Koshka

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Not really a quote, but it was a nice bit and this is the best place to put it. I was playtesting a pulp adventure last night. The PCs were in a gunfight with some Nazi soldiers in a forest. One of the Nazis was covering a PC when another PC shot and killed him, I ruled that the bullet went wide and hit a tree branch. Another player promptly rolled his Unluck to see if the tree branch would land on his head.

Re: Heroic Action Points - Do you use them? I was playtesting a pulp adventure last night, and used them. I just had everyone roll 3d6, total is the number of HAP the character had. To keep track, I gave everyone one glass nugget per HAP, and they handed them back to me as they used them. I've got a pair of questions to piggyback on this thread: 1) How do you combine regular Luck with HAP? Add the Luck dice to the dice rolled for HAP, or run Luck separately? 2) One of the pregens has Unluck. How do you combine that with HAP -- can the character spend points to overcome the results of an Unluck roll?

Re: Now Taking Preorders For the Champions 25th-Anniversary Special Edition! I was reading that as clearer-than-normal CYA -- Hero West is out in earthquake country, after all, and should California fall into the ocean with the books ....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Not strictly in game, but in the course of an IC brainstorming session: "Do we need a lich ... correction, do we need another lich mad at us?"

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones) Sorry to be late, I've had a ton of overtime lately. It's gotta be more complex than that. I think it was last winter when a couple drove out in a snowstorm to get some meth, took it before driving home, got stuck, left the car, and wandered around the countryside describing hallucinations to the 911 operator until they passed out and froze to death. If it was easy to get the location of a cell phone, they'd still be alive -- IIRC they were on the phone for at least 20 minutes, one continual call. It might depend on just where you are. It's been a couple years since I got my TracFone. I did have to register it before plugging time into it, and they ask for a regular phone number (not your TracFone number) and if you're registering online your e-mail. However, if the team is junking the phones as they run out of initial minutes, they could easily lie on the registration form. TracFone makes automated reminder calls when I need to stick some more minutes onto the phone, and I get regular e-mails with special offers -- but type in a random phone number and a made-up e-mail and the phone will probably be in the recycle bin at the battered womens' shelter before anything is sent out that would reveal the lie.

Re: Not quite a WWYCD: YWUA your PC... Well, at least Falcon and I are the same gender and roughly the same height, so moving around won't be a problem. Not having any of Falcon's skills will be a big problem, though. Assuming I realize that this isn't a weird dream brought on by too much History Channel, I'd probably want to call the two mystics on her team for help getting "home". Falcon in my body ... she's gonna be seriously weirded out. She's just jumped forward over 60 years, and the world is nothing like what people expected back then. Heck, could she even drive my car? EDIT: Almost forgot -- I'm hoping Falcon and I would be smart enough to not tell how WWII ends up/research how WWII ends up. Of course, for Falcon, nothing will quite fit right anyway since there was a distinct shortage of superpowered individuals involved in our world's war.

Re: WWYCD in the event of an approaching army Not playing FH currently (the GM prefers D&D), but if I may invite Arielle over from his game for a moment ... She's capable of killing all of them (10 level wizard/4th level loremaster means she casts as 14th level, and she's got Chain Lightning), but she wouldn't do it. Maybe a fighter-type would have experience with mercy killing, but to her it would be murder. Arielle would use Fireballs and the aforementioned Chain Lightning to open a gap in the surrounding armies and try to get the civilians to run away. If they refuse to flee, well, something weird is going on here, and she doesn't normally pack enough Dispel Magic/Break Enchantment to free everyone from the controlling spell. (She wouldn't think psionics as an explanation, not in use in her game.) In that case, she'd try till the last minute then Teleport away, and probably spend a couple weeks guilt-tripping with the two clerics and one paladin in the party once she finds them.

Re: WWYCD: Registration Falcon is Golden Age, so Homeland Security isn't around yet. Once Pearl Harbor gets plastered, she's draft-immune due to being female, but whichever government agency FDR sets up to handle superhero activity on the homefront will be more open to female involvement. (With over half the team being female, they've got to .) Given that I'm going for a four-color feel, Falcon should be willing to trust the government with her secret ID and knowledge of her abilities, and the government will turn out worthy of her trust.

Re: Martial Arts in the Pulp era Not pulp, but the right period -- there's a reference in at least one of S.S. Van Dine's novels about Philo Vance to Vance knowing jujitsu.

Re: WWYCD choosing between two villains to stop? Falcon would initially stop to deal with the minor crime-in-progress. Once the alert about the main villain went out ... are there any cops around? In that case, quick bolo on the minor villain and call out to the cops to drop the guy while he's entangled. (Alternately, if minor villain has the DCV from heck, drop a smoke bomb to blind him followed by something from the local environment that can act as an improvised Area Effect entangle -- probably a shop awning -- then turn matters over to the cops.) If there's no one around to take over for her, well, she can't just run off unless someone else can deal with minor villain. She'd probably spend her next few phases yelling for help over the radio and trying to KO the minor villain at the same time.

Re: How would you have handled this (GMs)? I haven't run CLOWN, so I'll stay out of that part of the argument. My next question: Did Avatar had this sort of honor code already established (either via Psych Lims or roleplaying) before that fight? If not, nice try Avatar, you've just added perjury to the list of charges. Had this happened at my table ... well, the PCs voted expulsion, so there's not much left for me to do other than triple-check whatever new character Avatar's player comes up with to make sure it's a closer fit to the game. I'm not putting the rest of the group on hold to run a solo mini-adventure for Avatar during every game session, we're short enough on time as is due to work schedules. And I'm not going to force Avatar down their throats by making up reasons he always turns up at the crime du jour despite being kicked off the team. Avatar's legal problems would just go into the background of the game -- "let's see, during the three months you were adventuring on Loezen, the local college team made it to the College World Series but lost in the semifinals, Foxbat tried to pull a hostile takeover of Survivor: Whereever They Are This Season, and Avatar's appeal failed".

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... GM to player: "I don't think you have Weapon Element: Dead Snake for your martial arts?"

Re: Champions Universe Movie Casting Call I don't know about the Rock, he might be a bit too trim for that role. I always pictured Bulldozer with a more massive build. Besides, last I saw makeup would go nuts trying to cover up Rock's Samoan tattoo job and superimpose Bulldozer's "label" tat. If he hadn't been suggested for Durak already, I would have voted Triple H for Bulldozer ... but then, I've never been a Triple H fan.

Re: WWYCD? The Trap

Re: Your PC's might be underpowered if... You're playing with a kitten, and go GMO when the kitten scratches you.

Re: WWYCD? The Trap Both my current characters are in 4-color Golden Age games. Neither would bother with talking to the Obsessed Avenger, they'd try to bring him in and trash the (adjusted for 1940's) trap zone. Falcon would need to call in help for this one, she's basically a gadgeteer with combat training; Arcana would get to use a spell she hasn't used in game yet because the character is afraid it might kill someone (she does not have a Code Versus Wrecking Equipment, though ... ) .

Re: WWYCD?: You Shall Be Mine, My Love... Falcon: If she were the target ... well, her secret ID has been the target of enough guys who figure marrying her will put them on Easy Street (15 points Weath, and IIRC prenups weren't common during the 1940's) that she would probably assume this was more of the same. The more he shows up, the more she'd scrounge around for reasons to keep the idiot behind bars -- she wouldn't manipulate the legal system, but the prosecutor's office might find themselves getting extra funding. If one of her teammates was the target ... she would be sorely tempted to tell Cat that if she's going to dress that way* she's going to attract the wrong sort of attention from men. She probably wouldn't follow up on it, given that Cat is STR 40 versus Falcon's STR 10, but she would be tempted. If the stalker was going after Madame Mystique, it's a tossup whether she'd be trying to calm down MM or MM's overly-protective grandmother . Either teammate, she'd be supportive and let them decide what constitutes support. Arcana: There is no way she would handle a situation like this smoothly if she were the target. She doesn't have a lot of experience with romance, and most of it has been blind dates set up by her relatives that never went past date 1. She would take the Mask of Justice up on keeping the guy away from her, until she could come up with a way to keep him away herself. If the other female in the group was targetted, she'd offer whatever help was wanted. If one of the guys was targetted by a female villainess, she'd probably stay out of it unless she was asked for help/advice -- she would assume that a male could cope with this situation. ----- *Ever see the Phantom Lady? http://www.paratime.ca/v_and_v/phantomlady.html . Take the first picture on this page, ditch the cape, and go strapless (filling in a bit of the cleavage with the fabric saved by removing the straps. That's basically Cat's crimefighting outfit.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... We're playing D&D, we've gotten into an underground complex of interconnected hallways and small rooms, and for some reason the game promptly degenerated into Scooby-Doo "everyone split up" mode. Our GM is going over some things on the map with one of the female players, when his wife tries to dive in with a question about something her character is doing. The GM is busy with the other player, so he ignores the question. His wife isn't paying attention to this side conversation with the other player, so she asks again. Another player tells her "He's doing [other player's name] ... wait, I mean ...."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... D&D, said OOC as the GM is having to use multiple dice to show how big the critters that just ambushed us are: "If I get eaten again, I'm gonna be p*****."

Re: Champions Christmas Adventure Seeds! I got it for you, ThothAmon

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... A Champions battle had one of the hero bricks going toe-to-toe with the main bad guy (another brick). The villain got a good damage roll, and actually did some knockback to the hero -- 5d6 to be exact. Knowing what that PCs defenses are like, I commented that I didn't expect any KB damage to get through but I'd roll for the heck of it. I picked up five Hero dice ... and got five "sixes". The player yelled "Yahtzee!" (One of the other players is convinced that the Hero dice know when I'm rolling them as a GM. Events like this don't help bust the myth.)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Last night, for a friend's birthday party, I put together a one-shot villain game -- everyone picked a published villain, and there was just enough plot to get everyone into a fight with each other. At one point, the guy playing Anubis was telling the "birthday girl" why he was going after Zephyr (her character) instead of Durak: "I'm the god of the dead, not the god of stupid".

If a character can produce multiple Duplicates (let's say eight as an example), it looks like that character can produce however many he wants as long as the total is eight or fewer. If he were working on his car and needed an extra pair of hands, he could pop out just a single Duplicate instead of all eight. But, what if the character has to produce all eight Duplicates when he uses his power? Would this be worth a limitation? Would it depend on whether the character spent the points on Rapid Duplication? (If he can pop out all eight in 1/2 phase, it's really not slowing him down any, while if he needs to spend 4 phases to get everyone there ....)

Re: Turakian: Indusharan and women - typo / errata? Without doing a full reread of the book ... There's plenty of examples of titles/wealth passing through the female line in real-world history, and the caste system of the Indusharans should limit the options for marrying off a heiress. Yes, the king can "promote" someone to a higher caste, but is he going to do that every single time one of his nobles dies without a male heir so he can wed that noble's daughter off to someone born at a lower rank? Personally, I doubt it; check the background of Magna Carta. Possibly what's going on here is a heiress situation. She's marrying as low as she can get away with so she maintains control over the money (the first quote seems to imply that the woman is supporting her husbands), but because she's married she's OK on a social level. Or, the Indusharan culture has simply gotten more conservative over time. Maybe a few thousand years ago Indusharan women had more options for supporting themselves (and their husbands); and while those options have gradually eroded away the church laws haven't been changed because it wouldn't be appropriate to change them. ( [Tevye voice] Tradition! [/Tevye voice] )

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? There was a show on the History Channel a week or two ago about that expedition. Or was it something a friend had taped earlier and we finally got around to watching it a week or two ago? Whichever, History Channel tends to rerun programs a lot, especially WWII programs, so it may pop up again soon.