Lamrok

Re: Damage Reduction before defenses!

I've played in your game for five years now, and built a bunch of characters designed to deal with the extra stun attached to attacks, and I think +1 is fairly close to right.

For everyone else, here's how it plays out. Combats are fast and nasty. Regular defenses are not nearly as efficient as they are in regular Hero, so it makes more sense to lean on Damage Reduction, Zornwil's Invulnerabilities, quick healing, extra stun, or not getting hit. You usually need regular defenses to absorb body, but it makes more sense to deal with the stun some other way. (Zornwil has added another class of attack in addition to physical, energy, and mental - this puts a greater emphasis on buying stun and healing, since points on defense are spread thinner.)

With regular defenses devalued, putting DR in front of them doesn't make for quick and easy invulnerability they way it would in regular Hero. Its all a matter of re-evaluating things and seeing them through a different prism.

Re: Your Character's Room at the Base

Blazing Arrow just has a few dead squirrels for a snack and some sticks for an occassional fire' date=' along with a mattress. The door is partly broken, right where the card system lock should be (Blazing Arrow uses no technology, despite each subsequent retraining by UNTIL). They get mad when the door isn't fully sealed, since the indoor fire sets off the main alarms (in his room, of course, they relented and put in a vent and no smoke alarm).[/quote']

 

You forgot all the debris from Blazing Arrow's removal of dozens of concrete sculptures. Crete knows that, deep down inside, the concrete trees and bushes makes Blazing Arrow feel a bit more at home.

Re: Write-up by a player - our campaign in the sit-com dimension...

And just what do you want with Spectrum's husband?

Nuthin

Re: Write-up by a player - our campaign in the sit-com dimension...

Well you don't HAVE to...

That's what makes it a psych lim, vs a physical lim. The problem is that we keep missing our ego rolls.

Re: Write-up by a player - our campaign in the sit-com dimension...

Geez, Spectrum is busy on her extended honeymoon. She has more important things to worry about than Laughton taking over the world.

 

Hey, how many points does one get for being hunted by their own team mates?

Spectrum can't be too busy, since Sihn had some business with her new husband.

How many points do the rest of the team get for having to go find Laughton?

Re: Could your Champions character beat...

It's all a matter of benchmarks. If the villains in his campaign are a credible threat to defeat the PC's then so what? Obviously the supers in Zornwils world are truly SUPER' date=' making normals look pale by comparison. As long as the game isn't a cake-walk for the PC's I say "so what?"[/quote']

 

Exactly. Zornwil does a great job of giving the players lots of interesting situations to play through. Any situation can be overcome with the proper amount of investigation and planning, but the difficulty can vary pretty widely. This makes the game feel a lot more "realistic."

Re: Children

I'm also with yamamura' date=' this is comic book/cinematic reality. You shouldn't have to pay double for your stats just to be a boy genius rather than his grown up counterpart.[/quote']

 

Kids don't have to take "NCM Child". You can build them just like any other Hero, then just call them a kid.

Re: Children

ok, I can understand the reasoning behind not having them be little adults, more than expereince is needed for that. But if the game allows for animals to have the same intelligence score as a normal person but with the disadvantage "animal mentality" I don't see why children can't be modled the same way with the disadvantage "child mentality"

 

Maybe that's just me though

That's a good point.

As I watched my three kids grow up with our dogs around the house, I noticed that they seemed to pull even with the dogs, intellectually, at about age one. When a kid is that age, they like the same games and toys a dog does. They also seemd to be about on par with the dog at figuring out simple puzzle-type situations.

I think the INT stats of animals are mainly there to compare them to other animals and to prevent a situation in which animals picked up a lot of points with negative INT. INT also drives perception, and animals tend to be fairly strong (compared to humans) in that regard.

Re: Children

As a parent who spends a lot of time with childen termed as gifted, I can heartily say that the reasoning in this thread does not square with reality. Children do not have the reasoning power that adults do. Their brains haven't fully developed. There are some genius exceptions, of course, but they are far out of whack with reality. If you take a child and an adult and expose them to a learning situation in which neither has an advantage, the adult will win consistently.

Here's an example. My second grader is a gifted learner and a ferocious competitor. He plays chess a lot and is the champion of his school, far above the other kids. My wife has never played chess before. She wasn't even sure what the various pieces could do. She was still able to beat him handily - even his practical expereince wasn't enough to overcome her superior adult-wired brain. Any time you call upon a child, even a gifted child, to work through a difficult logical situation, this becomes very evident. In general, children can't think as deeply as adults (A recent study has suggested that they don't completely catch up until their twenties.)

My own memories of my childhood would suggest that children are just as "smart" as adults, but that's more a function of childhood myth and biased personal perceptions.

Don't trust your own memories from childhood, the media, or various tricks from kids you don't know well. Try playing some logic games with kids some time. You'll quickly see the difference. They can be very quick at the limited things they know - some are very good with language, for example, but when pushed outside their envelopes, they are not just "little adults."

Re: Champions mods

But of course' date=' that was my first thought![/quote']

 

I'm a little concerned that, uh, without being able to specialize in "Eye Pokin'" Billy Hill might lose a little of the special something that made him the character he was.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

I should say that' date=' just as you pointed out in your office, a number of people in our office were losing weight through various means at about the same time as I was. It was coincidental and I didn't even realize it (consciously) until someone pointed that out to me. It probably helped as well, even if I didn't realize it at first. Similarly, my wife couldn't quit smoking (which she did over 10 years ago) until some of her smoking buddy friends quit, and then it was easier for her.[/quote']

 

Having less brownies and donuts around the office tends to help a good bit.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

My personal advice/opinion is that a big part of succesfully dieting and all that (whatever you add to make yourself look as you desire) is simply to suck up some level of "simple" but painful self-deprivation. If you don't learn to deprive, the diets that promise progress by "eating what you like" or "eating as much as you like within (x) set of parameters" don't address behaviors that resume as soon as the weight level is achieved or close to achieved. And, to me, the reality of losing weight has been simply living with less food-based satisfaction, although I do feel better.

 

You have to accept a level of unhappiness in one regard for a level of happiness in another, in summary, and, just to be clear, IMHO. That was just my experience. Maybe it doesn't apply to others, I don't know.

Quite true. A few months ago, I decided to alter my eating habits - generally eating less, and working to stick to low-fat high-nutrient foods. My goal is to stay on this new plan for pretty much forever. I'm trying not to think of it as a diet so much as a more reasoned approach to eating. So far so good.

My main problem with dieting has been that I had no issues with my size. My doctor said I was healthy and had no real reason to lose weight, and I just generally liked being a bit more massive. Until I got into my twenties, I was severely underweight, and hated it. Once I began to put on weight, I started feeling a lot better about myself. As long as I kept reaonably fit I was reaonably happy.

But, there are other factors. As my kids have been getting older, I've been spending more time playing sports with them, and to be able to keep up, I need to lose some mass. I'm also hoping that I'll have a few less aches and pains to deal with, and hoping to feel a bit more energetic. I've had a fairly stellar year at work and I want to keep the momentum going.

A bunch of people at my office have scored some MAJOR successes with Weight Watchers. I think our office, collectively, has lost about 30% of its total mass in the last two years. I'm not doing this personally, but it does seem that it can work for a lot of people.

Re: Pulp Film Recommendations

I saw "It's a Gift," with W C Fields a couple of days ago, and I'd recommend it as a great source of information about the more mundane aspects of life in the pulp period. Scene after scene is based on pieces of period technology and contemporary culture. The scenes in which Fields works in his gorcery store are particularly interesting - huge barrels of molasses, most goods behind the counter and sold by weight.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet?

If we're going to forego art entirely (and as an artist I shudder a little at that) then we might as well shift to PDFs and forget about publishing books.

This is where I think the market will eventually wind up: PDFs with Print on Demand for those who want it. This greatly lowers the investment a game company requires to distribute a product and start seeing returns. No gambling on printing too many or too few books. Resistance to this format will lessen over time, partly driven by a parallel change in personal computers (this is the forst year that laptops have outsold desktops.) If everyone has a laptop in their hands, at the game, then having a game in PDF format isn't that much of an issue.

I've been running a Savage Worlds game for the last couple of months. Almost all of my materials are in PDF format. I have the full book, but the PDF is just more convenient most of the time.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet?

I'd be perfectly happy if all gaming companies just dispensed with art, and published books with just text. Most illustrations do nothing to make the book in any way a better tool to support a role-playing game. I would never want a lack of available art to dissuade a talanted writer from sharing his ideas with the rpg community.

Re: Western / Steampunk Hero Idea Bouncing: "Bone Falls"

Let me again say' date=' given the description of what you want you will waste you time if you don't pick up Deadlands.[/quote']

 

The Deadlands books are also more fun to read than most RPG material (Hero's very own Steve Long wrote some of it - He's quite well-thought-of in the Deadlands community.)

Re: Western / Steampunk Hero Idea Bouncing: "Bone Falls"

Deadlands currently comes in three systems...

There's also D20 Deadlands, if you want to go that route.

Savage Worlds is actually built off the "Great Rail Wars" rules. It has a lot of what made Deadlands Classic fun (assorted dice, chips, cards), but is very streamlined, allowing for much faster combats with a lot more active combatants. I personally think that the "feel" of the Savage Worlds rules is kind of "pulp-like" (science, magic, larger-than-life heroes.)

My regular Hero group had a blast when we played Deadlands Classic a few years ago. It is definitely worth checking out.

Re: I touched it!

CoC is what I refer to as Cosmic Horror; don't know if there's a "legit" term for the sub-genre. It just happens to be set in the generally accepted pulp era' date=' and so tends to be really good source material... if you like to have the occasional mind-blasting cosmic terror lurking around some corners of your pulp campaign (I do ).[/quote']

 

I think the Cthulhu stuff is pretty inextricably linked to the era it is set in. For many readers, the Cthulhu horrors were horrors of science, driven by certain allowances for mass hysteria. Lovecraft was thinking about legends of Mu and contemporary astronomy when he wrote the stories. Most of his readers were born in the 19th century. I think the juxtaposition of frighteningly old vs frighteninly new was what gave the stories a lot of their staying power.

 

This tension between old and new is part of the fun that drives the whole pulp genre. It will undoubtedly be covered in Pulp Hero. (see, back on topic)

Re: Western / Steampunk Hero Idea Bouncing: "Bone Falls"

OOP? When did that happen?

The official website seems to still be selling the Deadlands Classic books.

Re: Western / Steampunk Hero Idea Bouncing: "Bone Falls"

Just in case you don't know Deadlands is an OOP RPG made by Pinacle Entertainment. It is set in 1877 in a US where the civil war has not yet ended. There is magic' date=' there are demons, the indians have a big part to play, and thre is weird science based on steam.[/quote']

 

"Deadlands Reloaded" a Savage Worlds treatment of Deadlands, is due out in a couple of months. There's also GURPS Deadlands (for a more Generic feel).

Re: Western / Steampunk Hero Idea Bouncing: "Bone Falls"

As Monster mentioned, you're describing the Deadlands setting fairly well - except Deadlands is set twenty years later (though the Civil War is still dragging on.). Deadlands has a bit more emphasis on the supernatural than you are describing, but you might want to poke around at some Deadlands resources to see what you come across.

My current game is fairly similar to what you are describing - set in the 1870's currently located in the American west, with Steampunk technology. My mental grasp on the setting is defined by the following:

- Start with standard 1870's history (I am a bit of a history buff, and read a lot of cowboy nonfiction in my youth.)

- Add the tech or your choice with some rules defining how it can be used, what it does, and what it changes (I'm using Ghost Rock from Deadlands - I like the supernatural slant of it, and I'm making California the center of the world's largest deposits. This gives a good setting for global intrigue.)

- Look at the ramifications of perhaps sudden tech advancement. Some areas of technology are far more developed than others - the American Civil War, and Prussian aggression in Europe have driven military tech. Old-Style bare-knuckle capitalists are driving most of the rest of technological advances, emphasizing transportation and communication - but only to the benefit of the capital behind the investment. Solitary eccentrics are working in their own random directions.

- Keep in mind that there are some very pristine places that can be explored.

My main "thematic" influences are spaghetti westerns, and those little red biographies I read when I was a kid - full of stories about how young men with pluck could overcome all obstacles to be great American titans of science and industry. This is how the "big" NPCs act, how they expect the PCs to act, and how this fictitional world, in general, functions.

Re: Boiling Water

You can't make the end of a broomstick disappear by waving it in front of a hot open oven. But that's exactly what happens (so I'm told) when you wave a broomstick in front of a steam leak: about one inch diameter wood is instantly vaporized. Bad bad juju.

I've been wondering about the broomstick story while reading this thread. I poked around and found this discussion http://www.usscochrane.com/ddg14/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=55 which answers a lot of my questions.

Re: Don't be a hater!

I think what's missing is "fun." Too many rules, too many subsections, too much "small print."

If I was in charge, I'd rebuild the system from the ground up, focusing on the basic physics of the system - 5 pts = 1 die of damage, 2 points = +1" movement, etc. I'd cut the list of powers to the minimum number that could properly reflect this, then include a section explicitly laying out design rules for extending these rules to design new powers. I'd do the same with advantages, encouraging the creation of new and interesting advantages. I'd overhaul Limitations, many of which have WAY too many weird sub rules, making them hard to apply in a truely generic fashion. I'd outline the philosphy behind the costing of frameworks, allowing players to create new or hybrid frameworks. All of this would certainly light the flamethrowers of many faithful fans, but it would also fuel the imaginations and creativity of the community as people would build and swap new interesting and distinct powers that had more substance than a single energy blast with six limitations attached. I'd make sure that this overhaul was driven by people who actually run and play the game in regular groups - people mindful of the fact that powers need to be point-balanced to be useful and that rules that are too complex are useless.

Toss out the vehicle rules and rebuild them into something that is actually fun and easy to use in play. Put together some base rules that make it feel like you are building a real base at a specific place, instead of situational modifiers to powers and skills. Include guidelines that allow for the easy running of battles with dozens of combatants.

Put some pizazz in the system. Zornwil does a great job of this with his "reputation points" sytem in his champs game. It is an extra "bolted on" construct that sort of guides character's to develop in a certain way depending on how long they've been around. http://www.realschluss.org/x-champions/house_rules/ch_gaining_reputation_and_experienc.htm

Extra goals and meta-game constructs (like "chips" to affect die rolls) just add an extra element of fun for players. Don't make these part of the basic system, but include rules and guidelines for players who want to use them. Make the game a more complete toolkit. Fifth editon still feels a bit dated compared to some newer games - if you want to be a real toolkit, then include a more complete array of tools.

Release worldbooks that take these general rules and apply them in specific ways in specific settings to achieve specific goals. Release setting books that use the basic rules but that feel entirely like entirely new and distinct games.

I want a revolution, not an evolution. Fifth edition does almost nothing to extend the game beyond the reach of what was achievable in fourth edition. Fourth edition was great for its time, but a lot of years have passed since then. Fifth edition just feels like a lot of words to me, instead of a bunch of new ideas.

Just my opinion, of course.

Re: Pulp Reading

The Intro to Simple of Art of Murder (Vintage Crime version at least) has an essay by Chandler of the same title. In it he is fairly critical of some other styles of crime fiction. Its been a while since I read it' date=' but it was a good take on crime fiction and compared his style with that of some other writers of the time.[/quote']

 

I'd like to point out that I think Chandler's "Simple Art of Murder" essay is the best starting point I've ever seen for running a mystery in a role-playing game. His criticism of the typical "English" mystery points out exactly why those types of mysteries don't work as well when you have a group of players running down clues. If Pulp Hero wasn't bound by page or copyright restrictions, I'd say this essay deserved a place in it.

Re: Pulp archtypes.

How about the Old "codger" who lived through the bad old days and is still tough as nails

I think it is cool that in pulp stories, the really old codgers are Civil War vets.

Butch Cassidy might be an old codger in a pulp game.