Nolgroth

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Better Man - Clint Black Funny that I am in a great marriage and have a wonderful relationship with her and yet I love country break up songs.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Cinematic and detail oriented bonuses to skill checks sounds like a great idea. Thanks for that.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate And now, as a general topic of discussion, I want to bandy Skill Roll value around. From my side of the screen, I notice that there are a LOT of failed skill rolls. This is bothering me a great deal and I wonder if the present skill roll mechanic (8 + CHAR/4) is the problem, the cap on Skill Rolls (and thus the lack of Skill Levels) is the problem, or the method in which I use skills. I would greatly value your input on this. And yes, I know, the MapTool dice roller is altogether EVIL.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Links to External Resources: 7th Sea Pricelist 7th Sea Maps (Note: this cover the "Old World" and not where we are presently situated.) 7th Sea Calendar

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Reserved for Campaign Source Material. Presently I am in the process of revising the Magic document. Will post update when it's complete.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate The forum limits file attachments to five per post. Savienien's character Rotman Woss will be posted elsewhere. Here are the following PDF versions of the characters. The +5 Body rule was added after characters were initially constructed so I had to improvise and provide alternate abilities for some of the characters. Anything with the title Heroic Resilience is part of the GM bonus package. Note to Players: If you see anything weird or incorrect regarding your character sheet, please let me know so I can correct the HDC file.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Here are the HERO Designer Template and Campaign rules files. When creating a character use the ColonialFantasy..HDT file. File > New Character > New Character (custom/non-standard rules) > Choose File Browse to where you saved ColonialFantasy..HDT. Then apply the ColonialFantasy..HDR campaign rules to the character. Current Character > Campaign Rules > Load Campaign Rules Browse to where you saved Colonial Fantasy..HDR. Those two files set up the base characteristics, modified Skills, Skill Roll calculation, Perks and Talents, and the base Points. The final step is to add in Powers Characteristics +5 BODY Custom Adder (renamed to GM Freebie) -5. Make sure Add to Base Characteristic is checked.

Re: Companions of an Uncertain Fate Companions of an Uncertain Fate Recruiting Status: Closed Start Date: Thursday, March 11, 2010. Game days will always be Thursdays unless the group elects to change them at a later date. Game Time: 5 PM - 9 PM Pacific Time. Hours will adjust for Daylight Savings Time transitions. Character Creation Guidelines Base Points: 175 Matching Complications: 25 Starting Campaign Power Levels CHAR Range: 8-15 (1) Speed: 2-3 CV: 2-6 DC: 2-9 Def/rDef: 4-8/2-4 Active Points: 10-45. Recommend 25 Active Points for most powers. (2) Skill Points: 10-50 Starting. Experience can exceed these numbers. Skill Roll: 8-/13- (3) Special: All of the base Characteristics start out at 5 and must be bought up from there. Presence will have a much higher utility in the game, so the cost has been increased to 2 points per increment. Characteristics and Skill rolls have a base roll of 8 + CHAR /4. This gives a little more range of rolls. For Player Characters, there is a GM Freebie of +5 Body (for a starting value of 10). Some powers that are not immediately useful for combat may be higher at the GM discretion. Mostly this rule is intended for GM created powers withing a narrow range of effects (magical protection circles). Other uses may be considered on a case by case basis. Each character may select a Specialized Skill and up to two Expertise Skills. All of these skills must be related to the character's raison d'etre and be tightly related to each other. The Specialized Skill may be purchased up to 15- (with skill levels and/or raw improvement of the skill). The Expertise Skills may be purchased up to 14-. Example groups might be Burglar (Lockpicking, Security Systems, Stealth) or Gunsmith (Weaponsmith, Inventor, Mechanics). These two examples are generalized and not necessarily required skill combinations. Skill sets subject to GM approval. As a note, I want each character to focus on different specializations so I may not approve two characters with the same skill specialization. Right now I see JD as the Thief, Rotman as the Inventor, and Hardesty as the Sailor. Not sure where I would classify Lulu or Cael, in terms of archetypes, at this point. This is not a required option. If you see your character as a generalist, this may not be the option for you. STR Minimum for weapons has been reduced by 5 across the board. 1 is still the lowest STR Minimum allowed for non-natural weaponry. Starting Funds: 5 Guilders or Shillings. Perk option for additional starting funds. Income Perk to be added soon. Setting Inspirations: Ars Magica, Colonial America, Lovecraft, Ravenloft, 7th Sea, Dresden Files, Treasure Island, Pirates of the Caribbean. Actual Setting: Using Theah, the setting for 7th Sea, with the addition of a New World / Colonial America continent. Warnings: The 7th Sea setting, which I have heavily adapted for this game, portrays very Christian-like religions. While generally portrayed in a positive light, the very presence of them may offend some readers. If you are one of those people, this is probably not your thread. The magic rules tend to lean heavily into detailed descriptions of rituals.

MapTool Server Status: My previously unnamed Colonial Fantasy HERO game finally found its name. As a result, I created this thread to better organize the disparate elements that have accumulated over in the Question: Anyone running any online games? thread. Discussion Topic: Should we change Skills? Outcome: Overall consensus leave things as they are mechanically. Implement bonuses for Cinematic, Dramatic and detailed descriptions of skill use. Discussion Topic: Should I hide NPC stats on Tokens from Players? Outcome: No strong feelings either way. For now things will proceed as they have. Update: Removed MapTool Server Status. I wasn't updating it to coincide with when I had the server up anyway.

Re: Anyone running any online games? Blog updated with last two sessions. The campaign name has finally settled in. Check the Blog out for details.

Re: Anyone running any online games? In concept, I based in on the concept around Ablative. I suppose Burn Out or Jammed would be more appropriate come to think of it. Mostly, I wanted to both simulate real world rifles of that period and make rifles somewhat less attractive so that muskets would be more than just relics.

Re: Anyone running any online games? Hmmm. May have to cut the torture session for Rotman down a little bit. Timing I tell ya.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Deep - Claire Voyant

Re: Anyone running any online games? Being as we are now officially in an urban setting, it is easier to have Rotman "warm the benches". I have a story related reason for him to be out of it. Update: I normally post campaign file for MapTool updates elsewhere, but a couple of things came up today that are directly relevant to our specific game. I found an error in the DC for the firearms. I posted a slightly increased DC (6 instead of 5). Changed and corrected. Found an error in the Draw Weapon code that made firearms cost END. Fixed. Added calculation for Barrel Fouling for rifles, as written earlier in this thread. Tested and works. If you are using a Rifle (not pistol or musket) and the first line reads "Rifle Barrel is fouled.", then ignore the rest of the results. The macro also sets a flag to make sure every shot after that reads Fouled as well. And to make things work again, I added a "Clean Rifle" macro that resets that flag to 0. Preliminary tests give between 3-6 shots before the barrel becomes fouled and not usable until cleaned. I'm considering increasing the base activation roll to 18, which would make the first shot automatic. Tomorrow is going to be an interesting game I think. I have a couple of ideas for potential plots/adventures. I also plan on creating a few generic NPCs of various levels in case I have to wing it. The only thing I do not have is a city map yet. That's sort of disappointing because I usually love the cartography aspect of gaming and haven't been able to get into it. Still, we should have some measure of fun without the map. At least until I can get it done soon. See ya all tomorrow.

Re: Questions from a newbie HERO is an odd duck at times. Online, using text based chat and some scripted die rollers, I usually can finish a relatively simple combat in two hours or less. Even more complex combats only take a little longer. I think the longest one was an entire four hour session, but remember that as text based chat online. In person, I could probably have cut those times down 10-15%. The game scales to the current campaign guidelines. The only thing that really slows it down is high Speed scores. Keep those under lock and key and it should go smooth. I recommend 3-5 being the Speed range max. I ran a Star HERO campaign on and off for about 3 years. I gave out about an average of 25-40 xp per year. Maybe even a bit more. Depending on how generous you are, it can go as little as 1 XP per session or as high as 5. The rate at which you deal out experience should be governed by what you intend to do with the campaign and how often your players need "treats" (new character abilities, etc.) to stay interested. The typical focus of HERO is not to accumulate XP by slaying monsters. XP is awarded based on GM judgment. Very easy to very difficult based on the scale of your game. If you follow a set of strict campaign guidelines for Combat Value, Damage Class, and Defenses, you shouldn't have too many problems with PC attrition. Pre-gens are useful to show how a character looks at the end of the character creation process. They do not highlight HERO's dynamic character building utility. I would say that it is much more useful to have a bunch of packages/templates available and then allow the player to mix and match those templates to get his character. Any leftover points can be used to flesh out individual abilities. That gives a pretty good balance between speed and customization. Having templates is useful for you as the GM too. You need that Special Ops Agent, add the appropriate Racial, Cultural and Professional Templates to shake 'n' bake one in just a few minutes.

Re: Anyone running any online games? Thanks Lez. Too bad I was out doing errands. Thanks though. It means that it works on my Linux install.

Re: Anyone running any online games? I need to have somebody log in to the server today for me. Just a log in and then a log out is all that is necessary. Thanks.

Re: Star Hero campaigns? Glad to be of assistance.

Re: 6E Hexmap? Like Mudpyr8, my maps are all on MapTool. In fact, I have no face to face games. I'm 100% digital. MapTool allows you to set a scale and that is what I do. I don't use hexes, squares, circles, cylinders or any other geometric shape. I just set the tokens down, turn off snap to grid, and use the ruler feature to get the distances when needed. Our primary attack macro automatically figures distance and the penalty for distance. If I were to play in a face to face game, I would probably take that method to heart and use a tape measure to figure distances and not worry about grids.

Re: Star Hero campaigns? When I was running my Gemini Ascendant game, the overarching metaplot was essentially stolen right from Babylon 5; archaeologists release an ancient evil during their excavations. The only difference is that the ancient evil is not a race, per se, but rather powerful members of a race. They were deemed "criminal" and imprisoned for "all time" just before the race apotheosized. Once they were released, the ancient beings set about trying to establish power bases for themselves. Out of the four that were released, one established himself as the power behind the throne for one of the modern species. One established itself as the leader of a group of invading humans, one disappeared completely from public awareness and the other was slain by the player characters. Several campaign tropes emerged. Some were accidental and others were intentional. A couple of examples: 1. Planets were bad. This was unintentional. Just being what they were (centralized places where people interact) most bad things tended to happen on planets. 2. If it could be flown, Wade (one of the characters) could crash it. Conversely, he could also pull off the most daring stunts when needed. 3. Something was always going on. Even if the characters were not on hand, things happened. I provided news feeds to them as often as inspiration allowed in order to demonstrate this. 4. The characters could change the universe in meaningful ways. Case in point, Samantha and her crew created a black hole / rift in time-space. Never got to explore the long-term ramifications of this. Those were some of the examples of things that happened in the campaign. Towards the end, it started to wander into more episodic storylines and less of the overarching metaplot of finding and killing the ancient evils. Was still fun though. You can read my blog to get a huge portion of the campaign in the form of after session summaries with commentary and what not. Search the forums for Gemini Ascendant and you can find both the thread that carried us through, an equipment thread, and (I believe) some of the sessions turned into semi-prose stories by ghost-angel.

Re: Anyone running any online games?