Michael Hopcroft

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.

I have a dirty little secret: I'm a big fan of Phil Foglio, even in his more pervy moments. I recalled reading his fantasy erotic comic XXXenophile and seeing one particularly gameable but tricky idea (I will leave out the more explicit details for obvious reasons ). Basically it involved a potion that had two effects, which happened in succession. First off, the person it is administered to becomes utterly crazed with lust until they have intercourse or the equvalent with the person who adminsited the potion. After that, they become completely bonded to them. A nasty potion to have administered on you by an enemy, and even worse to have accidentally adminsietred on you by your cat (it took the intervention of the Horned God himself to solve the problem in the comic). Now msot GMs probably would not allow this potion to be adminstered on a PC in their game because most players value their free will too highly to put up with it. But it could have all sorts of boomerang effects when adminsitered on an NPC by a PC, especially if it happens by accident or misunderstanding, and could be extremely funny in the right kind of campaign. Imagine being literally dragged into bed by a person of the opposite sex who you accidentally gave this potion to, then discovering afterwards you have an adoring new friend whom you absolutely cannot shake by any means. The mechanics of the potion would be interesting, as would love potions and love spells in general. I would iamgine it would be some sort of Transform to endow a Psych Lim "Utterly In love With X". (The lust effect might be best left up the imagination and is not a part of all love potions.) The effect might be permanent or temporary, but if it's temproary expect some nasty consequences when it expires or is Dispelled! And Phil Foglio? When he's not drawing Girl Genius with Kaja he's a board member of the local PTA. I won't tell on him if you won't.

Re: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

There is no real mechanic for pain in the HERO System. It is a concept that no RPG system can adequately measure because each person feels pain differently. Still, in the real woprld, and in fantasy worlds, pain is a fact of life and people are hindered by it. In worlds where magic is used for medical purpsoes, one of those purposes would logically be the control of pain. There are several circumstances in which magical anesthesia would be very useful, from surgery to childbirth. It's the sort of spell a cleric or healer would logically want to learn. But how do you measure something so subjective in an effects-based system? is it even possible to create magics that deal essentially with the control of pain? Inflicting pain is easy to model -- it's a form of attack, NND, STUN only, designed to make the target incapable of functioning (he blacks out or is otherwise incapaticated from an overload of pain). But SUPRESSING pain -- what agme effect do you ahve for that?

Re: Target: Earth! 20 miles was probably either a typographical error or Steve getting his sums wrong. I had my copy of Star HERO stolen (I'm ordering a replacement), but there are times when system math in any game system, even one as dependent upon it as HERO, must give way to basic logic. The math may say that a single nuclear test would rack open the Earth's crust -- yet hundreds of nucelar tests have been conducted and the planet hasn't cracked upon once. In this case, the math is wrong. If you want to shatter the planet like an egg, you need a bigger hammer. A 10-mile asteroid moving at relatvisitic speeds migth not even be enough to do it (although I never took physics so don't ask me to do the math). Makes me wonder how George Lucas, who was never one to jutoify his msuings with anything as mundane as science, could imagine an energy beam powerful enough to cause entire planets to explode. Sure it looks great on film, but really -- planets don't have explosive material at the core. what exactly could the beam have been detonating? You can boil away a planet's atmosphere, crisp its surface, and possibly cause its oceans to evaporate into space -- but how do you BLOW IT UP? This could be an improtant consideration because eventually players will want to blow up the enemy planet in certain types of camapgins, and all the methods above of wiping a planet clean of all ability to supprot life are far less satisfiyng than an Earth-shattering KABOOM!

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist, what happens to them? Do they just die? And what would someone who was accompanying them see in the instant the paradoxical effect took hold (the instant history was changed downtime)? The person disappearing or fading away? A flickering effect as the person slips in and out of reality? And would this be an instant effect or would it last for as long as the person's natural lifespan (i.e. until they would die naturally anyway)?

Re: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow One thing I know for sure -- the movie ends with a good song. I had a chance to heard the soundtrack recording today at a store and skipped right to the end for "Over the Rainbow". I'm glad nobody was watching me, because that song had me weeping like a baby. I feel so much less macho now. i mentioned this on IRC and was told to repent, play some football and drink some beer or I'd go to Hell.

I've been speculating that fi i run a HERo campaign again I might want to a modern-day fantasy campaign, where there are spells and monsters but most of them are disguised as mundane things so people don;t know about them. I'm wondering if the ethos would be different for such a campaign than in a standard fantasy campaign. IN a standard medival fantasy campaign, when you find the monsters you are expected to kill them. But what if the law considers that murder? what if putting a stake through the heart of a vampire can get you strapped to the injection table? What if orcs are consiered a minority group with the same civil rights as everypone else? the general ethos of the modern day is against killing people (and there;s no reason not to think of any intelligent being as a person) just because you think they're evil. Which means player-characters will have to find really creative ways to solve conflicts....

being exposed to non-Western fantasy, which doesn;t have the Christain tradition to back it up, has exposed me to several different ideas of what a "demon" can be other than an 'agent of hell". I;ve read and seen things where demons are forces of nature that happen to value destruction over creation, balancing the creative force; worlds where demons are just beings of power who aren't human and are vulenrtable to evil manipulation; and svereal other ideas of what a demon is. This has resulted in things like heroic demons, who fight on the side of good in spite of temptation, or demons who ally with PCs who oppose rival demons to suit their own purposes.miuch of the cast of Saiyuki follows the first model, while the classic of the second model is Xelloss of Slayers. So, when is a demon not really a demon? Does it really dpeend on which fantasy world you;re in? And what if you;re doing a modern-fantasy game and want your demons to be equally mysterious and ambiguous?

Re: Eberron Hero What's the magic level in EBerron? Have you decided on a spell cost mutliplier ala Fantasy HERO?

Anyone want to try their hand at some of the characters from the manga and anime Saiyuki (aka what Journey to the West would be like if all the characters were bishies). Despite that somewaht dismissive descprtion, it really is an alarmingly good series, in which someone is casuing 'demons", who had previously lived in harmony with humans, to turn vicious and run amok. A monk named Genzo is sent to find out the cause of the problem, along with three demon companions inclduing -- get this -- Son Goku. (Yes, Dragonball was at least partially inspried by the folktale Journey to the West). Each of the demon companions has different abilities, and Genzo has a demon-dispelling pistol that he uses im emergencies. One of the heroes has a companion creature that can assume other forms, incluidng that of a jeep. Yes, a jeep. There are numerous intentional anachronisms in this series, from the cigarettes and beer that Gaiyuki constantly indulges in to the jeep to Genzo's gun. we are definitely in techno-fantasy territory here. Journey to the West, by the way, is classic folktale which is esentially about how the Buddhist scriptures made their way to China (and later Japan). It is one of the most popyular traditional tales for mangaka and anime creators to play around with.