Phil

Re: Music Instrument Familiarity 1) This is overly anal 2) I'm interested too I think categorising on familiarity categories is an exercise in madness, because of differing similarities across the groups. Saxophone is a doddle for any oboist, because the fingers are near identical and the embouchre is close enough. Same with the Recorder. Flute on the other hand has very similar fingers but significantly different embouchre and remains the one woodwind instrument that stubbornly escapes me! English Horn (yuck - much prefer the European Cor Anglais!) is identical fingering to oboe and if you're an oboist take the earliest possible opportunity to play one, because it's a wonderful experience! Basson, embouchre wise is like an easy oboe, but the larger double reed is simple enough for pretty much any wind instrumentalist to blow. However, finger-wise it is not at all like oboe but more akin to the clarinet, which confuses the hell out of me at the higher ranges with all those odd side keys! Similarly, tuned percussion like the glockenspiel probably is equally familiar to kit player as to a pianist. I'm not a string-player, but an excellent violinist friend of mine would often lark about strumming his violin as if it were a banjo. I suspect transferability is extremely high between these instruments, but that may depend on formality or informality of musical education. I doubt if many rock guitarists could pick up a cello, but I bet most cellists could relatively quickly do the reverse. If you really wanted to do this accurately, you might be better off evaluating each instrument in terms of a range of sub-skills of which the three core *might* be Listening/Pitching, Rhythm and Technicality (you could potentially add Reading in here). Some instruments require higher levels of the generic skills such as Brass (Listening/Pitching) and Percussion (Rhythm) and as such, are more quickly 'familiar' for a competent musician. On the other hand, no matter how good your pitching and rhythmic ability, you wont be able to just pick up the clarinet and play a tune, because it has a high technical requirement. Of course, there's another more narrative familiarity to consider, which is environment. Most of my playing has been in Symphonic Windband, so I play oboe and saxophone (and piano), taught myself bassoon and clarinet years ago, tampered with percussion, and know I can get a tune out of a trumpet or trombone. A guitarist with a rock n roll background will have spent occasional free moments bashing kit or playing electric bass. I almost suspect that the best way to do this is to have two skills - core musical skill, and Professional Skill to pick up the slack and fringe familiarities. After all, I cant imagine many games where having a musical familiarity is worth more than a fraction of a point. Phil "How many points for Musical Familiarity: Baton?"

Re: ORCS! What makes them our favourite enemies??? I agree with most of the comments above as to why Orcs are so popular. I've also just started reading 'Orcs' by Stan Nicholls, a fantasy novel focused around an orcish warband which is really interesting reading. Orcs are still a violent, blood-thirsty warrior race, but it casts them in a slightly different perspective. Personally the Orcs I like are definitely more Tolkienesque and First Age at that. Which means that they are extremely tough, compared to 'normal' people, and a handful can quite happily see off many times their number of human peasants. It's just that the Heroes in that setting are tougher still, so that balance of single hero vs. marauding horde can be maintained

Re: Door opened in an airplane in flight. What next? Yeah, well, of course turbulence is the main reason for keeping the seatbelt on - but that's not as cool as a huge hole ribbing out of the side of the plane, is it?

Re: Door opened in an airplane in flight. What next? Or maybe make more people do what I do, which is keep the seatbelt on for the whole flight. People removing seatbelts but staying seated? - that's one thing I don't think I'll ever understand

Re: Links to high-lim Powers I think it's fine - sure, you're calling it linked, but it's not really very different from OIHID. Same value, same sort of implication, same possibility of being caught without it somehow (e.g. being Flash to Mental Sense).

Re: Tri-system experiment

Re: Tri-system experiment

Re: Tri-system experiment BTW, that's 10 END against Avowed Enemies of Thia Halmades I think that's key. Of the three game systems, the only one I had time to do this with on the character sheets was SAS (although if anything I went too far and spent too much time referencing the numbers myself). Still, it *does* make life a lot easier for newbie players and also helps them better capture the feel of the game - they spend less time worrying about optimising the numbers and more declaring creative uses of power and stretching the boundaries of the system, as any good superhero should!

Re: Tri-system experiment Which actually reminds me of the very first time I stumbled across Champions, in a superhero scenario in White Dwarf called Peking Duck (issue 66 IIRC). I started reading the scenario, because I loved supers tho at that time had never seen a SHRPG, and stopped reading as soon as I hit the first character write-up because it was just an impenetrable mass of numbers! That and one or two of the characters had rather too many with CSLs. That really added to the confusion! The conversion rules in Reality Storm looked off in a number of areas, evidenced most strongly by the fact that the pre-gens (Champions / The Guard) didn't even *use* the conversion rules! Some odd conversions of things like Massive Damage (SAS) <-> Find Weakness (HERO) which didn't work for me. And no consideration given for STUN when determining SAS Health, even though Stun is more important than Body in most Champions fights. Of course Time of Crisis was better - it had Nazis and intelligent Gorillas in it! What more do you need?! Phil p.s. one other comment. We chose two pre-gen characters from each of the respective games, thinking that this would mean that each character would be optimised for at least one of the three realities. Not true. The SAS pre-gens were absolute pants and would need serious tweaking to work in a long-term campaign IMHO. Sure, Slipstream may be a super-speedster, but what use is he when he would take all of his Extra Attacks to take down just one average minion, and against anyone with any kind of armour he might as well go home. Or go for a 10,000kph suicide splat

Re: Tri-system experiment Cmon Doc, that's vanilla 5ER! Special limitation applied to Hand Attack because to reflect the fact it's limited STR (+1d6, 5 Active Points, 3 Real Points) To add to Doc's points, the game was fabulous. We even got our group playing in character from the very start, which was a result as they were dealing with pre-gens! Few further thoughts on the systems: HERO: Players really didnt seem to mind the fact that they all had the same number of actions in M&M and mostly the same number of actions in SAS. I wonder whether for 'average' supers groups, HERO's Speed may in fact be an unnecessary complication? (HERESY!!!) I would also say that of the 3 systems, HERO really has got the balance of costs absolutely on the nail. Or as near as dammit. Except for skills, which I've always felt were over-priced! Also, something has happened in HERO between 4th and 5th edition that I hadn't noticed. DEF has stayed around the same, but DC has gone up by 2, meaning that Defender can only take 2 average hits with his own EB before he's out for the count. SAS on the other hand with its traditional HP mechanic didnt seem to fit Supers very well. On which note... SAS: Must be one of the most irritating RPGs I've read (certainly since RMFRP). The book is very badly organised (e.g. Rule on lifting capacity is found under the Superstrength power). It is also not well designed for the supers-genre in certain areas, e.g. it encourages Speedsters to attack and then run 30 miles to get away. Might be possible, but it's not something you see the Flash doing on a regular basis. Speedsters again - don't run into anything while running or flying above c. 150mph. You WILL die. Lots. A Tri-stat Superman doing a full speed power dive into an alien mother ship would be a smear all over its surface! While planning the game I did think that tri-stat really ought to be quad-stat and have a separate one for Agility/Dex type of thing. But actually, in play, I felt that the 3 stats worked just fine and gave a nice quick roll-under mechanic. Although separate costs for different skill is a pain in the botsie. Big mitigating factor that probably saves SAS, however, is Kreutzwritter - a truly cool villain M&M: Agree with the general comments that HERO is definitely the most effective at modelling any ability, that M&M probably is not a great generic system and, yes, I too missed the 3d6 bell-curve. My thought on that is to raise the M&M character 'level' to 14, meaning that on average all the main abilities will be +14 thus reducing the impact of the die roll from +/- 200% to +/-142%. Well, it's a start.... I also feel that the characteristic costs may be a tiny bit awry in M&M - for the cost of 18 in every stat a la Batman or Cap America, I can have a normal guy with EB, forcefield and an array of super-senses). While the same is true in HERO, attributes contribute a lot more than they do in M&M. Reflex saves are broken - not reduced in any way by being immobile, so you can grapple someone and he can still dodge out of the way of that explosion even if you get toasted! But in general I rather like the elegant simplicity of the uniform Save mechanic, though think it could be better to keep all the die rolling with one party - so A rolls to hit and damage, rather than A rolling to hit and B rolling to save. Oh, and one other comment. The players enjoyed the 'prologue' against a band of moderately powered gadgeteer villains more than they did the climaxes of the three main Acts against reality-respective mega-villains (Kreutzwritter, Mechanon, Omega) because it made them feel more like superheroes. Whatever that means I'll let Doc Democracy put up the detail of the *story*. I'm more of a systems kinda guy Phil p.s. Now to think of an excuse to bring those three realities back in conjunction with one another. After all, inter-dimensional mega-villains are never truly defeated....

Re: M&M to HERO I've just about got it finished now. Just need to translate it from nerdy Excel into more user-friendly Word

Re: Elves Yes, I have elves in my Fantasy Hero game. They are generally much more powerful than normal humans, but balanced by the fact that all PCs are considered to already be at the level of 'hero' status. There are four different types: Noldor, Sindar, Falathrim and Laiquendi.... hehe, guess what fantasy world *my* game is set in ;-) Phil

Re: What I learn playing a GM. The more prescriptive you are with your planning, the more likely the players are to do something you didn't expect. So, for each scene, work out what they will learn, what they might learn and what they might if they're really lucky stumble across.... and just don't worry so much about where they find it or who tells them. After all, if you're the only one who knows the plot, no-one knows if it changes. (with thanks to Doc Democracy, who helped clarify something I kind of already knew but in terms we can all understand!)

Re: Costing extra END Can you not Drain everything, just as you can Aid everything? Seems like you ought to be able to, but I cant recall off the top of my head.

Re: Costing extra END Agreed. Rather than an Aid (Naked Advantage), it's a Drain (Naked Limitation). Like it a VERY lot.

Re: Nightwing Guess this depends in part from campaign to campaign, but 6m leaping aint bad. Especially when you combine it with the Swinging. Given long jump world record is around 9m, perhaps 4" (8m) might be about right.

Re: Champions Worldwide... Everywhere BUT The British Isles?

Re: Nightwing Agree with the comments above. I also thought that perhaps 8DEF armour is a bit much - thats more than platemail! I'd be inclined to lower this but to include some sort of Combat Luck to beef it back up.

Re: Champions Worldwide... Everywhere BUT The British Isles? Oh god. Please, no King Arthur / Excalibur-based heroes. No 'Britannia' based heroes. No stereotypical scots warriors, Robin-hood archers, Alfred-the-butler types or cockney wideboys. We Brits are real people too!

Re: Earph!

Re: Recommend a fantasy world map? I'm a tremendously biased geek, but I think Tolkien's map of Beleriand is great, lots of interesting features and most likely a world that your players wont be familiar with. Advantage or disadvantage is that it doesnt go down into a huge amount of detail, e.g. no settlements apart from the really major ones.

Re: Block Which of course undermines the general consensus that block is non-sfx dependent! Good ole inconsistencies, 5th edition and still going strong

Re: Fictional Cities I've always wanted to set a supers campaign in London. Which is clearly not a fictional city! Need to warn players in advance though, because all those points spent on swinging and gliding really arent going to be a huge amount of use

Re: Block

Re: Block I don't have any problem with BLOCK being an all-or-nothing maneuver. The name is irrelevant, it's describing a particular type of SFX. However, I do also want to be able to recreate a genre staple, whereby an attempt is made to parry a blow and it proves to be too powerful, causing weapons to break, arms to bruise and/or knockback to occur. Short of custom-buying every character a 'Parry' maneuver based on purchasing PD, is there an existing maneuver that can recreate this? Perhaps there should be some kind of maneuver where characters can opt to defend an attack by opposing STR vs. STR, with a Martial maneuver equivalent which gives a +15 to STR? Phil