Alverant

Re: Gaspode the Talking Dog

Thanks, but I like the idea given in the first response to http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/81138-Things-that-trigger-Complications-Limitations in that it should cost 0 points. It's not really the Gaspode making people interpret his talking as an inner voice or someone else in the crowd. It's the person's own preconceptions doing it. Call it species prejudice. For example if someone is convinced all Trolls are stupid and hears a troll give a lecture about calculus then the person is going to think the Troll is just parroting what is being whispered to her or she memorized the lecture before hand. That person won't even consider that she is a Troll who is smart enough to give the lecture on her own. So a person who knows that dogs can't talk will invent reasons why they heard the phrase, "You're a worthless jerk." after kicking some mutt. So if the person is doing it to themselves, why should it cost points?

One of the characters in Terry Prachett's Discworld series is a talking dog named Gaspode. No, I'm not going to ask how to build him. It would be easy; remove Animal Intelligence limitation and add English and Wolf languages. No, I'm wondering how to build another one of his "abilities".

[from his wikipedia entry]

However, since everyone knows that dogs can't speak, people tend to interpret his speech as their own personal thoughts, a tendency which Gaspode regularly uses to wangle food from passers by.

The few people immune to this effect are those open minded enough to consider the possibility of a talking dog. Would this be the telepathy power or simply the skills psychology or ventriloquism to make people think that Gaspode's voice is either their own inner voice or a random voice in the crowd? I'd probably add a -1/4 limitation regardless for "Doesn't work on anyone who thinks a talking dog is possible" which would pretty much be anyone who the GM thinks would further the plot.

Re: Thoughts on the new Champions Universe for 6E

My main complaint is with Defender. He's an powered armored hero whose costume doesn't look much like powered armor. It looks more like spandex with a helmet. Worse it leaves his jaw and neck exposed. I could see someone like Grond saying "Hero has twist of top!" or a good punch to the face taking his head off.

Witchcraft needs a better name.

Dr.Destroyer should NOT be a mage. His power should come from the fruits of his own genius and not some mysterious shadow dimension.

Ironclad is a bet better built as a gladiator. But I don't like a brick using a HKA weapon. They should either have a club or (ideally) go barehanded.

Replacing Nightwind with Kinetix, very good idea. But I would still like to see Nightwind as an example character.

Re: GMing style, what else apart from 'Round the Table'?

Then you may need to get a bit heavy handed - threaten to rewrite their characters for them. It sounds like they may not fully understand the concepts involved (are they new to RP?). A GM can't afford to be a wimp. In some ways he has to take a leadership role - all in the interest of making it enjoyable. A football game doesn't work if there is no teamwork.

"New is a relative term" At this point all of the players have years of experience RPing. The "newest" one is the wife of one of the players. She has to look up the rules half the time, but she's a very good role player. Experience isn't the problem. The role-playing style is. Everyone wants to have fun. It's just that some people's definition of fun involves challenging the GM and other players (note I said players, not characters).

Re: GMing style, what else apart from 'Round the Table'?

How many players do you have? (not counting the GM)

 

What are their main attributes? (Brick, mentalist, detective, etc)

 

What kind of main complications (or disad) do they have? (show off, DNPC, psychological, etc)

 

This info may be helpful. And also one small example would be nice. (Brick has an NPC that is involved with his secret ID. Which means the others wouldn't be there...)

I'm not sure how much info would be helpful. We have 6 players (self included) made up of 2 married couples, the brother of the wife of one of the couples, and myself. But we're pretty independent and like having complete freedom in designing our characters. As such in all our campaigns no characters have ever been connected before teaming up (even when requested by the GM). The backgrounds are too diverse to forge any real common points of interest. The teams function more like a business than anything. There's very little teamwork in and out of combat and non-hero business.

That makes things extra tough. My first real GMing in years is a Dark Champions campaign and I did ask that the other players take it easy on me and try to write characters who could connect with each other. No such luck. The characters had NOTHING in common and the players were too busy IRL to try and rework their backgrounds so there were some links. That's what made me want to come here and ask for help. At the end of one session one character was seriously wounded and effectively out of action for the next session (I flirted with trying to stick to a calendar). I tried to engage him but he didn't want to do anything but rest and recover. Can't blame him when you're at 2 BODY.

I like all the advice so far. What I really need is a way to get the players to participate more. I like the idea of a player who's "off camera" take over the role of NPC. I would have to see if my group would go for it though.

Re: Oil spill

I only have one character who can breath underwater, Snark-E. He would gather the people responsible for this (BP executives) and they're "toys" (cars, planes, etc) then use them to plug the hole in the pipe. If they're REALLY nice about it, he'll give them scuba-gear beforehand and maybe use them last.

I've been part of a regular gaming group for a while. We alternate GMs and I've been behind the screen a few times. But it seems like in all the games the GM turns to each player in turn and spends about half an hour developing their own plot line then a fight pops up related to one of the plots and everyone does the combat. It's fun and everything, but it's like unless you're taking notes for the group (a necessary and thankless task) a player spends several hours doing nothing. They're watching other players take their turn most of the time. That doesn't seem fair. Sure, you can try to weave two or more plots together so those two players can actually role play longer. But how long can you keep that up? How many amazing coincidences can you use before it gets forced?

Maybe we've been doing it wrong all these years. I want to hear about what alternatives a GM has to "OK what do you do?"

Re: nations with royal families

Not sure if it counts as a royal family, but the Vatican does have a monarch-for-life of sorts who is elected by a kind of nobility. There's no real chance of a dynasty or family. But in a fictional history a family who knows what could happen.

Re: So, are Bricks more expensive in 6th Edition?

I see Damage Negation as a way to render immunity. As a GM I would nigh-require any DN to only be vs a particular kind of attack. If done right, it's a way to make villains that require heroes to defeat and can't be handled by local police. For example 6d6 Damage Negation vs conventional weapons (-1/2) is a mere 20 points but makes you immune to whatever the cops have. You don't have to worry about lucky shots to the head or defeat by a thousand "2 stun gets through" attacks for example. Meanwhile a hero with 6d6 heat ray vision would have better luck than a dozen cops since his attack won't be blocked by DN. OTOH if the national guard just happen to be nearby guarding a shipment of bazookas that would be a different story.

Re: So, are Bricks more expensive in 6th Edition?

Now I've got to re-read that part.

 

[Edit] Crap! I did get it backwards! Up to 400 pts, including 75 pts in complications.

Yeah, I don't like the wording of that either. On one hand, it's great for new players because it's clear about how many points you have to spend (400 pts not 325+75 in disads). Plus it's clear as to how many disads you are required to have, one way or another. So a new player can have however few disads he/she wants but still have to come up with 75 points total. But us veteran players still see it as base plus disads.

Re: WHY CSL's

One advantage to CSL is that it's easier to justify limitations on them to make it cheaper. If you're going to apply a limitation on the CV stats (like a focus) it's harder to justify; you're usually left with a suit of armor or a magic maguffin amulet. CSLs with a focus limitation can be weapon sites, a higher quality weapon, etc. More importantly as a CSL focus you can toss the focus to someone else who needs it (usually done in Heroic level campaigns).

I remember reading about stooge-jitsu in an old issue of Adventurer's Club for 4th edition. Has anyone converted it to 6th? I lost my AC collection a few years ago in a flood and didn't really miss them except for little things like this.

Re: Please help me understand

Okay I can see how that works, and I will be using Elemental Control for my lightning character.

 

Another bit of help however, another gamer in my group wants to do a character like Lina Inverse from Slayers, how would you set up her array of spells?

I hope there's no Dragon Slave spell. (Tried to do it in the Fanasty campaign my group sometimes runs and the GM didn't allow it.) For a new playing a VPP can be very confusing. I would suggest having the main spells in a multipower then giving her like a 10pt VPP for other minor spells. Here the VPP wouldn't need much defining, just guestimate if a spell can be done in 10 points and allow it. Provided it's not used in combat and you let other players buy it for their powers it should not be an issue.

Example spells for the VPP

Magic fishing line: Bonuses to Fishing skill (used in I think the 2nd episode of Slayers)

Bump of Direction (toss stick in the air and it lands pointing north)

Life Support Breath Water

Darkness 1 Hex

Shatter Spell (1 pip RKA vs fragile objects)

Re: Must have books

Okay, I've been out of the loop for a while (my last Champs game was back in 2004) and I haven't been keeping up on current gaming events.

 

For runnning a 5th Ed CU campaign, what books are absolutely critical?

 

I currently have HERO System 5th Ed, CHAMPIONS Genre Book and CU. I've already heard about CU: News of the World. Any other recommendations?

 

I don't know what city I want use as a playground, er, setting. So I don't know if I want to track down Millenium City or not...

If you've been away for a while I think Villainy Amok would be useful to give you adventure ideas and ways to set your campaign apart from others.

Everyman gives you a host of NPCs to use.

Depending on your level of realism I would suggest getting a history book and atlas of the campaign city if you're going to hold it in a real city. Google is also handy for finding bits of flavor text. Say one of the characters has a favorite bar, well you can give the bar a real name and have pictures. I did this in my Dark Champions campaign and I think people noticed the effort.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

I'm confused. What on earth are "small caps"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps

Basically it's capital letters shrunk to the size of lower case letters. In some books the first line or word of each chapter is done this way.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

Well' date=' the Grim Reaper (or any other Death figure) probably shouldnt be an evil figure, per se. You gotta keep balance in the world after all. I mean it does seem a big amount of fictional immortals eventually become either suicidal or megalomaniacal. ( i guess it would make sense that after a couple thousand years life would get kind of boring).[/quote']

In the Piers Anthony books, Death's first case is pulling the soul from a woman who's body was mangled in an car wreck. Later on in the book he rescues a drowning man and convinces a woman not to kill herself because he feels it wasn't their time to go. In a later book Death is outraged when Fate accidentally makes the threads of life too short and 20 babies die in the neonatal ward of a hospital due to nurse's mistake. It's the way he is compassionate to his clients and the respect he has for them is what makes him a force for good.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

The version of Death in Terry Pratchett's Diskworld books speaks in all upper case (commonly called 'CAPS' online). I believe the books also state that he doesn't actually speak' date=' you just hear his voice in your head.[/quote']

 

My goof. I only have the audio book versions. I thought it was small caps though. The narrator does a good job with the voices. You can almost hear the small caps and in Constable Dorful's case how the first letter in each word is capitalized.

Re: THE Grim Reaper

100 PRE only for fear attacks (all creatures fear Death)

There's also the Terry Pratchett version of Grim Reaper who speaks in lower case who would have a DNPC Death of Rats worth 0 points since DoR can't be harmed any more than the Reaper.

I can see Death being a hero in an "angel of mercy" way. In the Incarnations of Immortality series he was more sympathetic to people. He made frequent use of the time-stop watch to talk with his clients to make it easier for them and has honored a few last requests. He also answered "fan" mail and promised a little girl who feared dying in her sleep that he will wake her up if that is her destiny. It was a pretty good series if you're patient. Even Satan becomes a somewhat-sympathic figure (or at least as much as the incarnation of Evil can be).

Re: Champions movie

I wouldn't use Dr.Destroyer directly. I'd make someone else the main villain. Maybe the Ultimates. Then at the end you pull the clichie of Dr.D sitting in a throne saying "All is unfolding as I have foreseen." Then work it up in the second movie, drop a few more hints. And in the third movie they have to fight him. Since the first movie is almost always an origin story, we shouldn't have a bunch of new heroes defeat one of the biggest baddies in the campaign.

Re: Champions movie

I must admit' date=' that's a name I can't bring to mind in connection with the Champions Universe. Who is he and where's he from?[/quote']

 

Hardpoint is an example character in the 5e and 6e books along with Tarus ... and never seen again...

He kept the same basic origin both times (unlike Tarus who went from a half-demon to a genetics experiment between the editions) of a boy genius who saw too much anime then built his own set of powered armor to fight evil. I like the character. He has potential but never got past being an example on how to build a suit of powered armor.

Re: Arabian Knights

There's an anime called El-Hazard the Magnificent World that had an Arabian theme which someone converted to Hero system. There was an RPG book by BESM but is long out of print (your local game store MIGHT have a copy). It's not pure Arabian Knights but it does provide an interesting setting.

Re: Dimensional Fun!

I remember in Champions Worldwide the member of Tiger Squad who has cold-based powers got his power by pulling it in from another dimension.

Re: Dimensional Fun!

I remember TV Heaven with the white clouds and philly cream cheese. The planet which is really an Edomite. The original planes of the Edomites and their enemies.

Re: Would you play a game with pre-generated characters?

OK' date=' how about I take my question a point further. Let's say the character sheet is pre-gen but the origin and back story are left open? You would need to write this part of the character yourself. Does that change anyone's interest?[/quote']

 

If you weren't going to bring this up, I was. Letting the players come up with the origin and backstory would help, but I'd go a step further. For the sake of balance and team building, I wouldn't mind the GM making 300-325 points of a 400 point character and deciding on half the complications and letting the player finish the job. That way they can make the character their own while not throwing the GM any curves and cut down on abuses. For example the GM makes an ice based character to serve in a ranged attack and support role and the player can decide if he/she is a mutant, has power armor, magic, alien, etc. So you have the best of both worlds.

 

In my gaming group I think one or two players wouldn't mind some of the work being done for them, the rest want to make it themselves and not feel bounded by what would work in a team environment.

Re: Internal Computer

Kazei 5 will have rules for internal computers as well as a sample build.

Kazei 5 is 4th edition. I want something that's 6th edition legal.