Lamrok

Re: GM style Question I've done something very similar (oddly, I just mentioned this in another thread earlier today) and it worked out very well. Players had a lot of fun figuring out their powers, and then applying them.

Re: KISS vs MEPD

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

Re: Perception as in "do I see it" versus Perception as in "do I appreciate the meani Just to be clear, my superintelligent character does have precognition. That ability can be interfered with by certain types of villains. He doesn't use it constantly, since this would violate "Lemming's Law of RPGs" - "Don't annoy the GM." I've come to the conclusion that sometimes Nexus (the character in question) just gets so wrapped up in what he's doing that he forgets to have a look into the future. This helps make games a bit more surprising and strikes me as being genre appropriate.

Re: Perception as in "do I see it" versus Perception as in "do I appreciate the meani Having 20 skills at 55- is certainly nice. But the real reason is to explain to another player that my character, Nexus, is the world's smartest being. The other player has exactly the same stance, and this "war" is the result. (His character is a detective. My character is the group scientist. Stereotypically, the scientist should have the higher INT. I'm just ensuring that things stay proper. ) I'm a believer in the notion that good-natured rivalries between characters helps make a game "tick" and this is fallout from that pursuit.

Re: What's Your Favorite PH Campaign Power Level? From my perspective, the problem with having all those guys played at the same time is that to challenge that group, you'd need super-villains that would be more at home in a champs game. If your group is scaled more like Ram Singh or the Fab Five, it is easier to run villains and plots that feel more authentic (ar least it is easier for me.) When I run a pulp game, I always start with the master villain and work back - that tends to get me character guidelines that give players a good challenge. Of course, my average group size for pulp games has been pretty big, so that figures into it as well - too many Doc Savages spoil the pot.

Re: What's Your Favorite PH Campaign Power Level? 50+50. That's enough to be pretty good at one thing, and that suits what I want out of group players. I also don't like making pulpy characters come up with 75 points in disads which can feel like a burden on some character builds. 75+75 gives a tad too many options to make things gel properly in my experience. 150 point characters feel too self reliant to be good group members.

Re: Comics are getting too steamy... You think about Enforcer84 every 6 or 7 seconds?

Re: A Problem of Dissatisfaction The way to deal with player frustration over limited options (in this case, not knowing what to do with Grond) is to roll with what they come up with. If they want to send him to counseling, give it a real shot at working. If they want to find a way of undoing what was done, expedite the process. Show them that challenges can be overcome. Don't let them trap themselves in no win situations. Have a talk with the player of the overpowered character, and ask him to either power down or to let go of the character and re-write a more approriately scaled character. If he rewrites, then the initial character could potentially become an NPC.

Re: The Genesis of +5 = 2x power? I don't think I've ever seen anything official on INT, but it makes a handy rule of thumb when you don't have any other way of quantifying what it means to have 120 INT. It is slightly more meaningful to be able to say someone is a million times smarter than an adversary than to say they have 100 more intelligence. At least it allows you a non-rulesy way to say it. Another way to scale it would be do something like saying that at 10 int you're brighter than half of humanity. At 11, you're brighter than 3/4 of humanity, at 12 brighter than 7/8, etc. That way, a 20 int makes you "one in 2000" (which feels about right), and every 10 points after that moves the number up an increment of x1000, so a 30 INT makes you one in 2 billion, and a 33 INT would give you a solid claim to the title of "Earth's brightest human" (barring claims by other metahumans, of course.) This number also feels about right to me. Numbers above 33 would be more meaningful on a galactic or interdimensional scale.

Re: Thoughts on Multiform As a player in Zornwil's game, here's what I see happening - (Oddhat actually touched on this in his initial reply.) In the beginning, characters had lots of powers, plus some skills and perks. Let's say 90% of points spent on powers, 10% spent on skills and perks. As time has passed, those proportions have probably hit 70/30 or 60/40, partly as a result of Zornwil's generously quirky experience awards of various knowledge skills and perks related to adventures. Characters with Multiform tend to have those non-combat skills and perks built on a base form that is very effective out of combat. When combat starts, they can use a multiform and switch to another combat oriented form based on their total points - including points which had originally been allocated for solely background purposes. Then they can choose from a fairly wide selection of forms depending on the situation - eventually you hit a threshold where new forms are essentially free. As the game progresses, the ease of +5 to double forms is multiplied by the steadily increasing proportion of non-combat points and this produces the spike in efficiency efficiency Zornwil mentioned. I think that the essential answer to the problem is that multiforms shouldn't ordinarily allow conversion between powers and skills/perks unless there is a compelling reason for it. Knowing that you have to spend an action to switch to a form that has "architect 50-" isn't much of a hindrance, especially if your number of forms is essentially unlimited. You wind up having your entire character functioning as a VPP, only there are no limitations about what sorts of stuff can be put in that VPP. Every extra experience point awarded to you from the GM goes into this pool. I personally think that multiform should be done away with, and, taking Tetsuji's construct one step farther, that the definition of of multi-power should be massaged to make it cover the territory - allowing characters to make sweeping changes to powers without swapping skills and perks out. Losing access to skills and perks would be a limitation on a slot, rather than default behavior of the power. Unlimited form changes should be covered by VPPs.

Re: Soliciting Ideas - I like surprises. I'd vote for Kietersling (Norse-themed intellectual type master-villain) as being the next major threat, since I see a lot of good RP possibilities with that kind of a clash. Personally, I'd love to see the earth destroyed by Galactus, and the Justice Squad dealing with the angst and repercussions of such an event (presuming their survival, of course) before turning to stopping the menace and acting on a more galactic stage (can they rebuild the remnants of the human race elsewhere?). But, that's a bit much to ask from a GM. Nexus

Re: Soliciting Ideas -

Re: Free Will In one subplot in Zornwil's game, my character is searching for those puppet masters.

Re: Free Will I think my character would support the happy field. He'd use his powers to construct a backup for the mentallist, to make sure he couldn't easily be taken out. I'd make up some mumbo jumbo about happiness being the next evolutionary step for mankind and this being the next logical step in the progression of humanity and justify it with my character's huge INT stat, subtly pointing out that things that are right often seem wrong unless you can bring 150+ int to bear on the problem. Sometimes the best way to portray a character with s super high intelligence to to declare things that are intuitively wrong. We'd have a spirited discussion about it around the table, and various NPCs would show up to try to sway opinion on the matter. It would be a fun role-playing exercise that might end up going either way, but arguing on the side of happy would definitely be more fun than arguing on the side of "same ole thing" free will. There just seems to be more interesting plot development opportunities in supporting it than opposing it.

Re: My Son What's To Play I haven't had too much success with getting my kids into regular gaming. We play a few sessions every now and then, but discipline breaks down when I'm the GM, since it is hard to be dad and GM at the same time. My nine year old takes everything too seriously, going into extreme funks every time something bad happens to his character. My seven year starts giggling and can't stop. Maybe next year. When we play, we use Savage Worlds, since the system is a lot easier to grasp, and character building is a pretty simple menu-driven process.

Re: My Son What's To Play

Re: How to handle Western Hero Duels/Showdowns It sounds a lot like Deadlands Classic to me.

Re: Champs and players with no comic book background I read some, way back when, but my interest was short-lived. I'd rather participate than spectate - which also explains my general apathy for professional sports.

Re: Heroic Action Points - Do you use them?

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff Probably the most infamous instance of this in our group occurred in Zornwil's game, when we were presented with a situation in which an NPC who had been with us for years (and who sort of worked for one of the other PCs, and sort of was a GM plot device to scare up various story leads) was in trouble with the law more than usual. It looked like we were going to have to find some way to clear his name. It occurred to me, though, that if we got him drunk, my character could just swap his brain with a border collie we had in the basement for some medical experiments. The NPC got to avoid jail, and the dog got to go hang out in the mental ward where he would be well fed, exercised, and cared for (which was a much more upbeat future than he would have had in the basement.) The subplot was summarily bypassed. The NPC got his vengeance later, but that's another story. On the other side, I do have to say that I was pretty surprised when Zornwil had my character's left hand suddenly become sentient and free-willed. It could detach and run around like "Thing" from the Addams family. It became a DNPC. Nowadays, "Lefty" is going to school at Prof. Xavier's New School for Mutants.

Re: Pcs and the presidency Well, if you're going to allow for PCs who can shoot laser beams out of their eyes, fly to mars and back, and pay a surprise visit to Zeus, I don't think allowing one of them to juggle the duties of president with crime-fighting is very far fetched. Any sort of real tangible rewards from the office could easily be duplicated by a sufficient amount of mind control. Official duties can be handled through effective delegation, and Life Support: Doesn't Sleep. A secret ID would probably be a good idea. Any PC who tried to push things too far to his advantage would just hit a wall of red tape and beaurocracy and could easily run afoul of a Congressional Inquiry. It strikes me as fairly self balancing. In a lot of games, I wouldn't see a real problem with it, and in those cases, I think the price is about right.

Re: Crazy campaign ideas (Silly or serious) Cool! Thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Crazy campaign ideas (Silly or serious) Flower-Power Champions! Circa 1968 - In order to put down student protesters, the CIA tampers with the LSD supply in Campaign City, causing widespread mutations to otherwise peaceful hippies. Now, the intrepid group must band together to deal with the horrors of the Military Industrial Complex, and fight the tyranny of "The Man." It is almost worth doing just to see the characters my group would design.

Re: Religion Hero??