StGrimblefig

Re: Villains Campaign One reason that you could use to keep a villain group together is self-preservation. Make sure there is a hero (or a team) in town that no one of them could defeat by themselves. Any time one of them wants to go off and knock over a bank alone, he gets caught and thrown in jail. They can argue and in-fight all they want, but they need each other. If you want to be really twisted, make the heroes they must band together to defeat be their own "hero" team. Let them see how bad their actions are from the other side of the fence.

I just happened upon this at DriveThruRPG's cyber monday sale: 3d6 Karma Kards It is essentially a game of BINGO played with your die rolls. The cards are simply a randomized grid of the possible 3d6 values, and every time you roll one of the numbers on your card, you cross it off. When you get 5 in a row (vertically, horizontally or diagonally), you get some kind of a bonus. They have versions of it for all of the common die roll mechanics -- 2d6, 3d6, d20, d100, and even FUDGE. I am not sure I would use it, as it is at least as arbitrary as Heroic Action Points, and a lot slower to get any benefit out of it. I thought it was interesting, however, and thought I would share.

Re: Cut 'em Off at the Horsehead Nebula! Not really. The reference was used to point out the fact that the characters would be traveling to different places every week, rather than being in a fixed location and having the stories come to them. And, since Wagon Train was a popular show, making the connection between the two in the minds of the execs couldn't hurt. Whether Star Trek was as good as Wagon Train is a matter of personal taste. back to the original topic: Anyone remember the movie Outland? Very much a western set in space.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Harry Potter and the Scorpion King

Re: Squad Level Ranking Structure For A Military SF Adventure ? Depends on the situation, I would think. If the individual enlists, in a peacetime situation, he/she/it may have the opportunity to request a posting commensurate to his degree. If the individual is drafted and/or in a wartime situation, they probably will be sent to where bodies are most needed, regardless of their training or desires. There are exceptions, of course. Medical doctors tend to be always sent to some kind of medical service. Of course, this being science fiction, you can define things however it best fits the stories you want to tell, then work backwards to justify it.

Re: Cut 'em Off at the Horsehead Nebula! Interesting. Especially when you realize that Star Trek was originally pitched to NBC as being "Wagon Train in space."

Re: Traveller Hero Got mine in the mail yesterday. Just starting to read through them. Thanks to Shadowcat and whoever else made/allowed this to happen.

Re: Quantum of Time Good enough reasons, generally. As Mr. Goodwin says, this sounds like a question of precise control of powers, thus a Power skill roll.

Re: Dark Red Spot Found on Kuiper Belt Object Haumae ...sensory organ! The Kuiper Belt is actually an organism, and it is sentient!

Re: LHC 'Malfunction' No Accident? This last incident sounds like something from Tim Bedore's "Animal Conspiracy" theory.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Monsters vs. Aliens vs. Plants vs. Zombies (okay, so I'm mixing movies and video games -- you gotta problem wit dat?)

Re: What Will It Take To Blow Up Pluto? For some reason this reminds me of bit of dialog from "Phineas & Ferb" Phineas: What do you do when you're angry? Baljeet: Math Phineas: What about when you're sad? Baljeet: Math Phineas: Scared? Baljeet: Math, duh. Phineas: So, any emotion makes you want to do math? Baljeet: I do not know if it is a cause and effect thing. I do a lot of math. The feelings come and go.

Re: What Will It Take To Blow Up Pluto? SAVE PLUTO! If we get 5,000,000 people to join our Facebook group...

Re: Changing how Speed works There is also this post which talks about allowing SPD as a Power (In your case, perhaps it could be a Talent), limited to a specific kind of situations. The rest of that thread has some good discussion, too. Thus, a martial arts specialist can have a normal SPD when walking down the street, but when using his martial art in a fight, he is crazy fast (+2 SPD Only when using X martial art in combat). How much of a limitation that is, depends on your campaign.

Re: Changing how Speed works My first thought would be to adapt the Pushing rules to SPD. Doing something like this should tire a character out faster, so the increased END use is appropriate. For Heroic campaigns, I would also suggest a CON roll to avoid 1 pip of BODY damage from the strain. If you are not using END in your campaign, then definitely look at the Toolkitting options (6E2 134) for alternate ways to pay for the Pushing.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares The Bridges of Billy Madison (The Bridges of Madison County / Billy Madison)

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Stargate Atalissa (Atalissa is a small town in central Illinois.)

Re: An Odd Die Mechanic Fair enough. Would this be extra XP, or would this be the only way to get XP? This would seem to encourage players to make more rolls (rather than roleplaying some situations), in order to get more XP. On the other hand, it could also encourage more imaginative use of complimentary skill rolls, too. This would seem to only be helpful with lower doubles/triples, as the higher ones are less likely to hit, thus making the added DC irrelevant. Granted, that does mitigate the likelihood of rolling doubles/triples. Maybe it is just a question of GM style, but if the players are not in a combat/stressed situation, I am much less likely to require a roll at all. I like the idea that, with a condensed 3d6, low double/triples are not going to drastically change a result (you probably succeeded anyway), but higher double/triples can make a failure into a success. There is the issue of the triple 6's, however. The book says that any time you roll three 6's it is a failure, but in the condensed 3d6 scheme three 6's would probably result in a success. I am not sure which is the better way to go.

After a thread a while back, in which an attempt was made to make rolling doubles (or triples) meaningful, I started thinking about the idea myself. The problem is that doubles appear surprisingly often in a 3d6 roll (doubles and triples combined occur about 44% of the time, statistically speaking). So, how to make them useful, without having them take over the game? What I came up with I call a "condensed 3d6," and it works like this: Whenever a skill or combat roll shows the same number on more than one die, the duplicates are removed, and the remaining dice summed. So, if you were to roll a 1, a 1 and a 6, you would throw out the "extra" 1 and add up the rest, with the result of 7. That one wasn't very dramatic, but look what happens if you were to roll three 5's -- you throw out the two extra 5's and are left with a roll of 5. Here is a statistical breakdown: Condensed 3d6 Permutations= 216 n x %n %n- ---------------------------- 1 1 0.46% 0.46% 2 1 0.46% 0.93% 3 7 3.24% 4.17% 4 7 3.24% 7.41% 5 13 6.02% 13.43% 6 19 8.80% 22.22% 7 24 11.11% 33.33% 8 24 11.11% 44.44% 9 30 13.89% 58.33% 10 24 11.11% 69.44% 11 24 11.11% 80.56% 12 18 8.33% 88.89% 13 12 5.56% 94.44% 14 6 2.78% 97.22% 15 6 2.78% 100.00% ---------------------------- 216 mean= 8.85 Std Dev= 2.945 In the table, n is the die roll value x is the number of occurrences of that value %n is the percent chance that that value will be rolled %n- is the percent chance that that value or lower will be rolled. Do I think this is the way that HERO should be played? No. I just thought this was an interesting way to perturb a standard 3d6 roll, and I thought I would share. Feel free to discuss it, change it or ignore it. For those that want to play with the numbers themselves, here is the spreadsheet with which I generated the above (I used Excel 2003, fyi).

Re: Proof Lightsabers make everything better! http://www.animalswithlightsabers.com/

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Or Scooby Doo visits Superjail

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Ocean's 13 Monkeys?

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game As I understood it, they were shelved by the Cryptic team -- then they left, and the Paragon Studios team made them happen.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Okay, then please define what you mean by "end game" content. (Just for reference: I have never played WoW, so I have no idea what they have wrt content. I am not a "hardcore" MMO player, which means that while I have been playing CoH since the week of launch, I have one hero at lvl 50, and one villain at 46, and the rest of my 10-or-so characters are at 30 or below.)

Re: Traveller Hero Sent. Thanks.