Funksaw

Re: [Heresy] Do we need Killing Attacks? I think the analysis is correct but it misses the point. I honestly believe that killing attacks are a different way to roll damage... a way that depends less on the SFX and more on the genre. For example, fantasy heroes are more likely to use blades and maces and other nasty things designed to kill. So are their enemies - so killing damage is appropriate there. Same with post-apocolyptic settings, or war settings, etc. I like having killing damage as a seperate damage mechanic because even though it's "redundant," when you go from one genre to the next, one or the other might give you a better "feel."

Re: The United States is a constitutional monarchy Dude, the guy who followed Washington in rulership was John Adams, and he's the guy everyone compares Bush to when they ask "who was the worst president ever?"

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... In Shoulder Gunk?

Sorry - I'm sure someone has done this before, but how would you build a battlesuit that can be worn OR activated via remote control. Here's what I've got so far: The suit is OAF if controlling via remote control. The remote control is also an OAF, but for SFX purposes that's just another way to gain control of the OAF suit. The person inside the suit should get additional armor for the suit, but outside of the suit, that armor only applies to the suit.

Re: Post-Holocaust Starting Point Level? For a Twilight 2000 feel, I'd recommend 75/25.

Re: Time travel Dr. Who style - Hero Universe The general rule here is that events are fluid until they have been observed, at which point they become static and immutable. Changing something you've witnessed through time travel results in: A) A temporal fugue loop where time loops through the event again and again until they get it "right." Sometimes the characters are trapped in the loop, sometimes events just keep happening in the world over and over again despite the world moving on. A Paradox, which unravels the skein of time and lets bad things in that generally act like Steven King's Langoliers. Because in either of these instances, the event is resolved or the universe is destroyed - and the universe hasn't been destroyed yet - the end result is a universe where everything that will happen has happened already and if you try to "change" things you're only going to change them to the way they're already going to be anyway, so that really cocks up that whole free will thing. You can save lives, yes, but only in the sense that from an objective perspective you've already saved them. Tricky, but usually Doctor Who jumps so far in time and space that the ramifications of one action really aren't felt. Also, he discovered the secret of the Loch Ness Monster three different times, and it was different each time. I really can't explain that.

Re: The Tech of Torchwood Or Mind Control, Invisible Effects.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... How often?

Re: Why should I buy Champions? The Hero System (Champions is a genre book in 5th ed) is useful precisely because it really isn't a superhero RPG. It's a generic RPG that was designed to measure the superhero genre - and because the superhero genre itself is a mishmash of pretty much every genre under the sun, it did very well evolving into a generic system. Whether or not the Hero System is for you depends on three things: Are you likely to run games based on original settings and movies-not-yet-adapted to RPGs - not published ones? For example, were I to run a game based on "My Name Is Earl," (something I'm thinking of calling "Karma, Tennessee,") I would probably find a way to model the show's unique take on karma in the Hero system. But if I were running a Buffy/Angel game, I'd probably use the Buffy system - it's more tailored to the licence, and does exactly what you need to do to run Buffy. (Note that I would probably use the HERO system for Stargate and Farscape campaigns... but that's because I'm not thrilled with the official adaptations.) Hero's flexibility makes it ideal for multi-genre and strange ideas; not only, for example, can Hero make a fantasy campaign like D&D - it can make a fantasy campaign quite UNLIKE D&D, because D&D constrains you to certain narrow paths. Are you willing to spend a very long time in character creation (although it gets faster when you're more familiar with the system) modeling the abilities of your characters in exchange for nearly unlimited flexibility, creativity, and very precise modeling - or are you the type of GM that really wants to just "roll up and play?" HERO system makes that tradeoff - added complexity for added flexibility, but it tends to do so by being "front-loaded" - meaning that you spend a lot of time in the beginning of the game creating the characters (or essentially, the "rules" of your campaign) but once you do so, all the information you need to play is right there on your sheet. Mutants and Masterminds tends to play faster and create faster but I'm hamstrung by the lack of flexibility in that game. It's well done, no doubt, but that's more of a "We want to play a supers game -today-" kind of game. Aberrant tends to also create faster, but there is NO flexibility - you either have the specific power or you don't, and there's no "tech" powers in Aberrant. Do you want a game that plays in multiple genres? If you're just looking for "a superhero game" then M&M will provide a unique system, Aberrant will provide a unique setting, but they're both limited to the Superhero genre. Hero is not only multi-genre but unlike other "generic" systems, it scales very well from low-powered games to games where characters are outright godlike in their abilities. I hope I've kinda helped to explain what HERO System IS and what it ISN'T, and hope you can make an informed choice.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... *slaps forehead* Dammit, I wrote a villian group called "Peanut Gallery" for Digital Hero, and one of the characters I came up with was "Yo-Yolanda."

Actually, I think it -would- count. Are there rules for friendly fire presence attacks?

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Hitchhiker: Hitchhiker is the “son” of the Scarlet Witch, though less in a biological sense and more in a spiritual one. Douglas Draft, out-of-work architect and open-mic-nite stand-up comedian, just happened to be the least probable person on the earth to inherit sorcerous powers based on probability. Interestingly enough, because he was the least probable person to get the sorcerous powers, this pretty much doomed him to getting them. After figuring out that his sorcerous abilities, like the Scarlet Witch, were not entirely unlike the famous “improbability drive” from “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” he decided to use Hitchhiker as his moniker. Like the Scarlet Witch, he has to “do the math” and figure out exactly how improbable an event has to be before he can cause it to be. But unlike the Scarlet Witch, he’s still not fully in control of his power and is often the victim of extremely strange luck. You’ll forgive me if I don’t have a full writeup, I’m away from both my books and my software, but, here’s some basic ideas for the power build: A 60 pt. VPP: Magic, Active Point Penalty. An additional 30 points on the VPP, with “Extra Time: 1 Turn” on only those 30 points Another additional 60 points on the VPP, with “Extra Time: 2 hours” and OAF: Computer (Bulky) on that. -- Clairvoyance (Only to choose the right answer among a known finite quantity of choices, i.e., Red Wire or Black Wire in a time bomb, “The password is no more than 8 characters long… 256 ascii characters including space… 256 to the eighth power… around eighteen and a half trillion, if you use the British milliard… ah, got it. tueSday4, capital S in the middle there.”) -- Jinx: Transform Character into Character with unluck. So incredibly damn lucky: Desolid, cannot pass through solid objects, takes damage from magic/ego attacks

Re: [interest in an online game?] Avengers: Generation 3 Interested, and even have an idea already.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... It's either "personal immunity" or "hole in the middle" and I don't think "hole in the middle" is appropriate for an OIF Thong.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... You know, I always wanted to try Changeling but I couldn't wrap my head around it. It always seemed to me to be a bit unrealistic. I know that's kinda the point... but still...

Re: Just For Fun: Cartoon Network All Star Team Ups (FYI: Zim is Nickelodeon.)

Re: Just For Fun: Cartoon Network All Star Team Ups Actually, you did peg it. Metalocalypse is indeed the show, the band's name is "Dethklok."

Re: Just For Fun: Cartoon Network All Star Team Ups Old Man: "There is a place, deep within the bowels of the earth, where there may be a way to turn back time. It is a place of agony and torment, where rusted gears slam against rusted gears and the polyrythms of celestial time are counted. It was created to mark the infinite torment of the souls trapped within, but it may indeed, if you are brave enough, return you to your time. Samurai Jack: "Indeed. How can I get there?" Old Man: "Getting there is not the problem, but there are five evil guardians that will attempt to block your path. The tall one, the strange one, the murderous face, the drummer, and the man known as the explosion. To seek it would be the act of the desperate or the foolhardy." Samurai Jack: "I do not consider myself foolhardy. I will go and seek this... Death Clock."

Re: Question: Must I model everything I own? I typically draw the line in two ways: "Would this item be useful in combat," and "Could a reasonable person of the character's wealth level expect to own this item." This is why pepper-spray, easily obtainable, costs points. This is also why, if the character bought wealth, I would allow him to have a fleet of cars or even a private jet. But most billionaires do not own zepplins, nor do they have heat seeking missles or radar-jammers on the private jet. I would not charge for a cellphone, even if that's taken with them on every adventure and used for communication - first, it's got tons of limitations, including being "out of range" of a signal. I would charge for a "super-communicator" like Captain Kirk had, to communicate with a station in orbit, and I would charge for one that always worked. I'd also charge for any item in the character's MOTIF. The SuperMobile might not be anything more than a Honda Civic with a neat paint job, but if it expects to see Motif action, it's coming out of your points. (This, of course, does not include items that the PC's declare, sarcastically, are in their motif, for example, the SuperCivic.)

Re: Making the math easier Or to put it another way, a +1/4 advantage is really a +25% advantage. Personally, I think that it would be simpler if HERO used percentage points INSTEAD of fractions which represent those percentage points, but HERO was first developed in the days when RPGs were just crawling out of the primordial ooze, and some legacy things have stayed in.

Re: I am looking for magical items. When I need a magic item, I go back to a good Vertigo comic - Sandman and Lucifer, being the obvious, but Transmetropolitan works just as well - and pick an item, overlooked and undocumented, in the background.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... That actually happened to me in real life, only instead of RPGs, Bowling.

Re: D&D to Hero Fantasy rules questions I generally prefer to give no more than 5% of the character's current point total as XP per session. So for a 150 pt. campaign, no more than 7 pts. -- but I like my characters to advance quickly.

Re: Animation or Comics? The only criticism of it is that, because most of these heroes were NOT heroes that the average comic reader would be familiar with. In the origional JL (animated) Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash need no introduction (mostly because all have had television series or movies at one time) while the Green Lantern is more obscure. The Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl were unfamiliar - the origin of one is the story behind the first 2 hour special, while the origin of the other is kept secret to be part of the series concluding arc. Most of the JL stories are also two parters, meaning there's less time introducing the characters and more time with the stories. In particular, the episode with Booster Gold is very, very good; but it's only a half hour and you really don't see him again... much of that is explaining his backstory; that he's a timetraveller from the future with a (likable) robot sycophant, a glory hound and motivated by fame and money, and on the low parts of the totem pole in the league. I would not say most of his on-screen time is exposition, but much of it is. Now, keep in mind that the JLU was pretty much introducing a new character each episode... The first episode introduced Captain Atom and Green Arrow, the next introduced Power Girl and The Question, etc... Sometimes they spread the origin of the characters beyond more than one story - Shining Knight's origin was only explained in his last appearance in the series, while Vigilante's really wasn't explained at all.

Re: Drain STR on Objects? By temporarily reducing it's mass, it has two effects: 1) It will do less damage, as E=mv^2, but it allows characters - including others - to lift things their regular strength wouldn't otherwise allow. 2) It also means a character where alot of things go flying around really fast in a fight scene.