Ghost who Walks

I suppose my point was that you don't need to go overboard on a villains powers to make them usable. Invisibility or Desolidification is all a thief type really needs. Since a GM may end up running multiple villains at a time, simpler powers is often better. Heroes are partly there to serve as an inspiration to others. Villains aren't there to inspire anyone, that is one of their strengths. The most dangerous villains is one who CAN actually inspire other villains, and organize them effectively. A lot of good stuff has been mentioned here.

Lets see, Scientists I've had appear: ~Geneticist studying mutants, and running a center for their research in New Mexico ~Metahuman Docotr who worked for PRIMUS, studying the metahumans they brouht in (who usually came in unconcious and badly beaten, for some strange reason) ~Physicist studying alternate dimensions, who creates a device to travel to them ~Roboticist who built a robotic exoskeleton to allow a group of peaceful aliens to travel to other planets. The aliens were unable to survive zero-Gravity. ~Xeno-Anthropologist alien who came to Earth to study humanity. Deciding Earth needed better leadership, he started his own Presidential Campaign. (Yes I know an Alien doesn't qualify to be President, but it was still fun) Note: I'm a fan of 1950's Scifi, were the scientists are gods.

Santa vs. Dr. Destroyer! http://www.murderme.com/murder/Dead%20Santa.jpg

WOW! This is really cool...wish I had the time to do something like it! The layout looks good (like the binary at the top) Heh...Nar-Cola...

I thought I would start this thread, since we seem to be getting a lot of people new to Hero on these boards. While many of us can remember Grond from 3rd edition, and regard hims as classic, ne players/GMs may simply see a modified "Hulk". Here are some guidelines I use: 1) Who is the Bad? A big decision to make when you start, is who is going to be the big bad? Who is going to fight your players on a regular basis? Myself, I prefer to have the players fight the minor league villains at first, while the Big villains operate in the background, usually against NPC teams. don't spend to much time developing your first master villain...the players will usually smash him quick. 2) A Little Evil goes a long way: Villains don't have to massacre entire shopping malls to be bad. Make the villainy personal. Does the Hero have a public Id? Have the villain trash his car. Do the heroes have a team vehicle? Have VIPER steal it, along with their ice chest filled with beer in the back. 3) Have NPC heroes around, who get in to trouble. The players may be the greatest heroes in the cosmos, but can they fix their car? Or do they have to go somewhere? NPC heroes can liven up the game, by providing rivals, romances, and babysitters. If the players seem to enjoy a certain NPC hero, have him get captured by the villain next week. 4) Avoid huge supervillain teams in combat. They take forever to fight...they are best done at the conclusion of a series of scenarios, leading up to them. One or two villains is often all you need...remember they will usually be prepared, while the heroes may not know the villains powers. 5) Use hunteds for Paranoia: Keep a mystery going as to who the villain may be for as long as possible. Leave clues that might point to other villains, especially ones that heroes have as hunteds. The villains who are suspected may not be involved at all... 6) A villain is usually better at his powers than the heroes. He usually has more practice with them, since he has a "looser" code of ethics. Villains in the DC universe are a good example of this. The Heroes are usually ridiculously more powerul...but are limited by morals. The villains aren't, and are usually very good with the one or two powers they have. 7) Let your villains get captured. They can always break out later. If they have friends, the friends will threaten witnesses, ruining the court case. These witnesses include the hero who captured them. 8) Truly Psychotic villains are really only fun if your players are interested in either killing them or curing them. Never have more than one or two around at once, unless you are running a very dark campaign. Try and tie a hero into the origin of the psychotic, this will may make the player feel somewhat responsible for them. (Think Batman and Twoface) 9) Master plots are meant to be foiled. Make sure you provide a way to do this. 10) Don't hesitate to alter published villains, modify comic villains, or whatever else you have to do to keep a villain entertaining. Example: Grond has four arms. A Race in the "Terran Empire" Sourcebook has 4 arms... Thats all I know, anyone else?

Not in the Fantasy genre, but in the Superheroic I have. I set the players back in time to 1453 Constantinople (Modern day Istanbul). The turks were besieging the city, and the players were sent there to recover a magical artifact, needed in the future. In history, the city falls, and the Turks overrun most of SE Europe for the next 400 years. However, if the players had stopped it, there would have been no flood of refugees into Italy that started the Reinassance... They found the object they were looking for at the last minute, and escaped. I wanted to do a big war-battle type scenario, and this was an obscure enough place/time to do it. D20 even did a scenario module about Constantinople, as I recall. For Fantasy games, Turks make a great "evil empire" to research. (No offense to the modern Turks that I know ). Tolkien base his concept of "orcs" partly on Turks. Far as I am concerned, if it advances the plot and storyline, the players can lose. Just be sure to leave hints that they may not win this one. Note: Have never set up a situation to really kill off characters, having them get beaten is usually enough for me.

Couple I have used when I run out of Ideas: 1) Superhero Vacation: Someone the players helped in the past gives them an all expense paid vacation to (fill in blank). Oppertunity to bring in some heroes from another area/city, and se the sort of villains they fight (think of the players as guest stars in someone elses comic) 2) Alien Invasion: It works, alien Invasions always work. 3) Time Warp: Players go back in time, for no apparent reason. At some point they will return to the present, but who sent them back here? 4) Superfuneral: A hero has died, and the heroes go to the funeral. Will he come back to life before his is buried? Or is this for real? 5) Superwedding: A superhero is getting married. MAke him European. Make him friends with Eurostar... 6) Car chase: Take vehicle from vehicle book. Put VIPER agent inside. Give him thermos of coffee. Have him be the wheelman in a bank robbery. Have the security guard foil the bank robbery. Have the PC's chase the vehicle for the rest of the night. Download Knightrider theme song, play it in background during episode.

Well my fellow Americans...I suppose you all heard about the chaos down in Millennium City Last night. First the "Government" spends billions of you hard earned tax dollars building that ruin of a city. Why didn't we just bulldoze it into Lake Erie when we had the chance? Why you ask? Because our fearless President, needed to carry Michigan in the next election, that's why!" So what do we build? An overpriced, overdeveloped, overbuilt "City of the Future". Are you telling me we need another city? When the government still can't keep out illegal immigrants or drug dealers? When our children can't find our country on the globe? When our babies first words are 'Meteor Man'? I tell you America...our future is bleak... ...Now let me tell you about this latest rampage downtown. It seems a bunch of criminals, led most likely by Grond, were operating out of some kind of warehouse. Nothing upsets me more than drugs...and I'll be my next tax return that's what these costumed freaks were up to. Of course they destroyed the warehouse to destroy the evidence, and several of Millennium City's finest are now in the hospital! The unidentified supervillains escaped, of course. No surprise there, not with the record PRIMUS has for failing drug tests. It amazes me...that out country needs to be defended by a bunch of doped up soldiers. I'm flashing back to Vietnam as I speak... Whoever these villains are, they left behind dozens of bodies in their wake. According to my sources...a number of these villains were slain execution style. But more than anything else, what shocks me is that one of these villains was garbed in the flag of Britain. Has our European State finally shown its true colors? Have they sent over this villain to assist Canada in the conquest of our great Republic? And why ha no one seen Prince William recently? Why are they hiding the Prince...was he injured in the battle? So far as the allegiances of the heroes...One was a black clad member of the Japanese Yakuza, another was a flying fire projector...Why doesn't the fire department lock that guy up? Come on...he projects fire! Can I walk down the street with a flamethrower? Another was some kind of half man-half wolf creature, possibly some kind of escapee from a genetics lab...or a mental asylum. Another flier, this one claiming to possess telekinetic powers. I hope our law enforcement will be able to deal with this miscreant...after all, he can bend spoons! As for their leader, the mysterious Grond, I only ask that he has sunk pretty low to lead this riffraff. Spoonbender, The Arsonist, Puppychow, the Cannuck, and the extra from Highlander are all on my list! I won't rest until my listeners have found these villains, and brought them to justice! My personal war against Grond will continue, until one of is dead! Before we take the next commercial break, I want all my listeners to here that my latest book is out, 'How I survived 63 seconds in a headlock by Grond'. Not only do I recount that nationally known incident, but I also detail facinating bits of information about Grond. Act now, as the bookstores won't be able to keep this in stock for now! ~Jack Colby, Radio Personality

I'm pathetic in that this is a Champions/Hero system rule I am not using. If I was playing Dark Champions, I would probably use it. I should point out that most characters I do, including villains, have lots of knowledge skills. While I understand completely what Farkling is talking about, I don't think a general skill roll should be used to determine a superheroes job performance in his secret ID. This should either be done by RP (if there is time), or just ignored completely. As a side note, I don't use AK's either. They always seemed a bit too much like the 1960's Batman TV show...

I'm pathetic. I don't even use professional skills. Never really saw much point in them in a Superhero game. In another genre, its different. In the old Danget International, they made sense (because you were a spy and went undercover). In most champions games, they don't. Dor some Examples: ~Clark Kent sucked as a reporter. ~Spiderman's newspaper photos were always out of focus. ~Tony Stark never went to a single business meeting that I ever saw. None of these bought P.S.: their Occupation/Secret ID. They probably used that <8 you get as an everyman to get: P.S. Superhero <8

(31) VIPER Youth: The private school where all the VIPER people send their kids is experiencing a funding shortage, due to the efforts of the heroes. What did they think the money from that robbery was going to be used for? VIPER Agent #14 has a kid who needs a new backpack! Fearing their school may go bankrupt, and they will be forced to go to public school, the kids take all the training equipment (The tank, the tunneling machine, the jet fighter, etc...) and embark upon a crime spree...sending all their profits to the school, so the roof can get fixed. Unknown to any except the VIPER command, is the school performs a very important purpose. Many of the supervillains VIPER employs have kids that go there, as a method to make sure they don't leave VIPER. By the time the Heroes track down the culprits of the crime wave, some people from VIPER central should show up also. And what do the heroes do when they find out the villains aren't old enough to shave?

Genre Convention #8 Few people will think the hero is dressed strangely. The will not call the police as soon as they see him. They will however, always call the police if the villain is seen, no matter what he wears.

Well, when I do an alien race, I try and do at least a few examples of them. A few sample members of each race would be nice, to give a feel for them. I would also like more races added that are lower in technology. Our own world does not have iniform technology (as Afghanistan, Haiti, Mozambique, and Singapore demonstrate). Why should the universe? Some races may join these interstellar empires simply because the empire promises to restict technology importation (which will probably keep whatever power structure is in place on the planet in power.) Some more information about the governments would also be nice. Is anyone allied to each other? If so, why?

Confederate Superheroes: 1) Dueling Duck (Expatriate Russian Telepath) 2) Dancing Duck (Telepath, daughter of Dueling Duck) 3) Captain Stars and Bars (Wolverine like regerator/Captain Americ type. From the swamps of Florida, unable to be understood by anyone north of Virginia) 4) Rebelette http://www.rebelette.com/ Rebelette's homepage 5) Robert Johnson Andrews (Brick with around 80 strength, immortal who fought in the civil war, helped win the battle of Gettysburg: reason why history changed) 6. The Fightin' Cherokee: (Brick, strongest man on Earth) 7. The Flyin' Cherokee (Cousin of the Fightin' Cherokee, she can fly into orbit) 8. Rebel Yell (Original GURPS Supers): Mississippian with sonic powers, drives around in a dodge car and dispenses Justice...Southron style. Notes: 1) Together, their team name was the "Southern Knights", a homage to a 1980's comic book that ran about 50 issues. (at one point they had a crossover with the champions comic book). 2) The Cherokee Nation and the Indian territory(Oklahoma today) sided with the Confederacy during the Civil war. 3) Most of the Confederate Heroes hung out in aTlanta, which was like the Northern New York (so far as heroes were concerned.) 4) There were big cultural differences between the heroes. The Confederate Heroes stood for personal honor, family, and the Almighty Bible. They helped people through varios social programs, churches, disaster relief, and acting as front line symbols for the military. The Northern heroes either endorsed commercial products, or were on military "Special Op" teams. Both sides had a lot of spies and espionage against each other (Like East and West Germany, during the Cold War)

One of my PCs (teen genius Doc Smash) invented a 'dimensional conveyor'. It allowed ones conciousness to go to another dimension, where you inhabited the body of your genetic double. The doubles mind was sent back to the originals body (Yes I stold the idea from Quantum Leap) He used it to explore several worlds, running into all kinds of trouble that his doubles were involved in. Later, the rest of the players got involved when another dimension invented the exact same technology and used it to infiltrate our Dimension. The infiltrators were of course from a world where the Axis one WWII (you know how many NAzi villains HERO games has published?) Plot Complication: in addition to the PCs world, another world had discovered the same technology. This was one where the Confederacy won the Civil war, and survived to become a technological powerhouse. When several of their heroes got replaced by these Axis infiltrators, they began their own program to find who was responsible. (and of course suspected the players world) Several NPC heroes were taken over by their counterparts, and began behaving very strangely. The President himself was taken over, and the US military superheroes began plotting his assassination. Most of the PCs volunteered to transfer their conciousnesses to the other world, to stop the sinister invasion. The doubles they switched into had different lives, some had different powers. (or no powers, in a couple of cases) In the end battle, Doc Smash finds out that it was his Nazi double, 'Herr Doktor' who had invented the technology on Axis world. Herr Doktor had done it in the hope that he could get someone who would cure him from his terminal illness. (Which Doc Smash had overcome in childhood). Doc Smash managed to convince Herr Doktor of the evil that his technology was doing, and Herr doktor vowed to destroy the technology and take his own life in remorse. It will probably get another scenario at some point, alternate worlds are a lot of fun. Sourcebooks I used were GURPS Alternate Earths and Champions 3D. The nice thing about doing it this way, is it leaves behind little evidence to the general public that the invasion occured.

I once did something like this, some time ago. I was trying to adapt the birthright domain system to Harn (Where I was using the Hero system). It worked out fairly well, I used a variety of ways to simulate stuff. Most domains were bought as perks. Sources were bought as endurance batteried for spells. With 5th edition, they would probably be megascale also.

Perhaps the robbery could be at a location that has equipment Dr Death needs to animate the monster? Whenever possible, I prefer to have robberies occur where players have secret IDs...more fun that way. (Purely a coincidence, of course) I assume the teleporting villain is going to be used to get the hero away after he has been captured? If not, you are going to need a way for the robbers to escape.

Perhaps another limitation on the power pool? An activation roll perhaps, with side effects. The side effects would be that she gets some of the disadvantages (negative) from the characters whose blood she is drinking, in addition to the postive effects. The disadvantages would last as long as she kept the power they are associated with Example: Drink some of Gronds blood, and become vulnerable to fire and ego attacks.

What was interesting about Conan were a couple of things. He appeal on several levels. ~Obviously he is a big Barbarian, and really strong. ~But there is enough of a mystery about his origins, to make him a compelling character ~The world Howard created remains interesting, so much so that seven decades of authors have been able to write stories for it. That has to be a record. ~Also there is a subtext in the books. Howard was prone to fts of depression, and is probably one of the few fantasy writers who might have survived in his worlds. Barbarians always survive conflicts with civilization, but rarely profit from it.

Well if its the 1920s, he may just bribe/blackmail the police into letting his flunkies go. To bring the group back together, have the tracker runoff their own for a bit, ending up near where the final sacrifice will occur. Have the remainder of the group frolick through the adventure (a magic guy and an anti-magic guy on the same team?...OK ), getting into situations where they could have really use some one with the trackers powers. At the end, have them reunite to stop Mr. Bad. Possible subplot, Minion of Mr. Bad attempts to convince tracker to switch sides.

1) Braintrust 2) The Perseus Project (one of their goals might be to make a shield, to defend people from mental attacks) 3) Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Normals

I'm pretty pathetic. Isuually go through real estate sites, and find pictures/plans of bases from there. An ordinary boat is also good, and can be docked right next to the warehouse. http://www.luxury-realestate.com/ http://www.missilebases.com/ I've used these multiple times...

(29) HEROnet: VIPER sponsors a website about the Hero team, on a hidden server. It comes wtih unflattering pictures of the heroes in action, and a online forum. The forum is filled with polls about the heroes, rating everything from their costumes, who has the suckiest powers, to which one is "the hottest". Their combat performance on the evening news is also critiqued, in detail, bay "online experts".

I have an all-emale villain team, called the Valkyries in my campaign. They are all in powered armored suits, most of them are original, except for their leader. For that I used a rerorked Photon from the VOICE group. Counting the 6 clones of the triplets (don't ask), there are about 25 of them. They do mostly high tech mercenary jobs, I wrote them up after playing Mechwarrior for about three datys, non-stop. they have become part of the backgound: ~They have their own fanclub, women only ~They stage impromptu rallies where their supporters gather ~You can call their '976' number, and talk to one of them (actually just a computer) ~They hack hero teams websites, and post stuff about them in it. ~President Clinton bought their swimsuit calender

Nope. I don't even really allow gadget pools for PC's. Partly its a math thing, keeping track of some of the powers can really slow down game play. I've also found it hard to do scenarios around players with a VPP, because of its changeable nature. Its also easy to tell the players, that anything that has a stop sign next to it, they can't have. I don't really have that many VPP NPC's either. A few have "gadget" pools, the only "cosmic" one is for...Cosmo! (adapted from the Russian sourcebooks for 4th edition)