UltraRob

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns Isn't that how it always goes. I've just had bad experiences with GURPS pressure points skill, and characters using "Mental Paralysis" built like this in HERO. Here comes my tough villian and...oh....look there he lies unable to move....oh well....that kinda killed the big fight didn't it? In noncombat situations, this kind've power is cool for PCs to have, and villians too, but when the combat starts it can quickly become a GM nightmare unless there's some way for an NPC to defend against it, which technically there isn't other than avoiding being hit. I also notice in the source materials only Masters will try to use this stuff in combat anyways, which can be explained by them slamming all their levels into DCV to counteract the 1/2 DCV for concentration so they can still stay hard to hit. A novice just ends up being a target due to their low levels. Rob

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns Hey! I LIKE it! This one gets used a lot in the movies and stories, but I never did get around to designing a version of it for HERO. My only concern is that like the "Pressure Points" skill in GURPS (which does the same thing) it can accidently turn a game into PCs and NPCs dancing around trying to "pressure point" each other instead of using other moves because it can be a one-hit "kill". Why bother to use the sword when you can tap him for an instant takedown with no fuss or muss. I'd probably add 1/2 DCV concentration or maybe 0 DCV so that when used it's a gamble, or give it a really hard skill roll. (But even then, PCs will just bump it up if they can afford it...) Rob

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns Black River Pole Fighting The rivers of the land are filled with families of boatmen who run the ferries and barges that help to drive the land’s economy. They are the “truckers†of this land, and often whole families will live on their transport barges which they will use to navigate the rivers and canals which have been carved throughout the land. In one case, a former soldier married into a clan of boatmen and when he discovered the problems the boatmen had with pirates, he began to teach them to defend themselves using the techniques he had learned as a royal guard. These techniques were refined over time to become what is now called the Black River Style (there are other styles of Boatmen Martial Arts as well, this is simply one of them) and is based on the idea of boatmen using their dexterity and boating poles to defend themselves when set upon on the river. Note: All moves of this style are intended for use with a thick bamboo pole, sometimes iron tipped. Core Moves: WF: Boating Pole Block (Martial Block) Basic Strike (Basic Strike) Shove (Shove) Sweep (Legsweep) Poke (Fast Strike) Master Moves: Disarm (Martial Disarm) Crane Stance Block (Defensive Block) Anchored Feet (Root) Advanced Moves: Vaulting Strike (Charge) Kneecapping (Takedown) Wandering Poet Style Stickfighting Wandering Poet Style was created by a traveling scholar to defend himself from bandits and other troublemakers who saw a wandering scholar as an easy mark. But, this poet had been raised in a monastery and he quickly decided to come up with a way to improvise using the bag of scrolls he carried to defend himself. The scrolls he carried were wooden dowels with paper wrapped around them, and if the dowels were made of hardwoods they provided a good means of defense and offense for the poor traveling poet. Eventually he taught this style of defense to many other scholars like himself, and it became part of the secret society to which he belonged. Note: All moves of this style are intended to be used with one or two tightly wrapped scrolls using hardwood dowels as their cores. Core Moves: WF: Wooden Dowels/Scrolls. Block (Martial Block) Counterattack (Counterstrike) Strike (Martial Strike) Disarm (Martial Disarm) Master Moves: Rapid Attack (Fast Strike) Shattering Hit (Joint Break) Kneecapping (Takedown) Low Blow (Nerve Strike) Advanced Moves: Double Head Hit (Offensive Strike) Lover’s Leap (Flying Dodge)

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns Here's 3 to start... Martial Arts Styles/Schools Note: Unless otherwise noted, these are all substyles of Gong Fu (Kung Fu) and as such are intended for a Chinese-based setting or one which includes a broad-based martial art style similar to Gong Fu. As substyles, they are all structured based on the following concepts: • Each style as 4-6 core moves, 2-4 master moves, and 1-3 advanced moves. • In order to learn the intermediate moves, a character must first master the core moves, then master the intermediate moves in order to gain access to the advanced moves. Styles: 4 Sisters Style (Slaver Style) Developed by the 4 Sisters slave trading group of the Twin Lions Valley, this style was developed for controlling and handling slaves. Its primary focus is to disable the target and bind them while avoiding the target’s wild thrashing attacks. The Twin Lions Valley is an Amazonian society where woman are dominant and men are second class citizens, the 4 Sisters are the most ruthless of the valley’s slave trading groups who often hunt outside of the valley for better slaves from the local regions’ villages. Core Moves: Block (Defensive Block) Dodge (Martial Dodge) Throw (Defensive Throw) Disarm (Takeaway) Pin (Martial Grab) Master Moves: Incapacitate (Choke Hold) Disarming Throw (Disarming Throw) Bind (Grappling Block) Advanced Moves: Pressure Point Strike (Nerve Strike) Weapon Bind (Weapon Bind) Ring Dancer Style Ring Dancer Style was developed by a family of traveling entertainers who specialized in using metal loops for their tricks. It was eventually refined into a combat form in order to deal with bandits who would ambush the family from time to time, and taught to other similar entertainers in the villages where the families would winter together. The style is mostly based around using the rings to block and bind attacks while the practitioner uses his or her legs to attack. This defensive style is intended to be used with thin metal loops which are normally simple metal rings about 50cm in diameter, however there are some who will sharpen portions of certain rings to use in certain kinds of lethal or dismembering attacks. At the advanced level, the practitioner is skilled at using the rings to make targets trip, or knock weapons out of their hands. Core Moves: WF: Metal Rings Block (Defensive Block) Disarm (Martial Disarm) Weapon Lock (Weapon Bind) Weapon Takeaway (Takeaway) Snap Kick (Martial Strike) Sweep Kick (Legsweep) Master Moves: Ring Twist (Joint Break) Arm Pin (Grappling Block) Ring Hook (Grappling Throw) Advanced Moves: Leg Loop (Trip, Ranged) Wrist Blow (Ranged Disarm) Stunning Loop (Defensive Shot, Ranged) Final Style (Ultimate Style or Empty Hand Style) Final Style is the result of two of the land’s greatest martial artists marrying, then retreating to a secluded place where the two obsessively spent their lives practicing and refining their martial techniques to create a “perfect†style. Their creation was a fluid technique which involved making the user a master of balanced Qi who could simply do and react without thought. It can only be taught to certain people, and they must be taught almost from the time they can walk, so this “style†is extremely rare. Also, because it is so sought after, a master of Final Style will rarely reveal their true style to others because if they were to do so, they would quickly find themselves hunted by those who wish to learn from them or see final style in action. (Challenge them to endless duels.) Masters of Final Style will generally mimic other conventional moves, but a highly skilled observer (makes Analyze Style roll by better than half) will notice that there is something downright odd about the way they fight. Core Moves: 4 5pt HTH Combat Levels 4 Damage Classes Master Moves: 6-10 5pt HTH Combat Levels 6-8 Damage Classes Advanced Moves: One with the Tao (Suppress versus Martial Arts Maneuvers, target’s moves are all rendered useless) Combat Awareness (Desolidification, ½ END, Not through Solids, Requires a DEX Roll)

Re: Fantasy Hero Martial Arts Campaigns

Re: Growing love for Star Hero and Sci-Fi games. If I might add my own 2 cents, in my experience I tend to find there are 2 approaches that work best for running Sci-Fi games... 1) Find out what the players most familiar/favorite SF-setting is and just run in that setting. I know many a HERO will feel limited by this, but the sad truth is that whatever their favorite SF paradigm is (Trek, Star Wars, Andromeda, Ghost in the Shell, maybe Gundam or Aliens, whatever) is what they're going to concieve and play the game as anyways! People conceptualize things in terms what they already know, it's their nature, if you're trying to get them into Sf gaming why not accept and exploit it? It's also a lot less work for the GM! I have literally had Trek campaigns up and running from an hour or so after I first mentioned the idea to my players. No offense to Steve Long or any SF-game writers but explaining the inns and outs of amost SF settings unless the players are really SF-literate aleady can be a long and boring chore sometimes. Heck, even the TV show thing doesn't always work, I tried running a Stargate campaign and my players (who don't watch the show) played is like they were in Vietnam and the universe was out to kill them so they shot everything in sight. They weren't fans, so they didn't understand that in the SG-1 setting, most aliens are neutral leaning towards friendly and there's a certain level of romantic adventure to the setting. I got so disgusted I canned the campaign after the first major adventure. 2) I find SF games work best for me as what I call "narrow" campaigns, where there's already a preplanned story and goal from the get-go. I have never managed to get a "freebooting travellers" game to work very well with any group (might just be my style, though), but the games I planned out with a start and finish always seem to go like wildfire. (They rarely end like I planned, mind you, but that's just the nature of GMing. At least it gives the players a clear goal to build their story on and they can work it from there.) Rob

Re: Battlestar Galactica Interesting read... Sci-Fi channel isn't showing this series until January 2005, and lord knows when we Canadians will get it.... But, the people in the UK are getting it Next Week!!! (Oct 18th) Between that, and the fact they get to watch the Stargate series's straight through with no break (which means they finish before the American ones), I get really jealous of those guys sometimes... Rob

Re: Up, up and awaaayyy! On a related note, I saw on the news yesterday that NASA scientists have noticed that Astronauts immune systems aren't working as well in space. Because the people going up are in such great shape it hasn't been a problem yet, but for longer periods in space they said it might be a real problem. (ie Missions to Mars) They're not sure what's causing it, they said it might just be stress on the Astronauts themselves, but I thought it was interesting. It's those little things like this that screw up big things. Rob

Re: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Violence is a universal language, after all. In the end HERO will probably make around 80mil of so with DVD sales and second run screenings. I wonder if it will be like CTHD, a film I universally find in almost everyone's DVD collections when I visit other people's homes. As for Sky Captain, there's nothing wrong with the way it was presented, it was the bad writing and acting that killed it. The cool visuals could only take it so far, and the rest just didn't measure up. Rob

Re: Attn: Logan Darklighter...or other Golddigger fans. I gotta agree with you there, I'm actually loving a lot of the secondaries like Luan, Gar and Strype more than I do our main heros these days. Gina and her sisters are very cool, but they've kind've played themselves out and I think even Fred sees that since he's focussing more and more on the secondaries these days. It will always be Gina's book, but he's created so many cool secondary characters I'm glad he's making a point of revisiting everyone and giving them a chance to shine again. I'm glad the Lich King is back, he's one of my favorite GD villians. I can't wait til someone whacks Lord Gothwrain! Rob

Re: Hero HERO I agree with you, however looking at history his effort was borne out. He ended 5000 or so years of near-constant warfare in China and literally brought them to a new level of civilization which was beyond the West at the time. Of course, he also brought 2000 years of dynastic infighting that caused China to develop much slower than it could have (as side effect of relative peace), but overall he produced a strong monolithic country which has survived a lot longer than pretty much anything but the Roman Empire did. (And if you think this is an Oriental thing, go look up Pax Romana....) Rob

Re: Attn: Logan Darklighter...or other Golddigger fans. As noted, there are Perfect Memory books for the original Black and White comics that would probably include most of the info you're looking for. Since the start of the colour series he's been too busy with his other projects like the comic Legacy to do one. The Perfect Memories might be included in the Gold Bricks, I honestly don't know since I have the originals and never bought the Gold Bricks. In the GD setting there WERE superheros until the late 1980's/ early 1990's, even Cheetah herself was a teen superhero and the sidekick of the Pink Avenger during those glory days. However, during the 1990's almost all the superheros (with a few exceptions, like the Pink Avenger) "retired" and dropped off the radar screen. What had actually happened, however, was that they had decided as a collective that the public battles were doing more harm than good, and the "superhero" thing just wasn't working. So, with the American government's help they formed Zero Agency, an organization which doesn't exist (of course), and which is staffed by former superheros who are waging a covert war against crime and supercriminals as opposed to a more flashy public one. Basically, they're the superhero version of the Men In Black led by the former Superman of this world. If anything, the world has actually been shrinking. Originally the GD setting was this huge and miraculous place, and it generally still is, but slowly he's been spending more time going back and revisiting than adding new stuff to the setting. He's also committing the "error" of constantly starting to tie things together and explaining too much in his geek drive to explain everything in his setting logically. As a result, the setting has actually been losing scale over time because in the end it's all the result of....Well, if you want to know that one, PM me. I won't spoil it for people. Actually, I just started a GD-ish campaign last week, with the PCs being a group of adventurers working for the Archeological Royal Conservatory of Canada (ARCC) helping them deal with the pieces of ancient civilizations scattered across the world. Should be loads of fun. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I know this setting pretty well. Rob

Re: Star Wars Hero : Ready for Comment Just as a note for source materials, I recently had the chance to read the Star Wars: Republic comic that Dark Horse Comics has been putting out for a few years now. I'd ignored it because the new movies had pretty much killed my taste for Star Wars, but I have to say the Republic comics completely restored my faith in the story and setting and actually made me love the republic era stuff. For those who don't know it, Star Wars: Republic is basically a collection of stories about Jedi set during the times of the first two movies and right now well into the clone wars. Written by Timothy Truman and John Ostrander (who were the creators of a comic called Grimjack that was popular back in the 80's by First Publishing) and a few other occasional writers, the whole series is basically sets of 3-6 issue long self-contained stories with occasional running plot threads and one-shots. The art is beautiful, and those guys brought real life to the Jedi characters so carelessly tossed into Episode 2. The whole thing is around issue 68 now, and I can't recommend them highly enough, it actually made me want to run Star Wars again... Rob

Re: blowing out damage... oy! some minor designer q's I advise just talking to the player and saying "look, you're too powerful and if I put in stuff to challenge you it will be hard for the rest of the group, let's tone that attack down a little to a more reasonable level. Otherwise the first time you get unlucky the group will have a foe they might not be able to handle and you'll be out on the floor. How about we get rid of this Deadly Blow and replace it with something more reasonable, like extra Damage Classes which cost END to use to represent you exerting yourself?" Rob P.S. Arms races are a waste of GMs time, especially since ultimately he will win, and only the other members of the group will suffer since the GM focuses so much time on the "offending" player. Better to just scale him back now, despite the protests (if any) and just happily go on with your gaming lives.

Re: Post-apocalyptic fantasy Well, if someone ran a wonderful campaign that turned out to be in a post-apocalyptic setting then I think most people who played it but weren't normally into that sort of thing would suddenly go "hey, maybe there's something to this setting I didn't see before?" rather than "what? sorry, my enjoyment is ruined, I quit!". To dismiss it because of a single aspect of the game seems pretty small and petty if you're having fun otherwise. Rob

Re: Post-apocalyptic fantasy Nausicaa links: The official page... http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/manga/nausicaa.html A link to download a whole Naussica RPG someone did using the Palladium system, it's about 3mb packed with art and info: http://www.angelfire.com/ri/sentinals/Mecha_Pantheon_Presents.zip Panzer Dragoon: http://www.panzerdragoon.net/empire/index.php Rob

Re: Post-apocalyptic fantasy To me this is truely bizzare...What kind of Uber-nerd feels "cheated" when he discovers the fantasy setting he's playing in was once our world? I guess I could see some people rolling their eyes and going "that old cliche?" in these parts, but seriously, get "Damn you! Damn you all to hell!" Mad about it? That is just...sad.... On another note, I actually have been planning a campaign that is post-apocalypse in a Fantasy setting...the empire has fallen, most the people killed off in a great series of wars...and now the few survivors are just starting to trade with each other again...Lots of room for "lost" magitech and ruined cities without having to worry about them finding guns... Although, as one final note, the idea of a post-apocalyptic our world setting where civilization collapsed during (or because of) the Biotech age has always been one I kind've liked. The game(s) Panzer Dragoon, and expecially the comic Naussica of the Valley of the Wind did really cool versions of this kind of story. I always did want to try a Naussica campaign, a world of poison mushroom forrests, giant insects, Edwardian warfare, ceramic techologies and more airships than you can shake a stick at...now THAT's a fantasy world! Rob

Re: Hero HERO Since HERO's doing well, maybe we'll see another WuXia boom like followed CTHD. But I guess we'll have to see how it does this weekend to know if it's really doing well or that was just Miramax's advertising at work. On another note, MarkDoc how was House of Flying Daggers? I am really curious about that one, but I've heard mixed reviews. Rob

Re: Hero HERO

Re: Hero HERO Dauntless, I agree with what you're saying, but I think deliniating it into "traditional WuXia" and "Modern WuXia" is still a bit of a simplification. Very much like American pulp fiction, WuXia pulp fiction exploded onto the Chinese fiction market in the early part of the 20th century and continued on from there. Wang DuLu, author of CTHD was part of that early explosion, writing CTHD in the 1930's if I remember correctly, as part of the original wave of "modern" WuXia fiction writers. If we are to simplify it, I would say there is 3 major periods in WuXia Fiction that I know of... "Classicial" WuXia, which of course includes Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and the Water Margins, and other things that predate the 20th century. These are stories of trust, honor and "martial chivalry". "Traditional WuXia" stories, which would be anything written during the first half of the 20th century such as CTHD. These I suspect are closer to pulp adventure romps, kind've a cross between the old stories and modern adventure stories, as the emphasis has shifted to the fighting and to a lesser degree the cool moves. "Modern WuXia" stories which would be anything written after the 1950's which inlcude and are heavily influenced by Jin Yong's work. Here it's all about the cool supermoves and the secrety socieities, epic stories that weave history in, but are ultimately all setups for the next cool fight. Technically, there is a "Postmodern WuXia" story as well, which would start in the 1980's (maybe 1990's) and include the WuXia stories which seem to carry in them influences of American superhero comics and Japanese anime like DragonBall Z. I would put Wing-Shing Ma's Stormriders in this category with it's godlike characters. Rob

Re: Hero HERO I would comment that we should keep in mind that the term WuXia is like the term Swashbuckling, Fantasy or even Western, it's a genre and covers a lot of ground and a lot of different types of stories. HERO is a type of WuXia story, the epic tragedy as you point out, and a lot of WuXia stories do have a tragic element to them, but there are just as many which are lighthearted and adventurous romps. Better to base a game off something like The Adventures of Lu Xiaofeng or the works of Jin Yong (which can be found in SPCnet's WuXia Translations forum.) Rob

Re: Hero HERO I didn't write it until this past Spring. Although most of the reference materials have been available on the net for some time, I just started collating things earlier this year when I was planning a campaign. (Which was regarded by my players as one of my best when run, by the way. I highly recommend this genre!) I can't recommend http://www.spcnet.tv's Reading Rooms and Forum enough for source material, though. Rob

Re: Hero HERO *cough* http://www.geocities.com/rpatersonca/WuxiaHeroIndex.html *cough* Due for an update real soon, including characters and adventures. Rob

Here's history and notes for the setting of the comic "Girl Genius", which is perhaps the best clockpunk-type setting done to date... http://www.studiofoglio.com/girlgenius/secretblueprints/vol001/01.html I heard they're doing a GURPS version, but I personally think this would make a way better HERO campaign. Rob