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Alex Williamson

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Posts posted by Alex Williamson

  1. Honorable gangsters?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Honorable gangsters?

     

    Robert B. Parker has written several "honorable" gangsters over the years - they even all get together in Potshot. The Sin City series by Frank Miller is also filled with honorable gangsters. Also, the movie Heat is an excellent resource for this style of campaign, as is The Italian Job, but to a lesser degree. All of these sources could provide you with some great ideas. The problem is getting your players to go along with your great idea. I tried a "criminals" campaign once and one player in particular made a mess of it, wanting to murder everyone he met. It all ended badly. :(

  2. Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

     

    Um' date=' sabot rounds were field-tested in 1940, and were in widespread use before the first HESH warheads. In fact, it might have beat true HEAT into service.

     

    The timeframe of armor development is what I was stressing. Armor technology progressing differently would have caused other anti-tank rounds to gain favor, as they were deemed more effective vs the new armor tech.

  3. Cyberpunk: how did it change?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Cyberpunk: how did it change?

     

    Actually, Dubstep is totally cyberpunk themed music. It's totally the soundtrack to my world. Listen to Skream's Dark Side Of Life and tell me that's not totally cyberpunk. I love it - gets me in the mood to write/draw.

     

    Anyway, back on topic - we're actually living in the cyberpunk future. We can't all connect to machines with our brains yet, but there's a couple quadriplegics that can (they're hooked to a robotic arm that they control with their brainwaves).

     

    Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned already, but William Gibson kicked himself for not thinking of cell phones for his Sprawl series. He coined the terms "matrix" and "cyberspace", but totally missed the cell phone. Heh.

  4. Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

     

    Ok, here's a twist on anti-armor weapons and armor design. Tank armor progresses with anti-tank weaponry. Basic anti-tank weapons are the HEAT (shaped charge) round and the APFSDS (sabot) round. There's another one though that is often overlooked: the HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) round. If tank armor progressed more rapidly at the early stages of HEAT round development, incorporating honeycombing and ceramics to dissipate the HEAT round's explosive jet then sabot rounds would have developed earlier as well. Anti sabot armor might not have to be thicker or stronger, but more capable of deflection, possibly via an inherent brittleness, designed to flake off chucks with an impact, turning the penetrator to decrease its straight-line effectiveness (which is why they work in smooth bore weapons - they require a flat trajectory with no spin; rifling makes them lose energy on impact). So, now you have a layered and brittle armor, PERFECT for a HESH round to cause significant damage. The HESH round pancakes on an armored surface and then explodes, causing structural damage to and THROUGH the armor plate. The interior of the armor flakes off due to the shock sent through it. This spalling is what kills the crew and ignites ammunition, destroying the tank. So, an earlier development of certain armor systems/technology could make a different round the go-to anti-tank weapon. So loaders would be yelling "HESH UP!" instead of "SABOT UP!" as they do now.

     

    Of course in game play, there's no real difference. But it's good fluff. :)

  6. Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

     

    Keep recoilless rifles instead of guided missiles. Instead of grenade launchers, stick to rifle grenades. Keep the cranked Gatling principle for machine guns (which means electrically driven mini-guns become the norm in place of gas operation) or keep MGs water cooled ah la the Maxim.

     

    Can't help you with explosives - dynamite is, well, dynoMITE! It's the BOMB. Really, TNT's invention was pretty much IT for explosives. Everything else is is just fancier, but having your campaign world stick to TNT won't make it feel all that different from reality.

  8. Tactics

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Tactics

     

    Carry weapons with common ammunition. It's amazing how often groups I was in would be packing eight different calibres.

     

    Also, a single sidearm is enough. You don't need four guns on top of your primary. It sounds like fun, but a sane GM should assign penalties for carrying a gazillion weapons - even if you're strong enough to.

  9. Cool Guns for your Games

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Cool Guns for your Games

     

    There was a hilarious pic of a guy with an M79 grenade launcher with an M203 under barrel grenade launcher attached in a book I had. It would work too, but man, it was just silly. What would be the point of that double shotgun rig? Especially when you have guns like the USAS12, Striker 12 and Spas15?

  10. Homing

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Homing

     

    I like Querysphinx's solution best so far. This type of weapon would inherently be a "fire and forget" type, so really, it should have no range penalty. I think that advantage still exists (I think it was a +1/2 adv).

  11. Cool Guns for your Games

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Cool Guns for your Games

     

    So the projectiles have a predictable path in relation to the sights on the weapon. A barrel on either side of the sights means shot's will always be off target - designing a convergence permits more accurate fire for a double shot at a specific range and less variation for shots not at the optimal range until targets go too far past the convergence point. All rotary cannons use convergence as well for the same reasons.

  12. Fear Absorption Power

    in HERO System Discussion

    Posted

    Re: Fear Absorption Power

     

    I would say that's just a power limitation: only works when people in vicinity are scared/angry (-1/4 to -1) - it would be worth -1 if the character didn't cause fear all that well and only a -1/4 if he was scary.

     

    It's really not an absorption power because it's not vs any effect that affects him directly.

     

    So, a character that "feeds" on fear could have healing with the above limitation. It could work for any power that way.

  13. Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

    in Dark Champions

    Posted

    Re: Alternate History Trooper Loadout?

     

    Meh. You wanna get weird with weapon calibres, have the M1 Carbine become the weapon of choice for the US military during and after Korea. Have that modified into a shorter version as an smg for officers and tankers and have the military develop a pistol with oodles of stopping power. Maybe they develop a longer barreled rifle with more powder in the cartridge as an assault rifle. That's really the only part that doesn't exist.

     

    Behold the AMT Longslide .30 Carbine:

    http://media.photobucket.com/image/.30%20Carbine%20colt%20long%20slide%20amt/SilentHitz/2008_1005Guns0010.jpg

    And the Iver Johnson Super Enforcer M1 Carbine carbine:

    http://media.photobucket.com/image/iver%20johnson%20super%20enforcer/6Gunner_photos/SuperEnforcer.jpg

    http://media.photobucket.com/image/iver%20johnson%20super%20enforcer/Bell-helicopter-407/Enforcer.jpg

  18. building 6th edition power suits

    in Champions

    Posted

    Re: building 6th edition power suits

     

    I'm just getting back into Champions, so this is the forst time I've heard of "Physical Manifestation". Would this be a good limitation for a Green Lantern type character? I'm thinking about his blasts and telekinesis, maybe barrier as well, though I feel that's already a physical manifestation).

     

    Back to battlesuits, I always built them as OIFs because I liked the idea of the armor getting damaged (I'd build tracks to see what got damaged first - great fun for a detail freak). I noticed that Independent is gone. I used to use that for generic battlesuits that bad guy goons would use in a sci-fi setting (suits were common).

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