Mtinaro

Peace at Last I will go ahead and start this reply with something of a bucket of water. I hope my last post was taken as opinion and not pure flame. John515 I can not agree with you more. I have on the boards applauded your strengths and complimented you. A number of times in fact. An opinion is just that an opinion. There are no facts to be dealt with here. I try to put forth my truest feelings on the situation. There is no reason we can not go ahead and disagree on something. I do not agree with you about the character creation system. I know that there are numerous passages in the different rule books about making sure the characters are balanced. Just because I disagree with them does not mean at the table I would not be happy with any tight reigns you put on the game. I felt you ran the game well. I think the breakdown came when things did not go as expected. I think as a GM you must be willing that you impact the world as much as the players. Every time you do something in the game you set the standard or the limit. The only time players feel betrayed is when the same limits are not observed by npcs. Our story was just that our story. I felt we could have gone in any direction from that point even if that direction was to retire the my character, the villan that tried o kill the mayor. I do not like to think of the character as a villan, but more as a disgruntled hero. In my caracters history she was part of a team that broke apart fromt the same situation(disgruntled heros, gritty types) I think that if you want to you can spend all of your points where ever you see fit, adn the game master can then focus on showing you the reason to make balanced characters. Think of it like this. The min max type character has minimums most of te times these are fighting characters. They are designed to dish out ad take the most damage. Maybe even the fastest around to boot. The only problem is that there are still attacks/defenses that ignore all of the powers. The first time the superguy hits one of these if he/she is a competent player she/he will quickly decid wht to spend exp on in the future. While other characters are becoming more adept at what they do that character will be playing catch up just to have the defense or ability to attack. This is wy I believe that points could be spent anyway needed. Of course you could regulate the world to the point that the max ep is 14d6, but try to stick to that so the players and the npcs no what to expect. Then when an exception occurs it is meaningful. I can see a min max player making a defense heavy EP character with 18d6 blast. You are correct in limiting this. That would be a balance issue if all the npcs and other players were not given the same chances. Thats where the balance comes in. The combat is epic anyway. I do appreciate all of the work you put in to the game. We had no intention of trashing your game or destroying your desire to continue to run a game with us. We were just reacting to the situation. I do not mean you gaming style, but just the actions inside the game world. I know what it takes. I have emailed and called players for years to ask them questions about things they did the week before. I do research and I plan, but I find that ometiems you just have to have a story and make do when things go south. It is sometimes hard to convince everyone that the muesem needs defending when they want to protect the city and the best way to do that is to split up.(not based on your game at all). We all welcome you to come back and play anything with us. We currently have the same night open(a void since your departure *sniffle*). We even have someone else who will run a game if you need the break. As a GM I know you can get to a point when you want top smash the players heads in. Why dd you kill key npc?(err nothing else was happening) You havent run alot of games, and surely this was the first time you ran with our group. Just give us a little bit of space. I still had many suggestions for things we could do after the crazy hero killed the mayor. Anything would have been fine with me even playing another character that hunted my old character down. I have the mechanics down now and was willing to try with another character if you did not want thedisgruntled one. The other players were also all open to anything that you want to do. Gee, I even hate to say this part, but you could have made it all a bad dream(eek Dallas). With the disclamer hey guys something didnt go right last week lets work that through and talk about why you did that and see if we can change something. I am sure even Superman wants to kill Luthor ever now and then. Of course he doesn't, but maybe he has an X-men style danger room (fortress of solitude) where he blows off some steam. Batman still hasn't killed the Joker. You get the general Idea. Like I said before I want you to game with us. I hope you will get your busy life cleared up so we can play something. Currently tere are rumblings of D&D making its way to that night. On a side note not directed at John515 at all. Some Gamer history from me. I started playing D&D in 1982. I also played the James Bond, Gamma World, Teenage Mutant Ninga Turtles, and a few others in the 80's. Later I moved on to play Rifts, Vampire(not the creepy goth kind, John515 played that with us up until recently), I have even played Mage, Gurps(lots of genres), and RoleMaster. There are many more I am forgetting. I have run all of these games except for rolemaster. I love gaming, and play a lot of games. I have never considered myself a hardcore gamer. I find that I like the beer and pretzle gaming. I like to get together and have a great time. I even get off subject once in a while(might be underplaying this part a bit). I hope this history gives you a little bit of insight into my history. :D

Thank you and more Thank you for your kin comments that wish us to try the Hero system yet again. I hope we can quickly move righ into working on fantasy hero, or quite possibly a espionage game. I welcome these attempts. I hope all are as kind and friendly in the future. As to the ones of you that still beckon us to leave your purist realm, I hope you find your just rewards.

The Lights went Out Ah the ever present opinion of the multitudes. Well time for my silly comments. Of course you will no doubt disreguard them as you are all hardcore dedicated players. Purists to the last drop too from the posts I have seen here so far. I will attempt to enlighten you to the tragedy that occured. I will call this failed attempt at game mastering, John515's Game. I played in this game. I have to say that some of you have caught on that the game was a miss completley. While everyone playing the game did not understand the rules to the most finite level, most of the players had a mild understanding of the game. This understanding of game mechanics did not occur until after the characters were forcefully manipulated, during creation I might add, by John515. I do not want to drop a load of bricks on John515, but I am afraid it must be done. Hopefully this small catastrophe will not be inflicted upon other players. *other players should defintely take note of this message before attempting to game with John515.* The game was poorly set up from the start. I think enthusiam took the place of knowledge in this game masters planning. The players were regulated during chracter creation completely. All of the players were told that character designs they were planning to play were too powerful. Now I understand "the Golden Rule" (the gamemaster is running the show and therefore decide what is right or wrong_ this should be for rules questions and on the fly decisions). One player (not myself) was told his character would not work and he was then redirected to play an Iron Man type brick character. The character that wanted to be nothing more than a brick character(myself) was changed into an energy projector. The third character was also changed, this character was the one most of the time was spent on the creation. This third character was taken from the brink of being a mercenary/ vigilante type to being a darkeness based character and back to being a mercenary with no weapons and few darkness powers. I have to say that fromthe beginning these characters were distorted views of the players visions. When the brick character created a 14d6 attack it was quickly deemed as too powerful. This didn't seem odd at first, but when we faced nothing but vilians that were doing 14 to 16d6 attacks it definitely seemed odd. All characters were created with the same pool of points and the system is a point buy system, thus all players should be somewhat balanced no matter what they put the points into. This was the first thing we did not agree upon as players and gamemaster. I had hoped this was just a lack of insight but alas it was a game master flaw that could not be repaired. As each of us made our way through the book more we found that these characters could have been more concentrated in certain areas to allow us to complete our orignal character designs. Instead character creation was a farce at best. I must move on or I will have to make a different post for each part of this story. Game play was a bit rough for the first few weeks and you have no doubt by now seen some other posts reguarding many questions we had. I fel the game maste came to you as a whole for comforting on a weekly basis as he was struggling with how to run a game. The game play never picked up for us a heros, every good deed we did was quickly found out to be a trick,(now the first time shame on us as players for believing anything anyone says, please remember at this time we are heros, but the second time and on it was just a slap in face), after this trickery started to pile up we become angst ridden heros that wanted all to be well, but were becoming disillusioned. The mayor and local government spared no expense in trying to get us killed be enemy villians every week, and when we asked about the reason for this the mayor became a bit violent. As a character and a player, My dreams of being a superhero were dashed. This started out to b something of a four color comic and turned into this goverment and world against the hroes thing. Then if the heros do anyhting to try to save anyone or help anyone it is a constant blame situation. As players we then decided that maybe it was time to remake this world(maybe this was a bit on the evil side, but at the same time we were looking to eradicate corruption in the government and military from the start, we just became a bit more proactive). We discussed it and decided on something of a plan, but talked among ourselves about it with the GM away from the table. The conversation ended with we would not go ahead with the plan unless the GM caused it by triggering it with some poor behavior by the press or the local government. Of course John515 could not resist another chance to show us how corrupt this society was and we quickly implemented our plan. This was done by my character telling the press that she was going to run for Mayor to hlp stamp out the corruption in the city as the local government was to corrupt for her liking. I then turned on the mayor using my most powerful Energy Projection and attacked her. This of course still did not outright kill her(see above about characters). We then took a local Mafia boss hostage and fled the scene. The game pretty much ended at this point. After a little more talking abt the new direction for the game the game master directed us to come up with some ways to deal with DNPCs and funds and story decisions. At this point it was really a build up of poor gamemastering that led us down the dusty trail, but alas do not let me put it all on our game master. We did take these actions and these things did happen. I do not think in any way shape or form that we hijacked the game from him. We reacted to what he was doing to us in the game. He still had complete control over the game. He could have gone in any direction. We could have been brought in by an anti government super agency, or joined the local Mafia. Futher more none of this was done so that we would have more combat or get more money or even to gain more exp. All previous ANALOGIES of us being D&D gamers are not valid. All said and done by the end we new as much about the system as the gamemaster. The game only went on for about 7 weeks. During that time we were tricked and repremanded about 6 times. I hoped that at somepoint we would be able to wash away the corruption of the government agencies in this game, but I guess that was not to be. *on a side note John515 told us on a weekly basis that it would be cool to run a villians game, and asked us when we would be going bad(when I say weekly I mean once every week that we played, a total of 7 times) THE AFTERMATH. Well after that week John515 took a week off. He had some excuse, but I do not remember it at this time. During this time he posted his original post for this thread. Most of you did you job in convincing him that he had been hoodwinked and that he had not landed on plymoth rock but instead it had landed upon him. As hardcore gamers you showed him the true meaning of life by talking him out of giving it a second try with this group. He might have had a rough first go of it, but that was alright with us we were willing to do watever he wanted. He came back the following week and let us all know that he was not going to continue playing rpgs and he was no longer having fun. He also cited that he was really busy at this part of his life, and we took these excuses at face value. We all offered to take our fair turn at runnin if he no longer wanted to run a game, but he declined. I am afraid that some of you at this board had broken his will to go on in gaming. There were a lot of bright lights at the end of this gaming tunnel, and John515 was never allowed to see them. Being the gaming purist that some of you are, you made it seem if there was no way to start over. That there is only one way to play Hero/Champions is the complete opposite of everything I thought the system stood for. I wasnt going to post anything at all to this thread. I came here today to read John515's threads to see if he was starting another game somewhere or if he was looking to play again. I found that this thread had been responded to, since I had read it last. I read all of the new posts and wanted t otell you all my part of the story. I of course contacted the other players of the group and urged them to post as well. I know that they are not even registered on this board. I wanted to give a full account of our time spent in this game. After the game closed out we have all moved on to play other games. The main reason I posted again was to reply to the comments John515 made about us as a gaming group. I felt the comments were not warrented, but understand if he felt that way. I just don't understand why he did not face us, and instead came to the board to bring his thoughts to light. Since this is the forum he wished to paraly in, I accept. As for feedback I am afraid John515 never took any questions or feedback very well. He considered them to be hostile threats instead of understanding pleas. He took the mantle of GM vs. Players and wore it out completely. I never knew that was what roleplaying was about. I hope he gets the therapy that he so desperatly needs. Please do not take this post as something of a flame as I am just putting forth what happened. I wish John515 the best, and hope he roleplays with us again. A good solid try, that could have been improved upon, but was never given a second chance.

The best defense is to take your lumps Ah said crying character was me(not admitting to crying). All in all was mostly a system question to help me understand what happens when someone is knocked unconscious. Having said that I will describe the setting and my question a bit differently than John515 did. At the time the PCs did not know they were being tricked into attacking a good government facility. The players were told it was a terrorist bio-chemical warfare research facility. This was also to be the PCs first encounter ever with Supers. Also this was the second gaming session the group have ever played of Champions. The players (except one) all have a moral code against killing. Now we get to where the game gets tricky for me. COMBAT. After the martial artist attacked the Energy Projector with a sword, the EP went down unconsious. Remember except for the Martial Artist the PCs are against killing. Now turns are 12 second of time from what I have been told. Now in less than 24 seconds the EP is back up and in adequate shape to fire off a blast. Now my only point which may have gotten mis understood was that the EP was not at a minus to attack after taking such a deadly hit with a sword. Now after a brief(ahem) explanation from John515 I quickly understood that this was all well within the rules of the HERO system. I am ok with everything up to that point. I just had to say that maybe the system is flawed in someway. Of course this never sits well with anyone who is running a game( I have run games which John515 has played in for almost 2 years now). I just found it was strange that there is no negative modifier after taking damage to the point of being knocked out. The rules are the rules and the Gamemaster is the Gamemaster in my book. I agree that that is how the game works. I just have to rethink how hard is it going to be to keep my code against killing. I wonder if this is the reason so many combics have gotten dark and gritty. If I move into a room with more than one opponent, I have to concentrate on making sure one of them stays unconcious the whole fight. If I do not do this when I move from one unconscious target to a new target I will be attacked from the unconscious target before combat is over. With out killing any of my opponents combat could go on for well over 15 turns. A PC might even be in a perpetual loop of attacking the same targets over and over and over. I just thought there should be a way to take them out of combat permantly without using killing attacks or killing them. I want to uphold the code against killing. I hate to like this to any other system so I will not. Some things should be able to take a beating and keep coming or getting up but even in the comics when a hero is knocked out he is not back until after the fight. I am already trying to think of ways to overcome this. I guess after knocking someone out I could bind them. I only mentioned this as a flaw because I could not see why there would be such a great detailed system that would not give negative modifiers to damaged supers. I want to be heroic, but it will be hard to keep from killing if I have to watch over my back to make sure everything I have hit so far hasnt gotten back up. Maybe there is a state of really knocked out that takes you out of combat. I have had the Hero rules for about one month now, but I regret I have not read the whole book as of yet, and may not understand everything about the rules. Before I purchased the book, I borrowed John515's book(he was trying to convince us to try hero) and read through a little. I had a great character concept and thought of a truely christian morally based character(in real life I am not a nutbag). I also scanned through the champions books as well. John515 has done an excellent job of bearing with us as we learn a new system. Of course his GM style is new to us as well, but so far no complaints about that at all. I even want to say that with all the different games that I have played, I have only found this one thing that seemed flawed to me. Of course I could write a book on what is flawed in D&D and Vampire adn Rifts and so on. There is good balance in our group and no Min/Max going on. No power-gaming. John515 created characters with us and made sure we did not stray by concetraing on unbelievable stats or broken power combinations(even though I looked for them ). I must appluad him at every turn. I even liked how he ran the situation that this post is about. I just didnt understand it. I do now. Thanks for letting me put up my opinions.