SuperPheemy

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Finished The Battle of Corrin which is the last of the "prequel" DUNE books telling the story of the Butlerian Jihad. I give it a B-. It's better than the post-Chapterhouse DUNE books, and as a whole I liked it a lot more than God Emperor of Dune. It does suffer from a self-imposed desire to bring the DUNE civilization to the forms recognized in Frank's original book. Slightly better than I was expecting. I also read Angels and Demons and through the first two thirds of the book I was becoming pleasantly surprised. For a brief moment I felt that Dan Brown might have the storytelling range greater than that of a leaky Daisy Air Rifle. But then the contrived "big twist" hit and "OOOoooOOOOOoooohhhhh, the Catholics remain EEEeeeeeEEEEEeEeViiIIIIiillll!" so, yawn. Double yawn. I appreciated the Art History lesson (and as an artist, I always appreciate seeing reference to work that I normally only encounter in Art History classes). Other than the tour around famous Renaissance Sculpture, the book was an overhyped, overblown let-down. Better than Da Vinci Code, but not much. C-

Re: Pulpy Art I so very very very much want to play in this campaign. Heck, I'd even be the Flag if it meant I got to sit in!

Re: Building a Motorcycle Mecha! It's a tricky build to say the least. I'd start by listing out what powers and abilities are exclusive to the Power Armor form, the Motorcycle form, and which powers and abilities are shared between them. The shared abilities would have a common -1/4 to -1/2 limitation (in addition to any others) reflecting that they are part of the cyclone (for lack of a better term). I'd give the Motorcycle form powers a -1 Limited Power, "Motorcycle" plus a -1/4 Conditional Power, "not when in Power Armor Mode". The Power Armor form powers get an OIF "Cyclone Armor) and the -1/4 Conditional Power "not when in Motorcycle Mode". If it takes longer than a single phase to transform from Motorcycle to power armor, increase the value of the Conditional Power in increments similar to the "Extra Time" Limitation.

Re: Qwyjibo is up There's a fair bit of seaming on ol' Qwidge. Hopefully that gets worked outsoon.

Re: Markarian's Chain of Galaxies Not the Dark Technomancers of Blortch! They were ultimately defeated eons ago! It's impossible for them to have escaped the Nemesis Dimension! There is only one hope for the Futurian Empire now.. We must summon Space Godzilla!

Re: Who would be the Super Villians of your area? Mechanon Prime The "Brain" of a former Mechanon Unit that was captured and handed over to PRIMUS in 1996. Recently escaped, built a new body and is waging a cold war against Mechanon over who should assimilate who's intellect.

Re: Eve-Online tabletop edition? You could add a Limitation to the Hull Size component that allows only X numbers of High, Medium and Low slots on Y sized Hull. Thanks, you've given me plenty of stuff to think about .

Re: Naming the baby The BBB came out of 4th Edition being a "Big Blue Book" and for it's time it was a pretty durn big book for an RPG. BBB hung around for years in limbo while the rights to the game passed from here to there and was kept alive in the hobby by small number of very dedicated fans. He name came organically from the circumstances. Fifth Edition became FRED because of a good joke from Steve, and it stuck (some would say too long, but FRED does have a certain charm.) Right now any "pet name" for 6th edition is premature (I believe we need to have the physical product in hand) and really smacks of the same sort of marketing crap that I loathe. We don't have to come up with a catchy nickname for the sake of having a catchy nickname. Whatever we come up with is going to sound soulless and hollow. Please, no SexEd. Not that I don't appreciate the in-joke, but in the end (and GOD I hate to say this) it's juvenile and sophomoric. I get enough grief for being such because of my hobbies and interests already, frankly I don't want to feed that particular fire.

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles

Re: Reminiscing About Star Fleet Battles I hung tough with SFB for years. Though after a while, the weight of more and more Carriers, Fighters, and Drones stripped away all of the Trek feel for the game to me. I ended up duelling more and more (which brought back the "Queens of the Line" feel to the combats). My little brother and I played each other so often that regardless of which ships we threw at each other every battle ended up with two burning hulks struggling to fix one last Phaser 3 to finish off the other at range one. My favorite ship will forever be the IKV "Blood Debt" a C8K Dreadnought and scarred survivor of countless duels, task forces and fleet actions. She's won more than she lost, and always managed to get at least the Boom section back to a friendly starbase.

Re: Competition from Marvel ? Well, that tends to be the problem in gaming Universes like DCU or MU. It's what a good friend of mine nicknamed the "Mel Gibson Syndrome. See, in Mel movies you have Mel, the BAD GUY, the Sidekick, and the GOONS. The GOONS beat no one, The Sidekick beats the goons, the BAD GUY beats The Sidekick, and Mel beats the BAD GUY. In this case, Lex is the BAD GUY, his robot minions are GOONS, Superman is Mel, and your PC is The Sidekick. So, while the PC will be allowed to wade though the Robot Minions by the dozen, he or she will never match up to Lex. Or to put it another way... your PC is Heath Ledger from the Patriot. Superman is Mel. At least you'll have a front-row seat to the beatdown.

Re: Poison's Champions Art Thread Some good ol' fashioned respect for the tornado. Put up a Blue Devil and you'll have made my inner 12-year old very happy.

Re: My new Illustration My boy's Champs chracter, StarGazer. He's a high-school Junior bonded to a lost Star-Staff from a dying Star*Guard, and is hunted by the villain Herculan (who wants the Staff for himself!)

Re: Storn Sci-Fi Character Art Thread Make the thrusters compact, especially the boot thrusters. The armor itself should be more military looking than "Spaceman". Assault weapon, More on the complicated side Big and intimidating with a testosterone-inspired barrel. It's a heavy energy weapon so mount heavy armored cables and a cooling jacket. Re-entry shield. Make it like a disc, and transparent. The plasma can flare off it like a halo, and from the low-angle could be used to frame the character.

Re: Storn Sci-Fi Character Art Thread My suggestion would be an Orbital Assault Trooper in mid-deployment. Sort of like the Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers (the book) or Battle Dress out of Traveller. Here's what I propose.. Low angle shot. Trooper in an articulated armored suit with retro rockets flaring a primary charge mounted at the lower back and attitude adjusters on the boots or calves. Maybe a drag-chute ready to deploy at around 5 km from dirtside. Trooper is carrying a big assault energy weapon (like the classic old FGMP from Traveller). A re-entry shield is deployed beneath, and flares with re-entry plasma. Have Storn play "Radar Rider" on loop while he draws.

Re: How Many "Super-Cities" is too many? The main action in my game takes place around the San Francisco Bay (I play where I live, it makes trips to the City more geeky ). But I fictionalized the area. San Francisco became Champion Bay, where all of my Silver-Bronze Age mainstream stories take place. Oakland became Bayport, where all of the street-level Gotham inspired stories reside, and San Jose became Silicon City for Mad Science and Hi-Tech adventure. Beyond this region, everything else gets vague. There is a Millenium City and Hudson City and Vibora Bay because I have those supplements, but so far there hasn't been any stories told there (indeed, all of the stories those supplements inspired were transferred over to the San Francisco Bay). There remains New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington DC, just like in our mundane world. I keep the real world in my game so I can sprinkle current affairs in as flavor text. But for the most part, the campaigns I run focus almost exclusively on my little triad. Hmm. it's a bit like Stemteck's campaign, without the 20 years of continuity.

Re: My new Illustration Basic Action Super Heroes. A decent, simple superhero RPG that my son played in at DunDraCon. I think the name almost says it all. It's pretty "no frills", I heartily recommend getting the campaign supplement "Megapolis" to flesh out the bones laid down in the rulebook. And the Author, Chris Rutkowsky is a very friendly, open guy. Now if we can only get him to use his powers for HERO...

Re: My new Illustration No, they're two of my older superhero(villain) characters from campaigns long past. The big guy is an incarnation of Rampage, and the white knight is Starblade, reimagined from my old Aberrant character Minuteman (the cape was originally red and white striped like the flag). They really don't deserve retirement yet, so they get to inspire a new generation of rogues and vigilantes.

I put this together as a custom cover for my son's PDF copy of Basic Action Super Heroes. (Don't worry, he still plays Champions, but he runs BASH, for now ). It's one of the few pieces I developed wholly in Photoshop, as opposed to sketching it out in my trusty sketchbook and scanning the result in.

Re: Competition from Marvel ? Its a very interesting strategy considering that with Champions, City of Heroes, and DC Universe, "mainstream" settings and mood will have a pretty heavy presence. With SHS, they're competing with FusionFall and ToonTown (though going head-to-head with the Mouse is *always* a challenge).

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs Oh and before I forget.. since I am discussing an MMO.. They nerfed the system, woe is us! The game is ruined for all time, woe is us! The devs did it on purpose because they personally hate me And um... oh yeah.. the game is DOOMED and no one will ever play again, woe is us!

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs Paragon just updated Mission Architect to fix a few bugs and a couple of exploits. This may have changed some details in your published ARC (It did in mine at least). Fortunately, there is an option to Edit and Republish. It's mainly map changes. I had to go into Red Scare and choose a larger map to hold all of the events that are going on there. The important thing is, if the update did change an ARC, that ARC won't be playable until it is fixed, and you won't know unless you check in.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs I went ahead and changed the mission map for Mission 1 of Red Dawn (I learn a little more each time I log into the MA...) and with Red Doom complete, I can unveil my new Promotional Graphic!!! One of the things I've learned is that there is a huge difference between what would challenge a solo hero and what would challenge a group. So Architects, be aware that Elite Bosses and ArchVillains can and will most likely possess attacks that would drop a single character in very short order. I did a little research and discovered the CoH/V devs intend for ArchVillains to challenge groups of up to 6 characters of equivalent level. If you're intending your mission to be a challenge for the solo character, consider making the Boss, a well... Boss. Perhaps an Elite Boss for the super-climactic multi-ARC storyline. To be clear, I wrote the Red Guard saga intended for groups of heroes, which is why there's 3 Elite Bosses and 1 Archvillain in the group.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs That's why I started this thread, just to get a teensey weensey bit of exposure. The CoH forums are flooded, of course, so that route is like shouting into a gale.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Mission ARCs I'm outpacing the 100k limits on ARC size . On the one hand it's a minor quibble, part of the challenge of designing levels for a Computer Game is making the most out of limited resources. On the other, it's forcing me to break my story down into separate ARCs and I only have three. I figure that this will be resolved with the passage of time, and more space and more ARCs will be allowed. Or I can always lobby for Dev's Choice and get bonus ARCs..