Michael Hopcroft

Re: This weeks Un-Hero Challenge There was an ongoing "campaign" run at several GenCons before I started attending GenCon which involved the Gang with the Cthulhu Mythos. Apparently it was quite popular until the GMing troupe that did ti couldn't make it one year and it never returned. May people have been asking where the group gets their money. Some unsavory ideas have been suggested, but my theory is that they are supported by a combination of Daphne's trust fund and reward money. Later in their carrers, they might even be considered professional detectives, although they are not for hire in the usual sense (since they are on the road continually, how do you find them even if you did want to hire them?)] An anime crossover for the Scooby-do cast that might be interesting is with Lupin III. Lupin flirting with Daphne would be interesting, especially if Fujiko notices and decides to get even by flirting with Fred. Inspector Zenigate would find the "meddling kids" extermly annoying, especially if they insist the source of the problem isn't Lupin (and naturally, they will turn out to be right). Although "drive all the touists away with a monster scare" is the sort of trick Lupin might actually try -- until he realizies that there are some teenage detectives on his case who are wise to that kind of chichanery....

Re: And now something silly: Trouble Chocolate Pop in "Beautiful Dreamer". That'll get the bad taste out of your month. It's kind of hard to imagine anything lyrical coming from Trouble Chocolate, unlike some of the best episodes of Urusei Yatsura. The second season episode "Thrilling Summer Date" still gives me goosebumps when I remember it -- especially the ending with Ataru gets his little black book back and finds that he doesn't have it inhis heart to call any of the girls. At that moment, it was crystal clear to me what Ataru's feelings for Lum really were -- even if he was too proud to admit it to himself.

Re: And now something silly: Trouble Chocolate it would take much more than crack to explain Excel Saga. An extreme case of mental illness, perhaps. Excel Saga is sick in ways that no anime could concievably have imagined previousy. Don't watch the final episode in front of your children, your parents or your Significant Other (unless said S.O. has fetishes best left undescribed). I'm not sure you should even watch it in front of yourself. And I can't imagine how you could possibly explain it to the priest at Confession.... I swear, though, that the most blatantly sick-and-twisted anime I've ever seen is Puni Puni Poemy. I think that script must have been smuggled out of the Asylum for the Criminally Insane on soiled napkins, when the guards were distracted with bootlegs of La Blue Girl.

Re: And now something silly: Trouble Chocolate Perhaps. The principal problem with Trouble Chocolate is that, while it is funny, you can't help but compare it to the older but clearly superior Urusei Yatsura. Rumiko Takahashi's magnum opus has clrearly had an effect on many manga writers in the nearly three decades since its debut. In this case, entire characters are lifted out of it whole cloth (the rich kid is a virutal carbon copy of the more interesting Shutaro Mendou who plagues Ataru's existence). What is more telling is that Hinano-chan bears a much-more-than-casual resemblance, in all the points that matter, to Lum. Her distinctive speech pattern, the way she clings to Cacao in spite of all reason, and her flashes of awesome destructive power are all remeniscent of Lum. It's hard to tell beyond that what makes her an interesting character. The biggest problem is finding someone to care about. Trouble Chocolate is amusing, but it would have been much better if we had more reason to care what happens to Cacao and Hinano. Urusei Yatsura's anti-hero Ataru Moroboshi, for all his faults, had enough basic decency hidden deep in his heart 9where he could always plausibly deny his existence) that you couldn't help but give a damn what happened to him. The moments of genuine tenderness between him and Lum helped make the entire exercise in chaos worthwhile. In the episodes I've seen, sad to say, Cacao has yet to display any of these qualtiies. Instead of an everyman, he seems like a jerk, unworthy even of a woman with no working parts.

I frequently hear the classic comedy RPG Teenagers from Outer Space referred to as "The Unofficial Uresei Yatsura RPG". if this is true, then the realtively new anime Trouble Chocolate is somebody's TFOS camapign gone horribly, horribly wrong. Cacao (who, despite the name, is male) is a student at a school with 100,000 students and staff, 666 subjects and over a thousand clubs. But that's not one of the important things about him. the improtant things abotu him are that he has a bottomless pit for a stomach, he has untapped natural magical power, and chocolate gets him drunk. This all fits together when a summoning teacher (yes, summoning magic is one of the subjects taught at the school) gives Cacao a demonstratiion (he wants him as a pupil) by summoning a 'wood fairy". Cacao, starving as he always is, grabs a chocolate bar from the teacher's desk, gets wasted on it, and sneezes -- disrputing the ceremony. The spirit posesses a life-sized wooden marionette that happens to be in the room, catches up with Cacao, and instantly falls in love with him. cacao wakes up the next morning with a hangover, a headache, and a wooden girl with bizarre speech habits sleeping in his bed. Cacao is not amused, although he feels alittle better upon discovering that the girl, who calls herself Hinano, is a great cook. I could tell you about the handome rich guy with the private army, navy and air force who is desired by almost every girl on campus except the one he really wants -- Hinano. I could tell you about the extragantly romantic couple who continually place themsevles in cacao's path. I could tell you about the monsters, the sentai team, the kung fu girls, the neormous teacher who looks like Frankenstien's monster and HATES to be distrubed.... I could tell you about all of that. But you'll never believe mel. Heck, I don't believe me.

Re: Matsumoto HERO Not having seen Star Blazers, probably not. But there's a lot of stuff in yamato that would have made no sense to American audiences of the time. For one thing, they built their starship around the actual hull of the WWII dreadnoguth that was sunk by the Americans near the end of the war. There is a long scene describing thge sinking of the Yamato, including shots of American pilots saluting the courage of the sinking ship. There is also a long scene describing the bonbardment of Earth with "meteor bombs" and the deaths of Susumu Kodai's parents. Also, Kodai is somewhat of a berserker at times -- he even attempts to kill a gamilon prisoner at one point out of sheer hatred for the people that had ruined his life and wiped out his entire family. Another element that would have to have been altered was Dr. Sado; in the orgiinal he has severe alcoholism and is almost never seen without a huge bottle of sake nearby. Yet, oddly enough, he seems to be an effecitve physician in spite of it. I also don't know how Star Blazers handled the "radioation injury" that is slowly killing Captain Okita. Okita himself is portrayed as a fairly ruthless figure, willing to make sacrifices of lives in order to fulfill his mission and insiting on a sort of discipline that sometimes defies common sense. (In one episode, Kodai instinctively fires an anti-air missile battery to detsroy oncoming missiles that would have blown up the Yamato. Captain Okita strikes him for not waiting for an order that Okita could not have given -- because he was incpaacitated at that momewnt.) I also don't know if Star Blazers included the peisode where the members of the Yamato crew got one last chance to send messages home before contact with Earth became impossible. Strong men wept from this experience.

Right now I'm watching a couple of old classic Matsumoto series in fansub -- Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999. Yamato was released in an edited foorm in America as Star Blazers. It details the lonely quest of Man's first FTL starship, sent on a desperate mission to the planet Iscandar to obtain an antidote to the radioactive poisons that will exterminate Mankind in a year. Galaxy Express 999 features interstellar travel by means of the "Galactic Railroad", but that's only the setup. the real story concerns the fact that Earth's upper classes have replaced their bodies with mechanical ones, and the only hope of the poor is to find a way to get to Andromeda where they can get a mechanical body for free. A young boy named Testuro, who has just seen his mother murdered in cold blood by cyborg "hunters", is given an opporutnity to go to Andrtomeda on the Galaxy Express 999 by a cool and mysterious woman named Matael. but Tetsure faces many perils along the way, along with many encounters with people who have had their bodies replaced and had cause to regret the decision.... It's a transhumanist story twenty years before 'transhumanism" was a term.

Re: Shoujo HEROine I generally avoid outright Americanizations such as Mew Mew Power and Cardcaptors. My sanity prefers it that way. Actually, Winx Club is Italian and, from what I understand, the American version is as heavily edited as many anime series are. It's an interesting idea, but I haven't seen enough of the series to know what they do with it.

Re: PPG Doujinshi Writeups?

Re: Shoujo HEROine But by the time the series had run its course Usagi (Sailor Moon) had Mamoru (Tuxedo Kamen) far more often than the other way around. Tuxedo kamen is a solid fighter with a cool schtick (in his hands, an ordinary rose becomes a deadly weapon). In my shoujo RPG HeartQuest, one of the sample settings has a similar dynamic, with the heroine Ghost Tamer Miyaki constantly being aided in the nick of time by a mysterious swordsman called the Black Rose. He got the name because he always wore a black rose in his lapel, which he always gave Miyaki after the battle before disappearing. I have entertained many ideas on who the Black Rose really was. The idea I liked best, since the campaign involes the Troubled Dead, ghosts who cannot rest and who can posess and alter humans, was that the Black Rose was himself a ghost, who took over various human bodies whenever he was needed. Since Miyaki's father had died before she was born, he was a popular candidate. This of course ruled out a romance between the two characters... One of the classic shoujo heroine bits is that the "protector" character is not neccesarily on the same side as the heroine! Tuxedo kamen is a classic example -- he may help Sailor Moon, but he has his own reasons and his own agenda. Other examples include the Kaitou jeanne/Kaitou Sindbad dynamic in Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and the "eternal chase" subplot in Saint Tail, where the heroine is pursued by a boy who wants to 'bring her to justice". which reminds me that the "Kaitou" template for a magical girl-type character could be quite interesting.

Re: Character: Mack Bolan, the Executioner Great job of taking a "pulp" character and making him complelling. I don't think I'd want to read those late books everyone is talking about, but now I'm curious about this character and the early adventures. You got Rep, dude.

Re: The Villain Maketh The Game? No doubt a truly comeplling villain is the glue that will hold a campaign together. One can go for a while going after relatively faceless enemeis such as the Yakuza, but sooner or later you will need someone with style and panache to bring the PCs together in a real way. So while a war against the yakua may work for a while, it will eventually get boring unless you intorduce the deadly and cunning leader who has taken a personal interest in sending the PCs to Hell before he kills them. Or she. the daughter of the Yakuza kingpin who pulls the stinng not only of her Father's clan but of every political and criminal group in the city, who is beuatiful, cunning and ruthless, is no slouch in a fight and who has ways of making her enemies suffer that they cannot even imagine -- this is the sort of villain the players will remmeber for a long, long, LONG time.

Re: Lupin III for HERO Zenigata is easy to underestimate because of all the times Lupin has slipped through his fingers. However, Lupin can do it because he's, well, Lupin. Many criminals have ended up tied up in the carefully designed net Zenigata had weaved to catch Lupin. (which is the irony of the character -- a lot of people who are much more evil than he is have met their downfall because of his involvement, when all he wanted was a prize.) Lupin's greatest characteristic is his sheer audacity. There was a toime when a mad scientist was holding Italy hostage, and Lupin ended up foiling him. However his goal (which he did not acciomplish) was to take the two-billion-lira ransom for himself. Only Lupin would think of doing something like that given the stakes involved.

I keep going back to some of the examples of fantasy I've been watching lately and wondering how to do a fantasy game in which the characters start at a very high level -- possibly even Superheroic. But I'm wondering whether the heroic standards of fantasy break down at that kind of point level. A 350-point sorcerer, for example, would have access to a wide variety of powerful spells. The thing, of course, is that they will be facing superheroic-level challenges as well. A 350-point warrior might mow down orcs by teh hundreds, but fi he has to take on a mid-level Demon Prince he's certain to be tested. I imagine that once a D&D campaign gets to about 12th level or so, the characters get into the Ultra-Heroic range by fantasy standards; everything they do is the stuff of legends. without carrying the D&D paralell too far, if you want to do a camapignt that is truly epic in scope, even within a published setting that is intially built around less powerful characters, is this a good way to go about it? What other things does a GM have to consider when running a Fantasy campaign for very powerful heroes?

Re: Time Travel Modeling

Re: Marna the Manslayer - Valdorian Age Warrior Woman I'm glad you didn't take the clcihe way out and make her powers dependent in some way on her avoiding men. if i were to use her in a campaign, I would play her as someone who is renowned for her beauty as well as her deadliness, someone who would take a lover for a short time before moving on to other adventures. She might well have left a string of broken hearts in her wake as she has adventured. Of course, she will never use her body to get an advantage. Her favors would be given to men who have, in her eyes, earned them by being brave, honorable and skilled.

Re: Valdorian Age Sorcery - eternal youth doable?

I'm trying tio figure out the best way to write up this device: It is a wristwatch-sized controller that gives you access to a time control machine that is remote in time and space. It enables you and any other person within a radius of one hex (in other words, in any of the hexes around you with your hex in the center) to travel in time and, to a limtied extent, space. As long as it is activated you can go back and forth as needed. If the people travelign with you step outside the radius, they are out of your range and, if you leave before they get back in range, are stranded. In addition, you can activate a "cloaking" feature that makes you undetectable by anyone in the other times you visit. This enables you to observe just about any activity you wish. However, while you are "cloaked" you cannot interfere with anything you see -- any attempt to do so makes you visible. The watch does not use your own END, but you only have a limited amount of time to get back to your starting point in real terms. Usually the limit is one hour. What does this look like in rules terms? (In case you're wondering where I got this, Otto has a device like this in The Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi. I'd tell you what he does with it, but that would be an enormous spoiler.)

I'm thinking of posting some writeups for some of the characters from The Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi by Bleedman. I wanted to post a prelimnary message to let you know that many of the writeups will feature spoilers. So, when in doubt, read the webcomic first.

Re: Shoujo HEROine This is a really good seed. I would very much like to see what sprouts from it as this girl explores more of her world and the people around her. I've got to see the guys, of course. And naturally she has friiends, who have problems of their own -- story fodder! You can do a lot with this basic setup, depending on where you want to go with it.

Re: It's not a Robot... It's a Golem... Honest.

I'd like to do a writeup for Gold Dragons, as they appear in Slayers (particularly NEXT and TRY). Gold Dragons are the noblest dragons, directly linked to the Gods on whose side they fought in the War of the Monster's Fall a thousand years ago. Asdie from being powerful and intensely magical, they can also shift into human form quite naturally and shift back in an instant. Gold Dragon culture is very complciated depending on where you are. In the Inner World, Gold Dragons predominantly dwell in the vicinity of Dragon peak and the Valley fo the Dragons, where they guard the purest copy of the legendary magical tome, the Claire Bible. The leader and high priest of these dragons is Milgasia, who when he assumes human form takes the shape of a large, handsome blonde man. They bear a keen hatred for the Mazoku (Monster Race), particularly Xellos, who had personally slaughtered thousands of their number in the War of the Monster's Fall. In the Outer World the Gold Dragons, who were uteerly unaware of their Inner World counterparts, had a darker past. They had fought a war with another race of Dragons,.the Anicent Dragons, over a powerful weapon the Ancient Dragons were guarding. The latter race was untterly exterminated save for one child, Val, who made a pact with the Mazoku and became the half-demon Valgaav. Valgaav's revenge was terrible indeed, and a thousand years later a massive battlke over the weapon led to the virtual exterimiantion of the Outer World's Gold Dragons. Only Filia, a young priestess who had been chosen to be the intermediary between Dragon and Man, survived. Gold Dragons are as much anti-demons as beings. Unless killed by violence they are practically immortal. Their breath weapon resembles a laser and can destory a ship a mile away. They can fly phenomenal distances and can also teleport with virtually the same range.

Re: It's not a Robot... It's a Golem... Honest. Reminds me of the Orihalcion Golem from Slayers NEXT, an enormous man-shaped weapon that was impervious to normal magic. The thingwas over a thousand years old when it was revived, required a human pilot and could blow the top off a mountain ten miles away. Lina Inverse wiped out an entire city in the prcoess of detsroying it. I also forget what they were called, but one of the groups of warriors in Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind was trying to revive an anicent weapon with a very similar concept. (Nausicaa defies genre classification -- it has elemnts of traditioal fantasy, science fiction, and post-holocaust stories in its setup.)

Re: The Adventures of Mikael Not only do i want to know what this world is Like, I want to know what happens to Mikael. I like what I've seen of his character so far.

Re: Requirements for Fantasy Hero Although the $50 book is chock-full-to-the-brim with Heroy goodness and very much worth the price, you should be able to run a good game in any genre with just the rules in Sidekick. The main rule you may want to cisnsider that is not in Sidekick is Megascale, for spells that can bring down castles. Spells work basically like Powers with certain limitations applied to make them look and feel like magic. The full book details many of these limitations -- I don't have a copy of Sidekick handy, but you should be able to replicate many of these with those rules. If you already have a clear idea of what you're doing, that's really all you need. You can certainly expand your game, and make it better, with the rules from Fiver and from Fantasy HERO, of course, but if funds are tight Sidekick will do the job.