Speedball

Herophiles, I am once again in need of advice. Some friends and I are looking to see if there's a way that we can game in real time despite the fact that members of the group live in 4 different states. Thus, is there software/hardware you'd recommend--either chat rooms or internet phones with the ability to have several people on the line at once--that would enable this? Please keep in mind that none of us is rich and at least one of us (ahem) is a public school teacher in NYC and is decidedly lower-middle class. Thanks in advance for whatever wisdom you can supply, Speedball

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Apex is a brick, but he's also built with a hefty 6d6 of luck. While he doesn't really rely on that luck, it has made him overconfident--hence the perpetual grin/smirk on his face that Storn's captured. He's small for a brick, though--only 5'10", so Ithink some of the superpowered community doesn't take him as seriously as they might if he were a foot taller. The pouches were Storn's addition. I think it makes sense, given the form fitting nature of the costume. I mean, where else is he going to put his house keys and spare change? He's gotta be able to play the slots on a whim--this is Vegas, after all...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. Niiiiice. You even got the smirk of overconfidence plastered on his face. Oh--and for anyone who's interested, the character is seen in a game over on Herocentral.com called "Games of Chance."

Re: Super Eyes Suggestions All good ideas, folks--thanks. Not sure the Speedreading will fly, but who knows...

Hi there Champions afficianados, I have a teen champs character who, as he grows in exp, will need a place to put him points. Currently, he has the standard EB and flash attacks as well as x-ray vision (helpful also because he's a bit of a perve). Now my GM asks players to adhere to the genre conventions, so I'm hoping that some of you folks who're more familiar with teen champs than I am could suggest a few eye-based powers I could slip into a multi-power should my GM approve such a move. Thanks folks!

Re: Character write-ups should include QUOTES Ahem. I am not a lawyer. I'm a teacher who knows a little about the law.

Re: Talk about toxic Gas! To assuage any fears or doubts, I think things are going swimmingly thusfar and I have *no* idea what the adventure is, who the mystery villain on the scene is, or what's going to happen. Wheeeee!

Re: Talk about toxic Gas! Yes--probably safer, but a whole lot less fun for me as a player! Instead, the just gets to have a plain ole knock-down drag out fight...

Re: Character write-ups should include QUOTES I always put at least one quotation on my sheet for flavor. I find it's a way for me to let the GM have a little taste of personality. By the way--it *is* quotation, not quote. Quote is a verb. Quotation is a noun. I've been trying to impress that fact on my students, to little avail thusfar.

Re: Talk about toxic Gas! If the character had any XP, I'd pull for a radiation accident-type change. Alas, no such luck. Should be interesting to see what comes of it, since the GM has ruled (fairly, IMO) that he'll need to make a CON roll, even given his LS: immunity. His chances are good (15-), and the end will be spectacular if he fails...

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help! For the sake of clarification, can you point out to the readers where it was that you issued an apology? I may have missed it, in which case *I* apologize. Please understand, I'm not interested in stirring up any hornets' nests. I think part of the continued problem is the lack of clarity in our writing. (Having spent the last 3 hours reading essays, writers' clarity is on my mind at the moment).

Re: Talk about toxic Gas! OMG--that's farging great. The only sad part is that, being the lost sole he is, he wouldn't even get the joke...

Ok, here's one for the record books, perhaps. Or the asylum. Not sure which. Here's the scenario: It's a first session with new characters. Most of the PCs are playing an established team, while mine is a newb. There's a bomb in the park that's set to go off in 4 minutes. The PCs don't know how to get rid of the VX gas that threatens to engulf the entire downtown area of Providence. My character, not knowing what the other folks can and can't do, offers to simply ingest the poison in it's gelled form. He's got the appropriate LS: immunity. So here's my question--what happens when the PC, um, digests the VX? OK, I know--gas jokes for days. But all you GM types, how would you handle this?

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help! As the original poster teaches Constitutional Law, it's particularly apt to end on this point...

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help! *sigh* As the original poster who asked for help, I'm now going to ask you folks--all of you, to just walk away from the thread. I thank all of you for any well-intentioned advice, no matter how it was perceived. In the end, we're trying to play a game here, have some fun, and not hurt anyone in the process. As for whether or not my own feelings were hurt or my sensibilities offended, well, I'll just say that I'm a New York City public high school teacher. You don't have to worry about me. I'm not the most experienced HERO Gamer on the boards, obviously, but I've been around the block and don't really really consider myself a munchkin gamer. If anything that was posted pointed to that, I hope that it was because of a misunderstanding. Now--can we get back to the fun part?

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help! Hugh-- that's a good suggestion. I've already got a mystery hunted down for him, which Hermit's promised to use/make me regret, so maybe the mystery disad will be good fodder for adventure at some point as well. Thanks!

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help!

Re: Need another 10 points in Disads--help!

Hey there folks, I'm at the tail end of creating a character for an online game over on herocentral and I'm having a tough time coming up with the last 10 points worth of disads. The character is an immortal brick, born hundred of years ago in Wales. He's got the nigh-invulnerable thing going for him, along with a bunch of LS in different categories. Here're the disads I have for him so far: Points Disadvantage Name 20 Hunted: ?? GM Fiat 10 Hunted: UNTIL (mo pow, NCI, Watched) 8- 20 Psych Lim: Code vs. Killing (Com, Tot) 20 Psych Lim: Honorable (always keeps word, never takes advantage) 10 Psych Lim: Fearlessly Heroic: risks life for innocents 15 Soc Lim: Public ID (Frequently, Major) 5 Soc Lim: Gay (Occasionally, Minor) 10 Soc Lim: Knows Little of Modern American Culture (Freq., Slightly) 10 Psych Lim: Amnesia (Common, Moderate) 10 Distinctive Features: Mutant (not Conceal, Always) Detectable only by unusual Senses. 5 Rivalry: Other Superheroic bricks (Professional, Outdo) 5 Distinctive Feature: Thick, archaic Welsh Accent (easily concealed) Big, wet, Grond-flavored kisses to anyone who can help out!

Re: Best Way to Simulate a Thrown Hammer?

Hi all, I'm bulding a brick who is modeled on the Welsh god of smiths. I'm trying to figure out how to more accurately build an attack power that approximates the effect of a thrown hammer. It's a 450-point campaign, and so far I have the following: 16d6 Energy Blast; 1 recoverable charge (-1 1/4), Range based on STR (-1/4), Restrainable (-1/2). I think that's pretty standard as far as it goes, but how do I simulate the fact that the attack can't be spread like a "normal" energy blast? I don't want to use the "beam" limitation because that comes with the caveat that the attack is always at 16d6 and that doesn't make sense, since he could vary the strength of the throw. Ideas?

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball OK--as long as people are reading, that's a step in the right direction. I know there's a lot to process...Thanks for assuaging my doubts.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball OK--as long as people are reading, that's a step in the right direction. I know there's a lot to process...Thanks for assuaging my doubts.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball 80 views and no responses. That's not good. Are the posts blindingly long, or numbingly boring?

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball Carol paused her hands at the keyboard, having been at it for hours, judging by the number of coffee cups around her desk and the notes covering her desk and the floor around it. She could hardly bring herself to write the last chapter before showing it to her editor. She thought to herself, .oO(I know he's going to hate it. It's just not the kind of stuff we publish. But I just had to get this out.) The Speedball Saga, Part VIII: Speedball—the Tragic End Joe Dellasandro, jr., whom the world knew better over the last year as Speedball, got off the Greyhound bus in the middle of a July day amidst the kind of heat that is only conceivable in the deep desert. He’d been on the bus for nearly 40 hours and he squinted in the bright light. Joe had spent the trip cradling his army knapsack and dozing against the window. Others were nearly pressed against the glass for the last 10 hours, amazed at the colors of the desert, first in the light of the rising sun and then at its full height. Joe paid no attention. Joe had only two things on his mind: Molly and TAC. He had arranged the trip as a kind of grudge match between the two, and what better place for a 15-round, knock-down, drag-out championship match than Vegas? He hadn’t seen Molly in almost two years and their last visit had not gone well. The recreational syringe of low-quality heroin they would share on weekends off had turned into a full blown three-spike-a-day habit for Joe and he had begun to deteriorate as a fellow carny, a boyfriend, and as an all-around human being. The rational part of his brain couldn’t blame her for telling him to get straight or get out, but the problem was that that part wasn’t the bit that was in control those days. Instead, his junk-brain accused her of jealousy, of infidelity, and a half-dozen other half lies to justify why the arguments they’d been having lately weren’t about his addiction, but about any—and everything else under the sun. The time Joe had spent between leaving Molly in Arkansas and finding the TAC in New York was a slow-motion, velvet-covered blur. He remembered little bits of pieces, like pinholes letting light into an otherwise dark room and that room was a ****ing disaster area. Friends dead, with needles still sticking out of their bluish arms. Shakedowns by cops, by pushers, by gangs in lower New York. With TAC, everything had changed, but nothing had gotten better. TAC somehow had combined with the heroin in his system and had made Joe able to achieve incredible speeds, running fast enough to catch speeding cars; he could vibrate his body fast enough to allow bullets to pass right through him and, finally, he found he could run up the sides of buildings. Without the burden of a heroin addiction, Joe would have been free to become the kind of hero even his dad, Joe Sr. could be proud of. As it was, Joe wasn’t just addicted to heroin now—which he could probably score in any decent-sized city—but also to TAC, which was available in exactly ONE place—an experimental lab in East Harlem. Joe had never tried to go without TAC for long enough to figure out what the withdrawal symptoms were, but sensed that they wouldn’t be pleasant. He would have his answer soon, as he was walking out of the bargain breakfast in the Sands Hotel. Joe couldn’t recall ever eating so much for so little, especially appreciating the mountain of scrambled eggs that sat now in his stomach. It was his second day in Vegas and he had managed to get most of the way down the list of potential hotels (and therefore employers) where Molly might be working. As he sweated profusely, giving off an unpleasant, sour smell, Joe wished that the Kid had been more specific when letting him in on Molly’s whereabouts: “a hotel in Vegas,†was like saying “a whorehouse in Washington.†Still, Joe felt that working through the list gave him an opportunity to rehearse for the several thousandth time what he would say when he was standing in front of Molly for the first time. If Molly was still mad, he would need every one of those rehearsals—and probably some of his speed as well. Walking down the strip, he drew out some yellow pieces of paper from his back pocket. They was pages from the phone book containing listings of hotels. He drew out a sharpie and crossed off The Sands. Enjoying the heat, but beginning to shake like it was cold, Joe half stopped, wondering if he was coming down with something or whether this is what TAC withdrawal felt like. “If this is as bad as it gets,†he thought, “I guess I can go on and off the stuff whenever I want.†It was at that moment, as Joe was wiping the sweat off his forehead as his hand trembled a bit, that Joe heard screeching tires. Looking over his shoulder, he saw an out of control bus veering from one side of the street to the other, all while going better than 50 miles per hour. On one wide, looping swerve, it took the door clean off a taxi without slowing down an iota. Shipping his head along the line of the bus’s trajectory, Joe, thinking of himself as Speedball again, say the two retirees emerging from a hotel shuttle, their plastic cups filled with quarters in their hands. Joe would need to move quickly to get them both out of the way before the bus got there, but he’d moved faster and for higher stakes. He broke into a run, sweating even more. He got in a half-dozen steps, enough to impress the others on the sidewalk both with his reaction time and his speed, just before his face froze in shock and pain. He grabbed his chest and went down. It was a massive coronary thrombosis, according to the coroner. He went quickly, without more than a half a minute of gasping breath to fuel his mind wondering how he could get so close to Molly, how he could be in time to help two old people, just to fail. He died in a heap, the list blown out of his hand, still uncompleted. Carol put her head down on her desk, exhausted. It was a story without redemption, without the kind of heroes America was used to these days, and without vindication, but that didn’t make it any less important to try and tell. Neither Joe nor Molly had made much of an impact on Las Vegas. Speedball had died within 48 hours of his arrival and Molly moved away years later, never even knowing that Joe had come looking for her. Carol lifted her head off the desk with tears making her cheeks glisten in the light thrown off by her desk lamp. Her editor would never publish it; He’d put her on desk duty just for spending a full day writing it. She put her hands on the keyboard one last time that evening, hit control-a first and then backspace. Maybe she’d try and write it again some other time.