The Nexus

Re: Black Falcon 3.5

You know it's okay to love your characters, just don't love your characters

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Wow that painting is amazing Storn. The fire is incredible. I love the goggles in the mask. If this were my commission I think I would have asked you to have the coat a little singed on the bottom, maybe still smoking.

Re: Pandorum (Huge spoilers inside)

So what's the main hook here?

 

Is it about exploring an alien planet and learning to bend it to your needs?

 

Or is it a Settlers or Civilisation resource-gathering style game where the reward is to watch your ragged band of survivors grow into a thriving settlement?

 

Do you want your players to get involved in the finer points of alien agriculture or basic architecture? Or will they be the go-to guys, running off to fetch things that the experts need to build their settlement?

This is kind of what I'm having trouble with. I'm not really smart enough to get down into the nuts and bolts of rebuilding a settlement. I don't know enough about climate and biology to make a game like that be realistic enough for players. I was thinking about more about being the go-to guys, but how do you do that plausably. Why are they the go-to guys and why that particular group? I would need to come up with some common thread as to why they are a team let alone the team.

You might also want to think about conflict amongst the remaining settlers. Some of the people stranded on the ship did some pretty horrible things to survive. And with the death of Earth alongside the loss of so many fellow settlers some survivors might go mad or develop violent/criminal tendencies.

That's a good point, definately could add some political conflits. Maybe even a Lord of the Flies situation.

Btw. Will the mutants who evolved in mountains and deserts be intelligent enough to be reasoned with? Or will they be mindless monsters?

My inital thoughts were that the mutants could be Player Character's, but there could certainly be tribes of less friendly. Maybe even making the players question whether the mutants are natives.

Re: Pandorum (Huge spoilers inside)

If I get around to it, this would probably be an online game, so let's assume I don't know my players.

My initial thoughts were it was maybe a few weeks after floating in the pods. I was thinking that the base camp was pretty safe, maybe the occasional freak escaped the ship. For a survival game I could have just left everyone on the ship . I was thinking of more of an explore game, with the occasional survival session of having to try to make it around the ship to get some tech. They need to get the "civilization" off the ground. There were all these different types of plants on the ship (and I think animal DNA) that the scientists would need.

That's not to say that there aren't dangers on the planet, but I don't want that to be the over-arching theme.

Re: New Protectors Rising! (Bay City Campaign idea)

Well on your recommendation, I found to Serve and Protect on ebay, brand new still in shrink wrap for $15.

Re: Pandorum (Huge spoilers inside)

Sounds a lot like Metamorphisis Alpha.

Maybe, I've never heard of that, but don't go by my synopsis alone. I just really got the key points I wanted to touch on, some of them aren't that important to the movie's story, and some things I glossed over are important. The movie probably plays out a lot different.

By the lack of comments, am I to assume this is a bad idea and I should abandon it.

Re: Alternative biochemistry and Supercritical liquids

Isn't water neat? Yeah that's about all I can contribute.

Last warning, if you keep reading I will spoil the whole movie, which would be a shame, because I kinda liked it.

Okay if you're still reading, I assume you've seen the movie or you don't care about spoilers, allow me to get anyone who falls the latter up to speed: Here's the deal:

In the future overpopulation is destroying the Earth. Luckily a probe we sent out found a habitable planet, even saw a plant, yay us. So things because worse on Earth so they launch this massive ship with 50k people on it. Most of the people would be in suspended animation, and flight crews of 3 people (Pilot, Engineer, Captain) would take turns running the ship they going into hyper sleep. The included the crews families too (so there were useless bodies on board too). One of the fight crews got a message that from Earth, that Earth was about to blow up, and they were the last Humans. They scanned for Earth and sure enough it was gone. One of the crew flipped out and killed the other two. He experimented on the crew a bit and went back to sleep ( a few times probably). You also learn that the crews "Feeding tubes" contained a drug that stimulated evolution so humans would adapt quickly to the new planet.

Okay so by the end of the movie the hero leans that instead of something like 80 years they were supposed to be traveling, they've been on the ship for 922 years. A lot of the crew has morphed into cannibalistic monsters (explained but instead of adapting to the planet they've adapted to the ship) . They're strong fast hard to kill. You assume they are the first humans that the psycho guy experimented on, because they breed. Other crew members have been waking up over the years and the monsters attack them. The other crew members learned to survive however they could. Most couldn't get into the weapons locker because they were keyed to the 18 or so Flight Crew members, so they were using sharpened bits of metal for weapons living in holds, etc.

The Hero also learns that the ship isn't floating through space, it has crashed landed on the planet they were going to, except it landed in water and was at the bottom of a lake/ocean. The hero cracks the hull which causes all the hyper sleep chamber to eject, and they pop up to the surface, there are 1283 survivors, roll credits... That's the end of the movie, but the beginning of the campaign.

Okay so I was thinking there could be a lot of options for character creation:

• Security Details are an obvious one
  
• Scientists brought along to help colonize
  
• Maybe 700 years ago a few got out early, and they Evolver chemical has adapted them to where ever they ended up. In one group ended up in a desert and another a mountain, they'd have different adaptations.
  
• Maybe there are natives on the planet (we know there are glow in the dark fish, seen from a window on the ship)
  
• Family member provide another option, maybe some family members were Ex-CIA or ESPionage agents
  
• Something I haven't thought of yet.
  

That's what I have so far. I'm still trying to hash out the types of adventures and the purpose of the group. I mean there could be expeditions back to the ship to retrieve the doodad, or prevent the reactor from exploding. Recon of the planet, things like that, but what would keep our team together? Would someone have taken charge and created "Mission Teams"? Do I force some kind of common thread? I don't know. Still trying to figure all that out.

Thoughts, ideas, comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Re: Cougar (6e Update)

It's neither air nor fluid-proof, wich is explicitly stated. When an KA (usual delivery form for Contact Poisons) overcomes you defenses (gets BODY trhoguh) your impermeable defenses where breached.

Thus not one of the NND's from 6E1 or 6E2 would be affected by it. Name me one NND (except for NND[impermeable Defenses/Preventing Skin Contact]) form an offocial book that is stopped by Impermeable.

I'm going to assume that you are actually reading what you're responding to and the language barrier is where the disconnect is (although each posts really tests that assumption). His whole point is that there isn't an example, that's why he thinks it's messed up.

Re: Cougar (6e Update)

to 1: He uses Martial Arts

Hence the statement:

I realize all this has been settled already, but, I'll weigh in anyway:

Re: Cougar (6e Update)

He looks really good, I like him. The only thing I question is spending 3 points on OMCV, not sure what effect that will give you with no Mental powers.

I realize all this has been settled already, but, I'll weigh in anyway:

1. Remember in 5th ed, even some animals had Martial Arts to simulate natural fighting ability.

2. There is very little in Hero labeled as "wrong". I used Damage Resistance all the time for Bullet Proof Spandex in 5th ed, especially for martial artist types.

Re: Who's Hunting You? And Why?

Enforcer's hunteds ran a gamut over the years. When he began' date=' they were "Mind and Body" a mentalist and brick duo that was inspired by professor X and the Juggernaut - Brothers. It was highschool and they generally showed up to kick his ass.[/quote']

I had a GM that used to love duo teams like this. He had Assault and Battery. Assualt had a bunch of EB's run off and END Battery fed by Battery's Transfers. Cloak and Dagger (Cloak would distract while Dagger stabbed). There were a bunch of others that are escaping me at this time. fun times.

 

Just out of curiosity what was Enforcer's powers?

Re: Who's Hunting You? And Why?

I'm always hunted by Viper, most GM's use them anyway, might as well take it. Then I'll take a hunted from the established villains of around the same point level and similar powers, Pulsar for Energy Projectors, Ogre for bricks, Cheshire Cat for martial artists etc.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

But the thing with COM is it does "put them in the same 1 thorugh 10 order" (or 6-30, or -10 to 70.. whatever your games particular scale might be...) and expects everyone to react appropriately based on that preset numeric order.

 

That seems to be at least part of the reason why people are saying they prefered COM, is it not?

No it is not, not (I never understood how to answer those types of questions ), that's where the game aspect comes in, the same with, as was mentioned before, who's smarter, or who has a stronger presence.

And I will point out, I have a friend that thinks Scarlett Johansson is ugly. Not "less attractive than starlet x" but actual ranting tirades on how we are all sick in the head for finding her attractive on any level. And he's apparently not completely alone, based on a quick Google search

 

http://blog.aerojockey.com/post/johansson

As far as the article, I'm not sure it helps your case. The guy (I am assuming it's a male) made a comment got tons of attention (negative attention), loved it, and decided to push the issue more. I would be willing to bet that he doesn't find her as un-attractive as he pretends, he just likes the attention. The reason this actually hurts your case: The pure amount of negative attention this guy got. It is obvious that the VAST majority of people disagree with his assessment.

For your friend, I would imagine the rants are more about the attention she gets for being so hot, when he doesn't see it, but I don't know your friend so obviously can't say for sure.

I myself have no love for Katie Holmes, despite her (frequently) short dark hair and generally nice figure. I don't think she's "ugly" or anything extreme like that, but I certainly don't consider her anything special either. Her lopsided smirk annoys me almost every time I see a picture of her (odd, considering my own crooked grin...).

 

I'm positive I would peg her several points lower on the COM scale than one of my former GM's (big Dawson's Creek fan).

Again, who's smarter Einstein, or Hawking? It's a game as gamers we quantify, it's not perfect we accept that.

Ah, but I didn't say that Superman or Captain America's good looks have NEVER been mentioned in the combined 1 bajillionty pages of story that have ever been printed about them.

 

That wasn't the point. I acknowledged that they were very good looking.

 

I'm asking when was it important to advance the adventure? (and I admit I could havephrased that better upon rereading my prior post...)

 

Approving looks or compliments from random Jane Doe NPC are just fun role playing moments. They don't require someone to spend points to get there if they aren't having mechanical effect.

 

Kinda like having an eye patch or a bad leg. If the eye patch doesn't screw up your aim or otherwise inhibit you, it's just part of your look, not an actual Complication. If your bum leg doesn't cause you to have 10m or Running instead of the normal 12m (or similar), it's really just something for flavor ("I'm gettin too old for this s#!+!")

 

I'm all for flavor, but I only want to pay for it if it's appropriate for the character and the type of stories I want to tell with them...

In their game no it had no effect on advancing the plot, the same way Striking Appereance would have had no effect on advancing that plot, however, a different GM may have taken it a different way.

Another example, in my Champs games I don't allow Multiform, does that mean I think we should remove Multiform as a power? Heck no, I'm sure other GM's allow its use and love it. In my games no one wastes points on Multiform because I won't let them use it, if in your games you don't use COM, don't let players waste points, but don't tell me it should go away because you don't use it (you being a generic "you", not a "you" as in Bloodstone specifically).

Re: Old Marvel Super Heroes to Champions conversion.

We used to use the Marvel game as a huge Battle Royal. We'd all pick 10 of our favorites use the big city map that came with the game and have at it. We had rules like you could only pick 1 power house (anyone that had an Unearthly was typically a powerhouse). It was a blast.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

Very simple - if it is going to have an effect in game, it should have points attached to it in game. In our games, it has often had in-game utility, so it makes no sense to give it away for free. Yes, it's impossible to quantify "who's prettier", just as it's impossible to quantify "Who's smarter" and "Who has the most willpower" - but as gamers we hang numbers on all of those.

 

cheers, Mark

This echoes my thoughts exactly, but I wanted to make a few more comments:

There have been studies that show "pretty people" have an easier life. While I agree beauty is subjective, it's not that subjective really. I mean there's a reason most people agree with People Magazine's hottest people. Now not everyone may put them in the same 1 thorugh 10 order, but I doubt there are many if any people who say that any of those people are grotesque to look at. They showed pictures of two women one considered pretty one considered, below average looks to a group of grade school children. The children immedately said that the "ugly" woman was mean and the bad "guy", while the pretty one was nice and the good "guy".

As far as "in the comics" I remember one of my favorite issues of the JLA, the first appearance of Paragon, Oliver Queen, Hal Jordan, and Clark Kent were at a resturaunt eating and the waitress commented on how lucky she was to have 3 hot guys at her table. Then in Secret Wars II when the Beyonder made himself look like Steve Rogers, he got approving looks from women. I believe it is in the source material...

Wait a minute, what am I doing here? This is not the bathroom...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Next is yet another ArtOrder blog challenge. This time, for the ultimate fighter! There was 71 entries, including this one. My concept is that this guy is such a bad ass that he can kick your ass without even seeing you. While 71 entries are a ton to wade through, there are some real gems. The link to ArtOrder is here:

 

http://theartorder.com/2011/04/11/ultimate-fighter-challenge-line-up/

 

And my entry:

 

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

Did you ever watch the show Sparticus? I watched it on Netflix but I think it was on HBO, Stars or one of those channels. I ask because there was a scene where a gladiator was blindfolded and skill killed the other one.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

That's why Comliness is bad. Because it meant different things to different people that wreaked havoc with the rules. Not because it should or shouldn't exist.

Anything can be abused, it's up the GM to prevent this. It's not an issue with the COM it's an issue with GM's not knowing how to handle it. When CSL's vs. Hit locations unbalance a game (to use a recent thread) you don't take out CSL's to fix the problem.

I keep saying this, maybe this time I'll mean it. Some like it some don't, I doubt either side will be convinced. I'm going to do my best to stop looking at this thread.

Re: Hero vs Hero. Who would win? 400 pt 6th Ed Heroes

I would also suggest that you make it characters that have been used in a game. I mean, if I made a character just to beat other characters I wouldn't waste points on Deduction. I'd probably go with a 4d6 RKA and a 4d6 HKA with tons of OCV/DCV.

Re: A Marvel-ous Suicide Squad?

...As I recall' date=' DC's Suicide Squad is 'bad guys given missions for the government in exchange for reduced sentencing' or whatever. This differs from Marvel's original concept for Freedom Force how, again?[/quote']

The reason Freedom Force was created was to use mutants to hunt mutants. Suicide Squad was to do covert missions.

 

DC's was successful?

And that

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

To help Lucius (or the palindromedary or anyone else who is confused):

First I want to address the "realism" aspect someone brought up or the "what I find attractive someone else doesn't" syndrome. We have to remember that this is a game meant to simulate an Action/Adventure setting. Think about the A-Team, did women ever find Faceman ugly? No, he got whoever he wanted whenever he wanted (with some rare exceptions). It's a staple of the genre, and that's what I used (use) COM to represent.

Second, what I like about COM is that it is simply a measure of physical beauty. It allows for the beautiful "Ice Princess/Prince" builds. First sight you can look great, but upon meeting ick... Or not depending on how shallow you are

To use Lucius' running example, there is a lot of other things that go into running, maybe the first time Williams-Darling had built up more Long Term END, or maybe she failed her EGO roll and couldn't push her running. The way I use COM is there isn't a contest, your looks don't typically change. You have the same level of attractiveness now that you will 3 minutes from now (barring some sort of disfigurement).

Finally, I use it as a measure of what someone thinks is important to their character. If someone spends 30 points on being a food critic, it's obvious to me as a GM they want this to come up in game. If someone spends 10 point on COM, it's pretty important to that player and should come up, if they only spend 1 or 2 points, it's not important, but would be nice to once in a while. I think it also help players visualize their characters.

I dunno, like I said I'm a huge fan of spending points to flavor your character.

Re: Superhuman women less attractive in 6th Edition?

If two characters want to compete about attractiveness' date=' that's what Striking Appearance is for.[/quote']

I disagree. There levels of Striking Appearance meaning everyone with 1 level will be "equal", everyone with 2 levels will be equal ect. There is far less ganularity.

 

Okay, so to determine who is better looking I pit my 11- Charm skill against your 18-. You roll 3 sixes and all of a sudden I'm better looking than you?

To determine who is stonger all you have to do is look at the STR stat. No matter what that other person does they will never be stronger. They may be able to lift more (Hoist skill), they may beat you in a fight, but they will never be stronger.

 

Yes a PS:Beauty Pageant Contestant means you know how to act in a beauty pagent, it has absolutely no baring how how attractive you are. There is nothing that does what COM did to the same degree that COM did it.

 

Now all that said, I am old, I no longer enjoy "The Great Linked Debate" type debates. I won't convince you, you like the new way. You won't convince me, I like the old way. Let's just call it a day

Re: Quantum from Dragon Magazine #111, 1986 by George MacDonald

Everything is on the internet now, no one wants to make magazines. Heck even Wizard went under.

Re: Superman 350 Points with VPP

"Does Not Work During Red Solar Radiation Exposure (-1/4)"? Does that come up that often really? Might be worth a small power drain Susc in his disads.

In one of the editions there was an example of a Werewolf character. They took a limitation on their Regen to silver and they made it 1/4 (maybe -1/2) not because silver is so common, but because everyone knows silver hurts werewolves. It might be the same kind of thing. Superman's vulnerability to red sun is so well known it gets used a lot.

Re: 6th Edition Brick

I would not go so far. It may simply be their way of playing, that makes DCV 7 useless.

 

In my target campaign nobody has a DCV weaker than 5, and nobody an OCV/DCV+CSL higher than 10.

this is all context-sensitive. What is important is the difference between your DCV and the average campaign OCV. If you're in a game where the average OCV is in double digits' date=' then having a DCV 7 is not much better than a DCV 3. (although it does let people park all their levels in DCV when attacking you)[/quote']

Right, which is why I added "(depending on campaign norms of course)". My real point was that I need to think more about what I'm doing. I typically just add things because, well I've always done that. I should really analyze why and figure out what the value versus cost of things.