Tom McCarthy

Re: Time of Crisis FWIW, I converted Omega to Champions to run him for my group.

A fairly simple, straightforward pair of questions. i) I'd like to have two powers which are 'linked' in that the random element of their results is the same. For example, a Drain 4D6 BODY and a Energy Blast 4D6 NND, where I only roll 4D6 once, and the result applies to both. If there were no Transfer, perhaps I'd want to 'link' a Drain and Aid together for the same effect. Ideally, I'd build it as a +0 advantage or -0 limitation on the powers. Can you think of any reason why this value would be wrong? ii) Any chance such an advantage/limitation might someday see print?

Re: Help Requested: Name my Canadian team and it's members I knew a fellow who had a beloved electrical blaster called Hydro Bill. In the province of Ontario, the electrical power company (at that time) was Ontario Hydro (short for Hydroelectric, I think). Canadian Shield is a huge geographical region, but I've seen it used for team names and character names. Some simple names, translated to French Canadian, work well. Monsier Puissance, for a brick, perhaps. True North is also a common name for teams and heroes (it's from the national anthem). Canadian Guard works well ("we stand on guard for thee"). Grizzly bears and Kodiaks are great outdoors beasts. The Canadian lynx, badger and yes, wolverine, are also right up there for outdoors wild animals. Liberator, Vindicator, Avenger, these are all common enough international concepts.

Re: Elder Worm Reference Collection Did you want to include references as far back as Champions 3rd edition or earlier?

Re: Foxbat: A place in your campaign? Foxbat is the recurring villain who gets the most play in my campaign. A Foxbat caper tends to be shorter and a bit more direct, and there aren't layers or minions to worry about (inept sidekicks, yes, but not minions). So even if more sessions are devoted to mechanon or Dr. Destroyer, Foxbat runs more plots. And he's the only one who can really be the villain for the Christmas Special (Foxbat plans to shoot down Santa!), the comedy caper (Who is kidnapping all the original guest stars of the Batman television series, and why?), and the mad Science! plot and still be the same guy. I last used him to kick off an adaptation of M&M's Time of Crisis using the Champions Battlegrounds mall fight. Before that, one of the players wanted to GM, and I needed a quick and dirty 350 point hero. So I took Foxbat's character sheet, called him the Cannoneer, and proceeded to ham it up (8D6 NND up the nose!). When the Cannoneer was revealed to be Foxbat and to have successfully infiltrated the team, the players were flabbergasted.

Re: Homages you would like to see officially Planetary, the Authority, the Secret Six, even the Wrecking Crew could all be nicely 'riffed' on. Firestorm's transmutation abilities could be cool. The current Green lantern storyline suggesting a single alien race is responsible for a subset of GL's rogue's gallery who all are all 'evolved' specimens would be interesting. For that matter, the Identity Crisis notions of a premiere superhero team who have a dark secret, a villain whose specialities are information and networking, and the villains who team up to battle the heroes could all be interesting themes. Or, at the other extreme, a small set of street smart heroes used in a Secret War to destabilize a small European country or international corporation that was funding high-tech gadget-oriented villains as terrorists. Maybe UNTIL has the same rogue elements as SHIELD, maybe not. The manipulative mind controllers/puppeteers from Dan Simmons' novel (Cold Comforts ? Creature Comforts ?) could be excellent. Our mad friend from Popup could be cool. Absorbing Man, DC's Amazing Man, Klaw, and the Thunderbolts are all nice ideas.

Re: Homages you would like to see officially I miss Black Claw, the cowardly Wolverine homage. Remember when Oculon was a whiny, incompetent homage to Cyclops ? And of course, Eurostar was a wonderful homage to the Uncanny X-Men. Homages to see: - Shi'ar Imperial Guard / Legion of Superheroes. Dave Cockrum knew how to take a good thing with him when he went from DC to Marvel. Let's see a nice take on it from Hero. - Extremists. A villain team from the world that gave us DC's doppelgangers of the Avengers (part of a nod-and-a-wink 'crossover' between the two companies that also gave us the Squadron Sinister/Squadron Supreme/Supreme Power) - DNAgents - Jon Sable, Freelance - Bill Willingham's Elementals - The member of the Masq who has all the powers of the Fab 5 - Annihilus

Re: THE ULTIMATE METAMORPH -- What Do *You* Want To See? What's the game construct for a stretcher to enter a building under the door or through the pipes ? We've seen typical PD/ED, etc. for steel, iron, etc. in the USPD or Ultimate Brick, but collect them in one spot and maybe add a few more materials. I like the idea of listing the levels of DI/Growth/Shrinking at which: i) you have a noticeable gravity field ii) you are a black hole iii) the earth or typical building materials will not support your weight

Re: Dr. House INT 15 or 18 as required to stand out in campaign PS: Doctor Perk: Licensed to practice medicine Perk: Positive Reputation as highly skilled diagnostician Perk: Tenured SS: Medicine SS: Anatomy SS: Pharmacology KS: Obscure diseases Contacts or Followers ? (Dr. Cuddy, administrator, friendly oncologist, three assistant doctors with various specialties Foreman (B&E, brain surgery), Chase (rich) and Cameron (epidemiologist)) KS: Soap operas KS: Monster trucks Physical Lim: Lame in left leg, -3" running Dependency on painkillers (incompetence) Unwilling to be vulnerable to people emotionally Unwilling to observe social niceties, abrasive Fascinated by insanity and altered mental states Identifying quote: 'Patients lie. Everybody lies.'

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series Didn't Chris Avellone have community just down the coast (on a peninsula, I think) from Hudson where there were actually low-powered superheroes fighting DC style campaigns ? I thought it was the setting for Widows and Orphans and New Bedlam Asylum.

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series Well, it's Allen Thomas writing it, so I'm not too worried about it. Pulpy villains, even stereotypically so. The time of crimebosses who are scary and crazy enough to kill underlings for failing them. Preferably with strange motifs and themes (video games, clowns, mimes, opera, romance, playing cards, monocles, top hats, umbrellas, riddles, puzzles, confectionery and pastry, baking, eggs, snakes, scorpions, spiders, jetpacks, airplanes, postage stamps, lumberjacks, boomerangs, colours, you name it). Giant props would be good too (robot dinosaurs, oversize coins, giant typewriters, 40 foot lottery machines). Strong jawed heroes with a CvK and the kind of PRE attack where punks just crumble and talk. The kind of heroes who have strong psych lims about doing the right thing and at least one mental hangup or flaw that makes you think 'this guy is mentally damaged' (dead parents are good, dead sibling hasn't been seen as much, ailing parents and sibling are promising, too). Oh, and they should be uninterested in material wealth; maybe they're rich or maybe won't accept rewards. I want to feel an emphasis on style over detail. If you've studied the Shadow, you know about the fire opal ring, the magnums, and Shangri-La. But you also know that all this unfolds slowly, only seen in glimpses. Digital Hero had a nice article on the importance of style in TAS campaigns. I want grandiose schemes. Blackmailing someone is a crime, but it's rare that it impacts a TAS hero. Blackmailing the city, cornering the drug market, stealing a unique artifact or radioactive isotope, these all qualify. They all scream out that something unique is happening here, and it needs a special hero to stop it. If you've got the space, a CU:TAS section might be good. Note how Nighthawk and Nightwind fit well in DC:TAS, as does Shugosin. In a limited way, Solitaire might, too.

Re: Cheeze Alarm I try to figure out how long the character can stand being hit for 42 STUN every third segment against PD or ED, or 21 STUN against MD. If the answer is more than 2 turns, this is one very tough PC. I try to figure out how often one or more Hunteds will show or how often a total psych lim will occur. More than 50% seems too high for most campaigns. I check if the character has a movement power, attack power, or defence power far greater or far lower than anyone else. It's a warning sign. Too many advantages or limitations on a power is also a warning sign. If the character concept can't be conveyed in a single sentence, it's a bad sign.

Re: Improved Absorption? I seem to recall you could do a decent job of boosting an attack power by buying a bunch of dice which drew END from a reserve which only was energized by Absorption. 30 Absorption vs. energy attacks 6D6 to END in END Reserve 10 END Reserve (100 END capacity, 0 REC) 20 Multipower of power boosts, draws from END Reserve which is usually empty (-1/2) 2u +6D6 EB 2u +30 STR 2u +10" Flight, additional x4 NCM 2u FF (15 rPD, 15 rED) With this kind of structure, 15 BODY absorbed is 30 END which will allow you to unleash an extra 30 active points about 10 times.

Re: Probability? I think you want 1- (5/6)^n, where n is the number of dice. I get the following: 1 die 16.67% of one or more sixes 2 dice 30.56% of one or more sixes 3 dice 42.13% of one or more sixes 4 dice 51.77% of one or more sixes 5 dice 59.81% of one or more sixes 6 dice 66.51% of one or more sixes

Re: The Authority RPG ???? Just got around to perusing this now. First off, it's good to see a book priced with a realistic conversion rate. I live in Canada, shop in Canadian dollars, and know the exchange rate is floating around .75, so it bugs me to see books where the MSRP suggests an exchange rate around .60. Secondly, it's a thick, full colour book for a licensed property, so I'll accept that the price tag's going to be a bit high. I'm relatively lucky in that my games budget will support this kind of stuff (especially with my great games group kicking in the odd item to help my RPG budget), so I picked it up with several other nice looking products a week ago. It's actually my second full-colour copy of the TriStat gaming engine, so it might be an unnecessary expense, but I understand why the licensing company might feel they need the full set of support in one book (What is an RPG ? Example of combat, How do I build a character, etc.) In terms of appearance and such, it's a great looking book. The layout and design people seem to have made a conscious decision to keep the book the same dimensions as a comic book and then keep all the art reproductions from the comic in full colour and the same size and scale as originally published. It's a small detail, but one I appreciate. In terms of scope, the book does limit itself to The Authority 1-12, by Warren Ellis with art by Hitch and Neary and the Secret History of Jenny Sparks. While the character history delves a bit into the Warren Ellis Stormwatch issues, detailed issue by issue breakdowns are given for each of those 17 issues and most characters in those issues get writeups. The book contains both TriStat and D20 stats for all the characters, but the text inside suggests that only the TriStat engine is given. That certainly seemed the case in my limited reading so far. There's an interesting choice to give the actual stats at the back of the book, separate from the descriptions of the characters and their history. This is interesting and probably serves two purposes. First, it emphasizes the story over the crunchy numbers and second, I think the character history enjoys stronger copyright protection than the crunchy numbers. I haven't yet tried to run the characters through the Reality Storm conversion matrix but I plan to. Obviously, they'll prove to be very powerful characters, but the authors do seem to have tried to place some limits on them. For example, the Doctor seems to have had to use 'extra time' and 'push' in order to destroy all of Italy with one attack.