Michael Hopcroft

Magical idols A magical idol singer may cost more points than you think. besides the Multiform (preteen girl to teenager), you also hace the various magical effects that the idols use to enhance their performances. Rivalry is a natrual disadvantage (there's always a rival diol determined to wreck the heroine's career), as is a variation on Limited Duration (the powers go away after a year is a common theme in magical idol shows.) And there's nothing to stop you from designing a campaing in which a Magical Girl is both an idol AND an adventurer. Such a campaign could indeed be very interesting. Finally, there is the variation presented by I'll Make a Habit of It, in which a popular idol singer also happens to be a poweerful martial artist who has to go to great lengths to pursue both careers,In this case, the heroine becamse an idol to pick up disciples for her family dojo, only to find that plan didn;t work. So she disguises herself as a boy to get into a tough school -- and that's when things get weird, even by anime standards.

Courtuney would play the Brigadier twice more -- in the 20th anniversary story "The Five Doctors" 9where he was transported with patrick Troughton to the Dead Zone on Gallifrey and got to knock the Master out with a hard right) and in the Sylvester McCoy story "Battlefield" (where we met his successor at UNIT, Brigadier Winifred Bambera, who was a formidable character in her own right). And nit=pick here -- the Key to Time storyarc was four years before "Mawdryn Undead", a Peter Davison story which began a plot to kill the Doctor by inserting an evil companion itno his party. (Turlough later rejected evil and reformed).

Sailor Moon as an example Sailor Moon satrted out as very uncerttain about herself and her abilities. But she didn;t win because her enemies were somehow stupid -- they weren't. She won because she had willpower (although she needed encouragement and experience to discover it). Bother her power and her skill in using it grew along with her confidence -- a perfect analogy to many RPG campaigns. Even a beginning superhero might not have that much confidence in their powers or their judgement in using them. By the end of the season, she was much more confident and powerful. The important thing in a magical girl story of any sort is that the character grows and develops in both personality and ability over time.

Pertwee died in the late '90s. I met him once on a tpour to Portland -- we traded notes of having been in the same show ("A Funy Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" -- he played Lycus on the West End, I played Hysterium in college.) Every actor should do Forum at least once in their careers.... Tom Baker has aged visibly and not very well, but is still active and still has that incredible voice of his. He was in the suppedly excreble Duneons & Dragons movie, and when he appeared in one of the BBC Narnia series ("The Silver Chair", I believe it was), the old magic was still there. Peter Davison has gone quite bald over the years. His major role after Doctor Who was the title role in Campion, a series that ran in America on Mystery!, and he was very good. I haven't heard anything about Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) in years.

For the benefit of the anime fans who play Hero, what do you guys think would be the most effective way to build a magical girl? There are several different kinds of magical girl, as anyone who has read one of my books will know. I'm thinking of several of these types, such as the kind who transforms into a colrfully dressed warrior maiden with magical atatcks and defenses, or a thief who uses magic powers to commit her robberies, or the preteen girl who tranforms into a beautiful teenager so she can achieve fame and fortune as an idol singer. How do you build any of these characters in Hero, and at what point level should you build them?

Do you have the Hero Designer file for Yuri that I could either download or have e-mailed to me? I love collecting characters (I convinced Derek to send me all the characters from his Challenge of the Superfirends game from DunDraCon) and wish there was more exchanging of hero Designer files. The character sheets look very good. I too am looking forward to Mughi. I'd really like to see a Hero Designer file of Mink (from Dragon Half) someday. She must bem what, 600 points?

Getting back to the horse The hrose would be worth even more as a DNPC if you were a peasant or commoner in a fnatasy world where only the nobility are allowed to ride horses (as opposed to having an oxen to pull your plow). Ask anyone with a liger about the charms of having a pet who could land you in jail just by existing....

I'm trying to determine whether my scheudle will enable me to attend GenCon SoCal, but I'd love to go to Dundracon again and run a game of something. And hopefully get to play in a few more. The question is how I'm going to afford a hotel room and transprotation, and whether I can get the time off from work. I actually would probably prefer the atmosphere at DunDraCon -- I'm familiar with it and more comfrotable there. After some of the fiascos I heard about at genCon Indy this year, i wonder if the company that runs GenCon can put on three good conventions in a year, especially with one of them a new launch.

As far as PCs are concerned, for game balance purposes it should be relatively easy to defend against the power. Only those who are truly unaware of the attack are certain to be captured. If the Extra Time limitation is taken, then a simple DEX roll may be all that is required to step out of the way before the portal opens. The more difficult question for PCs is the possibility that one of their DNPCs or someone else very important to the campaign may be trapped in the "pocket Hell" and need to be rescued before their mind is destroyed. Although it would be a very traumatic experience, a good mentalist 9or even a good physchiatrist) can heal the damage once the character is out of the dimension.

It would probably be simple to model a villain whose major attack power was to transport his enemies to a pocket dimension 9(a sort of pocket Hell) and trap them there for etermity (or until some can get in there to plukc them out, by which time they might well be quite mad from the painand fear they've suffered). the attack would have two parts -- the act of teleporting the person from their present dimension to the pocjket Hell, and a Continuous NND EGO attack against the victim while he is there (which applies to anyone who enters the dimension, even briefly). Perhaps the villain thinks he really is opening one-way portals to the real Hell....

In the period from 1955 to 1990, the British Broadcasting Corporation produced several remarkable science fiction series for its television service. It was the age of Quatermass and the Pit , Doctor Who ,Blakes 7 and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . The shows were marked the the paradoxical combination of cheap, often cheezy effects and often truly creative storytelling. The era ended when Star Trek: the Next Generation proved concolusively that a government agency that relied on TV license fees could never raise the financial resources to compete. Since then BBC SF has been limited to satires like Red Dwarf , which have proved popular but not quite as satisfying to me at least. Could Star HERO be used to put together a campaign in ther style of one of those classic series?

Should I consder buying a VPP for a wizard character in FH to reflect the vast number of (relatively) minor spells he knows? If the same limitations apply to all the spells in the VPP (gestures and incantations, Extra Tinme perhaps) this could theoretically create a very flexible mage, particulaly if he can change powers every minute or so. The one problem I forsee is that it would be a very expensive way to construct a mage, especially if you aloso want him to have a few specific, more powerful spells.

Meeting my Waterloo It would be very interesting to see someone simulate Waterloo or Gettysburg with these rules. In a sanse, musketteers are just like archers ion that they can attack ar range, and adding cannons, exploding shells, and cavalry charges to the mix could result in quite an intriguing battle.

Armor vs. arrows IIRC my hisotry, the reason the English won at Agincourt was because their archery was so deadly. The French came in their heavy armor on their heavily armored horses, got stuck in the mud instead of charging with speed, and were easy pickings form the longbowmen whose arrows were fast and deadly enough to penetrate the plate -- and they were flying at the enemy at the rate of several hundred a minute. The flower of French chivalry never stood a chance. How can this be applied to smaller-scale fantasy combat? Remember that the archer can strike first and that arrows, especially from longbows or composit bows, hit hard. There's no way to make arrow-proof armor in the long run. And in the real worl, people never wore plate armor unless they expected to be in a fight right that very moment -- it was too uncomfortable and hard to put on to wear under any other circumstances (although you can put on a suit oif plate by yourself, it's a lot easier to have your squire strap it on for you). For travel, even in wartime, the knight usually wore some sort of lighter -- and more penetrable -- armor. If you can attack your enemy when he doesn't expect it, you have an enormous advantage. the reserve is also true. And if the enemy knows you have a habit of slitting the throats of unconscious foes, they might just do the same to you. If you're helpless, and someone does something obviously fatal to you, it doesn;'t matter how much STUN or BODY you have left -- you're dead.

This is going to sound like a very off-the-wall question, but what sorts of martial arts can a halfling learn? I know Tolkien hobbits scorned martial pursuits, but halflings in the campaign world I am imagining are more involved in the world and do not foolishly scorn the need for self-defense. However, what can bodies that small be trained to do in the way of disdging physical attacks, striking opponents (I doubt they can be trained to leap very high or far, so flying kicks are right out!) or using melee weapons?

I got my FLGS' last copy I got my FLGS' last copy myself. I'm kind fo worried about how long it may take them to get more. FH is evidently a hugely popular book.

I wouldn't want to put these in the hands of starting PCs, but how does one go about desinging a really massive spell within the confines of FH? In the past, I ocne started a thread about building a spell designed to skill a dragon with one shot. What if this spell also did massive collateral damage? Likewise, in the 4th edition version of Fantasy Hero, there was a section about genres in which lone wizards can take on an army and win. Do that he would need a truly massive spell -- something that would destory a large enough chunk of the army with one shot that the rest would break ranks and flee rather than face it again. They don't have to know that it was a one-shot spell that the wizard will never be able to cast again.... Likewise I can imagine building a spell that does massive damage, enough to destory a God, but has such devastating Side Effects that it can only be cast as a very last resort. An example would be a spell that ages the caster fifty years, causes massive collateral damage on an almost unimaginable scale, or even causes the entire world to explode if miscast. Finally, what kind of spells do Gods cast themselves?

What a massive, crunchy book What amsssive book "Fantasy HERO" is. Just skimming through ti took me half an hour. I haven't even tried doing anything crunchy with it -- that could take hours. I know that Hero has plans to release settings books next, but there are sopme things I could use like a whole boatload of packaged spells and magic items to make it easier to create characters that use them.

What is the URL to rejoin the Hero System e-mail mailing list, and are there other Hero-based mailing lists with more specific focuses (like Star HERO, Fantasy HERO, or so forth?)

I wouldn't be so sure about that In the episode I've seen her siblings mainly tried to keep her out of harm's way, so it's kind of hard to tell from what I've seen what her capabilities are.But she isn't particularly gloomy (she enjoys good food and drink, for example, and complains loudly when she doesn't get it) or apathetic (she is bound and determined NOT to destroy the world, but at the same time euqally determined to live for those who care about her). All the while, aside from her two adopted siblings, everyone else treats her in the curelest way imaginable. The episode I saw was obviously not the first time she has ben told things like "Your very existence is a sin!" and "You are poison to this world!" by people determined to snuff out her life (the only way they can see to prevent the prophecy from coming true). She must have a few dice of Luck to have survived infancy (her real, royal parents abandoned her to her fate so quickly they didn't even bother to name her) and growing up.

How would you model a character who is the subject of a terrible prophecy, and consequently is being hunted down by almost everybody on the planet? The new swords-and-sorcery anime Scrapped Princess features as its heroine the young girl who is, according to almost eveeryone, destined to destroy the world on her sixteenth birthday. Everyone knows about the prophecy, and ALMOST everyone wants to kill her because of it. Her only protectors are her two adopted siblings (her royal parents abandoned her to her fate so fast they didn;t even give her a name). She is not an evil person and does not want to see the world destoryed. Now the prohpecy does not say HOW she will destory the world, just that she will. Putting the poor girl into an almost unbearable moral dilemma that challenges her compassion, her conscience, and her very will to live. Can such a character be written up in HERO terms?

Why I came up with it Let's just say i was in an especially bad mood at that particular moment. I remember seeing issues of Tiger-Man posted on my high school library wall, but never reads the comic. I have no idea who published it and somehow it didn't strike me as being reading-worthy to any particular degree.

How difficult is it to Mind Control someone into killing themselves or doing something equally self-destructive (like carrying a bomb or a deadly plague onto a subway train for you)? This would be a truly nasty ability for a villain of terroristic or sadistic bent. I also wonder how you can build a device (Focus) to the effect of "Look into this gem and you will be automatically compelled to kill yourself immediately". This could also make for a villain so foridable that he cannot be defeated -- he can literally kill anyone he wants to with full legal impunity, and any superhero who attempted to stop him would be dispatched with their own powers!

I'm not going to tell you. So there. PLUH! (The sound of a man sticking out his tounge....)

Has anyone ever run a fantasy campaign in which none of the PCs can use magic? Maybe magic is a closely-guarded secret that none of the PCs got in on. Maybe magic is forbidden or inherently corrupting, and only villains use it. IN any event, how does that change the game?