PoorWandering 1

Re: HUDSON CITY: What Do *You* Want To See?

Things i usually end up needing at short notice are Taxi company names and Resturant / bar names. Preferably 2-3 bars etc per neighborhood.

Re: HUDSON CITY: What Do *You* Want To See?

Some semi-random ideas. I hope they will be usefull.

A bit about what is immediately outside the city.

What are the burbs like. Levittown 1950's uniformity? Armed gated communities? Or a land boom that failed leaving the city holding the bag on acers of poorly built decaying housing the heading twords ex-urb slum status.

What is the urban-rural interface like. Maybe something about the smaller towns near Hudson.

What is the natural environment like in the area. A bit about the weather and how the seasons effect the city will add atmosphere. :7)

In the city itself:

How about civic plans that failed. A 6 lane highway that goes nowhere. A nearly complete airport mired in kickback scandals and NIMBY issues. How is public housing dealt with in the city? Slums? Projects? I would love to see a photocopy ready tourist brochure. The language would be very positive but desperation would be oozing between the lines. Also how is Hudson City seen by the rest of the nation? How much of a factor is it in sate or national politics. Is it a 'safe' or a 'battleground' city in national party politics.

Any way that's my 2 cents.

Re: Anyone have Tomb of Horrors?

The casual style of play that has more in common with 1st person shooters and video games like Gauntlet (and its successor Diablo) than what you would consider a "Role-playing" game. ...

 

So really, from my point of view, the beauty of the early adventures is that they were just interesting enough to entice me, and bad enough to encourage me to find something better or make it up myself.

Exactly. The early stuff served as a springboard and as a FPS before FPS's existed. These things hit their height in the early to mid 80's afterall. Does any one know when Tomb was first published for example?

Re: Anyone have Tomb of Horrors?

Gygax and the whole of early AD&D always seemed to be based on an adversarial approach. All the rules and modules seem to support a GM desperately trying to control rampant munchkins.

 

When I was the first in our group to approach it from a dramatic, genre-influenced philosophy, I rapidly became the most popular GM of our group.

Wow, that sounded really egotistical.

 

Anyway,I almost never used a module or gamed in someone else's world. Can someone who went through them tell me what was the big attraction? What made them cool for you?

 

Keith "???" Curtis

The challenge. Think of it like a fantasy themed video game or a small unit war-game. Could you out-think the designer and the GM sort of thing. Of course not all the early modules were as adversarial as Tomb or White Plume Mountain. Some were much better balanced and entertainment oriented. The Slaver series and Bone hill for example. Keep in mind that this was back in the days when it took 2 class changes to become a bard. Good storytelling and depth were not the main focus at good ol' TSR. Frankly I see modules like the Giant series, if they are ran as written, as basically an excuse for a bunch of friends to spend a weekend sitting around, drinking soda, eating pizza shooting the breeze and occasionally rolling some dice.

The players and GM were generally aware of the limitations of the material. They tended to either 'out grow' the strict interpretation of the published stuff and move on to home grown or other companies stuff with better storytelling opportunities or they drifted away from gaming. This exodus reached it's peak when computer/console games became complex enough to duplicate this simple style of play. On the other hand there are some published adventures that are quite excellent and runnable basically as written. One of the best that I have seen was 'Dead man's stomp' in the 3rd or 4th ed Call of Cthulhu rule book. Of course this was published at least a decade after the Tomb and the industry had learned a great deal.

Re: Anyone have Tomb of Horrors?

If the characters are wise enough to simply go for the loot, and not bother the skull or the swirly dust, then they can just scoop up the treasure and leave!

That's how our party of 4 6th lvl characters survived. Walked into final room saw "skull with gems for teeth" swiped the sword and some other choice bits o' loot and buggered off. The sword alone established the resurection fund on a sound finincial basis. I suppose the real reason we survived was that we were all Thieves or something-thieves, had the teamwork thing down pat, and were just coming off a long running Paranoia campaign so we had the perfect mind set for this adventure. If you want to survive TOH all you have to do is think like a loot hungry munchkin and do the opposite. To give you an idea of our mindset once we saw the trap heavy entry chamber the Dwarf Fighter-Thief suggested heading back to town getting plenty of food and mining equipment and counter mining the whole place. She figured we would be under the main rooms after no more that a month or two of digging. Then we would collapse the dungeon and pick the loot out of the rubble. Pity we didn't go with that plan.

Btw: there are 2 possable fights in the tomb the litch at the end and a 4 armed demon thing in tomb itself. You can avoid the thing if you're sneaky.

Re: What am I missing?

Cool. I sugest KS: demons and KS: black Magic at a decent level. You may not be able to summon/ work with demons but you would have an deep understanding of them. Also you could be one of the very few mortals able to take AK: hades.

Re: WWYCD #118?: The man from UNTIL.

Would you help UNTIL track down the info they had the agent out to find?

Rocket: Absolutely. Heck (rocket tends not to swear, golden age an all) we work with UNTIL all the time so I expect they knew were going after the base. With that in mind i am assuming the 'viper' leader said they were working for the FBI or Interpol or suchlike. Still the answer doesn't change, throw them in the can. If they were legit help the good guys pick up the peices.

Re: What am I missing?

I know this might sound crazy but, how about some non-combat skills???

 

8 pts can go a long way in KS and Languages.

Exactly. What does this person do to earn money for food and housing. Who do they know and how to they fit into the world. It would make sense to have the person's sensi as a contact maybe even other students. This person needed extensive and expensive training. Who trained him or her and where? Ks: martial arts world and Ak: Japan would be a good start. This person is a major marital artist with at least 2-3 black belts. Has this person ever taught others? Then ps-teacher and contacts: former students might fit. Or maybe the training was done by a super secret orginazation, ks- politics or ks-"enemy" organizations would fit. You have excellent combat skills but you may have little to do between fights.

But then again a sheltered assassin learning about the real world is a workable storyline. Kind on an iron-age "Twins"

Re: Super looking for some powers

Who ever she is she not going to be running very far in those shoes. And some how spike heels do not say stone bodied brick. Even assuming the high tech construction could take the weight they would have a tendancy to puncture whatever she was standing on. The lizardish idea would work though. The shoes are easy to leap out of.

Re: WWYCD #118?: The man from UNTIL.

With deep cover agents 'emergency' contacts could still take days. At least back in the cold war days.

Rocketman. Jail him. If he was telling the truth it's UNTIL's problem.

Re: The Greatest American Hero (book).

Justice Inc. Strange powers and all. JI is the perfect Pulp/Noir genre game. You almost expect one of the figures in Hoppers 'Nighthawks' to be reading a copy.

Re: Gravity Control tricks.

Superleap useable by others or useable as an attack.

One small step for a hero one giant leap for....

Re: Jet City Champions Campaign Log

Ummm either it wasn't Mt. Kilimanjaro or the expidition wandered quite a bit. I'm assuming that you used that as a filler name?

Re: Iron Age/Dark Champions Concept

Very bleak and very cool. Please keep posting if this runs.

Re: Jet City Champions Campaign Log

No, I know it was the plan, it's just that it's a funny plan.

The funny plans work the best. Just ask Foxbat.

Re: Jet City Champions Campaign Log

Episode Two: Dragons Over Jet City! (September 16th' date=' 2004)[/b']

His jaw hurts and his ears ring, but the worst wound is to his pride. Not exactly an ostentatious first appearance.

Excuse me? The plan worked perfectly. Yes i got pasted, I was the distraction, I was supposed to get pasted. Only 2 members of the team could reach the site in timeto anything but help sweep up the glass. Even if Blink Dog and myself were pure combat monkies we could not have defeated a far more powerfull and experienced super like Dragon Raider Kaicho . Esp. since DRK was backed up by 10 very well armed and mobile agents. The whole goal of the incident was to plant Washi's frog. And that went without a hitch. The fact that DRK and his goons also think the Jet City Champions pose about half the threat of your average boys chior is an added bonus. With any luck secutity will be a bit lax when the whole team comes to pay a social call next week.

Of course I still expect i'll just get pasted again but hopefully we'll do enough damage to stop the raids on CKK. I suspect however that DRK is only the tip of the iceberg. Someone hired DRK and i dont think the Jet City Champs will be on their xmas card list.

-Rocketman

Re: FH Campaign

This is a great idea for a campaign. Please keep posting.

Re: Cinematic Gun Combat: "Give me that."

Many levels with Takeaway' date=' extra STR only useable with Takeaway.[/quote']

 

This is probably the cleanest way to do it. This way will allow you to sweep to snag the guns from multiple targets as well.

Re: WWYCD #115: Xerox Paradox...Baby Blues!

Rocketman- Well seeing how he is nothing more than a guy wearing a golden age surplus jet-pack and seeing how his last opponents were riding bleeding edge tech flying platforms he would rejoice that the baddies apparently suffered a major budget shortfall. As for the clones out fly or out fight them and toss 'em in a holding cell for air-traffic violations. Take apart the packs to see if there are any design improvements i can make use of. I doubt i'd notice the kids resemblance until it was pointed out to me. At that point i'd be wondering why Viper et al was going to the trouple to clone mooks. Surely it's cheaper to just hire them. Hmmmm i wonder what effect this will have on the unemployment rate?

Re: What would your Character Do?

Rocket man: Open the armor and begin first aid. Reasoning that there is zero chance that this is the real Dr. D. The good Dr. is far too savvy to ignore cardiac issues. This must be a double whose death will buy time for the real Dr. D to escape or activate plan b.

Re: H.P. Lovecraft, Otto Skorzeny, and the CU

That includes the guys running Project Paper Clip if you want my full 2 cents on the subject.

Hear Hear.

The lot of them are accessories after the fact.

Re: H.P. Lovecraft, Otto Skorzeny, and the CU

Using real folks works wonders on the suspension of disbelief front. A former hero of mine was hounded for a while to go on the O'Riely factor. Strange game.

Re: H.P. Lovecraft, Otto Skorzeny, and the CU

Coincidence that you should post here with your Elvis signature because...

 

Long ago, I had Elvis repel from the top of a fictional High Rise hotel in vegas and perform a swinging move through. As this was many years after his death in R/L, the crowd assumed it was an impersonator. Only he (and the heroes after I gave them a hint) knew otherwise.

The king is dead....Long live the king!!

Re: H.P. Lovecraft, Otto Skorzeny, and the CU

I think at least part of the point was that using these particular historical scumbags may cause some folks who or whose families were harmed, by these scumbags in the real world a great deal of emotional pain. I'm not saying don't use the Reich they are flat out the best example of Totalitarian Evil in the western world. It's just using them will hit folks a little harder than if you used a purely fictional org. like Viper. And then there's the whole racism issue. I'm not saying that gaming should avoid issues. Exploring these real and important ideas will lend power and impact to the game. I just feel that as GM or players we need to be aware of this. I personally consider any storyline involving the Holocaust to have the equivilent of an exclamation point warning. It doesn't mean I won't use or play in those storylines but it does mean that i will do the best i can as either a GM or player to give these storylines the respect they deserve. If nothing else a raid on a modern-day Nazi secret base will be a good bit darker that an identical raid on an otherwise identical Viper or Demon base.

Anyway, my $.02

Re: Where does this lim/disad go?

The Focus is for an Aid with extended effects.

Sorry *removes foot from mouth*

So are there limits to how long he/she can stay in tip top status? What is the widget in question btw?