Alverant

Re: How does a world die? Actually I put this here because this is the most popular of the Hero boards I frequent. Another reason is that the concept of a dying world happens a lot in sci-fi and when superheroes goes off into space. At some point there's a narration that goes something like "Quonus ... a dying world where the people struggle for life on a daily basis"

Re: How does a world die?

Re: How does a world die? Where did you hear this about nuclear winter? An asteroid impact puts a lot of crud in the atmosphere from one source and has to spread around the world. A nuclear war with lots of detonations puts crud into the atmosphere from many sources around the world. So how do you know the impact an asteroid would lose by spreading would exceed smaller explosions that are already there?

There have been some settings in sci-fi and fantasy that highlights a dying world. John Carter has a dying version of Mars were life is worth little and cannibalism is common. Dark Sun is another dying desert world. But my question is how did these situations come about in the first place? The carbon and water cycles would keep life going in some form. So unless some external force takes away a massive amount of material from a planet, how do you kill a world?

Re: Mexican Vampires There was a Mexican movie called "Samson vs the Vampire Women" which was turned into a famous MST3K episode (TV's Frank's last show). I don't remember much except the vampire women could be fought by a wrestler with a pure heart and were pretty easy to kill in their coffins (they couldn't defend themselves against a shirtless man with a mask, cape, and torch).

Re: Good-by Brick For STR drains, I see inherent problems. Bricks have a lot of STR. So to drain it you either need to get in close and risk getting hit or add the Ranged advantage and reduce your drain dice (which makes any Power Def the brick has more effective). Most bricks have a Brick Trick multipower as part of the archtype. Some of it includes blowing away smoke and gas, throwing things, and range-induced strength. Best thing against bricks is to keep them out of reach of anything, especially yourself. Against a flying brick, a ranged INT drain makes them too stupid to know they're suppose to be fighting you. Then you leave them alone so they don't act out of self-defense. Best to do it when they're alone. "Enraged When Friends Attacked" applies regardless of INT.

Re: Mind link to a vehicle So what I'm reading is that to do what I wanted, I would need additional programs. What about the Combat Piloting skill? I bought that to cover any combat situation I might have forgotten. The concept was he could control his mech mentally via the cybernetic interface. It could be blocked by radio jammers or distance. Because both man and machine had the link, I didn't see a need to reestablish contact. Since controlling a robot mentally is taxing, I didn't do it until after Skippy was entangled and gave no new directions after he was knocked out. We can't think of everything so I played it as the concept directed.

Re: Remote control robot Thanks. That's my GM. Should have looked harder before posting a new thread.

In a Star Hero campaign I joined, my character had a robot vehicle (the character was 3ft tall and the robot was human sized). Both the character and the robot bought Mind Link to represent how the character with cybernetics can interface with his robot and direct it from a distance. In the first game my character was entangled so he directed his robot to confront the attacker. Now the GM has second thoughts. So my question is, what is the "right" way to buy cybernetic remote control? The FX of the mindlink is cybernetics in the character and a receiver in the robot. When he pilots the robot, he plugs into it via the interface. To switch to another robot requires a great deal of fine tuning and adjustments making it impractical on a regular basis (he can't say, "I'll use the spider-bot today.") The link can be jammed like any other radio transmission. LOS is not required.

Re: Aliens watching our television In the Sun Times Quick Takes column a few weeks ago said "a ruling by government regulators that Welsh Dragon Sausages will have to change its name because the product does not contain dragon" (re-explained Dec 13th) So people started suggesting other product names with "misleading" labels (printed examples along with my own). Graham crackers Irish stew Peter Pan Peanut Butter General Tso's Chicken Chinese fortune cookies Colombian coffee Quaker Oats Jimmy Dean sausages Toad in the hole (english breakfast food, toast with a hole in the middle where a fried egg goes) Babe Ruth candy bars Catfish Chunky Monkey Ice Cream Moosehead Beer Girl Scout cookies

Re: Does anyone here play Cyberpunk HERO? As someone who has CP2020 and CP203X, what did you think of 3rd edition? Personally I was surprised on how they made the world WORSE. I mean I thought 2020 was bad, then I read how things really went to heck in a hand basket. The transition from 2nd to 3rd edition starts with the PCs getting nuked and goes downhill from there. I think the new alt.cults came up too quickly. I would have put it in 5X or 6X, you know give a few decades for these new cultures to evolve and establish their own traditions. But the mechanics... ugh. Where else is the best option for not getting hit in a firefight without expending a lot of points is getting down on one knee? (There's a big bonus for half-sized non-moving objects.) I'll give him credit for using action figures. It's different. (Note, I did not say it was better, just different.)

Re: Time Travel and Potential Plots. How would time travel work in this campaign. We start off with the assumption that you can alter your universe's past. But what if you can't? What if you can only alter the past of another universe. So that would mean another universe can alter our past. So we have a cold war between universe A and B by messing with each other's history. Or you can have the PCs be the ones living in an altered present. All of a sudden some Time Police show up and say, "Well we just saved the world by convincing Hitler to betray the USSR earlier instead of later." The PC historian would say, "But he always intended to betray the USSR as soon as he as he could." "Yep, thanks to us. Now where is the Time Police HQ, we'd like to report in." "There's no such thing as the Time Police." "You sure?" "Yes." "Oh BLEEP!!" How about alien time travelers seeking safe harbor on Earth. Astronomers detect a certain star cluster changing constantly and find out two races are altering each other's history. Aliens travel outside the "sphere of temporal influence" where they are safe from the fluxuating past and ask for help in ending this problem once and for all time.

Re: Everyman Review on RPG.Net

Re: Good animated supers flicks? I didn't like the series much, but The Tick had some interesting ideas about what happens in society when superheroes become commonplace. (A superhero bar with a sidekick area out back for example.)

Re: (best ever...) reasons for becoming a superhero "I get to use these cool powers and not be hauled off to prison for it!"

Re: Cluttered Universes

Re: WWYD - Marvel's Civil War I think the reason why blame was place on the NW was because Speedball (the comic relief) was giving the order. Plus it reminds me of how the police sometimes get blamed when things don't go right. To the public, this was a group of teens doing something they shouldn't have been doing and hundreds of children died as a result. As for Civil War itself, since the NW was my favorite team I was upset at what they did to them. I figure this would either usher in the Steel Age of comics (after Iron Age) or cause massive problems for Marvel itself. Between this and Annihilation we're looking at a major shift in the Marvel Universe they may not be able to fix without pushing the resent button. Back to topic, one of my characters already is registered with the government. He was a consultant for the military and got his powers on the job. My main character has the civilian ID of being one of the top scientists in the study of superhuman powers. Registering with the government may actually help him if he wasn't a mage. My other character wouldn't care except he would use his new connections to further some personal goals.

Re: Code vs Killing (Total) CvK for villains is a different story. That would mean they don't take hostages, threaten innocents, and are careful fighting authorities (not only so they don't kill anyone, but also the stray energy blast didn't do any harm). So I'd disagree that bronze/silver age villains had CvK, they just weren't as successful with the K. Let's face it, if you're threatening to pull an asteroid into the Earth, you have no problems with killing.

Re: Code vs Killing (Total)

Re: Code vs Killing (Total) Actually my character only had a moderate CvK. I know this is a topic about total, but I'm a realist when it comes to the personalities I play. I know I will never face situations they do so I give them some flexibility. Now he and another character were each given a trigger. We were ordered to push the button if Dr.D betrayed us. We were chosen because out of the group we were most likely to follow through on this order (the others either had stronger CvK or too new to be trusted by UNTIL). The other character didn't think the buttons would work either. Thinking it was disabled was reasonable since Dr.D knew about the bomb and said he removed it. Now is Dr.D one to gloat if he's not 100% sure about something? Basically we had it on good authority it was a futile gesture. Turned out we were wrong.

Re: Code vs Killing (Total) If I may come at this problem from the side, what qualifies as "killing"? If you can extract someone's soul from the body, then destroy the body is it really killing since the essence of what that person is lives on? Likewise, does a total mind wipe (or causing severe brain damage) that obliterates the person's personality and memories but leaves the body intact and functional mean they're not truly dead? This is for real life as well as superhero questions. If you remove the artificial life support keeping a person who's in a persistent vegetative state alive, is it killing them or did the person die when they entered this condition? Since the issue of sentience has been brought up, if you take away the sentience, say turning the person into a fly then swatting the fly, does that count? What happens if it's a matter of spiritual belief? Say a character has religious convictions that state that anyone who dies is reincarnated and that no one is really killed by simply causing the body to die. How does "redeem-ability" enter into CvK? The villains in Crowns of Krynn and The Monster have each of them being "irredeemably evil". If the CvK is based on the notion of giving people the chance to turn away from evil, then does it apply to those who rejected that choice? Then there's accidental killing. In a campaign I'm in, Dr.Destroyer was captured, but temporarily released if he will defend Earth against an alien invasion. To insure his cooperation, my and another character were given remotes to a cortex bomb to use when Dr.D betrayed us. After the invasion the group found ourselves in the sewers (via emergency teleportation) and Dr.D was attempting to take over the world. Big surprise. My character figured that the cortex bomb was either removed or neutralized, a logical assumption given this villain, and pushed the button out of frustration. He didn't think it would work. However the bomb was magically enchanted to counter such things. So while the world is listening to Dr.D monologing, they hear this *buffft* then see blood oozing out of his helmet as he falls over. So here's a character with a CvK who just casually and accidentally killed someone. What happens?

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas Something that hasn't been addressed yet is the PCs lives and goals. Now I don't mean "end the dystopia" goal. Characters have their own needs, wants, desires, friends, dreams, etc so use them in these formulas. Does the PC have a rival? Give him a chance to take the rival out. Does a PC run a business? Threaten it or give him a chance to expand it. You can do a lot if the other PCs are employed by the PC owning the business. Adventures in many genres have a lot in common. The difference is atmosphere and attitude. In cyberpunk the PCs motives can be more self-centered than superheroes. Theft, revenge, whims, etc are perfectly acceptable reasons to do anything in cyberpunk.

Re: [Worst Ever...] Reasons to be a superhero I've used this: "The voice in my head won't shut up about becoming a hero until I started being one."

Re: Build Challenge: Mythbusters! Do you really need Persuasion to get people to want to watch that? Especially with the popularity of reality TV! I'm willing to bet that at least half the people who posted on this thread would eagerly watch the Mythbusters take on that challenge. (Self included.) Two thirds if the target of the experiment was Buster.