ZootSoot

Re: Let's Talk Lovecraft Existential dread is the primary ingredient in a Lovecraftian game. Also good is a strong dichotomy in which the characters constantly dread discovering new information but cannot help themselves in the pursuit of it. Tentacles, slime, exagerrated vagina dentata phobias are all extraneous hoo ha, but can be included if the fear they generate is real. The universe is not malevolent, it is indifferent and humans are far to frail to deal with the universe on its own terms. In one of my favorite Lovecraftian campaigns the characters found themselves involved in a plot in which several apparently immortal people were involved around a conspiracy that hid a treasure which may have been the living (and never slain) Jesus.

Re: Belief in magic by normals. I think I have been misunderstood. I am a skeptic and a fan of skepticism. I am an atheist, a materialist, a rationalist. I like nothing more than the debunking of an extraordinary claim. But, like belief in God belief in magic is not sufficient for it to exist and human behavior, universal human behavior, makes it clear that we are not structured in such way as not to believe in magic. I have never seen a miracle, nor do I believe in any of the ones I have heard testified to. I believe that Yuri Geller is a fraud of the first magnitude. I believe my own uncle, a man who is probably as objectively close to genius as anyone I have ever heard of, is a gullible fool for his specific magic beliefs. I am a strong believer in science and the scientific method, but it is that very belief that leads me to conclude that everyone has belief (at some level) in what, from a purely objective view, has to be seen as magic whether it truly exists or not.

Re: Belief in magic by normals. You and I may not accept their testimony but in the real world there are thousand who have seen, actually seen, magic work. We all tend to think magically, we may deny we believe in magic but our behavior says otherwise.

Re: Dear G-D, NOOOOOOOOO!!! I hate Hollywood! Wow, I rarely get a chance to see this level of pure fanboy panic in the wild. I can't imagine a movie that would be worse than a slavish reproduction of something like God Loves, Man Kills; just, maybe, the movie actually would be better if the director dares to do something that reflects his/her vision rather than duplicate that of some other artist with no innovation at all. Oops, did I just suggest to fanboys that change can be good? Better hide . . .

Re: Dr. Silverback, I Presume? Nah, he drives one of those purple and green Harleys with the glitter and ribbons.

Re: WWYCD: The Binder Givne the ration of villains to heroes and the fact that removing my character's sheet does not destroy my character both Brickhouse and Tom Cat would remove all the sheets and destroy them . . .

Re: The Yo-Yo Afterlife In my superhero games the less maniacal master villains often have one (or more) back-up plans involving faking their deaths. If the PCs do not figure it out then, yes, such a character can return from the "dead." In one campaign several characters were involved in the murder of a mystical villain who became more powerful than ever as spirit in limbo. We discovered this was an effect of her nature combined with death and my character who had a mystical background, whose origin involved tying the soul of her predecessor to her own upon his/her death (and thus meaning that over the last 12 centuries many souls had been linked together in this way), who had not been involved in the murder, killed herself in order to defeat the villain and was saved; but this was the result of many precautions we had taken in advance and was not a certainty. I would never allow a Green Arrow type resurrection. If a character really dies (that doesn't mean we necessarily see the corpse {and seeing the corpse is no guarantee if this was planned in advance} but rather that the character had no way out of a situation that should have killed her/him) the character is dead.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Trey would happily have died in place of his sister, unfortunately there was no way for him to sacrifice his life to save hers (hell, Trey's subsequent career as a superpowered mercenary was pretty much all a failed suicide attempt). The GM's failures (which are legion) have much more to do with his cluelessness than his malice; I think the whole scenario was meant simply to destroy the Champions' as a superteam so that we would go back Xavier's playpen. I wrestled hard with the idea of having Trey jump out the window with Irma, and avoided doing it because of previous experiences with superheros finding their rescue techniques killed the recipient and felt once he jumped out the window there would be no chance to save Irma so I kept looking for another solution until the situation became final anyway.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? As I remember it that's pretty much what happened . . .

Re: A question for Comics fans The reason why comix suck is people who start the boo hoo campaigns whenever anything changes. Far worse than killing Oliver Queen was bringing him back, especially the way they did it, but thats a ver special way for DC in particular to suck.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Trey had kinetic diffusion as the special effect of his invulnerability. His body would be unharmed, but his sister would still likely have been killed with the way the GM saw his power working. In any case protecting her from the blast (conceivably possible) would have done nothing to protect her from the following 90' fall, house rules made falling particularly deadly.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? I know. But he was an NPC.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Trey did not dive out the ninth floor window clutching his sister because it had already been established (in a previous campaign with a different character) that physics are not suspended simply because you are in the grip of a superhero trying to protect you from harm;Trey would have been fine, Irma would have been gazpacho. While I would have had Trey try to kill any of the other character who approached, I felt less bad about it being Warren than I would have anyone else. Warren offered housing for Irma at the headquarters, got his civilian employees out and he's the Angel the best aerialist this side of the Silver Surfer. As for defying death, most of the time in Marvel (used to be, back in the day) characters vanished in ways to suggest they died but actually escaped. I know Dr. Doom had this thing of fighting Mephisto once a year for his mother's soul, but Doom always struck me as annoying plot contrivance rather than, say, a character. Only fairly recently have Marvel titles started sharing the premise of Heaven and Hell having their own webpages and phone directories and day passes and "Please excuse Oliver Queen from being dead," notes from friends and professional acquaintances. The only thing worse for me than discovering that Colossus was dead was hearing that he was back . . .

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Hey, this was Marvel! By the standards in that world Trey should have started manufacturing Sentinels and conquering small European nations in seeking vengeance.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Superman doesn't kill not because he is unwilling to but because of his power level he doesn't need to. At lower levels of power killing becomes much more likely. However, a hero is a hero not because he doesn't kill but because he tries not to kill. The Authority fails the heroic test not because they are killers but because killing is what they are all about. I remember having a character in one x-baby campaign who was essentially physically invulnerable. At one time he and several others in the game were trying to join (Marvel Comics') Champions team. At the end of his demonstration of powers (Hercules walking away muttering to himself in disgust after failing to make my character even stagger) Angel asked him what he thought about killing. My character replied, "In general, I disapprove of it. I'm not claiming I would never kill someone, or that there are not circumstances when I would think killing was appropriate. I'm human and sometimes I imagine I might decide that killing was what someone deserved and desire to do the deed myself. What I can tell you, however, is if I ever kill someone it will be because I meant to do it. My powers are not such that I could kill someone accidentally. No, if I kill someone it is because I decided to do so and so you will know exactly how to deal with what I have done." The GM was very impressed with this speech and I was the first one of my teammates to be voted in as a Champion. However, a while later the Champions headquarters had a bomb planted in it. The responsible party called and told whoever answered the phone about it and told them they had five minutes to vacate the premises. Every Champion except my character fled, he couldn't. He had an eight year old, mildly retarded, epileptic sister in the room with him and he couldn't get her out on his own and no one was trying to help. The bomb destroyed the building, killed his sister and left him essentially unscathed. Angel saw him walking out of the wreckage carrying his sister's corpse and ran up to ask him if he was okay. Trey (my character) delivered a vicious shot to Angel's kidneys and then stomped Warren Worthington the III to death before anyone could intervene . . . And, no, I did not consider Trey a hero after that . . .

Re: What are some interesting disadvantages you have used? Tomcat had a number of psych lims regarding lechery, competitiveness and such but the most fun was Utterly Incompetent at First Aid. He could not do it to even the least degree and he absolutely could not learn to do it. "Tomcat, get that guy's pulse!" "Got it, where do you want it?" "Eeuuw!" SwordDancer had a collection of DNPCs that consistent of her boss/lover, his wife, and their two children who were her contemporaries/friends from college. She also had a few psych and soc limits relating to her dysfunctional love life.

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper I know the real world matter but if you take a look at how all these characters are portrayed they are clearly not simply fraternal twins, I think Cassandra Nova in particular was even referred to as an identical twin and in the world of (what Marvel insists are) mutants where their powers are meant to be genetically determined how do you explained identical power sets except through identical gene sets. Maybe for Marvel mutants gendered is determined by temperature during gestation . . .

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper No, I'm talking Marvel Universe where characters who clearly are identical twins are always (nearly) of opposing gender. Jean-Paul and Marie Beauvier Fenris Charles Xavier and Cassandra Nova etc I know it don't happen in real life but I was talking about Marvel!!!

Re: Rewrite your PC(s) as Iron Age Villians! Brickhouse: She gets her "mighty, mighty" going a year earlier and avoids the whole descent into sordidness in the shanties of Jamaica. Uses her power to become a mega-pop celebrity and rich beyond dreams of avarice. Devoid of any form of empathy she will exploit and abuse anyone for her own advantage. Killed by a hero sacrificed his own life by filling his testicles with a witches brew of toxins and then allowing her to seduce him.

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper

Re: Person of Steel, Significant Other of Tissue paper

Re: Old School, Yesterday's Heroes Having never seen either a comic or a game in which heroes behave in the manner you show Libra behaving (except in cases where it's clear such people are not meant to be considered heroes) I don'e have this gut reaction to the so-called "iron age" mentality. That said I did have a senior game concept at one point which I never got to run. This was actually meant to be run using GURPS rules because it has aging rules and would be a bit harder, I think, in Champions (also in GURPS skill points are base on a character's age). The idea is that all of the characters are over ninety years old and living in a sheltered care facility because of the overt symptoms of dementia brought on by Alzheimer's disease (which it has become clear is actually the most common dysfunctioning of the brain in advanced years and was only thought to be uncommon because of studies of early onset cases). They are, quite unethically, subjected to an experimental treatment which works (it brings them out of their dementia, it does not restore cognitive function which is why GURPS aging rules were useful) but has the unexpected side-effect of bestowing superhuman powers upon the patients (powers along the same level and diversity as found in, say, an X-title). I thought this would be an interesting varying away from teens with powers gaming. These would be characters with significant (if somewhat outdated) skills but possibly a little slow on the uptake, and who would have an entirely different point of view than their colleagues. I was very disappointed with the way Old Man was treated in the Alpha Flight revival (ok, I know that wasn't his code name but, damn, I wish it was).