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Orion

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Everything posted by Orion

  1. Re: Building a Precog Take DCV or dodge levels to give combat luck, not armor. No matter how lucky they are, the bullet/dagger/punch should hurt them the same amount if it hits. The special effect is knowing the damage is heading their way and getting out of the path, not getting tougher just before it hits. Give them Cramming, so they can study enough to get a basic skill level in something that might be useful in the next day or two. Lovecraft and other interaction skills - they always know what to say and do to impress, or at least, what not to say or do.
  2. Re: What Non-Fiction Book have you just finished? Winter World, by Bernd Heinrich. This biology prof from Univ of Vermont has written numerous books about animal physiology, among other things. This is the first I've read, but it won't be the last. Lots of interesting detail about how insects and animals survive winter. Talks about physiological adaptions such as blood chemicals, hibernation, supercooling, eating more, etc. Rather than a dry research paper style manuscript, this is more of a "walk in the woods with an expert who tells you all kinds of neat stuff about the critters you see" type of thing.
  3. Re: My Campaign Is Starting to Flesh Out... I Need Help! 1. Decide very quickly if this is to be a role-play or roll-play based campaign. I'm thinking that with the problems to commitment, it's going to have to be roll-based. Thus, put the emphasis on gaining loot and killing stuff, not character development. 2. This would be one of the few times I'd actually support the idea of a dungeon crawl campaign, as it is easy to send them out to small self-contained adventures. 3. Make all the players leave a copy of their characters with you. On days they don't show up, pull a selection of these to use as NPCs as needed, or hand out to attendees as second characters. If the scenario runs into multiple sessions, the players can use the characters on the days they show up, and you control them otherwise. 4. Consider having a couple permanent floating characters that anyone can use, especially for the players that only rarely show up. 5. Treat it like a convention game - all characters are owned by you, not the players. There can be an agreement that the character designer gets first dibs if they show up, but otherwise each character is up for grabs each night. 6. Consider letting a player run designated NPCs, or even some of the villains/monsters/bad guys for you, instead of taking a PC on a given night. This can help speed up play as it requires you to do less. For even more fun, conspire with a player ahead of time to be a villain in disguise, who will then try to betray the team at a certain point. Afterwards, that character can either be retired or reformed as needed.
  4. Re: Weberverse HERO Depends a lot on whether you go by the first book, or the last one. She gained a ridiculous amount of abilities through retconned genetic engineering in the later books, as well as all the mindreading. She started out as a good, balanced player character, but ended up as a GMs Mary Sue.
  5. Re: TUALA MORN -- Interested In More Stuff? Steve - just curious about something. Has much of this stuff been floating around in your brain for a while, just waiting to be written down? Are you going off messy notes gathered through time? Or are you just staring at the screen and letting something flow forth? I ask, because when I write, it usually has to be something I've thought over for a while. Just sitting down and deciding I'm writing today usually doesn't produce much. In fact, any day I can do 1 full page of single-spaced text is a pretty good day for me. And this is why Steve gets paid to do this, while I'd starve to death as a writer.....
  6. Re: GM Help: That Player I Want to Strangle
  7. Re: Angel (yes I know the name has already been used !)
  8. Re: Robin Hooding Superhero Crimefighters 01. Does not prevent, and may even encourage that behavior. As Opale says, it depends on how the criminals got the loot, but I would think using unknown source money, say from drugs, would be common. 02. Again, makes perfect sense to me that they would rob criminals. They would likely think, rightly or wrongly, that putting it to use in this manner would help out the people that had been wronged far more than letting lawyers argue over it in court. 03. Not only allow it, but encourage it, if for no other reason than to play up the ethics of the situation. Steal weapons from Viper, and cash from mob. And when the Soup Kitchen is investigated for having marked bills, or the charity for getting that wire transfer, it's fun for the devious GM. I have one character that was designed around this very idea - stealing from drug dealers and using it fund charities - so to me it's a normal character archetype. 04. Police code vs killing is the standard level in my campaign, and I require justification to be more reluctant than this. SWAT team code is one step higher, and is a better fit for how I would typically run a scenario. Military code is a bit higher, then casual killer. Rather than worry about a short description, I just note CvK, then detail it in the character description. 05 In my opinion, it's because most writers wanted a world more like the typical tv show, and less like the silver age heroes. Tv show cops and detectives didn't want to kill the bad guy, and don't set out to do so. But if the bad guy shoots first, no little regret or guilt was typically shown. Alternative explanation - none of the writers ever allow killing in their campaigns, and so never saw reason to use CvK in the publications. Cheers QM
  9. Re: How many of you use END outside of magic? and other questions... I used a system similar to MarcDoc when I did FH. By design, I didn't want players to worry about END for melee combat. So unless the person was a out-of-shape- old guy (like myself), they could ignore it. I wanted the feel of extended combats, and the assumption was that everyone was in good physical condition, so ignoring END was the easiest way to go. And since all the players were new to the Hero system, making it simpler was a plus. LTE wasn't actually tracked, I just played it by ear and told them when they were getting extra tired. I wouldn't use the proposed healing rules right away. Tell them you'd like to move to that system at some point after they learn the rules, but that you'll ignore it for the moment. For now, just limit them to 1 heal/day for each big hit they took. For an advanced group, I would use something like this, as I would want to impose wounds and their effects.
  10. Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games?
  11. Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore So true. My Mom did it effortlessly, and I watched many times. Same with my wife. But if I thy anything but gravy from a box, it's worthless. Either thick as Jello, or thin as water. It looks easy, but it ain't.
  12. Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games? Well, if that's what they really wanted, I'd let them. More likely, it would be just one of them wanting to save the world, and the rest helping out on occasion. Or even better, the players know they are going to save the world, but the characters have no idea just what is going on until the very end. As an example, one of the primary characters is a private investigator (minor brick type) that regularly bends the law to help his clients, but is also a borderline casual killer. He hates getting involved with metahumans, but keeps getting sucked into it. Then there is the shapeshifting spy type that will steal any item or data from almost anyone, as long as it pays well. For her, getting into combat means the mission totally failed. There is a telepath that cures mental problems and helps people that interests him, but also regularly controls/influences others, sometimes for personal gain. None of these would be interested in saving the world, but would act to save themselves, or to save someone of interest to them. So the private eye is investigating a series of kidnappings, and hires the spy to infiltrate the Evil Corporation. When a Bad Guy is caught, the telepath reads his mind to get all the info, then resets his mind so that he will continue to send them info after being let go. No one cares that he is bound to get caught eventually, and will die messily when he is caught. Things start to get personal, they form a team just to get to solve the problem, and end up preventing DEMON from summoning some elder demon or vampire horde. And then they go back to divorce cases, corporate espionage, and counseling sessions to pay the bills until the spy sees something she wasn't supposed to see and needs help.
  13. Re: Alternate Sexualities in Champions and Supers settings
  14. Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Chicken fried steak is a cultural touchstone around here. I've semi-jokingly said that any restaurant that doesn't serve it isn't worth eating at. Haven't found a Chinese place that makes it yet, but just about all the Mexican places do. We cook it regularly at the house. Wife's instructions are: beat a couple eggs and get some flour out. Dredge the steak in the eggs, then dredge through flour. Repeat on eggs and flour once more. Fry till done. Serve with cream gravy, and choice of mashed or fried taters. She might put some salt and pepper in the flour, but there's enough of that in the gravy it isn't really needed in my opinion. The gravy always has some garlic powder in it, and it is preferable that bacon grease is used as the base, not butter or veggie oil. Really good CFS uses ribeye instead of chopped steak, although my preference is venison backstrap.
  15. Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Asia - Then and Now. Next up is Classic Queen, then on to Dark Side of the Moon.
  16. Re: GM Help: That Player I Want to Strangle I agree with the "just talk to him" advice, if you think it would even work with this player. When I first started playing Orion as a character, he wanted to track down some villain organization in his spare time. GM was okay with this. I assumed it would be part of the ongoing story, and in a few sessions we'd move on them as a group. But then I kept agitating to go after them and do stuff, and the GM really wasn't interested in it, and I never got anywhere. After a couple sessions of this, the GM takes his GMPC and Mary Sues the destruction of the entire villain base so I wouldn't have any reason to keep on gathering info on them. Torgued me off at the time. I wasn't being a disruptive player, but I was disrupting his plans. Whereas I wanted to be proactive and go after my hunted, he wanted the campaign to be completely reactive in nature - hang around the mansion until someone attacks the city. We never had a document or session in which the world was laid out, playing style was discussed, or anything. If we had, it would have been easier on both of us. But if after a good talk, in which the player fully understands the type of campaign the GM is trying to run, the player continues to disrupt? Kick him out on his butt.
  17. Re: Superhero team Leader: PC or NPC? I think it was always a PC as leader, but the GM always had as many PCs in operation as the players. We didn't do much social roleplaying, and never any romantic stuff, so NPCs and DNPCs were sorta rare. Having characters (we almost always had multiple characters in play) in the group at the same point level as us gave the GM more to do during all the intra-group roleplaying we did, and could be used to give us a clue when needed. I don't think they were ever mentors or leaders though. Leaders were almost always chosen by their character and skill set. Usually it was obvious who should be leader, but if not, that just enabled more fun roleplaying as we argued with each other. If a player really wanted to be the leader, they would just bring in a character that could do it, and the players would all agree to follow them. As a GM, I would never play the leader unless the players specifically told me to do so. I do like to always provide a character, though they mostly just hover in the background and pick up the slack as needed.
  18. Re: Quantum from Dragon Magazine #111, 1986 by George MacDonald
  19. Re: Fictional Bad Guys Become Real Most would be unrecognizable to my characters. Those that were recognized, they would assume it is just a crazy in a outfit bought in a costume store. Only once the villains had proven beyond a doubt that they had all the powers of the original would they even start to question anything. Given my campaign world, they have great difficulty accepting that it was fictional characters come to life, and not just a new metahuman whose powers mimic a classic villain.
  20. Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games? My two longest running characters never had costumes, although pretty much everyone else in the campaign did. It just never made sense for them to have a costume given their background and interests, and so they normally wore jeans, sweater, leather jacket, etc. In general, I'm perfectly happy running or playing a no capes / no codename type world, as I see both as uninteresting. I don't care if they are present, but they do nothing for me. In one campaign world I am currently working on, metahumans have only been around about 10 years, and there are maybe 150 worldwide. Early on, no one used costumes or code names. The % using them has slowly increased through time, so that about half the heroes have costumes, and about 75% of the villains now. While people with powers isn't the goal, it would be very easy to implement if wanted by players. The assumed game structure will be somewhere between Buffy and Stargate, but with metahumans. Although it is a somewhat dystopic world, where business runs everything and personal freedoms are less than what we have now, that doesn't have to be a big part of the game. In the second campaign, there are no costumes or code names at all, and people with powers is the goal. Not only that, but it is assumed that every character is morally ambiguous. There is black and white in the world, but all the main characters and NPC are gray. It's not about saving the world or fighting bad guys, but using your powers (all magically based) to advance whatever your goals may be. In some cases, that is destroying demons and devils, but in others it is about money, power, or sex. Some people know there is magic in the world, but it's not widespread knowledge, and most want to keep it that way. Very open-ended, free-form, and driven by player actions. And while I love the idea of this campaign, I admit that I have never met players that could do well in it. At this point in time, I've decided that it's something for me to tinker with and maybe writer little stories about, but not use in actual play.
  21. Re: Power Skill...How Do You Use It? As a 2nd-4th edition player/GM, power skill and power tricks have never been something I have used. I still prefer the older method of "my character's power is 50 STR". That's it - one line on the sheet. If he wants to, he can hit the ground or slap his fists together and cause a shockwave, or do just about anything in the Ultimate Brick book. All of these things are free - they come with the 50 STR. Whether they are used or not depends on the character design, not whether they bought them. That said, many of the things I have heard about them appeal to me. When I do use them in the future, I'll probably use the power skill for the first couple uses. They'll get it at either reduced power, or at full power with additional limitations. Each use or practice session afterwards will remove a little of the limitations, and after a bit they are just a normal part of what the character does. So, 50 STR is still all the power they would need to buy, but it takes time to learn and master a new way of using that STR.
  22. Re: TUALA MORN -- Interested In More Stuff? Nope, I've understood just right! :-) My side project is a campaign world with cultures similar to the pre-Christian Saxons, Slavs, and Celts, as well as Egyptians, Phoenicians, and early Persians. I don't want to mimic those cultures, just borrow interesting tidbits from them as a sort of short-hand reference for the players. If you have used tidbits of these cultures in your setting, it's quite possible it's close enough that I could get away with stealing large amounts of material, rather than figuring out just what to incorporate on my own. If this campaign is ever used, it'll be for a set of friends that want their gaming light on culture and heavy on dungeons, so the cultures really are a way for me to design slight differences into the world and come up with ideas.
  23. Re: VPPs used liberally to prevent character stagnation? As I see VPPs, the normal use is to either lower the point cost of many similar powers, or to make a cleaner character sheet. They are great for some things, like mages that can cast very large numbers of spells and can modify the advantages and limitations on the fly. For most things though, I don't see a VPP as necessary. I would allow VPPs in any genre, but have never had a player ask for them. Every campaign I've been in with mages, the total number of spells was less than 20, and all were built out ahead of time. Depending on the GM, either each only cost 1-5 points, or spellcasting was a generic power that cost a set number of points for everyone, regardless of power level and number of spells. In the latter case, gaining new spells, or modifying existing ones, came about through the storyline, not from XP (gaining levels with a weapon or skill was handled much the same way). I think it comes down mainly to how many powers and skills go into the VPP. If each mage just has 10 spells, or each martial artist has 6 moves, I wouldn't bother. If every martial artist has 10 moves in each of 4 different fighting styles, then I'd just say they automatically get all martial arts moves, charge them a set point cost, and tell them the difference is in how they describe the move, not in the effect.
  24. Orion

    Man o' War

    Re: Man o' War I'm bored at work. Shouldn't be - I have way too much to do - but I just can't concentrate today. So, I took what you had written above, edited a bunch, added some, and now have a working character for Montreal in my campaign. It had just been a "unnamed psionic" so far, so having this is nice. ----- Atticus Jones, white, 5'10”, 170 lbs, 26 years old. Lives in Montreal. Father was French Canadian from northern Quebec and mother from Nova Scotia who met in college. He speaks French as first language, but is fluent in English as well. Does not want Quebec to be independent, and easily annoyed by those that do. His brother is a staunch supporter of independence, and the two fight about it regularly. He is considering moving to Ottowa or Toronto, as he thinks he would fit in much better there, but is unwilling to give up his friends in Montreal. He suspects he has psionics, but has never confirmed it, and has told no one about it. He has never met another psionic to his knowledge. Can lift about 1.5 tons, but must be physically touching the item – he cannot project force at a distance. He has briefly manifested a force field three times, but these were not conscious actions, and he hasn't been able to figure out how he did it. He uses his psychokinesis to make his punches much stronger, and this is his primary method of attack. He regularly gets visions of events happening elsewhere in the city. These are usually events happening at that time, but also gets visions of events that happen up to a week later. 90% of all visions involve some obvious crime or emergency; the remainder drive him nuts because he wonders if he missed something. He tends to see the visions as being sent to him, and that he is supposed to do something about them, rather than as random flashes of clairvoyance. He will occasionally get flashes of what other people are thinking when he touches them, but this is not under his control. While he would like to get proper training in his abilities, he is more scared of being publicly identified as a metahuman or psionic. From birth Atticus showed signs of a borderline antisocial personality and obsessive/compulsive traits. He has a difficult time emotionally relating to other people – including his brother and his parents. He started getting visions at 14, and within a year he was reacting to emergencies as he was able. He wanted to stop crimes as well, and so started training in martial arts, which quickly turned into another obsession. He has found that mixed martial arts fighting style suits him best, but also does karate, as the discipline he finds in it is helpful. On his 17th birthday he stopped a gas station robbery, and has been active fighting crime since then. When his psychokinesis appeared the next year, he quickly incorporated it into his fighting style. He slowly grew in power the for the next five years, but they haven't changed in the last three. He has withheld knowledge of his powers from his family and friends out of fear of what they would say. His college education was a desperate bid to avoid having to face a job and acting like an adult. He had no real goal and so switched majors three times. Attending logic and philosophy classes his sophomore year, he was taken with how a society can often fail to achieve justice because of its values or laws. This, he felt, was wrong. Governments may not be able to dispense justice, but someone should. There is a right and wrong and far too many slip through the laws grasp. He found his focus – both as a hero and for what degree he would pursue – law enforcement. Aware that justice was beyond his ability to dispense while on the job, he uses his resources as a cop to identify criminals he would visit as a hero. He fights crime and enforces the law in both his secret identity and as a police officer, but his higher calling is creating justice – usually done separately from enforcing the law. He obsesses on justice and agonizes over the proper methods to dispense it. He takes his true calling very seriously and strives to prevent his own personal feelings to interfere with his interpretation. He has adjusted evidence from crime scenes twice now, in order to ensure that the guilty were punished, though since then he has reprimanded himself and now sticks to the letter of the law while acting as a police officer. Because he spends so much time as Man O' War, he puts in only the minimum required amount of time at work, and some think him not devoted to the job. This is holding him back from making detective grade, something he very much wants. His fellow police officers find him too grim and serious, and he has no close friends on the force. He has a hard time interpreting emotional issues and sticks to the facts when in doubt. He does his best to be a social chameleon, though he tends to come across as a stick in the mud rather then a non-descript persona. When involved in a setting of camaraderie, he smiles a bit too much and agrees too often, all in an attempt to blend in with the other people. He’s not aware of it, but he barely passed the psychological test to become a police officer. He needs to find another outlet for himself and learn to enjoy life, but currently he only has this one aspect of his life to focus on. Man O' War fights crime because he enjoys it. He enjoys a good battle, whether it is physical or mental, and rarely backs out of a fight. It takes a lot of arguing or a decidedly superior force to make him consider exiting the battlefield. He is tenacious, pursuing his enemies and preventing escapes. He is known to use excessive force, and has developed a reputation for his brutal tactics. He doesn’t mind the fact that those who resist him occasionally end up with fractured or broken bones. He see any consequence they suffer as the result of the criminal action the did, or where about to do. The propensity of being rough on suspects has gotten him two reprimands at work, and he faces suspension if it happens again. He has yet to kill a foe - something of which he is proud – and he feels this makes him better than other vigilantes like Orion. After one of his battles was filmed by a bystander and shown on the TV news, he learned to be more cautious, and has even let a criminal go rather than chancing the encounter being seen by the public. The one tried and true method to stop him is to create havoc among the civilian, thus forcing him to rescue innocents. Atticus received the name Man O' War from a kidnap victim, who described his fight with the gang members as a Man of War amongst rowboats. He tries to do his work anonymously, and so normally wears regular street clothes when acting as Man O' War. He has a stylized black mask he got at a costume shop, as well as a ski mask, that he will wear sometimes. He has intervened in enough emergencies and been recognized that he is starting to get a reputation at work. Some of his superiors on the police force, as well as a local reporter, are starting to question why he shows up so often when off duty, but rarely when on duty. It is only matter of time before someone figures out the truth.
  25. Orion

    Man o' War

    Re: Man o' War I think that would completely depend on the campaign. In most I have played in, he would have been considered somewhat normal, if maybe a little irritating, but no more so than the code vs killing / honor code types. I think in most Dark Champions campaigns he would be considered normal. If Batman can exist on teams, I'm sure he can. Personally, I'd play him as cooperating with the other heroes because it's the only way to solve certain problems. For all the other stuff, he is assumed to be doing solo adventures in his off time. Now, he doesn't like having to be the nice guy that the group requires, so he bitches and moans a lot and tends to be somewhat of a grumpy old man. The group puts up with him because of his obvious skills and abilities, but also is driven crazy by him at times. This type of group tension would pretty much a standard in my old campaigns. Maybe have a secondary character that can be played when he is unavailable because he's off doing other stuff, or is tired of dealing with all the rules. I'd even seriously consider giving him two costumed identities - one as the solo avenger concerned only with justice, and then the white knight good guy in the group. Eventually, the group figures it out of course, which makes for a lot of fun roleplaying.
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