM who thinks that, in order to keep the game from getting 'out of control', the PCs should always be low-powered compared to the setting, nothing they do should ever change anything in the setting, and they should always be scraping for the bare necessities of life, never getting past "Where's the next meal/load of fuel/maintenance/starship payment coming from?"

Y'know, I can only buy into UNTIL as a Champions Universe-specific bit. The closest comics antecedent, Marvel's SHIELD, was not a UN-sponsored organization for most of it's history, only becoming associated with the UN in its 90s incarnation. The closest fictional UN organization is UNCLE, from the Man From UNCLE TV series. And I could rant at length on exactly how unlikely-to-impossible it would be for such an organization to actually come into existence, citing other, more likely responses to the problem of supercrime. But UNTIL is an established feature of the Champions Universe, and as such gives the CU a unique character.

You say that like it's a bad thing...