Michael Hopcroft

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Get this ****ing sausage off my nose!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Enforcer starts raving about how Tomb Raider and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are total classics.

Re: Super Baby Battles Super Monkey! I got to see the image. That was actually kind of cute. Weird, but cute. At least they didn't come out in China or something. Which reminds me -- growing up with superpowers must pose all kinds of complications. How do you potty-train a baby Kryptonian?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "No, rebooting because there's one bad byte in a 7 trillion tetrabyte drive is NOT going to cause the Universe to implode, and -- wait, hang on a sec -- Ed, can you come over here? It's another tech support call from God. And you KNOW how much He hates being on hold. By the way, see if you can convince Him our receptionist would be very much happier were she not a zebra anymore." NT: Signs that the guy who just built your new Personal Computer for you is out of his mind.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat SPAM. I wouldn't know what to do with it.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat They redraw Krosp to make him cute, rewrite Othar to make him look sane, and redress Agatha in as little as humanly possible.

Re: 'Excellent." One particular Campion episode, "Look to the Lady" (an adaptation of The Gyrth Chalice Mystery), was sheer magic. Largely because Davison was given free reign to exercise both his charm and his gift with a turn of phrase. And because whoever wrote that episode filled it with amazing witticisms for just about everybody, especially the redoubtable Lugg. (As Campion described him, "He was one of the top burglars in the business, but he couldn't make the weight anymore.") It also set of the character of Albert Campion as a gifted, almost chameleonic figure with numerous identities, all of them false, including that of the Gypsy Prince "Orlando".

Re: Captain Jack I don't know that that's neccesarily going to be bad. I mean, Billie Piper was a BritPop idol of questionable skill, and she turned out to be a superb companion (and is well on her way to becoming an extremely capable actress in general). Before the Eccleston series, that news would have been as horrifying as Bonnie Langford as a companion was (and turned out to be). But after Billie, I'm willing to give Rachel the benefit of the doubt until I actually see Torchwood. By the way, the link does not work. Try this.

Re: 'Excellent."

Re: Quark! That's right, it was one of his first large parts after his return from Vietnam. He would later become a B-movie icon in the Trancers films.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "We need to keep Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn occupied for the next two hours. That's your cue, Batgirl." "I'm going to need the Bat*****" "Here, with some extras." NT: Signs that DC Comics has handed over creative control of their entire line to Phil Foglio.

Re: Bubble gum crises to hero By the way, for those with a taste for the utterly wacked, try finding something called Scramble Wars. It was made in the late '80s, and featured the casts from most of the important AIC OVA series up to that time (incluidng Bubblegum Crisis, Gall Force and Genesis Survivor Gairath) is a cross-country race. It featured a lot of slapstick and mayhem, as well as some canny satire on the characters (like Nene and Linna going into utter boy-crazy gaga bliss). It was paired for video release in the US with Ten Little Gall Force, a satiric "making of" video on the first two Gall Force OVAs as if it were being filmes like a live-action film, complete with bloopers, effects disasters, and wardrobe malfunctions. It was apparently made as something to tide over the fan base while Gall Force 2 faced severe production delays.

Re: The Death Note and How To Stop It

Re: The Death Note and How To Stop It Although in an RPG all bets are off, in Death Note itself when Light specifies a cause of death it has to be physically possible. Not neccesarily likely, but possible. The only thing the Note gives him control over is the actions (for the seven minutes it takes between him writing down the name and the person dying) of the victim. If the conditions Light specifies are impossible, the victim isn't spared -- he simply dies via heart attack as per usual.

Re: The Death Note and How To Stop It Verging into spoiler territory, there are other Shinigami (Death Spirits), and at least one other one becomes involved later, though not necessarily on the good guy side. There's a good guy in Death Note? News to me. I've been longing for Light to get a truly severe comeuppance since the beginning.

Re: Anime Champions? I've seen come clarification of that. What you suggest has to be physically possible in the time allowed -- not neccesarily easy, just possible. When Light tried to have someone who was in a jail cell in Tokyo expire at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it didn't work. Of course, the guy still died. Just not the exact way Light specified. Also, Light can dictate the actions of the victim in the period immediately before his death. He has used it to leave taunting notes for his adversaries, as well as to cause enemies to betray their comrades so that he can kill them too. Lovely piece of work, Light Yagami.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Will No One rid me of this meddlesome Bank Teller?" NT: Signs your High School Drama Coach is out of her mind.

One of the most controversial manga titles in years has come to the United States, and it poses the idea for a great but difficult campaign. Death Note tells the story of a high school genius named Light who finds a strange notebook on the ground by his school and picks it up. Reading the introduction, he finds that it is the "Death Note", a notebook left behind by an Angel of Death. If you write a person's name in the book while his or her face is in your mind, that person will die in the manner you specify if you do so within forty seconds. If you don't specify a means, he will simply drop dead from heart failure. (the face is a failsafe to prevent you from causing every person on Earth with the same name from dropping dead simultaneously). Light tries it out -- and finds that it works exactly as advertised. And that is when the darkness swallows him, at least in a moral sense. For Light decides that, since he has this incredible power, he should use it to cleanse the world. Soon criminals all over the world are dying for no apparent reason, at a level that causes rumors to being of an "avenging angel" and arouses the interest of Interpol. Light, meanwhile, gradually becomes more and more convinced of his divine purpose, to the point that he is convinced that anyone who would try to stop him -- even his own family -- deserves death at the hands of his pen. In short, Light Yagami is one of the most compelling monsters the comics medium in any country has ever produced. Nevertheless, a monster is exactly what he is. He has one solution to every problem -- sudden death -- and he rains it down without regard to consequences. His definitions of "criminal" and "enemy" become increasingly flexible and all-inclusive with time. And he finds it relaxing to write thirty or forty names in his book at a go. Which brings me to the RPG point. The Death Note, or something like it, would be the ultimate weapon in an RPG. It is so very powerful that writing it up in statistical terms would be pointless. And the question becomes obvious -- if an adversary of the PCs has a power of this variety, how can he even be contained, let alone stopped?

Re: The Treasure of Emperor Qin As Stephen King demonstrated so aptly, that may not even be a good idea for household pets.

Re: Anime for HERO: A new Wiki Has anyone else contributed anything to the Wiki yet?

Re: Bubble gum crises to hero As with many anime series that have been around for a while, there is a question of what you choose to use. The 1986 Bubblegum Crisis OVAs are sheer classic: a combiantion of gee-whiz high-tech action and utter paranoia. GENOM was so important to the world's function, and so powerful, that bringing it down would have wrought untold social and economic devastation. Yet they were undeniably a threat to the continued survival of homo sapiens, so you couldn't let them go unchecked either. There was a later TV series, Bubblegum Crisis 2040, that told an alternative version of the story. A lot of it was told through the eyes of Linna, an Office Lady who reluctantly becomes the fourth Knight Saber (with Priss kicking and screaming every step of the way).

Having Turn A Gundam on its way inspired me to ask how to model this in HERO: Somewhere in the campaign setting is your exact double. You are not related, you were not raised together, you might not even be the same race or species. You don't have the same skills, and if you have Powers they may have different Powers or none at all. Yet if you two were dressed and made up in the same exact way, it would be utterly impossible for even your most intimate friends to tell you apart. You can pose as your double, and vice versa, with only rudimentary Disguise and a minimum of effort. This is not the same thing as having an Evil Twin. Once you meet, you could easily become friends. You might even choose to switch identities for a time, or even permanently if circumstances warrant. Also, what is the likely effect on the campaign of a PC or NPC having something like this in their lives?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "AHA! So THAT'S where I left the leeches!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Now, if I were to tell you, it wouldn't be a secret, would it?"