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Midas

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Everything posted by Midas

  1. Does a post from someone who hasn't been no the site for years count? And in the spirit of the thread:
  2. Midas

    Sliders

    Re: Sliders I call that one "Disney World." Think about it: From Lady and the Tramp, through That Darn Cat, 101 Dalmatians right to Beethoven. How weird is the OP willing to go? One I rolled up from the random generator in Champions 3D, that I thought had some potential: Pizarro not only conquers the Incas, but also captures abandoned Van Daniken alien tech. The Pulp tech Spanish Empire rules the world!
  3. Re: Modern-day Pulp? I know they still have them, but nothing speaks "retro" like a jukebox. Having those little flippy things at every table (Formica of course), along with the neon speaks volumes. Adding some kind of virtual "touchscreen" pinball machine would do it too. There is a very strange episode of Fringe ("Brown Betty", Season 2, ep 20), where a tripping Walter Bishop tells a stream of consciousness story to a visiting child. It's a forty's noir with modern contrivances (a PC with wood paneling etc). You might mine it for ideas.
  4. Re: Alternative Necromancy Some sources for consideration: 1) This is Anita Blake's bread and butter. When she isn't given a bounty to stake a rogue vampire, she's calling forth ghosts for frustrated relatives. "Fred! You never told anyone where the bonds were stashed before you kicked off!" 2) One of the Gods of Tekumel is the Lord of both the Dead, and Death itself. He allows his servants to stay in the world as undead priests, or just to worship him. Worshipers regularly visit the dear departed. "Why do you only come to my tomb on High Holy Days? It's not like I'm anywhere else any other day of the year!" Weird and creepy to other sects, but a pretty good deal to those who can accept the idea. 3) Lumley's Necroscope series. Necromancers force secrets from the dead, and raise them as slaves. Necroscopes simply talk to the dead, and ask for answers - and if the dead like the Necroscope, they will raise themselves out of their graves to lend a hand.
  5. Re: Fort Knox Has Been Robbed Ha! I'm not the only one who thought of that, eh? So, once they overcame that pesky STR limit, then what? How did they manage to get the gold out, and where did they hide it? For the former, Brain has cosmic level mad scientist skills. Shrink ray? Teleportation? A giant, tunneling mecha? For the later, I suspect that ACME Lab's building, which once was probably made of cinder block, is now of a somewhat *different* composition. MOTIVE: To become leader of the world, the twin tools of greed and extortion are invaluable. Offer the carrot of pure gold in bribes, right up to the one time honest politician (he stayed bought). Threaten all kinds of panic in the markets to those who serve the plutocrats. Actually, the one of my characters most likely to figure this out is also the one most likely to see the simple solution. The UN declares Brain "King of the World" (with only ceremonial powers) in return for the gold. Brain achieves his life goal, the gold goes back to Knox, and everybody is happy.
  6. Re: DC and Marvel: What Makes Them Different? Goo ness?
  7. Re: CU Hero-vs.-Hero Scenarios
  8. Re: He's not Bigfoot! He's just a really tall, hairy guy! Or skeptics. That's why bigfoot looks so well fed. @McCoy: The "Messing with Sasquatch" commercials by Jack Link beef jerky You have to admit, it was a nice weird coincedence that the phrase "beef jerky" triggered a shopping link. For the OP, don't have the energy to find it right now, but there is another bigfoot commercial (different product) where the big guy puts on a yellow rain coat with hood, grabs a bunch of flowers, goes into a bar, and presents them to a pretty girl. ("awwwww") Might be good for inspiration.
  9. Re: He's not Bigfoot! He's just a really tall, hairy guy! He uses the salmon to get bears to stomp around, confusing any tracking efforts. "Beef Jerky" is linked in your post - I was hoping it was going to be a youtube "messing with Sasquatch" video.
  10. Re: Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities I don't expect this to happen, if the TV industry is any guide. For reasons that escape me, but must make sense to TV executives, discarding even a majority of viewers is common. I'll give three examples, but here is the common scene. Say there are five competing networks (at the time of my first example). One show is bringing in 40% of the viewers, and the other four networks are splitting 60% (15% each) between them. What to do? Ditch your show, and put a clone of the 40% show in its place. Now you're getting 1/5 of 40%, and 60% of the viewers are discovering treeware. It has happened at least three times: 1)1992. You have Carson, Arsenio, Nightline, and "Crimetime After Primetime" on CBS. What does CBS do? Why, cancel Crimetime and bring in Letterman of course! Anybody who isn't interested in watching a talking head? Tough! 2)19...96? You say you like Lois & Clark? Too bad if you also like Seaquest. Today: There are three shows competing for the X Files demographic: Fringe, Grimm, and Supernatural. Guess where on the calendar you can find those three shows? Same deal here: "Our audience likes First Person Shooters! Lots of gunfire, blow-things-up, 'twich 'n' flex'! People who want 4X games or Sims...can we suggest pen and pencil games?" (IOW, they literally don't want your money).
  11. Re: Recommendations and Reviews of Superhero products both old and new I have a fondness in my heart for the old V&V scenario "Crisis at Crusader Citadel". I like Mocker and the V&V "Shrinker (real name unrecalled)" characters, better than Mechanon or (our) Shrinker. I also think "Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs" was a good starter scenario for a Teens campaign, though many of the heroes presented were downright weird. That one also wins the "Clark Kent Glasses" award. Think about it, one of the superheroes is wheelchair bound - amazingly enough, his secret identity is the Kid in the Wheelchair at the local high school.
  12. Midas

    DC meetings

    Re: DC meetings Thanks. I've just been reading Gotham City Sirens, and I wasn't aware that Ivy was such a high level super, I thought of her as a Batvillain, street level. In GCS, she can manipulate plants as weapons city wide. I am curious how her powers would work around Swampthing.
  13. Midas

    DC meetings

    Tapping into the great database. I've been wondering about a couple of obscure questions in DCverse. Have Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor ever crossed swords? Have they ever been to the same cocktail party and shared witty repartee? Have Luthercorp and Wayne Enterprises ever competed for the same contract? Also have Swampthing and Poison Ivy ever teamed up or fought?
  14. Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.
  15. Re: Looking for landmines in teleportation Well, that is only to be expected. The metagaming idea I had was to use a skill roll to let the player know what he is getting into. Player: I want to try this new card. GM: OK, the character finds this card to be incredibly complex. (about a -10 to your skill roll to activate). Player: (OOC) Oh, this place is tough, maybe I should back off until I have some high powered friends with me. On the subject of otherworlds; Amber is very Schrodinger. Both the characters in the series and the reader are left to ponder whether the worlds they visit exist until someone says "I wonder if a world like this exists". Mirror, OTOH, has as a plot point that the universes seen in the mirrors exist before someone creates a mirror of the place. Galatia in 2d, on a third hand, specifically states that the people and places only come into existence when conceived by the painter. I'm going with both. Some places only exist because a painter brought them into existance. Later, Our Heroes discover places that seem to have an independent existence. I'm going to call it a night here, and take up discussion next time I'm online.
  16. Re: Looking for landmines in teleportation TY. I'm pondering thoughtful replies to the thread, so it may take me a while to come up with something worth reading. Please stay tuned.
  17. Re: Looking for landmines in teleportation The campaign has several literary inspirations. In no particular order: Farmer's World of Tier series, Amber, Mordant's Need, Galatia in 2d, and a book by Lawrence Watt-Evans which I have not been able to find again. Game inspirations include 7th Sea's Porte magic, Lords of Creation, GURPS, and all those early dungeons that came out in the late seventies. In the Watt-Evans book, Our Hero enters a room with a dessicated corpse on the floor and a mural that sounds like a Villejo work; a castle suspended in space. For reasons I don't recall, he figured out that the mural was a portal, and went through. On the other side was a mural of the room he had left, which didn't work. After finding another character who had been there for decades, they figured out that the reason the return mural didn't work was that the second person who was to come through the portal died in the room. His corpse was changing the scene enough that the mural was no longer correct enough to work. The rest of the story deals with the duo trying to get in contact with old universe and get someone to move the corpse. I don't like this because too much can happen to change a scene. Wasn't Dworkin's lair a light house? "Oh oh. Seagull perched on the parapet. SHOOOO! You're blocking the trump!" I am thinking a bomb blast enough to actually destroy a site, make significant changes, would work, but not just, for ex, putting a paint bomb on the other side. IMO, they work something like Skype, with a Trek style transporter "IM function." "You are receiving a transport attachment from USER #34321. Do you want to accept?" Except it is all intuitive rather than IM based. Dear Palindromedary: This is a formal Cease and Desist order on your use of proprietary Trump Industry Technology without use of license. Sincerely, Trump Industries Legal Department Aren't there some science fiction stories like that? The rooms of a house aren't necessarily on the same planet, or even the same solar system.
  18. Re: The One, True Son of Krypton We're talking "benchmarking" here. To compare HERO to Amber Diceless, Supe's character won the strength and dex auctions. Whatever you decide those stats represent, nobody else can equal them. They can come close (say one EP less, but nobody can match or exceed them). This doesn't work out as well with HERO because as was pointed out, Clark has a suite of skills, and if he spends points to cover all the various attack, move, and skill/perk abilities, a character with comparable points will outclass Clark if built as a straight brick. My humble suggestion is to have supes start out as the most powerful NPC in the game, and keep him there as perhaps a retired character. The other idea, which is suggested in the OP is to have no Superman, just Smallville era Clark Kent, still learning and investing his powers.
  19. Re: Looking for landmines in teleportation I'm going with the standard hero rules here. Unless paid for or pushed, 100kg, two meters height, etc. Nothing. Your oversize target just sits there. The easy answer is again nothing. I'd have to think about it a bit for any reason why someone could do otherwise. This does help with one problem I've encountered with tport: Tissue paper jails. Yes, a decent jailor will know enough to take a trump away from a detainee, but that doesn't do much for the simple expedient of having an ally with your trump checking in on you. I don't want to do a whole subgenre of "Forcefield vs Teleport" "Suppress Teleport area effect" etc. But I like the simple expedient of shackling someone to a bar in the jail to cancell the teleport appeals. Two questions. 1) Unlike in Mordant's Need, yes trumps can travel with you when you go somewhere else via trump. 2) And yes, if you really want to, you can give a trump you possess to someone "on the other end," or just toss it into an open landscape. Only one per user, but I guess in a stadium this would be a tremendous number of people. For a place with more than one trump? Both arrive next to each other. I'll handwave the "But my trump should have me a foot to my right" argument. For a person? The easy answer is again the telephone analogy. Somebody gets a busy signal. It might be more interesting to have it set up as a conference call situation though. What do you think? For the very rare Item trump? It would be astonishing if more than one trump existed for an item, but if it did... Hmnnn... Somebody could grab the item, somebody else could take it from the first person immediately or whenever they felt like it, the first could snatch it back... Sooner or later, someone would try to use the trump to hold onto the item, and then you might have some kind of contest...
  20. Re: Looking for landmines in teleportation Thank you, this is a very good list. I've gone over it, and marked how I would change it for not Amber!trumps. I'll point out that my trumps can't be used for attacks, only for contact and teleportation - and surveillance, thank you for adding that to my list. I'll keep the OAF, and add fragile as a default. I could argue that a stucco painting is an OIF - or even an IIF (if the viewer didn't know why the mage was staring so intently at it)- but will probably let that be covered by the immoble modifier: A viewer could still tackle the mage and thus "separate" him from the painting. I'll also say I like 6e, but intend to re-introduce Independent for these. A trump is truly an independent magic item after all. I'd replace the EGO roll with a RSR, because it depends on the skill of the user, not the power. Also, I would use a -10, or even a -5 (I'll explain why below) rather than a -15. Keeping the rest. Pretty much. I'm not quite a stickler for every little detail, so I'd just assume this into the above power. *My* trumps don't work this way. Again my trumps don't work this way. I don't think I need the simultaneous. A user could push someone else through, and then go after, and conversely, if the person "on the other end" wanted to send someone else through first, that would still be a single file. I'll have to look at the written Gate rules again, but I don't think they work quite right for what we are talking about. Quick aside: I intend to handwave the minimum distance requirement for MegaScale. In my mind this gives the trump a weird kind of locate effect: "OK, the card doesn't work. We must be within one kilometer of the site." I take it you are buying the deck as a set? I'd just go with buying each card separately. As above. That's how Dworkin sprung Corwin, isn't it? The only thing I'd change is that it is permanent, and requires the rarer PS: Trumps (where the character can actual create the things) as opposed to the KS: (how to use one that is available). I don't think I need this one. I'm guessing this is some skill Brand or Fiona had?
  21. I'm developing a new campaign/magic system based very loosely on Zelazney's Trumps. (It is actually closer to the Porte magic from 7th Sea, but the mechanism is based on foci - a card, a painting, even a stucco wall painting will work). The idea is that there are two kinds of trumps, people and places. You can activate the trump and travel to the place seen, and you can talk and travel to the location of the person. There are some details I'm leaving out right now, because I really want to talk about t-port as a mechanism. I'll get to other ideas, soonly. What I'm looking for are munchkiny uses of teleport, so that I can have a ruling ready before somebody tries it. Like "Can I send a bomb to such and such a place?" Yes, in theory. I suspect that it will change the target enough that the trump will now be worthless (it will be of a scene that no longer exists). "Can I send a bomb to a person?" In theory, but any body who's sat for a portrait should be savvy enough to be leery of accepting gifts from such a source. "Can I teleport someone to me by using their person trump?" Yes, sort of - they can be teleported by you in a "use on another way" not a "use as attack" way. "Can I send someone else to a place?" Yes, and that is the main function. One character is a t-port mage, and he can send the entire party to the Place of Mystery. Again it has to be voluntary though. In this case, blackmail etc counts as "voluntary". "Can I step halfway through, stab somebody, and step back?" Your name wouldn't be Brand, would it? No, specifically it is more like Porte than trump magic. You are either here or there, not in between. Yes, you can work around by having a trump of your escape place with you. Go to a person, stab him, then go to another place using the second card.
  22. Re: Gods with Off Switches vs. Loaded Guns. DC vs. Marvel in Character Design. *sigh* OK, everybody. Pull out your ID cards. Check the DOB. If it is more than twelve years ago... Let me put it another way: Whip out your wands of God Detection. See if you get a hit for either Loki (Marvel) or Strife (DC). Because a lot of posts on this thread can be summed up by: "That's Stupid!" "No, YOU'RE Stupid!" "I know you are, but what am I?" Now that said, do you think Loki and Strife are the same build? I don't because to me Loki *does* strife, while Strife *is* strife. And Loki is a lot more subtle about it.
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