Lethosos

Re: Eberron Hero One would do very well to pick up Races of Ebberon, as it further details the races in here and more. Very insightful--it helped me shape up the psycological behavior of my Warforged Eldeen Ranger. There's even a few things that would further expand the traits on 'Forged and Shifters. All in all, I like. If you need hosting space, PM me. I own Biolante.net, after all.

Re: City of Heroes writeups Being a CoH player myself... I agree that it should be "by concept", and not system-oriented. That, you can grab from the RPG book they're doing down the road. (J and I discussed this earlier with HERO; I have to agree that the lead designer guy would charge far too much from Long & Co. to do it.) But I can help with what I can cover regarding power frameworks of Paragon's Finest--Statesman, Manticore, Citadel, Positron, Synapse, Valkrie, Lumina (I think,) Sister Psyche, Aurora... I think those are it, but there are more out there, such as Malaise, Sirroco, Lord Recluse, the Praetorians... you get the idea. Ping me with what you want to know, and I'll give out some ideas based on what I know, along with any screenshots you need. Further Note: I can't help out with Statesman and Recluse, though--they are Incarnates, an archtype they have yet to release. But I suspect they have Superman-type abilities...

Re: Good D&D style setting to use to bootstrap? Well, theoretically Turkadian Age is the easiest to work with, but you can reasonably shoehorn an existing world into the system if you take the time to write out the parts that matter. I'd suggest Blackmoor, though--it's primarily a resource setting, and you can toss the rules out of the window, as there's not that much overall except for what's in the D&D book. Just some setting-appropriate favoring, and the addition of two elements--Wood and Metal.

Re: Rage Meter-like Construct Dust, I'd suggest a Vunrability to "Bad Feng Shui" for those kinds of cases.

Re: Too much tweaking? Too powerful? Hrmm... Have him pull stuff from UMA--but not peicemeal. Make him buy 3 martial arts packages--no more, no less. If you need package writeups, we can arrange for that. The Grail stuff seems a little whacked--but I can accept that. (BTW, I'd drop the Visual FX disad on #3--that would mean he'd be glowing like a torch all the time.) I would have him take some real skills in exchange for dropping the MA multi as well. Something to reflect his prolonged time on Earth, such as KS: History, and multiple languages. And last but not least... Foxbat as a hunted?!? You know that cornball has the attention span of a lemming...

Re: Demo Game Tom Sawyer wasn't in the books, so you may want to use Quatermain instead. But do pick up the graphic novels which, IMO, would help your game a huge amount. Especially the stuff in the back of novel #2--it can give you a good idea of the world around them there is like. Very Victorian Fantasy. But if you want to replace them... hrm. The classic "Wolfman", a Gaki (Asian ghost/vampire,) perhaps some sort of Thugee-type individual (I forget the actual name, but would do well as a Weapon Master type,) an effiminate Frenchman who doubles as a master of disguise... that sort of possibilities.

Re: Terra Fey Yep. You'd be better off working with the books from The SIERRAted Edge series--it's urban fantasy right there. Elves do feature in them, but it's not an entirely central theme.

Re: Your "2005" Pet Gaming Projects Heh, figured I'd toss this up. It'll be on my mind throughout the year, anyways. *points to his signature* Call it a Furry Dark Wuxia Asian sourcebook. Feel free to make comments where appropriate, although I'd rather have you use your real name so I can send credit your way if any ideas of yours gets used.

Re: Terra Fey The Big Bad Wolf idea feels a lot like the legends of Coyote, the Trickster spirit of the Soutwest. What if he has a vested interest in Terra Fey? It may explain a few things like resetting the stories and such, to see what might happen.

Re: Team of second rate Villains Oddly enough... go look at Vibora Bay's Cirque Sinister. MinMax would be really useful to a team like this--if she wasn't so cookoo all the time...

Re: Sci-Fantasy at the Super level.. Work this one in! He-Man is fun to mock. (Mumm-Ra is a better villan than Skeletor IMO, though. But each to their own. ) Regardless... we've all thought along this line. I recall that the Alantean Age will have plenty of this sort of action by the metric buttloads, so it's a matter of time that a sourcebook for it will pop up. But don't count on it--the crew have their own orlachium-powered airship to fill. (gets back to scribbling some ideas for the Celestial court for his own FH world, The World of the Eight Sages...)

Re: Anyone done a Riftwars Hero I'll take that as de facto for 'em--they're an odd bunch anyways. Figuring out how they're built requires a more in-depth study of the series--and I'm not in the right position to find that out for myself. I'd even have to see if I did buy a new copy of Magician: Master to replace the first ed. paperback I lost. (The orignal covers looked a lot better than the second/third ed. covers, IMO.)

Re: New FH GM looking for advice While I'm not a GM'er (bad hearing on my part, and recently fading for some wierd reason,) I was part of a local D&D Forgotten Realms group. The gaming was a little odd and usually 12 hours long, but I have noticed that if not enough show up, it's defintly better to have an alternative plan. We had this problem once, and chose to run a 15th level Drow campaign with just us 3 players and an NPC from the setting book. (We played the quinntsental trio group--Cleric, Wizard, and Fighter, with the NPC being a Rogue/Sorcerer. Man, we had fun.) Of course, our GM is a flake of a college student, so I'm looking for a far more steady group these days...

Re: Anyone done a Riftwars Hero And when this is all said and done, I'd love to see the material for the Kelwan side of the Rift--playing Tsuranni nobles and warriors sounds quite interesting. Incidently... it's not 'Elven' magic, but Spellweaving, the art of enhancing spells. Many elven mages are Lesser Path mages to begin with, IMO. Also, the Valheru have powers that seem to be derived from a mix of styles, so you might want to pick and choose to see if they fit.

Re: Richard Moore's Far West You can help by setting up some templates for the racial types involved--I know Pookas are 'selective' shapechangers in it, from the demo prodict I got a coupla years back. Defintly a Transform, Self-Only, with extra Disguise levels and disadvantages of changing into non-living objects roughly the same mass as the Pooka. I'm sure if you pitched this to the right GM, you two can make a great world to monkey around in.

Re: Do That Vodoo That You Do So Well For further 'hoodoouni' material, I suggest getting Vibora Bay and take a look at at Brother Thunder's write-up. He has some fairly good mechanics for a low-powered magical hero--nothing fancy, but well worth noting just for the variety of effects.

Re: Anthropomorphic/Furry HERO Resources I'll keep that in mind, Rose. Just being buffeted about by other interesting ideas, such as developing/organizing a Monster Rancher-themed world with some artsy guys. (Although that makes for an interesting world to use in HERO, too. Who knows, I have to do extensive research in that to make it happen.) What I can defintly say that will need playtesting is the templates and the Chi magic system. Everything else will be writing and thinking up ideas. Edit: I forgot to add a little bit more when I said it would be a Dark Wuxia campaign setting: I intend to split it a bit further by offering two methods of playing the game... the Heroic 'Mundane' setting, and the superheroic 'Celestial' addenium for those interested. The latter will be a bit more complex for me, but easier to pull off if your group is more used to playing Champions.

Re: Anthropomorphic/Furry HERO Resources I'll look it up and see if it's close to what I want to do with Chi. Bear in mind that there's a reason why there are 'Eight Sages', as they are celestial beings that created the world and the races that followed. So a lot of I Ching influences come to bear in the setting. And I'm not crazy about BESM, so I shalln't bother. I'm not familiar with those two comics, but it's not important. I do read up on Ozzy & Millie, though. I think I'm gonna slant the sourcebook towards Wuxia/Dark Fantasy--it is an Age of Shadow that the players will start at, with demons and dark desires waiting to be cleaned up and put into place...

Re: Anthropomorphic/Furry HERO Resources I think it's been old hat, but I did discuss with J about this. He wanted an 'offical' HERO sourcebook in a vein similar to Usagi Yojimbo, and I mentioned to him about 'The World of the Eight Sages,' a Middle Kingdom-styled empire that was inhabited by 8 distinct furry races, each with a minor link to the very world they inhabit. He, of course, was willing to pay for printing out of his pockets, if interest was high enough. Unfortuantly RL consipred with me and I haven't gotten much but a bare outline, some thoughts about the world itself, and what the 8 races looked like. I think his recent praise on my writing might help me a bit, but I just need to know where to start. The Chi magic section will be a pain to work out, that's for sure.

Re: Tenchi HERO I'm also wondering about the two Guardians of Jurai that were with Ayeka--we don't see them often later in the OVA series, but they do come into play frequently enough in the TV series. Are we purposely keeping both series apart, since they are a useful plot tool? They're not overly powerful...

Re: Video Games Ms. Sketchbook, may I suggest taking a gander at Kid Radd? It's a good start if you need to visualize your plot.

Re: Video Games Well, obviously any of the good Robot/Reploid Masters. I think attempting a good Storm Eagle would be interesting to try, myself. But Masters like Shadowman can be spruced up with associated abilities, such as a nice array of traditional ninjitsu skills. The tricky part is figuring out 'what would he/she would be likely to have, including what's been seen on-screen?' But, just out of interests of creativity, I would veto any game not unlike Neverwinter Nights, since that's designed with a high degree of flexability in hero design. Too easy to skip the 'character constraint' requirement.