MisterFurious

Re: Afterlife based upon world geography What happens to the gods, belief structures, etc of a region that's been conquered/settled by another people? For example, pre-Christian Europe... are the Roman, Celt, Norse, etc gods still there fighting an Afterlife guerilla war against angels and saints? Or a place like Istanbul... once pagan (of some kind, I'm not sure exactly), then Eastern Orthodox Christian (again, not sure exactly), now Muslim (?). You'll get an argument from various fundamentalists, but supposedly Christianity and Islam both spring from the same Abrahamic source and yet their "core" beliefs and practices are very different... how does that affect the Afterlife of an area? Or even a place like modern day Ireland or America, which are nominally Christian, but the question being: what flavour of Christian? Between all the Catholics and Protestants and Lutherans and Born Agains and whatever else.... not to mention Jews, Wiccans, Atheists, etc etc etc... Who determines what the "dominant" religion of an area is, especially given how often such things change (historically speaking). The same could hold true for any Fantasy or Sci-Fi setting as well, of course, just using real world examples to help it along.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? just watched Machete Danny Trejo is teh shete oh yeah, there's some other peoples like Jessica Alba (mraowr), Michelle Rodriguez (drool), Jeff Fahey, some skank named Lohan, Cheech Marin, and oh yeah, some kid named DeNiro.... this could be his break out role...

Re: PCs owning slaves: Do, or Don't? I think running a game involving slavery offers a rich opportunity for storytelling and "world realisation" that most people don't really get to experience or even think about, outside of the whole "black vs. white, southern USA" thing, as mentioned above. Most people seem to accept that slavery was a fact of life in a "history book" sort of way, but have no real emotional conception to connect to, particularly "white" people. Not that I condone it of course... owning another human being (or what have you) and trading/treating that being as property is a pretty f**ked up thing... but it was an everyday fact of life for some of the so-called greatest cultures of this earth for a very long time. I remember a Dark Sun game I played in once a long time ago... our characters were all of noble class and part of a hidden conspiracy to overthrow a Sorceror-King.... and being nobles, we all owned slaves of various sorts... and we were the good guys! We didn't really roleplay the slave owning part much mind you, we were all pretty young and naive and only just starting to depart from the "typical" D*D mindset... it was more part of the flavour of the setting than anything else, but still. But seeing as how we are all products of this modern day and age, incorporating a somewhat realistic depiction of slavery into a game could be an interesting experiment for those with a mind towards such a thing. Consider a Greek or Roman or Viking setting for instance.... the characters could still be "great heroes" battling terrible monsters, enemies of the state or what have you, and yet still bring home slaves as part of their "spoils". Do you just brush that into the background? How do you reconcile the two? Do you give those slaves distinct personalities along with the rest of the NPCs? Clearly there's no problem "in character" as it's simply a cultural fact of life, but what about out of character? As a GM, I'm not sure how I'd handle this facet of life other than the usual making sure my players are able to incorporate it in a mature fashion. Frankly, it's never come up for me since the few games I've run in recent years have all been your more "typical" medieval Europe style games, where only the "Evil" nations/wizard kings/monster lords/whatever keep slaves. The "civilised" nations might oppress women or start wars or have corrupt governments, but at least we don't keep slaves!

Re: Star Wars lightsaber help Something like that is kind of what I was thinking... I'm starting to wonder, too, if maybe I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be! I just get a little confused about the whole thrown weapon thing... all I have to go off are some sample writeups in the 6e book... and they use HKA plus Ranged (I guess it's a Naked Advantage?) with 1 Recoverable Charge. I'm not really sure if Recoverable Charge would be appropriate here or not.... the examples also throw in Real Weapon... not sure if I want to do that too.... although I guess I could if I want to run it Heroic style and have lightsabers that can be damaged or lost (like what seems to happen to Anakin in the prequels all the time).

Re: LOTR thoughts I think the reason there weren't five rings is because Tolkien wasn't going for the whole odd-numbered thing... if you add them all up, you have 20 rings all told... one for each digit on hand and foot.... not that Sauron (or anyone) would actually wear them like that, although I do seem to recall it being mentioned somewhere that once one of his "gift" Rings corrupted it's recipient, Sauron would take it and keep it in his possession in order to control that person. So maybe he did intend to wear them in such fashion.

Re: Weird Animal Species for Your Games don't forget the cunning and bloodthirsty jackalope!

Re: How does your Hero relax? Off Time Activities Invincible has a small farm upstate where he raises and trains horses. With his near invulnerability he's not too worried about being stepped on or kicked, and with his superstrength he can handle the most headstrong of horses. Plus, with his superflight, getting to and from the city isn't a problem. Sometimes he just needs to get out of the public eye and away from the noise and people. Horses keep him grounded. Girl-zilla (an unfortunate media nickname that stuck), on the other hand, loves the hustle, bustle and anonymity of the big city, given that she can freak out and turn into a rampaging monster if she's not careful. She loves little cafes where she can people watch. She's been taking some photography classes and she's a sucker for Nora Roberts novels.

Re: Star Wars lightsaber help whoah, there's a lot of stuff here.... thanks for that!

Re: Star Wars lightsaber help yes, I'm using 6e rules. As for STR affecting the damage, not sure exactly how I'll handle that either... probably I'll say that it doesn't add, but I'm not sure about the whole "canon" thing either... I really only have the movies and a few vague memories of WE and WOTC roleplaying games to go on. So how exactly would you use TK to simulate a thrown lightsaber? Why wouldn't you buy the Ranged Advantage like you would with a thrown dagger or handaxe or something? And I'm still unclear how you would get the lightsaber to return to your hand...

Okay, so I'm moving back to my hometown of Omaha here shortly and it's been several years since I've been back so I've been looking around for potential gamers in the area... I see that a store there has a "D&D or Star Wars or Shadowrun" night... guess it depends on who shows up... Now, I've been wanting to run a Star Wars game using HERO rules for the longest time and my weaselly mind is thinking this might be the perfect opportunity to turn some d20 people over to the Dark Side, as it were.... I'm familiar enough with the HERO rules, I think, to manufacture Stormtroopers, Wookie templates, and so forth.... I've got a pretty good idea of how I'd handle the Force in my game... it'd be one of three things.... 1) you're a full blown Jedi Master with a VPP representing all your kick ass Force knowledge; 2) you're a Jedi Knight (or nearly so) with a Multipower (or two or three, etc) representing your training up to that point; 3) you're "Force Sensitive" with no formal training per se, in which case you'd buy whatever powers you might have individually. Okay, so the only thing that's throwing me is how to build a Lightsaber.... on it's own it would likely be a KA, possibly with Ranged if you were skilled enough to toss it around like Luke and Vader do.... so does that mean with the Ranged Advantage, it always comes back to your hand "via the Force"? I just want to make sure I'm on the right track here... any other kick ass "advanced" Jedi abilities, like Reflection and Deflection would be bought in addition to the basic, "standard" lightsaber, right? would it be possible to buy Damage Negation/Damage Reduction/Resistant Defense with the special effect of whipping your lightsaber around so fast, nobody's shot can get through(kind of like what we see all the various Jedi in the prequel movies doing)? and how would you build a lightsaber's seeming ability to "melt" through metal, like what we see Qui-Gon doing in the first prequel?

Re: Well, hello there, HERO System! (New Guy) Strongbow said: >>Though it may not matter to many, I am also really impressed with the look and feel of the HERO 6E rule books themselves. I love the blue covers, the solidity of the binding and overall construction of the books, the well-laid interiors, the highlighted subsections, and the visual breathing room inside the pages that make it less daunting than it could be with so many rules and items to follow. Add to that the thick pages that are easy to grasp and turn, a readable typeface and friendly tone to the prose, and I'm sold. (Yes, I admit that I am particular about some things, and printing is one of them. HERO 6E gets an A+ from picky Strongbow on this point.)<< just had to second that emotion... I too am particular about certain things and while "looks" certainly aren't everything, HERO production values are clearly a priority... to my mind that shows clear love and attention from everyone involved... Steve don't just make the game, he plays it! and in my experience, while HERO certainly has more potential for rules abuse, I personally haven't experienced much of that with the people I've played with. I've seen more min-max-munkin'ing from the D&D crowd. Maybe it's just that there's more D&D players or maybe I just got lucky with the people I knew.

Re: Your "2011" Pet Gaming Projects oh, awesome... thanks!

Re: Your "2011" Pet Gaming Projects I had a crazy idea for something I'm loosely calling "Guitar Hero" that I've been kicking around... the characters are a world famous, globe trotting, crime fighting rock band with "magic" instruments... maybe not magic, per se, not sure about that yet, but each is capable of creating different effects or powers or something... part of each character's unique signature, so to speak... throw in some spooky mysteries, ninjas, beautiful jewel thieving femme fatales, etc etc and away we go! I'd also kinda like to do an end of the world, Zombie Apocalypse scenario in a Fantasy setting.

Re: Steampunk Star Wars wow, what an awesome idea... it's like peanut butter and chocolate, baby!