Death_Jester

Hello My fellow hero fans. It seems that I find myself in need of bookshelf space again and need to get rid of some of my older items. So take a look and feel free to make me an offer. I'll entertain any reasonable offers. Feel free to download the list and let me know if there is anything that you you'd like. Items for Sale.txt

Re: Villains Campaign Something I could suggest is to have the players and characters have a bond before the game starts. First have the players set down Together and have they come up with concepts for their characters starting off with what jobs they do before getting their powers. For example John is a Business man and Sally is a real estate person ECT. Then have them make connections between the characters BEFORE getting any powers. I mean being a villain is hard to do alone too many pesky hero teams out there anymore. Once again before they have any powers have them determine what kind of relationship they have. For example John wants gets word that Sally has a choice property that will become valuable in the near future. But someone has put in a bid for it first. Sally could help out John by losing the first bid and making sure that he got it. Conversely Sally may need a loan for some reason and John could put some pressure on the bank that she is working with to make sure she gets that loan. This builds some connections and establishes some trust between characters, at least in the beginning. Also something that works pretty well but takes a lot of work on the GMs part is to have a series of "agent" or even "normal" level adventures with the players before they get their powers. They could be dealing with petty mundane things that have an impact on their lives and lead up to the point where they get their powers. Example Session one Group meets in some arbitrary way and gets to know one another. A broken elevator is a good way to do this or a charity event where they are forced to interact and chat a bit. Once the Crisis is over they at least have a feeling for each other. Session two Some of the group has a problem that the others in the group are uniquely capable of handling. Example the Business man has a traffic ticket out standing and the Police Officer can handle it but only if he can get something in return. Another example teacher could help out anyone's kid to get better grades but they need a lot of money for a spouse gambling habit or some other reason beyond their control. It has to be something quasi-illegal so that you set the mood for the game. Session three The players become aware of a unique opportunity to either get rich or obtain power (not in the super sense of the work but in a real world sense) but they need each other to pull it off. This starts the players to bond together for their own interests and starts the model of the scheming villains’ portion of your game. Session four Could be the heist or whatever was brought up in session three and or its fall out as things begin to become clear that what was taken has more meaning than the players suspect. Someone or something starts hunting “the whatever” and seems to know that the players had something to do with it. Session Five The players are in real trouble now and a need to either resolve the situation in order to get back to their loved ones (and they should have someone that can be threatened even if they do not take a DNPC). An opportunity comes to them in the shape of a mysterious benefactor willing to help facilitate a resolution but the players are lead into a trap. Session Six The players find themselves in the hands of a person/group/government/what-have-you that fakes the player’s deaths and keeps them as guinea pigs. The players are now forced to escape and become accustomed to their powers while trying to stay alive in a world that believes them to be dead. The rest of your campaign is whatever you want to play with. Do you want the other bad guy come along to mess with the group or do the players destroy the bad guy and are now filling the power vacuum left? The sky is the limit for you. Best wishes with your game I’d love to hear how it works out. Peace Jester

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Dave that is wonderful that you have a complete team drawn up for the game. I thought it was a very funny idea when we were talking about it yesterday but seeing it makes it stick in my head. Keep up the great work and I will see you in the future.

Re: Disads for Dana Scully Some things you may have missed (I just re watched the entire series from beginning to end about three months ago). She is barren but she wants to have children. She has family members that get involved sometimes in the show. Hunting the killer of her sister (Alex Krycek) and will take irrational actions when in his presence. In love with or at least very protective of Agent Molder. Will certainly take irrational actions to protect and or save him. Cancer currently in remission but could come back depending on what time frame you run the show. Dependant on the metal chip in her next to regulate her cancer. If it gets removed it could cause the cancer to come back. Depending on what version of "the Cure" you believe. She was abducted by aliens and that could cause a social stigma if exposed to people. Also she could have complications from that abduction beyond just the cancer. She has a son named William depending on what time frame you use. She seems to have some "daddy" issues as well. Rivalry with the other women in the series like Phoebe Green, and Agent Diana Fowley. She has been hunted by various madmen/crazies throughout the show Eugene Victor Tooms, Duane Barry, and Donald Addie Pfaster to name a few. Just some food for thought.

Re: New World Creation Project, needs some help. Ok, David, I see your point buddy. It is a little vague at this point. I apologize for that, but I know what I need, it is just hard to express. Let me try and clear it up a bit. What I am looking for from the boards are some resources for creating a modern day campaign setting that is not set on earth. I need a way of simulating the kind of history, culture and religious detail you would find on a planet in the midst of its own information age. Things that will create a verisimilitude of a real world while at the same time not be the earth that they know. Ideally people posting here would just leave their thoughts about a project like this. What would they like to see, what challenges this would create for the GM to address. Mostly what does the GM have to consider when taking on a project like this. What kind of things does a campaign setting like this need in order to feel complete and “real” enough that the players can over look the fact that it is not earth. Mostly I'm looking for resources in the form of either poster’s thoughts, links to online resources (tools, generators ect) for things related to this topic, or just links to articles that may spark the imagination of someone just getting started on this kind of project. I'm getting ready to chart waters that are a little new to me. I would at least like to get a feeling for what I maybe need in the future to make this campaign and setting work. As for your thoughts David they sparked off some thoughts of my own and I appreciate you taking the time to post.

For those that do not know the website of http://www.harpingmonkey.com is sponcering something called International World Creation Month. It is a direct out growth (read blatent copy of) NaNoWriMo. The goal is to get on paper 50,000 words about a unique setting. I posted this over there but I wanted to post it here as well to see what kind of information the good peope at the hero games board could offer. Hello Everyone, First off I want to say thanks to Mick, Chris and KJ for putting out the idea of InWoCreMo to the patrons at the Monkey. I have had several settings and worlds in my head for a while now. January will give me an excuse to put them on paper (or electronic media at least). More than likely I will end up doing a fantasy campaign setting based on my own combination of Tolkien, Moorcock and Lovecraft but I wanted to throw this out there and get your feedback. One of the other worlds I have been thinking about is a world much like our own but not Earth per se. It is planet much like Earth in technology but that is about the end of the similarity. Also add to this world the fact that superheroes have existed for about a century as well. So, Super-Heroic Fantasy based in a modern but non-Earth setting. I know what you’re thinking, “Why not just put it on the earth and be done with it?” Well, I have my reasons to divorce it from our own home planet. Most of it is just to get the players off-balance a little. I also want to do it because I have never seen it done before and especially not done by me. ;D I know this concept has been sort of used by Shadowrun that takes our earth and turns it into a fantasy setting. What I want to do is take a constructed world and make it into a modern-like setting and add supers to the mix. I have been doing pretty standard fantasy settings since starting to play DnD. I’m familiar with constructed worlds but I have never seen one used to tell superhero stories. I think this is a genre that would work with making a completely unique world. What I could use from this community is a list of things that I may need to think about and plan for to give the verisimilitude of a place like modern earth using the same techniques that would go into creating a standard fantasy campaign. I don’t mean things like mapmaking and physical world creation – I have that covered. I’m looking for sources for developing modern cultures, technology, a reasonable history in a world capable of the information age, and so on. Plus, ideas for how supers might have impacted the world in the past hundred years; how supers might have evolved into the tights and masked four-color or even Alan Moore-esque heroes that would be current in my world (with a little more depth than they wear capes and costumes to hide their identity). Does this seem like something anyone would be interested in hearing or reading about? If so, how would you do it? I’m a little stumped, to be honest. I’ve been stuck too long with elves and dwarves to be easily able to go to modern-day, non-earth supers. Any help Ideas or direction you can give would be appreciated. Thanks for your time in advance. Jester.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER

Re: Adventures of The Noble Foundation No Offense Dave but I don't care much for the short discription of Rook. I would rather post the whole story to let people get a feel for him as I see him. A guy with big shoes to fill. So without further ado the backgroud for Rook. Warren VonXivon Sr. the owner of the multi-billion dollar Security Systems firm that bore his name took up the costumed identity of the Rook in the mid to late 80's. It all started after several disastrous events where items under the protection his company were stolen, by super powered thieves, he decided the people under his employ needed a super agent to help rectify the situation. He decided that hiring a meta-human might be risky and so decided to build something that could handle a Meta on its own terms. The security firm contacted the best and the most visionary of the new maverick technology firms to design a system to do this job. Out of several suggested projects that came from these talks only a handful made it to the design stage. With all interested parties making a presentation to Warren and his advisors directly making the final decision. Two designs came out of those presentations, both as visionary as they would be costly to produce. The first was a set of battle armor that would make a man the equal of any super thug. The second was to design a mechanical creature with a limited AI that would take over the duties of guarding items of importance. The engineers and personal designing the two separate projects were employed by the company and required to work together to produce the best one design that they could. The mechanical AI was the most ambitions project and drew the most heated and fervent discussion. Many man-hours were spent by both teams deciding how the systems would work and much code written to build the bases of the AI that would run the machine. While the project was far from complete it was on its way to shaping up. The major draw back was that the project would be much more costly than the armored suit and that no one could say with any certainty how effectively the machine AI would work. Ultimately the design for the battle suit got the attention of Warren Sr. with his blessing the construction began on the exoskeleton. The head designer of the mechanical AI disappeared along with a copy of the majority of the technical plans and code written for the prototype. The security firm tried to trace him down but to this day he seems to have just simply vanished without a trace. With the firm’s considerable financial backing and the personal enthusiasm of Warren himself the battle suit project was completed. Despite the fantastic cost over runs and the impracticality of the project it was finished and the proto-type was ready for field-testing. The suit was dubbed the Rook because of the flat-headed design that was necessary to house the various sensory arrays and from Warren Sr’s love of chess. The rest as they say was is history. The Rook armor was deployed on behalf of the VonXivon Security Company to anyone that suspected that a meta-human would be trying to steal something. Of course the cost to keep the suit working in the early days was prohibitively expensive so only the very rich could afford it. With the passing of years and the advance of technology the suit got easier to operate and maintain so the suit began to show up when the call for heroes got desperate. While the company has always maintained that an employee of VonXivon Securities International wears the armor the truth is that Warren Sr has always been the man in the suit. His intervention on the battle of Detroit may have lead to the inspiration of the young Defender By the early 90’s he was a regular part of the superhero community in Millennium city. In late 90’s VonXivon entertained the idea of petitioning for a place on the Champions but with Defender already on the team he decided to he would he redundant. His solo career and the pressures of running a multi billion dollar company finally got the better of him and he decided to take the company public and keep controlling interest. He also hired a board of directors that would oversee the day to day operations along with a chief executive officer to run the day to day operations while he pursued his goal of protecting the normal citizens of Millennium City those the seem to believe they are above the law. While this decision made it easier to pursue his personal goals it also put him at odds with his family. His wife of several years growing more distant he escaped to a world less demanding and easier to deal with emotionally. The separation came as no surprise to him. He came home one day and the mansion was quiet and he knew she had taken the kids and left him. He would miss his son, Warren Jr, and daughter Lisa but there were people that needed him out there. They would understand someday he was sure and come to appreciate what he was doing. While restricted to house rest and waiting for the Rook armor to be repaired, after a battle with Pulsar and Green Dragon Warren Sr., happened upon a TV program that would shape is destiny. Defender of the Champions was being interviewed for a local show dedicated to Superheroes. The interviewer asked he thought about the Rook. The Defender said he thought that Rook was a good guy and that his heart was in the right place but the armor was looking a little long in the tooth and should be retired. He went on to point out how outdated the armor looked and that the same suit may have been “hi-tech†in the 80’s but it could use some reworking now. This off hand comment made Warren Sr. re-thing just patching the old suit back up and instead do an entire redesign. The armor had need updated and the like but this would be a rebuild from the ground up. Ironically the decision to change the armor would be its undoing. He also had the old armor repaired but left it in the labs until needed again. Warren Jr. grew up the media image of his father more then the actual man. He loved his Dad but didn’t really know the man. All he had to base his impressions on were the few times he had spent with him but mostly the impressions his mom shared. In time other things that helped dull the pain a bit replaced the void where his father should have been. Being filthy rich and young led to all kinds of fun but it wears off and soon it takes more and more thrills to make the same impression. Young Warren still saw his father from time to time on the news but the personal visits came less and less frequent until they stopped. Warren Jr. was almost 23 by the time he saw his father again and that would be the last time. Warren Jr was partying, somewhere, but in his mental state he would be hard pressed to tell you where. The new friends he had met the night before had the best stuff and the chicks with them were killer hotties, all of them. They were talking drinking and partying up a storm and after a while everything got weird. He couldn’t move and was drifting off into sleep. Over Rook’s helmet a voice issued a challenge to Warren Sr. calling him by name. He was to come alone or his son would pay the price of in his absence. Warren Sr. came with secure in the knowledge that the suit would protect him form whatever lay in wait. When he arrived guards met him with state of the art weapons but they were no match for him. He managed to find out where they were holding his son and flush with his easy victory he went as fast as the armor could go. Upon arrival at the hideout, guards that seemed to know the new armors weak spots, all to well ambushed him. They weren’t human guards but machines that did sever damage to the suit. He managed to get to his drugged son chained to the floor and through the helmets visual array he could detect the explosives around the area. His armor’s major systems were disabled so breaking the chain or cutting through it was not an option but the protective quality of the armor would still protect the man inside. Quickly stripping off the armor and placing it on his son, he carried out the last act of a hero to give his life so that another may live. Warren Jr. woke from all the jostling but still to weak to respond. He saw his father say good-bye and the regret on his face as the explosions lit the area around them before the flash compensator filtered out the harsh light. Warren Jr. survived the explosion, which took the life of his father, with major injuries but he was able to mend physically. He is still haunted by the regret he saw in his fathers face and had determined that he will make it up to the man he called Dad but barely knew. The new armor was destroyed but the old one was still there in the lab just like it had been when Warren Sr. left it to build the new one. The Rook still lives only now everyone knows that it is Warren VonXivon inside that armored shell. The identity of the person or persons responsible for the death of the Original Rook remains unknown at this time. Warren Jr. joined the Noble Foundation as Rook with the hopes that he can somehow make a difference in someone’s life or make things better. Any questions or comments please feel free to let me know.

Re: Adventures of The Noble Foundation Well Dave you have us just where you want us buddy. We have the fate of the world hanging over our heads with only a dubious source for exposition. Looking forward to seeing what dastardly doings you will throw at us next. I like the whole “the world will be in danger if you don’t do this†kind of sudden adventure hook. That totally rocked dude sorry I had to leave out early but like I said before I had to hook up with one of the play testers. Looking forward to playing Warren Von Xivon Sr. I see him as being a very Dark Knight kind of guy. In the time line where he lives Warren Jr. died in the unknown villains base and he took the armor and has been waging a one man war for the last 9 or so months trying to find out who is responsible for the death of his son. I was thinking of tinkering with the points for the suit a bit to make him a little different what the Rook everyone else knows. Post here and let me know what you think Peace.

Re: Russian Superheroes - Ideas and Comment Needed for 'Russian Dawn' game openings For the real world Military enthuiziests you may want to check out Russias special forces as well. The site has some intersting history about russian special forces and their origans. http://www.spetsnaz.com.br/ Originally I played a character that was trained as a Spetznaz and took the name when he was recruited to become an "Iron Man" kind of charcter. hope this helps.

Re: Looking for A.I. Scenarios Greetings Everyone, First off I would like to thank everyone that has taken time to answer my request for plot ideas. The goal of this little series of games is to set up a campaign based in the dark future of a world gone to Helen A. Hand-basket. The players will be children growing up in the world of 2035. All the player characters will be Mutants that have had help hiding from the Mutant detecting Sentinel-like Men in black agents of the A.I.. Any Mutant found out will have to live out their lives being either lab rats for the inhuman experiments of the Genetic and Rare Disease institute, dead, living life out as neutered slave labor, or worse yet as chip implanted hounds chasing down other mutants. With these options I "hope" the players will decide to take on the system and decide to make a better world for themselves and their children. The A.I. wants to create a world where humanity can survive and sees super-heroes and the like as a treat to its prime directive, however is also sees freewill as a threat also. The end of the game will be the players going into the past to correct the problem that caused their world in the first place. If they decide to correct the situation than they will have destroyed their home and have no place to go back to leaving them trapped in the world of 2010. The real campaign will start from there but I want to do a pretty standard game after that and I have lots of ideas about this later part of the game but I want to give the players something to fight for. They have seen the future and know how wrong it can be and will fight anything they can do prevent the horrors they have seen in "their past" (which would the future of the campaign world, don't you love temporal plots). The first part, the fight against the A.I. part, will be a few sessions longs about 9 in total and I expect that some of the players will die in the attempt because it will not be easy to win. This, however, is a topic for another separate post. I hope this clears up what I was looking for a little more and gives you a insight into what I was looking for in ways of plot ideas. Thanks for looking and much thanks for posting ideas for me to work with you guys rock.

Hello Everyone, I have been thinking about running some Scenarios for superhroes. The setting is an A.I. controlled North America sort of like the Nightmares of futures Past of the old Marvel setting. The A.I. Has taken over America and killed off a majority of the superhero population and then dismantled the goverment and set itself up as the Autocratic ruler. It did so in one swift act of controlled assassination. Its goal is to protect humanity by saving it from itself. Then taking over the military with well placed "chip-controlled" personal and computer viruses to take out hardware. It has hidden its central intellicence and now functions through robotic proxies that interact as its eyes and ears. My question to the board is what kind of adventrues does that suggest to the members of the boards here?