Lord Liaden

Re: Another superhero timeline BTW Steve Perrin posts to these forums occasionally, under the handle "Captain Liberty." For those intrigued by references to his past Champions work, you could go here to see Steve's (Fourth Edition) updates to Terror Inc., including two new members, starting at Post #15. They're in the form of Attached DOC files. Our forum colleague levi was kind enough to turn those into HDC files which are also on the thread. Steve also started a thread discussing VOICE, with Fourth Edition updates to some characters, a few new ones, and plenty of background about the campaign that spawned them (all done with Hero Games's permission). You'll find that here.

Re: Another superhero timeline

Re: Another superhero timeline And let's not forget his classic adventure for 3E Champions, VOICE Of Doom! Of which there has been much written on these boards.

Re: Homages you would like to see officially Well, I'm not sure if he's ever going to be "official," although he's on the cover of Champions Universe (the little yellow-and-green winged guy). As described in Digital Hero #13, El Aguijon ("The Sting") is a clear homage to Hank Pym (shrinking insect-controlling gadgeteer), although he has his own distinctiveness. His was one of the winning writeups from the "Name The Hero" contest for fans to submit character sheets and backrounds for the previously-unnamed heroes on the CU cover. All of the winners were presented in DH 13. All of those characters (dubbed the "Millennium City 8") were given backgrounds that clearly set them in the Champions Universe, and even a group origin story by Darren Watts IIRC in which they rescued the Champions from Mechanon.

So, what exactly are you trying to say?

Re: Homages you would like to see officially Yep, the possibilities are numerous. I hope Darren and Steve are reading this.

Re: Homages you would like to see officially IMHO it wouldn't be hard to have Vanguard survive in the official CU without changing the timeline. According to Champions Universe, Vanguard sacrificed himself delivering explosives to demolish the asteroids that Dr. Destroyer was trying to crash into the United States. That sounds like the sort of thing a hero would undertake alone, so there were probably no witnesses to what happened to him there. Massively-powerful superhero, lots of nuclear megatonnage, alien rocks of unknown composition, a super tractor beam... there has to be a recipe in all that to allow Vanguard to avoid destruction. Maybe he was quantum-bumped through time, and just now reappears on present-day Earth. Or perhaps he was teleported far across space, and it's taken him this long to return under his own power. Or something like that. Now that would be a major event to include in next year's Champions Universe update: The Return of Vanguard!

Re: Homages you would like to see officially Along those lines, I'd like more details about the Hzeel, since they're supposed to be the alien civilization with the most immediate designs on our world. By the Terran Empire era they're reduced to being an interstellar Mafia, but I haven't heard enough about what happened in between. OTOH the Star*Guard have been quite satisfactory to me as analogs to the Green Lantern Corps, particularly at the power level displayed in Galactic Champions. Between GC and the S*G articles in Digital Hero, I have enough to run them with. More would always be welcome, though.

Re: Homages you would like to see officially

Re: Gravitar vs Graviton? Versus Superman! Man, I would pay good money to see that fight. And make popcorn. And maybe shower. Nefaria is a master villain with enormous potential, whom you can't help but take seriously. I don't know when Marvel will bring him back, but it will probably be big.

Re: He's twice the man you are! What is 2x normal STR? SPD? DEX? Great, now I won't be able to rest until I've statted up Zebediah Zip!

Re: He's twice the man you are! What is 2x normal STR? SPD? DEX? Yep, it's the common problem of coordinating real life with playable game mechanics. And when you factor in simulations of situations that could never occur in real life (like many of the conventions of fantasy or supers), it becomes even more problematic... as many of the debates here have demonstrated. I would guess that any system that could adequately make the correspondences we've been discussing here, would need to have "twice as strong" or "three times as fast" as a quantified game mechanic built into the system, so that people who wanted to describe their characters that way could take such attributes when building them. I don't know whether any current or past game does that.

Re: He's twice the man you are! What is 2x normal STR? SPD? DEX?

Re: Enemies of San Angelo I've mentioned this to RPMiller before, but while I agree that individual illos for every character would have been nice, what bothered me the most about Denizens of San Angelo was the layout of the stat blocks and background text for characters - or rather, the lack of same. All the character info was crammed together, stacked up like cords of firewood. That not only made it more difficult to read, but made the writeups look hasty and not really important enough to do "properly." In my mind I could only contrast that with Normals Unbound, where even characters without enough game stats to warrant a fully formatted character sheet still had their stats laid out clearly and cleanly, giving the impression (justified or not) that their entries would be worth reading. That can make a real difference to someone just browsing a book off a store shelf, as to whether they buy it or not.

Re: Living Steel? Gee, as a HERO gamer that complaint sounds kinda familiar...

Re: Gravitar vs Graviton?

Re: Gravitar vs Graviton?

Re: Living Steel? Well, I can't fault you for wanting to convert from the game yourself. You're right that that's a great way to learn the system; and lots of HEROphiles find building and tinkering with the system to be a fun process in itself. However, I did get the impression from your request that you were looking for prebuilt items to use, at least for examples. If that's the case, is there a reason that the sites I linked to don't work for you? They contain HERO writeups for all the stuff you asked for: gauss, laser and flechette weapons, and various types of powered and nonpowered armor. Just because these items originally came from other sources than Living Steel doesn't necessarily make them useless for your purposes - these are all sci-fi classics that carry over from one source to another, and wherever they come from once they're translated to HERO they're all more or less the same. And the quality of fan creations from the HERO community is often very high. But the game should be used in whatever way is satisfying to you, so please don't let me stop you from doing what works for you.

Re: Living Steel? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the setting or with any direct conversions for it, but from your remarks about what you need technologically, I don't think the Equipment Guide will help you much. That book is for modern-day equipment and weapons; you'd be better served by the Spacer's Toolkit for sci-fi materials, or perhaps Gadgets And Gear for superhero tech. Now, that's for published HERO books. There are also a lot of fan conversions of tech from many other sci-fi sources. Below are links to conversions of advanced weapons, armor and powered armor from GURPS Ultratech, Traveller, Warhammer 40,000, and the novel Starship Troopers. Hopefully that will help you. http://www.geocities.com/ac_jackson/hero/ultrahero.html http://www.starherofandom.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=122 http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/Inquisitor/inquistor_weapons.htm http://www.tigerseyemedia.com/tiger/40kequip.html http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35225 http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptionsbook/miarmor.html

Re: Revamping the Horsemen That's actually a pretty cool idea! If you change the source of the Crowns to the Kings of Edom or whatever Lovecraftian Elder Gods and/or their servants you want to use, that would make for a natural connection. Dark Seraph can then be searching for the rest of the Crowns just as Fear of the Horsemen searched for other Old Ones artifacts. Heck, the original adventure even features a Stone Crown. If you have access to Galactic Champions, you might consider something that I've been toying with for running this adventure: substituting Slug 3000 for the Prime. The Elder Worms were originally servants of the Kings of Edom, and this could be a good way to introduce them. If I needed more power I could add other lesser Elder Worms based on the CKC version of Slug. I might also substitute Maraud from GC for the Black Death, since in my campaign the Xenovores were created by the Elder Worms.

Re: Revamping the Horsemen Tom McCarthy offered some good suggestions as to how to bring the Horsemen up to 5E standards: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=35911 I used them quite a bit myself in past campaigns. They're a powerful, diverse, very striking group with strongly-defined motivations, who can be used singly or in any combination; and you never need to provide reasons for them to cause trouble. I did modify their character sheets to try to make each character's power set conform to my notion of their "aspects," i.e. fear powers, famine powers etc. I also increased the power level of the individual Horsemen, which IMO isn't as insane as it sounds. They're very single-minded and tend to work poorly as a team. I'm not going to post any writeups, though, because IIRC Hero Games still has the rights to all the characters from Wrath of the Seven Horsemen, and I think Steve Long mentioned that he'd prefer we not put them up here. As to the topic of this thread: frankly, beyond the PCs' ability to cope with whatever power level you give your Four Horsemen, I don't think it would matter a great deal whether you call them the actual Biblical figures or just villains styled after them. Superheroes in comics frequently interact with pagan gods, demons and conceptual entities, as both enemies and allies. And there have been many "end of the world" scenarios run in comics. If the threat is clearly out of their league the heroes may be frightened, but if there's a chance that they can stand up to it you can expect your players to roll up their sleeves and plunge in, whatever you choose to call the opposition. That's what superheroes do.

Re: Doomsday evolution power Well, Doomsday's ability to revive from death in general would probably be best modelled by Healing (Regeneration) with the Resurrection Adder. If I were dealing with his ability to adapt to what killed him, I'd just run it as a "radiation accident" scenario under the control of the GM. Essentially, whatever unspent Experience Points Doomsday has saved to that point would be used to purchase the appropriate new ability or buy off the pertinate Disadvantage. BTW this is exactly the premise used to justify "upgrades" to the Champions Universe villain Mechanon; after each defeat he rebuilds himself to counter what defeated him last time.

Re: Old Testament Hero Definitely not "what!" The Gestalted One's preliminary thoughts are worth most people's deep ponderings. Thank you very much, sir.

Re: your campaigns "Superman". In my campaign world the Superman role is probably filled by Dr. Hiroshima. As a young man he was caught near ground zero of the Hiroshima A-bomb blast, but amazingly didn't die. He was found unconscious in the ruins several days later, his body glowing with energy. He remained in a coma for several months; when he awoke he discovered his tremendous powers. The Japanese government concealed his existence for several years, wanting to use him as a "strategic weapon." But when Japan was attacked by a gigantic mutated monster in 1949, Dr. Hiroshima's battle to drive it off was too public to be ignored. Dr. Hiroshima continued to serve the Japanese government as his country's national hero, but grew increasingly frustrated by Japan's resistance to intervening against international supervillain threats, and disillusioned by the institutional corruption in Japanese politics (no offense intended to any Japanese here - it's a widely acknowledged flaw in the system). In 1956 he disavowed allegiance to any nation, declaring himself a servant of the world. He's been active on the global scene ever since, actively promoting peace and cooperation, but ready to defend against any threat to the innocent anywhere in the world. Dr. Hiroshima is the oldest superhero still active, and among the most powerful and respected. He has a strong personal code of honor with echoes of bushido, although he prefers to be a peacemaker and healer rather than a warrior. He's also the driving force behind a network of like-minded heroes and organizations which offers support to deserving supers: training, resources and intelligence. (It's in this patron capacity that he primarily interacts with my PCs.) Dr. Hiroshima has vast nuclear powers, including tremendous strength and durability, flight, and near-immortality. He can project various energy phenomena resembling a nuclear explosion: heat, light, radiation, EM pulse, and so on. Over the years he's learned to control the discharge of energy, from massive enough to melt a tank, to delicate enough to cauterize wounds or sterilize diseased tissue.

Re: Old Testament Hero Absolutely. Scott visits regularly and posts here fairly frequently, under the handle "GestaltBennie." You can ping him via Private Message or e-mail. I'd be surprised if he doesn't have some suggestions for converting Testament to HERO.