Michael Hopcroft

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.

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? Partly. It does show why an obsession with game balance, on one side or the other, can have absurd consequences. However, there may indeed be system reasons to keep magic out of the hands of players -- as well as game reasons. In Tolkien, "mortals" had no magic at their command -- it was a power they simply couldn't handle. And, of course, in traditional Sword & Sorecey fiction magic is slow, subtle rather than flashy, and universally in the hands of villains. D&D style fantasy has both extremes. beginning mages have a hard time suyrbibing, but if they manage to they become so powerful that they dominate their environment,

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers? It sounds to me like the obvious solution is to simply not allow P{C wizards at all! If a wizard is never going to be able to compete on an even field with the non-wizxard, either being too powerful or too weak, then only NPCs, who don't have to worry abount point balance, should be given magic.l

Re: Does anyoen use spell-multipliers?

Does anyone use the multipliers mentioned in Fantasy HERO to give mages more spells in their campaigns? Or do they always make their mages pay full price so they aren't so muhc more powerful than the fighters and crafty types? I'm not advocating one or the other -- merely asking for information.

I was looking over my copy of MMM and saw the Ran-Tari. I don't know why, but there seems to be something somewhat lovable in six-foot sentient frogs who have sucvh a bizarre method of child-rearing. I'm wondering hopw to use them as a potneital PC race. The hardest part of the mindest to get into would be that they have no concept of family. A Ran-Tari probabyl doesn't know who his father or mother are, and it doesn't matter. They are of a community and probably aren't even names until that community accepts them. And their infancy is spend just trying to survive in an animaliostic state. Only when they have survived that stage and are brought into the community do they learn language or social training. I wonder if they have a frog-like life cycle and perhaps the first two years are spent as tadpole-like creatures. If this is the case, and mating is done in a similar way, then the very concepts or romance, marriage and pair-bonding might be utterly alien to the Ran-Tari.

Re: Chickens? And I look up in my copy of MMM and I see -- something that looks very similar to my idea of sentient chickens. Supposedly they are meant to resemble vultures, but they are easily convertible to chickens. Now if only the MMM HD template weren't so darn expensive.

Re: Friendly faces in the Post-Apocalypse This reminds me of the Plater Gunsmoke, setting of Trigun. Where a supernatually-gifted gunfighter and an all-around basass psycho maniac battle for the survivial of mankind, and a couple of mis-assigned office ladies follow the gunsliger around trying to figure out how such a dork can be so powerful....

Re: Glitter Boy for 34 points- is that sick? And get pallaidum's attention called to this board? Remember these guys are the ultimate in online paranoia. Wizards of the Coast was almost finished before they began thanks to palladium's lawyers. Tread carefully, please.

Re: Folding, Spindling and Mutliating Settings Ruth is at the corner Starbucks, eating fudge and drinking a white chocolate iced mocha.