stmichaeldet

Re: Signs your Champions GM is now (fill in the blank) Signs that your Champions GM is now Philip K. Dick: 1. PCs can be either normal schlubs with little or no ambition, or barking mad. 2. Female NPCs are irredemably evil and based on one of his ex-wives. Exceptions: The ones based on his current SO are helpful until he breaks up with them, and the Dark Haired Girl is your salvation. 3. Everyone will consume psychopharmacuticals by the handfull. If they can't get them, they'll self-medicate with whatever is handy. 4. Taking any psychedelics will kick off a trip that will last for the rest of the campaign. 5. Inanimate objects will talk to you. If they are supposed to, they will generally demand money to operate. ("Anybody got change for the front door?") If not, they'll do it anyway, just to freak you out. 6. Every few sessions, reality will shift somehow, leaving everything about the campaign world and the PCs up for grabs. 7. The PCs are all actually androids, or in cold sleep, or dead, but won't know it until the end of the campaign. 8. The campaign notes consist of uncounted volumes of rambling journals speculating on the true nature of reality and God. 9. Eventually, you will meet God, only to find that He's really an ancient alien sattelite orbiting the Earth.

Re: To PLAY Or NOT To PLAY? I'm not sure what advice to give. I've tried to "educate" one problem GM, and all I got for my time and trouble were long-winded explanations of how brilliant his campaign actually was if we knew everything that was going on beneath the surface. The problem, of course, is that all that stuff needed to be on the surface, and revolving around the PCs instead of being all about conflicts going on between NPCs that we were peripherally involved in. Have you considered running a game yourself? You seem to have the right attitude. Maybe you could teach by example.

Re: Making a Scientist, Mad or Otherwise I'm even more abstract. I used to try to give my Mads "real" science skills, but ended up with a long, point-eating list of things I'll never actually roll on; they only exist to justify all the neat stuff they have. Plus, it was a pain to decide which skills a given super-genius character should have. Now, I just give 'em a Super-Science or Mad Science skill, and call it a day.

Re: To PLAY Or NOT To PLAY? Man, that's sad. I've been in a couple of campaigns similar to that. Fortunately, most of the people I game with understand that we're there to tell a story, and the PCs are the protagonists. Sure, bad things can happen to them, and certain major villains can seem to have the upper hand for several appearances, but it all goes to set up the eventual PC victory in a huge, climactic confrontation with the fate of the world (or some such) in the balance. GMs should always "lose" in the end. It's their job, and it's much more fun for everyone in the long run.

Re: Invisibility Well, if I was the GM in question, it would depend. If you presented me with a sound character concept that could reasonably detect any invisible object because of how your powers function, I'd work with you to create such a power, but it would probably be expensive if it was intended to negate any and all types of invisibility. On the other hand, if it seemed that you were just trying to preemtively negate a possible inconvenience for your character without thinking it through from the concept, I'd likely disallow it.

Re: System cap on creativity Well, no system worth playing is going to be able to do everything well; hell, Godel proved that long before anyone even thought of running a role playing game. HERO's mechanics produce highly defined and detailed descriptions of a characters powers and abilities. Therefore, open-ended concepts (like a shapeshifter who can change into virtually anything and take on all the abilities of the form) or the vague, subjective effects of a magical realism setting are going to be impractical, at best, to implement, and some exceptional circumstances that seem sensible in practice (like our stretching character with two targets in the discussion above) will turn out to be just beyond the scope of the rules-as-written. On the other hand, a less detailed and more open-ended system (like, say, FUDGE) deals with those things quite well, but won't give you any help if you need to nail down the specifics on someone's power and make it stick, and won't give you the granularity to make every power and effect unique in their implementation. I think it's just something you have to learn to live with - ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice. In my case, I try to figure out what sort of tone I'm going for in a campaign, and choose my system accordingly. Then, I just hope my players are wise enough to put some effort into syncing their concepts with the strengths and limitations of the system, and save the concept that would need extensive shoehorning for another campaign with a more compatible tone. (Doesn't always work out that way, though.)

Re: A strange site for Millenium City/Detroit fans Woot! I don't run in Detroit, but I do live there, so, very cool, sir, very cool indeed.

Re: Who are the top 5 most powerful characters in your Campaign. Well, since virtually all the characters in my universe are of my own design, at least I won't (hopefully) be kicking off any long-running arguments over my rankings. And, I think I'll give the most powerful by category, to give a better overview. Most Powerful Mystic Extradimensional Menace: Vastator Vastator eats entire dimensions, by infiltrating the symbolic language of his chosen beachhead (in this case, Earth, of course). Said dimensions then become part of his extradimensional "form." Plus, he has loads of extremely powerful lieutenants drawn from the dimensions he has absorbed. He's currently collecting a number of objects (the keys of St. Peter, the Horn of Roland, and one item yet to be named), which will allow him to "storm Heaven," subverting the belief systems of a good chunk of humanity, thereby allowing him access to our dimension. So far, SUPA has been able to defeat his various minions, but haven't been able to stop his plans from moving forward. Most Powerful Cosmic Entity: The Vortex Little is known about this alien creature. Essentially a sentient, barely-humanoid black hole, it first arrived on Earth over 20 years ago, and was put down only by a concerted effort of both heros and villains of the time. Since then, it's been held prisoner in a special containment cell designed by Engram (see below) and all information about it was classified. Eventually, Stronghold was built with this facility as its foundation. He briefly escaped when Stronghold was destroyed in a massive breakout (the villains released him to cover their escape), and was only barely recaptured by SUPA with help from others responding to the Stronghold situation. Most Powerful Supergenius Villain: Engram Engram started out as a janitor in a Soviet research facility. A scientist there was attempting to create a telepathic device that could be used for long-range communication, interrogation, etc., but it wasn't working properly - it emptied the brain of the "sender" and implanted all their knowledge in the "receiver." The man who would become Engram overpowered the scientist, and stole his knowledge, then went on to do the same to many other top Soviet scientists and developed an unsurpassed intellect, but side effects from the device warped his body into a deformed, huge-headed dwarf. At the height of his power, he had bases worldwide, armies of robot soldiers, and a technological sophistication that was off the scale by Earthly standards. He's recently lost most of his infrastructure after a sound defeat by SUPA, but after the fall of Stronghold, he's out there, somewhere, rebuilding... and plotting his revenge. Most Powerful Mastermind: The Toymaker With a name like Toymaker, you wouldn't think he's that much of a badass, would you? But Dr. Ian Winston views supers as his toys, and wants to possess (and control) them all. For many years he worked for the government as their #1 expert on superhuman abilities, while recruiting an organization and plotting behind the scenes to break out on his own. When he made his move, a good chunk of the gov't's top people simply vanished, going underground to begin work on the Toymaker's plans to enslave Earth's super population and forge them into an unstoppable army. Most Powerful Hero: Jamie Justice A flying brick with a variety of star-spangled costumes and a childlike innocence, Jamie easily fills the "Superman" role in my campaign world. The public face of SUPA, much beloved by the general population, and capable of beating the tar out of anyone short of a really major villain.

Re: Our Campaign's 25th Anniversary Wow. Congratulations. I started playing Champions back in '81 as well, but can't boast a 25-year continuous run. But I have run many, many campaigns in the same campaign world (if you don't count a reboot or two) for most of that span.

Re: AsSFXiate I dunno; I don't think I want to see codified lists of special effects, what they can do, and how they interact, and I can think of two reasons why not. First off, the number of possible types of SFX is potentially limitless, bounded only by the imagination of the person creating the characters. Sure, there are plenty of common ones, but also plenty of characters with unique concepts whose SFX aren't used by anyone else. Just one example - I have a villain (Monopole) in my campaign who can generate and control magnetic monopoles (crazy, mixed-up theoretical particles that have a magnetic charge - north or south, but not both - and generate an electrical field). If I should need to make an SFX call for Monopole, I'm making a judgement call about how mm's interact with ordinary, electrically-charged matter, and I'll bet I wouldn't find much help in any defined system of SFX interaction. Secondly, I prefer the use of SFX as a narrative device to allow sensible, minor effects of a power set to be available without having to stat them out. The mechanics are there to provide the standard, reliable effect of a given power, while the SFX allow me to push the mechanics aside for a moment when something a character should be able to do is just screamingly obvious, and I can just say, "Yeah, you can get away with that."

Re: Genre Conventions 2: What is Cool? Features of campaigns I've played in that I found "uncool": High-minded themes, realistic situations, few real direct antagonists, dramatic tension derived from dangerous tasks (exploring, flying experimental aircraft, or the like) rather than conflict, lots of info dumps supporting how "authentic" the science/setting/social milleu is. Features of campaigns that I thought were "cool": Good vs. Evil, wide open character design, strange and unusual settings, real villains, conflict, more concern for creating exciting concepts than stressing over how they'd "really" work. So, I guess, for me (in gaming, at least), "cool" = lowbrow. And I'm cool with that.

Re: Super Prisons It's a classic schtick. Batman gets Arkham or a prison (or both, if it's a really big event) emptied out at least, what, once every ten years or so?

Re: Super Prisons I destroyed Stronghold in my campaign a few months back. Had to. The players had put too many of my favorite villains in there (damn their ruthless efficiency!), and they were itching to get out and get on with their plotlines.

Re: Would you play… I've actually played in a couple of campaigns set up like this, and each time the game just kind of... fizzled out. I know I never really managed to feel attached to a character whose powerset had been designed by someone else and assigned to me, and I had the feeling the other players had the same problem.

Re: Characteristic power NCM Seems fine to me. In an NCM campaign, it's there for limited or exceptional-circumstance characteristics that would otherwise exeed the maxima, as explained above. In a non-NCM campaign, a character should only have NCM if it's a part of their character concept, and therefore presumably has no plans to be monkeying about with high-end characteristics. And in either case, abuses should be handled by the GM; again, as above.

Re: Hunteds in Secret ID Yeah, but Secret ID's should be threatened from time to time. If the GM has Viper grab the hunter and bust the ID completely off camera, that's bad, but if run as a plot (PC finds out that Viper is "interested" in his normal-ID hunter, and has to rescue the guy before they put that 2 and 2 together), it could be very tense.

Re: Offical Seal Generator Oh, this is very cool... I'm Official! Wheeeee!

Re: Opinons --- Value Of Limitation On A Disad But most, if not virtually all of that time is off-camera, and so, doesn't have any real impact on play.

Re: Is "Way Station" a suitable addition for a superhero campaign? First off - anything can fit in a superhero universe. High-tech armor guys hang out with mystic masters, ninja warriors, and out-of-work pagan dieties to defend the world against extra-dimensional reptoids and crazed, Eastern European super-dictators. Where ya gonna draw the line? But, more to the point, an alien way station would certainly be a useful additon to a superhero campaign. The thing's a freakin' plotline bonanza! I can think of a half-dozen adventure seeds just sitting here, from "Cosmic Powered Alien Lunatic Comes Through to Bust Stuff Up" all the way to "Aforementioned Dictator Tries to Take It Over for His Own Evil Purposes." Go for it.

Re: Modelling two power effects 1 - Even easier answer: He doesn't need a special power, he can just target other character's foci with whatever he usually uses to attack (presuming it does body), and use the rules on breaking foci to determine what happens. My players have gotten quite good at this, often to my chagrin. 2 - I second the above answer.

Re: Another Clarification: Narrative meaning of combat Phase. I'd take pretty much the opposite tack. The way I see it, for purposes of gameplay, a character's actions all occur in the segment their phase begins, but that's just a rules convention to allow for clear interpretation of various actions. But in a narrative sense, each characters actions should be interpreted as flowing naturally from one to the next. So, nothing is particularly being "modeled" by the speed chart, unless you want to interpret characters in combat bursting into one-second frenzies of activity followed by several seconds of immobility.

Re: Normals w/Abilities vs Supers [Offshoot of CSL vs MA] Should they have to purchase NCM? No. A "normal" character with super-training (wuxia, for instance) is a super, and shouldn't be wasting their time with disads that hamstring their character concept. The same goes for characters who are simply less-super (and want to spend their down-time beating up SEALs) in their normal ids. On the other hand, if normalcy is a central part of the concept, and I have no intention of buying my stats up, then the disad is there to offset the fact that (by concept) I can't just take the easy route and pump my DEX or STR or whatnot for greater combat effectiveness. In other words, NCM-concept characters should take NCM, everyone else should probably avoid it. Problem solved?

Re: Query to the Architectural Folks - GUGGENHEIM DISASTER! Can't say much about the architectural details of the collapse, but as to real-world effects, the loss of such a renowned collection of art would be devastating, and would probably end up being a black mark on the career of anyone involved.

Re: Power level for super villain group Balancing villains is mostly trial and error; eventually, you just get a feel for what will work. But, as a rule of thumb, all other things being equal, I make the villains just a shade more powerful than the heroes. This balances out the multiple-players-each-with-one-character vs. GM-trying-to-keep-track-of-everything effect. As to the second question, I don't bother trying to track "experience" for the villains. When I'm ready to run another plot with an existing villain, I look them over and ask, are they still a threat to the group? If not, they get a tune-up that brings them up to speed.

Re: Analyze This That seems kinda weird, to me. I mean, what visual properties of a tree or dog aren't covered by normal Sight (other than those covered by other senses in the Sight Group)? In other words, what would, say, buying Discriminatory or Analyze on one's normal Sight get you?