Peregrine

Re: Do I need the 6th Martial Arts book?

The Muay Thai writeup was a little underwhelming' date=' frankly. It's pretty much the same writeup from 4th and 5th.[/quote']

 

That's true of most or all of the writeups of the arts previously published, I think.

Re: Do I need the 6th Martial Arts book?

if you arethe GM shouldn't you have final say on what system is used?

Not if you want players - if they don't want to play the game you want, they don't have to play in *your* game.

Re: Hero System Modern Mass Combat Testing

So... maybe there's an opportunity for the Mass Combat Rules to be woven in to the Kingdom and standard rules to provide a somewhat graceful range of play scales?

Re: Female Master Villains

Liberated women aren't ashamed of tbeir bodies.

Even though some of them should be.

Re: Female Master Villains

I've always held the opinion that feminist supervillains wear the costumes they do to elicit stereotypical behavior from males they meet. It's a power-trip thing "See this fabulous body? You can't touch it. Now I'll punish you for wanting to."

I wouldn't limit that opinion to fictional females, myself...

Re: Batman meets Doc Savage

First Wave, is going to rock out like an Arena show. With the Line Up they are using (As well as little things, like using the Early Detective Comics Batman, who will be refered to properly, as THE Batman), and the fact they are running with the Product of the times, even the minor creative changes they are going to make (Chop Chop being the field leader of the Blackhawks for example, and you never......ever.....call him Chop Chop) FIT, with the established stories for all these characters (We get WildCat as well. )

 

With the creative team they have, they can't lose.

 

Here's a small article for those scratching their heads and wondering what us old school pulp fans are blabbering about.

 

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23294

 

~Rex

Oh, yeah. Jonesing *hard* for this one...

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE: What Do *You* Want To See?

As far as example characters and published "official" continuity go' date=' I see your point. OTOH the opportunity is now available to the great many HERO players who create their own settings and characters, and/or modify existing writeups to suit their own campaigns, to explore the possible new builds.[/quote']

 

Which is pretty much my point. However you choose to handle it in your local game, if the whole group is having fun, then keep having fun! But any expectation that the published materials will be changed to reflect a different set of assumptions is a recipe for disappointment. You* Have Been Warned.

 

*Plural/generic "you"

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE: What Do *You* Want To See?

Who says that there is supposed to be a major shift in design philosophy?

 

I'm talking about design snafus like the erroneous purchase of OMCV for non-mentalists, which seems to be born out of the old ways that one acquired more ECV as their EGO went up.

 

Plus Mr. Long's design philosophies might already be slightly shifting with Champions Powers coming out before the majority of official character writeups.

Then I will be even more succinct - don't hold your breath.

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE: What Do *You* Want To See?

What could be done is that these earlier releases could have a kind of "converted" feel to them while later releases can truly show off 6e's nuances as it it stays afloat.

 

That way it can attract 5e players and maintain them, guiding them along until the nuances look natural.

Then I will be succinct - don't hold your breath that the designer is going to change the default assumptions of the official setting just because A. the rules facilitate such a change and B. a minority of a minority of the customer base wants to see the assumptions changed.

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE: What Do *You* Want To See?

I don't suppose there's any chance that "standard" characteristics for superhumans might be reconsidered in light of the decoupling of figured characteristics. With DEX no longer a prerequisite to being effective in combat, I'd like to see Supers tend to high human, rather than top end human and above, DEX. Maybe a 5 - 8 point drop (eg. the old "20 DEX slow Super" now has a 13 DEX, still faster than Joe Normal, 23 becomes 15, 26 becomes 18, 30 becomes 23, etc.). It's possible to have a much broader range now without trending into "superhuman".

 

Similarly, I'd like to see a lot more unequal OCV/DCV and OMCV/DMCV characters.

 

Probably not a practical approach, as it de-links from the published characters from prior editions, unfortunately, but it seems a shame to make major changes to the game engine, but not follow them through when we design characters for the game.

 

From DoJ's perspective, such an approach would mean that there is a reason to replace your old 5e materials, but I suppose that's offset by also creating a reason to just stick with all that 5e stuff and ignore the 6e material entirely, so there's no real compellling reason to go either way from that angle.

Don't hold your breath that the designer is going to implement this preference for character building, especially since A. it's not confirmed to be a majority preference among the customer base (of which those who frequent these boards are a minority) and B. it is a major departure from not only 5th, but also from what has so far been published for the supers genre in 6th.

Re: Would you play a game with pre-generated characters?

For me, pregens = too much GM control and/or GM avoidance of communication to discuss and come to agreement on expectations.

Re: CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE: What Do *You* Want To See?

Champions itself features the five members of the Champions as starting 400-point heroes, and six villains.

 

My current plans for CU are to present character sheets for the five members of the Champions as of 2010 (i.e., with 10 years of experience under their belts, so probably 600-pointers or so), plus some or all of the following NPC heroes: the All-American; Black Mask X; Gadget Boy; Mayte Sanchez; Dr. Silverback; Victory. That's the most I intend to put in, and there's a good chance I won't even put in all of those guys. There's only so much need for NPC heroes.

Going off of the inclusion of the All-American, I'd like to see more about the super-soldier and superhuman soldier programs of the CU. In 5e, the U.S. had one of each (Perseus and Cyberline, respectively) operative, active, and routinely usable (within parameters of subject compatibility), with two others "retired" (Achilles and Yeoman) and one producing inconsistent results (Janissary). Have other CU nations developed anything comparable? How has the U.S. used its programs (especially the successful ones, Cyberline and Perseus) outside of PRIMUS, the All-American program, and the original Ameriforce One, if at all?

Re: Sherlock Holmes (movie 2010)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Moriarty

 

Not really.

 

I know there is at least one later (non-ACD) story in which Holmes suffers from a split personality disorder, with Moriarty being one of the others.

 

In 'The Seven Percent Solution', Holmes's cocaine addiction is making him delusional, to the extent that he is basically stalking an innocent man ( Moriarty is definitely NOT a criminal mastermind). Watson then enlists the aid of Sigmund Freud to get him on the road to recovery.

 

Holmes Lore is, in a way, a lot like the Trekverse. There is LOTS of detail - yet there are also enough gaps, inconsistencies, side references and things unseen to generate a fair-sized industry in "alternate" explanations and so forth. As it has.

 

Plus which, remember that just about all of the original Holmes stories are written from the point of view of Doctor Watson (one of the later ones is written by Holmes himself, but that is all). As some later non-ACD fiction suggests, it could be that Watson (and/or his editor) altered facts for one reason or another, or that Holmes simply did not tell his colleague EVERYTHING.

My thought, assuming it isn't obvious, is that Holmes deliberately created "Moriarty" to provide himself with the mental stimulation that he found so addicting - playing against himself. No split personality, just a deliberate juxtaposition of himself against himself.

Re: Female Master Villains

Oh, I'm thinking much more than that. You see, she's not from "around here". And Henrietta von Drotte was the name of the woman whose identity she assumed after she killed the original shortly before or during WWII...

Re: Sherlock Holmes (movie 2010)

Can someone with better Holmes Lore than I answer a question - did anyone in any of the stories actually see Holmes and Moriarty together at a close enough range to positively identify both at the same time?

Re: Female Master Villains

I've had some thoughts about making the Duchess more of a master villain in her own right - almost a female Dr. Destroyer.

Re: Does your campaign world have a S.H.I.E.L.D.?

UNTIL was heavily inspired by both SHIELD and UNCLE (as in "The Man From..."), so the resemblance is far from coincidental. SHIELD, during its published history, has at least once been officially associated with the Marvel Universe's United Nations, IIRC, though most of its existence has been extra-governmental.

Re: Good bye Constellation Program

Freight rail appears to be making a bit of a comeback, especially on routes that bypass heavily congested trucking routes (like from Savannah GA through Atlanta GA to... well, anywhere but the far East Coast up or down I-95).

Re: technology in the campaign setting

Transhuman Space (from SJG; it's a GURPS product) covers all that and more. I'd worry less about direct translation of game mechanics (read: not at all) and more about mining for ideas.

Re: Good bye Constellation Program

Agreed. NGD is like a train wreck for me - horrendous, and yet difficult to keep my eyes away.

Re: Star Wars licence news...

I think what Peregrine is saying is that having an ongoing Star Wars RPG on the market' date=' that someone is paying you a fee for, amounts to someone paying LucasFilm to market LF's brand for them -- that even if they sold the license for $10, it would be a win for LucasFilm.[/quote']

 

You said it better.

Re: Star Wars licence news...

The net effect will be to remove the Star Wars property from any ongoing and supported presence in the RPG market. A minuscule loss in licensing revenues, yes; but what about lost opportunity costs around marketing the property to an otherwise generally receptive group?

Re: Charging points for tech gear?

Just taking small arms up a notch from the stats for modern real-world weapons gets you close to a superheroic level (see also' date=' the thread for my SF game).[/quote']

 

You don't even have to go that far; look at the gear in 6E and compare DEF and DCs for contemporary armor and weapons.

Re: CHAMPIONS POWERS: What Do *You* Want To See?

Possession is in the APG.

Re: Champions Sneak Peek #1: The Cover!

Especially the post-Watchers of the Dragon Seeker. That book added great depth to the character.

Quite honestly, that book was the first time I really paid any attention to Seeker - and I liked what I saw there.

In the 5e incarnation of my customized setting, there were two wanderers, a man and a woman, who could be found in various parts of the V'Hanian Dimensional Empire. Everyone seemed to know them, but no one spoke of them. But the woman had a glowing jewel that constantly floated nearby...