Kap

Re: Second Best Game System ?

Sample of play for the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game

 

 

 

Sounds interesting but geez, they say Hero System is too complicated?

 

The original thread:

 

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?615607-Sell-me-on-Marvel-Heroic-Roleplaying

Holy moley! I read that through twice and I'm still not sure I understand the basic mechanics. Plus I am not a fan of having to use so many different dice...count me out unless I hear some really good reviews.

-Kap

Re: The Mystery Men

No' date=' just the movie characters.[/quote']

 

Wish I could read HDC files!

Re: Fairytale Hero

Fairytales/folktales. Is there a Fantasy Hero niche for this kind of game setting? And what would a Fairytale Hero setting look like? Would it be more interesting to stick strongly to the source material, (the stories made famous by Grimm's Fairy Tales and also by Disney), or to blend in ideas and beings from other mythologies? Even original Fairytales are often linked to other mythologies e.g. Celtic, Arthurian, Arabian Nights.

 

Consider the background. Fairytales have provided rich pickings for fantasy authors and GMs alike for many years. Fairytale style fantasy novels such as Blue Moon Rising, the Castle In The Air, the Xanth novels and the Wizard in Rhyme series form a little sub-genre within mainstream fantasy. More recently the Fables series of Graphic novels has depicted a dark and mature Urban Fantasy take on the world of fairytales. The even more recent tv series Grimm attempts to do the same. Fairytales are also big on screen in the form of films such as Shrek or Snow White and the Huntsman.

 

Fairytale Hero could also cover classic novels such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz, which have, (in my mind), a similar feel to Fairytales or are at least aimed at children, just as modern Fairytales usually are.

 

 

For the moment I'm just going to throw together some key themes and ideas which I think are common in Fairytales and to a lesser extent Fairytale fantasy novels, (which are not the same as their source material).

 

Ordinary People have adventures. In the original stories main characters are quite often ordinary people, although they may be knights or princes. A low-level party of adventurers in a generic fantasy setting might include an aspiring priest, a young sorcerer, a skillful but green warrior woman and an apprentice thief. A Fairytale party on the other hand might include a woodcutter, the third son of the King, (who has not received much attention or training),an apprentice baker and a talking cat.

 

Magic items are common. To balance out their lack of power Fairytale protagonists often stumble across magical artefacts or gain the help of a supernatural entity.

 

Qualitative Magic. Wizards and magical creatures in Fairytales are good at absolute abilities such as granting wishes or turning people into things. When wizards fight each other they are more likely to try and transform themselves or their opponents into things than they are to try and whittle down their opponents elemental defences with repeated fireballs or counterspells. Magical items do a certain thing e.g. creating a kingly meal or turning someone invisible and they never fail to carry out their purpose unless they are misused. Magical beings often have specific weaknesses and may be invulnerable to all other forms of attack, magical or mundane.

 

Talking Animals. These are common, with or without explanation. Some have magical powers or extraordinary skills. Some talking animals act like humans e.g. walking on their hind legs and building houses.

 

Violence is not always the answer. While it is not uncommon for Fairytale heroes to kill giants, dragons, ogres etc they are less likely to use standard combat tactics and may instead use tactics such as running, hiding, lying, disguising themselves, pushing people into ovens and using wishes. However, Fairytale style fantasy novels usually have as much blood and slaughter as any other high fantasy story.

 

Words Matter. Riddles, lies and word games quite often feature in Fairytales e.g. Rumpelstiltskin. Magical beings and even humans are usually bound by their word, sometimes even if this means their death or utter defeat.

 

Lots of Royals. Fairytale lands tend to have a lot of knights, kings, queens, princes and princesses. This is despite the fact that dragons prefer to dine on princesses or noble maidens and monsters of all kinds routinely slaughter dozens of knights and princes before one hero is lucky or clever enough to bring them down. It is possible that Fairytale Monsters are a necessary check on the population of knights and royals in Fairytale-Land, which would otherwise grow out of control and devastate the countryside like a plague of locusts.

 

One more idea to think about is Comedy versus Horror. The original Fairytales, (Pre-Grimm), were often quite horrific. The original Red Riding Hood was not saved by a woodcutter; she took all of her clothes off and then got devoured by the Wolf. I believe she was was supposed to be a cautionary tale warning young women to avoid dangerously attractive and/or hairy men. Modern retellings such as the Fables series focus on the darker aspects of these childrens' tales. Other stories, such as Shrek or Castle In The Air, are funny because they play around with the weird rules that Fairytales seem to have. Some stories, like Blue Moon Rising, manage to mock traditional Fairytales and force their heroes to wade through rivers of blood.

 

If someone were to run a Fairytale Hero game it would be important for the GM to agree with the players beforehand whether the campaign was supposed to be a light-hearted riff on Fairytale cliches, a devastating journey into the bloodsoaked nightmares of folk-legend or something in between.

 

So. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Not so sure magic items are common. Most stories with a magic item seem to me to have had just the one, a rarity that made all the difference. What fairytales are you referring to where magic items abound?

Re: Music For A Pulp Noir Detective Story

Perry Mason wasn't quite noir but his theme song could work. Music from Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, etc., would certainly be authentic. I find good jazz records work exceptionally well: Lester Young, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane...

--Kap

Re: The Mystery Men

I wrote them up a long time ago and posted them on rec.games.frp.super-heroes. Reading through Surbrook's Stuff recently' date=' I decided to dig them out and update them for the modern age, so here they are.[/quote']

 

I don't suppose you've worked up Flaming Carrot and the Mysterymen from the Bob Burden comic books, have you?

 

--Kap

Re: What "Pulp" have you read lately ?

I've got about a hundred Doc Savage and The Avenger paperbacks from when they reprinted all those pulp magazines as novels in the '60s and '70s. Probably read 75 of them so far.

Also have 4 neat Doc Savage hardcovers from Golden Press that I got for $1.00 each at a used book store. There were at least six (they're numbered), but I've never seen them anywhere else.

--Kap

Re: Support HERO Indirectly...

To follow up my own posting, part of the reason I bring this up is that we can save time and space by referring to things that are in whichever books we need: "To find the stats for the Flying Dork, take the Competent Normal (p. xx) and add 12m of Flight and the "Throwing Badger" power from p. YY..."

 

And saving time and space can be nothing but good.

I would assume the reader owns the basic book and additional info as needed, but that may be my personal bias against having to refer to multiple books to play a simple adventure. I think your idea here is pretty good for saving space, though, if we're limited to 5-6 pages.

--Kap

Re: Support HERO Indirectly...

I was thinking Savage Worlds has a tool called the “One sheet Adventures”. Downloading these and reading them was enough that I bought a lot of Savage Worlds material so I could have context and convert them.

 

The idea would be to make an adventure that fits on 5 pages or less and include stats for any bad guys or mobs the players are expected to encounter.

 

I think this would be a good idea for HERO and could get people buying & playing HERO.

 

I am going to try and write up a couple, but while I work on a few, figured I could see if anyone else would be interested in giving it a try. Once completed we could start a new post or even give them free to HERO Games to post in a “Free” section.

That is a nifty proposition. Do you have a link to an example? I think I might try to write one or ten but I would do a much better job if I saw something to model it after.

--Kap

Re: Catch Me If You Can: A Champions Adventure

Your maps are fantastic.

Re: Steriaca's Projects: Should I?

Can't really answer unless you explain who Lady Heart and the Court of Hate are...?

I would imagine use of the Champions Universe in part of whole would violate the owner's copyright unless you obtain legal consent in advance.

Re: Marvel Super Friends

I'd like to bring back up the Falcon as a conceivable Robin. Wasn't he first introduced in the comics as basically a new sidekick for Captain America?

You're right, I should have thought of that angle. I'm not sure if she debuted early enough, maybe one of you can tell me, but perhaps the original Ms. Marvel could fill the "girl" slot?

Re: Reason for creating team.

I'm just starting my campaign , and have a group of heroes I'm trying to bring together. The first session I'm going to start by having the Heroes brought together to form a team. So my ideas so far is a rich ex hero brings them together, or maybe UNTIL. The campaign takes place in the CU in Vancouver. Vancouver has been without a team since Necrull took out the last one. So I'm asking for help in creating a plausible reason for someone to bring these individual heroes together and pretty much getting them to form a team .

Please help as my mind is drawing blanks

Any menace more powerful than any single hero should be reason enough: a rampaging robot, invaders from subterranea, sea monster on the loose, weird science gone awry, a powerful wicked witch, etc.

You could always go the Defenders "non-team" route, where they only come together when there's a menace worthy of their combined powers and aren't a formal team with rules and memberships.

I try to avoid having them gathered together by another individual or agency (retired hero, UNTIL, etc.) as I find it works better when the PCs are self-motivated to take the initiative to form a team or to band together.

--Kap

Re: Marvel Super Friends

This is a great question! I loved the various Super Friends cartoons as a child in the 70s' date=' especially [i']Challenge of the Superfriends[/i]. And the restrictions against violence in those cartoons, which ultimately caused me to lose interest in them in the 80s, now allows me to share these with my 5 year old daughter. I DVR'd Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends for her, too, and she really liked that as well, especially Firestar and Storm (who makes a couple of guest appearances with the X-Men).

 

 

To respond directly to the question, I think that Spider-Man, Hulk and Captain America would have been slam dunk inclusions in any 1970s Marvel version of Super Friends. They were by far the most famous Marvel super heroes back then, in my memoiry anyway. For gender and racial diversity (paralleling Super Freinds), I would suggest that Firestar and Storm might be good options. Same with Power Man and Iron Fist.

 

That being said, the Fantastic Four were much more high profile back then in the Marvel Pantheon. I could easily see any of them being included, too. Iron Man was always one of my favorite characters and would be a great addition. But my memory is that he was sort of a 'second string' character back then (as was Daredevil).

Good, thoughtful answer. I think Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, and Captain America would have been the first three Marvel characters drafted. I go back and forth on who I think would fill the Robin "youth" slot and the Wonder Woman "girl" slot. Would they dare use Bucky in the Robin slot? It would make more sense than Rick Jones, at least to me. Marvin and Wendy could stay as-is, same later with the Wonder Twins. I think those two slots I mentioned are the hardest to fill due to Marvel's lack of sidekicks and popular heroines.

Marvel would seem to have a leg up on D.C. when it comes to the Challenge of the Super Friends "diversity" slots. The animators probably could have drafted comic book heroes instead of having to make up characters for the cartoon, as Marvel had more prominent "ethnic" characters to choose from.

One thing a lot of responders haven't seemed to consider is the visual aspect: some characters might make the cut just because of their color schemes or the visuals their powers bring to the cartoon, i.e., I read that's why Aquaman and later Hawkman and Green Lantern were selected.

--Kap

Re: Your favorite champions character

Fun to play would be BRUTE

 

(Stop me if you have heard this origin before). A Rocket Scientist who was would mutate into a superstrong neanderthal Brick. He would run around saying things like BRUTE SMASH. In his human ID he had an INT of 30...

 

Anyways, so one day we are running through Island of Dr D. Dr D is stoped, but he has launched his satalite, he will still win...I pass the GM a paper. He rolls some dice, He describes me walking over ot a council and smashing it. The players at the table were "How did you know which one to destroy"...I observed that I was a rocket scientist..."No your in your Brute form...your an idiot right now"...I politely informed him that I had an int of 30, and a ton of science skills...They informed me AGAIN that I had been in my super strong form and did not have access to those abilities. That is when I told them about a small 5 point psych lim I had "Likes to play elaborite Practical jokes", and that when I got in my Brute form I retained all of my intelegence. It had been a six month campeign up to that point...I, the player, had to dodge Pizza crusts, empty soda cans, and paper plates...

Did your GM have this information (that the character doesn't lose his INT in hit Brute form) and just forget it or fail to notice it at all?

Re: Combat and description

I like getting descriptive too. Maybe not the third or fourth time a character uses the same attack but adding some color spices up the fight' date=' IMO.[/quote']

 

Agreed, I wouldn't want to "re-describe" the same thing over and over. For instance, I don't know that there are a lot of great ways to decribe Cyclops shooting his optic blast. Maybe you could describe the results differently. Hand-to-hand combat lends itself to lots of great descriptions and sound effects. But even if you don't describe the same attack the second time, you can add some flavor by having the hero say something like, "No one threatens innocent children while Cyclops is around!"

Re: Combat and description

I personally enjoy the purple prose descriptions. Feels more comic booky. I also enjoy super hero and villain soliloquys.

Re: Argent

Is there any published material for this?

I would start with "Odessey and Oracle" and then move on to his eponymous work.

Re: Good resource for a pulp era breakdown of San Francisco's neighborhoods...

Charles' date=' I have two copies of that if you want one.[/quote']

I'll take it if he doesn't want it...

Re: MYTHIC HERO Kickstarter

What is "Mythic Hero"? Greco-Roman adventures of Perseus-type stuff?

Re: Sci-Fi Melee Weapons: Bat'leth, Lirpas, Lightsabres, Rykk Blades, Koltari, Denn'B

I guess this depends on which source you go by. I just like to believe that Han has a lot of pure skill.

Han Solo's character sheet shows he's just a super-awesome pilot. No need for any "unconscious Force use" theory.

Re: Fictional cities

Of course' date=' any cultural information about a place through any travel books and such would probably have to change to account for the existence of super powered and super scientific beings walking about.[/quote']

 

Only if the super science is generally available to the public or the super beings are extraordinarily influential for some reason. That would depend on the campaign you're running.

Re: Justice League Detroit

The JLA sourcebooks for DC Heroes and The DCU RPG have write-ups for these characters that can be converted to HERO.

Not very helpful unless one owns those.

Re: Justice League Detroit

At least Latinos get to be heroes' date=' most Native Americans in comics wind up being eco-terrorists or weird mystics.[/quote']

 

And they always have to be on the rez wearing traditional garb as their costumes. Shaman was pretty good at least when Alpha Flight started. Didn't read past issue 24, so I don't know what became of him.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

You should follow that up with The End of the Affair.

Better yet, turn off your T.V. for a while and read the book it was based on.

Re: Team as characters

Is your team always together, or only separated briefly? If not, I would keep their contacts/DNPCs/Hunteds separate.

In the games I run there are sometimes occasions where the team members are separated for long-ish periods, so having these as team advantages/disadvantages wouldn't work. The PCs are live in different areas and generally only see each other when duty calls.