DShomshak

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

Six days since my brother tested negative for Covid two days in a row, and none of use caught Covid yet. *Whew.* Dean Shomshak

I admit, I never would have thought to ask, "Why is Pennsylvania so haunted?" Nor Connecticut. Those states just became a lot more interesting. Dean Shomshak

Yes, but that's a game thing separate from what Assault asked. First you work out what halflings are by themselves. Then you work out what they are with other people. It's worth remembering that in LotR, it was an important feature of the world that Men, Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits had pretty much gone their own ways for thousands of years. A few points of contact such as Bree and Dale, but mostly separate. The Fellowship of the Ring was the first endeavor to involve all four races since, well, ever. It was Tolkien's imitators, and especially D&D, that shoved everyone together and nobody was particularly strange to anyone else. Tolkien shaped four distinct races (orcs, too) from a melange of folklore that didn't draw such distinctions among the faerie-folk -- and they were all Hidden Folk, not just the short ones. Nothing decreed that he had to create dwarves, elves, hobbits and orcs as he did, or as gamers have subsequently adapted them. So I repeat: Go back to the source. It might be a useful exercise to reverse-engineer hobbits from the folklore: work out what Tolkien used, and what he was trying to achieve. Then you can probably rebuilt the Sma;ll Folk to suit yourself. Or, you know, don't. If the only reason you're even trying to make halflings "work" for you is that people expect them 'cuz D&D, you probably shouldn't waste your time. You probably won't b e happy with the result; and if you aren't having fun runnin g the game, your players probably won't have fun either. Dean Shomshak

And a bazillion legends from around the world about the small folk who are rarely seen. That's where Tolkien got his hobbits (with a fair bit of his own imagination). Return to the source and do as he did. When I ran my Fantasy Europa alternate-history campaign I didn't get much opportunity to use my version of halflings -- or three versions, really, because I gave them three main cultural divisions. Regular "halflings" had assimilated into human society. Savants are sure they are simply a shorter version of humans. But it's also pretty well established that they are the first folk of Europe. Halflings who didn't assimilate are generally called Picts, Pygmies, Pisgies, or other variations; or Brownies, Bwca, Boggarts, Huldre, Kobolds, or many other names. None of these are what they call themselves. They still live in hiding out in the countryside. Local folk sometimes make tacit bargains with them: The farmer who lets the Hidden Folk glean his fields after the harvest finds fewer foxes getting into the henhouse. Or the reverse can happen. The Hidden Folk have their own ancient religion and mythology, preserving many secrets su ch as from when the elves came, and the Wild Huntsman's true name. But a few of the Hidden Folk strike back against the larger folk who occupy land they still regard as theirs. They are Goblins, the terror in the dark or under the bed, masters of dagger, dart and poison. Up the airy mountain/Down the rushy glen/We daren't go a-hunting/For fear of little men... Like I said, it's an idea I never got the chance to develop much. Maybe I'll get a chance some other time. Dean Shomshak

I followed the link to the original article. The Republican leader of the New Mexico State House condemns Pena, which shows he is not a complete lunatic. (Unlike Pena, who is clearly quite mad.) But considering how early in the campaign the Democratic incumbet pointed out Pena's criminal history (and tried to get him disqualified on those grounds -- a judge then ruled the applicable law was unconstitutional), I would have thought the Republicans could have found someone, *anyone,* to run against Pena in the primary. Or maybe they did; I don't know how New Mexico handles these things. Failed Republican candidate arrested in shootings targeting Democratic politicians' homes - Albuquerque Journal (abqjournal.com) I suppose it is possible that Pena was literally the only person who tried running as an R in that district, and the parties cannot actually forbid people from claiming affiliation when they run. But Pena is a gift for New Mexico Dems that tghey should be able to exploit for at least one more election cycle. Dean Shomshak

Heard on the BBC that scientists have used lasers to trigger and draw lightning strikes. The reporter from Nature spoke of it as a sort of improved lightning rod to protect especially vulnerable facilities, such as rocket launch sites. No mention of stealing the weapon of the gods from their own hands, but still: lasers, to control lightning. Someone, somewhere, is going "Muah ha ha ha!" I can't seem to find a BBC site for the report, but found this story directly from Nature itself. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00080-7 Dean Shomshak

Big Jack Brass beat me to it! But here's a link to the issue and article, if anyone cares. https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine100/page/n75/mode/2up The other article was in issue 117: https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine117/page/n53/mode/2up DRAGON also published the "One in a Million" article by Roger E. Moore, about superbeing populations worldwide, which has guided my setting design ever since. A useful reminder to American Champions GMs about how many people *do not live in the USA.* But they can have heroes and villains too! Dean Shomshak

I think I saw it in DRAGON, decades ago. As Duke says, this would have been for 2nd or 3rd edition, and likely unofficial. I'll check my old issues and see if I can find it. Dean Shomshak

If it matters, lately on BBC and ATC I've heard reports that Poland's government has announced its intent to give German-built Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but needs Germany's permission to do so. Since I don't follow the international arms trade as a rule, this is the first I've heard of such re-export permissions, but I guess it's a thing for some arms systems and some countries. Switzerland may do the same with weapons that it sells, no matter who they are sold to. Dean Shomshak

For a few days now, I'd thought of posting a new team concept since it had been so long since anyone posted, but was too busy with other things. I won't object if anyone has additional members for Second Chance, but I'd ;like to propose the next team. It's the same concept as the PCs in my current campaign, but I'd like to see what other people could make of it in the Champions Universe. In the Superheroic Age, the future faces deadly peril. Forget the official CU timeline with the Alien Wars, Terran Empire, and all that. That's only one possibility. Many of the possibilities are dreadful. Several current supervillains have the potential to end the human race and the world... or inflict horrors without end. Even in those doomed futures, there are heroes -- likewise doomed, because it's too late. But what if someone could go back in time to make sure that future never happened? Enter Captain Chronos! He has rescued six doomed heroes and brought them back to the early 21st century to defeat the villains before they can destroy the world. They are the Avant Guard. Pick the villain who dooms the world. The likes of Doctor Destroyer, Takofanes or Mechanon are easy choices, but hey, if you can think of a way to make Bulldozer a Destroyer of Worlds, great! Give a brief description of the dark future, and then that last hero who's going down fighting before Captain Chronos finds him, her, or it. Dean Shpomshak

Jana's closest friend in Second Chance is Fiona Stewart. She too suffered from an arranged marriage; in her case, as the trophy wife of a wealthy widower financier, Hezechiah Stewart. She tried to be a dutiful wife for the sake of her family. She did not encourage young men who paid her attention; she was faithful in her May-to-November marriage. It didn't matter. Her husband still was insanely jealous. Fortunately, he suffered a stroke in one of his jealous rages and died. Unfortunately, Fiona still wasn't free: Hezechiah's possessive obsession led to him becoming a ghost. (You'll find him in Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies, as The Haunt.) He murdered his wife and made her a ghost, too -- his wife for eternity. That was almost a century ago. Devious circumstances led to Second Chance entering Hezechiah Stewart's long-vacant house. They fought the Haunt, and gave Fiona new hope. She turned on her husband and helped the heroes destroy him. The old house burned. She expected to go to her own eternal reward then, but didn't. She was free for the first time in her... existence. Terrified yet exhilarated, she joined as their latest member (so far,), Ghost Girl. (Fiona is new at this hero name thing.) Dean Shomshak