bluesguy

Regular communication is always helpful - even communication along the lines of "This past month I was only able to do X".

I would definitely do the Superhero style game.  When we play Champions (we mostly play Fantasy Hero), one of the adult's 9 year old son joins in.  I built a Captain America look-alike for him.  I scaled him back.  He is built on less points than everyone else's characters.  I make sure there are some opponents that are clearly the ones he should go after and turn him loose.  He has gotten pretty good at counting up his damage and figuring out what DCV he hit after he rolls his to-hit roll. 

We have him sit next to my son, the 19 yr old rules lawyer who has been pretty good at teaching the 9 yr old how to play.

Another option is cardboard miniatures http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse.php?keywords=superhero&filters=600_2270_0_0_0&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

Also if you can get a hold of Steve Jackson Games Cardboard Heroes (Modern characters) it would fit your needs.

I went with Standard Heroic, which is what I used for my Valdorian Age.  In my new campaign I am going to probably go with Powerful Heroic or slightly less (200 base points)

So I am going to go a bit nuts with this:

• Skills
  • Analyze complex systems
  • Bureaucratics
  • Computer Programming
  • Conversation
  • Deduction
  • Navigation - Ground
  • Oratory
  • Persuasion
  • Tactics
  • Teamwork
  • Lots of KS/AK/CK
  • PS:  Software Engineer & Project Manager
  • WF:  Sword, Dagger, Gun
• Perks/Talents
  • Well-Connected
  • Computer Link
  • Bunch of contacts
  • Huge number of favors

I am not sure what this falls into but I am highly intuitive.

What I do is :

• Provide detailed guidance about the 'objective' measures within the campaign we are playing.  That means active points, characteristic norms (and ranges), allowable powers and power frameworks
• I have final approval of all character concepts and powers.  I will listen to a player but once I decide accept my decision.  I have changed my mind after a time and will work with the players at a later date.  I also let people know that for any 'big changes' I like to think about it for a while before implementing the change.
  • For instance one of my players wanted to have teleporting as a power.  He had a good reason for it and it was very consistent with his character concept.  I also don't particularly like teleporting because it really can make combat even more confusing for me as the GM :-) (a personal limitation on my part).  So as part of his character concept he got a non-combat teleport that let him teleport the whole team from place to place around the cities where they play.  Over time he saved enough points to buy combat teleporting and we talked it through.  Guess what?  I think I like the fact his character can combat teleport as much as he does.
  • Same player different game wanted his character to have a bunch of combat levels which would make him a better overall fighter than just about everyone else.  His character didn't have a fighter background.  Instead we went with him getting a bunch of unusual weapons and different combat skills with those select weapons.  It was less 'efficient' as far as a character build but a more accurate build for the character concept.
• Last but not least I will remind the players - "Anything your characters can learn to do the bad guys can as well."  Sometimes that stops them right away.  "Oh yeah it would be a bad idea to have a really massive mind scan and a mental killing attack."

I also use Obsidian Portal to manage the campaign information.  My Champions campaign is pretty light on information because I run a pretty loose Champions game.

Thanks, Indiana Joe. I'm planning on basing the city on our actual city, using familiar streets, restaurants, sites, etc. I figure this may make it more "intimate" for the players. No, we're not NYC or SF, but we're a growing city and close to SF, so all should be fine. (I hope!)

That is exactly what I have done my last two Champions campaign settings.  It does mean I need to read the paper to be up to date on what is going on because that can help spawn ideas for adventures.

So this isn't really a "Should I allow it?" thread. It's more of an "If I allow it, does anybody have any ideas on how to best handle/manage it?" 

 

Do you want to run a time traveling campaign?  If you do then allow it.  But find a way to help manage it.  For instance do not let it be something that can be used in combat - takes a long time to do (minutes) and makes the user very vulnerable (0 DCV) and requires a large amount of END.  Otherwise I can see a problem where the player is about to get knocked out and says "Well I am going to time travel back 6 seconds and drop that guy first." 

Also what will everyone else in the gaming group/party do if one of them can just time travel around and they are stuck?  Or does he take them with him?  Why?

As a GM I would not allow a player to have a power that allows them to time travel.  I would use time travel as a plot device though depending on the kind of game I was running.

I think I would check out as many of these possibilities before running a character who can time travel http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeTravelTropes .  As already mentioned there are the issues with 'hitting the time' you want to get to.  But it is worse than that because time and space are intertwined.  So if you miss your 'time' maybe you end up not only in the wrong time but also the wrong place.  "Dang we were suppose to end up in 1955 NYC but somehow we ended up 755 AD and we are in the middle of the North American Continent."  Or worse ... Last thought for our time traveling hero who really blew their roll 'Oh I thought I was going to be on Earth 5000 BCE but I missed... I am not on earth... I am in space... Oh bother..."

Once I was a playing in someone's campaign where there were ninjas.  The first time we encountered one the GM said "He moves like flowing mercury."  Turns out he was one badass character and proceeded to clean our characters clocks - we barely escaped with our lives (run away).  Later we got in the habit of asking "Hey does that guy sit like flowing mercury." or "Is he sleeping like flowing mercury."  That was a fun campaign.  We finally got powerful enjoy to kill the 'head' ninja.

Not exactly sure how you might use this but here is some information from the Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources about Ice Safety (when it is safe to go out on the ice) ... http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/safety/ice/thickness.html   You might be able to take weight vs. thickness of the ice to come up with a way of defining the PD/ED & BODY.

There is also this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nATJ3KJqekI and http://www.dontow.com/2008/06/the-physics-of-martial-arts-breaking-boards/

Did anyone mention Thundarr the Barbarian?

I have to say I use to watch the cartoon but I don't think it would work as a campaign background.  Here is a link to a RPG site describing a Thundarr campaign

It was off the top of my head.

I am impressed.  Wish you lived closer to me so you could game in my group and I could play in one of your games.

WOW!  That is wonderful.  Do you folks have a website that describes the campaign world?

I am currently in the process of creating a campaign world.  It is a lot of work.  I got very stuck when it came to a pantheon so I stole the Harnic Pantheon.  I am purchasing setting/area/adventure material that is generic enough (towns, villages, small areas, etc) that I can do minimal rework and plug into my campaign world.

Do you know who the owner is?  I didn't see anything on the site.

Inkwell Ideas is the company that makes Hexographer and Cityographer.

Lots of useful comments. Thanks!

You ask really good questions.

I don't think the VPP will accomplish anything.  1d6 for those powers won't even impact a typical animal.  If they were cumulative then maybe it would have an impact.

Without knowing what the other characters & opposition looks like it is hard to tell if this is a viable character or not in a fight.

Hi - glad to see I was wrong about you 'trolling'.

Good luck with your efforts to get HD to generate 4e characters.

You have gotten some recommendations & even offers of help on how to take your 4e characters to 6e.  I know you think 4e was perfect but you just aren't going to get much support for 4e because it is defunct.  This is kind of like me saying "I think programming in Assembly, using Emacs on an VAX running Unix is the only way to develop code.  That was the perfect way to do things.  The people who developed these IDEs and high level languages really screwed up a perfect solution.  They should change what they have done and make it like the way I want it."

BTW:  How do you know that search.com doesn't direct your searches to whomever pays the most?  They are owned by CBS ;-)

Glad to have you with us.  Character sheet in the download section http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/7-hero-system-6th-edition-character-sheet/

As for creating character costumes you can point your players to http://www.heromachine.com/heromachine-3-lab/ which is pretty nice for creating characters/costumes.

I have looked at the 6e VII book on Abort Action and I have a few scenarios that I need to ask about.  Let us suppose the character in question ("David) is a SPD 3 character.

• Scenario 1:  In phase 3 David decides to abort to a dodge because he doesn't want to get hit by the mace of death.  In spite of dodging, David gets hit and is Stunned.  What phase can David act?  He aborted his phase 4 to dodge - so he can't act then but being stunned means he needs to use his next phase to recover from being stunned.  Does that mean David can't act until phase 8?
• Scenario 2:  In phase 8 David decides to abort to a dodge to but is hit anyway and not only is he Stunned but he is Knocked Out (-1 Stun).  What phase can David act.  So he didn't act in phase 8 yet (the attack came before he could act), so the abort means he can't use his phase 8.  But he is also Stunned, so does that mean he can't act until phase 4 because he needs phase 12 to recover from being stunned.

I love abort but I am not enjoying writing the code for it

I feel like we just got trolled since the original poster has not posted a response.

The mechanics of setting up and running a low magic world are not that hard.  It sounds like you were headed down the right path IMO.

My last campaign was a low magic world as well.  I think there are two things that really define a low magic campaign.

The first is how powerful magic is compared to the mundane approaches to deal with things.  A low magic world the "sword" will be more powerful than a spell.  Especially at the beginning of the campaign.  Here is a link to a description of how magic worked in that campaign and the specific schools of magic. 

The second aspect is the frequency of magic being used in the campaign.  For instance I can't imagine there would be very many, if any magic items in the game.  In my game the players didn't find any magic items until the last 6 sessions of the campaign (that was after two years of playing).  Also people who use magic should be very rare.  Most of the opposition won't have magical abilities.

The harder part is making sure your players are prepared to play in that kind of world. 

In the above game one player was a sorcerer (mental magic) and because of the nature of magic in the world he had to be very careful about using his magic - both from a meta-gaming POV and a campaign setting POV.  He actually had a secondary set of skills as a bounty hunter.  Another character was a reluctant priestess who eventually got divine powers (reluctantly at that). 

The PCs knew they were facing a big time mage and his apprentices but that person used his mundane allies to deal with the players for as long as possible. We probably played for six months before they ran into someone who could directly use magic against them.

You really have to bring your players along.  Weaning them off of D&D style magic might be really hard. 

I hope you can recover from this very negative post.  If you really want 4th Edition rules I suggest you go out and buy those rules.  Uncle Google found a set of them at http://www.nobleknight.com/ViewProducts.asp_Q_ProductLineID_E_160_A_ManufacturerID_E_39_A_CategoryID_E_12_A_GenreID_E_