shem_whistler

Re: I got the snot beat out of me in my first HERO combat......... Thanks to everyone for their positive reponses. I had a look at cafe press and couldn't find a single t-shirt that had snot on it

Re: I got the snot beat out of me in my first HERO combat......... I'm sorry what?! 24d6, I thnk we're gonna need a bigger table. That's insane. Can't wait to try it. :-)

Re: Who Do You Tthink Thay Will Lock Up In "Stronghold" (the book)? Patric McGoohan

Re: Who Do You Tthink Thay Will Lock Up In "Stronghold" (the book)? I was thinking exactly the same thing, so I had a quick scoot and found it in the 2006 release list.

.......And I didn't even get a lousy T-Shirt. I've been a member of the forums for some months now, I've spent way too much money on HERO products. I've even had a stab at creating characters, powers and equipment. But until the weekend I had never actually rolled dice for HERO. A friend of mine has been a Champions/Hero sytem fan for more years perhaps he'd like . He's been showing me bits and pieces of the system and helping me with builds, heck, he's the one that got me into this and cost me a fortune. I was at his house at the weekend and he got out a battlemap and a ridicoulous number of D6, we grabbed some sample characters from the books and we were ready. We fought two encounters, my 2 heros vs 1 of his villians, both times I took a monster beating, but it was so much fun. I'll never again be able to have exactly the same emotion when my opponent picks up a ton of dice. "How many D6 is that?!!!!" "Oh, only 16" "Holy %*&$" And then there was knockback, yikes. I admit I got soundly beat by some questionable tactics on my part, though a few rolls of 16 - 18 didn't help either. It was great to finally put all these figures and values into context. During the second encounter I really learned how useful Resistant Defense could be, and I was introduced to what I now know to be "The Stun Lottery" It will definitely make it a lot easier to create characters having seen how some of the things interact. I thoroughly recommend the experience to anyone new to the system like myself, it's worth the pain. So thanks again to Darkstar and Armadillo. I'll get you next time.........

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes Dr. Who Dr. - Pleased to meet you Rose, run for your life! B5 Marcus - You see, it's like I've always said: 'You can get more with a kind word and a two-by-four than you can with just a kind word Voyager Dr. - Someone's stolen Neelix's lungs. Hmm, not sure if that last one is supposed to be funny.......

Re: Pulp pictures. My pleasure, B5 is one of my geeky specialist subjects. Here are a couple more I have come accross. Shem

Re: Pulp pictures. Following on from Tim's pic of Garibaldi from Babylon 5 here is a pic of him in his undercover threads.

Re: What are you working on? Real life permitting I'm working on my Stargate write up stuff, for that I'm in the middle of; Replicators Equipment Lists Modified Character Sheet In real life I'm spendin most of my time planning for my upcoming wedding. The lions share goes to the latter at the moment. Shem

Re: Stargate Hero Thanks, I'll have to check this out. Shem

Re: Flying through an asteroid belt. Glad to hear it That's a good way of doing it, when they first encounter the belt "Your sensors can not scan the entire width of the belt, you don't know how long it will take to cross" Hmm, just a couple of thoughts as I type that, would this lack of knowledge effect the PC's tactics? "We're nearly at the edge let's just blast it" Also what happens if they fumble every roll on the first turn and suddenly appear the other side of the belt? The one time it might be better to fumble. 2 creds Shem

Re: Flying through an asteroid belt. Glad you liked the ideas. I'd be inclined to keep it as simple as possible, as you'll already have lots of different rolls going on from the different players. The size of the belt probably isn;t needed unless your players are really into all the details or unless you are known for your crunchiness in game. I'd go this route. "As your head towards your destination your sensors pick up an asteroid belt up ahead" "Can we go round it?" "No" "How long to get through it?" "At normal speed, x turns". I see that the velocity chart idea didn't work out, so I still think that sticking with your original idea of maneuvers coupled with penalties or bonuses to travel time would be simplest. I was thinking about how I described it before and have a clearer explanation now. If they choose a cautious maneuver consider how this affects their speed, if it's an alls top then that is a 0 turn, if they are flying slowly then maybe 1/2 turn, recklessly 1 1/2 turns. Another thought as I was typing that is to give the belt an arbitrary width say 10 for example, then assign each maneuver a distance travelled value. Again all stop = 0, defensive 1, normal 2, reckless 3. Either way each maneuver will have 3 values OCV, DCV and travel mod/distance. I would then have each of the pilot, sensor, engineer rolls give extra travel mods something like fumble -1, failure -1/2 success +1/2 and critical +1. This will allow for some variation of totals. All 3 PC's critical that's +3 fumble -3 , but for the most part it would be a mixture. I think it might be quite fun for the pilot and sensor operator to roll well and have that undone by a fumble from the engineer. "Ok I've spotted a gap through this next cluster" - Sensor Op "Course plotted into the NavComp ready to engage" - Pilot "Ooops, I've unplugged the engines" - Engineer I think that keeps the whole thing fairly basic, select the maneuver, try and augment with the various skill rolls, and take your licks. On a slightly different note I'm always concerend with situations like these, where potentially a bad roll could wipe out the party, these situations always need a back door. I'm curious what yours would be Again, just my 2 creds Shem

Re: Presenting a genre using the toolkit I think that some people can take this to extremes, where instead of roleplaying they rollplay. What I mean by that is that they try to get every last point out of the system by choosing the combination of actions that gives the best result, I'm trying really hard to not say Min/max and munchkin but this is where my thoughts are heading. Whereas in Doc's game I had to choose exactly what the character would do in a given situation based on flavour and style alone. Two things made this happen a) A lack of knowledge of the HERO system and The lack of crunchy bits on the form. I think I actually prefered this style of play. In the past I have played in a TORG game where two of the PC's were gunbunnies and they have really slowed down combat sometimes by discussing, at length, what combination of attacks would get them that extra 1 to hit or extra 1 to damage. I feel that this level of crunchiness should be reserved for out of the game and character creation, not in the middle of gameplay. So for me Doc's version was a great introduction to the system, as evidenced by large number of HERO books now on my shelf. Shem

Re: Presenting a genre using the toolkit

Re: Presenting a genre using the toolkit Would you intend to have a starting character with 10 in each stat and then let them buy different traits at a set cost, Savvy, Tough, Lightning Fast, Silver tongued, etc? Or rather than keeping the point buy system would you use template characters? So a gunslinger might have tough and lightning fast and a politician might have savvy and silver tongued? Or is that to restrictive and too far removed from the crunchiness? Shem

Re: Stargate Hero Ok, I've modified the spreadsheet in response to the comments that Doc has made, this seems to have ironed out any blips and seems to be ok. Though again if anyone can double check the math, that would be helpful. Cheers Shem

Re: Pulp Hero Cometh

Re: Presenting a genre using the toolkit I thought that one of your original ideas was to list the stats and figured characteristics but change the name to fit the genre. Didn't you use the example of guts instead of stun? Maybe something like savvy instead of INT Shem

Re: How far to stretch a core system? TheRealLemming has been mulling over a new name and has just recently changed it, I guess this is who Phil was quoting. TRL is now Sean Waters and given that his sig is Ben Appreciation Society, I guess that Ben is responsible for the name change whilst keeping his stats. Shem

Re: Flying through an asteroid belt. Just a thought, but none of the available maneuvers have any effect on the speed or time of the whole scene. I'd be inclined to use this and set a fixed amount of turns that the 'encounter' within the field will last. And then give modifiers to the total time dependent on what maneuvers are selected. For example; Fly defensivly pluses to DCV but +2 turns. Blast through at max speed minuses to DCV but -2 turns. This way they can decide to take their time and be as safe as possible or try to belt it through and take their chances. This may allow for slightly more tactics, rather than essentially the same eac turn. Just my 2 creds Shem

Re: Stargate Hero I could put in a conditional statement that makes sure that the Wroker value does not decrease at all. This would mean that the workers will be built at a detrement to Warriors. I'll have to give this a go and see how it affects the growth. You've hit a point there that this whole exercise is a little pointless, as it doesn't take into account how much damage is don eby the PC's. I think that this process should be used for people to decide what variables they like that give the results and speed they want. Shem

Re: How far to stretch a core system? You should talk to Doc Democracy about this, it is his obsession at the moment, using the toolkit element to display things in certai ways to generate genre flavour to the games. He's also a big fan of deadlands. Shem

Re: Stargate Hero Yeah, that would have been one way to go, but I felt that the BODY deployed into constructs was not going to be spending time Transforming more raw material. The Warriors are too busy warring and the Workers are already getting a bonus to the Transform. Shem

Re: Stargate Hero Ok, Whislt trying to play with the numbers for Doc's suggestion, it seemed to make more sense to put into excel. To that end the attached file is a sheet that plots the infection rate of the replicators. It is built on the numbers that Doc has suggested, though he has said himself that these were pulled form thin air, therefore I have made most of the fields variable. As such you can adjust the starting quantity of workers and warriors, the number of constructs that you can have per transformed body. The base transform value and the increments of time. So lots to play around with I'd appreciate it if any one conversant in excel could check my math as I've spent too long looking at it and I can't really pick it apart now. Also if anyone could suggest a decent way to chart the rate of infection that would be very useful, all the charts I came up with weren't correct, as they were using the number of iterations rather than the time per iteration as the x axis. Oh, I've used the CONVERT function which is not a standard excel function, it requires the analysis add in to be installed. Please let me know what you think. Cheers Shem

Re: Package deal - no deal? True but with 75/75 heroic points and maybe a totla 30 point PD as a base, this still gives room for customisation. Taking your Police example further, you could take this base PD, and then decide where to spend your extra points in. For instance; A SWAT officer, more combat skills. A Detective, investigation skills and contacts. A Forensic expert, science based skills. So you have the average, but still have room to maneuver. I would be opposed to a PD creating a whole character. Just a base point to work from. Shem