Chris Goodwin

On 9/21/2022 at 10:01 AM, Steve said:

I was reading through the new Champions supplement Lifted and started thinking about how campaign worlds might be structured without using the classic comic book superhero/supervillain tropes.

 

If superhumans don’t take part in the cosplay out of comic books, how would they engage with society? Would it be X-Men anti-mutant paranoia? Some other sort of dystopia?

 

How would governments react to suddenly having superhumans in their midst today, regular people suddenly having godlike power, without a history going back to World War II? I imagine the first instinct would be to try and control superhumans, either by force or threatening their loved ones. That likely will not go over very well.

 

What if those superhumans were pretty much immune to man-portable weapons like handgun and rifles? Would they eventually start policing each other with some sort of code of conduct?

 

Do these issues then lead back to some kind of comic book paradigm after sufficient time has passed?

If the world has a cultural history of comic book superheroes, if supers appear they're most likely going to adopt whatever paradigm the supers in the comics do.  

Costumes, masks, and code names go back hundreds of years if not more.  Masks and code names derive most directly from the pulp stories that predated comic books, and those derived from masked criminals and highwaymen.  The Scarlet Pimpernel, arguably the first masked and costumed hero, was published in 1904; Robin Hood and his compatriots go back hundreds of years or more.  

Colorful costumes derive most immediately from professional wrestling, which dates back to the early 20th century in something resembling its current form.  The idea of emblems or devices representing individuals or groups goes all the way back through the jousting knights era back to ancient Egypt.  (History of Heraldry)

People conceal their identities when they're afraid their actions, or even their existence, will cause trouble for themselves or their families, and the sudden appearance of supers would seem to be a good reason for those supers to conceal their identities.  Even if they don't actually do anything with their powers, it's likely someone else will either want them to or will want to capture them to experiment on them to find out where their abilities come from.  And there's zero chance that no super ever publicly demonstrates their abilities.  

That said, just because you have a world with supers in it, and just because they engage in comic book cosplay, doesn't mean their world is going to end up resembling anything out of the comics, and it doesn't have to mean the world is going to resemble any particular "age".  The Wild Cards series was mentioned; in that world, every petty criminal in New York, wild carder or not, adopts a code name and often a mask.  I don't see why that wouldn't happen in another universe where supers suddenly appear.  

Regarding weapons and policing: the history of development of weapons and armor has been a literal arms race.  One side develops a better weapon, the other side tries to develop an even better weapon or better armor.  Repeat.  What would probably happen in the event of supers is that whatever civilian agency is tasked with regulating them will bring as much offensive firepower as necessary.  It's very possible that someone, a person or group in some secret government agency somewhere, will be working on coming up with Batman-style contingencies for every known super.  Tasers, gases, nets, and bigger and bigger bullets as necessary.  Obvious weaknesses; water cannons against fire users, for instance.  If there are supers that can create repeatable high technology items, police and military will try to be first in line.  The overall tech level of the setting will increase as a result.  

If supers appear, even if it's only a few, even if it's only one time, the world will very quickly stop looking the same as it does now.  Never mind that the world doesn't look the same now as it did in 1922 or even 1982.  Even mundane technologies change the world; iron, firearms, the printing press, steam power, internal combustion, mass production, railroads, telegraph, telephone, air travel, and the Internet were each major paradigm shifts, and that's ignoring things like improved sanitation, health care, farming methods, and food preservation.  It doesn't take supers to make the world unrecognizable, but you can bet they will.

I really hate to say this, but... 

On 9/10/2022 at 2:26 PM, Cygnia said:

And I'm pissed with this bait & switch.  I do NOT want to be a part of this, but everyone else seems fine with it.  OK, problem is on my end, ergo I don't play, right?  I don't tell my hubby that he shouldn't play.  He can play and I can go do something el--

 

No no no...hubby insists that I MUST PLAY~!  That we must play TOGETHER~!  That we never DO anything TOGETHER~! (nevermind the fact that we're already playing another game together on Wednesdays with another group)  And that he's worried that I'm so ANTISOCIAL so that it's for my own good we play TOGETHER~!  And our new characters should be LINKED so I have more reason to STAY!

 

This guilt trip is pissing me off and he knows it.  But he is doubling down.

...from this it sounds less like a gaming issue and more like a relationship issue.  

Like, you should be able to tell your spouse "I'm not enjoying this activity," and they should say "Okay, then you shouldn't take part in it anymore.  Are you okay if I continue to take part in it?"  

I would go back to the original edition of Fantasy Hero for inspiration.  An extremely limited number of professional templates, likewise race templates.  Maybe even convert the FH1e game stats.  For magic, use the grimoire rather than building a bunch of spells and magic systems.  Or use your favorite magic system.  

Add one or more organizations (guilds?) for PCs to belong to.  Use the guilds as a framing device; have them hand out missions liberally.  (You could do worse than to borrow the first-gen agency rules from Danger International and reskin them for guilds...)  Missions include delivery, escort, rescue, eradication of monsters or bandits.  (Maybe the occasional fighting tournament...) Offer monetary rewards, maybe minor magic items as well.  

I'm really looking at autoduel-universe types of adventures and putting a fantasy skin on them.  The main thing is, make it obvious what the characters are "supposed to do".  

You need rationales for warriors to fight, wizards to cast spells, rogues to roguishly rogue, and priests to heal/minister/interface with the gods.  

There are a number of ways to do that:

War:  There's a war on, and the PCs are part of it.  It works better if they're part of a small unit of what we'd call "combined arms" IRL.  Pro's: defined roles and missions.  Every PC gets a chance to do their thing.  Cons: PCs are part of a military organization and players might not take kindly to having to follow orders.  May or may not be a lot of available rewards ("loot drops").  Players expecting "traditional fantasy" might be disappointed.  References: the Black Company series by Glen Cook.  The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans.

West Marches:  Based on a campaign idea by Ben Robbins.  Overland exploration, mapping, fighting, and treasure hunting.  Pro's:  Defined roles. Amenable to drop-in players by design.  Cons:  Dungeon crawl overland, if you're looking for not-a-dungeon crawl.  

City-based vigilante adventurers:  Fantasy Dark Champions, essentially.  Characters can solve crimes, find missing persons, help the poor and weak, and so on, within the walls of a city.  Pro's:  Mission-based.  Cons: Even less traditional fantasy than the war campaign; characters who need the tropes will probably not enjoy this.  References: the Garrett, PI series by Glen Cook.  Probably others I'm blanking on.  

In all seriousness, I remember one game where we were in a realistic space environment, and the ship we were in was making combat maneuvers.  We all had to make CON rolls to avoid vomiting in space.  

I'd buy it as Cramming plus Eidetic Memory plus lots of Speed Reading plus Penetrating Vision, only for reading books within X meters.  Buy it with Clairvoyance if you want to read books that are out of LOS. 

I had the weird idea several years ago to try to stat up various vehicles and equipment from Lego Classic Space, but never got around to it.  I got sidetracked by trying to denote ships and vehicles by size and type, then realized I was putting in more work than "stat up plastic toys in elf game" warranted.  

Here is an old thread wherein I suggest a bunch of "typical" Disadvantages for fantasy characters.  Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

On 4/12/2021 at 11:33 PM, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke Bushido as usual had some good points and did everyone else. Now let me pose this question. CCTV is usually presented as Clairsentience. Now if would it not be reasonable to allow the Viper goons to use the the CCTV to attack the fool heroes when they show themselves on camera?

They were determined using the value of a Physical Complication of lacking the missing sense.

When I ran a Fantasy Hero game in the Myth Adventures 'verse we had a PC who was a parody of Luke Skywalker and NPC parodies Oben-wan Oldfogie, Darth Sajak, and Princess Vanna Organna.

On 7/6/2022 at 8:49 PM, starblaze said:

Grimsteel - Character Sheet.pdf 59.53 kB · 1 download

I really need to make that look better.  

I have determined that the power build sheet and many of the Disadvantage build sheets need fixing.  Those will be worked on.  (END Cost for Powers is incorrect; some of the Disadvantage builders add the totals incorrectly.)

All of the Disadvantage builders are present and usable!  

I still have a third edition Champions spreadsheet here; the character generator as a whole isn't really finished, but the power writeup sheet is.  That will generate something resembling a 3rd edition power writeup vaguely compatible with the writer's guidelines for 5th and 6th edition.  Do copy the sheet to your own Google drive before using it, and I recommend using a copy of that so you have a pristine version.  

Edit:  And because I can't seem to leave well enough alone, there are now Disadvantage builders!  For Psych Lim, Phys Lim, and Berserk/Enraged!  More to come!  

Until I started playing in a regular 6th edition Champions game, 3rd edition was my jam.  I played in a couple of sessions run by @lemming at GameStorm in 2018, which is where I realized that he was using writeups from 5th and 6th editions without alteration, and the transitions were seamless.  That's where I started thinking that editions don't matter.  

When I started playing 6th edition regularly it started growing on me, and I realized I was having as much fun with it as in the old days, and the experience of play was the same.  Counting out hexes of movement, rolling out damage and Knockback... all of that felt exactly the same.  

I'll admit that tactics might differ, and I've gone into a lot of detail about how the experience of building characters and taking them into play differs, but to be honest I have a hard time seeing it in actual play.  The END thing... if in 4th-6th you're spending 2-4 END a phase on movement and 6 END per attack... at SPD 5 that's 40-50 END per Turn, so you're going to start running into issues almost as much as in first gen.  

For Fantasy Hero I'd almost have to play the original.  I've only played a little bit of FH post-3rd, and it never felt right to me, feeling like Champions in armor and swords.  I'd have to give it a good try in a campaign.  

I ran a short campaign of Robot Warriors using 6th edition for characters and the original book for robots, plus my conversion document, and it played identically to the original.  From that I'd expect that a Danger International game using 6th edition but otherwise the same assumptions as the original (no Powers, no points charged for equipment) would play the same as the original as well.  I didn't play a lot of Justice Inc. and no Star Hero (lots of SF-nal DI though), so I can't really speak to those, but I'd have to expect again that with the right initial assumptions it should play close enough.  

As far as editions, I don't think I really gave 4th a fair shake.  I played lots of 4th edition Champions, but I never really got over the rules changes that seemed unnecessary to me.  Point cost changes in powers I could deal with, but the big ones were the changes to END cost, Range Modifiers, and Disadvantage cost structure... and those don't bother me now for some reason.  I'm not sure why.  I played a total of one session of 5th (Fantasy Hero), and it just reinforced my feeling of it being Champions with horses and swords and shields.  

"These are not official HERO System rules in any way; there are no specific instructions for them, or requirements that you institute them. They’re simply campaign management tools some GMs consider useful."

If the GM uses them, then by definition they're a house rule.  If the GM doesn't use them, then they're not a rule.  It says right there.  

Hero Designer is a useful tool.  A GM is within their rights to require their players to use it; but there's no rule that says they have to, optional or otherwise.  A GM could choose not to require Hero Designer; they might insist that all characters be turned in using a Google spreadsheet, or they might insist on all characters being written in longhand in fountain pen on an 8 1/2" by 14" yellow pad.  Those would be as much house rules as AP caps. 

There are dozens of optional rules in the game.  The term "optional rule" is used enough in the HERO System 6th edition that it could almost be considered a "term of art".  Steve Long takes great pains in the description of AP caps to note that they're not "optional rules".  They're not rules, because Steve says they're not.  By definition, if the GM uses them, that makes them house rules.  

Consider the board game Monopoly.  Many, perhaps most, people learned from their families that all money paid to the bank for anything but buying property or repaying mortgages goes into the center of the board, to be collected by anyone who lands on Free Parking.  It's specified in the rules of Monopoly that no rewards accrue to players who land on Free Parking.  This is not an optional rule, but a house rule; in fact the first time I ever heard the term "house rule" in relation to a game was in this context.  

An optional rule is deciding to use Knockdown instead of Knockback, or Hit Locations instead of Killing Attack Stun multipliers.  Active Point caps are not this, because it says so right there in the book that they're not. 

That doesn't mean that if a GM is using them that I can just ignore them, nor if the GM is using them that they're not a rule for his game, but they're not a rule of the HERO System, because the rulebook specifically and explicitly says they're not.  Rule of X is not a rule either, despite the name, and Hero Designer is not a rule at all... but as I said, if the GM says to use Hero Designer, that's a house rule.

If a GM adopts AP caps, they're a rule for the GM's game.  To my knowledge that's the definition of a house rule.  If a GM doesn't adopt them, then they're not a rule.  

They're not a HERO System rule.  If a GM doesn't adopt them, there's not something anyone else can point at in the book and say, here's where the rules say this is how they work. 

If the GM sets AP caps, then slots in a VPP should abide by them, as should slots in a Multipower.  As others have ably mentioned, the Control Cost of a VPP determines the maximum Active Points of a slot in the VPP.  

There is not, to my awareness, any way of setting a general Active Point cap in Hero Designer.  

I've told Duke about this, but I made a play aid that reduces the playing time by a factor of about 3.  It puts all of the data you need to run your car at a particular speed on a 3x5 sized card; when you accelerate or decelerate, you flip to the appropriate card.  It has your speed in big bold numbers and the phases, you can put a paper clip on it to mark your handling status, and slide it left and right as needed.  I would seriously swear that 80% of our table talk was "How fast was X going again?" and this reduces that to near 0.  

Using this play aid, with three rusty old hands and three complete noobs, we got through a complete arena duel in two hours.  

Car Wars is fast if you're talking about in-universe time.  

Six hours to play out a ten second long duel!  

Maybe the captain should be an NPC, and the decisions the helm player, the weapons ops player, the engineering player, and so on, make at the table can be assumed to be based on orders given them by the captain.  

Back In The Day there were a couple of SF-nal Danger International games my group did.  One of them was an original (to the GM) hard science campaign called Near Earth Orbit (NEO), and one was based on the Chaosium's Ringworld licensed RPG.  In one of them there was some space combat; vague memory tells me it was NEO, but I'm not a hundred percent certain.  The GM had us calculating orbital plots, in character via skill rolls, and taking time to generate a firing solution and then more time for the ... missile, I'm guessing... to hit.  

I'm thinking it might have been based somewhat on the dogfighting rules that are still around in one of the APG's.  

As far as computer parts, higher tech doesn't have to be more fragile.  Most if not all of what I've worked with are either prototype server grade or production consumer grade equipment, so I would agree they're not meant for being exposed to micrometeroids or unfiltered solar radiation.  I know that there are "ruggedized" versions, but I don't know what makes them ruggedized. 

In the Traveller universe, I would imagine that warships do go on six to twelve month deployments, during which they're parsecs away from replenishment.  Most trading ships of the sort the PCs would likely have are usually not more than a couple of weeks away from a starport or parts depot, and are probably seldom to never involved in extended combat operations.  And TL 9-12 ships probably have TL 9-12 computer equipment that is probably as rugged as needed for its intended duty.  (Misjumping, running out of fuel, and "Oh look, the passengers are attempting to take over the ship, again," are the more likely hazards.) 

As far as rules go...

On 6/14/2022 at 12:44 PM, LordQulex said:

The Area of Effect table (6e1 319) says 17-32m radius is +1, and explosion is -½, so a "final value of +½" is anywhere between a 17 and 32m radius. 

This is correct.  A weapon with this Advantage would indeed have an Explosion between 17 and 32 meters in radius.  A 12d6 Blast with this Advantage would do damage out to a 25 meter radius from the central point of the explosion.  

As for the rest, I'd recommend starting a topic on the Star Hero board for further discussion.   

Probably V&V or Marvel FASERIP.  

43 minutes ago, Spence said:

 

With the number of people that seem to love this game I can only conclude we were playing it wrong. 

 

All I can remember about it was the color coded chart and that whoever had the higher number in a stat won. Period.

No point on trying anything because if the opponent had a higher stat you simply lost.

 

I am getting the vibe that this may not be true

In practice, no.  Attacks do a flat amount of damage, so if you're comparing attacks vs. defenses, it's possible to be up against an opponent whose defenses you can't get through.  As with Champions, that means you have to get creative.  Blast the ground under his feet, or blast the tree behind him and knock it down on him, or something else.  

From a Traveller standpoint, TL5 computers were vacuum tubes.  We're at approximately TL8 now.  I'll admit to not knowing what computers modern US Navy vessels have on board, but... does it help if I point out that the actual computers used in the Apollo space program did not in fact use vacuum tubes?  Granted, their interface was switches and lights, but still.  And the Boeing 787 is entirely fly-by-wire, with modern electronic linkages between the cockpit and all of the flight systems.  (The  internal saying among Boeing engineers is "If it's Boeing, I'm not going," but I digress.)