Nolgroth

Re: Non-humans in a mostly human world: social limitation or distinctive features?

Based on your explanation, both are appropriate, though I would tend to side with Social Limitation over Distinctive Features if I had to choose one or the either.

The extent of the limitation would, of course, depend on how loathed a particular specimen was. If they are viewed with contempt and disregard, then probably a minor limitation. If they are particularly hated, like Frankenstein's monster, then the limitation would be a little more severe.

Of course, YMMV.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

Voice over? Wow. Let us know how it works.

 

JG

Well, so far the technology is working fine. I connected with one of my friends and had a conversation. A wee bit (less than a second) lag, but then we all have the luxury of broadband connections. Our first actual game will be on Sunday (assuming all things work out). I'll keep you posted.

Re: The World of Solem

Well you certainly have a good start. I can definitely see some of your influences. A lot of people seem to have a beef with a Tolkinesque world, but I always thought that the players (including the GM) are what makes a world unique. Keep up the work and see how it plays out.

Corinia? Weird that the primary continent in my own fantasy world has the name Corinareth. I guess sick (er, great) minds think alike. In any event, good luck on your development.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

James Gillen,

Thank you so much for sharing the whole campaign online. It sure has inspired me to get off my butt and gather my friends around for an online game. This weekend we're testing a voice over internet concept. With any luck, I'll have as much fun running my game as I've had reading about yours.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

So, did you say that you happened to live in or around Sacramento, CA? This sounds like a really fun campaign. I guess I'm playing a role-playing game vicariously through your group. Good job though. It seems your players are well balanced and complement each other.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

And he leaves us with a cliff hanger! Whoo hoo. This gets better all the time. Looks like it's a fun campaign to be a part of. It is definately fun reading about it.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

Very cool. Can't wait to see more.

Re: Modern-Day Fantasy

I haven't read it, but I think I might just look it up. I never really had a problem with his other books. They just were never that inspiring either.

Re: Modern-Day Fantasy

Mage: The Ascension has some cool concepts behind it. My biggest complaint about the setting is my complaint about all of the White Wolf games; the mood of the setting is very bleak. I like the trappings of a spooky world, like Ravenloft, without the constant bemoaning of fate. Mage, does happen to have that layers of reality beyong normal ken thing going. Some of the critters are almost Lovecraftian in concept and who can say "no" to that?

I don't have any of the other products that you've listed, but it sounds like they would make a good basis for a "hidden world" campaign. I wonder if Michael Hopcroft is looking at something like that, or something a little more like Shadowrun or Castle Falkenstein, where the presence of magic is more overt.

Re: Modern-Day Fantasy

Well' date=' I would respectfully disagree with you on the Shadowrun system being better than Hero. And I'm a fan of Shadowrun, having played the game since its 1st Edition. It's very inconsistent in it's mechanics (Ok, is my target number the opponent system's rating or an abitrary number decided by the designer? Is my level of success determined by every success, every two successes, or a single success? Etc.). [/quote']

 

I'm really not trying to start up a game system debate and that would be very off-topic. I will say that every system I've ever run into has the things about it I don't like. However, beings that this is HERO's board and to stay on topic, I'm sure you could successfully emulate the Shadowrun universe in HERO. The toolkitting ability of HERO is very successful at that. I wonder if Michael Hopcroft could use your notes as inspiration for a potential modern day campaign with a similar, if distinct flavor.

 

To change gears a wee bit, Ternaugh mentioned Harry Potter. While I personally find it oriented to a younger audience, I just couldn't get over the goblin bankers. That was way cool.

 

I imagine you could pull from many sources and have a decently fleshed out setting. In fact, I've always been a fan of "mundane" fantasy, where there is/are layer(s) of reality beyond the apparent and readily accepted. X-Files and Millennium did a good job of peeling back the curtains a little to show that. Too bad X-Files evolved exclusively into an alien conspiracy series and Millenium was cancelled. Still, some good stuff to use as reference.

Re: Campaign: The Turakian Age

Now, just reading this post makes me want Turakian Age even more. Sigh! Looks like it'll be a fun campaign. Can't wait to see the next post.

Re: Modern-Day Fantasy

Aside from it's rather dubious socio-political historical progression, the effects of magic reappearing were spelled out rather nicely in Shadowrun. You had the Awakening; it caused a lot of panic and spread new magically-charged diseases, then people got over it. There are still cases of blatant racism against the "metahuman" races, which varies by degree based almost entirely on appearance. You still have crime. You still have vice. You still have everything a modern world does, except you also have some (slightly) higher tech and magic to boot.

Shadowrun is one of those flukes, in the gaming industry, that works really nicely combining a pretty impressive setting with a really cool mechanics system. As much as I risk blasphemy, I think the combat resolution and damage system from Shadowrun is the best ever. Better than HERO. The authors made some pretty odd decisions on relative weapon damages, but a little reworking made a playable system that works both for the setting it was designed for and virtually any modern/near future setting.

Now if I could just build a flexible and useful Powers Construction system into the Shadowrun rules.....

Re: Here There Be Tigers

I am looking for a copy of "Here There Be Tigers" does anyone know who published it? And are there copies available anywhere? I have already done an e-bay search to no avail.

 

Thanks

Are you talking about the Ray Bradbury story or something else? I was not able to find anything but an audio cassete of the former.

Re: What super hero concepts would you like to see more of?

Aren't superhumans (not necessarily superheroes) wearing more conventional clothes pretty much standard procedure by now in comics? They're at least as common as spandex types' date=' I think. Not to mention heroes who "oficially" are spandex types but go hundreds of issues without ever wearing them?[/quote']

 

 

Couldn't tell you. I haven't read an issue of any comic book in over a decade. If that IS a trend in modern comics, then I applaud it.

Re: What super hero concepts would you like to see more of?

Keep in mind that I basically dislike the superhero genre, but I've recently had some thoughts on superheroes who use their powers, but pay the price. Maybe they already have some limitations that explain the powers. Examples include; a speedster that strains muscles whenever he goes too fast (I actually did one once and lost the character sheet. Rebuilding now.). A mentalist that had to go through some arduous experiment to get his power. ( A friend of mine did one with projected Mental Illusions based on whatever hallucination he was currently having. The process which gave him mental powers also broke his mind.)

I know that most people don't like that kind of limitation on their characters, but I get real bored with the flying, invulnerable brick schtick. I would also just love to see more characters that wear real clothes as opposed to spandex. One of the reasons I liked Nomad about a decade ago. I would love to see more characters that undertake their duty to protect with some level of seriousness, without coming off as angst-ridden.

I would love to see a player take it upon himself to design a character that had a comparable number of points spent to flesh out the secret ID as opposed to the hero one. Not so much of a character thing there, but I digress.

Speaking of breaking the racial stereotypes. (This is a bit off topic, sorry.) Tyr Anasazi from Andromeda was one of my favorite characters of all time. Intelligent and articulate. He violated all the norms. He was still angry, but in this case it had to do with his clan being wiped out than because his skin was dark. Absolutely great job. The show suffered much with the loss of him as a protagonist. Also, there was an episode (one of the last ones) of X-Files that had a schizophrenic black guy that was psychic. Again, broke the stereotype to bits. A good sign from the entertainment industry.

Originally posted by Vanguard

Didn't build it for any particular game but I did sorta have Dark Champions in mind while creating him.

He's almost tailor-made for that kind of setting. That or a cyberpunk setting which kind of crosses over.

I wasn't too sure on either the damage output of the weapon nor the ammo capacity so it was all a guess. I may have fallen into the "bigger is better" pit-trap and just upped the dice when I should've stayed around the levels you're talking about. Especially since it's an Autofire weapon. Out of all 3 movies I think I only recall seeing him reload once and that was in Robocop 2 while in the Nuke factory (could be confusing that with RC 1 as well). I remember recalling something about the weapon having an internal ammo feed or something along those lines but just pretty much went with what I did as a "I'll do this and hopefully someone will come up with a better idea".

Good plan. I usually agree with the HERO damage classes for firearms. If you look at any of them combined with the proper Hit Location, they can pretty much take out the average man with one or two shots. Like I said, the 9mm x 21 is a high energy round that hits something similar to a .357 Magnum round. I would see the weapon being able to field those. Incidentally, the model is based on an automatic Beretta pistol that can hold upwards of 30 rounds I believe. Of course, the magazine on those extends quite a distance below the bottom of the handle. On the other hand, the handle may be so large that it might have tandem double-stacks in the magazine to hold the 32 round capacity. The firing mechanism may automatically cycle one stack forward as the first one ends. Don't know how the fictional pistol works in comparison to the "real" weapon. Could work, especially if they are caseless rounds and I don't recall a lot of casings falling around when he fired the weapon. Just my $0.02.

Overall, it is a respectable write-up. Good work.

Just some observations and opinions.

I think I would buy down his natural PD, as he takes no STUN. Either that or buy it resisted and reduce the amount of Armor. In fact it may be cheaper to buy his natural PD up, make it Resisted and Hardened, then add the Visible limitation to it.

I'm not sure about the Visible limitation on the armor. It seems to me that armor would be inherently visible and you would need Invisible Power Effects to make it not obvious. Just my opinion and I have no real official take on it. See Resistant natural PD above.

18 PD would be just about right. He never seemed to take more than a scuff mark from small arms and larger weapons had to have some oomph to do some damage to him.

The 9mm Autopistol seems way too high in damage. He was just fighting mooks for most of the movie. I think that I would change it's damage to 1 1/2d6 RKA and assume it's using the larger 9mm shell (9x21). I might also add a +1 Stun Mod to it. The 9mm x 21 round hits roughly like a .357 according to all the literature I've read. On the other hand, I think you underestimate its ammo capacity. Admittedly, there is no sign of an extended magazine, but he tends to fire the weapon a lot between reloads. I would at least push it to 16 rounds and probably 4 clips. It probably wouldn't be considered too unrealistic to give it a 32 round capacity.

The rest of the write-up looks pretty well done. Robocop seems to be geared for a Dark Champions low-level gritty game more than a four color Champions one. He fights lots of mooks and the only thing preventing him from killing one of them is surrender to authority, so he fits the mold.

Of course, I stress that these are my opinions and may not reflect the style of game that you built the character for.

Good idea. The site is really cool and an inspiration. A little bump never hurt anybody.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the input.

Don't know how, but I got a double post in there. Hurm. Hate when that happens.

Originally posted by cyst13

Nolgroth,

 

One solution I can think of for the "I want to be a ship's captain/engineer" syndrome is to let them have their way. But instead of giving them a spaceship, give them an airship or watership and let them move around on the planet. After all, the vast majority of terrestrial captains and engineers never leave the atmosphere. Also, I wonder how much your players really want those occupations. Are they simply conforming to genre expectations the way that fantasy players "want" to be a thief or cleric because they haven't really considered the range of options?

Actually, I think it's a fifty-fifty split at this point. One player actually wants to be a John Woo action hero meets Jedi Knight. The other player wants to be the ships engineer and has paid a lot of points to do so. I had them create mutually inclusive backgrounds, so I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of introducing them during our very limited gametime. They came up with the freighter idea and the action hero guy decided a few levels in Combat Piloting and Transport Familiarity might not be a bad thing to have anyway.

In terms of the arena by which the ship moves, I've considered an underwater game quite a few times. I've been playing Aquanox 2, and the setting intrigues me a little. I just wanted to avoid a game that could be more cyberpunkish in origins. The setting I'm running has a very gritty feel to it.

.....Once you set the intial parameters for your home world, you can relax. You've got the frame set up. All you have to do at that point is write-up 6-12 billion character sheets with balanced point totals and you're rarin' to go.

And don't forget to start on the other worlds too. Even if you have a few core worlds, those character sheets can add up quick. I wonder how many Hero Designer characters I could fit on my 160 gig hard drive.......

Originally posted by ghost-angel

Of course, I've noticed I'm turning into a bit of an elitiste as I age

I can't say as I blame you. I can't stand abusive GM's either. Life's way too short to waste time on a game where you feel miserable. Seems rather counter-productive to play a game, meant for enjoyment, and have to deal with that kind of stuff.

cyst13

Good idea. I've often wanted to use that one myself. However, invariably one of my players wants to be a starship pilot or a ship's engineer and I honestly don't like confining myself to one system. But, in theory, the controlled access to a starship would work. I think that it would work better in a Babylon-5 setting than anywhere else, but that is purely psychological.

The one drawback to your idea is that a similar volume of material will likely need to be created. If you restrict a group to a single place, then the locales they visit will need to be just as detailed as throwing out a bunch of star systems.

Hmmmn. Makes me think that a database of places, similar to Sprawl Sites from Shadowrun, might be useful. Then the prospective GM need only select an appropriate type of place and integrate it into his campaign world. Bah! Something else to add to my "maybe someday" list.

Okay, I'll bite. I would probably define the upgradeable weapons as a MP with each slot an ultra. Throw on a limitation that reflects the fact that he needs to change weapons in the armory (maybe) and you have that. I would probably include a flamer, a rocket launcher, a heavy machine gun, a powerful sniper rifle, an energy weapon and maybe even a non-lethal weapon like a net gun or sonic stunner thing. Season to flavor.

Disadvantages

I'm not sure of the campaign or the genre specifics, but maybe Accidental Change from the heavier forms to the lesser form.

Distinctive Features, if he is unique.

DNPC, if appropriate to back story.

Physical Limiations to represent his size and mass. Also can be used to represent hard-coded protocols (think Robocops Directives).

Psychological Limitations as appropriate to the back story/character concept.

Social Limitation may be appropriate.

Those are just a few off the top. If he needs a substance to survive, then Dependence. Especially combined with the Incompetence or Weakness modifiers. If he is vulnerable to certain styles of attacks you can do Susceptability and/or Vulnerability.

Advantages/Limitations

Again, since each power must be defined first, season to flavor.

I would probably give him Hardened defenses. Hmmmn, I would actually define his weapon as two attacks an EB and an RKA. Each one I would give the Variable Advantage and Variable Special effects advantages onto. Simplifies things greatly. Maybe throw those two into a Multipower as ultra slots. Of course, it does limit the non-lethal stuff like entangles, but I'm sure you could add another slot. I would also throw on the Variable Limitation modifier just to round things out.

I would tend to make his enhanced senses with Increased Arc of Perception and maybe some Telescopic levels. As many as could be used for Targeting should get that.

Beyond that, I don't know enough about the character to give any defintive answers.

I really sympathize. I have been working on a Star HERO campaign now for about a month. I cheated and used much of the Star Frontiers setting as I found that fits, so I cut off some of the basic stuff you are doing.

For starmapping (which I recommend It's Full of Stars - a PC 3D starmapping program - for), I basically cheated by using the Star Frontiers map from Zebulon's Guide. I designated a center square and counted outwards from there. Still took me the better part of a day to place the stars and I haven't even entered all the information in.

I understand your questions about the fluff. Consider this; give characters a starship and they will travel. I would think two steps are very necessary.

Step 1: Create a dozen hotspots that the characters are likely to travel to soon. Some very basic information is all. I like the Star Frontiers method. Star name, who controls it, and the habitable planets in the system. Maybe a note or two on what the planet is like.

Step 2: Control the speed at which characters can traverse to the different hotspots, so it takes them a while to reach any point outside the radius of detailed space. Stick them neatly at centerpoint and you should have time to create more in the direction they are going.

Also, consider creating an edited for players version of the content and giving them a printout/file of the common knowledge stuff.

For the aliens/races I would add a bit about how other races perceive them.