Michael Hopcroft

Has anyone done a 5e updated writeup for the heroine of Urusei Yatsura, Lum the Invader? aka "The poster Child for What happens when you Fall in Love with the Wrong Man"? I personally found Lum adorable. Of course, I can see why alvoer who uncotnrollably emitted electric shocks when angry, enthusastic or otherwise emtional would intimdiate Ataru. But still, I sometimes think Moroboshi is blind as a bat to other people's emotions.

Re: Video Games

One of my favorite anime series from a couple of years ago was .hack//SIGN, which postualted that the hero was a child who had been trapped in a MMORPG gone horribly wrong. Not only could he not "log out", but his real body was in a coma in a hospital bed in japan, and his father was trying to get the plug pulled! I don;t know if it would be too mcuh metagame to have some other type of campaign turn out to be a MMORPS in whichone or more characters is a real person trapped inside. Although it would ex\plain such RPG conventions as "the world will never run out of rocs!" (the system generates some more), it would present quite a roleplaying challenge, especially if players in character start challenging and manipulating the reality of the setting. How would any of you handle this?

Re: Favorite Television Characters Veyr interesting quote. Is it DBZ canon or from a fanfic?

Imagine if you will that something lives in the abscence of lightt darkness itself is alive. Now imagine that you could manipulate lviing darkenss not only to create darkness fields but also to do other effects. And imagine the darkenss was sentient.... One could easily imagine a darkenss-manipulator who controlled existing darkness would be utterly formidable at ngith (so much more darkness to manipulate!), somewhat elss so during the day, and could lose access to a lot of his powers if put under a spotlight or other extreme forms of illumination.

Re: Yet another fantasy idea Interesting idea (or rather set of ideas, as this seems to be breakable apart into several modular themes that can be used separateky in duifferent campaigns.) It might also be intersting if the Natvie American nations had proven more reistant to smallpox and thus more resitant to the European invasion: instead of a quick campaign, the conquests of the Aztecs and Incas might have turned into a Vietnam-like quagmire for Spain, and Native Americans from more easily conquered lands might well travel to the Old World as trophies, slaves or diplomats. (perhaps Monteczuma had sent a peace emissary to Spain in an effort to end the war, although how the xenophobic Spanish counrt would recieve an obvious "pagan" is anyone's guess). Perhaps Azetc piriests have made their way across Europe and are trying to use their own blood-and-sacrifice-powreed reituals there.

Re: Here Be Dragons! Great wrietup! Can i get a .hdc file for the baby dragon? I'm thinking of giving it to a party of fantasy adventurers as a mascot, having been orphaned by a less ethical adventuring party.

Re: hanging PCs together Historically, many colonies (Australia, Guyana) were originally settled by prisoners. player-characters could all have been sentenced to trasnpoprt to the "New World" and meet while on the same ship. then, when they get to the prison, something happens and they find thesmlves free -- but alone and on the run in a totally unfamilair environment with no way home. Or the authorities could just drop off the prisoners in port, give them a few coins and say "You're on your own from here on in."

Re: Bardic Magic You can probably replace Incantations with the generic limitation "Must sing to use power", which would be worth about -1/4 less than Incantations but still be limtiing (because when you're in a situation where you can;t use your voice and hands you can't use the powers).

Re: Hero Designer in a Star Hero Campaign? I am a very happy Hero Designer user. The software is very handy for several reasons that have not been mentioned. It keeps all the character, vehicle, race, etc. stats in one convenient place on your hard drive, which can be wherever on your hard drvie you want it to be. It provides a convenient way for users to share data -- chsaracter files are surprsiingly compact, and you can give them to any other HD user to print and get comments on -- making it useful for collaborative settings. As your PCs and NPCs grow, you can alter their character sheets "on the fly" and print out new ones as needed.

Re: Love/Lust Potions

Re: Encounter: The "friendly" ogres

Re: On Upcoming Releases: Dark Champions and the law? Clearly the government would prefer that law enforcement be left to the police! Vigilantes both in fiction and in real lfie have very bad relatiosnhips with the government, to the point that msot are wanted crin\minals themselves. With good reason -- histrocial vigialte groups have a long hisotry of getting the wrong man, administering their rough justice to people who didn;t deserve it (often along ethnic, racial, or religious lines) and generally being as bad if not worse than the criminals they fight. Harbinger certainly qulaifies under this description; when the first edition of Dark Champions came out and it was noted just how many people he had killed over the years it becomes obvious that someone like him would be an even bigger public enemy than the criminals he fights, especially if he starts to have trouble distinguishing friend from foe and innocents start to suffer. And killing a criminal is just as much murder as killing an innocent civilian -- that;s why gangland kilers are prosecuted so severly even if they only kill other gangsters. Another thing to remember when thinking an\bout vigilates and the law (and why you don;t want to see a lot of such activity iny oru city) is that everyone has someone who would miss them if they were gone, and the law recongizes this. The Crips or Bloods gang member gunned down in the projects by rival gangstas left behind a family that, even if he was nasty and cruel, will miss him terribly, whether its his parents or he had children of his own. That's why it doesn't matter really who you killed or why -- murder is still murder, even if your intentions were "noble". You may think the world is better off now that the criminal you killed is dead, but HIS family and friends certainly won't see it that way!

Re: Urban gang warfare This is acutally a very common plotline in just about any action story involving organized crime. The hero can stand up to any gangsters thrown at him, but if the bosses find out who he really is then watch out! Anyone close to him, from family to co-workers, is likely to be targeted, and only the hero will know why. Also organized crime of any sort is a very difficult nut to crack simply because it's organzied in such a way that a.) nobody is indispenable and b.) everybody is replacable. It's a lot easier to stop the Joker than it is to make a dent in Roderick thorne's criminal empire -- Thorne is the one villain in the Animated Series that Batman could never take down. In fact, he never even came close!

Re: Jade from Beyond Good & Evil Good idea. Then the other files that come up could be renamed Jade-DCU, Jade-JCA, etc. The same princple could be applied to other names that are used extremely frequently in fiction, such as the multiple anime, manga and fictional versions of Yagyu Jubei (a legendary swordsman who shows up several different places, most notably in Ninja Scroll and Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl).

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens? This seems like a very gamable concept. If you see a friend start to turn into a "chronal ghost", you will natrurally want to take some sort of action to save them! And if the "ghost' can still interact with the world before fading away completely, will he realize something si up and possibly be able to rpovide hints as to how he might possibly be saved? Another gameable concept related to time paradoixes is what i call "rememberers": a sub-set of the population in a paradoxical situation who still exist in the world after hisotry has changed without having been changed themselves! They remember the way the world was before hisotry was changed, and thus those around them might think them insane ("Hitler LOST? Are you NUTS?") Rememberers have great incentive to return the timeline to normal, and may be the only people who have a real clue that time travel exists besides the time travelers themselves 9because SOME effect must have caused hisotry to be different for them than it was for everybody else).

There are many campaign types where there wil be many social situations that, while not played out as a conbat, would have as serious repurcussions as any combat. go to any royal court, govenrment agency, or business and you will find numerous situations in which social interactions can have ahrmful or even deadly consequences if mis=handled. If the conseuqnces of an action taken by another character can lead to social limitations for YOU that you don;t get points for, such as "unemplyed", "perosna non grata", or having secrets you were keeping exposed, what is the most effective way to play it out 9aside from obviously roleplaying your handling of the situation). Likewise one can imagine numerous social situations which act like duels, such as a game of Chess or Go being played for extreemly high stakes. rememebr how many times James Bond has played games of skill against people who turned out to be master villains to guage their strength of will?

I've placed my order for Fifth Edition Revised (I imagine we will never be calling this book FRED) and something just occured to me. The rules themselves may not have changed, but the layotu of the book probably will. Page number referecnes from the frist printings of Fiofth edition will probably not work with Revised even when citing the same rule. What is the best form of etiquette to use when making a page number reference if you're pointing to a specific rule if you only have one of the books but want your point to be instantly understandable to users of both books?

Re: How to do Jackie Chan Adventures RL Jackie Chan the artist has often said in interviews that he wishes that the American movie industry would either allow him to make or be cast in films in which he doesn;t fight. There are two basic reasons for this: the first is that Jackie is (very gracrefully) sliding into middle age and eventually he won't be able to do the stunts anymore, and he wants to have a career after that happens. The second is that he feels ethnically-Asian actors are often badly typecast in American movies, especially Hong Kong veterans like himself, and he wants to show the American moviegoing public what else he can do. Jackie is actually quite a formidable comic actor, especially in his native Cantonese, and has done turns as a romantic leading man in his native Hong Kong and won considerable acclaim in the effort. it has been a long time since I ahve seen an enthincally Asian romantic lead in an American film, a fact which causes Jackie endless frustration. Another interesting Jackie Chan note is that he is a bit of a patriot. While many Hong Kong film limunaries (like director John Woo) abandoned Hong Kong when the Chinese took over in 1999, Jackie maintains his primary residence there still. He sees himself as Chinese and stays out of doemstic poltiical matters brought about by the oversight of Hong Kong by China's Communsit regime.

I have a question about charatcres who take "Social Limitation: Minor". If the campaign runs long enough, minors eventually grow up. It seems to make sense that the player would then buy off that particular disadvantage. The problem is msot players would rather buy keen new abilitires with their expeirnece than buy off disads. I don;t recall any campaign I;ve been invovled with in a point-based game in which people have actually bothered to buy off disadvantages. But obviously the charatcre cannot remain aminor forever (unless they're in the DC universe, where Dick Grayson was 15 years old for something on the order of forty years). The obvious solution then is to swap the dsiad for another of equal value when the character turns 18. but what sorts of disads would be suitable for the swap? what makes sense in terms of character development in most campaigns?

The more I think about it, the more I think a campaign based on Jackie Chan Adventures (the cartoon) would be a Dark Champions campaign (or Dark Champions: the Animated Series style). We have atwo-fisted, two-legged archeologist who would seem to be in way over his head against a crime cartel yet holds his own thanks to martial arts skills, coruage, inegnuity, and a sizable dose of help from unexpected places (who would think having a disobedient little girl constantly underfoot would turn otu to be so handy?). The first question i can think of before trying to write up characters 9you ahve to start with Jackie) is how to model Jackie;'s martial arts. I don;t know if there is a specific martial arts style that the real-life Jackie Chan or his animated equivalent practices: in real life, Jackie's training came in a theatrical troupe rather than a martial arts school, so his style is based on spectacular-looking mvoes rather than specific combat training. I don't know if you can assign a martial arts style out of either of the martial arts books (UMA and Ninja hERO) to either Jackie. So would ti be best to simply assign some manuvers, add a few approproate abilties, and call it a martial arts package? I don;t know enough about real-world martial arts to tell by lookign what the manuvers look like, and it's hard to tell what a martial arts style would do just by looking unless you ahve some experience with it 9or at the very least had seen a lot more kung-fu movies than I have). I also wonder about his point total, although as a rule I do nto count points when modeling characters from media (I simpyl assign him the abilties he shoudl have and assign an Experience Bonus if he goes over the disad limit).

Re: Jade from Beyond Good & Evil How come the high-quality Ameritoons don;t get the same kinds of DVD releases that anime series do (in seuqence, season boxed sets, etc.)? The only show I've seen get that treatment is Batman: TAS (admittedly the classic American adventure cartoon) but I want to see a complete season 1 box set of Jackie Chan Adventures, Teen Titans or Batman Beyond (maybe the best cyberpunk series on American TV period). I know we're drifting woefully of-topic, but I had to emntion it. My oriiginal query stands -- how should i distinguish this Jade from all the others in my character directory? Are parentheses allowed in Windows filenames?

Re: Have you ever taken a fall? The game system :TFOS. The campaign: Mistukuri High School, porobably the longest-running TFOS camapign in hoistory 9a year and a half). My character Hiro Suzuke was a guy who had split Cool: maximum normally, but minimum when the Love of His Life, Eriko-san, was around. Natrually, it topok him months to finally get up the nerve to confess to Eriko-san. When he finally did, in a very stressful situation 9the auqarium they wree in was under attack) I didn;t even roll against anything. I just fainted dead away from the 'emotional BONK". Everyone agreed I roleplayed the situation very well. By the end of the campaign they were engaged, but I never did buy up my Cool around her. Think the "Tofu Effect" 9referring to the Ranma character who became a complete yutz around the love-of-his-life. I built my character around that concept, with a liberal mixutre of other Takahashi traits.

Re: Jade from Beyond Good & Evil Does Jade have a surname? there are several characters from comics and media named Jade (Alan Scott's green-skinned daughter in the DC Unievrse, the spunky niece in Jackie Chan Adventures, etc.) and I fear that if I download one of those I'll lose this file unless I have something in the filename that distinguishes it from all other possible jades I might download or create.

Re: Spells that work against pain It would be an interesting argument. I can undertsand pain as a sign that something is wrong with your body being a good thing, and how not being able to feel pain at all could be a nasty Phsycal Lim (especially if ti means the GM doesn't have to tell you how much damage you take from attacks, or if you can;t feel pleasurable sensations from touch as well). But I fail to see the benefit to the sufferer of things like birthing pains or migranes.