Lamrok

Re: Religion Hero?? Don't forget DragonRaid, if you want to go hard core: (from the DragonRaid site) "DragonRaid is an exciting experience in adventure simulation. More than just a game, it offers hours of enjoyment while teaching participants to resist sin, counter deceptive arguments, memorize Scripture, and build moral and spiritual character. The DragonRaid system encompasses many different adventures. On the mythical world of EdenAgain, players meet challenges that parallel real life. The imagined dangers compel them to grapple with conflicting values, discover how faith in Christ can shape behavior, and reflect on what is really worth living and dying for." I actually tried it once or twice. In order to perform the equivalent of casting spells, you had to recite Bible verses from memory.

Re: Doc Savage Write-up?

Re: Doc Savage Write-up? Dent would say that when introducing them, but the stories, as far as I can remember, never bore that out. When push came to shove they were never close in ability to Doc.

Re: Doc Savage Write-up?

Re: How to use the President In one of my old games, the "Skull and Bones" were modern descendants of ancient wizards tasked with protecting the North American continent. The powerful magic had faded, but, wouldn't you know it, during the course of the campaign, it began to re-emerge. Bush (the Herbert Walker one) had to scramble some of his close friends and help the gang confront Cthulhu on R'lyeh. Cap Weinberger didn't survive the ordeal (squish). After leading a magical group ritual, G.H.W.B was also called upon to fly an attack aircraft after one of the pilots went insane. In Zornwil's game, our group is currently serving as body guards for Bush II on a diplomatic mission to Atlantis.

Re: College Professor Skill Level In the last couple of years, I've seen three of my old college professors on TV, in the role of experts on various subjects. One of them was also a passable instructor, but the other two were excellent teachers - professors who took great delight in finding ways to ignite their enthusiasm for the things they loved within the imagination of their students. These two are nationally recognized experts (one has won two Pulitzers), but I think they could have taught nearly anything to anybody. Certainly, there are some professors who don't care much about teaching (I had a couple of those as well), but I don't think you can make a generalization about an inverse relationship bewteen expertise and teaching ability.

Re: College Professor Skill Level

Re: College Professor Skill Level What part of the private sector gives proportionatly high pay to experts on Elizabethan drama? Network Executive: "Dammit, CBS is beating us five ways to Sunday with their new sitcoms! We need some more Elizabethan drama experts; some people with really well developed literary critical skills, and a keen sense of classical irony. That should put the zest back in "Everybody Loves Millionaires." Ad Executive: "If only we could deconstruct Acme's new print ad, I think we'd really have a good idea about how to blunt their new campaign. Who do you know with the skilz to do a complete textual analysis?" Politician: "I'm sick and tired of people laughing at my speeches and saying I'm stupid stupid. It isn't me, it's those idiot speech writers. Let's get some top gun smart guys in here turn this thing around."

Re: Dangerous New Powers

Re: How 30plus RPGs Define the GM's Role You can find some odd stuff poking through the "How to run the game" parts of the rules. Here's a bit rom Savage Worlds: From my perspective that's some fairly specific and fairly bizarre advice.

Re: Long Distance Gaming Teamspeak should be able to cover the conferencing, and that shouldn't cost you anything. The only cost would be appropriate microphones (less than $10, and, likely as not, you already have one somewhere - I'd suggest buying a headset, but this won't set you back much over $10).

Re: Start BODY at 2 instead of 10 I ran a game for quite a while with the rule that if you made your "to hit" roll by half, you did maximum damage. I used hit locations on top of that, so there was the possibility of doing fairly huge damage on any given roll (3d6 normal damage strike to the head had the possibility of doing 12 body. Our martial artist used an 8d6 offensive strike to accidentally connect for a 32 body insta-kill in the first fight, an event that haunted him for the rest of the game.) That made things significantly more lethal. It worked well for the grim feeling I was looking for in that game. I wasn't really trying to model reality - I was modelling a situation in which the players had to deal with the fact that their powers were lethal. I think that a lot of people say they want reality, when what they really mean is that they want a game in which death comes easy. These are two different goals.

Re: An Overall Evaluation of Fifth Edition

Re: An Overall Evaluation of Fifth Edition I think this reaches back to earlier comments in the thread - as long as designers are clear on the intent of rules, it is much easier to adjudicate exotic rules additions with out a bunch of trial and error. When I got my first copy of AD&D, I recall that there was something in the rules that said something to the effect of "these are the rules, don't modify them or you'll get out of synch with other games (I'm probably a bit off on that.). The first copy of Champs I had bought had a statement that was essentially the opposite. I'd like to see Hero be a more fleshed out toolkit, with lots of (fully tested) redundant mechanics that can be swapped out at the desire of the GM with explanations describing their probable impacts on a game. If this was done properly, Hero could accomodate people who want Fuzion at the same time it serves people who want old school Champions.

Re: An Overall Evaluation of Fifth Edition

Re: An Overall Evaluation of Fifth Edition

Re: Limitation Boondoggles?

Re: Limitation Boondoggles? First, I'd like to point out that some of this is a matter of GM vs player perception. When I played The Troll in your game, several of his powers were based on charges. In about one third to half of the sessions, he ended the session severely depleted or out of charges (if he didn't use all of his charges, I felt I hadn't played him to his potential). This was exciting, and part of the design, but it wasn't something to make a big deal out of. When charges were gone, it was just a sign that tactics had to be changed. I'd mention it when it happened, but I don't think anyone else ever really noticed, and I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't aware it was happening. In a way, taking the charges lim is betting that combat won't go past a certain point. If the amount of combat in a session doesn't exceed the charges threshhold, the player wins. If it exceeds it by a large amount, the player loses (though as has been previously mentioned, these types of losses often make memorable sessions so they can often be seen as tactical losses but role-playing wins.) I personally think that activation rolls and "Requires Skill Roll" lims are seriously muddled, but at this point in my experience with Hero, I see this is symptomatic of a fetishistic focus on complexity for the sake of complexity, rather than a discrete issue to be addressed. I can still build the characters I want, and keep them legal, even if it means jumping through unnecessarily silly rules to do so.

Re: Stunning News for Robots!

Re: Overall Levels are they too good or not good enough? It really depends on the game. In a heavily combat oriented game, you won't get as much value from them - your'e better off buying specific levels in specific things. In a game with a lot of non-combat action, they are far more useful, since they allow skill mongers to put up passable combat stats without a heavy dual investment of points. As a GM, I don't like them because they are often a quick way for a character to cover a lot of bases with a rule mechanic, and without a lot of deliberation. My house rule used to be that overall levels always had to have a limitation on them, but the lims could be -0 "flavor" lims.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: WWYCD: The Vampire Who Doesn't Want to be a Vampire Anymore Jimmy Hebert would pick up the phone and call his uncle. That would take care of it. Hebert's uncle is the man whose group "cured" Jimmy of vampirism, leaving him still a bit averse to sunlight, but by and large, no longer a vampire. He'll tell her that the vampire hunters will keep coming till she's dead. That's just the way it goes.

Re: I'm going to have a WHAT?

Re: Damage Reduction before defenses! Generally, I think defenses are on the low side compared to the amount of dice in attacks, with characters more designed to absorb or avoid stun rather than resist it. (from my perspective as the most frequent recipient of stun over the years.)

Re: Damage Reduction before defenses!