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?

It may have been on another thread. I seem to recall it coming from Steve Long.

 

If it helps to conceptualize DC, think of it as being modern day pulp adventures. The pulps had everything: superheroes, hard boiled detectives, street level vigilantes, international explorers, espionage, military adventure, science fiction, police and crime stories... all of which are incredibly easy to update to modern day and put under the heading of Dark Champions. If you want to get technical, Danger International was the roleplaying game of modern adventure during the cold war 80's, with occasional forays into post holocaust and Star Hero type SF.

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

Actually, IMO, the Power levels in Dark Champions were about right if you consider Harbringer and Panathanos as the equivalents of Dr Destroyer and Takofanes for the genre. The Skill level abuses however should be reined in.

By this I mean no 27-30 DEX Characters with 4+ levels in weapon, range, combat and HIT LOCATION as part of large teams or even as Solo Villains.

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

Must eat food (While having Life Support 30 to survive radiation since Life Support 25 includes not having to eat etc)

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!

Not a problem at all.

 

Give me a day or two to work it out and I'll post it for ya.

Many thanks.

Re: Star Wars in HERO

I dislike the EU' date=' A LOT!!![/quote']

Hear, hear! For starters, they missed something critical in RotJ:

 

"It is your destiny to teach, and her destiny to learn." Obi-Wan to Luke, speaking about Leia.

 

He-LLO?! This means that Leia is destined to be trained by Luke as a Jedi, not to be the 'most critical' political figure in the New Republic. That destiny takes precedence over any political needs the New Republic thinks it has. And she'd be a far better diplomat as a Jedi.

 

That alone puts the EU (pronounced EWWWWW!!!) on the Ignore list. (Though I confess that I do like most of the rest of what Timothy Zahn has written.)

 

[/RANT]

 

Sorry. That's been on my mind for a while now. Thanks for the opportunity to get it off my chest.

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?

I can see Captain Planet and the Planeteers finally getting fed up with fighting the same villains over and over again, and just becoming eco-terrorists.

 

 

"Drilling illegally, eh?"

*blows up homes and families*

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

I'd like to mine one little bit from Shelley's PRIMUS. The bit about the Cyberline serum actually being genetic material from a mildly superstrong and invulnerable metahuman.

 

But instead of going all Iron Age and having it be from a murdered gay Communist from the Bronx, instead, have the DNA come from a willing donor. Somebody who was so patriotic that even after his powers faded, even after his death, he wanted to know that a piece of his legacy would live on in as many other American super-soldiers as possible, and be out there protecting people and saving the innocent.

 

Captain Patriot.

 

That would be a nice tribute, wouldn't it?

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?

I was posting to the TUB thread when I got to thinking about a pre-Golden Age campaign (early 30s pulps). The idea is to have a campaign where the players all play masked crime-fighters with VERY low power levels (8 DC tops). Characters don't have to have costumes, but they should wear a mask, have a motif, and a secret ID. I'm thinking the Shadow, The Phantom, Green Hornet, etc. The trouble I usually have with campaigns with such as this is keeping the players on the same page. Very often people want to make characters who have all kinds of wild powers and what-not that don't fit the little sub-genre very well. A stretching character just doesn't fit the campaign. The question is how to articulate that to the players. These are the parameters I thought of:

• Attacks must have a maximum of 8 DCs to start. Killing attacks are acceptable.
  
• Defenses should not be higher than 15 each. Resistent defenses are suggested.
  
• All powers must be either enhancements of existing physical abilities (strength, speed, etc.), psychic (telepathy, clairsentience, etc.), or gadgets.
  
• Characters must be humans from the present world. No aliens, time-travellers, androids, elves, quasi-demons, or people from alternate realities.
  
• Characters do not need to have costumes per se, but should have a mask or at least a "stage name."
  

What d'y'all think?

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.

Originally posted by Crisis

This one has some great potential.

 

Unfortunately, a town controlled by a major supervillain has been done already.

"Welcome to Orlando, the Town That Eisner Built."

 

*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.

Originally posted by nexus

I was following a thread on Rpg.net about that sort of game. You'd be surprised how many really like, or even prefer that style of play. I was fascinated.

Originally posted by Zed-F

There's nothing wrong with that, providing that the players know what they are in for when they sign up for the game. Not every game has to be about the movers and shakers of the game universe. For every success story, there are hundreds of folks just getting by; why shouldn't we have a game about them from time to time?

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.

Originally posted by TheImperialKhan

Expensive!

.

.

.

REALLY Expensive!

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