AmadanNaBriona

Re: Wild West Hero I really enjoy the western genre, even if I have never actually run a game in the setting. I've been a western buff since I was a kid and have the conventions hardwired into a part of my psyche... I grew up on spaghetti westeerns and Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trailsongs (which, BTW, can provide wondeful inspirations for characters and games, and make great background music). Added to my basic affinity for reenactment and my familys penchant for gun-nuthood, and I find myself with a couple of thoughts to add to the thread... Blackpowder guns,for the most part, need a little adjustment to the usual rules to represent reality. I start with giving them Jammed 15-, adjusted up or down a pip depending on maintainace, with Side Effects (the gun explodes (1hex AoE)if jammed roll is failed by more than 2). I usually make them Reduced Penetration, but also give them a small damage boost with Reduced by Range to make them more effective at pointblank. Then I allow for overloading for 1 or 2 DC's, at the cost of lowering the Jammed roll (and possibility of explosion) by the same amount. If you look at books like the TimeLife Old West series, you can find some great pics from the period. One thing that consistently apparent is that most of the bodies of outlaws taken by lawmen tend to be shot freaking FULL of holes. I figure that most range rovers will be wearing heavy leathers and rough canvas that will impart around 2 def. with reduced pen, it means that a lot of shots will hit but fail to do any body. If you factor this as "wounds that aren't serious enough to impair function or threaten life" then it works out rather well. Most of the semi legendary gunsligers of the time either conducted most firefights at point blank, or resorted to long arms in the field. Movies I always recommend for the genre include Silverado and Young Guns (both good representations of group Western Hero Campaigns), most of the old Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood westerns, and Unforgiven. I like the idea of using some of the vast repository of western superstitious folklore to conceal a more "realistic" threat. Of course, I also like including lovecraftian and lost worlds style elements so, I'm biased. Brotherhood of the Wolf has some neat ideas that could be ganked quite cleanly, tho set across the planet and goodly time before the Western Era.

OK everyone. I''m redoing my various fantasy martial arts for my game, and I'm pondering how to add the classic cinematic "grab the head, usually from behind, then snap the neck" move to my Scout martial arts. I have a couple of ideas concerning how to do this, but before I post my thoughts I'd like to see how some of y'all would construct it.

Re: Putting out the flames If I didn't do the effect as a Change Environment, I'd probably work out the flame on a "by the hex" basis. for simplicity sake, I'd probably just use the active points of the killing attack per hex, possibly modified with the +1/2 for AOE-1 hex. I figure all the other various flame effects kinda work themseles out pointwise unless someone is actively paying for it. And I'd drop by GM caveat that as its basically an ongoing Uncontrolled effect, if the Supress or Drain took it down to 0 points that hex is extinguished.

Re: Can Knockback cause Knockback? Way back in the dawn of time we had "Prank" superheros for a VERY lightherted campaign. The Evil Mastermind, Dr. Nasty, had a sidecick/pet named Zodo the Barfing Frog. This frog had "Takes Knockback from Knockback" and "Has threee levels of Increased Knockback" as Disads (3rd edition), as well as 75% physical damage reduction, shrinking,superleap, a nasty acid RKA(*Blarf*) and regeneration. *****MOST ANNOYING BADGUY****** *** EVER!!! *** Bounced around the friggin battlefeild yarfing on people till someone hit him. Whereupon he would go sailing. Hit Something. Ricochet faster than before. Hit something else. Repeat ad nasuem. Sort of a random pattern weapon of mass destruction. Nothing quite like taking 30D6 normal damage from getting hit by an unconcious frog moving at several times the speed of sound. Oh, yeah.... Dr. Nasty had the Cavity Creeps as agents *shudders*

Re: Stun Problem in Fantasy Hero (Double it) One thing I'm pondering for my new campaign is adding extra non resistant PD to the rigid armor types. It seems to mesh with my experiences fighting with "ancient" weapons. I started with fencing, myself, then moved progressively on to other types of combat. The first time I fought in full field plate, I had a friend with me, whom I gave a quarterstaff and instructed to beat me soundly about the head and shoulders. The purpose of this excercise was to convince my subconcious that armor does, in fact, protect you, especially against concussion. Didn't stop me from getting flattened, but then again... I was dealing with all those Encumberance Penalties that I'd never had to deal with before. During the fight, my opponent (who had appropriate levels to offset his Encumberance... the guy could do a kip in his armor) took me down with a Martial Throw, which definitely Stunned my ass. Basically I got wailed on, except for landing one Haymaker, which Stunned him. Fight called on account of running out of LTE (mine... I smoke). Got hit rather soundly with a HEAVY blunted blade (made from a truck leafspring) probably 2 dozen or more times in a 5 minute period, mostly in the head. I was a bit wobbly at the end, and quite out of breath, but honestly, the main place I actually hurt was in my neck, from having my head constantly whipped around by the impact of his sword (repeatedly pummeling the side of my helmet was what distracted him while I set up for my haymaker... He was leaving an opening right when he cocked back to hit me again ). This, along with quite a few other situations has convinced me that rigid armor needs some help in heroic level Hero games. Most of the actual BODY inflicting injuries I saw from this fighting troupe consisted of either... A blow slipping in somewhere the armor doesn't cover (this is why I put an activation roll on armor, and then still use hit locations. I basically asssume that every location has at least a few angles of attack that can slip by the armor) A blow that literally smashed in the armor, often driving the actual armor into flesh, sometimes with either gory, continious or annoying effects. examples include the guy who got the chin strap on his armor broken, the helmet spun 90 degrees to one side, and caved in on his skull so bad it needed to be chiseled off his concussed head. Another was the fighter who had her visor smashed in with a pommelstrike. Broken nose and another concussion. I saw the blood spray on that one. Very cinematic. Both these injuries were caused by a fellow we nicknamed "The Giant". About 6' 8" and well over 300 lbs. (I'm thinking that the armor is bought with Side Effects, taken when hit for either X2 the Def or when hit by an attack with DC greater than DEF... haven't messed with it too much, yet.) The armor broke under repeated impact. Happened personally to me in a demonstration fight. The strap on my left leg finaly said "no more!!!!" and broke, dropping the articulation for the knee down over my kneecap. As soon as I was knocked back, it clamshelled my kneecap and dropped me like a poleaxed steer. (In addtion to the activation roll, I make armor Ablative, in that hits that inflict body also decrease the activation roll for that location. ) OK...that got a bit more wordy than what I intended. I may be convincing myself that I do need to look into stun a bit more. I've blacked out from damage in a fight exactly twice I can remember, and both involved nasty unprotected head wounds. I have broken damn near every major bone at one point or another, and none of those put me down. Mostly in game terms it'd all be normal damage, as we don't use sharps. Perhaps coming up with a "Long Term Stun" rule to simulate shock might help..... *sounds like a new thread idea...*

Re: Technocracy HERO To jump over from another thread I was reading.... watching Equilibrium gives a good example of how one could run the Technocracy as "good" guys, and still be the main story villans. Essentially, its just a matter of taking the "the good of the many" ideal and expanding on the logical evils inherent in any absolute system.

Re: Changing Effect of Damage yeah, its off topic, but Tom Wham is a boardgame GENIUS!!!!!!!

Re: Changing Effect of Damage I haven't read comics in quite a while, but does he actually slow down as he heats up, or does he just fuse into glass if he gets to the right temp? If the latter, I'd call the effect a major transform. Perhaps both the speed drain and the transform might be in order? And BTW... susceptibility doesn't need to be to non damaging effects. its a GREAT way to reflect that someone takes abnormal or unusual damage from an attack due to some aspect of the character. For instance.... I had a dark champs martial artist who was "possessed" by the spirit of a powerful evil ninja mystic. Most of the time, he kept things under control, but was Susceptible to Mind Control attacks, with a Major Transform as the effect. If his will was suppressed, the Ninja could take over.

Re: On balance...when no one else follows it. Bravo. All that rather spurious Rep you just gained doesn't dilute the fact that your post is dead on. When, in our Champs campaign, the time came to make a Team, it was mostly assembled from existing characters. Mine, Blackjack, was a "dark detective" as well. And once we got the resources together as a team, he morphed his Gaget VPP almost literally the way you mentioned, and became not only one of the "front line" combatants, but the de facto Team leader as well, because he had all the nifty skills to back up the job.

Re: Illiteracy... limited Acting skill? This just reminded me of my first WW Vampire character... a 17th century pirate that woke up buried in a basement in Jamacia. I spent the better part of a years worth of playing before he FINALLY learned to read. Wasn't exactly the night school kind, and every time he ordered a copy of "Hooked on Phonics" his haven would get burned out before it'd arrive in the mail....

Re: Changing Effect of Damage I'd go with a cunningly crafted Susceptibility, or else Side Effects on his main defensive power (which I assume is either Damage Reduction or Desolid)

Re: Character Transformations back in our old Champions campaign I had a couple of characters go through transformations. The big one happened to a powered armor character of mine named Vengance. A climatic story arc ended with his background nemisis/ main hunted suffering a catastrophic reactor meltdown. Thus removing his main hunted, his unique focus powered armor, and a good amount of his anatomy. When he returned to the campaign, it was as a cybernetically enhanced martial artist/gageteer with a number of mystery disads related to the labs who rebuilt him.

Re: Grimjack Tech levels Sweet!!!!!! I've always loved Grimjack, and have often thought about running a Cynosure campaign. Perfect setting for a crossworlds game. and some have even called it Tanelorn.

Re: I smell something fishy Precognition as a superskill, with limits designed to reflect that he can only "predict" the future based on data he has perceived, even if he didn't make the connection at first

Re: I smell something fishy I'm along with the rest of y'all... I use deduction skill to represent the characters deductive reasoning ability. I've had players who couldn't spot a clue if their lives depended on it, and I've had players who see everyting through a keen analytical filter, who occasionally forget that that the character they are playing might not connect the dots as well as they can. "Uh... Bob... Not to stifle your creativity here, but before you continue with this thought, would Thrud the Barbarian REALLY be able to figure this out?"

Re: Inspirational Reading One big source of fictional inspiration for Dark Champions for me has always been the Wild Cards books, edited by George R. R. Martin. As far as I know, the series started as a game (I want to say Superworld by Chaosium) among a group of sci-fi/fantasy authors. Quite a bit more "superpowered" than most dark champs campaigns, but a wonderful look at how supers could change the development of the world.

Re: Pulp Hero D'Oh! Yes...Lands Of Mystery. Got the title and genre confused. One of the best written gaming supplements EVER. One reason I'm so happy with the direction HERO is currently going is because Steve is one of the owners, and he is, along with Aalston, one of the two best authors who have ever worked on the hero line. I can't wait to see the new pulp Hero.

Re: Need feedback on house rules for my new campaign not to far off of one of my player's character design. My world has a "half giant" race, the Ardach (gaelic for High Man, roughly) who all follow a rigid martial religion that protects their souls from their inherently "chaotic" nature. There is a Heretic sect that follows differning, but no less strict precepts. He chose to play a Heretic Ardach who was basically a celtisized Zen archer and healer. Great frelling character.

Re: Mage TA And don't forget the neat "Paradox" Side Effects ... I'd probably use a cumulative major transform for a default (transform character to character with paradox flaw) I'd say a multiple power skill VPP system, one power skill per Sphere. Or posibly a multiple talent VPP system... hmmm...I'd probably mess around with both and see which one was more elegant.

Re: Inspired campaign ideas. two quick thoughts popped into my head... Post Apocalypse High Fantasy/Swords and Sorcery setting: Not of the Thundarr the Barbarian variety (High Magic setting in the future after a technological apocalypse) but rather more of a "Sauron won" type setting. and in a simiar vein... Post Apoc. Steampunk: This just came up today... I was listening to the musical version of War of the Worlds and thought to myself... "What would a campaign set in Victorian London be like in a world where the Martians didn't forget basic biology? Say, 10 years after the inital conquest?" P.S. I LIKE the gods exist because people believe in them idea. I'm using something quite similar in my upcoming fantasy game P.P.S. that'd make elves, what? Glam Hair Metal boys?

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? LMAO... OK Lemming... We're gonna have faith related diferences on this one Even tho I use the Order/Chaos division in game, in RL I am a practicing eclectic Northern European Trickster-tradition shaman. If it wasn't obvious by my sigline quote, chaos is my friend. And my players are eventually gonna git bit on their metaphysical asses if they buy into the campaign party line that Order=Good. The way its planned to play out is that Chaos = Change, Order=Stability and BALANCE is the closest thing to Universal Good. An excess of either will lead to evil. So us Chaos types love KA's for the random carnage it wreaks, on bad guys, good guys, and predicatbility of outcomes.. And you Order types hate them for the same reasons... Fair enough, but they still belong in the game as a BALANCE And for fans of the order/chaos vs. good/evil farce, check THIS out: http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=68 I laughed so hard I was afraid I'd end up bleeding out of my eyeballs Hows THAT for a NND KA?

Re: Adult themes in gaming, a rant of sorts To be fair, most of my players have been all good over the years. It's only been when I've ventured further into the wide world of gaming that I've encountered issues with players. Between Cons, working at 3 different Gaming Stores over the years, the Explorer post I mentioned, and moving around a lot I've gotten to encounter a wide cross section sample of gamers. Mine have usually been pretty good. I think that my old hardcore gaming group spoiled me, so when I really delved back into the hobby, I was inclined to trust the maturity of gamers and thus was often left aghast that not everyone was as "evolved" in their gaming style as the folk I was used to.

Re: Pulp Hero I've always liked the "base points from campaign role" type idea that A. Alston put forth in Lost Worlds. It seems to fit most of the pulp era novels I've read, but you need players who are willing to start unbalanced. One idea I've been toying with for my current campaign is to allow 3 different starting point levels, each having certain incentives. A "rookie" level, that starts with less points but gains additional XP and has more options to go through "retraining" situations which can also add additional Disads, a Standard Hero level, that uses all the normal rules, and an Epic level, which gets more starting points but gets decreased XP and requires GM permission, and gets, essentially, a Semi-NPC disad for no points to reflect that the price of these extra points is that the GM is GOING to use the character to drive elements of the Plot even if it is to the detriment of the character (GM hands note to Gandalf's character... "You will NOT run from the Balrog")

Re: Adult themes in gaming, a rant of sorts Yeah... my new group of players have been fairly cautiously handpicked for their intelligence and maturity. Not to mention that they are all members of the SF Bay Area Kink scene. For some reason, people who spend their leisure time with bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masocism are a lot less titilated by simple adult situations and are easily provoked into the kind of reponces I want when faced with certain kinds of villans. It goes back to the time when I left gaming for a while... When you're doing something in real life, suddenly sitting around your house talking about doing it seems less enthralling (In my case, it was swordfighting, drinking and wenching. FAR more entertaining in real life. Many years of roleplaying gave me insights to how to "play" a larger than life heroic "character" that allowed me to make myself infamous in a fairly short timespan)

Re: Limits on Killing attacks? one additional little point for consideration, tho it doesn't affect most superhero genre games..... we also tend to use the crit hit rules in much the same form as they were layed out in 4 ed. Suddenly makes Normal attacks MUCH more dangerous, when there is a reasonable chance that that same 12d6 normal attack can inflict 24 body and 72 stun in a hit. If you add in crit rules, the predictablility of Normal attacks suddenly inverts the predicatbility of killing attacks if you crit with a 4d6 rka, your stun will still be random, and biased towards the lower end if you are using the stun die rather than locations. I recall a Justice inc game where the resident "Jon Carter of Mars" type strong jawed hero, with his 25 (IIRC) strength, cinematic brawling martial arts, and plenty of levels killed, dead, in one shot no less, a sabertoothed tiger. 12d6 uppercut, crit to the head... X2 BOD, X2 NSTUN on a 24 body 72 stun attack...letsee...that comes out to... 48 BODY AND 144 STUN, before defences. buh bye putty tat Seriously tho... I agree that we're all descending into armed camps... its time that we agree to disagree. As I see it, we have 2 basic philosophies representing here... those who feel that increased random factors and unpredicitability are good and those who don't. both sides have valid points, and I doubt either side will sway the other. I happen to be in the "random factors" camp. and to adress TRL's questions.... 1. Yes... I like being on both sides of KA's. our games tend to only use Normal attacks for fairly predictable attacks that are , in common situations, non fatal. As TRL has said, KA's (in real life, that is) are fairly predicable in the amount of force/energy they convey to a target, but I don't think anyone has addressed my issue of the vast amount of effect difference that can be caused by very small shifts within a given location. Tri Tac games (Fringeworthy, Bureau 13/Stalking the Night Fantastic) did the best job of translating anatomy into game terms, but was EXTREMELY clumsy. It did show however, that the same bullet hitting say, the thigh, could be anything from an annoying flesh wound, to a crippling blow, to a fatal injury.... impacts within say, a given 3 cm radius could pass clean through the meat, hit a thighbone, or rip open the femoral artery and cause a target to bleed out withing seconds. (The last, incedentally, happened to a Forest Ranger friend of my first rangemaster... he was hit by a .22 long rifle slug that had been fired into the air, coming back down to earth. It ripped open his femoral and he died before he could get to his car and call for help. show me how that can happen with a 1d6+1 RKA hitting location 14 without GM intervention... I already agree that guns are basically underpowered in Hero system as written..they are designed to accomodate Superheroic reality.) 2. They increase, IMHO, realism, and add "fear and loathing" to the campaign. I have seen PC's callously waltz through withering quantites of Normal attacks because they could usually predict about how much grief they'd take. Anything that decreases the predictability of damage increases the amount of concern said attacks produce in the minds of PC's, thus promoting more genre appropriate effects, such as taking defensive actions. (can everyone say,"I Roll with the Punch!" one of Spidermans favorite moves when facing hardhitting baddies, IIRC I don't need to address all of these...just #3 You proved my point at the same time you proved your own... Random (unpredictable)=Bad is an assertation of preference rather than an argument. EDIT> Oh yeah, I almost forgot... They make pretty patterns on the walls when you use them against soft targets