Michael Hopcroft

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Are you as famished as I am? It'd be a shame to waste all this. Why not just set up a spit and have at it?"

Re: Complicate the Person Above Cancer is pretty cool for a devastating disease.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "What happened here, Jokey?" "Terrorist Smurf stole all my powder! What the heck does he want with it?" "Uh-oh...."

Re: Where's Amelia Earhart? As far as game use, I think it would be quite nice to have Earhart, or a fictional analogue, in a campaign. Say as an aviator who had gotten a lot of publicity but was also doing "special work" for the government (perhaps with numerous other unique talents, and possibly whose work is so secret that she can only answer to Franklin D. roosevelt himself). Eventually a point is reached, as the world situation dteriorates in the late 1930's, where her special talents are needed to such an extent that her being in the public eye would be far too dangerous. So she and her sidekick/navigator annoucne and set off on a gaudy around-the-world flight and disappear -- only to re-emerge as a masked mystery woman and her companion flying a new, state-of-the-art, long-range fighter craft.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat His posts to NGD are actually being ghostwritten by Marvin the Paranoid Android. ("Brain the size of a planet and he sends me to post to NGD. Oh God I'm so depressed!")

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat The Post Office, the one on the Resiogtry of Historic Buildings, now has a Starbuck's and Wi-Fi Access.

Re: Numbers as a Campaign Hook A modern day Mycroft would hold a Ph.D. in Poolitical Science and work at an uber-influential think-tank. After all, in his day prime Minsters came and went, but it was Mycroft who determined the course of the British state.

Re: Complicate the Person Above L. Marcus has trouble finding something he likes at his own store, not to mention the constant annoyance of people faking his "legendary cookie recipie".

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat 'The complete works of Shakespeare? Surely there's a better use for an infinite number of monkeys than this. I could have them do the accounts...." "Shut up, Simmons." NT: Signs the priated video file you've just downloaded is not what it claimed to be.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Since nboody else is helping: "What I don't understand is how they could have gotten all those camera crews to Middle-Earth in the first place. Do you know, Fred?" NT: Signs your teenage son or daughter is moonlighting as a Great Detective.

Re: Sci-fi swear words? "Beligum! That's so Un-Hoopy!"

Re: The Fox and Vixen That restriction does not hamper copy-cats, though, which would be if anything more dangerous. Someone who imtiates the M.O. of Fox and Vixen to a good enough level is going to inevitably cause a lot of problems for Kitten!

With the talk of catburglars in other parts of the forum, a concept just occured to me that would be appropriate for this catgorty because of the period. I'm trying to figure out how to a camapign in Paris during the Occupation (1940-1944). The Nazis have conquered France, and the legal mechanisms of the state are in their hands. Most believe the war to be lost, and that France is going to become a peramnent German sattelite. The resources of the legendary Surete police agency are now being used to hunt the political opponents of the Reich in addition to the criminals that are their usual quarry. In this environment, Paris' greatest and most honorable criminal minds are seeing what is happening to their country, and they don't like it at all. They may be rogues and scoundrels, who even without the Nazis woiuld be headed on a one-way trip to Devil's Island, but dammit they're Frenchmen! the only honorable thing for them to do is set aside their greed and put their talents to use to save their country from the Nazis and those who collaborate with them. Their foes are cunning and deadly. They have all the resources of the state and no reluctance to kill anyone who challenges their authority. Not only the Surete but the dreaded Gestapo will be trying to track them down -- and Devil's Island is paradise comapred to Dachau. Do you think that will stop these dirty rotten bastards? Of course not!

Re: The Fox and Vixen Two other possible hooks: 1. The parents are still active, just being very discreet. Somehow, for some reason, they decide that they need to pull one final, spectacular heist before giving up the game forever. Is Kitten willing to help take down her parents? 2. Since Kitten has been working as a secret agent, nobody outside the CIA knows she's gone straight and many of her crimes are still listed as "unsolved". What if there are foreign police agencies still trying to track her down, or an obsessed police inspector or Interpol agent who is still on the trail? This would be the perfect setup for introducing a Clouseau or Zenigata type into the campaign -- or the Inspector could turn out to be frighteningly competent as well as determined. His emergence could well bring out Kitten's latent love of the chase, with all the complciations that implies.

I've recently seen a few episodes of the CBS drana Numbers and have been wondering what kind of use the series' concepts could be in a police-based Dark Champions campaign. The series involved an FBI agent who is frequently put on high-profile and rather puzzling cases, ranging from celebrity stalkings to brazen robberies linked to kidnappings. And the agent, although he isn't stupid, is frequently in over his head when it comes to the cleverness of the felons he is trying to track down. Luckily he can get the help of his brother -- a math professor at a local univeristy (I'm thinking UCLA, since the show seems to be set in los Angeles) who has already been doing consulting for the FBI on things like handwriting-recognition software. And this brother has an uncanny ability to apply mathematcial principles to anything and make them make more sense. Satisfying as many of the peisodes can be to watch (it's relatively well-written for a US cop show and the plots are usually full of intriguing twists and turns), I was wondering how one could work an arrangement like this into a game. Would the mathematician borther be a viable PC? He never goes out into the field -- he still has classes to teach, research to do, and a very interesting social life to lead (sociually, the action-man FBI agent is just as awkward as he is, perhaps more so because in a show like this you expect the he-man to be the babe magnet). But he's a really fun, likable character who looks like he would be fun to play. How would people handle a set-up like this?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "That can't possibly be set in Japan -- nobody's carrying a sword!".

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Guys, can I get you something to drink?" "Sure, Mr. brock. I'll have A-Positive." "O-Negative for me." "Got anything in a nice B?" NT: Signs your girlfriend is really a refugee from the future.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Of all the times for the coin-operated parrot to break down, why this weekend? I wanted to go to the beach!" NT: Signs your daughter is dabbling in Forces Beyond Mortal Comprehension.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Honey, when are you going to clean out the paperboy trap? It's starting to smell!"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Eviscerating prostitutes is a crime? Who knew?"

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat "Wicked-cool ability to sling bull**** like there's no tomorrow!" NT: Signs your teenager is turning into a Mad Scientist.

Re: Teen Champions Plot Seeds from Yu-Gi-Oh! You know, some episodes of Urusei Yatsura would make great Teen Champions plot seeds too. Tag! You're it!: An uber-powerful alien invasion fleet that the Earth cannot possibly defeat has offered to spare the Earth if our champion can defeat their champion in their "national sport" of Tag. Two problems: our champion is chosen by the aliens at random, and their champion has superpowers that make them alarmingly good at Tag. The PCs have to find a way to tilt the odds in the Earth's favor without being obvious enough that they get caught by the aliens. Ventura! Ventura! Space People!: A group of students who are real fanatics about alien life have concoted a hair-brained scheme to summon an alien ship to the campus. It almost doesn't seem worth the trouble to stop them -- until actual aliens show up, mistake the summoning for something else, and get rather upset.... The Queen Awakes: Due to an unforseen accident, one of the male PCs has accidnetally awakened the Queen of the Tengu from her thousand-year slumber. Now the Queen is convinced that this guy is her Chosen Groom, and will stop at nothing to secure his exclusive attentions. And if the guy already has a girlfriend, to say she is going to be jealous is a minor understatement.... The Is the Place, Master: The son and heir of one of the world's greatest megacorps has transferred to the PCs' school. He's extremely handsome, uber-competent and a natural warrior, and from now on the school is going to be his private preserve where he can girl-hunt and show off with impunity. The very existence of this guy is a threat to the masculinity fo eveyr guy in the school. How will your PCs respond?

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Her favorite perfume is Brimstone Passion. NT; Signs your significant other plans to sacrifice you to Satan.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Her idea of fashionable evening wear is a tiger-striped bikini, she has cute little horns on her head, and she tells you she finally got around to dumping Ataru.