OddHat

Re: Super Zeroes The Booze Hound. A lycanthrope who transforms into a beagle whenever he consumes alcohol. Not much good in combat, but he can track reasonably well, and can communicate with dogs. Not control them; just communicate, about as well as any dog. Cookiepuss. A cat with complete telekinetic mastery over all cookies. Not cakes or candies, but all cookies. Might actually prove sort of powerful in an odd way, except that the Cookiepuss is only a cat. She has the perspective, intelligence, insight, and planning ability of a somewhat brighter than average American short hair.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Sanctuary season 2. Such a great series fem a gamers pov. Not great writing, but all the elements you need for a superheroes-sans-costumes/urban fantasy campaign. A Very British Gangster. A look into organized crime in the UK through one Manchester gang boss in his last year of life. A reminder of why it's so very easy for young men to choose gang life, and that gangsters can seem sympathetic and charming when not robbing you or having you killed.

Re: Super Zeroes Adequate Man. He's adequate, in every area of human knowledge and performance. Plays every sport as well as an adequate but not spectacular professional player. Fights as well as a solid but not exceptional fighter, in every martial art and style. He's an adequate pollymath; a good-enough mechanic, scientist (in every field), physician, computer programmer, hacker, etc. You'd think he'd be able to do some amazing stuff by mixing the best of several styles / fields, but unfortunately he's only adequate. He'd like to join a Super Team, and might turn out to be pretty handy as support staff.

Re: Super Zeroes Cassandra. She has the amazing power to always recognize the truth when she hears, sees or reads it. She doesn't know intentional lies from honest mistakes, but she always knows if a statement is true. Unfortunately, she has no special superpowers of persuasion, and people want to believe what they want to believe, so everyone pretty much ignores her.

Re: "Normals" gaining superpowers: how would they change in terms of mentality? As so many others have said, that depends on the person, how strong the powers really are, and circumstances (including how many other people have powers and if superpowers are a secret or well known). In a game, it also depends on how you see the campaign. From my own POV, assuming "Real World with Secret Powers": 1) Unless you're already a killer, you don't change. It's not the fear of getting caught that stops the healthy people from killing, it's a mix of social conditioning and the capacity to feel empathy. Studies by the US Army suggested that only a very low percentage of recruits arived ready to kill, and even after completing basic training only a minority can be relied on to shoot to kill even when under fire. Veterans are a different story. Many men like to posture and claim that they're Stone Cold Killers Barely Held In Check. It's nonsense. 2) Most people would engage in lots of Peeping Tom stuff for a while if they could choose which layers to strip away. That stops fast if what you see really is just an X-Ray, unless you have a fetish. Naked people would stop being much of a turn on pretty quickly once you could see them whenever you liked. You might find it pretty tempting to use when playing cards. 3) Not that useful for most people. Good for avoiding people you don't like on the street, and you might use it to get into places for free and commit other victimless crimes, but you're not going to start using it to become a jewel thief or perfect killer unless you're already so inclined. 4) Saves on airline travel if it's fast enough, great for getting to work, not so good for grocery shopping. Fun. Would probably do wonders for depression, might encourage risk taking behavior, might cause you to be late more often as you over-estimate how useful flying really is in areas where you might be spotted. 5) Tons of risk taking behavior begins now that it's no longer risky. Gambling of all sorts, participation in sports where luck plays a role. Could cause interesting problems in situations like addiction, where you could argue that "luck" only looks like it's part of the process when it may be predisposition that determines how vulnerable you are.

Re: Supers vs. Military

Re: Supers vs. Military Yup. Don't want to use optional rules? Then, if you're going to use the official write ups of military hardware and environmental damage, you'll need to scale your Supers from that baseline. Of course, you'll end up with Bricks who risk accidentally splatting normal humans if they hit at anywhere near full strength, but that's not a problem if you make it clear to your players and they're willing to play along.

Re: '70s TV Supers The modern TV Darna is a real pain to stat. In one episode she picks up two tree trunks in a lumber camp, and fights with them as if they were escrima sticks. Fun, goofy CGI. They must weigh something like 1000 pounds each, and she shows no strain at all. In other episodes, she seems to have trouble breaking the grip of an ordinary thug, at least for a second or two. Insane stat flux is always part of Serial Fiction characters with multiple writers, but it gets really bad with some TV series. I'm seriously considering the STR Slot in MP answer, but I've never really liked using that.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Supers vs. Military

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? More "Wire in the Blood", just finishing season 4 now. I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Tony Hill makes for a very entertaining protagonist, brilliant and socially inept by turns. Every geek identifies with that.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Groovy! How was it?

Re: Supers vs. Military There are times when the most powerful Heroes or Villains are written as being completely immune to the most powerful conventional forces, throwing moons and planets around, and other times when a good smack on the back of the head will knock out the same characters. It's a matter of what you want in your campaigns, and what you like in your comics. Personally, in my campaigns, the military includes Super Soldiers. These aren't the most powerful Supers in the setting, but they're powerful enough. The vast majority of NPC Supers can't stand up to military forces on the battlefield, but a few of the most powerful can. Most Giant Monsters can be driven off or killed by the military, but a very small number of the most powerful are immune to anything short of a Nuke, and one or two would survive that. The PCs, depending on the campaign, might range anywhere from guys in masks who have to worry about being shot up to top end Silver Age Cosmic Heroes who can fly into the heart of the Sun and emerge unharmed. The top end Supers in top end games are meant to be more powerful than any non-Supers they might face; as a GM, I let them be.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Buffy & Angel were tricky for me. I loved the first three seasons of Buffy and really liked the second and third seasons of Angel. There were individual episodes of both series in the "bad" seasons that I thought were excellent (the Lucha & Muppet episodes of Angel are favorites, even though I strongly disliked that season). I'm not sure whether Joss had too little involvement, or if I just didn't like the choices he made as a writer.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Yup, you see similar goofiness all the time. Bodybuilding is the socially acceptable eating disorder. (Of course, while I was never a bodybuilder, part of the way I got fat was telling myself "I trained two hours today, the ice cream and pizza won't be a problem".)

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore [Nutrition Geekery] Most commercial protein shakes and supplements are not worth taking. Overpriced, manufactured with insufficient regulation and almost no oversight, and marketed to teens and twenty-somethings who won't bother to do the most minimal research. That said, you do need sufficient protein both when adding muscle and cutting fat. How much is "sufficient" is also tricky. The best studies of Olympic and professional athletes suggest it's about .8 grams per pound of body mass. Protein companies pad this number, and push ordinary weekend tranees to suck down as much protein as pro athletes. This can be a seriously bad idea, as your digestion will quickly tell you. Vegans lie in the other direction, pretending athletes can get by on the same amount of protein as sedentary hospital patients. That can lead to serious performance issues. The classic Vegan lie is "I am a professional Power Lifter, and do great on a diet of sunshine and fresh water". You don't need your protein from animal sources (though that is much easier), but if you want to keep or add muscle you do need it. You do not need less protein when trying to lose fat; your muscles still need the same amount of protein, if not somewhat more, to avoid being catabolized by your body for energy. As to how much protein you really need, that's tricky. Anywhere from .4 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day for someone doing light exercise a few times a week to the full .8 per pound per day for someone doing serious weight training. Even more if the person in question is using steroids (not that I am in any way advocating steroid use; just pointing out that it further complicates the issue). If you want to lose more muscle than fat, you generally don't want to cut your protein intake when dieting. If you do want a protein shake, I'd suggest blending nonfat greek yoghurt with water, ice, stevia, and fruit. Wheat germ also works as a nutritional booster. Bob's Red Mill Whey Protein Concentrate, or any simple whey protein concentrate (not isolate), is cheap (cheaper at a per gram of protein price than eggs or milk, generally); I use that quite a bit. No useless or actively harmful extras, just plain protein. I wouldn't drink Muscle Milk or similar crap if I could possibly avoid it; a raft of artificial ingredients and useless extras, all wrapped up in advertising talk to sell it to the easilly bullied. No one intentionally adds lead to protein powder; it's from the manufacturing process, and another reason to actually pay attention to the way the company you're buying from makes their product.[/Nutrition Geekery]

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Actually, the classic bodybuilding weight gainer shake with protein powder, ice, whole milk, wheat germ, banana, berries & peanut butter is fairly horrific from a calories point of view. You can certainly get 500+ calories into a shake like that even if you're trying to be healthy, and 1000+ calories if you're being indulgent.

Re: From Bat Bombs to Goo Guns: Crazy Military Experiments I think my favorite was Racoon Vision (I love any attempt to give people Superpowers) followed by the Alaskan Aurora Machine. If you can't find a way to work those into a game, you're not trying.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Saw The Good, The Bad & The Weird with Susano & friends. An exceptionally good Wuxia-Pulp-Western. Makes me want to run my Asian Pulp campaign.

Re: Order of the Stick Even worse. As Redcloak says to his followers, the only reason Xykon is leaving the Goblins with Azure City is that it's somewhat more entertaining and less effort than killing them all (or as many as he can before he gets bored, which is probably a considerable number). If Redcloak betrayed Xykon and failed to actually destroy the lich, he can't be sure that Xykon would stop at just killing him.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Great sheet! I was expecting the movie to be good, but I was surprised at just how good. An action film for aging boomers.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Universal Soldier: Resurrection and Taken. Reviews in the Bunny's thread. Here I'll just say, wow. If you're a middle aged man and want to imagine yourself as a total killing machine, these are great films.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Black Mask also had some cyberpunk to it; the main character and his fellow super soldiers were supposedly cyborgs. We don't really see them do much past what other Hong Kong cinematic martial artists do, though. Been a while since I watched it.