keithcurtis

I suspect it's a matter of resources. More people want to see books and the printing schedule is pretty well-considered. There would have to be a TON of demand to upset the apple cart. Of course, I could be way off base.

Keith "Mouthing off about stuff since 1963" Curtis

Re: Cities

Originally posted by The Mad GM

Are there any really good City Setting resources out there for FH?

 

How about general fantasy?

To toot me own horn, you might look at my Savage Earth city of Tallon. It's very campaign-specific, but there might be some stuff there you can use.

Keith "Civic Engineer" Curtis

One of the problems with generic fantasy gaming art (i.e. followin the D&D model) is that so many of the archetypes are drawn from European sources. Dwarves and Elves (as modeled) come from these sources. A black Elf or a Chinese Dwarf would look odd and out of place. At the same time, if the subject was bushido, a caucasian samurai would be equally jarring.

That being said, so much of the art assignments are generic "A wizard casts a spell" variety, that the artist could easily interpret it from the point of view of any culture. When I start my Grimoire assignments, I'll try and keep that in mind.

To be fair to DOJ, their art assignments specifically direct the artists that unless otherwise specified, they are free to interpret the described characters of any age, race or sex.

As for the Cleavage situation: It is fantasy art.

Keith "chiming in" Curtis

Re: Re: Re: On the Shelves in VA

Originally posted by MadKestrel

Artwork -- I didn't intend to be insulting. The artwork is not BAD. But it does not grab my attention like some other products (except for the FH logo).

Thanks!

Keith "My first cover stuff" Curtis

Originally posted by austenandrews

P.S. I did my stint in furrydom. Mostly it's not as bad as its reputation. In some dark corners, it's worse.

One thing I learned when doing research for Savage Earth: good or bad, furrydom is HUGE! I would never have imagined the vast numebr of sites dedicated to furry fanfic, illustration, etc. It's got to be the single biggest cultural phenomeon that no one has ever heard of.

Keith "Avoid the dark corners, for sanity's sake ;)" Curtis

Originally posted by Black Rose

What's wrong with furries?

Nothing in and of itself. It only disturbs me when it reaches the point of fetishism. The term "furrie" itself is a little too fannish, kind of like "trekkie".

OTOH, one of my favorite comics ever was Kamandi, Last Boy on Earth. Now there were some talking animals!

Keith "All Hail Great Casear!" Curtis

As the designer of the frame, I know exactly what the Martinez Scale is. However, the curious part of me wants to let people have a few more guesses.

Keith "Mr. Cruel" Curtis

Originally posted by Tom Carman

I see no problem with running in a hybrid Heroic/Superheroic mode.

Dark Champions, anyone?

Keith "Harbinger of the Obvious" Curtis

Though I haven't read them, the Laurel K. Hamilton Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books might fit the bill.

Keith "Magic Man" Curtis

Piers Anthony's worlds have a lot of this, such as his Incarnations of Immortality series.

The Stand

The Movie "Wizards"

The latter two are probably more apocalyptic than you are looking for.

Anne Rice's Vampire stuff

Keith "More if I think of them" Curtis

http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookDiversity_7.html

has some good info, lots of pics and some good links at the end.

Keith "Half my education came from gaming" Curtis

Originally posted by Old Man

And let me reiterate that what is out there on the net is mostly crap. Keith Curtis' Savage Earth isn't bad--aside from the furries--but one third-party, online-only campaign setting is a far cry from a published series of campaign options that a GM can pick from a list on his lunch break.

Thanks, I think.

Seriously, there really is some good stuff out there. Wasteland Hero is pretty fully realized. It just takes a little looking. ell, OK, a lot of looking.

Keith "isn't bad" Curtis

PS. I really don't care for "the furry phenomenon". I had something much more "Gamma World" in mind when I began. It mostly seemed like a good way to get a lot of broad easily-recognzable archetypes for player races without resorting to Elves-n-dwarves.

We obviously disagree on this issue. I'm not sure where your attitude is coming from. If you don't like what I'm saying, I'll stop saying it.

Keith "Not sure why you posted" Curtis

Originally posted by Rob_Knotts

Only if the NCM is pointless to begin with - if you're using NCM in the first place you're accepting the fact that Charateristic Maxima are important. As as far as "tweaking" them goes, there's nothing artificial about it, in that NCM is artificial (subjective, arbitrary) in the first place. The only thing establishing the published NCM as the one and only set of maxima is tradition.

I was referring to having different NCM (or none at all) for different characters based on the SFX of race.

I also suspect you're making the mistake a lot of people make in discounting the of lowered maxima accompanying raised maxima. Sure, a 25 STR is useful for everybody, but a maximum of 12 in EGO or PRE is likely to affect a lot of characters as well. And you an bank on the idea that when I increase a maximum I'm going to be lowering a maximum right along with it.

No mistake made. If a person doesn't intend to buy above the NCM, they suffer no penalty. Why should you have to pay more for a 16 INT half orc? If a half orc is supposed to be stupid, buy him stupid. Guidelines are fine. In my campaign I have an acceptable range that defines the species and only allow people to buy one stat above it. But I don't tweak the points, and I am open-minded to concepts that require more than one characteristic bought outside the norm. You just have to have a darn good rationale.

Besides, all of this only matters if the players try and buy up beyond the maxima, and I plan to make taking NCM optional in the first place. They can deal with it or not, it's up to them.

Exactly so. If I were a point-conscious player in your world, I would total him up both ways and buy the cheaper. What's the disad in having NCM, other than the point cost?

At least with the age-delineated NCM, you are supposed to have the defects of age. Bad back, or poor stamina, or always feeling cold, or having a spare tire or arthritis or whatever. At least there is a disad for being old. I'm actually against differed NCM for age, too, but too a lesser degree.

But again, these are all my opinions.

Keith "Hey, I turn forty this year! Where are my 5 points?" Curtis

My opinion has always been that a 25 STR (say) is just as useful no matter what your race is. Pay the 20 points and call yourself a half-giant. Artificially tweaking the NCMs is a pointless endeavor. If you have a DEX of 23, pay the points. That you are an elf is immaterial.

Keith "All my opinion*" Curtis

*Well, FREd's, too.

I ran a hard sci-fi game for several years. No FTL. No Artificial gravity or anti gravity for that matter. Weeks or months between planets in the same solar system. Newtonian physics for space ships. It ran quite well but took a LOT of research. FWIW, Star Hero's world building section is pretty good.

Keith "Solar Colonies" Curtis

Originally posted by BNakagawa

If he's doing a move-through with 2-300 inches of velocity, how the heck is he hitting anybody? Does he have dozens of 2 point levels or something? and if he's bought dozens of levels, how could you miss that?

 

besides that, desolid or no, he's taking the damage.

 

If you're desolid, you can always affect yourself. (hard to use his pistol, otherwise). Since he's the one doing the move-through, he always takes at least half damage because the STR used to inflict the move through affects him even if what he hits can't.

 

$0.02

Sorry, should have said "move-by".

Actually, that was the tack I took, claiming he should have taken damage. This led to a big argument and his refusal to play the character any more. (no loss)

Keith "no more munchkins, please" Curtis

Both from the same player:

Grizzly: A Brick with a Str Transfer. He'd grab you, and under the rules you could grab and attack. (After all, you can grab and squeeze for damage, or grab and throw in one phase). He started out with 65 STR, he'd transfer 15-20 points. Now he's got 85 STR and the target is 20 points below. So if they both started at 65 then it'd be a contest of STR to get out: 85 to 45 the first phase and only get worse from there. Basically, he'd grab a target and take them out of the fight.

Agent Zero: An agent level guy (20 Str). He had Invulnerability bought as Desolid-STR affects normal world. That sounded OK. He even had a blaster pistol ANW. Still OK, he can be taken out with gas attacks, psionics etc. and the DC's aren't too high. I failed to notice the belt jets with many, many NCM's on them. His idea was that he would do Non-combat move-throughs on his opponents, slamming into them with 2 or 3 hundred inches of velcoity. So what if he took half damage? He was immune! Of course, he never mentioned this tactic during character creation.

Keith "Older and Wiser" Curtis

Great write-up Michael!

I might increase his demolitions a bit. He did blow up Parliament after all. That can't be easy in a paranoid totalitarian government.

Also you state that he both does and does not kill anyon who gets in his way. Which one do you feel is correct?

Finally, I would probably make his Dex a touch higher. The things he does are reckoned to be impossible by those hunting him. Yes, 21 is above NCM, but so is V. Of cours this is relative to the rest of the cast. If the highest Dex you are likely to meet is 13 or so, then he is indeed truly superhuman.

Keith "Dang, now I have to go rad the comic again" Curtis

We ran a very similar character. She had a large VPP with No Conscious Control on the control cost. Then we had a large list of pre-gen powers and SFX she could use. When she wanted to activate the power, I would have her randomly roll the power that got activated. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Urgh. I just tried and the format is so old and the compression might have been corrupted. (We only had a couple of megabytes on our hard drives back then, and we Liked it!)

Sorry, but the list is unpostable...

Keith "Mr. Not-so-Helpy-Guy" Curtis

Originally posted by MarkusDark

DUDE! Your avatar freaked me out!!! When did you make the changes to it? I actually jumped in my chair.

I was wondering when someone would notice. It also blinks and looks around.

Keith "Evillo" Curtis

If I can present an awesome idea of Derek's:

Go to a school supply shop or educational toy store. Get one of those big cardboard "Teach-you-to-tell-time" clocks. Remove the hour hand. Indicate the segment with the minute hand. It's much easier to read than a giant 12-sider.

Keith "stealing from the best" Curtis

There was an interesting thread with some actual write-ups in the old boards, but they don't seem to have been rescued yet.

Keith "Sorry" Curtis

Originally posted by Toadmaster

Finally PA is an easy genre to do yourself. if you really can't wait http://home.attbi.com/~TheGM/SE/savage.html is supposed to be well done, its not my type of PA setting since its more Gamma World like but I know many here have had good comments about it and I think the webmaster frequents the Hero disscusion boards.

Thanks for the plug. Yes Savage Earth is more Gamma World than Aftermath. If you are looking for more PA type sites, you might also try Wasteland Hero, which I belive can be found in the links section. Lots of good stuff there.

Keith "Spreadin' the word" Curtis

Re: Mr. Elmore

Thanks for sharing, Big Rich.

I had a similar experience during my education days. When I went to University, there was a Fine Arts program and a Graphic Arts program. I spent half a semester in the Fine Arts program before I got fed up with it. The department was riddled with poseurs and just plain nutsy folk. Grading and assignments were entirely subjective and at the whim of the instructor.

I started taking illustration classes at the Graphic Arts school. Lo and behold, we had actual assignments where our abilities to perform were tested, not our ability to conform to what the teacher thought was "art". Composition classes focused on things like balance and white space, not our ability to "assemble three found objects to elicit a feeling of 'dry hardness' " (Actual sculpture assignment)

I've met some of the folks you mentioned. I'd like to meet Larry Elmore. Thanks again for the info and for letting ME rant.

Keith "Dry Hardness?? Are you nuts?!?" Curtis