Chris Goodwin

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Nothing.  But one of my friends plays elves exclusively, and I've heard of other players with a similar preference for dwarves.  There has to be something in the setting to cater to these players or you risk losing them.  I don't know about you guys but I have a hard time finding good players.

I have heard of individuals like that.  In fact I've heard of some who insist on it to the extent that even in settings that are otherwise inappropriate for it (i.e. modern settings taking place on our Earth with no fantasy races) they'll still try to sneak in characters that are elves and dwarves.  

I would be okay with not playing with those people.

22 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Chris Goodwin I might have missed if any one else’s pointed it out but Three Hearts and Three Lions do have elves on them. And Poul Anderson’s other book I’ve read the Broken Sword has elves and they’re definitely not Tolkien at all.

It's been long enough since I've read it that I obviously need to reread it.  My mistake.

Superhero, not swords and sorcery, but hopefully you'll find this at least amusing... 

Background

Guglielmo DiCarlo (Guillielmus DeCarola in Latin) was a wizard who lived in Europe in the 1450's.  He was a great student of alchemy, science, medicine, art, architecture, swordsmanship, and the occult; he amassed a great library of books collected over time, as well as of his own writings.  He was about to be named as the head of his chapter of a secret society, when a small cabal within the society decided that he was too proud of his works, and too open of a practitioner, so that he should be killed.  He had some advance warning, and was able to preserve the majority of his work.  His final act was to cast a spell that would make him appear dead, but would preserve his life until some point in the future.  He left coded notes for his allies in the society to be able to cast the counterspell, and release him from preservation, but sadly his remaining papers and effects -- significant in themselves -- were taken and hidden away.  

Over the next almost 600 years, his remaining papers, effects, and so on, were located and placed in various university libraries, museums, and so on.  In the beginning of the 21st century, students of history noted the signatures among the papers, realized that they were all related to one another, and eventually all of the extant materials were brought back together in a museum in Los Angeles.  

After the first Dream (note: the in-game rationale for the first supers), and subsequent appearance of various super powers including magic, more prominence was given to the "DiCarlo" as it was called.  The California Science Center in LA chose the DiCarlo as the subject for one of its "CSC After Dark" shows.  The "After Dark" series is an over-21 only event that serves wine and beer, and often dips into subjects that wouldn't normally be suitable for its family audience.  The museum granted hands-on access to copies and replicas of DiCarlo's work and -- crucially -- an attempt at working out the "DiCarlo Cipher".  

So it was that a number of slightly tipsy museumgoers inadvertently cast the counterspell to release him from suspension.  Upon completion of the spell, the Museum's lights dimmed… but nothing else happened.  (Not yet, anyway…)

It took several hours for the suspension spell to end, after which the museum had closed for the night.  DiCarlo awoke, expecting to be surrounded by either assassins or his friends within the Societas Philosophae.  Realizing that he was alone in a strange place, he discovered the copies of his work.  He was able to cast a spell to locate the originals, also on site, and after a judicious scrambling of the deciphered work, he reclaimed the rest of his materials (leaving the copies) and left the museum.  

He accidentally triggered the alarm, of course, resulting in the appearance by two recently empowered superheroes, along with a nonpowered friend of theirs who happened to be a descendant of the DiCarlo family.  (Though, had he been aware of the alarm system, it's possible he might have had the right spells to defeat it!)

Personality/Motivation

As a doctor, he wants to save people's lives.  He's often found himself tending to rich women with stomach problems, and often their idiot sons who drink too much wine at night and wake up to coffee and swords at dawn.  (He might note that he's been an idiot son a few times in his life.)  As a sorcerer he thinks he's discovered the secrets to the universe, and part of him really wants to share them.  As a swordsman himself he hates it when he has to fight, but sometimes needs must.

As an artist, scientist, and so on, he just wants to learn more.  The invention he really wants to build more than anything is a two wheeled riding conveyance; he's already got the spell to power it ready to go, as well as the designs for it, in his library.

Quote

"I don' care what you call me.  Dottore DiCarlo or Strego DiCarlo or Signor DiCarlo or hey DiCarlo you piece of !@#$, you just spell my name right."

Powers/Tactics

DiCarlo is a wizard of great skill and knowledge, and not-insignificant power.  The majority of his spells are either defensive or utility in nature, though he does have a few minor offensive abilities ("a spell to render an attacker unconscious through the use of controlled lightning" is one of his favorites).  Most of his spells rely on or make use of physical principles discovered and developed independently over the past 600 years, or are otherwise replicated by technology created in the meantime.  ("A spell for brightly lighting a dark area," "a spell for rapidly extinguishing small to medium sized fires," "a spell for imparting rapid motion to a coach lacking horses" are several of his favorites.)  

It should be noted that the written procedures of some of DiCarlo's spells are shorter than their titles!

Appearance

DiCarlo is 5'8" tall, with brown shoulder length hair and brown eyes.  He bears a strong resemblance to Inigo Montoya.

On 3/4/2022 at 7:55 PM, assault said:

Well, my elves are very very small, blue and wear Phrygian caps. 

Smurfy!

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Thanks, Assault!

 

I haven't had to do that in a very long time.  I had forgotten how much fun it is!

What, smurfing?  Smurfing is fun!  You might even say it's... smurfy!

3 hours ago, archer said:

 

So it's a big "in your face" to pretend to negotiate while you're telling the country you're invading that you'll settle for nothing less than their complete disarmament.

Further, it's not actually a negotiation if you're still shooting at the other party, and further, everyone knows your word is worthless.

If you do include them, I'm glad that you're doing so thoughtfully, and not as some sort of almost tautological requirement of the genre.  

I completely failed to sign up to run anything at GameStorm this year.  It is, however, happening!  

If they do exist, what's their history in the world?  Why are they showing themselves now?  Can players choose to play them?

1 hour ago, wcw43921 said:

Anyone here thinking of joining up?

My wife says no.  

I'm getting older, like others here, and I'm starting to get some of the medical issues that come from that... but I also have prior service (USAF, 1988-1992).  But the real reason I'm not is because my wife said no.

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

In addition to what Lord Liaden said about creating a campaign arc and equivalent of character "levels" there's this question:

 

What's a beginning character?

 

400 points?

300 points?

287 points?

 

I'm not being facetious here, this is not meant to be mocking.  What actually consists of a starting Champions character in 6th edition?

A "standard superhero" in 6th edition Champions is 400 total points, with 75 points in Matching Complications.  Equivalent to 350 total (200+150) in 5th edition, and probably roughly equivalent to 350 total in prior editions, even though "standard superhero" was 100+150 in 4th edition.

I've played 6th edition Champions games with starting points ranging from 300 to 400.  

Oh, that name!  That's the cherry on top!

Everyone deserves to hear this story!  😁

Duke, I am out of reactions for the day, apparently!

18 minutes ago, SCUBA Hero said:

 

*Have to* have?  No.  Why are they often used?  Familiar tropes.  Orcs - primitive, brutish, violent.  Dwarves - underground, mining, obsessed with material things.  Just like human tropes - Vikings, Romans, Horse Nomads.  You have a good idea of where they fit in to the world with little explanation needed.

This makes me even less comfortable playing them, as "primitive, brutish, violent" and "obsessed with material things" are all tropes that have been used to describe various ethnic groups IRL.  

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

K I'm going to go on record again here as being extremely, almost violently opposed to putting out YET ANOTHER VERSION OF CHAMPIONS.  Let's say you have never played Champions before.  Let's say you go online to buy a book and see what the game is like.  You pull up Champions, and what you do you see?  Well, aside from 5 previous versions, three of which aren't really even labeled as versions, you get to the latest edition: 6th.  Cool!  What do I get?

 

Hero System 1 and 2?

Champions?

Champions Complete?

Champions Now?

Champions The New Book We Just Put out Honest, This is the Book Guys?

 

Good lord, Imagine D&D taking this approach.  Well You can get Player's Handbook, or Player's Guide, or Player's Folio, or the D&D Player File, or...

Player's Handbook, Unearthed Arcana, Player's Handbook II, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide... 

Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II, Creature Compendium...

Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons... 

5 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

How many fantasy RPGs contain elves that are not Tolkien-type elves?

Duke, if I hadn't paused to write you an email, I would have said this right here!  

2 minutes ago, Mr. R said:

I think also some responsibility goes to AD&D.  It had elves and dwarves and hobb... err halflings.  And since then EVERY fantasy roleplaying setting seemed to need them included.  Role-Master--Check.  Palladium--check.  it wasn't until Talislanta (No Eleves for over 35 Years) that people started to gravitate to a possibility of one people with multiple cultures and beliefs, rather than if the live in mountains, they must be dwarves (Tell that to the Swiss)!

As I said on the other thread, licking D&D's boots.  

This is a spin-off of a thread on the Champions board where elves came up.  My own contribution was something to the effect of, I'm an un-fan of fantasy, especially games, where elves and the other Tolkienian, D&D-esque, races exist.  And an observation that when a new fantasy game or setting comes out, there are those whose first question is, what are their elves like?  

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

See, this is the key approach.  This is how to go about it: what kind of elves?  Tunnels and Trolls had little green elves that had minor abilties.  Skyim has like 6 types of elves (including orcs) whose special abilities are no more outstanding than any other races.  Hell, AD&D had a couple kinds of elves who were slightly more agile and could see in the dark, but had some poorer stats and couldn't level up as high in some areas (plus an xp penalty?  If I recall).  You can make them interesting, compelling, and curious without having to make them super powerful mary sues.

But why does fantasy have to have elves?  Or multiple races?  (I have to admit:  I use "elves" as a shorthand for "elves, dwarves, some sort of hobbit analog, probably orcs as well, possibly some number of others.")

I can think of half a dozen fantasy series off the top of my head that don't have them.  (Zelazny's Amber, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar series, de Camp and Pratt's Compleat Enchanter (Harold Shea), Robert E. Howard's Conan, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, The Matter of Britain (King Arthur, et al).)  

What exactly can be done with elves and other races that hasn't already been done to death?  My problem with them is that they're everywhere, for the most part because people assume they have to be there.  And there's nothing interesting or compelling about them; the most curious thing I can think of is, in most worlds where they exist, there's no particular reason for them to be there other than, because the author thought it wasn't fantasy without them.  

Really, what is it about elves and other races that you're going to explore, that hasn't already been explored in the approximately nineteen thousand other settings that have them?  (Note: that is hopefully obvious hyperbole.  I haven't actually counted.) 

It occurs to me that there's a discussion about Why Some Of Us Hate Elves in a topic on the Champions board called "5th edition renaissance".  I'm going to start a more appropriate topic on the Fantasy Hero board, and will link to it when I've done so.  

Edit:  Appropriately titled, "What are the elves like?"

That was a thing that Iron Crown used to do, and got a shout out in FH 1e for.  It wasn't long after that that Iron Crown actually picked up the license for publishing and distribution of Hero Games.  

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I don't get why people hate elves so much.

Duke's opinion might differ from mine, but for me it's not just elves.  It's the D&Dish, Tolkienesque combo, and the notion that fantasy has to include them -- or even diverse races -- or it's not fantasy.  

Why?  Why does fantasy have to lick D&D's or Tolkien's boots?  

I think the Mary Sue comment (which I've made myself) comes from Tolkien's near worship of them.  They were taller, more beautiful, longer lived, and just plain better than humans -- never mind hobbits!  

I sort of imagine that when a new fantasy game or setting comes out that there's a significant percentage of the fanbase whose immediate first reaction is: what are their elves like?

Lest we forget, it was the Finns that coined the term, "Molotov cocktail".  

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

The perception was that "roll low" is counter intuitive, deterring new players.

It's the same probability wise, probably faster handling as far as math goes, and I don't like it for Hero. 

7 hours ago, steriaca said:

How did we drift from 'altered way to hit a target' to 'attract new players'? I kinda agree that we need what is basically a solid worldbook. Yes, comic books are the world outside your window, but how does the addition of superheros change what is outside those windows?

That tends to happen in any discussion of fundamental mechanics, and in any discussion of anything else.  

2 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

OK, so once we Transform the awake target to an Asleep target, he needs to recover the BOD at REC per week/month before he wakes up?  With 30 AP, it will take a few hits to put him under, but once he is under, that's pretty much hibernation...

In various sourcebooks, there are plenty of Transforms with the equivalent to "reverts naturally" as their reversal condition.  Two I recall off the top of my head are Transform: Water to Ice (ice melts) and Transform: Messy Room to Clean Room (becomes messy normally).  I'd assume Transform: Awake to Asleep would work similarly.  

While I still think there's a bigger mechanical difference between Knocked Out (game term) and asleep, I will concede that most combat uses of "go the **** to sleep" are best handled with STUN damage.  And they're also carrying Stun's baggage regarding recovery and the like.  

STUN and Knocked Out have their own mechanical baggage regarding interaction with other rules.  Post-12 Recoveries, negative Stun values and recovery time... on the sleeping side, Lightsleep and Life Support: Does Not Sleep.  Plus some Mental Powers work differently based on whether the target is asleep or unconscious.  

About the only thing they have in common is that both mean the character is DCV 0, can't move, can't fight, and is considered Surprised (takes 2x STUN) when attacked.  Otherwise they're not the same.