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Orion

HERO Member
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About Orion

  • Birthday 07/19/1966

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Lockhart, TX, USA
  • Interests
    Gaming since 1980, using Hero since 1985. Big fan of Traveller, Harn, and Battletech as well. Seldom game, but spend much time designing campaigns that are never used. I hope to complete some of them one day and release them online. My interests are in settings, characters, and stories, not in game rules. I hobby farm (goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits) in spare time, and enjoy hunting.
  • Biography
    Married, no kids, atheist, introvert. BS & MS from Texas A&M. PhD cancelled after 2.5 years due to equipment problems and decided I had enough school. Same job since 1997, but it has evolved a lot as I absorbed duties of others. Support environmental issues, socialist economics, personal rights, death penalty, and gun rights. No political party wants me, which is good, because I generally try to stay away from politics.
  • Occupation
    Wildlife Data Analyst

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  1. The source material I own (all of it rather old) indicates that while MD is rare, it is out there. No official stance on it though. In my campaign world, it is pretty rare, only having been introduced a couple years previously. There is a lot of stuff that claims to be MD that is sold to the masses, but almost none of it works any better than tinfoil hats. Basically, the only stuff that actually works is a force field generator that has some MD qualities. I want mentalists to be powerful. But, there are very few mentalists, and most don't have the ability or power to do anything really noticeable. Those that do, unless going against another mentalist, don't even have to role the dice - it is automatic. Because of the way I handle mental powers, one of the first questions for a new campaign is: do you want mental powers to be involved at all? It can be the focus, a very rare thing, or completely ignored, whichever the players prefer. I actually recommend that they choose either lots, or none at all, because of the potential danger. All in all, I find mental powers much better in a book than in a game, and generally try to exclude them.
  2. I generally prefer to play in a fictional setting where the gods are real and manifest themselves on occasion at the Thieves World level, and magic is known, but uncommon and low powered. I would be willing to run or play in a straight historic campaign, but have never met anyone else that was interested. If I were running one, I'd probably choose lesser known periods in time, such as early Babylonian or Sumerian, the Sea peoples raiding Egypt, or northern Europe a little after the Roman Empire collapsed. I'd stay away from anything later than 1200 AD. Since I prefer very detailed settings, I am more likely to pick an existing one and further detail and/or modify small section of it, rather than create my own. If doing a historic setting, or one emulating a certain time period, I keep with the various social mores and rules of that time. I don't consider the PCs to be the special snowflakes or the exceptions to the rules, and expect them to have characters that would fit into the norm. Depending on the setting, the race. religion, or sex of the character may limit opportunities. I refuse to put 21st century sensibilities into a historic setting. To me, keeping to the historic norms is part of the interest in playing within it. If someone just absolutely has to have something that doesn't fit, these days I'd just run a different campaign in which it was okay.
  3. Re: A starship as a PC for Galactic Champions As a GM, I do the following: 1) The player gets a robot character. If he wants to be able to control multiple robots, he just needs to write all of them up. I'd recommend using multi-form if the other players obsess over character points, but otherwise it's just a stack of character sheets and a gentleman's agreement that only one can be active at a time. Not really much different from playing multiple characters in different locations. 2) No character sheet for the ship at all. I would not charge any points for it at all (bases and vehicles are free in my games). A general write-up for it so that all know the capabilities, but no more than that. Whenever the ship is in use, that player gets to control it and the rest of the players advise it and/or give it orders. Sure, the ship and robots are the same mind, but that's just SFX. In play, they'd be separate characters, or even more likely, a PC robot, and an NPC ship that a designated player handles for me.
  4. Re: What Fiction Book (other than Science Fiction or Fantasy) have you recently finis One for the Money by Janet Evanovitch. There was an okay movie based on the book last year. The wife loves the series and has almost all of them. I was looking for a quick, easy read while on a business trip, and took it. Not bad. A little more comedy than I'm used to in detective genre books, but it works. Just started the second book as my default bedtime read.
  5. Re: Using the Hero System Equipment Guide I always use the equipment guides as shopping lists, and if the players want anything not on it, they can ask me to help create it. I don't think they've ever needed to go off the list. I define common equipment as anything on the genre appropriate list, and allow any character to have anything on that list, assuming they either had the money to buy it, or could come up with a reasonable excuse for acquiring it in the past.
  6. Re: Who are The Ultimates? Here's the short wiki note on the Ultimates in my campaign writeup. I've had Binder wanting to head into space for years and years. I think I got that idea from some canon sources, as it isn't something I'd normally come up with. Criminal metahumans whose stated ambition is to rule the world. Most activities seem to be organized towards gathering equipment and money needed to rule, rather than grabbing power at this time. The leader, Binder, has a secret agenda of wanting to live on the Moon and control it as a space station or colony. The other members of the group do not know about this. All members of the group are known to the public, but it has not been revealed that they have joined forces.
  7. Re: Any ideas for a character leveling system based on experience points? Rather than basing it on EXP gained, base it on combat potential. For example, in my game UNTIL categorizes all known metahumans based on three criteria: power type, threat level, and power level. Power level 1 is a competent normal with a pistol, level 5 is medium metahuman, and level 10 is cosmic/godlike. This doesn't give much credit (bumps up 1 level) to people with lots of skills since it is damage-based, but works good for how the public see them. If characters in your game typically don't gain much power, but instead just get better at using the powers, then base it on the to-hit roll. You may want to have several different level systems in place - one for combat, one for movement, one for skills, etc. Gadgetman is L2 movement, L4combat, and L10 skill, while StrongGuy is L6 movement, L8 combat, and L1 skills.
  8. Re: The Good and Bad about Marvel and DC Are DC and Marvel just printing what the fans want, or are the fans buying it because it is the only thing available? I've got boxes of stuff that I bought because it was what Marvel was selling at the time, and I wanted the complete story, but didn't like the current storyline in the least.
  9. Re: What Have You Watched Recently? The Last Airbender. Saw it on tv last night, and somewhat surprisingly, the wife left it on that channel. Only saw the first two hours, however, as we decided to hit the sack rather than watching the second part. Glad we didn't pay for it, but may get the second part on Netflix just to finish the story. 2 stars. No idea how true it is to the original material, but it didn't impress me much. It has kids as the heroes, and they act like kids much of the time. This is good, as I don't expect kids to be experienced and wise, but bad, because I have zero interest in watching kids do just about anything. And some of the big plot points seemed blatantly obvious to me - it took the heroes time to figure it out, yet should have been obvious to anyone there. If the adults are really this clueless, maybe they deserve to be taken over by an enemy nation? Decent action, good sfx, beautiful countryside, but it just didn't grab me.
  10. Re: Fins and Ray-Guns Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers just about define the genre for me. Some of the early Heinlein juvenile stuff would fit the genre, although he never really concentrated on the tech side of things.
  11. Re: Your "2013" Pet Gaming Projects This year I fully expect to: 1. Contribute to the revision of several Harn products. 2. Write at least one major manuscript for submission as a future Harn product. 3. Finish my Battletech storyline and start writing some short fiction set in it. This year I hope to: 1. Significantly revise and expand my Nuem Campaign manuscript for Harn. 2. Do some significant work on my unnamed sword and planet campaign setting. 3. Finally create a world map for my Heart of the Demon fantasy setting. 4. I've got a history, power descriptions, etc. written down for superhuman characters that have never had defined stats or power levels. I'd like to change that.
  12. Re: Looking For Input On Potential New Fantasy Product Just found this discussion....I'm leaning towards strongly wanting a complete rule book, even if that means much of the book is a duplicate of something else. When the BBB came out I was happy because it gathered all the rules into one spot, and let me carry it all easily. With the rules having gotten so large now, I'd rather go back to genre books so that everything I need is under a single cover. And I'd much prefer that it be a rule book, and nothing more. Use spells and creatures as examples of the rules, but don't include large bestiary, spell list, and magic item sections - 10 of each is plenty. Show me how to make my own, rather than locking me into running a fantasy world the way the authors do it. And don't provide any setting at all. An intro scenario that has a basic map is plenty, but don't bother with a game world. The key here is everything that is needed, and a setting, complete with monsters, spells, and artifacts isn't needed. I'll either going to be doing one-shots where a setting is ignored, creating my own world, or using a highly detailed one already purchased. In my experience, those willing to use Hero love it because they can use it to build the game they want, and not be pigeonholed into a certain subset of the genre. The last thing I want is to find 50 pages of stuff that is only relevant for a type of setting in which I have no interest. Show me how to create spells, but don't provide a spells system - that's what the flavor books are for. It was mentioned earlier that some fantasy players refuse to use book they think is aimed at superhero games. I don't have that problem, but if I think the rules are aimed at dungeon crawls or high fantasy, I'll likely never take a look at it. Make this a "Fantasy, using hero" book, not "D&D, using Hero".
  13. Re: Best Complication / Disadvantage? Here's another fun set of disadvantages for a character idea I'm still developing. Greatest American Hero is one of the inspirations, and the character is supposed to be played for laughs. I could never play the character myself, but could see the appeal for others. After the inter-dimensional invasion was beaten off, Joe returned to his home and started to rebuild. In his yard he found a discarded suit of armor one of the invaders left behind. It's beat up, and obviously damaged, but still works. Rather than do the smart thing and turn it over to the government, Joe decided to use it and become a hero. The invaders were bipedal, so the suit mostly fits, but it has great difficulty reading his brain waves and translating that into commands. On a rare occasion nothing happens, sometimes the suit gets the command completely wrong, and regularly it gets the action right, but not the level of activity. When he first starts using the suit, issuing a new command gives a 5% chance of nothing happening, 10% chance of something completely different happening, 60% chance that the command is right but has the level wrong, and 25% of getting it right. Through time the odds get more in his favor, but he never has complete control. So, lets say he wants to fire the suit's energy cannon, and the suit actually does something. There's a small chance that a random multi-power slot not currently in use is activated instead. Maybe the searchlight is activated instead, or the force shield comes up. This can be done randomly, or an effect chosen for the laughs, or to complicate whatever is happening at the time. If the cannon does fire, there's a pretty good chance that instead of the 8d6 blast he wanted, he gets a blast of a different size - roll 2d6 for the number of dice actually in the attack. As he gets better with the suit, he can bump the number of dice in the attack by one or two towards what he wanted, but it will always be more likely that he doesn't get quite what he intended. Force walls, flash attacks, distance the rocket boosters cover in a leap - all have a range of effect that is often determined by a dice roll.
  14. Re: Best Complication / Disadvantage? Unknown at this time (to him and me). Most supers in this campaign get them when a "magic storm" finds them, so I'll probably use that. He's an NPC, not a PC, so it isn't quite as important.
  15. Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... On Basilisk Station - the first of the Honor Harrington books. I think this is the third time I've read it, possibly the fourth. I love the series, although I do like the earlier books better.
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