Michael Hopcroft

I was wondering how one would design (hopefully as an NPC) a little girl with the powers of the Elder Gods. Maybe she's the unfortunate product of interbreeding, or maybe she's an Elder God herself in human form. If she were evil, she would be a truly firgihtening character indeed. But what if she were just curious about the world, inexperienced, or didn;t know hwo to use her powers yet?

Change Whether a Magical Girl has powers out of costume depends on the character concept. In the first episode of Sailor Moon S, a monster destoryed Sailor Moon's tranfpormation pendant (one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe) and Usagi immeidtaely transformed back and had no powers until the pendant was replaced. On the other hand, the heroine of Card Captor Sakura has the same abilities no matter what clothes she wears. She does not have a single costume and transforms the same way everyone else does -- by going somewhere and changing clothes, which given the complexity of her battle costumes usually takes a while. Many of her most important battles were fought in street clothes, and she's even captured a card in her pajamas. How the card got into her pajamas I'll never know...

aka has anyone ever done writeups of the cast of Bubblegum Crisis? It would be interesting to see what the Knight Sabers are like both in and out of the hardsuits, what the AD Police write up as (and how you avoid a high body count when running them) and how powerful the Boomers are in HERO terms.

Teen heroes in RPG campaigns often display an alarming tendency to ignore their hormones in play. I'm wondering if there are possible ways for players of teenage PCs to roleplay the things real teenagers go through in addition to adventuring -- like falling in and out of love, having to make up an explanation why you didn't make your date without revealing you're really part of the sentai team that stopped that giant monster from trashing the city, magical girls who get crushes on their protector-type characters, that sort of thing.

Linux Is there any mapping software (free or otherwise) for Linux?

Example Character: Lina Inverse Lina has a TON of spells in addition to her "sure-kill" Dragon Slave. She has a whoel array of attack spells -- Fireballs, Flare Arrows, Dil Brando (causes the ground under the target to explode, propelling them high into the air -- naturally what goes up comes down hard so ti does damage twice!), Freeze Arrows (an Entangle that does cold/ice damage), you get the idea. She also has a whole bunch of little spells (like a spell to attract fish to her fishing line and bait -- I'm surprised fish are not an endangered species in any area Lina passes through, as she loves fish and catches them in huge quanitities).. She also posees healing magic that she can use both on herself (to heal wounds as long as she's still consicous) and on others. There are several possible ways to construct Lina. A very large Multipower with numerous Ultra slots is one (teh effectes of the spells are rather predictable within the range of the dice). Another is to buy the big spells separatelky or in a multipower and give her a VPP to represent her encyclopedic knoweldge of the spellbooks of evergy mage she has ever come across. I'd like to see someone try a 450-point line, especially if you can find a way to fit the Giga Slave (a spell that can slay gods but has Side Effects so severe that casting it risks world obliteration). This would represent Lina at the beginning of the Tv series. She earns 40-50 experience or more per season of the TV series (or 2-3 Experience per episode, plus I'd award her an experience bonus for defeating an enormously powerful foe like Shabrandigdo, Copy-Rezo or Hellmaster Phibrizzo). The end-of-TRY Line woudl easily be worth 600+ points because fo her earned experience and has learned many more spells. She'd be a perfect candidate for some sort of Dependent PC disavtantage, but she would not get point sofr it because it is earned during play (it becomes obvious after a while hat she is in love 9and denial) with Gaurry but assuming the TV series is an active campaign this is a disad she picks up no points for.) Possible disads are Physical limitation: fast metablosim 9she burns a lot of food and thus has an enormous appetite), Psych Lim: greedy, Hunted: the Mazoku Race (Mo pow, harshly Punsih, 8- at the start growing to 11- as she becomes more of a nuisance to them), Psych Lim: various phobias (Luna, Slugs, Naga) 8- (they don't appear very often individually but a single one of the phobias could occur every so often.) Alternatively, since the mvovies and OVAs come before ther TV series is Slayers continuity, the 450-point Lina could be the one who avdentures with naga and she';d have about 40 points of experience to spend by the time she meets Gaurry.

I don't think my idea was fully understood Everybody is talking about peoiple using superpowers in a fantasy setting. That wasn't what i had in mind at all. What I had in mind was having only the stahdard fantasy abilities available, but building characters on 300+150 disads or a smilar point level with Normal Characteristc maxima enforced but not counted against your disads. If you have access only to standard fantasy abilities, how would you spend all those points? The characters in a series like Slayers are built on an even higher point level (I can't see how to build Lina Inverse for under 700 points), but they don't conquer the world. There are a lor of beings as if not more powerful than they are to give them trouble (high-level demon gods, dragons, that sort of thing).

I never realized That the Missile Deflection power (hitting a very hard pitch and sending it in a direction the pitcher did not intend) was the most important skill in baseball.... Assuming that all baseballpkayers aren't supers (although supers playing baseball among themelves could be interesting), are they all issues Midsile Deflection OAF baseball bats, Fragile (bats break all the time), Easily Replacamble (there's a whole rack of bats the player can use if one breaks) -2 Limitation; only vs. baseballs? Since the bat could in theory alsot be used as a melee weapon as well (although if you tried it you could forget about the rest of the seasob) or even a missile weapon (if you throw it at somebody) maybe it has a Multipower.... But we're getting off the suibject. Back to Fastball. what other physical characteristics would he require to have the 1400 MPH Fastball make sense? Some suggested that he may not be excessively super-strong, but have truly mastered the art of pitching at extrame speeds which would require superhuman reflexes. He would need a very high DEX for the CV to place the ball accurately (do you have any idea how hard it is to hit the strike zone from 60'6" away?) and a high END to withstand the strain of throwing as many pitches as he would throw in a typical combat.

A little historical perspective In 1920, Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was hit in the head and KILLED by a fastball thrown by New York Yankees pitcher Carl May. This was in the days when batters wore no protection at all and is the only time there has ever been a fatality during play in major league baseball history. It was not until the 1960's that the plastic batting helmet was developed. May's fastball couldn;t have gone more than 95 MPH. Of course, they didn;t have radar guns in 1920 so there was no way to tell just how fast or hard that pitch was. Fastball's pitches would be about 14-15 times faster and harder than the pitch that killed Chapman. And Fastball WANTS to kill you....

An Android PC is built the same way as any other PC -- same poitn base, etc. But what speicial abilities would an adroid have to buy to represent his android nature, and would they make him less effective a character than a human character of the same point base?

How would one effectively run a campaign using time travel over which the PCs have no conscious control? The basic idea iwa first described in a Different Worlds article by Tony Lee that I still wish I have. Basically this fantastically powerful being has recruited agents to go all over time and space to 'fix" what he sees as having gone wrong. They go on their mission, leave the area through a "nexus" portal, and emerge fully healed, rested, fed and recovered 9but with no conscious memory of eating, sleeping or healing) at the site of their next mission. Since the portals are completely under the control of the superbeing, the PC agents have no control over where or when they go next. Sometimes they would be fighting an enemy organization of time travelers trying to change hisotry in their favor, who have more control over where they go and would love to locate and kill the superbeing. other times they would just go someplace, fix whatever is wrong, and leave. Would players put up with a campaign in which theyhave no control over what happens next after the adventure? or would the right sort of players roll with the punches and keep going, hoping to either meet the superbeing face-to-face or return to their original homes? Since the superbeing bought the time portals, the PCs might not need time-travel pwoers of their own besides a device that tells them where the next nexus point in the world they are currently in is located. Basically nexuses appear where and when the superbeing wants them to -- and only then. Possible storylines include preventing the extinction of Neanderthal Man, stopping someone from completing a 'supertask" experiment and thus destroying the universe, and preventing the use of anacrhonstic technology to change history. The scope would be the entire omniverse, but the GM would only need to plan one adventure at a time -- there need not be an overweening plot arc. Great TV series, but terrible RPG campaign?

I seem to recall an old thread I satrted (but can;t find now) about how to model a character whose main superpower is a 1400 MPH fastball, turning an ordinary baseball into a projectile capable of blasting through brick walls, steel plate and people in power armor. I'd like to see how the attack would be written up so that I can write up this character and submit it. other than his pitching ability, he's mainly a skill-based villain who is essentially a "free agent" killer for hire. How muich damage would a 1400 MPH fastball do? If it missed, would it do the same damage to whatever it did hit (It's got to hit SOMETHING)? Can it be Missile Deflected like a bullet? is it an EB or a RKA? To be useful in combatm woudl fastabll have to develop some other "pitches"? Most importantly -- can a baseball survive being thrown at that speed?

The Daleks have always been built around the hovercraft principle -- Daleks were rising out of the Thames as early as the second season. Only the original Daleks from the very first stroy they appeared him had limited movement, which was because they were dependent upon electricity beamed from the floor of their city. This proved their fatal weakness, which was corrected in later adventures (because the Daleks turned out to be such popular villains). The only reason we didn;t see Daleks climb stairs in particular before was that BBC effects technicians had not yet figured out how to move the bulky, heavy suits up a staircase. The real-world BBC Daleks had a very small driver inside the shell, which he moved by pedaling something akin to a very small, very cramped bicycle all the while manipulating the arms, turret and lights. (At least that's how I THINK Daleks worked in real life. Terry Nation's whole idea for the Daleks was to make creatures whose movement was utterly alien, and that seemed the most logical way to manuver the shells). When a Dalek had to get upstairs before the McCoy era, it would simply do it off-screen where they didn't have to manuever the shell. the McCoy-era Daleks climbed stairs by camera effects (jncluding some early CGI). If the series were being made today, of course, Daleks would be 100% CGI and could probably hover three or four feet above the ground if they wanted to. And just imagine plugging a Dalek into the back seat of a starfighter....

Sailor Moon's Tranformation Symbolism Given that Sailor Moon's element is Purity and the Soul, this is entirely apprpriate. And Usagi Tsukino is in efect "reborn" when she becomes Sailor Moon, going from clueless junior high school student to the savior of the world. Remember, she regularly does thjings like purging individuals of evil influences that turn them into monsters. And she won her greatest victory not be y destorying her foe, but by purifying her spirit. "She's my WHAT?" = Usagi, concerning Chibi-Usa "Shes' my WHAT?" -- Lune, concerning Diana.

What if you find a character in a villain supplement that you especially like, but who you think would be even cooler as a hero than as a villain? Several characters from CKC come to mind. I'm surprised nobody has ever run Foxbat, for example, as a loony superhero rather than a loony supervillain. instead of constantly losing by overraching himself, he constantly wins by sheer luck (and his Rouge's Gallery is equally wacky except for one ultra-serious Dark Foxbiat-type who is deadly serious, ultra-competent, and does not hesistate to kill heroes if it suits his purposes). I also wonder if it is possible to create new superheores by working from the stats of a mfamous CU supervillain and supplying your own background. Your players never need to know that the mysterious emntalist who aids them in their times of greatest peril uses Menton's character sheet., or that the ultra-experienced power armor hero who shows up as a Deus ex Machina is a retooled Doctor Destroyer....

I havent; seen the VIPER book yet. Does that organization still organize its agents into "five-teams" to more efficiently combat both supers and normals? And if so, how effective are they in real terms?

Underwear? Underwear? Sinc ehwen has Sailor Moon's trnaformation shown her underwear? It usually doesn't show her wearing anything at all for about ten seconds until the parts of her costume start forming around her -- and, in the last season, her wings sprout. "If God had meant Sailor Moon to fly., he would have given her wings! Wait a minute -- what are those feathery things on her back?":D

Another note IIRC, Miraclo turned out to be an addictive drug that did long-term damage to Rex tyler's health to the point that his doctors advised him to stop taking it. One way to balance the power of the pill in a homage is to add a STUN drain so that when the hours is up, the character is completely exhausted until he spends some phases on recovery. An hour can reflect an entire combat and then some, but if you can only use it in one of many comabts during an adventure it bomecomesd a serious tactical challenge. maybe the ingredients of Miraclo are so expensive or difficult to obtain that you can only carry one pill at a time and have to manufacture another one between adventures, and it becomes impossible to stockpile a mass of miraclo pills for emergencies. Keep in mind also that the bad guys are also going to want the forumula for Miraclo -- even if it is dangerous in the long-term,most suervillains don;t care about their health or the health of their henchmen). Even worse -- make Miraclo addictive or make it cause a psychological high effect. Every organized crime kingpin in the world will want to formula so they can manfuacture it as the hot new street drug.

Pirtacy in a fantasy setting is usually associated with the high seas, but wouldn;t it be interesting if there were priates/raiders in your fantasy game who traveled by air. Whether by magically-powered dirgibles, "fiftwood" ships, or on the backs of a group of dragons, airborne raiders could do a lot of damage to civilized settlements and become very rich. This makes them a perfect target (or occupation) for PCs. One could also do fantasy campaigns where the air was a battleground whenever kingdoms or principalities went to war. Maybe the king has an 'air fleet" to fight in sky battles or transport troops to areas they can't reach on foot or horseback. How would you manage a Mass Combat battle involviing airships, and what happens to the characters aboard when an airship is "shot down" but doesn;t explode or do something otherwise obviously fatal to all aboard?

Daleks and Stairs One of the classic scnees in the Sylvester McCoy era of Doctor Who involved Daleks and stars. The Doctor had found a Dalek "transmat" pad in the basement of Coal Hill School (which happened to be where his first companions taught all those many years ago, although the story took place in 1963!) and a Dalek suddenly appeared. Naturally it recognized the Doctor and went after him. "The Stairs!" cries the Doctor and he and Ace scramble up the basement stairs. The door is locked, so the Doctor turns around and is horrified to see the Dlaek pulling itself up the stairs by its hovercraft-style bottom panels.... It is a common misonception that Daleks can't climb stairs. Even the Doctor had been lulled into complacency, and barely got out of the situation alive. (Naturally it was a cliffhanger!)

Speaking of peasant revolts..... What kind of farm tools frequently seen in fantasy worlds can be used as weapons? How difficult would it be tolearn to ifght with them as opposed to cutting down and threshing wheat? The insights into the medival world are interesting. I can't help but wonder what magic would do to the medival requation. If there's enough magic going around like priests blessing crops (to protect against disease and ensure a good harvest), healing spells available to anyone when they get injured or sick, magically skilled midwivesto ease the pangs of childbirth.... You get the idea. peasant life might be a lot less nasty, a lot less brutish, and a lot less short unless the local lords were REALLY cruel and tried to deprive the populace of these benefits.

Not to mention distinguishing two or three fighters among a party of PCs! If each of the fighters in yoru party trained in a different style, then you get a lot of added flexibility, and a lot of roleplaying possibilities on the side as well (martial artists can always be counted on to dispute the superiority of their particular styles.) Now I wouldn;t dream of starting a FH campaign without also hacing a copy of UMA to give me ideas. Make a few changes and you can get Eli\vish Archery as a martial art conmplete with manuevers, or a set of manuevers for knights in armor, swashbucklers who manuever a longsword with the deftness of a rapier, eschewing armor in favor of deft dodging and an uncanny ability to parry incoming blows (including arrows!)....

Spells with no END cost go against the grain for HERO. They make mages almost infinitely powerful,m especially if they can cast spells as potent as a superhero's attack. If you can cast an unlimited number of 12d6 Explosive Fireballs, then you're pretty much unbeatable unless you have some pretty potent Limitations on the spell. And I don't even want to think about the same spell with Autofire.... No END attacks are unbalancing enough in Champions. In fantasy HERO, they're devastating. You want to provide SOME incentive for a player to play a character other than a mage....

One of my favorite subgrenes of anime and fantasy is the stories of people from our world who are drawn into a different one for any number of reasons. They can be ordinary people, but posess abilities they do not know in the other world -- they don't think they're hero material, but somehow they are. How would you work this trope in HERO? The very nature of HERO System character design prevents you from designing a character with powers he or she doesn't know about. But how would you play a character who has mystic, superhuman, or strange powers but doesn;t even know it in a system that encourages you to know what your character can do down to the last detail?

You may not knwo this, Tempuswolf But you may ahve just hit on the perfect cross between the plot of Superman, the plot of Jurassic Park, and the plot of Sailor Moon. Will you write for me?