Steve

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I suppose Temporal Inertia could also be expressed as the Law of Conservation of Events. There are certain key events in time that can't really be changed, and doing so simply triggers off a divergent timeline. Smaller changes could fall below a certain energy level and not trigger such a divergence.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe One of the laws of time travel I'm debating including is from Timemaster. The Law of Death: If a time traveller dies, they remain dead even if the circumstances of their death are undone. They simply keel over and die at that instant. Too harsh?

Re: Reproduction I wasn't referring to your posts at all, just a general sense I was getting from posts put forth by everyone. I find it interesting that a number of posters don't find the ability to have kids useful at all, simply on its own merits as an ability. I do, and I think that's where there's a difference in opinion showing up. I keep coming back to the Life Support vs. Aging question. Is it really useful in the context of a game to be able to live 200 years as opposed to 100? How long do campaigns last? For example, why be an elf and buy 4 or 5 points worth of Life Support vs. Aging at all? Your last paragraph misinterprets what I said, so maybe that's my fault in how I presented it. In the shattered post-holocaust landscape I was picturing, the characters would not be coming from regions that would treat breeders as slaves, but they could encounter them in their travels across the world. There are other places where breeders are treated as special, sometimes even revered. What I meant was that, on balance, taking both ends of the spectrum and all points in between into account, I think having the ability to reproduce is a 1 point ability. The default is that you can't. If you never care to have kids, then don't pay the point in this campaign. If you're born into a society that treats breeders as slaves, the campaign won't be starting there, but it gives (I feel) an interesting hook for a PC to have come from one of them, have the ability, and somehow escaped. I could imagine a pretty interesting write-up could be created from that origin. I just find it surprising that the ability to have kids is dismissed as being an utter waste of a point by some posters, if the only benefit it gives you is just the ability to have kids when most people can't.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe Well, I think it would make a great addition to the Star Hero lineup. There aren't a lot of good time travel RPGs out, so Hero should have one.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe That is a very good question, and one I have been thinking about a bit.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe The Time Wars series is what I feel to be the best writing that Simon Hawke ever did, all twelve books of it. It started out with time travel being used as a way to fight wars out of sight. Soldiers would be inserted into historical battle scenes instead, and the results tabulated by means of an elaborate scoring system. Then the Timekeepers started messing with things, a terrorist organization devoted to ending the Time Wars. The first book pretty much set the tone for the series with Finn DeLaney, who was endlessly getting promoted in the field for being such a good soldier, only to get demoted just as often back home for his inability to tolerate spit and polish discipline sorts. With a few other soldiers, like another series regular, Lucas Priest, he's brought in and the officer in charge of the operation offers everyone coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, or whatever they could want. Finn's reaction? "Oh sh*t, we're dead."

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I think multiple timelines might muddy the waters too much, especially since the Hero Universe's standard timeline offers quite a lot of variety on its own. If the number of time travellers is kept really small, it minimizes their impact and makes the heroes feel even more special for being able to do such travelling. V'Han raises some interesting questions. From what I recall in Galactic Champions, at the end of the Superhero Age she swears to leave Earth alone for a thousand years. But does that mean that region of time is what she leaves untouched? Or does it mean she leaves all of its history untouched for a thousand years? Magic is another thing to consider. Does it sweep all over the universe equally, or does it have zones where it's stronger some places and weaker in others? What I get from reading the Champions line of sourcebooks is that magic is a universe-wide phenomena, and its levels affect everywhere at once. It may rise and fall like the tide, but that tide is evenly dispersed. Malvan-tech seems like it is "genuine" super-technology as opposed to "superhero" super-technology. Magic levels are low in Terran Empire times, but it all still works just fine. That raises an interesting notion of comparative technologies when looked at across time. When magic allows it, some really oddball stuff works, and that might be fascinating to technology types. I mean, pick up an UNTIL blaster in 2001 and then zip forward to 2601, and it become so much junk. Zip forward to 3001, and it works again. But take a blaster from 2601 and zip back to 2001, and it works the same. Can you imagine what that would do to an engineer or physicist?

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I give thee rep, sir!

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I'll have to take a look at the Timelords RPG. Having a single timeline does fit more in line with Doctor Who, but it's also the classical view of time, where it's like a river you can travel up and down. Although that does raise the specter of something like a timestream split as a very bad thing to try and avoid, which was how it was presented in Simon Hawke's Time Wars series.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: Reproduction

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe Keep the ideas coming! In order to do a proper homage to the good Doctor's adventures (which is part of my goals), I would use something like a TARDIS, an actual vehicle that the PCs would arrive in, park somewhere, and then leave to go have the actual adventure. Based on descriptions of Malvan technology in the Terran Empire sourcebook, I'd rate it as being darn near indestructible from anything short of equivalent technology. As far as picking the lock, I couldn't see that happening without Malvan technology either. That leaves the chronoporter (or whatever I end up calling it), as more of a plot convenience to get the PCs from place to place across time. Having an enemy able to commandeer the vessel is definitely a possibility, but it would require another Malvan or maybe an Elder Worm to do it. I haven't decided how 'user friendly' to make the vehicle. It could require a skill roll, which would keep down the numbers of Malvans who would pursue such a hobby. But it could also require a telepathic link as well. One feature that the TARDIS provided which was nice was its universal translator ability, so everyone seemed to be speaking English, even nightmarish aliens. That would pretty much eliminate any need to buy languages though, unless taken just in case the chronoporter left without a PC, and he needed to talk with the natives. As far as camouflage, it would definitely need that. I could also borrow a notion from Timemaster. Their vehicles could be set to hover on the verge of being, essentially desolid and invisible until called back.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe That is pretty much my thinking for how to make this campaign work. It's a way that I could put together a party that could include such wildly different origins as a 1930s detective, a barbarian from the Valdorian Age, and a noble from the Terran Empire of the 26th century, to name a few options off the top of my head. Yes, they could go to London in 1941, but that's more of a setting for the actual adventure than going there to try and change history or something. With the Elder Worm and their minions lurking in the dark corners of history, my Malvan time traveller and her companions could foil their plots, among other adventures. If I go with the notion of a small society of Malvan dilletantes as time travellers, it also lets me play with some intrigue and politics, especially if these other Malvans also have small groups of assistants with them. Romana herself would be more of a way for me to do infodumps to the players, so I would need to make sure I don't overshadow the PCs with her.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe That sounds pretty much like how GURPS approached it with their "Observer Effect" notion. I'll have to dig out my old Timemaster stuff to see what kind of time tricks I'll allow, and I'll compare it to the Doctor Who info that tkdguy posted a link to. Rep to him for that, btw.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: Reproduction Well, I hope I didn't come across as huffy or something. I agree that more should be involved than the Talent purchase, but I was thinking of having the Talent be a pre-requisite to taking a Perk. I don't often do pre-requisite abilities as a requirement for certain Perks, but this seems to make sense. Dealing with gender and reproduction also becomes a possible plotline to explore. Imagine if most women are fertile, but very few men are. That makes fertile men a rare and valuable commodity. Would they be kept safe in harems of some kind but be slaves, or would they be honored as pinnacles of manhood, expected to take their pick of any woman they want? Think about the reverse, with men being fertile, but very few women. A different dynamic opens up. I could see conquest being a more common thing than it would be if women were the more fertile gender.

Re: Reproduction What I've been seeing in the various arguments for and against asking a player to pay for something that is a 'natural ability' is the assumption that a given natural ability is always going to exist across every universe and thus should never be something a PC would have to pay points for, but I don't agree that's always the case. What I was contemplating was to make a campaign baseline assumption that infertility is the default setting, and to ask anyone interested in their character having the ability to reproduce to expend a point for a Talent. In some societies in my imagined post-holocaust landscape, having this ability would allow a character to take perks related to that society, but it also opens them up to disadvantages a character without this ability wouldn't have to deal with, such as slavery in other societies. Is it wrong for me to say that, on balance, taking all possible societies that a PC could run into across a post-holocaust landscape, some which treat the fertile as nobility and some which treat them as slaves, I choose to make it a 1 point Talent purchase? That's what some of you are saying, that it is wrong, since it's a natural ability, like breathing. But the assumption you are making is that the ground rules are always going to be the same everywhere, and Hero lets you play with altered assumptions. Take Valdorian Age, for example, where PCs and NPCs start with 8's in the primary characteristics. And if PCs and NPCs are treated the same, what's the problem? I started this thread with a build idea that I was playing with, namely parthenogenesis. That led me to look at other forms of reproduction to see how costs might differ. But my original idea was to present to my players a PC race that can reproduce with essentially only females, with no exchange of genetic information required. Is that worth a point in a world where everyone can reproduce normally? It's not the standard method of reproduction. I guess I'm trying to understand something I'm seeing in the various opinions flying back and forth. I've always treated Hero as working from a baseline, and things which would be free in some worlds cost points in others, since the baseline is shiftable.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe DH issues should be available to you if you have a Digital Hero account. You can still buy back issues going back to #1. The Xenovores will probably have a part to play in this campaign plan, but more the role of BEM (Bug-Eyed Monster). Other than as a bunch of angry beasties with high intelligence, I'm not exactly sure how to use them in this campaign. I ran a short-lived Alien Wars campaign back when it first came out, and that era of time would provide many possible scenarios, especially since my Malvan Time Lady does like humanity. Perhaps she even had a hand in humanity's victory over the Xenovores. And I have one player that really liked his Rigellian character, so this would be a way to bring it back into play. Of course, one scenario that immediately comes to mind would be if other temporal powers decide to try and undo that victory. One thing I'm considering is how to deal with her Malvan looks, one alien from humanity, which would be really bad in more superstitious time eras. One option would be some kind of Mavan-tech image disguise, and the other would be that she's so enamored of humanity that she has herself body sculpted into a human appearance. The latter idea seems to work better with the Malvan psyche, since I imagine that would be a novelty among them, like putting on a costume would be for us, and easy to do with their technology. With the first idea, there is always a chance that the image goes on the fritz, which does provide scenario possibilities as well.

Re: Reproduction As a brief side note, here is the official ruling on costing for Duplication with a zero-point Duplicate. It needs to be a minimum of 1 point.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe Ah, I hadn't known this about the Dr. Who mythos, but I'm sort of a newbie at the series. GURPS Time Travel talks about this sort of thing as well, what they called "The Observer Effect" I think. As part of my homage to the good Doctor, I'll have to study up on such things to come up with my own laws of time travel for the game. I'd rep you, but it seems I must rep others a bit first. XD

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I'd forgotten about the Temporal League until you reminded me. I have the issues and will be sure to mine them for ideas as I flesh out the concept a bit more. And I will definitely be pulling out my copy of Ultimate Vehicle. I'd see them more as sometimes allies, sometimes foes of Ms. Malva and her intrepid crew of adventurers. I'll have to check to see who the villains are. I do still like the Elder Worm idea I was thinking of, since they would be a great "secret enemy" sort, the type that works behind the scenes mostly. I will rep you for the reminder.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe I think you and Curufea are misunderstanding why I'd like to do a campaign like this. Several years back I ran a game with a paramilitary style Time Patrol, using the old Timemaster system. Part of the reason why this idea of a Malvan time traveler and her assistants appeals to me is that it allows a more free-wheeling approach to the campaign, which I think my current gaming group would appreciate. They could be battling Spanish pirates in the 15th century for one adventure, and then dealing with Thorgon spies in the 27th century for the next. And if I added in interdimensional capabilities on top of time travel, then it seems like it would be quite a fun campaign with endless plot variety. I don't think a Malvan NPC would overshadow the PCs, especially if done on a Heroic power level (or maybe better with PCs as Powerful Heroes). Most of her points would be tied up in various knowledge skills and such, and I'm thinking she keeps the PCs around to do the "heavy lifting" (i.e. combat) when needed. I also like the idea of what sort of characters they could come up with if I give them all of history to play with.