Michael Hopcroft

I can top that. I developed the Exploding Prootwaddle spell. when cats, it created a prootwaddle that functioned just like a normal Prootwaddle, but when you struck it (or if it tripped and fell) it exploded like a Petard, doing the same damage for the same radius. This concept gradually evolved over the years. i was writing a comedy series called Weird Guy a few years ago and one of the major characters was Hugo the Exploding Pig. Hugo was a bipedal talking pig who exploded every day at 3:22pm excatly, no matter where he was and what he was doing. he could also detonate himself at will. he alwasy reformed himself a few minutes later and it was unclear 9since nobody tried) whether he could be killed. Strangely enough, Hugo was in the supporting cast.

Remember though, that CLAMP started out as a rather naughty doujinshi circle. the ladies from Osaka have never outgorwn that attitude even as they became best-selling manga artists on three continents (they are the most popular graphic novelists among American readers, for exmaple, so American readers have really taken them to heart). Writing up CLAMP characters also raises the issue of whether sexual orientation is really worth points. In the case of CLAMP's work, i'd probably say not. CLAMP charaetrs are gay, lesbian or bisexual even at very early ages and nobody makes a major issue of it. For example, why Syaoran develops his initial crush on Yukito in CardCaptor Sakura, nobody around him seems to be thinking "he's weird for being a ten-year-old boy who has a crush on a teenaged boy"; it's just another level on which he is competing with the heroine. (later on in the series, Syaoran has what can only be described as an ephiphanic moment in one of the most amazing pages on manga I've ever read in its impact and realizes he doesn't really have a crush on Yukito and that he's straight after all -- becuase the heroine is occupying ALL his attention.....)

I get too many ideas. just now I got the idea for a fantasy world that in essentially the Age of enlightenment with magic. And sowrdsmen, instead of weilding mighty greatswords, weidl 'smallswords" and rapiers and gain their deadliness through phenomenal skill. I wonder if fencing would be the proper MA style for them to use, or whether fencing could be given magicla ssists 9drink this potion and gain enough of a DEX bonus for ten turns to raise your CV by two or three, then your DEX goes down by the same amount for the rest of the day as you exhuast yourself), how Enlgihtened wizards would function, whetehr magic would be forced to be sublte of whether more overt effects could be used, and how the world would be affected by those democratic ideas that are so dangerous to tradition-bound societies. I don't know whether this would be re-inevnting 7th Sea, but it could be an interesting (if bizarre) FH campaign. When it's discivered that ligthning is really a form of electricity, for example, how would wizards apply the disocvery?

Gundam Wing gets props in my book for being the first Gundam series to hit it big eher, and for strecthing the envelope on what could be shown on Amercian "children's television" in terms of story content. Although there were some stupid edits (replacing herro's "I will kill you" with "I will destroy you") and some cuts, the very idea of showing a series where the "heroes" do things that make them pracitcally indistinguishable from terrorists was mind-blowing. I honestly don't think you could put Gundam Wing on American television today for that reason. But the genie is out of the bottle and the DVDs are available. I'd love to have a complete collection someday. By the way, is most discussion of mecha anime and manga done in the Other Genres section still? I know I've discussed fantasy anime and manga in the Fantasy HERO section, but Slayers is popular enough among gamers that it seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

I haven't had a copy of Dangerous Journeys in years. If I ever get another one (and lviing five blocks away from one of the biggest used bookstores in the world and being a regular customer of RPGNow makes that entirely possible....) I would probably be very careful what I used. I recall really annoting GDW when I reviewed Mythus -- but followed up by joining the fandom for a while and getting involved in a heated discussion over an NPC villain i created, a maopole-weilding Partial Practice Dweamoecraefter with series strategic skills who wanted to be the AErth version of napoleon and win a kigndom by his own sword.... On the other hand, The Epic of AErth, the one Dangerous Journeys book I can;t find in PDF, amkes for an incredibly detailed mostly-human Fantasy HERO setting.

I was wondering if anyone had any idea on how to write up Kohaku, the angel heroine of CLAMP's classic manga Wish. Acutally, there are a lot of chaarcters in that series who would make interesting HERO characters, if unusual to deal with. After all, you wouldn;t expect Satan's eldest son to flee to Earth and adopt domesticity, or expect a pair of black cats to run into busty woman-demons who have several annoying habits. One could do a whole website or web-book based solely on characters from CLAMP's manga, andnot just those series that have been animated. The CLAMP School Detectives would interesting NPCs to encounter, as would any skilled Angelic layer player or a "personcom" like Chii-chan. SAnd leave us not forget Subaru, of Tokyo Babylon and X/1999 fame. If you're playing in a CLAMP game of any mkind, though, you'll find points spent on COM to be points WELL spent. CLAMP for some reason cannot draw ugly people -- either that or they simply refuse to on general principle. Even their villains (heck, ESPECIALLY their villains) are drop-dead gorgeous.

If i wanted to run a Furry HERO game (notice I said "if"), what would be the best way to model the differenes between the various kinds of furries? Are there special ways in hero to build cats that are different from dogs that are different from wolves that are different from fioxes that a different from rabbits, but all able to do essentially the same things humans do in this world? Also, is a restricted diet worth points? If you can only digest meat and all creatures are sentient, then you are either going to be a ruthless killer or society's norms would permit predation (in which case herubores might have to take a very large Hunted to reflect the fact that a significant portion of society sees them as food).

I've had a few weird spell concepts in my time, and I was wondering what kind of weird spell concepts people have come up with, and whether they've actually built them. Here are some of my stranger ideas and the intended effects. I don't know how these spells would work and some are, frankly, impossible. but they might show up in some mad wizard's grimoire.... 1. Every evil witch knows the spell to turn princes into frogs. what about a spell that will turn a frog -- any frog -- into a prince? what happens if it's cast indiscriminately and there's suddenly a surplus of princes? 2. I once imagined a spell to Create Infinite Pizza. Casting this spell would create a hot, fresh, delicious pizza that is infinte in height, width, depth, mass, and extends infintely through time and space. Eventually that pizza, unless dispelled, will take up all the space in the universe and then some -- it's INFINITE! Fortuntaely, because the END cost is also infinte the spell will never be cast. Perhaps more reasonable would be simply Create Pizza, which creates a hot, fresh, delicious but normally-sized pizza out of thin air. Great for urban fantasy campaigns --learn that spell and the Domino's driver becomes the lonliest guy in town. 3. what if you could cast a spell on yourself that, for the next hgour, will warn you when you are about to make a mistake? Not just walking into a trap or the like, but ANY error in judgement. Like "you really don;t want to kiss this particular girl right now...." 4. what if you could enchant a real sword (or other weapon) to do illusory damage? This could actually be useful. The Duke tells yolu to kill your friend or he'll shoot you with his battery of archers. You whip out your sword, cast the spell, and to all appearances it looks like you've comp[lied with his wishes. then you take the "corpse" and make your getaway, and when your friend wakes up you plot your revenge. You could even simulate such seemingly irreversible innjuries as decapitation convincingly without doing any real harm to your "victim".

I can;t sem to find the infamous "5-for-1" rule regarding spells in FH 5th Edition. Could someone point me to that rule and explain eoughly how it works> And will there be any future includion of that rule in Hero Deisgner so I can create characters in Fh seamessly?

I was responding to a mailing list psot of gifts that make you more attractive to the rcipient when it occured to me that one could make a smiliar gift to present to a spouse (such as an enchanted wedding ring) to improve their fertility. That led to some general thoughts about the role of fertility magic in a fantasy world. it's hard to represent in agem terms because the concept is rarely dealt with, but it a world where magic is known and plentiful 9or at least commonly known) magic to improve fertility would be a very important concept. This can apply on several levels. For humans, kings and other nobels depend for the srurvival of their lines and the stability of their realms on large families. One of the very first thoughts that crosses a king's mind on assuming the thorone is 'what is going to happen to the kingdom when i die? Who will i leave it to?" Having an heir in line is essential for a kigndom's stability. Thus a royal marriage could feature wedding rings that increase the wearer's fertility. In addition, if one of the partners in a royal marriage is infertile for some reason, a ring could be forged with the curative spell so they could still have children, heris, and a stable succession. The peasant, of course, may not have acces to the kind of magic that ensures a large family 9although a large family is important to him too -- more children means more hands to share the workd). But what about his cows. his horses and his crops? Village priests of the God of Agriculture would narually know blessing spells to make the crops grow hardier, more weather 0-resistant and more fruitful. More croips means larger harvests, a wealthieer society, and a larger population of craftsmen and merchants that can be supported -- more propserity in general. Evil priests or wizards who cast a blight on the crops have an easy way to derail the fantasy-world economy -- and are good targets for player-character party of adenturers to seek to reverse the effects and punish the offender. Blighting the crops, casting a curse on the king to render him sterile -- all of those would be high crimes against the state that can be committed with magic and punished with extreme prejudice. The problem is that these are very difficult effects to put into game terms. Even Dungerons & Dragons 3.5 ignores the subject.

Sailor Stars would be a toughnsell for Adult Swim because it is, after all, the fifth season of a show that has been promoted for years as a children's shpw (even though in it's original form it really isn't). Even Adult Swim shows have to face S&P, ab;liet somehwat looser. The very violent Cowboy Bebop and the just plain weird FLCL made it (apparently FLCL was a popular and critical smash on Adult Swim!), but Sailor Stars may be a bit much. Plus there is huge competition for sports on Adult Swim, just like thgere is huge competition for slots on Toonami. They are the ultimate prestige slots of Cartoon Network and the prime ratings-grabbers for your show (I think the only show that's ever really bombed on Toonami was Hamtaro, and that was because it was far too kididified for the Toonami audience even in its original form.)

Will there be a FH/Grimoire character/anuility/spall pack for hero Deisgner? It would probably cost a pretty penny, but it would be worth it to have all those spells handyin one place on your hard drive. Michael Hopcroft

That is the threat that always hangs over Lina' head every time she is tempted to cast the spell. She's tried it three times. First time it worked perfectly. Second time LON took over her body, destoryed the intended target of the spell herself, and tried to absorb Lina's soul. Third time LON blocked the spell. It is doubtful that Lina will ever try to cast Giga Solave again. It's not a question of the energies of the spell running out of control, but (so far) of LON controlling the energies of the spell. If it suits her pursposes, the spell will work. If it doesn;t, she will cause something else to happen. It has so far not suited LON's purposes to destory creation, so creation has not been destoryed.

One of the problems with modeling Dragon Slave is that, while it is definitely an area-effect attack, people who are not the direct target can survive being in close range of one. And sometimes characters who are not all that strudy can withstand one -- Martina, the nutzoid Zoamelgustar-wroshipper (and inventor), has survived three Dragon Slaves at point-blank range incluidng two within the space of ten seconds. Martina and bystander characters have what is reffered to as "comedic immunity" -- if it's funny for them not to die, they don't die and are not injured all that badly. Dragons, most mazoku, and other intended targets of thr Dragon Slave do not have such immunity nor do buildings. A certain character has survived several Dragon Slaves. Nobody, however, is powerful enough to survive a direct hit from a Giga Slave except possibly LON herself. And the being upon whose power the source of a spell is drawn is generally immune to that spell, which is why you can't throw a Dragon Slave at Sharanigdo and expect it to kill him 9or, indeed, expect to survive the experience). LON is immune to all magic, but what do you expect from the Slayers equivalent of the Creator of the Universe? And there are other ways to kill a dragon -- a certain character is known to have slain thousands of dragons at one time without raising a sweat, earning the enmity of all dragons for the next thousand years.

As for Blakes 7 I was wondering if any of the Blakes 7 fans on the board might be interested in trying to model the Liberator or the various hand weapons used by Blake and Avon's crews, not to mention the infamous Federation 'flash-gun" (so-called because of the time a Federation troooper fired into the camera and you could see the flash=bulb go off in his gun). For the record, the Liberator was equipped with energy blasters that looked vaguely like curling-irons but which were deadly against human targets. Its successor, Scorpio, came equipped with apecilized handguns that could fire multiple types of ammuntion, from percussion bullets to laser blasts. How this is phsycially possible I'm not sure, but their inventor had several centuries to work on the design.

I remember that in the 1st Edition DC Heroes rules you never wanted to get Superman really mad. He was easily stong enough to punch a good-sized hole in the crust of the Earth with one blow, and the effects of such a thing would be catastrophic. If you want a practical planet-destroying weapon, igniting the atmosphere is the appeal i would personally take. I also wonder about a 'bomb" that uses Tranform to turn all the Oxygen into the atemosphere into methane -- useful if your race breathes methane and the enemy doesn't. Speaking oif which, how would you write up a race of methane=breathers to whom oxygen is both poisonous and corrosive. If you breach their containment suits in an oxygen-based atmosphere like Earths, they will quickly die and corrode into dust.

It may sound like a "plot-device weapon", but since i HERO people like to point-cost everything out I was wondering how one would design a weapon of si\ufficient power to eradicate a planet from orbit. It could work several different ways, from boring into the core of the planet and causing it to explode (leaving a rapidly-expanding bunch of rocks) to igniting the entire atmosphere 9leaving an airless, burnt-out husk where an inhabited planet once was). If something is attacking a planet in this fashion, is it safe to assume that any lviing thing that was on that ufnrotunate world automatically perishes? Hopefully no PCs were planetside when it struck.... or could an exceptionally powerful character surive that kind of catastrophe (and, if they were that powerful, be so royally P.O'd that the future does not bode well for the planet's destroyers?) I leave it to the Champions players to design a character capable of such massive destruction....

If I wanted to create a character who doesn;t intially know they are destined to be a superhero and doesn;t even know he has superpowers, much less what they are, how would this be handled? I'm thinking about the situation where the character either has his "origin" over the course of play (he's a less powerfulnormal, then has accident and gets superpowers that he did not expect and initially has a hard time controlling) or a character with innate super-potential that emerges gradually over time (every so often he gets a new power or super-characteristic until his character is filled out to full power). Is there a good way in-game to handle this sort of developemnt. And how can the player know what powers he's going to get and still play as if the character doesn't know? Other systems use a system where the Gm can assign superpowers according to his own design for the character, but that goes against the very nature of the HERO system. So how to handle this?

I know there are occasional references in various HERO books to running a comedy game, but I don't know of anyone actually doing it. Something about the mechanical precision of HERO character creation and character modeling,. and the overall seriousness of (and emphasis on) combat seems to de-emphaisze humor. I, on the other hand, would love to see some characters who may not have any combat capabilties but have character quirks and foibles that make them funny. Sometimes funny in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways, but funny nontheless. Some series I am very fond of would be very difficult to translate to HERO but a lot of fun to play in, from Urusei Yatsura to Kiko-chan's Smile and Azumanga Daioh. And that's just the anime examples -- wouldn't it be fun to take your favorite TV comedy and turn it into an RPG? Especially if you get the opportunity to actually have your characters develop over time?

Is there a website out there with good 5th Edition writeups of the various characters from Card Captor Sakura? The original series is about to finish its run on DVD, with the final three episodes released the second week in November and the final mvoie a week later. The manga run has already been completed. I know someone did a her write-up of Sakura and it's on the web somewhere -- I just can't remember where. But there are so many other characters besides Sakura worthy of writeups and attention, from Li Syaoran and Eriol Hiiragazawa to Yukito/Yue, keroeberos, Tomoyo daidouji, Touya (fascinating character before before and afetr he makes his great sacrifice), and Kaho Mizuki-sensei (who is universally loathed by almost every CCS fan I know). Writing up Sakura's cards is an interesting exercise as well, but there are many other interesting magic things in the series, like Syoran's ofuda-based spellcasting and Eriol's effortless control of the very essence of magic. Even though Tomyo is so relatively powerless she might qualoify as a DNPC, she plays a vital role in the story and is a fascinating, complex character. It is a subject of much fannish dispute whether she will ever transfer her obsession with Sakura to someone else of either gender.

The episodes of Sailor Moon in question (the season is referred to as Sailor Stars) have never been shown on American television -- in fact, I can;t think of an American network that would see them slip past Standards & Practices intact. Heroines who spend most of their time as male idol singers would have hard time getting past S&P. I was convinced for a long time that the Three Lights were women disguised as men until an episode at a lake resort where the Three Lights were shown with bare, breast-less chests. One of them is later shown nearly nude in one of the single funniest episodes of Sailor Moon ever made. Of course, i had some justoification in my belief. I the original comic, the Three Lights WERE disguised women. Which made the fact that one of them spends most of the series courting Usagi even more interesting. One of the ongoing discussions in Sailor Moon fandom is whether Seiya of the Three Lights was more deserving of Usagi than Mamoru was -- the answer to that question frequently depends on how you feel Takeuchi-sensei meant her charatcers to be interpreted as far as their sexual idnetity. (Many fans feel that the various boyfirends in the TV series were inserted artificually and that most of the Sailor Senshi were meant to be lesbian.) As far as the attack in question goes, Star Gentle Uterus is essentially an Energy Blast (most Sailor Moon attacks can be modleed as Energy Blasts that happen to be attached to different "elements" -- Sailor Moon herself is a superemely powerful exorcist and spiritual healer in addition to having some powerful Energy Blasts of her own to take out "monsters".) One other reason you'll never see Sailor Stars on Cartoon network is that it has a very grim climax and Sailor Moon spends most of the last episode wearing no clothing at all. "If God had meant Usagi tsukino to fly, he would have given her wings! Wait a minute -- what are those feathery things on her back?"

This is a poretty good 4th edition writeup. I'm hoping Michael will revise this particular section for the 5th Edition rules or for the standards of Fantasy HERO as it is wirtten now. In the Slayers world, several different peopl learn (or try to learn) the Dragon Slave. It's a wonder there are any villages left. Lina Inverse is so good at it that she doesn;t always need the full incantation (if she;s angry enough). It's not just Dragon Slave I'm curious about, though. I'm curious about the spell that i call, for lack of a better name, Here, Fishy Fishy Fishy . This is the spell Lina uses to call the fish in a body of water and get them to bite on her hook, and has the material compnent that she usually makes the line out a strand of her own hair. A trivial spell by Slayers standards, but instant death if you happen to be a trout. Lina can catch an astounding number of fish with one casting (of the spell, not the line).

LOVE IT! And the shrine maiden would be perfect adversary for that "game" -- plus, if the miko is pretty, the victory will be all the sweeter (in every sense of the word -- I couldn't think of a way to put Yui's bisexuality into her stats, which is probably just as well.)

I hope Warner Bros. Animation is paying him REALLY well. I also hope he gets to go guest work in such cutting-edge shows as Samurai Jack sometimes -- as a character other than Batman, and maybe not even very much like him.

It's amazing how good a voice actor Kevin Conroy is and how little credit he gets. In a series where the villains are usually played by top-of-the-line actors (Mark Mammil, Roddy MacDowell to name a couple) and it's Conroy that held the show together at the strong center. He IS Bruce Wayne. And he continued to be just as solid and scary, if not more so, in Batman Beyond as a Bruce Wayne enfeebled by age but still strong in will and spirit. Plus there are those little sly touches of humor that indicate that Bruce may not have slipped completely over the edge.... I wish I knew who the voice actors in Teen Titans were. Robin and Slade in particularl are done exceptionally well.