DShomshak

According to one of the NPR stories I heard a year or so ago, this is at least sometimes the case. Supposedly, some of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, in jail pending trial, were given basic civics courses -- and were surprised (and sometimes embarrassed) to learn that American history, government and the Constitution were not what they'd believed. They realized they'd been living in political Fantasy Land. Either nobody told them the truth, or they hadn't listened before. Dean Shomshak

The Champions product I first think of here is Aaron Allston's Strike Force. The extended family called "the Blood" are exactly this: Super-powers run in the family. Some members are heroes, some are villains, some just living their lives. (They also appeared in the very early supplement The Blood and Dr. McQuark, IIRC.) Not part of the CU, but it would be easy to splice them in. Strike Force is worth reading in any case. IMO it's the best Champions supplement ever written, and darn useful for any game as an example of what a successful campaign looks like. Dean Shomshak

Ooh, perfect for Fearmonger from Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies! <scribble, scribble> Dean Shomshak

DC did that schtick as well: http://thenewcaferacersociety.blogspot.com/2008/06/monowheels-in-comics-war-wheel.html Dean Shomshak

IIRC the White Event and nuking Pittsburgh -- the "Black Event" -- were separate events, though Star Brand caused both. And yes, time travel was involved, so the Star Brand did not (at that point) have a definable origin: it existed in a time loop. Later, the MU hero Quasar acquired the Star Brand, replacing his quantum armband thingies. I don't know what happened to the Star Brand after Quasar's title was cancelled, though I'm sure I could look it up on Wikipedia. I haven't thought about this stuff in decades. Dean Shomshak

Excellently done, Stealthgamer! Dean Shomshak

The player does intend Princess Moonray to be a temporary character for this particular campaign, so final victory coming from giving up the Magical Girl powers and identity is not out of the question. We'll see how the campaign goes. I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched in the family tree of Magical Girls? O-kay! Yes, I do know them; watched them growing up. I don't intend to do a great deal of research for this, but I might look for a Sailor Moon movie or two, or one DVD's worth of episodes at the library. I might look for She-Ra to watch a few eps (probably not a full season, uff da) because IIRC J. Michael Straczinski was the executive producer. That probably makes it better than He-Man, and She-Ra is a girl who's magic (don't know if she's really a Magical Girl, though). Dean Shomshak

Aw shucks, I'm blushin'. (But considering the nature of the thread, I must also remind people that these products are not official parts of the CU. Easy to integrate, but not official.) Dean Shomshak

Including Russian rhetoric. As usual, the Kremlin is screaming wild threats; the latest, that Germany is now a target for retribution. Yesterday on the BBC, the German defense minister drily said that his government was not cowed by harsh language. Dean Shomshak

I have indeed, but I never saw any other Magical Girl TV to make the connection! So thank you (and for reminding me of TVTropes -- it's been years since I used it, I d completely forgotten about it.) The player tells me that MoonBlossom indeed tries to turn everything into a "lesson." Whether it is or not. Dean Shomshak

Here's the situation: One of my players has a fun idea for a character, but it involves genres I'm really not up on. Specifically, the character's backstory is that when she was a lonely 13-year-old, she imagined a fairly elaborate fantasy world in which she was Princess Moonray, heroine of the magical Moon Kingdom -- sort of an unholy mash-up of Masters of the Universe and Sailor Moon. When she was grown up, she somehow managed to help a supernatural creature that rewarded her by granting the deepest wish of her heart. Not what she wanted right now, but what she had wanted most strongly in all her life: to be Princess Moonray. And so that's her Hero ID. The thing is, this wish also seems to have created the entire Magical Moon Kingdom, too! Princess Moonray's friends/allies live there, like the magical hummingbird MoonBlossom and the hunky Dorian Silversword. And her arch-enemy Queen Nocturna, ruler of the Dark Side of the Moon. There's no way I'm leaving this undeveloped. There *must* be visits to the Magical Moon Kingdom, and her friends and enemies must visit Earth to make her life interesting. Only... I never watched Sailor Moon or any iteration of He-Man and She-Ra. So far, all I know is that Queen Nocturna needs to have a cadre of lieutenants who can implement her evil schemes to conquer the Moon Kingdom. (Or Earth, as they follow Princess Moonray.) Maybe her son, Prince Balthazar Blackheart, who looks suspiciously like Leader Desslok from StarBlazers (but more "bishi'?), and a daughter Princess Shadira, who is totally an Azula expy from Avatar: the Last Airbender. But that's all I got. I appeal to the wisdom of the Forum. What are the tropes? What powers are standard for someone like Queen Nocturna, and what minions should she have? Are there any must-have locations? Standard story elements? (At least I already have the character sheet for Princess Moonray. So I know that the way magical attacks work is that she points at her target and shouts, say, "Staggering Moon Strike!" for a Mental Blast or ""Moon Mind Invasion!" for Telepathy. This is, hm, a new magical tradition for me to learn, but I'm not sure I'll ever want to write a new chapter for Ultimate Mystic.) Dean Shomshak

Reviewing: Placing Reduced Endurance on a Multipower rather than the slots is at least potentially legal, so that's between you and your GM. No further concern iof mine. It's been pointed out that while GG still has her Martial Arts and Speed outside her Hero ID she's the most fragile of spun-glass cannons. This has dramatic possibilities. If you're okay with the choices it places on the character, I am more than okay with it too.👍 Ah: the BODY AVAD field is a *focus breaker.* Any adversary who depends on breakable Foci will be hosed... if Ghost Girl is willing to harm the people around her. Which she may have to do, and consequently wrestle with her Code vs Killing. Which, again, is dramatic. (And while it's very powerful in some circumstances, it's no more so than, say, a high-STR brick with levels in Grab. Now *there's* a character you end up building antagonists and scenarios around. I speak from experience as GM.) The Hunteds are just placeholders, sure. In my group, we often just write in, "Hunted: Major Campaign Adversary," or something like that, because it's often not certain who will become the ongoing Big Bad. Invisibility, Desolidification, and Teleportation that can MegaScale make Ghost Girl the infiltration and quick escape paragon for any team she's in. This is in no way a criticism; I just hope the GM is ready for a character who can bypass many obstacles. I've alowed more in my campaigns. As far as I'm concerned, that covers everything in the write-up. The character seems eminently playable. Unless you want to give more description of her origin story and personality, I'm done. Dean Shomshak

I should add that I like reusable shared origins, but am not a big fan of all-encompassing origins. Well, unless they are so broad they really do amount to flipping a switch on the world so that all sorts of origins become possible. The Walpurgisnacht Working is a such a switch-flipping for the CU. The Wild Card virus is, eh, a little too narrow for my taste. Sure, the writers on the project did find ways to explain (or explain away) how it resulted in androids, mages, gods and whatnot, but I found the work more clever than graceful. I'd rather revel in the gonzo. Dean Shomshak

As it happens, the BBC had a story on this today. The article is grotesquely false. The geophysicist interviewed explained that the inner core was rotating slightly faster than the Earth's upper layers. It's slowed down a little, so its rotation now matches the rest of the planet. It may gradually slow to spin just a bit slower than the upper layers, but it has not stopped or reversed directions. But apparently quite a few articles present similar misunderstanding. I can only guess whether that many science reporters are that ignorant or incompetent, or if they are deliberately misunderstanding for the sake of clickbait. (My contact among the Corefolk says, "Why shouldn't the Earth's atmosphere rotate at a different rate than the planet proper?") Dean Shomshak

I am fairly sure I have no classified documents, since the closest I came to government employment was a three month trial period with the Tacoma Public Library system... The brief announcements I've heard about Pence's documents say it's not known what the docs are. But there's no mention that he's fighting their return to government custody, which I consider the core issue. ADDENDUM: Just heard on ATC: Pence earlier said he was sure he didn't have any classified documents. A few days later... Oops! But he called the FBI promptly to retrieve them. So I am fully willing to believe that Pence is blameless in this. Dean Shomshak

To commemorate Doctor Who's 60th anniversary, I suggest visiting your local quarry. OK, visiting the Pacific Northwest instead? When you're in Seattle, I recommend the University of Washington. Specifically, Suzallo Library. It has a splendid Collegiate Gothic facade. Inside, be sure to go up the grand staircase to the Reading Room. It's like the Great Hall at Hogwarts, only minus the CGI and the students are older. I also like the stained glass windows honoring the pioneers of printing, which shows you where my mind's at. The main desk is on the ground floor of a newer part of the library, an immense room featuring an art installation of carved ravens and the motto, "Raven Brings Light to the House of Stories," both in English and one of the local Indigenous languages for which linguists had to invent new characters (lots of backward question marks, IIRC). Also swing by the Quad nearby, if you want more Collegiate Gothic. If you arrive at the correct two weeks of the year, all the Japanese cherries will be in bloom. One of the buildings on the south campus has a Foucault pendulum. Or from Red Square, in front of Suzallo, you can look south to a fine view of Drumheller Fountain -- and beyond it, if the weather's clear, a perfectly framed Mount Rainier. Elsewhere in Seattle, it's been way too long since I visited the Seattle Center. The Space Needle is the most famous attraction, but I prefer the Science Center. The city also holds the Experience Music Project and, next door, the Science Fiction Museum. The Underground Seattle tour is... well, not actually that spectacular, but but the history is interesting and you can glean material for setting adventures in Seattle. All this below ground space, much of it neglected, ready for supervillains, vampires, or other interesting people to occupy! As a resident of Pierce rather than King County, though, I am obliged by statute to put in a good word for Tacoma. The old Union Station downtown is another architectural gem, its form echoed by the newer Washington State History Museum. Nearby is the Museum of Glass. Tacoma's most celebrated artist, Dale Chihuly, brought glass art to the city, so it's a big deal for the locals. The museum includes a "hot shop" where you can watch local artists and artisans doing glassblowing and such. The Point Defiance Zoo is available if you like animals. Don't worry, the infamous "Tacoma Aroma" is long gone since the pulp mill shut down. And the demise of the Asarco Smelter means Tacoma is no more toxic than any other metropolis. I recommedn Atlas Obscura or the book Weird Washington to help you find the region's stranger attractions. For instance, as you drive up I-5 you might catch a glimpse of Gospodor's Monument Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospodor_Monument_Park). Dean Shomshak

I assume that's a rhetorical question. If not, you'd have to ask someone involved in producing and/or maintaining Hero Designer. (Simon seems to be the guy at the HD forum.) I've never used it. All I know is that published works must now follow CC. Dean Shomshak

Painful, but potentially dramatic. Comics have had lots of heroes with off switches, like early Thor (turn to semi-crippled Don Blake if he's without his hammer for a full minute) or Captain Marvel (Billy Batson couldn't turn into "the big red cheese" if he was gagged). I'm completely okay with this. The incoming character in my Avant Guard campaign has pretty much everything on OIAID, and I am pondering ways of forcing the character into such no-powers situations. (Though Ghost Girl still has her Martial Arts even when her Powers are shut down, and that ain't nothing. More than Billy Batson or Don Blake had, for sure!) Dean Shomshak

Oookay, let's see what the rules specifically say about Advantages on Multipower reserves. 6e1, page 405: OTOH, three paragraphs down the text says that a reserve can have an Advantage, even if the Advantage is irrelevant to some of the slots -- with the specific example of placing Life Support in a Multipower that has Armor Piercing or Reduced Endurance on the reserve, even though Life Support does not cost Endurance anyway, and canny be Armor Piercing. I regard the text as muddled to the point of summing up to, "Uh, whatever." And a great waste of word count. But it sort of supports the way Ghost Girl's Multipower is written, in that the specific suggestion not to do this is specifically undercut on the same page. So what about Champions Complete? Page 122 says: (With Charges as a special exception.) So by the latest iteration, no, all Ghost Girl's slots need separate Reduced Endurance and the reserve must have enough points to accommodate this. For what it's worth, I cannot recall any Advantage except Charges ever placed on a Multipower reserve in a published character. (See Lazer, in CV3, for example.) But if your GM follows 6e and accepts Reduced Endurance on a Multipower reserve as valid, I am in no position to say he, she or nonbinary pronoun is definitely wrong. Just that I would never allow it. Dean Shomshak

As others have said, a lot depends on how restrictive you want to be, with "Just one origin event" comparable to the Marvel New U White Event as an extreme case. But it sounds like you just want to prune things down -- not every powered armor character invented their tech ex nihilo, not so many "secret projects," etc. For which I fully agree! Like, Hugh Neilson mentioned the Armor Wars: To me it seems both plausible and artistically satisfying that yes, inventors are copying armor designs. Even just knowing that something has been done is, historically, a very good start for a competent scientist or engineer to duplicate it. At risk of immodesty, let me mention that I wrote a few supplements based on just such premises: the SHARED ORIGINS series, all available from the HERO Store: Shared Origins: Sky-Q. It's the "Smart Drug" that really works. Sometimes it works too well -- with some unfortunate side effects. Along with the brilliant technological breakthroughs, users tend to develop bizarre criminal obsessions. This is your source for nutty theme gadget villains! And some who aren't so nutty. And maybe some who are downright monsters. Shared Origins: The Dynatron. Mauro Fuentes, a.k.a. Red Giant, invented a machine that can give anyone super-powers. After a brief career as a supervillain, he got smart and started selling origins to other people. Being the world's premier "power vendor" has not worked out as well as he hoped. But if you have the money -- he has the power. Shared Origins: The Green Butterfly. This book of magic tells how to gain super-powers... if you're lucky. If you aren't lucky, you may suffer a fate that would make death a mercy. But if you're up on your occultism and willing to take a BIG chance, you can become a nascent demigod. Several copies are extant. Is somebody making more? Dean Shomshak ADDENDUM: Also, each of these mini-books has an appendix giving brief descriptions of three other Shared Origins that follow a similar theme, which you can develop for yourself. So, three other Origin Substances, Power Vendors, and Dangerous Choices.

The chart on p 325 of 6e1, and p 98 of CC, place Power Defense two steps down from normal defenses. Following that, AVAD should be +1 and NND should be +1/2. (Though the 6e writeups in the Champions Villains series still seem to rate NND vs Power Defense as +1. <shrug>) IDean Shomshak

Basic Blast operates against Normal Defenses. Converting them to operate against Power Defense is an Advantage. Then making the attack NND reduces that Advantage; it does not make it a Limitation. As a matter of notation, though, good idea to note how many meters of Flight the character can use with each fixed slot. Dean Shomshak

Well, that would seem to be the way the rules are written. Multipower Reserves do not themselves cost Endurance; therefore, Reduced Endurance is not a valid Advantage for them.

Thank you, I always like a Rene Magritte homage. Dean Shomshak

The January, 2023 issue of Scientific American includes this excellent sentenc e in an article about the 2022 Physics Nobel Prize winners, John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zilinger: "Colleagues agree the trio had it coming, deserving this reckoning for overthrowing reality as we know it." The article is, "The Universe Is Not Locally Real." It's about quantum entanglement. Dean Shomshak