Phil

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game I've found that the changes have actually increased my enjoyment. New tweaks equals new challenges equals better value for my gaming experience. No disrespect intended, but in gaming I do from time to time like to try out new house rules, usually to fix a perceived inbalance in the game or to better enforce genre feel. if I had a player who wanted to rewrite his character each time to maximise his advantage from the new rules, or to recreate the very issue that led me to instigate the fix, that player wouldn't last very long in my game. YMMV.

Re: Fourth Age Hero Dash it all, you're right. I do. Well, that's me scuppered then, all over a simple spelling error. Well, that's me told. I'm quaking in my boots. Fair enough, call it what you will. Strikes me there's no point using a background so rich in detail unless you're going to at least attempt to be accurate with it. Political thriller sounds like a good premise for a Fourth Age adventure. Lots of potential for misdirection with local administrators, disinclined toward the re-establishment of the monarchy, distracting PCs from the true villains of the piece. Ithilien also offers some interesting nearby locations - are the dead marches still haunted with the passing of Sauron, or with his death are they ripe for colonisation? What about Mordor itself. The stones of the Black Gate and Minas Ithil would be great building materials, but would those houses then be cursed? The Elves are all about trying to hold back change (the ultimate conservatives), but perhaps a small band of them have a vision of the future involving the regeneration of Mordor itself into a lush green paradise? But no doubt orcs are still in the hills, and the pass of Cirith Ungol is no safer than it was before the fall of Gorthaur.

Re: Fourth Age Hero Fair enough, but as far as I'm concerned if this is your approach you shouldnt be calling it Fourth Age and you shouldnt be calling it Middle Earth and you sure as hell shouldnt be deining to mention Tolkien's name. As far as Middle Earth goes, the only subjectivity over canon is around the Silmarillion vs. Book of Lost Tales, where Tolkien didn't finish revising his earlier material. There is no question where Saruman was killed and even if there was, there is no reason to think the Valar would treat his spirit any differently whether or not Peter Jackson's "artistically appropriate" revisions show it. I apologise for my tone, but I find few things more irritating than people making as fact statements that are in fact false, incomplete or misleading. There is a rich world in Tolkien in which to set a game, and plenty of leeway within it to tell the stories you want to tell without changing the history, nature or internal-consistency of the setting. The idea of a Fourth Age game is a good one, the setting of Ithilien equally strong. The concept of either the Witch King or Saruman as the villain of the piece is metaphysically unsound and, in the context of Tolkien, anachronistic. The Fourth Age, after all, is supposed to be the Age of Man.

Re: Fourth Age Hero

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Hey! Can everyone quit whining about this game and get back to the incescent flattery? Doc Democracy, I'm going to need a silk robe and bevy of maidens feeding me peeled grapes next time we game. OK?

Re: Fourth Age Hero

Re: Fourth Age Hero Wrong. Tolkien is explicit about this (Unfinished Tales, or maybe his letters). There are female dwarves but they are few and dont always have children. The original seven fathers of dwarves were made of stone, but then had life breathed into them by Eru.

Re: Fourth Age Hero I'm sorry, but this is VERY wrong. Firstly the Valar arent gods, they are perhaps akin to arch-angels. Tolkien's theology is very clear: there is only One God, that is Eru Iluvatar. The Valar (lit. "powers") are his representatives but arent gods as such and certainly aren't worshipped. Aule the valar made the dwarves, but as automatons. They because alive when Eru breathed on them. The Ents were brought alive in a similar way, as a counter to the dwarves for Yavanna, Aule's wife. The maiar and the valar were all involved in the song of creation. In addition, the elves did not take part but they were *a* part of the song, which means their destiny is intrinsically tied up with that of the world. This is not true of men, who have a fate - although unknown - beyond the end of the world. This also means that men have the ability to change the destiny of the world - effectively the traditional judaeo-christian gift of Free Will - which provides a metaphysical explaination of why most of the great heroes of middle earth are human.

Re: Fourth Age Hero I'm currently creating a First age game and I'm ignoring magic entirely. While omnipresent, it's largely a background to things that take place and rpg-style magic use is notable by its rarity. Tolkien simply doesnt write enough to define a magic 'system' as such, and personally I think it's foolish to try. Leave magic to the likes of Fingolfin, Luthien, Gandalf and the Witch King, and everyone else just get on with hitting things with swords.

Re: Fourth Age Hero Technically not angels nor strictly maiar. The whole point was that the Istari had to take mortal form and thus be denied the full extent of their power, falling back on wisdom, judgement and advice to move the people of middle earth whilst getting around the valar's promise never to interfere in things. Again! Thus, Gandalf was able to be killed (sent back by the valar. no interfering, remember?!), although the suggestion is that on his return he was either in his full maiar form or certainly nearer to it.

Re: Fourth Age Hero Not true. Humans of Half-elven descent may inherit some elven abilities (to quote Galadriel, ""For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe, though I do not understand clearly what they mean..."). They have no superhuman abilities in combat, they're just heroes. As per any semi-mythological setting.

Re: Skills System - Out of Synch? OK people, this thread ends now. Someone's suggested that d20 does something better than HERO, and it's not Magic Missile. It's time to move on....

Re: Alternate Skill System I thought of a system very similar to this, but as soon as I'd written it up I realised to was too complicated. I think yours suffers the same flaw. I'd just be happy with some formal guidelines within the rules that offer suggestions on balance and resolution issues with changing the Char element of skills, and some suggestions on how to reflect difference between overall ability and the expertise suggested by skill levels. I'm happy with GM fiat, but I'd like to think - for those inexperienced GMs out there - that it could at least be partly codified!

Re: Costing out a 'Hero Point' multipower Just had a thought. This requires an Abort action to active. Could you be sneaky and link it to a +1 SPD? Although it makes it prohibitively expensive - better off just buying some armour or Missile Deflection. Phil

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Is there a more fundamental control than whether a character lives or dies? Do you enforce PRE attacks against players? At the end of the day player preferences and GM gaming styles will dictate which way you fall in this argument, but I dont think your example helps. It strikes me that any firmly held conviction such as not killing innocents is something that goes beyond the influence of the skill system and into mind control. Interpersonal skills alone should never be able to accomplish something that the *character* would never, ever want, but they *should* be able to accomplish things that the player doesn't want. A less extreme example would be to persuade you or I to kill a parent or girlfriend - Persuasion is not the appropriate mechanism. Persuasion might make a character see the benefits of doing so ("But look at that life insurance policy...."), if used over an extended period of time it could eventually lead to that outcome (You convince Mother Theresa that sometimes death is a blessing, You convince her that sometimes people do deserve death, You convince her that X person deserves death, You convince her to do it). But if Mother Theresa is still hanging around with you after you've been throwing this kind of conversation at her, she deserves everything she gets! It all boils down to trust in the end - can you trust your players to go with the story, to roleplay consistently in the context of their character's motivations? If you can, good luck to you! If not - and I suspect most players cant be trusted all the time to ignore player motivations in favour of in-game - then using influence skills against them can restore some of that "third wall".

Re: Help with a concept Given that Always On is a limitation, only in this case it doesnt limit, I'd definitely say it was Constant, Always On (0) to represent a less limiting form of AO.

Re: Costing out a 'Hero Point' multipower Do you know, I hate Luck so much I'd completely forgotten that in FRED, Steve introduced a range of alternatives mechanisms... including roll agains. If only I'd looked at that in the first place, I could've saved some heartache. Mind you, I still hate it and wont allow it in any other campaigns Thanks for the suggestions, they've been very helpful.

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Costing out a 'Hero Point' multipower Unfortunately, while again this is a really helpful suggestion, it doesnt actually get to the root of my problem. Which is that because some characters have them and some dont, the relative value of them is of utmost importance to me in determining at least a modicum of character generation balance. Allowing humans to spend XPs like this will still require me to evaluate the relative cost of this as a special ability.

Re: Real world vs. Game world

Re: Costing out a 'Hero Point' multipower Which works fine because *every* character gets them. The issue I have is that only Human characters will get Hero points. Hence my desire to roughly cost it out. Nice suggestions on some possible effects though!

Re: Handling interpersonal skills Are people out there seriously roleplaying teenagers trying to get laid? And we wonder why roleplayers are portrayed in a bad light in the media...?

I want to determine the approximate cost of Hero Points by costing them out as if they were a multipower with non-recoverable charges. Context: I'm in the middle of preparing a tweaked version of HERO for use in a Middle Earth first age game. In this, one of the mechanisms I am using to balance Elves (who kick *** like Orlando Bloom can only dream about) and Humans (who kick *** a lot less than Elves) is a fundamental metaphysical difference between elves and men, which is that elves can function outside of God's great plan, whereas Elves cannot. I.e. Free will. The way I'm planning on implementing this is some sort of hero points, which will allow re-rolls, protection against life threatening blows and such like. The problem I have is costing these little blighters! Doing it strictly by the book, I see each Hero point as being a non-recoverable charge in a multipower. One of the ultra slots is either a Heal or extra rPD or similar. That's fine. I have *no* idea how to cost the re-roll, but I'd quite like to keep that as the mechanic rather than simply having a few Skill Levels as one of the possible slots. Would also welcome other suggestions for what might go in this Hero Point multipower. Two extra points: Firstly, the multipower wont be costed out on the charactersheet - it'll just say 'Hero Points'. This exercise is just to give me a Q&D estimate of their points value. The ease of comparison within HERO is one of the main reasons I'm using the system. Secondly, Please dont suggest hate Luck, I hate it and wont touch it with a barge pole

Re: Handling interpersonal skills

Re: Skills System - Out of Synch?