wylodmayer

Re: A Plot Idea ... With No Good Resolution Hehhe. Get "meta" on it. The dream fragment finds a young boy (or girl), a fan of the heroes, who would love to get caught up in one of their adventures. And thus does kidnap the boy, in a loud and noisy way sure to draw the attention of the heroes... ...because the Dream Fragment he has! The villain, who doesn't need to be mystical - a mad science type will do - has been struck by the inspiration that he can use this dream fragment to manipulate reality, to build a device that will let him do anything! The thing is, he knows the boy has it because he must - it's part of the dream! The dream fragment alerted him, effectively, and he realizes, more or less what is going on (and is thus in a position to do neat exposition at the climax of the adventure). Of course, he also realizes that he is supposed to have a role in this, to get beaten by the heroes. But, in his enormous arrogance, he believes he can sidestep that aspect of the "dream scenario" - he can't pass up a chance to get ahold of something that will let him directly manipulate reality, and he only needs to hold the heroes off long enough to let his machines (where the boy is strapped down, into some appropriately villainous apparatus) isolate the "dream fragment" for him. After that, it becomes his dream - a nightmare for the rest of the world!! Obviously, the heroes hear about the kidnapping (called in by the authorities, if necessary, baffled as to why Dr. Destroyer would take a young boy of no special background), track the villain (who has, necessarily due to the dream, left a trail to follow a mile wide, even if it's out of character), and engage him in battle. Maybe the dream is elaborate, and there are traps and tricks and even lesser baddies to fight along the way. Maybe not. Doesn't matter. What matters is a grand fight, in grand style, with much soliquizing on both sides. Give extra kudos for roleplaying during this fight the way the kid would imagine the heroes to be - over the top battle cries and heroic poses and quips. Distort reality slightly, the results of the dream - kick up all the KB and really play up the cinematic fight style. Natch, they beat the baddie, whoever he is, but in order to do so, they must use his apparatus to send the dream fragment "back" (whereever that is). Come up with some lame excuse for why they can't just destroy it - it'll kill the kid or something, or even just (plausibly) it'll send the fragment away and then the bad guy (or someone else) can keep looking for it. Work it so that some of the team has to keep the bad guy busy while the others change the machine around to send the thing back. The dream fragment becomes the MacGuffin in the kid's own "dream scenario," and resolving his fantasy means getting rid of it. Neat and self referential.

Re: Humans are "Special" Hehehehe. And, as most people around here know, I disagree. But, you know, the LUG books were pretty. And much, much better edited (which isn't saying much - a monkey could have edited the books better).

Re: Humans are "Special" You know, in a lot of the game version of Trek (like Dechiper's), this actually sorts itself out pretty well. Vulcans are stronger and smarter, but crap for diplomats. Andorians are, according to the game, slightly less intelligent on average than humans, but have other advantages. Ferengi aren't as tall or strong as humans. Etc. Without having sat down and done the numbers, just from the "main" species of aliens we see regularly, humans appear (on Decipher's stat mods) to be about middle of the pack on strength (I can find almost as many aliens with Strength penalties as with bonuses), about lower third on intelligence (there's more aliens with Int bonuses than penalties), and a tad above average on charisma and whatnot (more with Presence penalties than bonuses). So humans would be known as the "social" aliens, good at adapting to other species' ways, but they are also probably considered slightly dim. The frat boys of the universe, in other words. Heh, this sounds more like Clonus' answer all the time. In other words, in a space-setting game with stat mods, I think it usually turns out that humans DO have a niche. The problem comes with a lot of mass-media sci-fi, like this "Ben 10" (which I know nothing of). If the writers are lazy or just not thinking about it hard enough, they forget to portray species with disadvantages that render them less capable than humans in the area under consideration. In which case, humans DO come out looking like wimps. And then there's always some crap about "bold spirits" blah blah blah. PS - if it helps, look at it from the Ferengi's point of view. Humans would fall into the same category as many other species as being "abnormally strong."

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? I dunno... there's only so much defensive aborting you can do; eventually, giving up those actions starts to stack up against you and the enemy gains a real edge. It's stopgap measure at best. Like I said earlier, I don't see an appreciable difference in the time taken for HERO or DnD combats; if anything, Stunning makes HERO combats quicker, because you have the potential to stop an enemy in his tracks for a second and then gang up on him while he's watching the canaries circle his head. In DnD, there's no choice but to slog through those aitch-pees until the guy either gives up or drops. Rolemaster was, in my opinion, the real offender in terms of drawn-out combats.

Re: WHY is combat so slow and what have you done about it? I have to agree with the others who don't find HERO combat slow. I've been playing the game since 3rd edition, and - after an initial learning-curve period - never thought it was particularly slow. It doesn't involve additional steps, honestly, than other games. HERO: Tell the GM who you're attacking, and your "to hit" situation (final CV); GM tells you what you need. Roll. Assuming you hit, roll damage. GM marks down damage. Move on. AN UNNAMED FANTASY GAME: Tell the GM who you're attacking, and your "to hit" situation (total bonus to hit); GM tells you what you need. Roll. Assuming you hit, roll damage. GM marks down damage. Move on. There is a potential slow-down here in only one place I can see, and that's rolling for damage. There's just more dice to count, and if you're worried about BODY, that takes a bit longer. But honestly, this is a minor, minor difference, a matter of a few seconds per roll, a total of a few minutes per fight. The real problem was, I think, nailed by Balabanto. Players in HERO often don't learn the combat rules. There's no good reason for this; they're not even markedly more complex than the combat rules for UNNAMED FANTASY GAME, in it's current edition. Dithering, mentioned by many others, can be partially the result of having a poor grasp on said rules. The GM needs to educate his players, or force them to educate themselves.

Re: Review My XP Policy Nice. Well thought out. Looks good to me.

Re: Down but not out This actually came up in our last game. One character was in negative BODY but in positive STUN, all the while bleeding out. To make it even more on-point, he was Impaired (if I recall this correctly) in the chest area by this attack, so he was actually unable to move or act, but conscious of his surroundings, and able to make "feeble movements" and cry out a bit. I love the HERO System. And I love Impairment.

Re: Three Heroes to Save the Universe In a situation as uncertain - and as high stakes - as the one described, nothing substitutes for a lot of Luck. So... Foxbat. The other slots will be filled with the usual hypercompetents, like Harbinger of Justice and Dr. Destroyer. But Foxbat is a necessity.

Re: Character Concept Question I actually ran a villain in one of my games named Zero, and he was a power neutralizer. He was part of a group called the Sweet Tooth Gang, which also included: *Fifth Avenue, a snappy dresser (thus the name) and face-man, no powers *Jawbreaker and Rock (as in, Rock Candy), two minor bricks *the aforementioned Zero *Honey (as in, Bit o' Honey), a female moll-type with minor mind control powers *Cotton (for his whispy white hair), an octagenarian gadgeteer who started out making trick umbrellas and bombs for themed villains in the thirties, and has been backing bad guys with technical know how ever since *Kit and Kat, psychopathic female twins with minor superspeed and a telepathic link They all worked for the Candyman, a grossly obese vice lord known for his sweet disposition - he was all niceness and pleasantries, allowing his underlings to handle all the ugly stuff. At the time, I never did come up with any better ideas for Zero than power-zapping. The stuff about zero-point energy and debuffing that others have mentioned sound nice. Other possibilities include: *A superhacker, maybe with cyberkinesis, playing off the cyberpunk term "zeroing," which is to erase someone's identity in the grid. This could be fun. Years ago, in a very old Champs campaign, I had a whole arc of the story based around what happened when a superhacker adversary of the group managed to zero everyone's secret IDs, except for one guy. It was interesting. * A guy with duplication. He wears a big zero on his chest and every dupe has the next highest increment (1, 2, 3...). Don't have an explanation, but it sounds neat to me at one am. * Go at right angles to the concept and make him a Japanese fighter pilot.

Re: Pleasure Effects More or less on topic, the psychic powers prefab I came up with for a "pleasure inducing" psi.

Re: Super Populations and other goodness Off topic, I once played a rogue NWO stats guy who had lots of dots in what was then called Entropy, basically what is nowadays Fate. He didn't cause things to happen, in his paradigm, he merely figured out where to look to see things that were happening. His "magic" depended on having, as an ex-NWO member, access to detailed statistical information of the likes you've never imagined. Like, one time, we wanted to see if a car in the parking lot was both unlocked and had the keys in it. Mechanically, I used Entropy to bring this event about; in paradigm, he dug out his laptop and discs containing statistical info on car thefts, insurance reports and so on. After fifteen minutes, he had a list of the most likely makes, models, and years of cars to check for being both unlocked and having had the keys left in the car. We found a car that was the right color, make and model, and only one year off the optimal model year, and - what do you know? - it was unlocked and had the keys in it. It was a fun, albeit short lived character. That said, new Mage is much cooler. Sorry for the hijack.

Re: Standard vs. Dramatic scenes (Torg-inspired) Players may hate an arbitrary GM, but mechanics are mechanics. We played Torg for years, and no one ever complained about the cards, especially because they don't actually help the bad guys, just disadvantage them in non key situations. After all, the GM didn't control the cards, but, interestingly, the net effect of the cards that the players had and the slightly random factor introduced by the combat deck preserved the dramatic flavor of the game without anyone feeling like the GM was manipulating things. Cos, you know, he wasn't, really.

Re: Are there any Champions Players in Texas? I suddenly see a great adventure! Foxbat, irritated by a long drive across Texas while on his way to Las Vegas for a vacation, is sidetracked by an insane plan to shrink Texas. Working his underworld contacts to obtain a shrink-ray, he accidentally makes a little too much noise and another villain - someone suitably Texas-themed - gets wind of this. Nevermind the bond amongst the criminal fraternity! The Lone Star State shall not suffer this indignity! But our cowpoke villain is, at heart, a coward. Foxbat may be loopy, but he's managed to wrangle some well known mad scientist (Dr. Lirby Koo, perhaps?) into this scheme, and the bad guy isn't up to taking them both on. So... ...he approaches the heroes with what little he knows! The heroes will almost certainly not believe him. With their villainous sidekick in tow, they can track down the guy he heard it from, and then follow the trail of clues backwards until they've confirmed that Dr. Koo is, indeed, building Foxbat a giant shrink ray. In the process, however, they also find out that the mad inventor is also being secretly backed, and perhaps ultimately controlled by, someone else... ...naturally, the "climax" of the adventure will be when they have to fight Foxbat in order to stop him from test-shrinking the Alamo or some such nonsense. But the real climax comes after this, when they have to see what happens once he's defeated and his device is impounded. Not realizing the heroes are on to their existence, the real bad guys in this story will move to steal it from government custody for their own nefarious uses and tip their hand to the forces of good! So who is it? Eurostar, who heard about Foxbat's desire for a shrink ray and decided to let the idiot foot the bill for the thing? A secret US Gov't program, confident that Foxbat would be defeated when he tried to use it, thus handing the shrink ray right into their grasp? One of Foxbat's other personalities, acting as a third party via emails and secret messages? Or Foxbat himself, having started brainwashing people into pretending to be him just to see whether his mad plans will actually work? Wow, I really should be writing my term papers.

Re: The Ultimate Tragedian? (Caution: Long, maybe better for posting under GD) jk, this is awesome. I'm totally repping you when the time comes. I have a player who routinely goes the Tragedian route. Some of his past characters: *in In Nomine, a cynical, burnt out angel of creation who sleeps with a demon because she gets under his skin, which in turn fuels his creative spark. He constantly struggles with self loathing for consorting with Hell, and is always compromising his principles to accomplish the "good" result. The player was quite insistent that there come a point when he can 'really' do the right thing, though. *In a superhero game, a hero who was an abusive womanizer and junkie before he was 'outed' about this to the world, at which point he fled - the player played a series of different characters for a year of real time before bringing back the old character, having sunk to the bottom and then pulled himself back out again (developed in private sessions and 90+ pages of bluebooking!) to become a real hero. He came back in a new identity and earned the team's trust again under a new name before revealing himself. *In a WoD game, a death-mage who liked the dead because he could control them, and because they didn't threaten him - he had been abused by his father in unspeakable ways, and was wary of basically anyone, well, alive and animate. Basically a good guy, though. *In another superhero game, a hero whose selfishness and moody nature eventually chased off his wife, who was then kidnapped by a villain, and he had to rescue her and then try to slowly and painfully rebuild their relationship. Etc. He's a great guy, and a terrific roleplayer. The key is that he loves for his guys to overcome great struggle - to redeem their sins or failings with a show of moral strength in the end. My characters on the other hand... *In a superhero game, a moody, bitter mathematical genius/energy projector who is a paranoid schizophrenic. She takes heavy doses of antipsychotics to control her hallucinations and potentially homocidal tendencies (important for someone with a MegaScale Explosion RKA v ED), but the medicine not only causes depression, but also causes long term tardive dyskinesia (i.e., she'll basically be a Parkinson's patient by the time she's 40). She's not a pleasant person to be around. *In another superhero game, a skilled normal who was so thoroughly abused by the denizens of her slum neighborhood growing up that her mind fractured and invented a superheroic personality to rescue herself. *In yet another game, a character who openly holds such repulsive social/political views as to be widely reviled by the public and other heroes. People who have read my posts in other threads going back some time will know what I'm talking about here. I'm the guy who actively enjoys watching his characters go mad in Call of Cthuhlu. I like playing Victims and Falling. I love nothing more than playing a Paladin who eventually slips down the path to becoming a Blackguard. My superhero characters are almost all deeply disturbed people. I don't want them to get solace, I don't want them to get helped. The paranoid schizophrenic, for instance, really couldn't be helped. There's nothing that anyone can do for that character. Another player in the group remarked after dealing with the character for some time, "Okay, I'll bite - what's the resolution?" I looked at him and said, "What resolution? She's insane and she's miserable about it." He said, "That's it? She doesn't get cured or something?" "Nope." He didn't get it. He had no idea why I would want to play that character. Frankly, neither do I. I don't have any idea why I enjoy portraying unstable, tormented souls. But I do. I want them to be maladjusted, or hated, or self loathing, or preferably all of the above. I especially want this in superhero games, where characters are often idealized. In superhero games, I am highly motivated to play incongruously unpleasant individuals whose screwed-up lives intrude upon the pristine landscape of perfect bodies and supergeniuses and millionaire playboys. (shrug) Who knows.

Re: Theory Discussion: Defense Alternative Well, I don't know why defense are fixed, but I like them fixed because it simplifies my math as a GM. I can guess pretty well about how much damage an attack with (x) number of dice will do, so I can know that (y) DEF will usually result in (z) net damage. If I have to roll DEF, too, that's just more uncertainty there; I have to match likelihoods of two independent trials against each other and that gets annoying.

Re: A Thin Moral Line...? Actually, evaluating actions solely on their consequences is an ethical theory known as consequentialism, unsurprisngly enough. Consequentialists are often constrasted with those who hold a deontological ethical view, which is - very roughly - the idea that there are certain ethical duties that hold regardless of consequences. Many people would just say, "well, why not both?" The problem is in the tension between the two. The classic example is killing one person to save five. Suppose there's someone who is about to kill five people, but you can safely and reliably kill him first. On the deontological view, killing is a moral wrong, and - by definition - you must not do anything morally wrong if you can help it. Killing the man would be wrong, so you shouldn't do it. You can't worry about the other five; after all, you didn't kill them, he did. The moral stain is on him, not you. The consequentialist could say "life is valuable," and taking action A (killing him) results in a net loss of -1 life, while taking action B (not killing him) results in a net loss of -5 lives. Obviously, I should kill him. Indeed, I am morally required to. Clearly, the whole things gets a lot more complex than this, and we wind up in different "flavors" of consequentialism, in the distinction between killing and letting die, etc etc etc. But that's the basic tension. Morality as its own reward assumes certain things about the universe and about morality which are (a) not necessarily true and ( heavily contested in any case. Just throwing my two cents in.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. It's part of the Dadaist/absurdist turn in cartoons, like Aqua Teen Hunger Force. If you like that sort of throw-your-brain-against-the-wall kind of approach to comedy, you'll love it. If not, well, you'll feel as though someone just threw your brain against a wall. I look at it like roller coasters. Everyone who rides them describes the sensations the same way - it's just that some people like that feeling, and some people don't.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. Okay, considering how many fans the show has, perhaps I was a little harsh. But, yeah, I think any show with a three-plus hour fight... is not going to appeal to me very much.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. No offense, but I didn't have to watch DragonBallZ to know it would suck. It radiates the suckitude.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. Heh, when you put it that way, I like it to. I was originally introduced to the character as a "Gadgeteer/Skilled Normal with almost parodic levels of Reputation". Of course, he turned out to be the freakin' awesomest charcter ever. I love that comic more than is healthy.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever.

Re: Points Equality Well, that is true - HERO would consider them fairly differently. The basic point, though, was that a not-unreasonable system, and one that was designed specifically to recreate the Buffy characters, considers them as starting on roughly the same basic level. Which is to say that it's not crazy to group them into one "weight class." Doesn't mean you have to, of course, just that it's not insane to assert that it could be done that way.

Re: Points Equality

Re: Hero (and Villain) Poseurs... Well, a couple of my PCs have had questionable motives. Ace was a decent guy, but other heroes sometimes looked askance at the way he parleyed his heroic success into a career as, basically, a celebrity. Mainly, his goal was to score with hot actresses. Mind you, he cared about catching bad guys and all that, too... just, you know, not so much that he'd break a date with Halle Berry to patrol for crime. Maybe if the world were ending, yeah. Terminaxx was a cipher to his teammates. I played him close to the chest on purpose, and they never did really figure out if he was actually a deeply moral person with a lot of aggression issues, or a sociopath who was high-functioning enough to realize that the moral rhetoric of superheroing was a good cover for his love of injuring people. He always pushed it right to the limit of what he could get away with, in terms of violence, against villains, and he was also a womanizing jerk with no manners to boot. There have been tons of NPCs in my games like that. For instance, in my long running Four Color game, a group was started to rival the PC heroes, mainly as a publicity exercise. Some of the people in the group were down with that, while others were genuine heroes who went along with it to get a chance to fight crime, and others walked a line somewhere in between. Also, as I noted in another thread, in my Champions Universe based game, I played Nighthawk as a character with a deep sense of moral arrogance, so that while he held strongly to certain very "right" ideas, he was unshakeably convinced that he was pretty much always right in the ways he went about championing these ideas, much to the annoyance of the PCs. He was an a**hole who eventually got the beat-down from a PC. On the one hand, he had it coming, because his failure to recognize he might be wrong made him dangerous, and indeed he had nearly screwed up big time on a number of occasions in a way that could have cost innocent lives. One the other, it was amusing to have a game where some of the villains were better liked by the PCs than at least one of the "heroes."

Re: Are there any Champions Players in Texas? I'm in Norman, OK, as most of y'all know. But I love superheroes enough to consider the drive... heheh. Just kidding, I'm lazy.