Michael Hopcroft

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! Aewricans. It's take hundreds of years to develop time travel. By the time that happens, will anyone still care about John Kennedy? Or any American President of the 20th century? The universe does not revolve around the United States, you know. What makes us think time travel won't be developed by the descendants of, say, the Iranian fundamentalists? The Chinese technocrats? Kenya? By the time time travel is developed, the USA may well be gone, forgotten and unmissed.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat The Magic 9-Ball -- OF DOOM! NT: Signs your buddy is plotting against you because you got to go to GenCon and he didn't.

Re: Anybody want an android? That says a lot more about you than about the technology. Whether Sexaroids would actually work or be desirable would depend entirely on what the user is trying to get out of the sex act. Remember, people have sex for innumerable reasons many of which have nothing to do with physical gratification, and a lot of those reasons would not be satisfied at all by a Sexaroid. Now it becomes a different story if the lines between person and machine become completely blurred or even obliterated, as many writers and artists have postulated. A full-conversion cyborg, for example, is unquestionaly a person and would be capable of a person's full emotional range regardless of its physical appearance. Indeed, authors like Masamune Shirow (in the Ghost in the Shell series) postulate worlds in which almost everyone is cybernetic to one degree or another, obliterating the lines of gender and orientation and calling into question the very concept of personal identity.

Re: Captain Jack The accent is probably part of his cover story in 1941 -- he was posing as an American volunteer pilot for the RAF. Since apparently he went to the Blitz often it was a cover he needed to keep up. Since Captain Jack's home time is at least three thousand years in the future it is highly doubtful that by the time he was born the United States of America would still exist in any form we would recognize -- or, for that matter, that anyone would still be speaking a remotely comprehensible version of English, accented or otherwise. Barring utter catastrophe there would still be scholars who can read English, but no spoken language can survive that long in everyday use. (For example, even if someone today had full classical training, he would speak latin with such an atrocious and incomprehensible accent that a Roman wouldn't understand more than one or two words out of thirty.) Remember, a lot of what the audience perceives on Doctor Who is the result of the viewpoint characters being affected by things like the TARDIS's translator field. The Docotr has been aboard the TARIDIS so long that this field, which he referred to once as "a Time Lord gift", is still with him even when he is separated from the TARDIS for long periods. He comprehends the speech of innumerbale aliens -- since we see the Universe through his eyes and hear it through his ears, therefore so do we. Captain Jack almost certainly has easy access to something similar, possibly implanted into his body -- and he also has the same sort of "slightly psychic paper" that the Doctor uses.

Although I haven't quite figured out how to, I'm thinking very seriously of doing a write-up of Captain Jack, the slightly unethical, occasionally outrageous, and generally very bizarre for the series ex-Time Agent from the recently-completed season of Doctor Who. Captain Jack encounters the Doctor while he is in the process of running a scam during the Blitz. He's dragged an alien spacecraft from the future to London in 1941, to a spot where it is sure to be blown up by the Germans unless someone picks it up, and mistakes Rose for the Time Agent who is going to buy it from him. He also thinks Rose is extremely sexually attractive. And so, for that matter, si the Doctor! As it turns out, Jack's scam has an unintended consequence that almost leads to utter catastrophe. But evicently he is forgiven sufficiently that he is admitted to the TARDIS, facing the Slitheen in 2005 and a really nasty enemy in the far future. It turns out that one of the reasons he is so eager to rip off his former comrades is that there is a two-year chunk missing from his life and he suspects the Time Corps (or whatever his former agency is called -- it's never named) was responsible. This suggests that Humanity does eventually discover reliable time travel in the Doctor Who universe once the principal force hindering them has been removed. One other ntoe about Captain jack is that he is utterly incredulous when told about the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver. He literally cannot believe that anyone with any sense would invent such a device!

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! If they're dressed in period, speak English well, and don't do anything outrageous, a tourist from the future would look just like a tourist from Chicago. How do you know that guy standing next to you taking a picture of the Space Needle didn't really come from the year 5714 -- or the year 700 B.C.E., for that matter?

Re: HEROs of Heaven Heaven and Earth, which si goign through its third edition (and system), postulates its own take on the "Heaven and Hell go to war for the Earth" theme. Its basic take is that it is a lot more complicated than simple good against evil -0- Man is at the center of soemthing beyond its control, a war in which neither side really has its best inetrests at heart. It's the sort of game you would play if you're the sort of person who reads the story of Elijah and Ahab in 1 Kings, ponder which side you would be on if it were happening now, and realize you'd have a hard time deciding.... Which I suspect is what you would be looking for in a game like that. You would be looking for choices, where in the name of a higher good you may find youself forced to do terrible things, where what you even think of as good and evil is called into question under the crucible of a shades-of-grey reality.

Although the series itself does not have combat (and indeed combat would be incredibly out-of-place in it, in the way that a truly heterosexual female character would be out-of-place in Project A-ko), I was wondering about the Wind Manipulation powers that are the centerpiece of a wonderfullyh lyrical anime series called Windy Tales. There seems to be aburgeoning "magic reality" genre in anime, in which ordinary people and places have fantastic qualities, and Windy Tales is one of the very best of these series. At the local club it is the biggest hit among the membership since Azumanga Daioh, the rapturous recpetion only heightened by the glacial pace at which the fansubbers release episodes. Windy Tales is the sotry of Noa, a girl in junior high school who one day, while standing on the school roof, sees a cat flying by. She is so excited that she falls off the roof -- and comes to a soft landing. On one hand, everyone is worried about her because the accident has been mistaken for a suicide attempt. But on the other hand, her survival gains her entry into another world. One of her teachers is a Wind Manipulator, a man who can make the wind do his bidding, and he has been teaching his skills to the local feline population. Trying to explain why this series is so appealing is like trying to put words to the feelings engendered by a Beethoven quartet, or describing comprehensibly what goes through one's mind when viewing a Van Gogh painting. But along the way we meet a flying squirrel who doesn't know how to fly, a storytelling teacher with his own unique and melancholy gift, elementary school boys whose own wind powers are linked to their innocence, and a rural village that secretly controls Japan's weather.

Re: Zatch Bell Reminds me of a series called Ninku about this boy who looks like a badly-designed ventrilousit's dummy but is really an ultra-powerful martial artist leading a rebellions against a Napoleonic-stylized empire. he wanders around the world with a penguin in tow (seems to be an ordinary, if expectionally temperature-tolerant, penguin). Evidently a lot of people in Japan really liked it. But then again I have yet to find an adequate explanation for how Naruto begame a mega-hit either.

Re: Anime Champions? See Super GALS! Kotobuki Ran (released in America simply as GALS!) for an anime example of a somewhat more ethical kogal heroine (not to mention some surprisingly honest dealings with some serious issues like pay-dates). Kogals are a distinctive subculture of relatively recent vintage, so I'd be hard pressed to call early-'90s heroies liek Usagi and Mirai kogals.

Re: Anime Champions? This is a common character type in anime. Her name is Mirai, and she bears certain resenmblance to such seemingly-less-than-competent heroines as Usagi Tsukino and Miaka Yuuki (Fushigi Yuugi). As for the Moldiver "suit", it came about because Miaka's mad scientist brother really wanted to be a Western-style superhero. In this case, though, his wish-fulfillment fantasy got way out of hand. My understanding t=is that the OVA series that was released here was based on a much longer TV series that has never been screened in the US. Moldiver also has one other thing that is common to heroic anime -- a tragic romance between Mirai and a candidate astronaut who, if he achieves his goals, will not be returning to Earth for some twenty years.

Re: Anime Champions? But if you want to play super-heroic, it doesn't get much weirder than Graviton. Someone built an entire alternate DC Universe around A-Ko as the new Supergirl. And if A-ko ever learns to fly she'll have all the requirements. As it is A-Ko has the three classic Superman powers: "Faster than a speeding bullet" (runs to school every day at Warp 10 with C-ko flying behind held by the wrist), "more powerful than a locomotive" (I feel sorry for any skyscraper she punches) and "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" (she certainly has extremely prodigious jumping ability and precision). The only thing stopping her from being the new Supergirl is that she refuses to call herself Supergirl. And her rival B-ko is much closer to a Lex Luthor figure than she realizes (she has the wealth, the skills, the unholy obsessions, and the power armor, with the addition of a percieved romantic rivalry).

Re: Anime Champions? Actually Ah! My Goddess doesn't quite count because only one of the goddesses (Belldandy) has any romatnic interest in Keiichi. The other two (her sisters Urd and Skuld) are basically there as busybodies -- urd is trying to bring them together more, er, "intimately" while Skuld is trying to tear them apart 9at elast intially). It's more like being in the situation where living with the girl means you have to put up with her relatives, who in their efforts to "help" end up getting in the way a horrendous amount of the time. If you msut base an RPGT on a Kajishima work, consider You're Under Arrest!, a buddy-cop comedy where the buddies are female. Fabulous characters there, and not just the central "partnership" of demure, clever Miyuki and brash, strong Natsumi. One could have a lot of fun with the gossip-hound dispatcher Yoriko, with macho but shy motorcycle cop Ken and with Aoi-chan (who would be very difficult to describe....) And of course, the ultimate Anime Champions setting would be Graviton City, home of A-ko.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "I'm the computer's bioggest fan! I lvoe the computer! The computer is my friend! I'l,l go anywhere for the computer!" "OK, citizen, ease up on the happy-happy pills...." As to what I'm listening to right now: "Don't Think Twice, it's Alright" as performed by Eric Clapton at the Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert.

Re: NGD Scenes from a Hat Since there has been no new topic in quite a while: Signs the Master of your Ninja HERO character's martial arts dojo is out of his mind.

Re: Anybody want an android?

I have been reading through MM&M, the Fantasy HERo creatures book, a lot recently, and it occured to me that with only a very little tweaking many of the creatures would work as Star HERo aliens. This was porbably deliberate on the part of the folks at Hero. I wonder how many of the creatures struck the general readership of the boards as alien material, in addition to their value as fantasy creatures. Rootlings in particular seem so utterly alien that they would be right at home on forest moons, Drakine space cruisers could be adversaries for the Human Space Navy, etc.

Re: Orc fall down, go BOOM! A variation on this idea is one of Lina Inverse's signature spells, the Imploding Troll. It only works on beings who automatically regenerate their damage, such as trolls. Basically it accelerates the rpocess to the extent that the unfortunate victim consumes himself utterly when struck by the slightest little wound. From the description, though, it sounds like it would have the opposite effect of what Lina describes. Instead of the troll collapsing into a rather smelly black hole, shouldn't he grow a massive cancerous tumor before collapsing dead form his overworked body?

Re: Friendly faces in the Post-Apocalypse One face you might actually want to see in the post-apocalypse setting is the "traveling doctor". the archetype of this character would be the protagonist of the c lassic leslie Fish song "Blue Bread Mold". the "traveling doc" goes from town to town and uses her knwoeldge, imrpvoisation and a little luck to tend the ills of those she visits. Her knwoel;dge includes the ability to make effective primtiive versions of modern drugs such as penicillin, asprin and the like, how to m ake effective painkillers out of what is at hand, and primitive srugery. The basic idea of having characters like this in your post-apocalypse campaign is that the world may have gone to Hell ten times overe, but there is still at least a little bit of goodness left in humanity. That little bit, that tiny spark, may be the only thing saving those who have survivied the unthinkable from total, unbearable despair.

How would I build a spell that, when cast on a humanmoid foe 9such as an Orc), turns him itno a living bomb? It doesn't have an immediate effect, but if the target is forcefully stuck he explodes, doing as much damage to those around him as if he were made of gunpowder! The orc, of course, would be destoryed by the blast. If they're lucky they might find a few scaps of his clothing.

Re: Teen Champion Cover! Not correct. The actual quite is "the lady doth p[otest too miuch, methinks" and is from Queen gertrude in Hamlet. This was during the play that was Hamlet's trap to determine what really happened to his father. Half the fun of quoting Shakespeare is knowing which play you're quoting.

Re: Usagi Yojimbo HERO Anyone seen Sanguine's new Usagi Yojimbo RPG yet? Converting stuff from the "Claw" system to HERo is tricky (modeling the stats would be much better) but I have been looking forward to this book. Ironclaw and Jadeclaw are two of the most under-played games I've seen.

Re: Teen Champion Cover! I like the cover, acutally. It speaks of fun and mischeviousness, something that seems to be lost in the superheor comics being done now.

Re: Clubs, Lethal Weapons? (Killing Damage Not Normal) The distinction between Nornal and Killing attacks is artifical to begin with. You can kill someone with your fist, sometimes without even trying to. Anything that can do any sort of damage to a human body can, with the proper application of force, do enough damage to kill. even some things we normally don't think of as attacks can be fatal -- shaking soemone, for example, may be a simply act of anger or frustration, but it can result in lethal brain damage. In game system terms, Normal Damage exists so that strong people aren't splatering their foes all over the pavement with their pounches. In the real world, if someone with a STR 40 were to punch me in the stomach full force, I'd die instantly and messily. Normal Dam,age is a mechanic that enables the superheoric scale to exist without becoming a bloodbath. This also reminds me of another major difference between fiction and reality -- how many fictional characters suffer cumulative effects from all the concussions they must recieve?

Re: Magic: The Gathering to Fantasy Hero I have wondered what the perspective of those "ideas made real" might be, though. If they are actual creatures who came from another world to do battle on the plane of the duel, however, they definitely have their own viewpointsa. They don't stick around long enough to express them -- unless something goes terribly wring and they find themsevles stuck on a world that is just as alien to them as it would be to one of us.