gojira

Re: What Champions Books Would You Like Published in the Future?

I like a lot of the ideas already expressed here.

One idea I had just recently was looking through an old Enemies book, and I realized that there where a fair number of master minds. I thought "Hmmm, a 500-point base, that's big, I hate to have to do one of those. Plus I'd have to do it again if the heroes blew the place up!"

Then I thought, "A big book of enemies bases and hideouts might be just the ticket." So, I'm suggesting it.

Modular bases and prefab stuff that you can just plug in and customise would be a bonus.

Modular floor plans that you can place on the table and use miniatures on would be even better, but also I suspect that might be too much to ask.

Re: Wwyddiyryc?

Could you explain what went wrong with your current campaign? I'm interested to learn so I don't make the same sorts of mistakes. Kind of a GMs helping GMs sorta thing. Plus others might like to know too.

I'm dropping my PC's back to 250 or thereabouts. I like a good selection of skills on the PC's' date=' but their previous characters had wandered up into the 700 point range and I want them to have a look at the world from a little closer to ground level again.[/quote']

 

Wow! That's a big jump! But I really like the 250 point range, it's where Champions started.

 

One thought I had was to sart with 250 pts., sans most skills, perks, contacts etc. Then have the characters write up a good background, then add up to 100 points based on the background alone. The result would be 350 pt characters, but the power level would be 250 points (I'm thinking 8-12 DCs).

 

I haven't tried this yet so I'm not sure if it would work.

Re: Once I get a job...

Yes, Steve has said that all shipping is free anywhere in the solar system. That means with the price of the dollar you would get a great deal on the books if you order online. If you can't find any FLGS, just get them online, only disadvantage is the delay.

Re: New Pulp Art

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TheQuestionMan again.

Re: Pulp Hero, after looking it over

Yes! Details soon please. In particular what does Ch 3 cover? I saw it referenced in Solar Smith.

But a review as soon as you can manage it would be great (or if anyone else wants too do one also).

Re: Magic Items Thread

So, uh, you can't store your hirelings and followers in there?

Too bad.

Re: Magic ammo suggestions?

1. Hmm, I used to play Chill (Mayfair Games) a lot. Lead, silver, rosewood, holy water for starters. Armour piercing and explosive. Get a few clips where the bullets are loaded armour piercing and explosive alternately. AP blows a hole in the armour and EXP follows up with big damage to the meat.

2. Two pistols. And one shotgun for back up. With a gernade launcher. :D

Re: Character (Powered Armor Brick) for review - advice welcome

I am thinking he saw your character's 7 REC and not seen your END RES.

Yeah, totally missed it.

What if you got rid of the end reserve, put half of those 17 points in to REC and END, and used the other half to up your PD and ED? All with OHID lim, of course....

Re: Character (Powered Armor Brick) for review - advice welcome

Looks great overall. I love the multipower attack, handy and fun. A few thoughts:

Yeah I spotted the low rec too. Running too many of his systems would leave him huffing and puffing in a hurry.

If the TK is a "repulsor", should there be a lim "not for grabs" or "only for pushing away"? I thought TK allowed a grab too, unless he can reverse polarity or something and get his repulsor to grab an object.

20 PD with 12 points of resistant defense sounds low for a 400 point game. Check with your GM, but 25 to 35 for PD and ED sounds better to me. Full Damage Resistance might be a good thing too. On the other hand, I've never played with 25% Damage reduction, so maybe that will compensate.

Also, you should think about Hardened, Lack of Weakness, Power defense, and Ego Defense. I didn't notice any skill levels either, with might be important with only a 15 DEX. Think about a couple of levels with his multipower and a couple of overall skill levels too.

Re: What do you think of my first character?

Good write up, now we need to see a character sheet!

The others have good points, make sure that this guy lives through his first encounter. Acrobatics, high DEX, lots of overall skill levels, combat luck, and some kevlar in his costume would all be a good idea. Don't forget to Dive For Cover a lot.

Re: 'Bots 'n' 'Droids 'n' Star Hero

A couple of thoughts. First, I don't own Star Hero, so take this with a grain of salt.

Depending on how androids are constructed, handedness might be reasonable. What if androids have artificial brains that are patterned after human brains? They might develop a preference for using one hand or the other. This is a "ghost in the shell" type question -- what is it that makes us human? I prefer to keep this answer ambiguous. Androids might have a hand preference, and no one is able to explain precisely why....

Likewise, everyman skills might be appropriate for an android. What if androids are programmed with brain tapes copied from real humans? What if androids are programmed by copying from a "master" android brain that was raised like a human, learning slowly? It all depends on how you decide androids work in your world.

Regarding range, robots might not be much better at this than humans, unless specifically designed with some sort of range finder (radar, sonar, etc). Binocular vision isn't that great. There isn't much distance between the eyes to calculate the distance of the sides of the triangle your eyes form to a target. There's a lot more involved in human distance estimation, a lot of it is judging the size of the target and the closeness to other reference objects.

So, I guess in summary I think your ideas are good. However, I think there's enough wiggle room for an individual GM to decide his 'droids are different if he wants to. Rather than absolutes, I think Ambidexterity and Absolute Distance (?) are neat powers a GM can give to 'droids if he feels they fit his campaign. Ditto with the everyman skills.

Re: VPP Nightmare!

She created a follower that is essentially a robot spider but when another robot attacked it with an EMP attack she told me that is was a 'mystical spider' and that that wouldn't work on it.

I agree with the others in many respects, but I have to question this. Why did you send a robot with an EMP attack to destroy her robot? Was the robot breaking the game, or were you just being mean? This was a planned encounter with EMP weilding robots or did you just dream this up after she aquired her robot?

First rule: the players are supposed to win.

I think you need to stop GMing for a while, then talk it out with your players. Find out if the problem is you or her. I'm guessing some of both, but if you're creating NPCs just to take away her powers, I think it may be you more than her.

Re: How to Write (or run) a Pulp Story

Somewhat in the same vein, Gamasutra had an article a while back on What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story. (Free registration required.)

The author relies hevily on Story, by Robert McKee, who is apparently some sort of Hollywood writer extraordinaire. I have no idea who McKee is, but he likely knows more about writing stories than me, so his book might be interesting to check out. The Gamasutra article gives a pretty good summary of the book, but an even quicker summary might be:

Story isn't dialog....Story is CONFLICT. ...

• First, there's a protagonist, a hero.
  
• His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident. (Look at the sabotaged dope deal in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for a good example of this.)
  
• A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life.
  
• The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too hard.
  
• The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
  
• Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up.
  
• The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap.
  A
• fter overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.
  
• The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.

Joe-Bob says check it out.

Re: Solar Smith and the Sky-Pirates of Arcturus now in Online Store

It must be mine!!

P. S.: It is mine, I just downloaded it!

P. P. S.: Curse you for including a secret message, now I'll have to fenagle a way to get a secret decoder ring.

P. P. P. S.: I guess I should buy the Pulp Hero source book now too, huh?

Re: PULP HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See?

I think you should have replied in Code' date=' so that we'd all need decoder rings to read it...[/quote']

You're a cruel, cruel man....

Re: A little medieval music...

If you live in/near a large enough city, a big music story will often have a small medieval section. Just go in and browse. (It's often part of the "world music" or "ethnic music" areas.)

Re: How can you feed this many people?

You might also wish to check out Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. Ancient and medieval armies were about 2 to 15 thousand people in size (or more, but not often), and they did not farm on the march. This book has a wealth of information, including about how much a human eats and how much many pack animals eat too.

Basically, it's done two ways: steal/loot/buy food on the march (but not forage, this slows you down), or resupply from ships. You can't resupply overland with medieval or ancient technology because your pack animals will eat more than they can transport. Carts and roads do not help much, afaik.

The other suggestion I've not seen yet is just to assume that your population eats less than modern humans. If we're talking elves here, then maybe elves are powered partially by magic, and a full grown elf only needs 300 Calories per day instead of 3000 that laboring human needs. Maybe that's why they're all thin and angsty too.

Re: Munchkinpalooza

The Premise:

Your GM has asked you to build a character. You are limited in that you can spend no more than 60 total points on a power framework.

What's the genre and the game premise? I'm not sure what that I can properly munkin unless I know what the GM has in mind....

...because munkin is all about winning vs the GM.

Re: Announcing — DIME HERO ADVENTURES!

Aetherial Earth sounds fantastic! I think I'd have to buy that no matter what. The concept is otherwise cool, it'll depend on exact subject matter and how well previous editons turned out. Some artwork, even recycled from previous products or drawn by YT would be great.

Re: Help with Vehicle Combat (Ships)

So, Cap'n, by your reference then say the HMS Algiers, a three masted 32 gun brig, size 19, 80" long, at a Spd of 1 to reflect the approximate velocity you'd have the surface swimming at 13" to 16"?

To further push the envelope a bit, to reflect better handling on say, a galley at Spd 2 and a sloop at Spd 3, I would drop the swim number to around 7" and 3" respectively?

Thx for yer attention, matey....

I've actually done a little sailing (even skippered a couple of times) and this feels like a neat solution to me. I don't have the vehicle books, but your ideas above feel about right.

As for smoothing out a boats movment, I wouldn't bother. Waves, currents, even the wind itself is not even and steady across the surface of the water, and a sailboats movements are not even and steady either. Boats do NOT move like automobiles. If 3" of extra movement for a phase allows a slower boat to catch a faster one, then so it goes. This might be a better model for how real boats move anyway.

One last hint: bigger boats are faster than smaller ones. They set more sail area, for one, and they have porportionately less hull resistance. That's why clipper ships are HUGE, and fast. But quick deft manuver can allow a smaller slower boat to catch up to a bigger faster one.

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See?

Yeah, one more vote for an SF Pulp setting.

Pulp Hero: 2130-2139 as it were.

Art Deco spaceships. Earth, Mars and Venus are all spacefaring empires. (Mars and Venus are not human, obviously.) Smugglers ply the asteroid belt. The moons Jupiter and Saturn are full of primative, barbaric races barely capable of spaceflight, and there are Things from Beyond further out on Neptune, Uranus and Pluto. (Remember Pluto is probably a captured planet from outside solar system, something reflected in it's eccentric orbit.)

* * *

If you can swing it, Thrilling Places sounds more useful that Madmen and Masterminds. I dunno what's in PH, but TP sounds like a better compliment for a new release.

And a sub-genre book on things that didn't make it into PH might be cool too. 1920's prohibition, 1940's noir, 1920's Cthulhu by gaslight, WWII pulp, etc. If you can come up with five concepts and devote a long chapter to each, people might buy the whole book just to get one or two things they are interested in. Maybe put this in a PDF first and see how it does.

Re: Pulp Film Recommendations

Howard Hughes directed and produced several films in his life. In 1930, he made Hell's Angels. It's a WW1 flick, but its got zeplins in it, as well some interesting details on their operation. (Hughes was a nut for accuracy it seems). Plus it's an awsome movie in it's own right.

I haven't seen Hughes mentioned in this thread yet, so I thought I'd bring his work to your all's attention.

Edit: Add in there Scarface: "An ambitious and near insanely violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall. User Comments: Among the best gangster movies of all time."

Re: Vehicle Search

no' date=' they aren't a DF disadvantage unless being a tow truck is somehow worse than being any other vehicle. [/quote']

 

Duuuuude, didn't you see the -2 COM post earlier?

Re: New HG book concept - opinions requested

I think if spells were pulled from a Grimoire it would be best' date=' in the front section, to list the spell, point cost, END cost and effect. Then have an appendix which actually broke down the spell into its rules components. If a spell required a component not in Sidekick then asterik and refer to 5ER.[/quote']

I'll toss in my $2 (inflation) and say that those astericks could be what drives sales of the larger books. Want to know what that little asterick really means? Pay up, sucka!

Re: The Quintessential BODY

Determining The BODY And Defense Of An Object (pg 447) - "On the Object BODY Table, an object's BODY depends on its total mass; each doubling of mass is +1 BODY. The GM may wish to increase an object's BODY based on its size or the materials it is made of."

 

[This pretty much spells it out for everyone. Any real arguments against BODY being exponential in nature, after this, better be very creative or inspired. Otherwise, the argument will showcase the persons lack of the basic concept of what the word exponential means. Regardless, many of you have made many excellent arguments championing the linear aspect of BODY in game play, to your credit.]

I'll just fling myself into this debate here. *flings* Note the emphasis I've added above. The exponential curve for body is a suggestion, an average. The GM can change it when it makes sense to do so. So can various genre books.

It's all about fun and common sense. Don't like the earth having only 90 body? "It's a pile of dirt held together by gravity. You can't blow it up, it'll just fall back together again. It's gotta have like 10,000 body." So it goes. No biggie, just make up a rule that makes sense to you and move on.

Getting back to a slightly more realistic example, my Champions ("Champions II -- The SUPER Supplement!") lists a battleship as DEF 21 and BODY 26. An aircraft carrier is DEF 10 and BODY 27. If those seem a little low to you, just increase 'em.

Happy?