Chimpira

Re: Killers The last game I played in just self destructed because of this. The GM was to blame. The game was set in Los Angeles and was supposed to be designed to run parallel to my own Champions game. Relishing a chance to finally play, I designed a Captain Marvel-like character named Guardian. Another player named Jeff made a Flash-like character called Slipstream. Our hope was that we could make something like the Justice League or Society with the remaining three players. So much for best laid plans. One player made a time displaced Knight with a magic sword. He would never hold back even when fighting street thugs. The fourth guy made a robotic assassin for the CIA (The GM even gave him in-game assignments). The worst of the lot was the female player. She made an ex-con that was put in jail for pedophilia. (Her disads on her powers made her have to touch children to change power selections.) I was extremely appalled at this and shared my displeasure with the GM. Against my best judgement I went along for a few games. The female player did not show up often so her character did not get much use. The other two guys tore through villians (the GM was too worried about our characters getting totally beat down, so we fought quite a few pushovers) They even tortured one guy to get information from them. The whole time Jeff and I was playing characters that spent all our time making sure that people were safe and I was desperately trying to rein in the other two characters. They seem to enjoy that bit. I think they wanted to pull things just so that they can feel like they were getting away with something. The storylines started to revolve around me as well. I knew what was going on and decided that the GM had enough chances to put his house in order. It was time to end it. I told him that his game was now in a splinter dimension from my game and he could pull things from my game that he liked and disregard those that he did not. I was going to do the same. I, then, informed him that my character would not associate with people like this and had him leave the game. (Jeff had stated that he was planning to do the same thing)The GM was upset because he was by now basing most of the adventures around me. I made my new character. A right bastard named sleeper. I had no real powers to speak of and built him pretty barebones. A very mercenary type of character. We played one game and I then showed the other characters why I do not play anti-heroes. I am very good at it. The game ended after that session. I think I drove the point home to everyone and I had a long conversation with the GM about what he needed to do in the future. He said he did not want to tell the players that their characters were wrong for this game because he did not like GM's that told the players what to build. I told him that the players were testing him to see what type of crap that they could get away with. And they got away with everything. Bad rules raping that I had to point out time and time again as well as characters that they never would even had imagined to try and float past me in one of my Champions game. Telling people what is not acceptable in a game is part of what being a GM is about. Making certain that everyone is on the same page as the GM and adhereing to the genre that you are playing in.

Re: Super hero comic Actually, I did not think that you were out of line. I thought you were trying to offer solid advice. No, I was simply indicating that although Dark Horse is not known for their Super heroes they have a history of giving them a shot. So yes, if you are going to pitch one to them then it needs to be really darn good. What you say is true, however in this situation, what they are asking for is basically a cattle call and they are going to see quite a few submissions and unless you stand out as either one of the best or as one of the very worst, they are not really going to give you much thought either way. They just do not have that type of time. I have no friction with you and I hope you did not think that I was trying to start some. That was not the purpose for my post.

Re: Super hero comic http://archenemiesonline.com/ This is from Dark Horse and I might be mistaken but with the costumes and all I thought this was a super hero book. Kind of an odd couple feel to it but with a Superhero and a supervillian. I do not think that Dark Horse doesn't publish superhero boooks they just have not run into anything that they have liked recently. They tried a superhero world before but everything tanked but The Ghost, which lasted several years. Besides the worse that could happen would be that they say no thank you. Which happens with most pitches or new projects anyways from most comic companies. If you come up with a great idea that grabs them by the seat of their pants with solid art, solid story and has a great potential to make more people buy Dark Horse comics, I would have a hard time seeing them take the pass.

Re: Moonknight Comic I bought the first two and was not really feeling the book. I dropped it.

Re: Wow....that is a useless power for sure....

Re: Wow....that is a useless power for sure.... Umm.. Didn't they use those powers to...Ummm....Beat the bad guys. Plus I would not want to mess with The Bowler.

Re: Wow....that is a useless power for sure.... First off I need to go on record by saying that any power can come into play to save the day. The power to clean things up seems kind of useless until you run across a blood ritual that has the pentagram forming on the floor from the blood of their victims. And then the player says "Clean?" This actually happened. So I tend to think that there are no useless powers. It is just that some powers are more useful than others. (although the refrigerator might just change my mind. Unless you are trapped in the refrigerator. Punky Brewster anyone?). I tend to have to sell this notion to new players in my games when they talk about skills or talents. I hear a lot of comments about how something is useless until they run across the time that they need it and then I get to hear "Well, how was I supposed to know that would come in handy?" Now having said that, the ability to turn your thumbs green does not seem like much beyond a drunken party trick.

Re: Input on a bunch of bad guys? I thought about spore thing but that would be more of a glide than a fly. As for Seductra, nothing is wrong with her simply walking around. Bear in mind that she is not going to have a range penalty on her powers anyways so she probably does not need to fly to close with her opponents unless you want to just have her fly because you think it would look cool. Of course then you are going to have players that are going to say the same thing about their characters.

Re: Please help me with new game setting Pretty much my line of reasoning when I wrote 'why have the aliens not immediately returned.' But since this was probably going to be a big part of the campaign and was not mentioned I assumed that he knew the real reason behind this.

Re: Input on a bunch of bad guys? Pretty good however my first thought was how does Thornbloom and Seductra fly? All their other powers seem to connect except the flight.

Re: Please help me with new game setting Well, just off the top of my head. Get the government involved. If all the supers died and we have reason to believe that the aliens are involved, the government would go into overdrive. The only thing that worked the last time was our supers and now we are pretty much defenseless. Someone would review footage and point out that The Watchman had no poweres but he held his own and that Warmonger seems to have an advanced suit of armor but no evidence of powers at all. We need to prepare. Odds are that they did not drop the gene bomb just to be petty. We need to research the effects of the gene bomb, find out why the aliens have not immediately returned and we need to be ready to kick their butt when they return (or even send a force there to show them that they should not have us as enemies) All the capes get recruited (some refuse but I believe that the government allows heroes to operate and could find all types of info about them if they really wanted to.) They get crazy organized, anything that distracts from this project, like a crimelord whom gets his hands on a nuclear bomb, gets stepped on hard. The world is close to how we see it today. Some children believe that capes and powers were a myth propagated by the government. Uberman never really existed. Then the news has a late breaking story. It seems that a 747 was saved today by an unknown man whom seemed to have phenomenal strength and can fly under his own power. They have footage. Somewhere, a man that had devoted his life to training his mind and body to peak levels stops filling out paperwork regarding tomorrows duty rosters and looks up at his tv screen. His aide sees something on the old man's face that he had never seen before. A smile.

Re: My CU based webcomic I think that you are confusing Knight Rider with (believe it or not) an Episode of CHiP's called Force Seven which starred Fred Dryer as Lt. John LeGarre, who put together a squad of ninjas to work on cases in Los Angeles. They raided the compound to stop the terrorists that had acquired a nuclear bomb.

Re: Using the Warlord The stealing of tech is how The Warlord has been introduced into my game. One of my PC's was a boy genius working for the Omni Corporation. He would develop all types of strange devices for them. The PC broke from them and had the Omni Corp as a hunted until it was recently revealed that the Omni Corp was one of Hundreds of fronts for the Warlord. In a cladestine mission instigated by UNTIL the PC had to infiltrate a base in Africa and destroy the plans and all the prototypes for one of his devices. (A dehydrator that would suck the moisture out of anything in a set radius of the machine). I went back and looked into a lot of the armored villians that had supposedly pulled fast ones on The Warlord. In my game the reality isthat they work for the Warlord and he keepstabs on his competitors through them. (I mean if they were mercs for hire,if the Warlord really wanted to track them down, how hard could it really be?) I boosted the War Machines power level,mainly because I think they would be a half way decent team if the group of PC's were starting out but against experienced players? I could still make them work (Heck I made peopleafraid of Road Kill without boosting them) but I want to make this a little easier on me. Oh and Lord Liaden, Rep for you because I did not even think about the Argent angle.

Re: Your scenario style Most major scenarios are set up as three to four game sessions but when you add in the players sometimes it takes longer. My GM's tell me that when I play in the game the reverse is true. Minor scenarios (or relief games that do not have a deeper impact on the campaign) usually are targeted for one session but them pesky players of mine. Solos and dous tend to last one session.

Re: Traveller Hero, a major announcement Man! I had hopes that this year was going to be a light one for me. Oh, well I am on board for Traveller.

Re: How would you use Takofanes? Thanks. A recent episode of Doctor Who said it best. "When a door opens it can be used both ways." (At the time someone was using mental abilities to read another characters thoughts and she read his in turn. He did not even think that would be a possibility)

Re: How would you use Takofanes? So far Takofanes is like a boogeyman in my game. One of those names that get dropped and makes the room turn utterly silent. My players are not of the point level to challenge a character as powerful as that yet. Right now the Crowns of Krim are the big bad and the players have been preparing to throw down against them. They just recently discovered that DEMON is plotting to take the Crowns so that they might be able to exert influence over Takofanes. The players are working to stop the plan.

Re: The Things I Learned Playing A Villain... Never threaten someone tomorrow whom you could have simply had killed today

Re: The Things I've Learned Playing Team Leader... A team leader can ask for advice from his team. I used to do this one quite a bit when I first was elected team leader of my first super hero group. If we had the time I would ask all the members what they thought about the situation that we were just about to leap into. After hearing their views on the matter I would come up with my decision and we would go with that. I did that mainly to make them aware that I cared about what they thought and had their interests in heart. When I had to make snap decisions they backed me up without hesitation. I got a lot of jokes thrown my way from the group but none of them had to do with my leadership abilities. Thinking about that now, makes me smile.

Re: The things I've learned playing a Martial Artist That Defensive Manuever and Combat sense are my best friends.

Re: [GM Help Needed] Superhero Mystries I set mine up in a very similiar fashion. I do think about who has what information and how I might set up foreshadowing for another adventure that might be several game sessions ahead. I do not try to make my mysteries so tight that if they (The PC's) do not get a hold of Mr. X (with the desired information) that the game is stalled. For a lot of it I tend to introduce characters into the game before they become involved in a mystery storyline. It might be a random meeting or a newspaper article or whatever. If I can not feasible do this then I manage as best as I can so that the players do not go "Aha! Chris has put this NPC into the game that we never heard of. He must be involved in some form or fashion. Quick. Use telepathy on him." My campaign is structured in such a way to avoid that.

Re: one year to change the world Probably spend the first six months destroying the regime that was set up by the guy before me. Track down the people behind The Beam and try to convince them to stop doing this as everyone on my planet has their own sense of what is right and what is wrong which does not mesh well with someone elses sense of right and wrong. All the constant switch does is screw up my world. First a damn wall gets put up between America and Mexico and then the next year it is torn down. Then North Korea loses all it's Nuclear weapons and then next year they are replaced by all of America's nuclear weaponry. Clearly this chaos has to stop. If I can not convince them then I would have to try everything to stop this from continuing. Hopefully I will make it back to Earth alive.

Re: PRIMUS or UNTIL In my Campaign, although PRIMUS, MARS and MCPD are there, the characters interact more with UNTIL than with any other organization. This was just the way it fell together. I have seven players and had plans for different players to become tied more closely to different organizations but it looks like PRIMUS is about to become off limits. Recently, I have allowed a player to become a GM in my game world. His first game made PRIMUS look very much ineffectual and moronic. Of course, he used VIPER in a way contrary to how I had established them to be as well. Over a local level I would not have had a problem but since it was on a national level I had to have a talk with him, because it would affect my game. He confided in me that he was using another mastermind to take down PRIMUS from behind the scenes, so that he could take it over. The fact that he was using a character to do this, that I had already established in my game with several subplots did not thrill me either. Long story short, VIPER is showing their response to these events in my game. (which is going to be a major event. One of my players that is currently going through it said, "Now, THAT'S VIPER!") PRIMUS is going to be hit hard and I am going to let the other GM deal with that organization more than I do. I will still portray my local branch the way I presented them but overall structural policy and things I will leave to him. He was ok with this and said that he usually just played them like jerk cops. (Sigh)

Re: Where would you go? Spring of 64 is a little bit before the incident in The Gulf of Tonkin, so The Vietnam war is on the horizon. Civil Rights is on full swing down south. The thre civil rights workers are due to go missing some time in June, I believe. The Whiskey-a-Go-Go is going to open up in California that year not certain on the exact date. Europe would be great, I think.

Re: You've taken over the world. Now what? Ah, yes. I played around with Nation states a couple of years back. I was pretty much a benevolent dictatorship. None of my friends were surprised. Well, maybe a little bit about the benevolent part.