Steve

Re: Traveller Hero Update I was actually hoping for some tidbits of rules you could post.

Re: Traveller Hero Update How are you handling psionics in Traveller Hero? I'm definitely getting it, but since psionics are fairly limited in effect in Traveller, I'm not sure what game mechanic approach you will be using to do it.

Re: Traveller Hero Update I picked up the two Traveller 1248 supplements, and I'm enjoying reading them. The Bowman Arm supplement is also good reading. Do you cover the 1248 era in Traveller Hero? I'm curious about how you are doing the Solomani Supermen.

Re: Divide by Three If simple and easy is the goal, why not use Spell Skills instead? That uses a standard Hero mechanic (individual skills as spells) to replicate a magic system based on the idea of magic being a learned ability. The costs would be roughly the same as the divide by three notion. This is not to say that I have anything against the divide by a number concept, since there's nothing in the rules that says a power (like Flight) must always cost the same in every campaign that exists or ever will exist. I just prefer to try and work with standard Hero as much as I can to replicate concepts. Skills should work quite well for ease of play for newbies to the system.

Re: Divide by Three I'm a little surprised too. I've come to expect a certain level of snarkyness in KS's posts, but these have been a bit nastier in tone, like the poster he replied to kicked his dog or something.

Re: Running jokes in your campaign

Re: Traveller Hero Update Where did you buy them from?

Re: Running jokes in your campaign This originated in an old Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the 30s. One of the characters had their own plane that could be used to fly the group around to wherever they needed to be in the world. One day the GM came up with this gem, to show that they shouldn't be using the plane in that scenario. "You see twelve disreputable-looking men with shotguns standing around the plane." It since morphed into a similar saying on other campaigns, changed to suit genre. "You see twelve disreputable-looking Zhodani with assault weapons standing around the ship." "You see twelve disreputable-looking elves with enchanted longbows standing by the docks." You get the idea.

Re: HCPD - The 13th District (Campaign Idea) Resurrecting from the crypt of older threads... I've recently finished re-reading my copy of Delta Green, and it's given me a new slant on things to consider. The 13th District once existed with an official mandate, but it was destroyed/mothballed years or even decades ago due to enemies in the supernatural underworld or maybe other groups working within City Hall. It still exists, but now it's a sort of deeply-hidden conspiracy within the Hudson City Police Department, with no official recognition. Anyone ever run a Delta Green campaign?

Re: Mixing Traveller and Hero Universe That's just cool. Rep to thee!

Re: My Traveller Hero campaign

Re: Super Hero? ::Eyes Glaze Over:: Amen, Brother! As a player and GM for both Rolemaster and Spacemaster in days past, I concur. Make mine Hero!

Re: An alternate timeline idea Well, my thought was that aliens are still out there, but Earth is somehow "less intersting" to them in this timeline.

Re: My Traveller Hero campaign Wise guy. Well, I've lost more than a couple of characters during Traveller character gen, but I prefer to shield my poor Traveller newbies from the horrors of Old School Traveller character gen. I suppose I could borrow a page from GURPS Traveller and have them roll 3d6 after completing their characters. Failure means I take their character sheet, crumple it up and toss it away. I do plan to write up a list of approved mental powers, likely taken in consultation with Ultimate Mentalist and the other powers books I have (Fantasy Grimoires, USPD etc). I'm going to do my best to limit each pool's concept into what Traveller had set up (although a bit broader and deeper of a list than the old Traveller's psionics rules listed). Telepathy, for example, will be more for communication/thought reading. I'll have to consult my books to see if Mind Control fits in there, but it might. I'm also thinking of doing things in a school-based approach, requiring characters to spend time studying on their own or with a master to learn new uses for their pools.

Re: My Traveller Hero campaign So primaries will range from 7-17. If so, why not use +6 and go from 8-18? The prelim I saw of Traveller Hero had 100+50 as the setup. So that's been changed? Since Traveller Hero is not out yet, I was thinking of taking packages from Alien Wars to cover Third Imperium backgrounds. The tech level is not overly dissimilar between the two, except for hyperdrive speeds, and a lot of the packages felt about right for Traveller.

I've started writing up some of my campaign ground rules, and the first thing I started with was character creation, skill rolls and limits. Characters will be built on a Heroic level, with 100 Base plus 75 Disads, although I might go 125 Base plus 50 in Disads. All primary characteristics will start at 8, not 10. The maximum a primary characteristic can reach is 23, and the minimum is 4. This gives a 20 point range in characteristics, which seems a reasonable range to me. The maximum for secondary characteristics is 10 for PD/ED and 5 for SPD. All others remain at standard Human Normal Maxima. In order to allow each character their 'schtick', only one category of abilities may ever go over Human Normal Maxima. If a character wants to be fast, they can buy a 23 DEX and 5 SPD, but all other abilities are limited to the normal maximas. Likewise a character could take 23 STR and 23 CON and go up to a 10 PD/ED, but not anything else. Since I'm limiting it this way, I'm thinking of not charging double for characteristics over Normal Human Maxima. Skill rolls are determined by using 8+CHAR/3, and Normal Skill Maxima is set at 14-. Psionics are available, but they represent a character's 'schtick'. So if multiple characters want psionics, I think they should have to specialize, such as one taking Telepathy and another Telekinesis. Psionics are purchased as suggested in Fantasy Hero for doing magic in that each category of psionics are bought as a pool (one for Telepathy, one for Telekinesis, etc), with each point spent representing five Active Points. A skill roll in Psionics is required to be purchased in order to use the pools, but I'm not sure if I should require one skill for each pool or a single skill and then let a player buy bonuses at one point per +1 with a particular category. This is just the bare bones beginning, but I wanted to toss it out for comments from others.

Re: An alternate timeline idea Thank for the suggestions, Shaft! A lot of stuff from the regular Champions Universe timeline would still exist, but without a Superhuman World things would be more out of sight, like the Empyreans and Atlanteans. The superpowered setting for Dark Champions: The Animated Series might be closest to what I am thinking things would be like. There would be a few masked crimefighters (a carry-over from the Pulp Hero days), but aliens and magic would keep to the shadows. High technology would be limited, and martial artist chi powers would be very rare. The 13th District would be the thin, blue line in this world, dealing with the weirdness.

Re: THE HARBINGER OF JUSTICE Writeup.. He's in the sourcebook, Hudson City: The Urban Abyss.

Re: Traveller Hero Update Misjump question: In the Traveller books I have, misjump is a 2- on 2d6 with modifiers possible for unrefined fuel and trying to jump too deep in a gravity well. How are you handling this check on 3d6? Starting at a 5- maybe? I assume all other rolls, distance jumped and time it takes, will stay the same calculation method?

Re: How to build a factory in Hero? Not quite the effect I am going for. Consider it this way. Base 'A' has a factory that can build a car in a week, but Base 'B' has a factory that can build it in a day. The owner of Factory B put more points into his Base, and one of the things he bought was a more efficient factory for his Base. Change the name of Base 'A' to Kingdom 'A' or Planet 'A' and the idea is still the same. Player 'A' buys his planet as a Base, and he invest points into that Base to have factories that can churn out guns, starships, or food. I guess it's a little bit of an esoteric build question, but I was playing around with the notion of a higher-level game that involves building up a kingdom or planet and playing politics. I just couldn't decide what was more appropriate a Power to use: Transform or Summon. A factory creates something, but is that effect a Transform of raw materials into a finished product or a Summoning of the finished product with a material requirement.

I imagine this might be one of those 'how to build a spoon' type of questions, but I was working on a world write-up for a Star Hero campaign when I got to wondering how you'd define a factory. Is it a Transform, using Extra Time and taking raw materials to create a widget from them? Or is it a Summon? I'm trying to nail down some reasonable rules for determining economic output and factory production by writing up a world as a Base. A player can spend points to have a more productive world at the beginning, or to make a less well-off world more productive in the course of playing the campaign. What the factory makes isn't really important. It could be starship drive cores or maybe even food.

In the standard Hero Universe timeline, in the 1930's there was a magical ritual done that ushered in the Age of Superheroes, an age that lasted about a century. But what if the ritual failed to have that effect? Or just failed completely? How different would the timeline be if things went from the Pulp Hero era into modern times without true superhumans arising? If you drop the Superhero Age from the timeline, what would the Hero Universe be like? It is this sort of universe that I was thinking of putting my 13th District campaign. Weirdness and strange things can happen, but not up to the level of full superhuman stuff. However, that being said, in this universe the Harmon family exists, and there are parallels for almost everyone who exists in the main timeline. There just aren't any superhumans or a Superhuman World. The Dark Champions era replaced the Pulp Hero era (which did have masked "mystery men" sorts), and it will in turn be replaced by the Cyberpunk era and the rest of the timeline for the Hero Universe will proceed pretty much as in the main timeline. Would VIPER still exist in some form? How about DEMON? What other changes might work in this altered timeline?

Re: Artwork for Gestalt

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... From my old L5R game, on the second session the characters were fighting goblins (called bakemono in that world). I showed them a picture of one which was captioned with the name for them. P1: "Hey, we're fighting bakemonos." (Only the player pronounced the first part bake, rhyming with cake). Jokes about baked monos and wonderings if they were evil creations of Keebler Elves went around the table for the next few times goblins appeared.

Re: Mixing Traveller and Hero Universe I like how you can zoom in on this one. It is definitely pretty to look at. Rep to you!