Koshka

Re: The death of El Aguila

You've got Rep

Very nice job.

Re: Captain Booby-prize

Without going that far, would be possible to design a Speedster who really should take a rec every third or fourth phase.

One of the pregens I wrote for my Teen Champions game at GenCon would probably fit under this category. Half his SPD is bought Costs Endurance, and since he's a teenager he really doesn't have the REC or END to spend much time using his superspeed.

Mikesama, do you have Hero Designer? PM me if you do, and I'll send you his character sheet.

Re: The Empire Club: recruiting drive!

Indy is a shoo in for the club I'd say as is his father.

Dr. Jones Jr would be a wonderful fit, but Dr. Jones Sr might be a bit too bookworm to belong until after the events of The Last Crusade.

The Great Merlini should be a member. I don't know how much travelling he did (he refers in one novel to being injured in a Zeppelin raid on London during the Great War, but he was performing at the time, not in the military), but a stage magician/detective would get along well with the other members. I don't know if any of his books are still in print, if you're running a search the author is Clayton Rawson.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

I can't believe I forgot to post this ....

This was at one of my Pulp Hero games at GenCon. In the final fight, one of the bad guys shot the female PC. The next person up is the male PC actor who's a bit of a ladies' man. His line: "How dare you shoot the woman I'm in love with this week!"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

 

Me: "Looks like the crit hit the fan.":D

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to CrosshairCollie again."

Some of us were brainstorming next year's GenCon games a bit, and the first thing that has to be decided is which villain or villain team the heroes should go against. Is there anyone in particular you, the Hero fan, would really like to pound on?

A poll will be going up later, when I'm back at my home computer with my game books. However, here's the basic guidelines:

1) Published 5th edition villains only. I can't speak for the others, but I've got two major cons next year (Costume Con and GenCon); I know I won't have time to write a new master villain.

2) This will be run in a 4 hour slot. Votes for Istvatha V'han will only count if they come with suggestions for a plot worthy of her that will fit in a 4 hour slot. That goes for Doctor Destroyer, too.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

From my Dark Champions game at GenCon: The game opened up with the members of LIBRA being set up, so needless to say they're a bit ticked. Especially Sarge, as he has a thing about plans that don't work out. Once they find the first of their street contacts, Sarge tells Blade to come with him and pull his biggest knife (actually a machete).

Sarge to contact: "Now, we can do this the easy way or the cutlery way."

Re: Ok...I got $50...

I'd be willing to buy it for you, but you might want to see if someone closer to you is going -- no point in paying for postage if you don't have to.

I'd love to get one for myself, but unfortunately my eye doctor decided yesterday that one of my not-even-one-month-old contact lenses will have to be changed to a different strength ... and my insurance didn't even cover the first lens, so forget about it covering the replacement

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

D&D, and a bit of game history first -- several game years ago (before I joined the group), some of the PCs managed to kill a black dragon. Getting to a first edition dragon while it's still asleep really does help . One of them took enough of its hide to make a suit of armor, and is still wearing it.

Fast forward to last night, which starts out with a black dragon swooping in on us. The veteran PCs in the group recognize it as the same dragon they fought and killed lo those many XP ago. It would appear the Cult of the Dragon found enough of its body for a Raise Dead. One of the other characters, a wood elf (and small even by wood elf standards) happened to be flying at the time. The wood elf announced that she was going to fly at top speed to hide behind the paladin, because "I'm snack-sized!" My comment to her: "You're not the one wearing its skin."

Re: Champions (Group) Question

I don't remember offhand' date=' but does it say that the other Champs know Nighthawk's secret ID? If not, she might not even know he's scarred (physically).[/quote']

 

The group description says the Champions socialize with each other, so I would think they all know secret IDs. (Though you never know; Nighthawk stripped down to his shorts for the Hidden Lands cover but left his mask on.)

 

I'm with Hermit on this one, I don't think Witchcraft would make the offer until after she buys off her psych lim. If she knows about the scars and how he got them, she'd be too worried about "not getting everything just right".

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Sick Joke Alert -- if you're easily offended, you might want to scroll past this (or put me on ignore for a couple days -- this thread should be on a new page by then).

.

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D&D 3.5 in the Forgotten Realms (yes, I know ...), the session before last was trying to figure out why an army is now occupying the home town of one of the PCs. At the beginning of last session, we discovered that the 'army' is actually a military force sent by the Cult Of The Dragon. We then had to pause the action while the GM got everyone up to speed -- while our characters would all know about the Cult, some of the players didn't.

GM: (in the course of his description) They're an actual religious cult ...

Player 1: So can we get them to line up for Kool-Aid?

Re: Belief in magic by normals.

With all the mages' date=' undead, lycanthropes, demons, devils, and gods running around I would think it's very hard for people to not except magic in the CU [and let's not forget DEMON.[/quote']

 

How is Joe Average going to know whether Generic Supervillain #1 is a "real" werewolf or a guy who got unlucky in the mutation department? Are there Mystic Energy Detectors for sale at Wal-Mart, only $5.69 this week? If he's predisposed to look for magical/mystical explanations, he'll probably go with that; if he's predisposed to a scientific explanation, he'll go with science.

 

Fenris' background story says he got superpowers from a super-science serum containing wolf DNA, but it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't people in the CU who think he was cursed to become a werewolf. On the other hand, if Defender can think Dark Seraph or the Crowns of Krim are non-mystical, anyone can. (Granted, the bit about him not believing in magic was written before the event portrayed on the DEMON cover. )

Re: Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich Review

It looks like the rebuild my brother did on my computer may be enough to let me run this, but I've got an odd question for those with the game: will it let the user switch mouse buttons?

I was taught to use a mouse by a hard-wired lefty, so that's my mouse hand even though for most things I'm righthanded. I was once given a computer version of Clue, but had a lot of trouble running it because it didn't care if the mouse was set to left hand use, it would only accept clicks if they came from the left button (the one under my middle finger).

Re: Funniest ingame event

At last week's D&D game, we ran into a tendriculos -- if you haven't seen them, think a huge blobby monster with tentacles and a mouth/stomach capable of swallowing two Large creatures or equivalent. As it happened, three PCs got swallowed alive in short order. One of them, a druid-like custom class, decided she wasn't going to get anywhere punching the stomach wall in her normal elven form and shapechanged into a gorilla. That now meant the stomach was overcrowded (with one Large and two Medium occupants), and the GM ruled that the bard was belched out of the monster ("Last in, first out"). I hadn't realized a table of adults could run so many barf/belch jokes ... we were all channeling our Inner Teenager for about 15 minutes.

Re: Your Character's Room at the Base

Falcon has her own mansion, so she doesn't actually need a room at the team base. If the group started using the base more, she'd probably set up a fairly standard bedroom with two huge closets -- one half-full one with spare costumes and gadgets, and one full of all the appropriate dresses/shoes/hats for a 1930's heiress. (She's had to dash home to change for a "let's maintain the secret ID" social event several times.)

Re: What are some interesting disadvantages you have used?

One time when I was running an air controller, I gave her Distinctive Features: Air Within 2 Meters Of Her Always In Motion. Not as odd as some on this thread, but at least it tied in nicely with the Life Support she didn't know she had.

I also ran a 4 foot tall brick once -- it was in a WWII-era game, and I wanted to see if I could come up with a non-cheesy way to make a brick with a 4-F* draft rating. It actually came into play when we were "borrowing" a truck for some reason and Samson couldn't reach the gas pedal.

-------

*In the US draft system, 4-F means "forget it, we don't want you in the military". The Golden Age Superman (as Clark Kent) got a 4-F for bad eyesight, he was still getting used to his X-ray vision and read the eye chart in the next room.

Re: Real world Pulp characters

While the link really doesn't give enough detail on the guy, Wayne Wheeler could be an interesting character for an early-period game. He was both one of the primary people responsible for the stricter provisions of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, and one of the primary people responsible for the inefficiency of Prohibition enforcement. (Since you won't find that in the link, he used his political influence to make Prohibition agents subject to the political spoils system instead of Civil Service and to get the Prohibition Bureau made a department of the IRS instead of the Justice Department.)

Re: Pulp orgs/seeds

PHOENIX - post-WWI organization cobbled together from all the "losers" of recent years. German, Austrian, and Russian aristocrats predominate, but there are a variety from other sources as well.

I always thought Raven (from Super-Agents) fit better as a pulp-era group than a silver age comics group. Maybe it was just the idea of all those former autocrats deciding to reclaim their rightful place ruling the earth starting their Master Plan by sitting around doing nothing for 25 years .... I know it's hard to find Super-Agents these days, but if you can it would be a good (if rules-outdated) reference for Phoenix.

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

I've yet to have the opportunity to snag Galactic Champions' date=' but if I did run it, I'd definitely use some permutation of the Standard Effect rule for damage dice to speed things up; probably something like the Star Trek HERO conversion used, where the upper third or so is rolled, but the rest is Standard Effect. I just don't want to sit there while someone counts up a 20d6 attack. [/quote']

 

I ran a one-shot GC game from the playtest manuscript at a mini-convention, and yeah, adding up that many dice did take some time. Players borrowing enough dice from the other players to make their 20 dice attack also burned up some of our playing time . Guess I should have emphasized the whole "high-powered game" thing in the prereg description.

 

If I were going to run a GC campaign, I'd probably check into that version of the Standard Damage rule. My players might prefer to roll all the dice, if only because I don't have enough of the Hero dice for the villain's attacks -- those dice have a bit of a reputation at the table for rolling lots of sixes on damage, the players would probably appreciate the reason to "dilute" them with other dice .

Northwestern University has over 300 posters from World War II up on the web -- the vast majority American, but I think I saw a few Canadian as well.

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/collections/wwii-posters/

There's also a few other paper items scanned in, such as a sheet of sugar allowance coupons (for home canning) and a certificate to buy rubber shoes.

Re: New-model Dalek

7) Self destruct. Can completely disintegrate. Possibly this could also be a one-use weapon as well - but not against large targets (or perhaps it becomes proportionally weaker with increase in radius).

Haven't seen the new Doctor, but didn't a Dalek self-destruct in Sylvester McCoy's Dalek episode?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

The other night, we were playtesting a con game, and a player decision meant that they were now going to need transport to the area where they suspect the hostage is. Only two of the six pregens can fly, and there was an argument going on as to whether the flyers could carry all the nonflyers.

PC 1 (running a male character): Do I have enough strength to take both of the girls?

PC 2: Wouldn't that be CON?

Re: Roll up, roll up... Let's see how YOUR Marvel Select will do...

We can argue Cap and Batman all day.

And have.

Re: sword and sorcery (valdorian age)

Ask the players of the non-Elweirian characters if their character would have a reason to visit Elweir. No reason you should have to do all the work of getting the characters together, let the players do some of it . Once you know why everyone's there, you can either put together a short "Meet The Other PCs" scenario or, if there's too much potential conflict in the PCs plans, go back to your players and ask if they really want half the party trying to kill the other half.

Re: Pulp Reading

Thanks, Steve

(off to check online bookstores .... )