Tom

Re: combat acceleration & decceleration Most movement powers can only accelerate/deccelerate at a rate of 5"/hex (ie: char with 20" of flight needs to move 4 hexes to reach his full velocity). Adding the accel/deccel Advantage allows you to reach your full velocity in one hex (or come to a complete stop in one hex). Can come in really handy for move-by/through in tight spaces...

Re: My Son What's To Play My kids are just starting to express an interest in trying to play a bit more as well. My son is nine, my daughter is eight. Both have been watching stuff like Power Rangers and Teen Titans for a while and have been watching me and the others play during those infrequent FtF sessions... We've only played a couple of times so far, and we're using randomly generated chars using the tables in CU... Right now, my kids are interested mainly in rolling dice and knocking bad guys all over the map which makes it pretty easy overall... Stuff I'm doing: Intro just enough plot that it isn't just beat stuff up... Keep everything simple (which for me is hard, since I have entirely too much fun complicating things, but I have an online game to really torment people ;D). My patience and the kids attention spans both have finite limits so 'scenes' should be pretty short. Background setting rests pretty heavily on both the aforementioned PR and TT stuff they already know. Avoiding killing attacks and 'mature' themes like the plague...

Re: Ideas for the evil Mr. Smiley sought

Re: Attention: Veterans of the Battle of Detroit! Hmmm, this might take a little explaining, since there is a semi-amusing anecdote involved... My character Speedzone had recently discovered a teen with similar powers who'd taken to wearing a costume and using a name clearly derived from his own. Being new to his own powers, and not really feeling up to trying to mentor a teenager (never mind an enemy who'd be more than happy to accept a 'sidekick' as a valid target), Speedzone had gone searching for alternatives. To make a long story at least a little shorter, he'd managed to find out about Ravenswood Academy... OK, amusing anecdote part one: I'd decided already to put zone's roots in the midwest. He'd attended Millennium City University, and grew up in Oregon, Ohio (campaign city is New Constantinople, Oregon)... Amusing anecdote part two: In play we'd brought out that the name 'Ravenswood' seemed familiar somehow, and had been thinking that it was because Tim (zone's secret ID) had attended MCU -- but as we were playing through the scenario, I realized that it was possible that Tim might have heard mention of superpowered teens in Detroit; Oregon, Ohio being roughly an hour south of Detroit and being in the obvious evacuation path in the aftermath of the battle. The GM (Hermit on these boards) and I were discussing this in chat, the game being on the Hero Central boards, and we decided to make a roll to determine if Tim had MAYBE heard or seen something involving teens. I typed 'act of god, 8-' into the chat die roller, and the result came back a '3'. We decided with that result, he'd encountered something personally, which resulted in the following memory... The story is a little chopped up since it was originally interspersed in a post with what was happening 'real time' for the PC, and it (and related posts) can be found here: Speedzone: A long list Since this memory, Speedzone has managed to meet one of these three teens as an adult (the second boy, the one who kept 'Pulse' from blasting Tim when he'd opened the door)... Note: the events in the memory take place in the parking lot of St Charles Hospital, which is located off of I-280 in Oregon, Ohio. Yes, this is an actual location in the real world...

Re: When Champions Begat Almost asked if you'd put this thread up before or after you dropped a bomb on poor Tim's worldview before I saw the bump and actually bothered to look at the dates... We'll leave Speedzone and Speedtrap out of this since Speedzone is still working his way to his first real kiss with Speedtrap's future mom... ;D Only other char where a legacy is really a possibility would be Kodiak, and since my mind usually freezes up whenever I start trying to comptemplate his reaction when Justice makes the 'request'... However; given the child's biological father is a fairly powerful brick, and effectively a superheroic paladin -- and the mother would literally be the avatar of 'Justice' -- and the child's 'dad' is a high end martial artist/scientist who also had a costumed identity before he retired to take on other responsibilities... Let's just say the final result should be more than potentially a little scary... (and that's without considering the rest of the family tree)

Re: Working on New Constantinople I believe he forgot to mention that he's managed to create an even bigger headache than Foxbat with Captain Chronos -- who may yet be renamed 'Reynold's Wrap' some day... And we're having a blast with New Conn, so let me say thanks to everyone who's contributed their two cents or so... Tom/Speedzone

Re: WWYCD: Hi! We're your Sidekicks!

Re: What I learn playing a GM. Always leave yourself a backdoor... Between the players and the dice, stuff can go in directions you never intended. Sometimes this leads to interesting stories, but sometimes it breaks the game... Leave yourself options. Sometimes you have to fudge the dice a little or save the PCs -- in a 'large' campaign this can be OK if done sparingly. If you're having to do it constantly, something is wrong.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Too lazy to fully explain the context, but it might be funnier this way...

Re: What are the "Cosmic Cubes" of the 5th Ed CU? Hmmm, I think the Dragon Crown and the other Crowns of Krim tend to have more of a 'Tolkien' feel, imo, rather than being analogues to the Cosmic Cube but ymmv...

Re: Working on New Constantinople

Re: "Your Most Embaressing Game Mastering Moment" I'm more than willing to 'fudge' the dice from time to time -- my problem is an unwillingness to ignore a 20pt Disad just because it actually puts the character at risk... (believe me, I could have killed the char in the first phase if I hadn't been pulling the attacks...)

Re: "Your Most Embaressing Game Mastering Moment" The char went enraged and charged the nearest group of Bretheren and it's Initiate... Continued to roll poorly for his attack (PC had martial arts and fairly decent for a normal stats)... Char probably could have done halfway decent against up to two Bretheren, or just the Initiate, with only a little luck... Against five Bretheren and an Initiate he was in way over his head (we'll ignore the second group on the other side of the room, they never came into play)... PC was still on his feet after the first phase, if bloody, with only two Bretheren in position to attack, and the Initiate failed his Magic roll... PC remained enraged, and continued to roll poorly to attack... PC was unconscious and badly wounded before the end of the phase, with more villains still in position to attack... ...we stopped at that point... My belief that chars should never take an easily triggered enraged was firmly reinforced, especially not when they can be caught without 90% of their powers through simple circumstance... What was supposed to be a simple plot hook turned into a simple slaughter when the char construct required the char to turn off his brain and act in a suicidally direct manner...

Re: "Your Most Embaressing Game Mastering Moment" Hmmmm -- both in Champions no less... First time I'm running the game, 3rd edition rules for anyone who wants a time reference... I'd talked the GM into letting me run the session for the fun of it. Me, him, and my (then) wife... In a game where killing people is nearly impossible, I somehow managed to both kill one of the villains (an oops on the part of one of said villain's teammate) and my own PC... More recently... *sigh* I tend to develop scenarios without referring to the players' char sheets. I've discovered I have a bit of a competative streak (and I started out as a wargamer not an RPGer), and if I have the sheets as a reference point, I have a bad habit of setting up the bad guys specifically to deal with the heroes -- leaving the heroes wondering how exactly did they end up stuck in a meat grinder... So I try to generate the story entirely from the bad guy's POV, including a lack of accurate knowledge of whether a hero will show and what he's capable of if it is appropriate to the scene... The scene in question was intended both as a hook to lead to a multi-hero crossover (my game has a lot of heroes who usually act as individuals), and to get some mileage out of the char's PA being built as an OIF w/ Extra Time (only to activate) -- oh, and I acquired this PC from another GM, so the char hasn't really gone through my normal review... DEMON is out to kidnap a specific baby as the sacrifice for a ritual. The PC is present at the time, as the baby is the focus of a social event (PC and all the others in the room are wealthy business types)... Bad guys show up in what should be a massive show of force for a PC w/o pretty much all of his actual powers -- recall, the idea is this is a hook for a bigger story... One of the other rich guys does the cliche'd "you can't just barge in like this" shctick and I roll really well on the RKA he caught in response for his stupidity... I'm thinking I just did a great job of showing how dangerous these guys are, and the player will have to use his brains to minimize damage to everyone else and try to keep track of the target so he and the others can engage is some serious butt kicking later on... Then I do a serious look at the char sheet to try and second guess what will happen next... Psych Lim: protective of women and children... Hmmm, this might get sticky... Enraged: Innocent killed... Uh-oh... If the dice aren't ridiculously nice, this is going to be messy and short... The dice weren't nice...

Re: Which supers movies were better than you expected, which were worse? The Incredilbles: All I had going in was the trailer of Mr Incredible trying to put his belt on -- and failing, and the guy snagging his cape flying up an elevator shaft. I went in expecting a comedy, and having a few laughs. I got James Bond meets spandex with a real movie behind it. One of the very few movies I've ever bought when it came to the video market, and the only one I bought the day it was released. Sky High: It's Disney, and I hate Disney as a rule. But it was supers, and I've got young kids, so I was at least willing to sit through it. Maybe it was the fact it wasn't blatantly ripping off anything else (in my experience), or trying to re-do something I watched as a kid, but it wasn't bad. Which given my feelings towards Disney, is high praise. Batman Begins: I'm not a big Batman fan, so the stuff which doesn't fit canon doesn't bother me so much (unless they're being blatantly stupid, ie: Batgirl as Alfred's neice...). After having watched the earlier Batman movies, my expectations were pretty low, but I found the movie to be quite watchable and a good source of gaming inspiration.

Re: Compound power question A compound power is a single power, though the construct is also used to build partially limited (advantaged) powers. Refer to pages 16 and 94 in 5er. The idea is to be able to construct a single power which has multiple effects per useage -- say a 'Blinding Bolt of Power' which is both a Flash and an EB. Can you simply use a Flash and an EB as an MPA? Of course, depending on how you purchased the powers and whether or not your GM allows MPAs. However, you are using your 'Bolt of Power' and 'Blinding Flare' (two powers) not a 'Blinding Bolt of Power' (one power). The downside to compound powers is that their Active Point cost is the sum of all powers inside the construct, which brings them into possible conflict with APt limitations. The plus (other than creating a unique, possibly defining, power for your character) is that it counts a single slot in power frameworks.

Re: But I want to play Champions Yeah, I know the feeling -- and to an extent it's my own fault. It's hard to just limit myself to only 'one' character sometimes. But sometimes I really want to just concentrate on 'my' char instead of everything on the field plus second guessing the players, and is the main reason I ended up on Hero Central. Of the four games I currently play in, I GM two -- go figure... I've lost track of how many games I've been in that have folded for one reason or another, or I bowed out of. Just like with a FtF game, personalities and expectations do make a difference and when you hit that game where it all comes together, it's worth it. Unfortunately, you can't always tell in advance and they don't always last...

Re: Ann Arbor - Ucon Thanks. Don't know if I can make it, but I've got it marked on my desktop if the opportunity is there.

Re: Ann Arbor - Ucon Ann Arbor is almost close enough for me to consider making the drive -- but a date and more specific location reference would be helpful...

Re: Sharper than a Serpents Tooth Actually, as with just about anything published, the real question comes down to how the villains compare to your PCs, and how you choose to run the adventure... I ran the adventure against three relatively casual players, with chars ranging between ~360 to ~390 points. And quite frankly, I softballed it a lot... In the final battle, Firedrake saw the opportunity to play dead, and he took it with both hands... I didn't use Slither at all as a matter of good taste, in addition to wanting to weaken the opposition... *Doing a little pre-game combat analysis, I realized there was only one PC that Slither really had a chance of affecting with his main attack -- and just as quickly realized the player and the char were both Japanese and female. If you don't make the same connection I did, I'm not going to be the one to educate you* Krait nearly leveled the entire team despite my looking for any reasonable opportunity for him to turn on King Cobra -- until one of my players tried something I would normally consider tactically silly and rolled a crit... I think Krait may still be unconscious from that...

Re: How Have You Used King Cobra/COIL Thus far I have used the Ophidian Plague sub-hook to weaken VIPER pretty much across the board. I ran the primary adventure with my FtF group, but ran the effects of the outbreak in my online game at Hero Central. VIPER's resources along the east coast have been fairly well gutted, and they lost a number of members of Dragon Branch as well (the plague had an interesting side affect with metas created by KC for VIPER originally).

Re: Sharper than a Serpents Tooth And Slither played from ambush -- especially if you have players who are silly enough to seperate at times can be positively lethal against various character types...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Ain't it grand when the dice cooperate...

Re: Sky High Gamer's Eye Micro-Review

How would you determine the number of DCs added to an advantaged attack by powers such as Growth, Shrinking, or Stretching? Simply add the DCs on a one for one basis regardless of advantages as per maneuvers such as Haymaker, or factor in the advantage in a method similar to that used when figuring additional DCs based on movement from manuevers such as a Move Through?