lapsedgamer

Re: Dr. Destroyer or Mechanon? Mechanon. He is very easy to understand as a pure bad guy. Not a lot of subtext needed there. By the way, did you ever think about doing PS 238 for your kid. The PS238 RPG book is half price now, like all 5th edition stuff, and it's a great preteen setting. I got my godkids into the comics years ago and they loved them. They kept asking for them all of the time. I think I started buying them for them when they were 10, and they still liked them up until last Christmas when they were 14. They might still like them, but I haven't seen any around recently, so I stopped picking them up.

Re: Sniper 5th edition books are half price now. You can get a lot of the PDFs for like $10-15 The write-ups are still very useful. Most of them require very little changing to be used in 6th edition. It sounds like you aren't in a four-color wold in your game which makes this a valid concept in game. However, if you have access to a copy of 5th edition Conquerors, Killers, and Crooks in your group take a look at the write-up for a character named Thunderbird. He is a more four color version of Punisher, using blasters instead of bullets. I'm not sure if he made it into 6th edition as I'm still waiting for a print copy of the third villains book. Anyway, good luck with your build.

Re: Group equipment MP or VPP

Re: CHAR: Martian Manhunter That wasn't my point at all. I was saying that basically everyone in the classic JLA was a god, except for Batman and Green Arrow. This made it hard to think that they would be threatened. Anyway, Golden Age made the point far better than I did. Don't worry. You do superior work. I would would have repped you, but I can't right now because I just repped your Mary Mavel write-up.

Re: Group equipment MP or VPP It's a balance issue. In a heroic level campaign, the player only gets X number of points to do their concept justice. Most of those points go into stats and skills, with the occasional talent or super-skill power. If you spent a lot of your points on powers built as gear, you would be pretty pathetic if you lost your stuff. In superheroic games, you get far more points to work with. Some players would be tempted to pump up their character's stats and skills, then drop 5 points on a wealth perk and then claim that they had all these other powers that were just things that he/she could buy at the Spy/PI store or on the black market. Also, there is a certain genre consistency that has to be considered. Most superheroes are defined by their powers. Most heroic characters are defined by their training and experience. There is obviously some cross over, as there are superheroes who are essentially highly trained normals (Batman) and there are heroic- level characters that are basically low-powered supers (River Tam), but you get the idea. The question is is the character more about what he can do innately, or is he more about what he has trained himself to do by dint of effort. Though he is formidable without them, James Bond needs guns and tricked-out roadsters. Superman does not. The only real confusion is that middle ground inhabited by the Punisher, Batman, and their ilk. They are both arguably heroic-level characters in superheroic settings. You could really approach either of them either way. I could do heroic version of either character that would play well in a Dark Champions game. In those cases, I would say tailor the concept to the world you are trying to simulate.

Re: Group equipment MP or VPP I wouldn't do this. To me this is very open to abuse. It's a way to buy point intensive powers with a focus limitation and the massive discount afforded by the way bases are bought by characters. Ideally, the balance would be that the character would not have access to the wave motion pistol in the middle of the adventure unless he packed it, but this guy can just pop out for a phase and come back with it. Here your player is simply looking for a way to be able to have just the right power on hand at any given moment. Not a bad concept, but those points should appear on his character sheet, with very little in the way of a point discount. Yes, this is the way to handle this if he insists on doing it solely using his Wealth perk. Alternately, I would say that during his radiation accident rewrite, he has to buy a Multipower or VPP to cover his ability to teleport things to him. A good model for the Multipower is the utility belt build in the Equipment guide, or Nighthawk's character sheet from Champions or Champions Universe. The VPP is the cleaner way to go, but remember that the guy seems to want to do anything on the fly, which sounds like a Cosmic Pool to me, and that gets pricey fast. Anything more than a 30 or 40 point pool cost would probably break his budget. Yeah, you don't have to give him anything for free. It sounds like his character concept has changed a little, so give him a rewrite. That's well within the rules and the genre. Anyone remember the short-lived Dr. Pym character from the Avengers. He used the shrinking power of Pym particles to carry around tech objects and weapons in miniaturized form and then grew them to full size as needed. This is a major change from shrinking flying blaster with minor telepathy and mind control vs. insects. Actually Henry Pym has had more changes to his power set over the years than almost anyone I know in comics.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I saw Falling Skies as well. It was OK. Nothing new to be seen so far. It's just Independence Day and Terminator Salvation rolled into one, but it has a solid narrative structure and a lot of good subplots to play with. It seems like they spent some money, and it looks like a first class production, especially for a TV show. It might run for a season or two and not suck. It would make a decent game setting, maybe we'll see a PAH homage down the road.

Re: CHAR: Martian Manhunter Every time I look at one of Enforcer's DC write-ups, I am impressed at how accurate they are. He does great work. At the same time, I am also appalled at at how accurate they are. This type of thing points out my big problem with DC Comics over the years. The characters are all too damn powerful. I could never that into a lot of them because they were just so overwhelmingly overpowered. Superman is already like the Swiss Army knife of superpowers, and then you have MM. MM can do basically everything that Supes can with all these extra abilities just tacked on.

Re: Alternate realities aside from Multifaria? 5th Edition's The Mystic World had extensive coverage of the magical dimensions. I believe the PDFs and books for 5th Edition are still half price. There was a 4th Edition book titled Champions in 3D that covered a lot of dimensional travel stuff as well. You might want to look for that on eBAy or Noble Knights. Oh, there was also a Mutants and Masterminds book called Worlds of Freedom that covered this material. It would take some work, but it could be adapted.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Why was that so fascinating? I watched the whole thing, and I have to admit that I was basically transfixed. It must be some sort of primal male instinct to destroy stuff. I was also imagining a larger version with Batman and Robin being lowered into slowly. "Will the Dynamic Duo escape from this mechanical monster. Tune in to find out next week. Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel."

Re: Stereotypes about the Superhero genre The Ultra Humanite is just Lex Luthor. I think he might predate Luthor, but they were essentially the same character until UH got trapped in a gorilla's body. Now he's Luthor with physical stats that would be threatening to a trained normal type hero. I have to look at it again, but I think the point of his thing with Power Girl was that he was plotting and scheming more than they were slugging it out. Also, you have to remember that PG, and all of the other Kryptonians, always have to hold back. Let's face it Luthor, Toyman, and all the rest would have been dead if Superman used the Authority's rules of engagement. That is what bothers a lot of gamers who are new to the genre. They are so used to just using force to kill thier way through problems that they balk at having to let people live and go to jail. That, and the lack of immediate material gain, are that things that cause the biggest hiccups when trying to get someone into a supers game. I have loved comics since I was ten years old, but I also don't think a lot of the Silver Age convetions make for a good game. I usually shoot for something along the lines of 1980s X-Men or Teen Titans. So more Bronze than Silver or Iron. I do like some of the Iron Age stuff about looking at what's going on behind the superbattles, but I try not to play it up to a depressing extent. I guess I shoot for a shade or two brighter than the Ultimates.

Re: Off-world crops? I remember reading on the Atomic Rocket site that yeast could be a go-to food crop for spacefarers. Here is the link. The info is about midway down the page. This is overall a great site, filled with great stuff, especially for you hard science fiction GMs. http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/lifesupport.php

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Hey, how would you like it if you were out enjoying a concert in the park or something and a giant stick came down and started poking everyone.

Re: Best/Worst Characters? Which is actually a good character concept, as you said. I wonder if the player was actually into supers. I have rule now. Don't play supers games with people who just don't get the genre. They will invariably either attempt to subvert the game or tun everything into high camp because they think all superhero fiction is "stupid" or "juvenile." These same people usually can't wait to play a 20th level fighter/magic user/vampire, and yet they can never see the disconnect in their thinking. I know that a lot of stuff in supers games makes very little sense. I just say don't pee on everyone's fun if they are into the genre. Hey, if I sit down at the table with you to play Monty Haul dungeon delvers, I bought in, and I'm not going to point out how little sense the ecosystem makes. I just can't see slamming costumed heroes, but being completely serious about hobbits and orcs. All of this stuff is meant to be fantastic, literally. You should never mock another person's favorite genre until you've taken a second to look at the faults of your own.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Funny and oh so true:

Re: 'Batman' identified, arraigned It depends where you live. Here on the Left Coast, we make them into pseudo-celebrities. http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-06-01/news/the-alleged-adventures-of-phoenix-jones/ You can find a lot floating around about this guy. He had national news coverage around the end of last year.

Re: Dr. Manhattan on 350 Points Probably not, but here Cassandra is playing it a little loose with Meagascale and UAA. He is megascaling the affected radius, the range of the teleport, and the personal radius around him at the same time. It's a fun excercise to do something like that on so few points, but the GM would have to be pretty liberal minded. I repped him just because he had the temerity to try it and get so close.

Re: Dr. Manhattan on 350 Points Clever, but probably a very liberal interpretation of Variable Advantage. Can you really vary the level of the advantage within a single application of a power like that? If everyone was going to places in the same approx. radius from Dr. M, then a single application would do it. However, to change the Megascale range wouldn't that require an additional application? So with that build, I see people blinking out in waves, not all at the same time. You also might need more dice on Telepathy. Standard Effect would probably get you what you need to get surface thoughts on average folks, but on a bad roll he might might miss someone with just a few points of EGO over the average. Ah, on second thought 4d6 is close enough for this purpose.

Re: PAH Destinations WWYD That's rough. The Road is one of those PA settings that made me say, "No thank you, rather be dead." I saw the movie, but didn't read the book. I understand that the book is a great piece of literature, but I now have no desire to read it ever. However, I am interested in seeing what other folks think.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Drive Angry. This was the worst movie I have ever seen that seemed intent on being bad. By that I mean that they were clearly going for so-bad-it's-good status, and they juuust missed. It was like Roadhouse or Showgirls without the charm. Nick Cage hopefully used this money to pay down some of his debts, because his sense of self-worth must have taken some kind of hit here. The plot was barely existent. If you've suffered through End of Days with Schwarzenegger, you've seen this movie. This one's just so much worse. The acting and dialogue were horrible. I've seen fan made Internet Star Trek episodes with better writing. Literally. I like to see cars blow up, watch gunfights, and look at boobies just as much as the next man, but this was just a mess. There was one scene that was basically lifted right out of the Clive Owen flick Shoot Em' Up, and they even managed to screw that up. How can take a scene that was funny, remake it shot for shot, and mess it up? Two good things exist in the movie. A demonic collection agent called the Accountant, and a gun capable of dispatching demons and gods. They are both ripe for game use. The actor who plays the Accountant has a blast with it. The gun is a nice piece of design work. It reminded me of some of the custom firearms from the movie Wanted. Both ideas would meld nicely into an Urban Fantasy game, especially one set in the Deep South or the West. Once you've seen these two things, that's it for the movie. Actually, you can probably figure out how to build those two things based on my brief description here. You might want to skip the movie unless you just really need to see muscle cars and breasts and can't find a good hot rod magazine.

Re: Dr. Manhattan on 350 Points All right, wise@#$, do the teleporting people home thing. By the way, repped for making me laugh out loud. Very creative indeed.

Re: Dr. Manhattan on 350 Points I like the thinking out of the box, but I don't think that pool is big enough to support all of the things he was shown doing at the same time. On Mars, he is shown using Life Support UOO, like at least 80 STR TK, with the Action/Reaction Adder, and he still has full access to his Claisentience. The stunt of teleporting thousands of people to their own particular homes simultaneously breaks this build. I think Susano's build is workable, but I really think Dr. Manhattan had plot-based powers and cannot was a PC at all. Still, those who dare win.

Re: How much do you customize the setting? Yeah, I can see your point, but I still think having all these things on the moon is a little much. In the source material, you get one blue area on the moon, and various people live there from time to time. Don't get me wrong, I like the Selenites, and would also use Revenger, with a few tweaks, I just imagine my supers universe with a little less density. The current MMO-flavored CU is like Marvel New York. It's no wonder people are always teaming up in Marvel comics, they are literally living cheek by jowl.

Re: Superhero Showdown #11: Justice Society of America v. The Avengers Umm...thread necromancy big time. Anyway, if the Spectre is on the playing firld it's all over. The Spectre is probably capable of going toe-to-toe with Infinity or the Beyonder. Why he spends all that time punishing mortal sinners is beyond me.

Re: How would you build Mr. Fantastic's or Plastic Man's movement? I think it's just a balance issue that causes a little bit of a mental disconnect because we are all used to it being one way for so many years. Only in 5th and 6th Edition did this stuff become an issue, as the system moved more and more towards trying to fill in all of the old munchkin exploits. This seems even more prevalent in 6th edition, as the trend seem to be to strip most of the freebies out of purchased powers. If I rememebr correctly, you don't get free stretching and shrinking growth momentum damage anymore. You have to buy a separate H-t-H attack.