wylodmayer

Re: Build your Super Self Ugh. There is that. Oddly, the last time I had the chance to build myself with powers for a game, I chose to take shapeshifting and "super charisma." If I had to chose again, I think I'd take intangibility and invisibility. I think I have issues. And I'd STILL be stuck in traffic.

Re: Power Request: Bouncing Here's how I wrote up Marvel's Frog Man and his uncontrolled bouncing. Frog-Man’s leaping coils give him +15” Leaping. He often performs a Move Through as an attack, which is good, considering that he has only an 8 STR (his leaping velocity adds +5d6). His main attack seems to be some sort of multiple-bounce Move-Through-like attack that can hit more than one individual per Phase. This is best simulated by an Area Effect HTH Attack set to the same amount as provided by his Move Through velocity, +5d6. The attack should have Selective Targeting (+1/2) and a Radius equal to half his Leaping movement, or about 8”. The natural radius of the power should be 2.5”, so we’ll have to double it twice to get 8” (technically, we’d have 10” at that point, but because of the power’s Special Effect, we are limited to 8”). So far we have 5d6 HTH Attack AE: Radius (+1 1/2) (62 ActPts); Linked to Leaping (-1/4), Attack Sequence Ends and Character Suffers Damage as per Move Through If He Fails to Damage Any Target (-1), Side Effect: Character Deposited Randomly within Area of Effect at Completion of the Attack (-1), OIF (Frog Suit; -1/2). Total Cost for this “Random Bounce Attack” is 16 points. He must make at least a Half Move with Leaping – the Radius is centered where ever he ends that Half Move. Although he can come at his targets from almost any direction, Area Effect attacks are inherently Indirect, and so Frog Man doesn’t need to buy this Advantage. He actually moves physically to attack each target, but in an uncontrolled fashion – should it become important, the GM determines his “flight path.” He may make many “extraneous” bounces on his way to each target. The costume is probably armored to about 4 rPD/rED. Frog Man seems hard to hit while bouncing, even though he’s an incompetent moron. Buy him +2 DCV-Only Levels (10 ActPts); Only in any Phase in Which Frog Man Uses Leaping (-1/2), OIF (-1/2) (5 Real Cost), as well as +2 DCV-Only Levels (10 ActPts); Only in any Phase in Which Frog Man Uses his “Random Bounce Attack” (-3/4), OIF (-1/2) (4 Real Cost). Frog Man is not very skilled with his suit, but he does stand a good chance at hitting, just because of the chaotic way in which he “blindsides” targets with his Random Bounce Attack. Model this as +3 Levels with Random Bounce Attack (15 ActPts); Considered a “surprise attack” bonus (-1/2), OIF (-1/2) (7 ActPts). The fact that these levels are considered a “surprise attack” bonus means that they are not cumulative with Surprise Move bonuses, and may be completely negated by characters with Analyze Combat, Precognition, Danger Sense, or some sort of 360 degree Targeting Sense.

Re: Drain with Limitation I'd say -2 is way too much of a Limitation; on the other hand, the Life Support in question is VERY cheap and totally cancels the power. Still, that more or less makes it on par with an NND, which is a +1 Advantage, so a -1 Limitation sounds about right to me. Unless that Life Support is more common in your game; for instance, in a high powered game where there are a lot of androids, cosmically powerful interstellar policemen, and flying bricks from other planets, I'd rack it up to at least -1 1/2. But for the average superhero game, -1 sounds good to me.

Re: Grandiose Schemes In the Four Color game I ran, a conclave of second string supervillains got together and kidnapped another second string bad guy, a chick called Bad Penny, who had luck powers. They then cooked up a techno-mystical scheme by which they could sacrifice her life-force to "stack the deck" in favor of evil - in other words, change the fundamental laws of the universe so that the bad guys would tend to win. The heroes became alerted to their scheme when they started breaking off into teams to steal the necessary technological and mystical items needed, and eventually tracked them back to their HQ just in time to stop them and save Bad Penny. The team science and magic wonks swore up and down it wouldn't work, but no one wanted to take the chance. Interesting postscript to that: Bad Penny lost her luck powers and went on to lead a productive and normal life. That game being what it was, there were of course many other grandiose schemes, but I can't think of too many off the top of my head. Oh, wait, I remember one. A race of cosmically powerful, identical beings with a hive mind discovered that other dimensions existed and, being xenophobic in the extreme, set about trying to destroy all other dimensions. THAT was fun. Most of the others that we did have been covered. In my world's version of Gorilla City, a rogue faction seized control of the government and tried to use their prodigious technology to shift the earth's axis enough to start a new ice age and wipe out humans so that, when the ice melted, the simians could take their place (the city itself was environmentally self sufficient). A copped version of Turner D. Century got ahold of the Horn of Kronos and "rewrote" the world to a version of the way it was at the turn of the century. That was fun; I handed out Call of Cthuhlu sheets to the players and new histories for them, and they played their characters as they "would have been" in Turner Century's "new" world. Of course, they both evaded the fanatical Cult of the Thousand Eyes and managed to seize the horn from Turner and undo his changes. It was fun. An easter-themed pagan villain tried to "poison" the town's water supply with a drug that would make everyone start having sex like crazy (that was the idea, anyway; the team scientists thought it could be lethal to a large portion of the population); he wanted the biggest fertility rite in history. I'm not sure if these are grandiose enough.

I once played a character called Liberty, a bubbleheaded but well meaning brick/model who was also an aspiring actress in LA (the character was very loosely based on the GLOW wrestler of the same name). Anyway, Liberty's attempts at becoming "a star" involved many - perhaps exclusively - misadventures along the way. One of them was a particularly ill advised merchandising choice made for her by her sleazy manager. On the upside, she had gotten an action figure. On the downside, it was made by ACDC, the Anatomically Correct Doll Company ("Squishy In All the Right Places!"). Liberty was distraught. This isn't so much a 'what would your character do' as a 'what have they done to my character' thread. Imagine a godawful merchandising scheme based on your character. What would it be? Who's likely responsible (the character himself is always a live answer - Ace would definitely come up with the worst crap all on his own)? What would your character's reaction be? Go nuts.

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy I didn't think I did. It sounded like an honest mistake from an "outside observer" to US political history. Besides, no American student would use the phrase "military junta." It's sadly beyond them.

Re: Skillful of you Gosh, what a tough choice! The real dilemma here is whether I decide to make myself stronger in areas I believe I will be working, or beef up areas where I am traditionally deficient. For instance, I could by 25 pts worth of languages and knowledges to supplement the ones I already have (which are not insignificant), thus "shortcutting" my way to all kinds of supporting knowledge that would be useful to have in my field but which I don't have time to acquire. On the other hand, since the points are essentially "free," I could buy skills like Survival, Mechanics, and so on - things I don't think I'll ever need to use, but would really come in handy should I ever been in such a situation. Without a boost in SPD and maybe CON I can't say I'm all that tempted to take any Martial Arts, although the thought is there. But if I had 25 pts in Martial maneuvers, I'd wind up a bully, so that's a bad idea. I think I'd split the difference. I'd up my French, German, and Latin to fluent, and pick up Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and maybe something else. I'd buy some general sciences - like Bio and Phys - at 11-, just to round me out. I might pick up a few extra knowledge skills, but this is one area where I am NOT hurting at current, so maybe not. After that, however, I'd buy Mechanics, Electronics, Paramedics, and maybe a few other similar things so that I can "take care of" myself and my loved ones. And if I could get my girlfriend's permission, I'd buy Seduction.

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy

Re: Altered Reality (making yourself) Perhaps I missed something, somewhere, but what is "Derek's Intelligence equation"?

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy Yeah, the 'Lord Protector' who wanted to defend liberty 'stayed true to his ideals'... by gathering to his office more power than Charles I ever had. The man was a hypocrite who claimed to champion the rule of the people but dissolved parliament and persecuted those who dissented with him politically or religiously. He set 'freedom' on The Isle back hundreds of years. And, oh yeah, for a man so 'true' to his principles, let's remember that he spent over a month dithering about whether to accept the crown, and nominated as his successor to the allegedly non-heriditary post... his son. Plus royal-like robes, etc. The only way in which he 'rejected [the crown] utterly' was that he went sailing right PAST it in terms of personal authority. Cromwell may have meant well, but when he got into power, he sacrificed everything he claimed to believe in - rule of law, religious and political freedom, etc - for "security."

Re: Evil Counterparts We did this in my Four-Color Campaign, and it was actually kind of the idea of one of my players. His first character, Banshee, mentioned in other threads on these boards, turned out to be a woman-abusing drug-user and a reckless, irresponsible hero to boot (he was the son of two deceased but beloved heroes from the previous generation, and had issues). So after he left, the player's replacement character, a teenage girl superscientist showed up from an alternate dimension. Well, what she hadn't told anyone was that she was the daughter of Banshee in that dimenison, which seemed to be about a dozen or so years ahead of this timeline. In that world, Banshee was a pretty level headed guy, but after losing his wife to a villain, became a little overzealous about enforcing peace and order. Things degenerated between the members of the team and they each wound up carving out a piece of the world to rule. The coolest part was that the resistance to their despotic rule was a group made up of the HEROIC versions of the game's prominent villains; when the PCs wound up going back to this dimension with Creatrix, the girl superscientist, to "set a few things right" (and to drop her back at home, since her presence in their dimension was disrupting reality), they had to get help from the group in question. It was so cool to watch them deal with the good-guy versions of their villains. The reason was just for, well, coolness and to say we did it - it's a cliche from the genre, and we wanted to do as many of those as possible. Plus, it was fun. I wasn't trying to make any major philosophical point, but the "road not taken" dynamic was kind of fun. Plus, we got some major plot developments out of it. * Ms Mercury, the sister of Mr Mercury III had become the wielder of the Helm of Mercury when her brother died, in our world at least, but in the counterpart world, he was still alive, and the two had to go at it. He was better at using the powers, but she was smarter and an occultist to boot, and eventually beat him by summoning the gods to take back the artifacts - all of them! She retired after that, but what a way to go out. * We got major foreshadowing on Myst's eventual transformation into the power mad Nocturna, which was her identity in the counterpart world. and * We got to see further into Banshee's psyche and the scars he carried with him over losing his parents so young, setting up the character's eventual redemption and return in the main continuity. It was neat.

Re: Build your Super Self I have this weird desire to have superstrength and toughness, especially because I don't look the type. But if I did, I'd totally wind up as a villain, or at least I would be considered one, mainly for ripping the wheels off of cars that cut me off in traffic.

Re: And this is my special eff... er, I mean, my Sidekick.

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy

Hey guys, I was just wondering what the folks here thought of this idea. I was bouncing ideas around with a buddy, and together (I can't remember who first proposed it, honestly) we came up with the idea of buying a Sidekick merely as 2 Overall Skill levels, OIF (-1/2; Sidekick), Limited Power (Seperate Person; -1/2). The Limited Power means that the Sidekick usually sticks close and is able to help with stuff, but is occassionally at school or not around or something. Other than that, the "person" is just a "special effect" for Skill Levels. He can distract enemies in combat (CV), help with disarming bombs ("Don't clip the red wire until I tell you!"), and so on. Yes, I know - there are rules for Followers. And yes, I know, I could probably build a much more useful Follower for the same point value. But, seriously, aren't some sidekicks such non entities as to almost be better represented this way? I mean, hell, they're not even Independent (-2)... Batman cranks out juvies in red doublets as quick as the Joker can squish 'em. It's a tad creepy. It was just a flight of fancy, but I've been toying with "nonstandard" ways to represent certain basic things, lately. Any comments?

Re: Altered Reality (making yourself) It's a Montage! Heh. Actually, the thing is, I'm a big fan of different - sometimes wildly different - power levels in one group. As a friend of mine once said, "If we set Driving and Engineering at the same difficulty level [in discussing game design], why would anyone buy Driving? I can do so much more with Engineering!" I replied, "Yes, but you can't drive anywhere with it." If the less-powerful characters have useful or even necessary skills that the more powerful one doesn't, the game can be quite interesting. Of course, we've even had some success with less powerful characters who DIDN'T have unique skills. I ran a game once where the "main" character was essentially Batman, and some of the other PCs were his sidekicks (Robin, Batgirl, etc). They varied in power level from each other, but they were all less powerful than he was, and none really had much in the way of skills he didn't. But it worked alright because he couldn't be every where at once. Indeed, because he was the toughest of them all, he usually got stuck wading into the thugs while one of his junior helpers snuck over to turn off the Doomsday Device. I fully admit, though, that this sort of thing would only work with a group of really mature players, and in a game where the GM was doing his best to make sure that certain objectives had to be met simultaneously. That having been said, I'll pit my KS: Philosophy against anyone's 200 pts of Ranger Training anyday! Ha!

Re: Altered Reality (making yourself) Ugh. I turn out to be about 11 pts, with 25 pts in Disads. Around 26 pts in skills, most of which are Knowledge Skills that I actually have some basis for believing I can make a living with (i.e.: I do and/or have done so). I didn't buy anything like KS: Gaming or KS: Trivia, although I again have a solid reason for believing I have the latter - I lettered in Quiz Team in undergrad. I suppose with those and some other miscellaneous "hobby" skills, my total skill expenditure should come to about 30 pts, bringing my grand total to around 15 base points and a total of 40 with Disads. Wow, I'm depressed now. At least I can say my stats have started to come up somewhat, since I started hitting the gym five days a week (two for strength, three for cardio). Not great, mind you (yet), but better than they were. Which isn't saying much. They had no where to go but up. On the other hand, I am relatively free of major Disads. Aside from a Social Lim (Grad Student) that keeps me tied to my university and a nearly insignicant Phys Lim (Occasional Insomnia) that screws with me from time to time, I'm pretty free and clear. No Dependences or DNPCs, no major Phys Lims. I have a general Psych Lim (Essentially Altruistic and Law Abiding). Yup. Pretty boring. No Martial Arts, no skills like Combat Driving or anything like that. I do have Oratory, from my experiences in front of a classroom and at conferences. Yippee. Yeah, I'd need a superpower or SOMETHING to make me useful in a game.

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy Making the United States a Constitutional Monarchy after the Revolution would already assume that not just Washington, but many if not virtually all of the founders were of PROFOUNDLY different character, so if you're already making THAT change, I don't see a problem in setting up George I as King of America. However, if you really can't see casting the profoundly humble Washington in that role, try Aaron Burr, Jr. He had the hubris and the aristocratic attitude, as well as the keen mind and nearly limitless ambition, to be king. Interestingly, this might have spared his daughter her untimely death, and actually brought about women's lib, in one form or another, much earlier. Burr's daughter, whose name escapes me just now, was a brilliant woman that in our day would likely have been a respected scholar; Burr encouraged her academic pursuits fully. In real history, she wound up married to a drunken, abusive man of money and died, tragically, in a sailing accident off the Carolina coast. As the Princess of America, however... perhaps she would one day ascend to the throne, beating out Victoria to become the second of the great female monarchs in English speaking history. As a result, we might have gotten a greater measure of equality for men and women a full century before we actually did. Furthermore, it would have probably spelled the end of slavery. Burr opposed it not just personally, but actively in politics - he was one of the earliest American political figures to court the support of free blacks. While the Southern states would have almost certainly been upset by this disruption to their economic system, if in fact they acquiesced to making Burr a monarch, we might imagine that they would obey his decree (I believe but am not certain - memory is a tricky thing - that Burr was in favor of compensation for slave owners, so they wouldn't have come away empty handed). There is some possibility that if the monarchy was a constitutional one that the issue would have been set "off the books," much as it was in the actual constitutional debates in 1787, and if you choose to take that route, you might even still have had a Civil War as the issue finally came to head - except this time, it would be between Northern royalists (Burr was Northern man through and through, and his royal city would probably have been New York) and rural gentry of the South, far removed from the seat of royal power and used to doing things their own way. Or you reverse it - assume that at some point, Burr's line died out and the throne was claimed by a Southerner whose strings were being pulled by a military commander of mean birth named Jackson (who was called "King Andrew" by his detractors during his Presidency for his broad view of executive power). Under Jackson's influence, the new, Southern King pressures Northern peers into accepting Fugitive Slave laws that apply to their demenses, against their wishes. Later, the new Southern dynasty pushes to repudiate the Compromise of 1840 (wherein an informal meeting of the peers struck a gentleman's agreement to leave new, Southern territories acquired as slaveholding fiefs and Northern ones as free areas) by granting several prominent pro-slavery Dukes and Barons fiefs in the newly acquired Northern territories. Eventually, it builds to a conflict between the King's loyalists and a coalition of northern moneymen and peers led by Baron Seward of New York, carrying on what he sees as the legacy of King Aaron. There's a lot of fun possibilities to it, especially if one considers that Constitutional Monarchy was fairly, but not completely, well established in that day and age. Assume that after the Revolution, England's King George manages to browbeat Parliament and greatly expands the power of the throne, making it more like the monarchs of old. Assume that in the age of Jackson, the Parliament's power becomes severely checked and the constitution rendered a hollow document as well, and the two English speaking monarchies drift toward a more authoritarian position. Perhaps France's monarchs survived, with no American republican example to inspire the sans-culottes, or maybe France is the only truly representative gov't on Earth. Indeed, perhaps the few American founders with republican leanings fled to France and helped brew their revolution, their leadership and vision curbing the excesses of the Terror and preventing the French Revolution from devouring its own children. This would mean no Napoleon, but a stable democracy counterpoised by two monarchies growing ever less constitutional. There are all kinds of implications. Perhaps Germany and Italy take their cues from England and America, not France, and have a weak and ineffectual Parliament with a powerful heriditary leader. If the position of Prime Minister/Chancellor turned out, in fact, to be a nugatory one in those countries, then they would have been safe from fascist overthrow in the thirties - both Mussolini and Hitler maneuvered their way to power via the PM/Chanc. post. Certainly, the over throw of the Tsar by Bolshevik revolutionaries in the early part of the 20th century would have frightened the remaining monarchs into tightening their grip even further, so merely saving Europe from fascism would not necessarily save it from totalitarianism. Indeed, France might have welcomed another putatively republican body (the Communists made a pretense of elections and representative gov't, after all) onto the world stage. And WWII might have still happened as the jumpy Austro-German Empire started trying to grab Eastern Eurpoean countries before the Franco-Russian revolutionary spirit "infected" them... leading to an alliance of England, Germany and Italy against France and Russia! I need to stop before I wade too far into this. The possibilities are endless.

Re: Wrestling HERO It'd be "Battles Royal." Nazi> Sorry. They'll take away my English degree if I don't do stuff like that from time to time. It's out of my hands.

Re: Philosophical question

Re: Idea - Hero Points

Re: WWYCD: Alternate Identities I figured I might as well post to my own thread. Cat switched identities once after an explosion that left many believing she had died. She laid low for a while, then resurfaced as a heroine called "Dove," with a decidedly more pacifistic approach to crime fighting, to throw the villains who had been seeking to kill her off her trail. Ace can master just about any physical skill in a day or so, and once posed as Captain America when the real Cap was needed elsewhere - he learned to fight almost just like him... and unfortunately wound up getting captured by some of Cap's enemies. The real deal had to rescue him and they fought their way out together. Holocaust lost her powers for a while and used a spare SHIELD uniform and a blaster rifle to do what she could for the team, although she never actually gave herself a new name. Later, she temporarily wore the Iron Man armor while Stark was in the hospital. Ingrid showed up as a heroine named "Olympia" for a while - her other identity was a public relations nightmare (don't ask, although those who are familiar with my previous threads might be able to guess why). Not my characters, but some characters in games I have run did similar things: Lady Justice wore the armor of her mentor, Defender, for a time after the original died tragically. There was a lot going on at the time, and Defender's presence on the scene was, she felt, important to holding together the loose coalition of the city's heroes that existed then. Banshee, a hero with a Public ID, was exposed by gossip columnists as a druggie and an abuser of women, and he nearly got his teammates killed on one mission with his increasingly reckless and irresponible behavior. Absenting himself from the team for over a year to get his head together (and, as it turns out, study martial arts in the Far East), he returned, level headed and serious, as "Guardian." It was actually a really neat set up. The player purposefully went through about six characters during the actually-year-long time that he wasn't playing Banshee, claiming to not be able to settle on one character. When he brought in Guardian, the other PCs were none the wiser; they thought they were seeing the next one in the hit parade of alternate characters. Over several adventures, he earned their trust as a solid and dependable guy, and then revealed his real identity, asking their forgiveness for his past mistakes. It was awesome - one of the most rewarding moments I've ever had as a player or GM. That player, an old friend of mine, gets my highest props; greatest part is, that's not the only time he's pulled some seriously awesome rp on me, either. He's gem to have in a game.

Re: House rules for Comliness - critique, please Oh, I like this a lot! I'm definitely going to use that. Plus, I forgot to mention, that buying things this way allows for more sensitivity to cultural variance. For instance, an American male character with "Androgynous Appearance" might get a bonus from a few people, but it may be that he finds his appearance more generally useful in, say, Japan. Yeah, I think I'm liking this. It winds up costing a tad more than COM to be highly attractive, but it also has more definite game effects and is a booster to, rather than being redundant with, PRE.

Re: Western Hero Book I have a hard time convincing my players to get into a Western game, even the ones who have seen a lot of Westerns. One doesn't want to play because she's only seen the BAD Westerns, and the other can't handle a game where he doesn't actually have real, legitimate superhuman powers that set him apart from everyone else. Great roleplayer, mind you, just needs for his characters to be something other than "norms." That said, I was never overly impressed with Western Hero. If you're going to do a Western Game, you should probably get it just so you have a baseline for the conversions of additional gear and stuff from something else, like Sidewinder or Gunslinger. Now, Ninja Hero... that was a supplement. But one of my favorites is still the old FH/Rolemaster dual-use supplement, Mythic Greece. Stats for the Gods, baby. Awesome.

Re: Idea - Hero Points Well, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who's ever thought of something like this - it makes me feel less crazy for suggesting it. As for players losing XP, I generally agree, but the idea first came to me after my group switched to HERO from DC Heroes, a game where your "xp" is also a pool of points you can use to influence the game. Different players had different styles, of course, but some of them really appreciated the flexibility and used it often. Too often, perhaps.