Orion

Re: Cool Guns for your Games

Other than the barrel configurations' date=' what is the difference/what are the differences between over-and-under shotguns, and side-by-side shotguns?[/quote']

 

From having used both, I'd say there is no notable difference. I've been told by several people that side-by-side are far more popular in Europe, where that is considered the high-end shotgun type. In the US, the over-and-under is the high-end.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

I'm dern sure the aircraft are Hawker Hurricanes. The canopies aren't far enough forward for Airacobras' date=' and Airacobras had a tricycle landing gear (hence, no tail wheel). Certain that neither ever served in the Aleutians but, interestingly, both types were lend-leased to the Soviets.[/quote']

 

From September to November 1942 pilots of the 57th Fighter Squadron flew P-39s and P-38s from an airfield built on land bulldozed into Kuluk Bay on the barren island of Adak in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. They attacked the Japanese forces which had invaded Attu and Kiska islands in the Aleutians in June 1942. The factor that claimed the most lives was not the Japanese but the weather. The low clouds' date=' heavy mist and fog, driving rain, snow, and high winds made flying dangerous and lives miserable. The 57th remained in Alaska until November 1942, then returned to the United States.[/quote']

 

It's one of the rare times my memory was correct - they did have P-39 in the Aleutians. Too bad I didn't even think to check the landing gear. I saw a caribou, a plane, and just assumed the rest.

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Is that a still from a new indie retro-period atomic horror movie?

 

Nazi scientists in a secret base were tinkering in things that were in the realm of God; They soon learned the folly of using an elk as a test subject...

 

I've watched worse.

A possible explanation is that the animal in the foreground is a caribou, not an elk, and the planes look somewhat like P-39 Airacobras, which were known as Caribou in the British service. I think it likely that the photo was a Photoshop or some other sort of manipulation, but they could have appeared together in the Aleutian campaign in WWII.

Re: Making Magic seem distinct.

I have done something along these lines....

Divine spells have only one way to do them in general. To get the desired effect, the ritual must be followed exactly. Maybe someone else has a different ritual, but for it to work for you, this ritual must be used. If it isn't midnight, or you don't have the sacred brazier, or the sacrificial virgin isn't really a virgin, it won't work, and there is no way this can be changed. There is a limited number of possible rituals, and these are highly dependent on the deity worshiped, so the player doesn't have a lot of choices. However, they get access to all of them from the start, and the power level of the effect is independent of the characters skill/priesthood position/character points. Minor requests have a great chance of being answered, powerful requests just a low percentage. They do the ritual, and if they succeed, then some effect is granted. Just what the deity chooses to grant is not up to them. How close the result is to what they requested could depend on how much it would advance the deity's goals, how much favor the character has with the deity, how many times he's bugged the deity recently, or even the mood of the deity at that moment. This can be implemented as a random table with modifiers for those that want hard and fast rules, or as GM's preference for those favoring a storytelling approach. For additional fun, rule that every request costs the character something, whether they succeed or not, and the more powerful effects are likely to result in more powerful costs. If there are demi-gods, saints, and other servitors of the deity, they may be easier or harder to approach, may be less or more likely to answer the call, and answer it at different levels of power.

Magic spells can do anything. They are built like powers, but learned like skills. Every one has an activation roll, and being good at one does not mean you are good at others. Stuff like gestures, incantations, spell components, the right time and place, etc., all make it easier to succeed at the spell, but none are required. As an apprentice, you need every bit of help you can get, but as a master, you just think it, and it happens without fail. Mechanically, this means every spell has a large number of potential advantages and limitations that must be chosen by the character before it is cast. Have the most common ones pre-built to save time, and have it a group agreement that 95% of the time one of the pre-built versions are used. Maybe give a extra penalty to using an unbuilt version to model not being used to doing it that way. If the spell succeeds, the result is exactly what the characters expects. If it fails, Bad Things may or may not happen, depending on the campaign magic rules.

Re: World War Two Campaign

1) The Axis powers have a military advantage. In real life, once the US got on a war footing and got its industry involved, it was only a matter of time. The Axis simply didn't have the production capacity to match up. In the game, that's not the case. The Allies will probably lose unless the supers can get in there and smash some military equipment.

Or just play the Axis leadership as being reasonably intelligent. The German could have been much tougher if they had a better understanding of just how many planes and pilots they'd need. Same thing for the Japanese. If the Japanese had trained them like we did, rather than considering aviators as a small, but elite force, it would have taken us much longer to finally defeat them. What if Germany had not invaded Russia? Just think how much harder that would have made the war.

Re: Fantasy worlds you had to "rework" years later once you've grown up and knew bett

I constantly rework my worlds. Granted' date=' I spend more time doing that than I do running them, so there's less sentimental value that way.[/quote']

 

This is me. I've only created two settings, one for fantasy, and one for supers. Both are works in progress that will never end. For what they are, they are pretty good. It helps that I was in college when I started the supers setting, but have developed most of it in the last 5 years. There was no supers settings when I started, so I was forced to create it. Given my play style, there's no way a published setting, or a comic book series, could ever done the job without extensive rewrites. It resembles a lot of others because I've "borrowed" so much material, but that also let me pick and choose just what I liked.

 

The fantasy setting was only started a year ago, and most of the work has actually been done over the last 3-4 months. As many did, I started out not knowing that D&D dungeon crawls could be connected, or that you could reuse a character from one session to the next. I got World of Greyhawk, but never used it, because I found Harn very early on, and immediately knew I was home. Harn was so good all I did was develop a small corner of it, although that has been significantly developed. Recently though I wanted something different as an exercise in creativity, so I've started my own stuff. Late bronze or early iron age is the feel I'm going for, though with reasonable amounts of magic. It started out as something for D&D-playing friends that mostly ignore the setting, but I'm enjoying it too much to stop, and eventually it'll be quite detailed.

 

For Battletech, Traveller, and Shadowrun, I pretty much just choice a point in the official timeline and run with the standard setting.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

Just a point but most police forces don't run a shoot to kill policy so why should heroes kill ?

And as most of us game heroes in the Western world our heroes per se will not kill. Spiderman and Batman are the norm and closer to what a police officer might do, apprehend and bring in a suspect as opposed to the Wolverine and Punisher schools where they can and do kill.

Most police officers are busy giving traffic tickets and answering domestic dispute and noisy neighbor complaints. If they answer a call and someone starts shooting at them, there is a very good chance that someone will shoot back. But, this happens rarely enough that most go their entire career without shooting their gun, and many never even have to draw it out of the holster. Now look at many comics, and every single superhero scenario I've ever played in. In these, if the characters respond, they will be shot at. Pistols, lasers, blasters, thrown cars - something deadly will come their way every single time. And using normal reaction rules, this means they will respond with equivalent force every single time.

A cop may shoot at a suspect once in a career. A super does something as deadly every week.

Re: Wealth and Super Heroes

Although many super heroes have been defined as wealthy (Batman and Iron Man) and that wealth was used to explain those characters' access to high tech' date=' is spending CP or XP on wealth necessary in a supers genre? Most any device a hero wishes to use on a regular basis has to be bought with CP or XP and not with in game wealth. He isn't helped by wealth. Likewise, a hero defined as impoverished is not restricted from using his CP or XP from obtaining items he would not otherwise afford. This makes wealth or poverty to be more of a special affect than either an advantage or disadvantage. It seems to me that either wealth and poverty mechanics should be eliminated from supers campaign or reduced in price, and I am thinking of either removing it halving its cost or payment. How do other GMs handle and use wealth in their campaigns?[/quote']

 

I approach gaming from a story and setting viewpoint, not a rules viewpoint. Thus, if they have money, they can buy anything that is available. If they are broke, they can't buy anything. Broke, but want a new suit of armor? Better hope that some villainous organization has a battle nearby so you can loot the bodies before the police arrive. Need a new ray gun? Buy the GM an extra large pepperoni pizza and he might work it into the next storyline. I don't even bother giving out XP in any game system. If the players want to change their characters, and I think it a reasonable change, it gets worked into the storyline.

 

As a player, if you told me the character's wealth couldn't help him out, my first question would be why even have a character background? If I have to ignore part or all of it, what point is there in having it?

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete

If you don't mins me asking' date=' why the name change to Naked Advantage?[/quote']

 

Naked Advantage is for when Captain Kirk loses his shirt and gains fighting skills, or when smaller bikinis mean the heroines are more bullet-proof.

 

Independent Advantage is a metagamey, character design thingy.

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete

Thank goodness. I always hated that rule.

Bah...I've thought it a great idea from the moment I heard of it. :-) But then, by definition certain mental powers like telepathy and mind control cannot work on computers and robots in my games, so the concept has always been there.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

A question for the GMs here: how often do villains in your games actually escape from prison?

I've never played in a prison escape scenario, and never designed a scenario in which a villain had done so. However, I also don't have any Stonghold-type prisons in existence, as the tech level isn't quite there yet. It's not a question of will they ever escape, but of how to even hold them long enough to convene a grand jury. It can be assumed that any not dependent on foci will escape sooner or later. Whether I ever reuse villains or not depends on whether the players want reoccurring opponents. I like the idea as a GM and a reader of good stories, but it drives me nuts as a player.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

orion sound like a DARK CHAMPIONS player

I was Dark Champions way before they ever considered making it a separate ruleset/setting/genre for Hero. My campaign style was always much closer to Dark Champions and Shadowrun than 4-color. Never Punisher/Executioner stuff, more like violent action movies. Villains killed, especially the Genocide agents, drug cartels, and terrorists. Characters were expected to have a police or military mentality, not social worker, fireman, or do-gooder. They have powers, costumes, code names, and a secret base, and most of the characters were considered heroes by the public, but killing was always an option, and even expected in certain circumstances. If Doc Destroyer or some other bad guy ever nuked Detroit, they characters would have gotten as much grief for not killing him outright as they would have for executing him after capture. In general, I prefer to not have different rules and expectations for each genre. Common equipment is always bought with cash, not points. All equipment is real - none of this indestructible stuff. No difference in superhero vs normal equipment and damage. By default, all weapons do killing damage. If killing a terrorist is acceptable, and maybe even heroic in a James Bond game, then it is okay, and maybe heroic in a game where people fly and shoot lasers from their eyes.

People saying or inferring that it isn't heroic to kill, and that players shouldn't be allowed to do it, really push a hot button of mine. What they usually mean is that it isn't the convention of the genre they prefer, or how they run their games, but they often forget to specify that. Too many times, they assume that everyone else is talking about the same thing as they are, and that isn't always the case. There is silver age, and rust age, and a whole lot of room for different styles of play in between.

As long as players and GM's know the game style there is no problem.

So very, very true. Any campaign that doesn't start off with a long discussion on expectations, playing style, accepted conventions, etc., is a fundamentally broken campaign in my opinion. It may work out, but the chances are not good in my experience.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

I'll play the Punisher any day over Batman, given the choice. Batman is just too wishy-washy on the subject of crime and punishment. At this time, I think I would turn down the opportunity to play in a bog standard silver age campaign. Between the goofy plotlines and villains, nobody ever gets hurt rules, and morals best suited for kids' educational programs, I just couldn't take it seriously.

I find I just don't give a flip what the genre conventions are, and refuse to follow the rules as established by someone else's favorite comic book. I find I also don't care whether or not the characters are described as heroic or not. Some are. Some are not. If they want to shoot the Viper agents, they can. If they want to defeat them in a game of tiddlywinks and them haul them to jail, they can do that as well.

Just because they have a cape and a power does not mean the play style has to be a certain way, and those who insist it does really bugs me. Play with whatever you enjoy, and encourage others to try it your way, of course. But if someone doesn't play your way, don't say that they must, as has been done numerous times earlier in the thread.

Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

I've never locked my doors while at home. This is both while living stateside and while living here in Japan. Indeed, a house was far more likely to blow up in an explosion or burn in a fire than be robbed in my little section of the city; in 15 years, we had 1 explosion (my house), one burning (neighbor) and no robberies.

 

And it was a rare thing for me to ever lock my car - and I had a fairly nice car (2000 Monte Carlso SS). But that was the nice thing about living in such a good place in the US.

 

La Rose.

Until I got married, I never bothered locking up when at home. Didn't matter if it was the dorm, apartment, farmhouse, or little house in a big town, they all stayed unlocked. Much of the time I didn't bother closing the back door at night - I wanted the cool breeze blowing in. Windows were left unlocked all year (how else can you break into your own house when your stupid self locked you out?). I'd lock the doors when I left the house, but removing a screen would have been trivial for anyone wanting in. And my truck? I lock it only in two conditions: 1) I got a bunch of stuff I just bought sitting on the front seat and I need to go into another big box store, 2) the wife is with me and forces me to lock an empty truck.

The wife's need to have all doors and windows locked at night or any time we are gone drives me nuts. Locking an empty farm truck in my own driveway is even worse. Caution is one thing, paranoia is another.

Re: Destruction of public property, and dealing with the aftermath

2 and 4 are suspiciously alike.

Not really, at least in the way I mean it.

Handwavium:

1. Super construction company can rebuild the Empire State Building, Sears Tower, and Statue of Liberty in 2 weeks, so it's no big deal.

2. Every single building that is damaged had been abandoned and was slated for demolition.

3. For $4.95/week, the insurance company takes care of it all with no complaints.

4. Villain, villain organization, or evil megacorp that heroes were fighting have to repair it all as part of the lawsuit they will inevitably lose.

5. People love the hero so much, or hate the villain so much, they never complain about damages.

Ignore it:

1. Damage happens. It affects the reputation of the heroes. We are too busy fighting the next battle scene to play it out. Same thing as ignoring the endless trials and such because of killing a Viper agent or injuring a villain.

2. The villain never kidnaps the hero's girlfriend, because the player isn't interested in those storylines. Player also isn't interested in playing out lawsuits and trials.

3. Character is already hated by public and hunted by authorities, so additional destruction makes no difference.

Re: Destruction of public property, and dealing with the aftermath

I've seen all four of the below, and have used the last 2 personally.

1. Run away and hide. If they can't find us, they can't make us pay.

2. Handwavium.

3. Lower power levels, so more than busting a wall down is rare.

4. Ignore it. We don't care about that part of the story, so it never comes up.

Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings

Thanks' date=' I'm probably just being naive but when I think of Vow of Chastity my mind goes first to what the person is giving up (a family, children, one of life's great joys, etc) out of dedication rather than rape or sexuality as defilement. But I see how its a topic that would have to be handled well particularly in today's climate.[/quote']

 

One does not give up children, one is blessed to not have been cursed with the little hellspawn. Your mileage may vary, of course....

 

And a vow of chastity in no way denies the person a family. While having sex can make a marriage happier (or at least more tolerable), it certainly isn't a requirement. There's probably quite a few marriages out there where one partner hasn't wanted, or perhaps hasn't received, any sex in a long time, but still has no wish to leave.

Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Selling my Champions collection!

If some reason some stuff doesn't go, try contacting Noble Knight or another web-based used game company. Having bought and sold numerous items this way in the past, I can just about guarantee they would take everything you have, regardless of condition. You may well make more money on Ebay (they give better deals for trades than for cash), but it's always a thought.

Re: Current Champions or will 4th Edition suffice?

I upgraded from v3 to the BBB back when it first came out. It's doubtful I'll ever get v5 or v6. While I've heard of good things in later versions, I've also heard of stuff that wasn't so good. More good than bad, sure, but for me it just isn't worth it. Besides, no ruleset ever goes unchanged - every campaign needs a few house rules. Just as easy to house rule v4 to get what I want as to house rule v6.

Re: Your "2012" Pet Gaming Projects

My gaming projects for 2102, in order of personal importance:

 

1. Finish off the writeup for my current Harn campaign. About 90% done with writing at this point. After that, try to find some free art on the web to include, and finish off the future timeline chart.

 

2. Finish my Galloway's Grenadiers storyline for Battletech. 10,879 words so far, and about 7,500 to go. More a history of the unit and battle synopsis than anything else - not a short story or novel. Once I have all the details worked out, I hope to try writing a short story. Unfortunately, plot is my strong point, not script. Conversation is the worst.

 

3. Start the writeup for a second Harn campaign. Whereas the first is highly detailed in a small area of one kingdom, the second will be wide-ranging, and cover major events in three kingdoms. Most of it will be from the view of a bishop or earl, not a knight or peasant.

 

4. Start writing a comprehensive historic overview of my super hero storyline. I know all these events that have happened or that I want to have happen. Not so clear on the exact order though....

Halfway though the year...how have I done?

1. Finished, and published to the web. Still adding to it, as it really is a never-ending project, but at least something is out there. For those that are interested, it can be downloaded at http://www.lythia.com/2012/04/nuem-campaign/.

2. Haven't finished the storyline, but am up to 42,000 words or so, and the end is in sight. It went from 7 years to 26, 4 mech pilots to 15 pilots plus tanks and technicians, and added in some romance and character development to all the combat arcs, among other things I hadn't originally planned. Once this outline is done, I'm going to go back and start writing actual short-story type snippets.

3. This one has stalled completely. I have a little of the background timeline down, and a general idea of how the war goes, but nothing else.

4. Not even started this yet, and unlikely to do so this year. I've done a little editing here and there, and created several new characters, but no campaign work.

5. Been spending serious mental energy lately on a Fantasy Hero campaign. One of the design goals is to bring the classic AD&D v1 feel of dungeon crawls, abandoned castles, and common levels of magic to FH. It is setting-lite, as it is being written for friends that mostly refuse to do anything but dungeon crawls and think roleplaying is a waste of time. Still, loads of roleplaying potential for those that want it. At this point it looks as if I'll have enough material to make a workable product by the end of the year. Whether I get around to writing any of that down is another matter entirely.

Re: The bystander safety trope and your game

I prefer to enforce reality as much as possible. Bystanders will run if they know what's going on, but they often do not. If the PCs are not careful, people will get hurt, and it will affect their reputation. But, I tend to create storylines in which the PC's actions are better described as SWAT or military in nature, not "heroes", and the bad guys regularly act more like terrorists or violent gangs. In any battle, the bad guys typically get the blame if something bad happens in a sort of good samaritan rule. There's always some tv station or magazine that tries to make it the PCs fault, but the public generally takes the PCs side until it is shown they are too careless.

If the players specifically request that civilian deaths be kept to a minimum, or state that they don't want to have to deal with the issue of bystander safety at all, I'll go along, but it isn't my default.

Re: Sci-fi Mech Build

I have mechs in my supers campaign, but only available to villains and alien invaders. I pretty much just write them up as a character and ignore the squishy thing driving it. While I could use the vehicle rules, it just wasn't worth it for my purposes. If PCs were to ever get them, they'd just have two character sheets - one of the mech, and another of the character when not driving.

I've considered running a Battletech campaign using Hero for all non-mech combat and any character interactions, and the Battletech rules for when mech combat occurred. It wouldn't be hard at all to move back and forth between the two.

Re: Infertile Half-Breeds?

When you knew with 100% certinty that your children would be unable to have children themself' date=' would you still set them into the world?[/quote']

 

a) Where the child comes from is of zero importance to me. For the life of me I cannot understand why people get so hung up on needing to donate the genetic material themselves. What matters is who raises the child, not who donates a cell. They can adopt a child a birth and have the same quality of family.

 

Not everyone thinks having kids is a good thing. There are people out there that would see not being able to have kids as a good thing, and thank their parents. It is just as easy to believe they would be happy with the situation as unhappy. Tolkienesque dwarves, for example, are often portrayed as never marrying or having kids, either because of cultural issues, or because of an out-of-balance sex ratio.

 

c) Personally, if I knew I had certain "bad" genes, I'd make sure I never reproduced, so that they couldn't be passed on. But as to whether my kids could have kids? That would never enter the equation.

Re: My Campaign Is Starting to Flesh Out... I Need Help!

Regarding the Divine Difference- No END limitations. They can cast spells all day long- as long as they are doing their god's work' date=' and they have to set aside time to pray, penance, perform other acts of service to their deity, etc.[/quote']

 

I tend to do the opposite, in that casting a divine spell takes huge amounts of endurance, and basically leaves the caster drained of energy and a little helpless. The in-universe explanation is that having the power of a deity run through you is extremely taxing to a mere mortal. And depending on the world, divine casters either have a small, predefined list of spells/rituals/miracles they request, or they have a single miracle skill, and each miracle must be described in general terms, after which the difficulty and chance of success is determined ad hoc. I find most players tend to prefer one or the other, but never like both, and this breaks down a lot to their gamist/narrativist breakdown.

Re: Infertile Half-Breeds?

It would raise ethical and moral questions regarding interracial breeding' date=' and as a result, only the most selfish and unscrupulous beings would consider it, IMO; [/quote']

 

 

Seriously? This is so far from what I would expect, that I can't even begin to see where you are coming from. Forget the sky not being the same color in our worlds, I don't think we are even in the same dimension.

 

 

What ethical/moral issues do you even foresee? Are you saying that there is an expectation or command that everyone has have kids and by reducing the chance of having grandkids you are somehow wrong?