ThothAmon

Re: Help with Serial Killer story For a normal-powered killer to be a serious antagonist? Problematical. Face-to-face confrontation will heavily favour the heroes. My $0.02 worth borrows from various movie/TV sources: Mr Clockwork (the killer) is an ex-SWAT / law enforcement / bomb-disposal expert. He is seriously pissed at metahumans because his immediate family were accidentally killed in the course of a heroes vs villains fracas. He suffered a mental breakdown, was retired from active duty and pensioned off Mr Clockwork devotes his time to pursuing metahumans, kidnapping / killing their loved ones, often using them as bait for psychological torture of the metas in question. Given that metahumans are often fanatical about preserving their identities, Mr Clockwork does make mistakes in attempting to discover secret identities and innocents do become victims. Nevertheless the obsession has complete control of this former LEO - where once he was altruistic (and decorated for his bravery) he is now a driven killer who can anticipate all the moves of standard law enforcement agencies. Mr Clockwork is keen on exotic deathtraps tailored to exploit the (perceived) psychological weaknesses of his metahuman targets. He is not out to kill the metas - he wants to make them suffer as much as possible, causing them to fail in their duty when they try to protect their loved ones. He is as likely to target heroes as villains. Mr Clockwork has a lot of good detective, criminalistic and scientific skills. He is patient, methodical and very good at intelligence gathering. He is also a genius when it comes to mechanical / chemical / electronic methods of death. He has extensive contacts and lots of resources - good investments made many years ago have made him modestly wealthy. In his real-life ID he may even be an occasional consultant for the Police Department and FBI In terms of powers I'd suggest vehicles, flak vest, modified shotgun, taser, stun grenades, radio-controlled explosives, sense enhancing tools, surveillance gear, pre-scouted and pre-prepared locations and a number of kidnapped DNPCs held as bait / motivation. In order to fox Psionic / Psychic types Mr Clockwork could suffer from MPD and thus effectively be two people, one when he plans and kills and another when he is 'normal'. This is perhaps most suitable for 4 colour campaigns, Whilst this would give him a sympathetic angle it could also be said to dilute the deliberate, logical, darker aspect. An alternative would be to have Mr Clockwork think like a policeman even when he's perpetrating his crimes; his psionic 'spoor' would thus be lost amongst that of the legitimate police investigators. Example scenario #1: Mr Clockwork blows up two or three separate bombs around the campaign city, which "coincidentally" hurts one or two DNPCs. These merely set the stage and act as a goad for the metas. A blackmail note is delivered to the mayor demanding that one hero PC delivers a ransom to a set location. The ransom carrier is then confronted by Jane Peril who is actually someone he loves (wife, girfriend, etc) when in his secret ID. Jane is wired with remotely-detonated explosive jacket and all kinds of anti-tamper devices. Hero PC (or cohorts) follow Jane only to see her and the money violently exploded in a public place in front of pre-warned TV cameras. The blackmailer drops out of sight. Then, perhaps a year later, something similar occurs again. Example scenario #2: Hero PCs discover that a supervillain hit squad is in town and their target is Mr Clockwork. It seems that he has harmed the nearest and dearest of the wrong villainous people. As the villains do their 'searching' the city underworld is violently being turned upside down. Bodies are piling up, criminal gangs are getting jumpy and the entire city is a powderkeg awaiting ignition. Mr Clockwork leads the supervillains a merry dance before he evntually gives them to understand (anonymously of course) that a PC in secret ID is the mysterious serial killer. He also points them towards a DNPC of said player. At the big showdown things do not go as planned - Mr Clockwork has arranged a number of concealed gadgets and walk-on victims to help push both heroes and villains into a killing frenzy. And the muckraking TV journalists are there to get it on tape How does it end? Up to the GM really. The darkest ending would be that Mr Clockwork never gets caught. Alternatively he is dealt violent summary justice by a PC who is in the final throes of his fall from grace

Re: Iraq Hero Depends upon the method of manufacture. IIRC Danger International offers pretty solid guidance on the use of low explosives, with or without shrapnel. Explosion is an EB and the shrapnel adds autofire RKA. They listed powder, dynamite and nitro... I think.

Re: Exodus 2025: A campaign idea looking for input! Not a POV that I share (except on my darker days) and it doesn't really help the original poster either - it presupposes that any species with a history of violent competition (predatory species or even semi-predatory) would be ineligible for galactic inclusion - that seems to be self-defeating. In riposte I'll offer up potential solutions to two of the 'negatives' above. Firstly, aliens would welcome humanity if their intergalactic community was founded on the principle of species being mentored by older, wiser patron races. An SF genre staple is the mysterious Ancients / Progenitors / Old Ones / Whatever who seeded life throughout the universe. You could follow on by suggesting that the galactic community was founded to encourage species diversity as the mysterious Ancients saw fit to create so many different life forms. Secondly, the 'angry humanity' idea could be nullified by the practice of preselection or preceding, a concept stolen from Ian Banks SF novel The Algebraist. This occurs when alien races take an early sample of a 'primitive' species and breeds/seeds them in a bunch of systems many light years away. Thus when the 'native' primitives finally reach the stars they discover that they are not the first of their species to get out there into the intergalactic community. The transplanted intergalactics introduce the 'natives' to the intergalactic community, easing the transition and showing that inter-species cooperation is possible. And there is also the debt - patronage relationship to provide extra plot goodness.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Youth Of The Galaxy (Final Demand Mix) by Doof

Re: Exodus 2025: A campaign idea looking for input! Looks OK so far. I'll make a few suggestions that may be redundant if you've perhaps already gone down the literary road... I'd strongly suggest that you'd get mileage out of the David Brin novels / tales that begin with Sundiver, a nice wee SF novel in the Golden Age tradition. Their central premise is rather similar to your own except that the time of Uplift by patron aliens is 20th century. The first three stories play increasingly heavily on SF politics of bringing species into an intergalactic society. Also, interestingly, humans are not the only species from Earth that get Uplifted by the aliens, a potential character-generation option for your players Similarly James P Hogan's classic trilogy featuring the Giants of Ganymede has some juice of this nature. Perhaps less relevant to the background you propose but still covers the Contact aspects rather well. And the interfering alien aspects... I'd also recommend a wee look at the SF novel The Hormone Jungle by Robert Reed. It has rather good background relative to human adaptations for non-Terran biospheres e.g. heavy volcano-worlds. Regards your proposed campaign background I think it's a brave step to miss out on most of the 20th century. Whilst it does have potential issues it also allows a historical Utopian rewrite, giving the kind of positive internationalist background favoured by many SF authors who play with this kind of premise. I assume you want the angle that human internal affairs would look fairly pithy by comparison to all things intergalactic?

Re: Movie Heroes I trust that Glen Danzig has 1 Level Shrinking and an attitude problem?

Re: Is this guy BS? Might I suggest that you play the computer game No One Lives Forever 2? In there you will find a whole load of mime-villain goodness that you can use for inspiraton

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel Rape Man This chap is in his mid 30's or perhaps mid 40's. He stands about six foot tall with sloping shoulders, is big boned and weighs around 200 pounds. His hair is dark and greasy, unkempt just-beyond-collar length and with a liberal sprinkling of dandruff. His skin is sallow and greasy. It's hard to tell his real age - he sports a full beard, stained teeth and fingers (nicotine), is quite overweight, and wears grossly unfashionable, smelly, stained clothing - usually the same dark coloured nylon / poly non-iron slacks, white (now grey) threadbare shirt with armpit sweat-rings, scuffed black brogues and a shapeless suit jacket with almost-worn-through elbows. He also wears 50's style US Army issue black plastic-framed glasses to correct myopia. He smokes constantly and smells equally of cigarettes and rancid body odour. The cleaning staff (all female) will not clean his room and they do not like talking with him for too long. Rape Man is a huge fan of SF, fantasy and alternative / cult media encompassing film, TV, literature and computers. He is highly intelligent but emotionally (not socially) stunted. He's never had a girlfriend and he probably never will. He lives in his hotel room permanently having been forced out of the parental home by his parents when he reached his 30th birthday. The floor of the hotel room is buried under 36 inches of mixed discarded fungus-infested fast-food packaging, cigarette packs / butts and heavily soiled socks and underwear. Flat surfaces feature overflowing ashtrays and literally thousands of piled-up CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, VHS tapes etc etc. The bathroom is a horror of mould, unidentifiable stains and all-too-identifiable stains. Rape Man has a significant media collection and and a hefty broadband / computer / audio / home cinema setup. These are the tools of his obsession with 'collecting' girls. His porn collection would make Larry Flynt stand up and have a coronary, his anime and manga collection is prodigious and he has taken a lot of time to make his own 'smorgasbord' home videos and photo-quality pictures from his media collection. He has incredible knowledge of women - any remotely good-looking female even slightly in the public eye will be found fully indexed and dissected (virtually) by this man. He is, however, pathologically hopeless at filing anything that doesn't fall into his areas of obsession. Rape Man is financially 'almost comfortable', using his sporadic talents to freelance as a computer systems consultant / web designer. He owns his own aged, battered, similarly disgusting station wagon. He pays his room rent in advance and the management leave him be as long as he keeps his AV system turned low enough that the constant moaning and cheesy soundtracks don't disturb the neighbours too much. Rape Man has never had a criminal record beyond unpaid parking tickets. He does not own firearms or indulge in extra-legal activities... yet

Re: Underwater Hotel Uh, there is an underwater hotel in Florida You can pick up a hydrophone and order a room service pizza :E

Re: 'Excellent." I like the new look - it has a retro Gernsback feel

Re: The Montauk Project Again with the references, the Duncan Cameron (and the Montauk Chair) history served as some inspiration for the Necroscope (and Psychomech) novels by Brian Lumley. Recommended reading for those who like their pulpy stuff.

Re: (location) Der Schnitzlehaus Given the time I spent in Bavaria some years ago, this sounds pretty authentic. I like What's the legality of real wiener schnitzel in the USA in the 1930's?

Re: Economics 101: Character Building in a Point-Based System Good argument that reinforces the idea of 'character concept'. Nevertheless, CP caps are IMO necessary whilst AP caps are generally useful as guidelines for all parties.

Re: Gravitational Tractors On a related note, I can think of one way that 'asteroids as weapons' might have some bearing. When the Martian colonies finally decide to do their updated Boston Tea Party they'll find it useful (and easy) to send hunks of the Asteroid Belt towards Earth as incentives towards 'negotiation'. And yes, Starship Troopers is supposed to be satire. OTOH Moon Is A Harsh Mistress pretty much covers everything you'd need to know about near-Earth realpolitik and the practical use of gravity wells Earth already has gravitational tractors - they are called Jupiter and the Moon. The latter has saved old Earth many times (vis impact craters) and Jupiter does a good job at catching debris further out from the centre of the system. Without these celestial bodies methinks we'd have been in an extinction event a while back. Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a fine example of 'what if'. The call for a grav tractor idea should come when you give consideration to objects that may be entering the system on a path that's off the plane of the eclyptic. Main issue with grav tractors are available mass. It's wasteful to send up usable metal and it would take a while to repurpose material from the Asteroid Belt. I'd suggest using spent nuclear fuel as the raw mass, shuttled into orbit by a reliable (non-NASA) means. Kills two birds with one stone - gets rid of harmful waste and helps you build that high mass NEO sweeper. As ever, YMMV.

Re: 'Excellent." Apparently the Cybermen in the new series will have a few new twists. A writeup may go out of date quickly...

Re: Sorta Ninja Hero Related: Logans Run Hero MA I'd look to softer forms such as Aikido, Tai Chi or Pa Kua as inspiration.

Re: The Montauk Project IIRC the Montauk Project was covered in some depth for Delta Green / Call Of Cthulhu...

Re: Gas Giant Resources - Got Any? TY all. Some reading for bedtime methinks

I'm trawling for fiction that deals with inhabitants of gas giants for a scenario idea. If you know of any I'd appreciate a brief note here so that I might dig a little deeper. ATM I have the following to hand: 'The Algebraist' by Ian M Banks 'The Many Worlds' stories by John Varley Others?

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Underground Resistance - Interstellar Fugitives compilation

Re: Re-envisioning The X - Files Redux: wherein the most useless agent in the history of the FBI is sh*tcanned for incompetence in Episode 1. His cute redheaded partner moves on to the Florida field office to work intimately with the 'Silk Stalkings' team The Master Redux: the ageing ninja cowboy ditches the lame sidekick and takes on a cadre of cute boys and girls for some strict post-watershed discipline

Re: Super Bases and the Gm's who love them I am partial to the low-tech 'bases' that appear in Andrew Vachss Burke and Cross stories: Cross and his mercenary crew live in a NY apartment block that one of the crew owns in a less desireable area of the city. The entire city block around the apartment is the rubble of demolished buildings. A realtor planned to build new apartments on the city block but went bust when Cross and friends bought their building and refused to sell up (the realtor couldn't complete without the plot). The apartment building has a pool hall on the ground floor and the crew also own a table dancing joint. Both establishments are known as 'guaranteed hassle free places' thanks to the crew's no nonsense reputation. Burke's Nazi-hating Jewish buddy the Mole is a bona-fide social maladept / science genius who lives in a junkyard in the outer reaches of NY. He lives partially below ground and partially in amongst walls made of piled junk. His security system is a large pack of very wild junkyard dogs, and (it is implied) buried explosives and lethal mantraps. The ever-hungry dogs are a means of disposing of potentially-incriminating corpses. Although you are building for villains, the two bases above belong to the (anti) heroes of the stories. Nevertheless, they might inspire you to think outside the box when it comes to bases - they did so for me

Re: kind of fantasy Historical / Cinematic. Heavy on the bloodshed and moral lessons, light on the fantasy elements. Anyone seen the episode of 'Samurai Jack' where Lonewolf and Cub make an appearance?

Re: Fantasy Adventures Or Why are we always underground...again I'm not a fan of dungeons (I prefer political intrigue) and think they have no place in a campaign other than as a receptacle for masochistic players who like a bit of pain for their PCs I have run one and only one dungeon mini-campaign. The entire game world was set underground (no surface access at all) and featured a heavily tailored biosphere, history and social background. Think of it as 'Lost' meets Tolkien's Mines Of Moria mixed with the Village from 'The Prisoner'

Re: Who knows physics? Alternatively have UV photvoltaic outer skin that helps provide power to the light surfaces on the inner skin: non-rubber science