Lightray

Not much more to tell, really, since this is the first in a series. SPOILERS follow... Really. SPOILERS. I mean it... Starts with PG in a spaceship as a baby leaving an exploding planet, landing on Earth thinking she's Kal-el's cousin. Then Dr. Midnight realizes she's not Kryptonian, there's mention of her on-again, off-again vulnerabilities (currently not present). And that Dr. Fate confirmed she wasn't magic. There's discussion of her recent heat-laser eyes, which Dr. Midnight finds are now "normal". Soon enough at home she's manifesting super-hearing, x-ray and telescopic vision. There's a boob joke, then Arion's brother Arn Daanuth shows up, as does the heat-laser vision again. Except it turns out she's apparently imagined (hallucinated, something) the whole thing. There's a final teaser, where some guy says "her history is folding in over itself".

So, anyone know if this is the week that the JSA spinoff series that starts by explaining PG's "true" origin is supposed to be out?

In my own Champions game, psionics are a completely separate power origin than the other Universal Source (= magic). They're easily detectable as such to Mental Awareness, even if they're things like telekinesis or teleportation (conversely, magic-sourced telepathy effects don't show up to Mental Awareness). PSI was one of the early opponents of the player characters, and developed into a kind of psionic terrorist organization. They ratcheted up the paranoia against psis considerably -- with only a couple of PC mentalists as examples of "good" psionics (and only 'cause they've been careful with their powers. so far). For a while, the government in Washington DC was scrambling to locate anyone with psionic powers, to serve as living "psi-detectors" in case someone started messing with minds in the government again. That was, of course, pretty much what PSI wanted in the first place. Much of the public fear had developed because of telepaths reading secrets and blackmailing politicians, controlling minds, planting telepathic commands to cause innocent people to become terror weapons, causing riots from mental illusions and emotion manipulation, and similiar acts of mental terrorism. The player characters were able to foil PSI's plans, and capture their leadership. However, the public is still deeply suspicious of psis -- kind of my Marvel mutant analog. It was interesting that when one of the occasonal PCs on the team (usually he was an NPC) betrayed them to assume control of PSI, the other psis on the team weren't upset once he explained that he was going to turn PSI away from terrorism and back to protecting psis in danger (since they now needed protecting more than ever).

It was "debunked" (retconned, whatever) in JSA, on several occasions. Dr. Midnight examined her twice (once upon rejoining the JSA, once after she was shot by the Crimson Avenger), and basically told her that her powers weren't magic-based. Also, Arion himself (her purported grandfather) told her the entire story had been a lie he'd used for his own purposes, and told PG to say hello to her mother for him when she saw her again. Also: 4. PG has just (re)gained some kind of heat vision (or "flash vision") in the most recent JSA issues.

AFAIK, pretty much the entire Sovereign Seven thing was booted from continuity -- including that "injured by natural materials" stuff. Arion apparently knew PG's mother. PG apparently just got some form of heat vision (flash vision?) back. And PG had some reaction when the JSA was time-traveling through the year of the Crisis.

Ooooh! That would be nice. I suspect, though, that any LSH connection will tie-in with the current continuity Legion of Super-Heroes, so as to cross-promote. And we don't really know anything about Daxam in the current series. But Johns was involved in the current reboot, inasmuch as it was a Teen Titans crossover that kicked things off. He sounded like a fan of the new reimaging. And, veering wildly off-topic, should Shikari from the last reboot LSH still be around somewhere?

Thank G-d! I was worried with the rumors of the mutant hooker with pheremones that the writers/director/producer didn't understand the subject material or, more importantly, the target market. But if she's going to be a bisexual mutant hooker with pheremones, they've obviously got the target market pegged. *phew*

Postmodernist essay (be sure to read the footnotes)

There are lots of mutants with those powers. Stacy X isn't the albino African-American woman. She's kind of scaled and an odd color (blue, was it?). She was briefly in whatever X-book had Havoc as the team leader. She was a former mutant whore, who worked at a whorhouse that was exclusively mutants. She had pheremone powers. The Purple Man also had pheremone powers. As did his daughter, who showed up in Alpha Flight (IIRC). Also, there's a student now in New X-Men who has mutant pheremone powers. As does her father, the sinister psychiatrist who pheremone-raped her mother. But, then, the X-Men movies need another hawt chixxor who can seduce anyone, dude. 'Cause they're apparently planning to completely remove Mystique's powers, also.

I was never tied to the RQ system (although I quite liked the Pendragon incarnation of the BRP system). I liked the characters because they were unlike anything else out there, but mostly because their religion mattered (and not just to the clerics). It was cool that worshippers of Orlanth actually had wind powers, and magic to behave just like their god behaved (instead of Cure Light Wounds x3, Light, and Protection from Evil for the wind god cleric). Plus, the shamans actually did shamany things. And the spirit binding rules were cool. And everyone had battle magic. And anyone could call for divine intervention (even though it sucked two of my PCs down to ~1 POW). And you could play anything. I was bitterly disappointed at Greg's admonition against playing Dragonewts, so I took an Aldryami when everyone else was playing twinked-out Uz (yeah, in retrospect, probably a weird combination. but we were in the Rubble, so what the heck). And then I got Cults of Terror, and realized Glorantha was one of the coolest game worlds I'd ever read about. But then no one wanted to play. Well, since you're playing Hero, I suggest taking a cue from HW... Structure each PCs magic around their cult's Runes: Make each Rune a power framework (multipower, probably). This would probably work best for theists, but when the Humakti PC wants to learn a Kill Undead feat (er, "Rune Spell"), simply have him buy another slot in his Death Rune multipower. If you want 'em reusable, add "1 Charge, Recoverable" to the slot. Animism and spirits might be trickier, but for non-shaman practitioners you might just give them a VPP that requires foci (fetishes) and charges (1 charge = 1 favor from the spirit), and add a limitation that they need to go to the shaman to get the VPP replenished. You might give them one VPP for each "Rune" of spirits/fetishes they can command.

First off, The Ultimate Mystic has a pretty good breakdown of the different types of mystic characters. ha! got here before Lord Liaden, for once! That said, the ones I see most often are: - Supernatural Being (e.g., demon, angel, elemental. often embodied in or possessing a mortal host) - Deity (e.g., Olympian or Aesir) - Untrained mystic with "great potential" - Pulpish mystic (e.g., with the "power to cloud men's minds") - normal human imbued with mystic power from an enchantment or magical weapon.

I don't have any of the nifty new templates installed to post the character sheet ('cause I'm still back on HDv1 ), but I'm attaching a scorpion-theme villain from my game. Setesh (and his cousins) are descendants of Set. He's able to assume scorpion or hybrid forms. Might give you some ideas.

This Hero TrollPak will only be complete if you post a Kyger Litor writeup five times, you know.

I believe it's canonical that a broo can "impregnate" anything -- female or male. With the proper chaos features, some really freaky broolings could show up. I seem to recall mosquito-broos mentioned somewhere... Broos will probably go for the female critters of preference, but Thed is the goddess of rape, so anything that can be raped is going to be tried. Which is why I'm not sure that the female broo (in Lords of Terror, maybe?) is generally accepted anymore. Of course, in Prax, the threat is that broos get into the herds, and a few weeks later you have bison broo (or rhino broo) on your hands. I can't imagine not taking Dorastor seriously. Especially with Ralzakark the unicorn broo superhero and his broo Humakti castrati...

Just finished Biggest Brother, the biography of Maj. Richard Winters, who commanded Easy Company of Band of Brothers fame (on which I'm somewhat fixated, it seems). It's a good companion book to Ambrose's Band of Brothers, covering some of the details that were left out of that book, and explaining Winters' thinking a bit more. It's well-written, and includes a brief appendix with quotes from Winters on leadership, and a short glossary (for those of us who didn't know the difference between an S2 and S4). I'd recommend both this and Webster's book for those who'd want to read more about Easy Co.

Well, there's a particular trait of the broo that seems to be missing... that broo propagation should probably be a Transform (with Gestures and Extra Time, maybe Concentration?). It'd probably be quite expensive, too. It might be interesting to try modeling it as a Summon, with Side Effects and Delayed Effect, though. And I'd give them a small Bite attack of some kind -- they do chew their way out of "mother", after all... Thed worship is definately animistic, although only "socialized" broo would have any magic at all. Most animalistic or wild broo probably survive on the basis of their chaos traits. Broo who've somehow gained some kind of primitive learning would be animists, with their shaman dealing with spirits of Thed, Malia, and other Chaos spirits. Particularly in Prax. And speaking of Broo near Prax, don't forget to toss in an encounter with the Wild Healer: a broo baby raised by priests of Chalana Arroy, and a pacifist priest of that goddess himself. Drives Storm Bullies nuts, it does. (not that this is a difficult thing, mind you)

Prax: If you're thinking of running Prax, do yourself a favor and pick up the Gloranthan Classics book that reprints Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror. IMO, they're the best RQ Gloranthan books ever published. However, the rune cults in Cults of Prax seem very theistic to me nowadays, not so much animistic. For Fantasy Hero, I'd actually recommend trying something like the summoning rules from the Valdorian Age to model animism, even though it doesn't really match what goes on in HeroQuest, either. Iron: Best source on Iron is from the Secrets Book from the RQ Elder Secrets boxed set. Basically, enchanted iron is tempered to steel (basically half again the armor points of bronze). Unenchanted iron is equivalent to bronze, but hinders magic (hindrance proportional to the weight of iron carried). It also notes that iron damages certain elder races (mostly elves and trolls), and damages creatures otherwise immune to normal weapons. Community in Heroquests: In Hero, I'd either run it as an Aid effect that the community or temple adds to the hero via ritual, or I'd simply make it into a new Perk similar to the Equipment perk from Dark Champions (where the hero'd spend points to have a pool of heroquest help available to him from the temple, instead of a pool of equipment). I'd definately require the hero to take Contacts for his heroband, community, and temple, though. With the adders for being an Organization and for the amount of help he can get. Heroquesting: The point I wanted to make was that you can't Heroquest to change history, which is a common fallacy. You can seriously screw things up for yourself if you go back before History, particularly into the Green Age. Arcane Lore talks about this. Most of the examples you used, however, are merely heroquests that reenact something natural. The Red Moon rising into the sky wasn't a new thing -- there were a series of moons before the Great Darkness. Rufelza's heroquest simply put herself back into the sky where she belonged. The Glowline appears to be a really big magical spell, and is essentially Yara Aranis' web stretched over the Lunar Empire. It may or may not be similar to Arachne Solara's web, Time, stretched over Glorantha. Anyway, the "web" thing is why, if you take out one of the Reaching Moon Temples (i.e., an anchorpoint), the Glowline retreats (the web comes unanchored there). The corn rituals that Hon-eel brought from the Kingdom of Ignorance have always been used up there. The soil is so poor in the KoI that they needed the blood sacrifices to make them productive. For the Lunar Empire, they can grow corn just fine without the blood, but they need the superabundance to feed the poor, so they use the blood rites. Most of the heroquests we know of (e.g., the Hill of Gold, the Kalikos Icebreaker quest, the Westfaring, etc.) simply duplicate things that the gods did in the God Time. Even Arkat's experimental heroquesting was essentially the same (especially since he seems to have inserted himself into the God Time, performing the myths he experimentally heroquested, and hence becoming a god himself). What the God Learners got up to with heroquesting is apparently not possible anymore, so that's not an issue.

Grognardism ahoy! First off, get thee to http://www.glorantha.com/ and thence to http://www.lokarnos.com and read up on Glorantha. You seem to have a few, subtle differences in interpretation from Generally Accepted Glorantha (for which, see below). This won't mean much, though, other than that Your Glorantha Will Vary. Also, I'd recommend choosing one small area of Glorantha and sticking to that, at least initially. With the nifty Dragon Pass sourcebook for HeroQuest now out, I kind of like that as a setting. Prax, of course, is also an area that's well-supported (although somewhat out of print). As you're going to have to be statting up everything, limiting yourself to one area/culture will make it easier on you. No need to worry about Grotarons or Rokari bishops if you're playing in Prax. Also, it'd make it easier to offer suggestions. And easier on your players and yourself, trying to figure out what the awakened Herd Man, Kralori merchant, and Vadeli sailor are doing together... This is both a God Learnerism and a limited view of the runes. The Celestial Court -- a group of entities more-or-less made up by the God Learners, and who don't even exist anymore* -- were runic beings of opposed dualities. Other runes are not so paired. For example, the elemental runes are five (or four, or six)** that are in opposition, but not paired opposition. Also, there are many more runes in Glorantha now than were implied before. And some of these runes are known only to specific cultures. If you're sticking with RQ2, that's probably not an issue, though. * Uleria is probably not the same being as the Uleria of the Celestial Court. And I can't recall if Ratslaff is still around, but as a Trickster I'm betting he's breaking the rules, too. ** Darkness, Sea, Earth, Sky, Storm. Except that the Dara Happans don't recognize Storm. And the Lunars add Moon. Plus there's all those funky derivative elemental runes, like Fire and Cold. Iron isn't foreign to Glorantha, it just has a different origin than other metals (which are mined from the bones of gods killed in the Chaos Age). Iron was invented by the dwarves specifically to fight Aldryami and Uz, which is why it burns both. It is also a runic metal, and as such has some specific properties -- much as other runic metals do, and the reason that they're tricky to use unless you get some help from a cult that knows how to work with that specific metal. (for example, one that knows how to fix quicksilver into aluminimum). IIRC, there's also a connection between Iron and the Death rune, because the Mostali used it to make the Axe with which they chopped down the Aldryami World Tree. Mostali are supposed to be the only source of iron, although the Third Eye Blue people (and others, maybe) stole their secrets. It is apparently created alchemically, although Mostali also seem to mine iron in the Iron Mountains. You gain those unusual abilities by HeroQuesting into the Hero Plane or God Plane. And by doing so, you become a Hero (or Superhero like Harrek or Jar-eel). HeroQuesting involves rituals that need the support of your community or temple or followers (better yet, all of 'em). All HeroQuests are dangerous and risky -- you "wager" your own abilities against other beings in the Hero Plane. You might win the abilties they have staked against you, or you might lose the ability you have staked. Or worse. The least-risky HeroQuests are the ones where you reenact the deeds/myths of your own cult. Since your cult has knowledge about the secrets of these myths, they can tell you what you might be facing. Venturing off the myths you know -- "experimental HeroQuesting" -- is hideously dangerous and risky, since you literally don't know what you're doing. When you enter a HeroQuest, the world responds as you face the challenges of the Hero Plane. Often, these opponents are your own, personal enemies, although they are filling the appropriate roles in the myth/story/quest you are enacting. HeroQuests do not exactly "alter reality". They can bring back magic that has been done before (e.g., ending a drought with the Orlanth vs Aroka heroquest). Or they can verify that something is mythically "true" (e.g., the Red Goddess' battle at Castle Blue establishing her godhood). *phew*

When I (re)started running Hero, I had 3 players. It was a good number, small enough to focus on individual PCs without everyone else getting bored, large enough to have some group dynamic. Then, we suddenly added two more, for a total of 5 players. I'm finding that a lot of the things I was trying simply don't work anymore. So, for me, 3 is a good number, 5 is the limit.

We'll get back to you on that.

I think Steve said it might get delayed.

With the apparent popularity of yaks in gaming, how could they possibly be left out of Pulp Hero? Plus, it seems kind of odd to have a section advising "more yaks" in a book that does not, in fact, have more yaks.