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Lamrok

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Posts posted by Lamrok

  1. Re: GM style Question

     

    I had a thought and I wanted to get feedback on it.

     

    The set up:

     

    I am running a mini-campaign with about 4 players in the near future. It's a long gaming weekend - 4 session long campaign. I was thinking of something inspired by Heroes the NBC show - normal folks who discover they have some extraordinary ability and a destiny to use them to save mankind.

     

    The thought:

     

    I was thinking of how I would want to run this idea and I had a thought. What if I withheld their character sheet from them? Instead of giving them a character sheet, I give them a summary of their character with descriptions of their strengths and flaws and so on - but no stats. They get the concept but not the numbers. As the GM I have the numbers and when they attempt stuff I let them know what they need to roll and all that. Would this be a cool way of playing out characters who don't know exactly what they are capable of?

     

    What do you think?

     

    wlg

     

    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.

  2. Re: KISS vs MEPD

     

    In d20' date=' everyone gets gear all the time because it's built as a Wealth Management System, whereas HERO uses Point Management; however, just making everyone pay for everything to the same sum total does not balance make. Balance only really comes into play when things are properly thought out.[/quote']

     

    To put this in some perspective, when I decided to run my current game under the Savage Worlds rules, I spent some time poking around on the message boards. One thing that I had some trouble with initially, was reconciling the cost of the strength stat in a non-fantasy game. I just didn't see it being as useful as intelligence or agility. When I asked about it on the boards, the question was greeted with surprise - strength = gear carried, no matter what the setting. "How can you carry all the stuff you need with a [low] strength?" "All I need is a pistol and a throwing knife." "What about a shotgun, a machine gun, a backpack, a shovel, etc?" "Under my suit jacket?"

     

    If you're in the D&D "build your character by getting stuff" mentality (which is where a lot of Savage Worlds players come from) then it is inconceivable to travel light. If you come from a "pay for what you carry, or at least justify it with an in-character argument" background, it makes a lot more sense for your character to carry the amount of gear that a sane person would be lugging.

  3. Re: Running jokes in your campaign

     

    In our current campaign there are a few but the one that comes to mind is the running jokes related to the baloney replicator. Basically' date=' the base's very-nice-and-only-a-little-mad inventor, Gere-luce, built a food replicator, but he's very pragmatic and plebian in tastes, so he just programmed it to make baloney. The various dietary habits of the Justice Squad are peculiar and contrasting enough, so various references to the baloney machine have continued on. Basically, though, most of the JS are quite fine with baloney, and those who aren't are quite fine with going elsewhere for food, so the base's baloney machine has remained such.[/quote']

     

    The "Food Fabrication Unit" is actually broken. It was supposed to be able to create anything, but it got stuck on baloney and no one has complained.

     

    The existence of the "The Cheese Dimension" (a dimension created entirely of cheese) is one of my favorite running gags. Sammy (our ever hungry shapeshifter) is always looking for a trip there.

  4. Re: Perception as in "do I see it" versus Perception as in "do I appreciate the meani

     

    My instincts as a GM run strongly towards Sim preferences (and as a player I generally find strong Gamists annoying)' date=' but to do the Sim thing [i']right[/i] is an immensely difficult task. And, as I freely confess, I am a notably poor GM, partly because I get lost in the Sim world-construction process and forget to make room for PCs' randomness in that world.

     

    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.

  5. Re: Perception as in "do I see it" versus Perception as in "do I appreciate the meani

     

    Most of the players I know that stack INT (although I don't think I've ever seen a 200 INT!) do it to max out their INT based skills.

     

    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.

  6. Re: What's Your Favorite PH Campaign Power Level?

     

    Last time around I was running Pulp Hero on 150+100.

     

    The Pulp characters I'm interested in simulating (Doc Savage, Tarzan, the Shadow, the Spider, G-8, the Green Hornet, Jon Carter, etc) are a pain to fit into 75+75 without feeling like you're throwing away half the cool stuff they manage to do. Some of them are easily 500+ point characters in HERO terms. 250 points makes it easier to build a Jungle Lord, Man of the City, or Master of Eastern Mysteries who really feels in play like the character he's a homage to.

     

    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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. Re: Soliciting Ideas -

     

    Because my players are invited to read and suggest ideas (which they may do off the boards), I won't announce, in most cases, where I might adopt your ideas, except via PM. I enjoy keeping things as surprises, and my players seem to respect/enjoy that. But I want their input of course and I would like them therefore to see the thread and be able to comment.

     

    Thanks to anyone with time!

     

     

    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

  12. Re: Soliciting Ideas -

     

    First though' date=' I think the Justice Squad needs to become more worldly.. We still consider ourselves a Detroit/NYC super team. Course we are tangling with all sorts of world figures these days. Perhaps a global event would be a good mechanism to make us feel like protectors of the world.[/quote']

     

    Sammy considers himself a Detroit local, but Laughton and Nexus are already pretty well outside of those bounds. I always figured that was part of Sammy's naive charm - not quite realizing the implications of his actions on a larger scale.

  13. Re: Free Will

     

    If you really think about it, doesn't this describe every single RPG campaign that has ever existed?

     

    Every character, every NPC, every event, everything is under the control of the GM and PCs. Nobody has free will, but everyone has the illusion of freewill. And the universe is vulnerable to stagnation or destruction if the GM and players get bored of it.

     

    Now if the characters found out they were merely puppets on a string, wouldn't they want to eliminate their puppeteers if they could?

     

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

  14. 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.

  15. 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.

  16. Re: My Son What's To Play

     

    Keep the game four-color and carefully PG rated. When Mentor's two son's joined our group (at different times) both were about the same age' date=' and we had to change the tone slightly and the native girls had to acquire bikini tops.[/quote']

     

    :) When the kids play, all the taverns serve juice.

  17. Re: Heroic Action Points - Do you use them?

     

    Do you assign the same number to each character' date=' or is each character's individually and/or randomly determined? How many points is average? Do you give extra points during the game as a reward for particularly heroic actions?[/quote']

     

    I would assign them for particularly genre-appropriate actions, especially actions that put the character at a tactical disadvantage. This would provide a mechanism to re-inforce genre conventions.

  18. 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.

  19. 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.

  20. Re: Crazy campaign ideas (Silly or serious)

     

    2000ad did a pretty good story based on just that premise lamrok

    it was called "Storming Heaven" where a guy does way to much acid and gets super powers it was written by Gordon Rennie and illustrated with a wonderfully psychedelic look by Frazer Irving it had some cool superhero names and powers you can see images at frazer irving's website

     

    Cool! Thanks for pointing that out.

  21. 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.

  22. Re: Religion Hero??

     

    Sorry' date=' it sounds as bad as the aforementioned comic books.[/quote']

     

    You are right. It is just as bad. But, people buy those comics, and this game has been around in some form for twenty years. There's no accounting for taste.

     

    Check out the website (http://www.dragonraid.net). It is quite entertaining.

     

    "For example, in the first adventure (an easy-to-play introduction to the game system) the players meet a troll who wants to give them "gifts" which are really temptations to sin. The three temptations put before the players are gawking at bodies on the beach, buying all the clothes they could ever desire, and going to a music concert where there will be plenty of "pleasure potions" (drugs). The troll asks each person which of the three "gifts" they would like to have"

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