AlHazred

So, I've been playing a little D&D 4E recently, and they've definitely done a number on the system. It plays much more now like a MMO than a tabletop game, but they've made some good changes as well. One thing they did was to standardize a set of Conditions that characters can bee suffering from, such as Immobilized, Restrained, Stunned, and so on. They also changed the way characters gain abilities. Now you have three kinds of powers based on your class: At-Will abilities you can use all the time, Encounter powers that only work once per encounter, and Daily powers that you only regain when you take 8 hours of rest (called an Extended Rest). I've been toying with converting some of these abilities into Hero terms, but the list is huge -- you choose one power from a list of at least three almost every level. It would be interesting to come up with some general guidelines though; I put that in my "to do" list. Then a buddy sent me this email: I thought I'd open it to the floor.

Re: Project Pterosaur Hmmm... This is one of those where you think it must be fake, then you think it might be real, then you think it must be fake again. Not getting some of the jokes doesn't make it real, I suppose.

Re: Project Pterosaur I started reading it thinking it was a spoof -- I vaguely noticed a Landover Baptist link on the side, and that's one of my favorite religious spoof sites. Then I realized they were serious. That site is just full of unintentional humor! The Project Pterosaur mission is just the tip of the iceberg! They also want to shut down Landover Baptist, since they see it as overall anti-Christian (when it's really more of a site that makes humor at the expense of fundamentalists). Wow! That's ten pounds of crazy in a one-pound bag.

Re: Fantasy game props I recently started trying again to use sound effects in my games. I think it can lead to a more immersive experience, especially if you can use subtle sound cues to build tension or give nonverbal cues to the players. I'm thinking the villain of the piece, who seems perfectly reasonable, should have his own "theme sound" so that I can use that to elicit tension from the characters. Many years ago at GenCon, I picked up the Toxic Bag Productions' The Game Masters Collection set of sound effects clips, along with their Battles CD. I've used them before, so I can speak to the quality of the recordings -- they're great! Clean and crisp, and designed to be loopable. But you don't have to spend any money to get started. The Freesound Project aims to create a database of sounds licensed under the Creative Commons license. They've got over a hundred thousand sound bites in there now, covering a wide range of user-generated clips. Then, all you need is a program to set up your sound environments. I started a thread to cover mine (and, hopefully, other people's) investigations into these resources.

Re: Kim Possible - Modern Day Pulp Heroine? *subtly exerts psychic pressure on Jhamin to update the writeups*

Re: The Italian Connection Well, that's not helping!

Another thing to consider is that there shouldn't be one "Vehicle Martial Art." What works for a motorcycle probably won't for a 400-ton Subsidized Merchant starship. Instead, consider creating Weapon Elements for different specific Transport Familiarity Vehicle groups (Two-Wheeled Motorized Vehicles; Tracked Military Vehicles; etc.) the same way most other Martial Arts have Weapon Elements for different specific Weapon Familiarity Weapon groups (Axes, Maces, Hammers and Picks; Blades; etc.) Then make your Vehicle Martial Arts "styles" as different as regular Martial Arts styles. Keep in mind that pilots and drivers will have different goals than the guys manning the vehicle's guns; keeping in motion and such is much more important than hitting the target. I would hazard a guess that most maneuvers should involve an OCV penalty to represent this. Exceptions could be made, such as "Combat Motorcycling" for example. For the most part, I would only allow Vehicular Martial Arts for vehicles that are supposed to be maneuverable: space fightercraft and maybe smaller freight haulers or general-purpose vehicles in a Sci-Fi setting; motorcycles and sports cars in a Modern setting; chariots and small carts in a Fantasy setting. Larger vehicles are likely to have their own defenses.

Re: Spirit Companion Intriguing. He still needs one of the Aid Powers, and can now buy it No Range.

Re: Here There Be Dragons I thought the sirens were usually depicted with feathered wings?

Re: Here There Be Dragons Hmmm... Not very Greek in inspiration, is she? Or is this Scylla?

Re: The Italian Connection The reasons this wasn't done so much in the Pulp Era were two-fold. The Nazis weren't actually a regular Pulp threat during the 30s and early 40s because they weren't thought of as an enemy until the war. How many Afghani or Iraqi villains did we see during the 80s? Only the later Pulp heroes, and the modern retro-Pulp characters like the Rocketeer, fight Nazis at all. Mobsters had a love/hate relationship with the public at large. Many criminals were thought of as heroes of the working class. Mobsters were bad guys because they tried to become too powerful, but individuals were still thought of as having redeeming qualities. This is why there is both a criminal villain NPC archetype and a Thrillseeking Criminal PC Package Deal in the Pulp Hero book. Somehow you'd have to combine Fascists (who, as wartime enemies, would not be shown to have any redeeming qualities) with gangsters (who, as criminals, need to be able to draw on at least a thread of sympathy). Difficult at best! I salute your attempt!

Re: Spirit Companion IMO the Spirit Companion class feature from the 4E Shaman class is not a distinct Follower. Instead, it's a specific Power, which Power is determined by whichever form of Companion Spirit the character chooses. This is an Aid to REC for all nearby allies. This one's a little trickier. Your best bet is to make it an Aid to STR for all nearby allies, with the limitation that the extra STR is only for doing extra damage. Both of these Aids are best modeled as Area Of Effect (2m Radius), Selective, Mobile, so you can move them around the battlefield. The Call Spirit Companion power says: So, the modifiers granted by whatever power the Spirit Companion becomes are Nonpersistent, Physical Manifestation, and some form of Feedback (so you take damage when the spirit is hit.) Since you get the spirit back at-will at the start of any Phase that it isn't in existence, it should be a 0 END power.

Hmmm... You could build it as a Talent (either extra PD/ED for the ship with Limited Coverage, or Barrier which already has coverage limitations built in). Or you could define Reinforce Shields as a Block -- the PC flying the ship uses his Phase to Block the incoming attack. If it works, it doesn't matter how large the attack is, the Block deflects it (assuming the thing blocked isn't unusually large/powerful -- asteroids and massive Wave Motion Guns might cause the GM to declare the attack does damage anyway). Neither is more right than the other -- it's just a matter of seasoning to taste!

I thought about this more after I posted last night. In movies and books, you have a variety of "vehicular tricks" that characters use. In Hero terms, some of these are best represented as Talents, while others are best represented as Martial Maneuvers. In general, anything that does extra damage should be designed as a Martial Maneuver; Talents would cover every other kind of trick. For instance, one trick that's constantly used on TV and in movies but that rarely shows up in books is the ability to eke just a little more speed out of a vehicle. This can be bought as a Talent based on the Aid power; if you bought it as actual extra meters of movement, then you'd need to buy the Usable Simultaneously Advantage with lots of extra mass. On the other hand, you could design an Automobile Martial Art for your 70s Cop Hero game, where the character is adept at using the mirrors on his shiny Pontiac GTO to blind people next to it. So, there are lots of options.

I've been waiting, and no one else brought it up, so... Weapon Elements. You can do this relatively cheaply by designing a Martial Art using the regular Martial Maneuvers list, and then defining its default Weapon Element as "Usable with Wheeled Vehicles." This is how you fight with Giant Mecha, you purchase "WE: Usable with Mecha" for your Karate, and then go to it. The second paragraph under "Weapons" (HSMA 90) says, "A few Weapon Elements (e.g., Use Art in Zero Gravity, Use Art in Armor) work a little differently -- they function sort of as Limited forms of Environmental Movement, allowing characters to use their Martial Arts in situations where they would otherwise be unable to use them or suffer penalties. It should be possible to design a Vehicular Combat Martial Art. I'd give all maneuvers either the FMove element or Requires a Half Move, as this feels like how vehicles should do damage to people. Check out the attachment to see what I'm talking about. The Martial Art there is for a Murdoch-style (The A-Team) character who gets into lots of car chases on the streets of Los Angeles, but the same principle applies to Captain Starkiller and the SS Zero Gravitas. It's a particularly cost-effective way to do it without sinking lots of points into specialized Powers/Talents -- if you're going to have whole sessions go by without a chase scene or space battle where they can be used, the 50 points you sank into them tend to look wasted. Prefab file is located here. Martial Arts - Vehicular Combat.pdf

Re: Writing Setting Material I favor the idea of "found documents" as setting material. For example, go with number 2 of your choices, but also include post-it notes dispersed throughout the printout that put the lie to what the propagandists are saying within. If you have some photorealistic graphics you wish to use for the game, then printing them out on glossy photo paper and dropping them in there is good, too. Maybe a file folder with edited memos containing hard statistics and raw data. The idea being, this is what the character sees. How the player interprets that information is part of the art of role-playing. Good luck, and please post what you can -- I love to improve my own GMing by seeing what other people do.

Re: Weird Animal Species for Your Games The squbbon and several other analogues are mentioned on the "Save the Tree Octopus" website. It's really exhaustive when it comes to research!

Re: Weird Animal Species for Your Games How about a giant killer panda (and not a panda that kills giants, no sir...)? Or a palm-sized pterodactyl? Surgeon crabs? The domestic gryphon (admittedly far more appropriate to Fantasy Hero, but with a new description it could be alien)? A gargantuan underwater mollusk? I need to do a writeup of another endangered species from that part of the world, the Mountain Walrus.

I was reading this article, which led me to this page about the plight of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and the attempts to get it on the endangered species list to save the last few members of this now-rare animal. I can't do much about endangered species except raise awareness. So, as a Hero gamer, here's how I do that: Character sheet is located here. For a real combat challenge, supersize one and give the Beak one or two levels of AP and the tentacles some Stretching. Should be a real threat for Fantasy Hero or Star Hero PCs, especially if you give it terrain bonuses, like if it grabs one guy and attacks him in the trees while his friends are on the ground. It occurs to me that a thread with creatures not specifically designed for a particular genre would be a good resource -- it'd be nice to have them all in one place. So, I open the floor to suggestions.

Re: Historical Late Medieval Period RPG Pendragon's not really a "Late Medieval" RPG. In fact, if realism's what you're after, I would stay away. It's extremely good at what it does: Arthurian romantic RPGing.

Re: Your "2011" Pet Gaming Projects

Re: Your "2011" Pet Gaming Projects Since my list from last year was fairly complete, I'll just update that. Champions Write two more modules for the Legacy of Champions convention campaign. I continue to be woefully far behind due to Real Life and other projects. 0% done. If it gets close to convention time, I may just steal somebody else's ideas, but I really hate to do that... Dark Champions Port an organization I built for the Spycraft 2.0 RPG, the Disciples of the Word, into Hero terms. 0% done. Low priority anyway. Fantasy Hero [postPONED] Complete work on my massive High Fantasy Hero campaign, In the Hands of Fate. It's about 75% done but the campaign was put on indefinite hold due to an upset in the player base. It might be too cerebral for a Tuesday night anyway; we're currently doing Dark Sun D&D 4E there, and that seems to be more at the mental level people can manage then. Convert the magic of the DragonQuest RPG to Hero 6E in three flavors - pure Fantasy Hero, as-close-to-DQ-as-possible-in-Hero, and a comfortable mix in between. About 90% done. I had this on-hold due to other commitments, and it's about time I finished it off and posted it. Pulp Hero Update my write-ups of Fu Manchu and his minions in the Si-Fan. 0% complete. I did take the books off the shelves and acquired one of the two follow-ups written by Cay Van Ash, so I have hopes it'll be even more complete and thorough than the 5E Hero version. Star Hero Still haven't begun work on the next leg of my Traveller Hero campaign, Flight of a Thousand Years, currently in hiatus. I found some excellent third-party resources on the Trojan Reach, which the PCs had just entered at the break point, so it looks like most of my work will be of the "cut 'n' paste" variety. Other Hero Convert World of Darkness RPG Vampire: The Masquerade into Hero 6E. Basic template is 100% done and posted. I don't think I'll convert the rest as it's not something I can use in any other current games. Convert World of Darkness RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse into Hero 6E. Basic template is 100% done and posted. I don't think I'll convert the rest as it's not something I can use in any other current games. [postPONED] Convert World of Darkness RPG Mage: The Ascension into Hero 6E. Mostly the magic system. 0% done. Indefinitely on-hold as it's not something I can use in any other current games. [postPONED] Convert World of Darkness RPG Changeling: The Dreaming into Hero 6E. 0% done. Indefinitely on-hold as it's not something I can use in any other current games. Convert World of Darkness RPG Wraith: The Oblivion into Hero 6E. Basic template is about 95% done, everything else is 0% done. It's not something I can use in any other current games, but it's so close to finished that I might just finish it up to post it and be done. Write-Up: Ham the Astrochimp. Completed today and posted. Other Game

Re: In Praise of Ham the Astrochimp Okay, let's honor him the Hero Boards way.

I was idly looking online for blueprints for the TARDIS (futile, I know -- the vehicle is able to be reconfigured, so any blueprint would be only a snapshot in time) when I came across this thread on the Trek BBS forums. He has some designs on Deviant Art, and Imageshack. I'm frankly impressed with this guy's attention to detail (even as I might wonder about his sanity). However, I'm not enough of a Doctor Who geek to properly evaluate (appreciate?) the designs. Any takers?

Re: Shadow World setting