Ehreval

Re: Aijral - Supermen Okay, so that leads us to a new round of questions: 1) Do they have this effect on a large variety of aliens, or only humans? 2) Did they know in advance they'd have this effect on us? 3) How do they react (both as individuals and as a society) when they discover their dominance? 4) What is the reaction of earth governments and supers organizations who discover the alien domination? Do they make contingency plans? Pre-emtive strikes? Do they limit the number of aliens who can be on earth and the activites they're legitimately allowed to pursue? 5) And just why *are* the aliens here? Is it different from why they *say* they're here? (After all, Mars needs women!) And, finally, a follow-up to one of my previous questions: What does it say about the origin of the *aliens* that they have this effect on us and possibly other species? -- Ehreval

Re: Aijral - Supermen I think it's a fine idea with a variety of implied uses. 1) Alien Invaders -- As written, they simply trump just about any normal they run into, so if they play their cards right, you'll soon see the Aijral as "advisors" to leaders of countries, large corporations, etc. 2) Mistaken Identity -- Even if the Aijral come to earth with entirely benign intent, it's entirely possible that they'd accidentally find themselves in uncomfortable positions of authority, sought-after by the leaders of earth as advisors. Even on their own merits they'd likely accidentally manipulate earthlings into doing their own bidding on a regular basis. In some places, the locals would probably revere them as higher beings, angels or even gods, possibly even against their will. 3) Angels Among Us -- If, like Kal El, the aliens come to us with sheer benevolence on their minds, the possibilities are endless. It's possible that we'd have much to learn from them. It's also possible that they'd be, from our point of view, morally inferior beings. They might also end up taking a "Prime Directive" type of stance in which they conclude that since they have undue influence over us, the best policy is to leave us alone entirely. No matter which of the above is actually true, I'd expect some serious conflict between the aliens and earthlings. Violence aside, cultural conservatives would descry the polution of our culture with such alien ideas. Liberals would be aghast at the infringement against civil liberties implied by the force behind the aliens' words and actions. Philosophers and theologians alike would have to wrestle with the demonstrable mutability of free will. Here's my big question, though: Are the aliens' minds sufficiently human-like that their powers affect each other? If so, what differences have evolved in their society from this? Are they immune to their own "alpha syndrome" or do they have complex societal rituals for communication which allow them to interact without stepping on each other's toes? Or, conversely, do that have a fascist government run by the most "influential" members of their society? Even more important, from a roleplaying standpoint, is what their existence says about us, which provides you with a number of themes involving them in your campaign. 1) Is our inability to resist their mental powers an indication that we were constructed or had our evolution influenced by others? 2) Can we really say that we have free will to any real degree when it can be compromised so easily? 3) Can two species co-exist peacefully or as equals when one is, through no fault of either party, entirely socially dominant? Just some thoughts, Ehreval

Re: columbia! Definitely get rid of the panties. This is wonderful, wonderful work! -- Ehreval

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Playing that game is a waste of time because you know you'll lose. If that were the case, I'd have said it succinctly, just as you did. I've had enough of your mindless negativity. Congratulations, you're the inaugural member of my ignore list. -- Ehreval

Re: EC AN (Ad Nauseam) I got a lot more long-winded than I intended with this, but that's a known flaw of mine. (PsychLim: Frequently, minorly impairing.) I prefaced each of my responses with a "Nickle Summary" that wraps things up quickly if you don't want to wade through. Thanks. 1. Nickle Summary: No gaming system is perfect, but most imbalances are either perceived or the result of a difference between how designers and actual gm's in the field want things to run. I've played a good number of game systems over the years, and I've never seen a single one, no matter how much the makers tried, that was totally balanced. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the primary one is that any game of sufficient complexity will be used by consumers in ways that the designers could not anticipate short of pulling the infinite number of monkeys trick with playtesters. You can see evidence for this in the "is this balanced" arguments that periodically crop up. A mechanic that is balanced in one campaign or adventure (or even session) may be completely unbalanced in another. Evening these things out is, in the main, the gm's job, when it's necessary, but I think a lot of these imbalances have to do more with the milieu expectations of any given group than with any flaws in mechanics. Note: I'm not trying to say Hero is flawless. Part of the problem is also that in any complex game system, there will be obvious and common uses for mechanics that the game designers can't anticipate or don't like. Game designers enter into their task with their own assumptions, some valid and some not, and if their assumptions differ greatly from yours, you'll perceive an imbalance. 2. Nickle Summary: EC's are points-imbalanced, but needn't be imbalancing if you have a reasonable set of players or don't mind spending time and effort policing your game. Of course I believe that the EC is an integral part of the game. I wouldn't call it "balanced", but that's likely because I have a very different idea of EC's than the designers seem to have intended. From what I've seen, EC's are a primary example of Hero's expectation that the gm will spend a good amount of effort being a rules cop. "Heaven forfend your players would actually want to spend their points efficiently," they say. "An EC is only to be used for simulation value." That's all well and good if your players don't believe efficient character builds are an important and enjoyable part of playing the game. My players *do* believe that building an efficient character is part of the challenge and part of the fun, so they'll try to be as efficient as they can be. That doesn't mean they won't spend points on background skills and knowledges that'll likely never come up in the game or that they'll try to cheat. They'll just try to do what they perceive as a "good job." However, doing that "good job" also means that you don't look for excuses to use an EC. You use it when it's appropriate for a build, and then you reap the rewards (in terms of efficiency) without shame. So long as my players keep this sort of thing in mind, EC's aren't unbalancing at all, despite the fact that they're so terribly, terribly points-efficient.

Re: Help! Would You Allow This?

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Okay. Which of the following is not following concept? (I'll use the characters from my above example.) A martial artist so skilled that from picking up on cues like heartbeats and subtle wind currents he can determine the likely location on an enemy. A spider-man type whose most effective power is a truly stunning degree of danger sense. A cat-girl thing with amazing reflexes that lets her leap away from where a grenade is about to land. Or a brick type who has nothing he can really do to defend against powerful flash attacks other than cover his eyes and hope for the best. -- Ehreval

Re: Help! Would You Allow This? This is absolute garbage on your fault, Fox. He has a different policy as a gm than you do. That doesn't make his style wrong or yours right. It makes you different people. My policy along those lines has remained essentially unchanged for approximately 20 years of gm'ing in a variety of systems: If a player wants something that doesn't detract from others' enjoyment of the game (including my own) then it's my job as gm to find a way to make it happen. If I can't, that's not my player's fault. It's a limitation on my skills as a gm that I should work on. Now, I could go on and on right now about how your inability to properly accommodate your players is the true gm'ing weakness here, which from what I've seen of your posts is almost certainly what you'd do, but I won't, because I don't believe that's necessarily true. You run your games the way you see fit, and if your players keep coming back, then you're clearly doing enough things right that you deserve some sort of atta-boy. It's entirely possible that, within the bounds of your group's play style, your policy decision in this matter is one of the virtues that makes your games fun for you and your players. But it's wrong for you to tell Tesuji his play style is wrong and weak just because it differs from yours. Grow up. -- Ehreval

Re: Issues/concerns around Flash Flash isn't any more unbalancing than anything else. From my experience with Hero, and gaming in general, I've seen two sane policies that most gm's can implement. 1) Tightly control pc and npc powers in both variety, level and details. 2) Make the whole book legal with very few limitations and let folks go to town, both the good guys and the bad. I follow the latter course in my current game, set primarily in the current vein of mainstream team comics with some elements of the previous "ages" thrown in. (Major influences include the Wade and Morrison stints on JLA, the current run of JSA, Ellis' The Authority and Silver Age Avengers, with hints of Planetary and Morrison's Doom Patrol constantly hovering around the edges.) The characters are about 525 to 550 points right now. A supervillain well call Mr. Brain-in-a-Jar decided he needed to control the heroes home town in order to enact his diabolical plot. He quickly realized that the most important first step was taking out the hero team, so he gathered his forces and laid a nice little ambush. Part of the ambushing team was a character with a large (but small-radius) visual flash attack. She caught a group of four pc's in a tight cluster for the effect and rolled 21 body. Yup. I was being mean and wasn't holding anything back. I followed the book's suggestion and allowed anyone who made a high enough dex check (who had an action they could abort to) attempt to save themselves. One of the four heroes succeeded and managed to get out of the radius of the flash. Another hero took the flash full in the face, and it nailed him hard even through his (reasonably-sized) flash defence. However, this guy has danger sense built with analyze, discriminatory and targeting. There were some things he couldn't do, but he definitely wasn't taken out of the fight and even accounted for a couple of the baddies while blind. Two other characters were facing away from the center of the flash. I'd built the power so that it only worked to half effect if you were looking away. One of those characters was a martial artist with enough blind fighting on his sheet that he should have been functional -- and if the player and I hadn't both failed our int checks to remember it was there, he would have been fine. The fourth character, my party npc, was pretty much horked for the fight. So I launched a devastating flash attack, and 3/4 of the targets were, by hook or crook, good to go. The bottom line here is that what has been said earlier in this thread about consensual reality is dead on: My players want and expect me to throw random horrors like the 21-body flash attack on them without warning, and many of them are prepared for it -- though sometimes inadvertantly -- as a result. There's nothing wrong with pc's being built who can withstand exotic attacks, if that's part of the style of the setting. I also question whether or not flash attacks are really that exotic, as flash-bangs are standard equipment for swat teams, counter-terrorist forces and others in the real world. I would honestly expect to see the better grade of cop in a supers world carry them as part of a standard equipment load. To the poster who put forth the idea that characters stocked with defenses against exotic attacks are likely not working from concept... That's simply not true for my player base. Much depends on the concept in question and the type of concept your players tend to go with. When your character lives in a world where hyper-intelligent apes, brains in jars, extra-dimensional Nazis, genocidal giant robots, Lovecraftian horrors, demon invasions, spandex-clad mutants and the like are a daily-to-weekly threat, I don't think the uber-sunglasses are out of line. In fact, they seem downright boring. Ehrreval

Re: How to build a drag chute? Thanks for the replies, everyone! Your assistance is greatly appreciated. -- Ehreval

A player in my bi-monthly supers game has requested a power that I, frankly, don't know how to build. He's a robot with a built-in parachute, and he wants to be able to use it as a drag chute to slow down or stop his character's motion from knockbacks and other situations where he's not in control over his own speed. Specifically, he's requested that it have greater effect the further he's being knocked back. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, Ehreval

Re: What's the most outrageous plot your PCs have ever been subjected to Due to some miscommunication, a party in a low-fantasy world with early medieval technology went on a quest... for paper. Which lasted, I believe, four sessions and included multiple encounters where we had to haggle with various people (a lord, an abbot and several merchants) since we needed to convert trade goods periodically, as it was a barter economy and we needed something we thought the paper merchant (Yes, the paper merchant) might be willing to trade for. No, it's not the most weird plot I've ever seen, but we found it outrageous enough that our time had been wasted this way. -- Ehreval

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?

Re: Name her! Give her Powers! I'm Lazy! Apparently you mean too lazy to bother covering the pudenda of any given female character. (I was willing to accept that her clothing choice was dictated by demonic nature until I scrolled down and saw Rouge with the same underwear.) My suggested name is Crotcherella, the Demon of Genitalia How about a presence attack or mind control that only works on straight men and lesbians? You could make it an NND where the defense is being blind. Or a transform to "horny 13-year-old boy" built along those same lines? It's debateable whether those breasts were bought as OIF or OAF, but I'd definitely buy her a couple points of COM with a 3.14159 custom multiplier on the cost.... I'm also awaiting the arrival of the male counterpart of either of these. I just hope he shaves, too. Disads for Rouge could include the social disad "childlike face on adult body". In (mostly) good humor, cause I like cheesecake just as much as the next 13-year-old, Ehreval P.S. -- Here are my actual serious comments: I, personally, find it hard to take any hero seriously who constantly displays part of his/her genitals. I'd cover the pubis mons on each of these, seriously. Also, I can understand why some people thing such art is demeaning to women. I mean, really, would you even consider rendering a male hero with his scrotum partially displayed? I'm also disturbed by Rouge's childlike face on what is clearly an adult body. Are you going to give her the disad "Hunted by Pedophiles (less powerful, harshly punish)"?

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Of course, all that follows is imho. Mind you that I'm talking about super-powered characters, and since I'm a fan of both comics and games, I'll be using the terms "author" and "player" interchangeably, in case, I miss using both with a slash between somewhere. Superheroes who kill disgust me in direct proportion to their body count. When I read a hero book, I want to read about heroes *defeating* murderous scum, not *being* muderous scum. Personally, I don't think that folks like that really count as heroes. They're vigilantes in the worse sense of the word. (No offense intended to Vigilante who, tends to get things done in a much cleaner fashion.) A superhero who's too stupid and gets himself into a situation where he has to kill in order to get the job done is almost as bad as a hero whose first option is guns blazing. Of course, any talented writer can make it impossible for a hero to save the universe without killing someone, even lots of people, but that's hero abuse. While putting superheroes in situations where it looks like they should or must kill can make for interesting writing, having them actually do it is a tawdry conclusion to what should be an exploration of morals/ethics and the hero's personality. The cool thing about Superman isn't that he has the invulnerability or the strength or the heat vision. It's that he's the best of the best, morally. He has nearly illimitable power along with the wisdom to use it justly. Regardless of whether or not the character has attributes that are super-powered, he should be super. Sure, it's pretty easy for Superman or Thor to come up with non-lethal solutions most of the time. They've got options that most people don't. But even non-powered heroes like Batman, wrestling with monstrous inner demons, know that murder is the evil that spawned him, not a solution to embrace. There are two and only two reasons a superhero kills: 1) The author/player is lazy and cannot find a more elegant and enlightening solution. 2) The character is smarmy and evil and does not deserve the title of superhero, at which point the author/player should be ashamed or switch to a more appropriate genre. -- Ehreval

Re: Can Superheroes Be Too Pragmatic? (Edited to add examples, tighten a transition and change a turn of phrase that was unintentionally insulting.) Some of this isn't too bad. For instance, there's nothing wrong with being annoyed by a mission. I've seen that happen even in some of the most heroic comics. I'd also say that the PC who ran down the Questing Beast did a bang-up job, stopping the problem without extincting the thing. That being said, the PC's who let people get hurt without even the mitigating arrest of a villain deserve to get pronged for their trouble, and the blood sport needs to get shut down for good. Presuming the players entered the game knowing you expected real heroes (if not, see below) I'd hammer them left and right for their (in)actions in the Piper incident you mentioned. I'd start with the press and the court of public opinion. Surely those folks who were needlessly bitten by rates are upset that they didn't get help. They clearly expressed that at the time. I'd hit the characters with a one-two punch of newspaper articles descrying their lack of concern for innocent victims coupled with a personal injury lawsuit by some of the people who didn't get seriously bitten until after the PC's showed up. As for the blood sport bit, I'd say it's time for a little angst: Have some people get killed in the arena, or even involve someone the PC's know and (preferably) love in the event to highlight the horrid nature of what's going on. Alternately, if you want to drive home the point of my suggestions for the rat victims, have someone *else*, possibly not even a super, bust up the blood sport ring for good. Let the *real* hero who stops the blood sport receive public accolades, commendations from local government, etc. honoring him as that "real hero." Of course, you can always do both: Have the local hero, possibly a cop, receive his commendations in public. During the ceremony, briefly give the testimony of an elderly woman whose only child/grandchild was slain in the bloodsport, have her tearfully recount the senselessness of the death and how the only meaning she can take to her heart from the entire affair is that at least someone else's child doesn't have to suffer the same fate, thanks to this paragon of heroism. If necessary, develop this alternate hero as a bona-fide rival to the party. If they don't do their jobs well, let *him* steal their thunder, either by doing their jobs right or by taking care of his own missions so much better. They'll hate him with an undying passion, and they'll be motivated. A tactic that I use in nearly every game I run, to prevent just this sort of thing, is to hand the party an NPC they will like and value. He's generally a nice guy, a real team player, and a decent damage dealer/absorber. Use *him* to demonstrate to the PC's what qualities you expect in heroes. All that being said, let's look in another direction as well, to cover all our bases. Remember, your players are only half the equation in this game. It's also possible that you're the author of their attitudes. Another thing I do, which I haven't seen addressed in your post, is create a detailed campaign prospectus before people start making their characters. I am unashamed to let people know *precisely* what types of characters I want to see, and if it's to be a heroic campaign, I wouldn't be shy about saying so. If you didn't properly prepare them for this -- or if there was some miscommunication -- a nice sit-down chat with the players, as someone else suggested, might be in order. This could, after all, be the heart of the problem. It seems clear, from your examples, that you're running a fantasy game in the post-modern era rather than a "true" supers game, and the players may have picked up on this either consciously or subconsciously, and they've acted the part of post-modern "heroes" as a result. In that genre, self-involved heroes who are annoyed at having to rescue "stupid" people, or who put the glory end of the job ahead of the altruimsm, are pretty common. (See "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series for post-modern fantasy heroes and remember that Buffy and the gang are as wholesome as that lot generally gets.) I might also suggest some reading material to get these folks in the flow. Tell them to take a break on contemporary Iron Age stuff and look at the way the major heroes in the mainstream team books tend to comport themselves. In other words, take away their Authority and Planetary and move them over to Justice League and (especially) Justice Society for awhile. The current run of JSA is full of great old heroes helping newbie heroes learn the ropes. Maybe they can do the same for your players. Ehreval

Re: Kill the PCs? In my current Hero game (superheroic, pc's started with 350 points plus disads and are now somewhere around 500 each) the players and characters take the issue of pc death very seriously, even the one with nine lives. Never you mind that I rarely kill characters in any of my games. I make sure each player knows, before character generation, exactly what the prospect of pc death is. For this genre, pc death really isn't appropriate at all times, so I let the players know that they'd generally only die if they did something very stupid or literally asked for it. I also made the caveat that some foes and situations would be more dangerous to others, so sometimes "stupid" would be quite relative. (On the other hand, in my Vampire: Dark Ages game, I made sure people knew that Final Death would happen often, sometimes without warning and sometimes even when nobody did anything stupid. In the past, I've sometimes warned players that death would sometimes happen if the party failed to be *brilliant*. In my futuristic gladiators game, cloning and brain-taping had been perfected, so it was unlikely for death to be more than an inconvenience, ever, but one of my pc's managed the final death anyway.) I follow this up with a little talk during/after character generation with any player who makes a pc that's likely to be killed, especially if it's likely he'll be slain by fellow party members, like the "Worm From Beyond," a sentient slug from a Mythos universe who, while he was the closest thing to "good" his universe had, really wasn't all that pleasant in his habits, like eating the brain of a sentient and piloting around the being's corpus while he did so. So when the superheroes dash across the street to stop minor villains from running a bank, my players know that I'm not going to have someone get run over by a Mack truck. Similarly, they know that if they're going to assault the Fuhrerbunker in a universe where WWII never ended, they're going to have to be very smart to avoid casualties. While we haven't had many pc deaths in the time this game has been running there have been many, many npc deaths. Sometimes, innocents are killed and the pc's are powerless to stop it. Even when that's the case, though, I make sure they know that their actions directly effect the mortality rate of the normals around them. A strong, quick response to a disaster -- like the recurring plagues of demons they just put a stop to -- can keep down the npc carnage, while a poorly-planned, slow response heightens it. I also opened a session with the near-death of the party npc in a way that would have slain practically anyone else outright. So even before I hit the characters in the forehead with a fallen comrade whose passing they mourned (see below) they were still very much aware that death exists and is a real possibility. Yes, they're a bit cocky in some ways because it hasn't happened to a character who hasn't been set up for it yet, but they're also very careful in many other ways, and they keep it in mind as a possibility for the vulnerable mortals around them, always. We also got a little roleplaying mileage out of the Worm's death that did occur. The pc who whacked the Worm was mind-controlled by a baddie at the time, but he still dealt with a good deal of angst regarding his actions. If that angst had been played out externally rather than taking place almost entirely in the pc's head, it would have been even better, but the particular pc in question isn't the type to act out much. This same pc also seems to angst over civilian deaths that aren't prevented, and that's good, too, maybe even better. I also killed off a former pc whose player had abandoned the game. That one was well-respected and valued by the rest of the group, and the characters' reactions to his death -- shock, dismay, disbelief, wrath -- were much more fun to watch play out. The bottom line with death, I think, is the same as it is for any other element of story-telling. It should have an effect, and the truly interesting part isn't the death scene, it's the aftermath. Our group got shortchanged a bit, because people were really stretching themselves -- letting their characters not notice things or think of the ramifications of things -- in order to *not* kill the Worm earlier, so there wasn't so much agony over its death, and since the Worm wasn't publicly acknowledged, ever -- and the Worm's two known shells weren't really high in the local public eye -- the public, themselves, didn't have much reaction to his passing. What's really interesting, usually, is how the characters and world change as a result of the pc death. When the Worm's first shell was destroyed, her family showed up en masse for the funeral and to dispose of her property. This was mildly amusing, and could have gone far afield if the pc's had let them know about the Worm. So while pc death may be a dramatic and effective storytelling device, I'd say that the important thing isn't the frequency, or shoving it at your players sideways. The important thing is how it plays out, how it affects the story, setting and characters involved. (A major npc hero in a nearby city is slated to die in this game, off-screen. A nation will mourn, and players will have a chance to react to the death of a powerful hero.) Now, if you absolutely *must* have pc death for the story you want to tell -- and sometimes it happens -- then you have a great opportunity to plan for it ahead of time. Approach your best roleplayers or ask for volunteers at the end of a session. Be prepared to offer rewards for anyone who's willing to sacrifice a character for the sake of a story. I'd *start* with letting them build with the current points total of their pc or the average of all pc's, whichever is higher, then offer them a flat points bonus and often give a second bonus for how well-played a death is. (I tend to do this whenever a character dies a natural death in the first place, with the exception that I'll generally start them out at the level of the lowest-pointed pc.) With prior planning, you can get the flavor of the scene down-pat, and if you haven't openly canvassed for volunteers to bite the big one, the player shock value should be large. You can also make sure that the sacrificing player has his new character ready to go or, perhaps, already worked into the campaign. Just my thoughts, Ehreval

Re: Hero System women are all insanely attractive And the recent Wonder Woman artist who couldn't manage to make her look like the same person from panel to panel. -- Ehreval

Re: Pregnancy and combat Double-post. My apologies.

Re: Pregnancy and combat See, that's the part that I find both weird and disturbing. Pregnancy, in and of itself, isn't a touchy subject. At all. The whole situation reminds me of a friend of mine who has a near-psychotic reaction to the presence of marshmallow peeps in that something normal and innocent and perfectly appropriate gets howled at without demonstrable reason. -- Ehreval

Re: Expanded Everyman Skill List

Re: Expanded Everyman Skill List

Re: Pregnancy and combat (Post edited for typos, one of them truly egregious.) I agree entirely. I can't believe that someone was flamed twice for a perfectly legitimate question. We are dealing with a situation that is: 1) Experienced at some point approximately half the members of all mammalian species, and thus a legitimate state for a character to be in. 2) A serious physical impediment that *should* be worth points. As for the poster who compared late-term pregnancy to constipation and pms in terms of disability, I'll note that many, *many* pregnant women suffer constipation as one of the many adverse effects of their pregnancy, but that otherwise you're foolishly trivializing the difficulties of pregnancy by comparing it to a minor inconvenience that is worth, at most, 1 pt. as a quirk: "Chronically Constipated". And, seriously, if you think that the menstrual cycle can't be worth points, you haven't known one of the many women who *are* debilitated for several days a month by migraines, cramps severe enough to lead to back spasms, etc. Finally, let me note that you may run your games as you wish. If you consider something "inappropriate" for your game, good for you. If someone else decides to venture into territory that you won't, good for them While I find it disturbing that such a normal, healthy state of being as pregnancy is trivialized by one poster and possibly considered dirty by another, I'm not going to tell either of you to include pregnancy in your campaigns in some misguided effort to enlighten you. Do have the courtesy, likewise, of not telling others how to run theirs.

Re: Suggest Mayhem For My Game! The stupider demons aren't a problem here, so we'll dispense with them. Some things that I think the smarter ones might try as they realize that summons rarely last forever. 1) They look for things, such as sources of magical power, mystic talismans, heavy weaponry, etc., that might be useful to them when they're back in hell or whatever their home dimension is. They steal or otherwise obtain the items and are holding them when they go home. 2) Plan for the day they get banished or unsummoned. Set up gates that will allow them easy access to return to this world, willing pawns, safe houses and the like. 3) Contact others in this world who might be convinced/coerced/bribed/tricked into summoning them again. 4) LA is already, in real life, a haven for corruption. Tricking folks into permanently damning themselves (which should raise a demon's status in hell) should be child's play. Here's some examples: a) The advertising agency that encourages vice by glorifying corruption. The actor/sports star who's now a powerful and negative role model. c) Schools that teach children negative values. d) A corrupted priest teaching things from the pulpit that are *almost* good ideas, but are horribly awry. e) A charitable foundation turns its work evil, fostering lesser evils amongst its recipients, like encouraging working moms toward prostitution. 5) Drive some of the locals insane or toward evil. A wake of terror unleashed by demon-influenced mortals who are now serial killers, perverts or newly-created priests of evil is likely, along with non-aligned mages and psychics. Fakirs, such as pop tarot readers, newspaper-column psychics and other charlatans may discover they suddenly have real powers and may or may not recognize the price involved. 6) Taint LA. Create sources of evil that will remain after the demons have gone. a) Desecrated churches that taint rather than purify the souls of the parishioners. Cemetaries that turn those buried into living dead. Artifacts that corrupt those who hold/wield them. c) An unholy power source that empowers those who pass through it or experience it daily (depending on how powerful and transmissible it is) and corrupts them in the process. d) If your campaign has a magical or spiritual "background energy", have the city's entire aura go evil, making it harder for good energy to do its work and giving evil energy a little boost, possibly discouraging even good thoughts and encouraging evil ones. 7) Fight the power! If there are powerful forces for good in the area, the more powerful demons might have tried to take them out, by deactivating or damaging or corrupting good power sources, attacking good-guy psychics, mages and priests, etc. 8) Get in contact with indigenous evil and start making deals. Likely targets would include... a) The shallow, self-indulgent set from Hollywood and the LA clubs. Organized crime from the mafia down to street gangs. c) Crack addicts, the deeply impoverished and others who have nothing to lose or who have a serious achilles heel in general. 9) Straight Outta Compton -- There's a lot of anger in the hood. This should be easily harnessed by evil for distribution to the downtown and more affluent areas of the city. (And, really, aren't they *all* more affluent?) All it takes are a few whispers in the wrong ears to say that whitey's keeping you down, and why should you mug/murder/sell drugs in your own neighborhood where you're hurting friends and neighbors when you can share your special brand of mayhem with the rich white folks in the burbs? 10) Encourage Human Misery -- Let's get some more negative energy flowing in LA in general. Randomly reward those who promote the misery of others: Pimps, drug dealers, bookies and people-smugglers, just to name a few. And remember, the more people are miserable, the more turn away from an "obviously uncaring God" to those powers which *will* make their lives better, materially. 11) Hooray for Hollywood! -- Hollywood film stars are already terrible role models, and the mass media already promotes hedonism in all of its glorious forms. a) A few carefully-whispered words in the right ear, and all of a sudden those pampered actors will have even greater sins forgiven by the studios they make money for, b)the casting couch will return in full force, and c) heroes of the next wave of films will have such glamorous traits as controlled drug abuse, underage love interests and understandable killing rages. 12) A New Religion For Our Times -- LA, in real life, is already primed for this one, and indeed, new age religion is already a big thing in some segments of LA society, and has been for ages. What we *really* need is Dianetics taken to the next level: Part of being "cleared" now involves complete amorality. And, really, let's worship those things that matter, like money and status and power and good looks. Those are the *real* virtues we should be pursuing. Evil isn't hurting others; It's being poor, not having any style and affronting people with natural ugliness. And, as we all know, "A life without pleasure is a life not worth living." -- Ehreval