DShomshak

I'm sorry if I became snarky; I was rewriting my post while you responded.
 
In most cases, yeah, being immune to a character's own Powers is just handwavium. The comics often seem to be fine with that; I am fine with that; many other people seem to be fine with that. One can say "Unstable Molecules," or "Magic," or just dramatic license.
 
May I suggest your question about unstable molecules was perhaps unclear. Would a more precise question be, "How (if at all) do you write up a costume being immune to a character's own Powers? Assuming circumstances in which this goes beyond the mere fact that the costume isn't instantly destroyed by Powers that, in the real world, would destroy ordinary cloth." If I work at it, I'm sure I can think of situations where, say, the Human Torch's non-burning costume could be used for purposes other than not leaving Johnny Storm buck-naked when he turns off his flame aura. Under those circumstances, a GM might want to specify what can and can't be done with a costume when the character isn't wearing it -- even if one isn't charging Character Points for it. (Or it's a campaign where characters are not limited to arbitrary point totals.)
 
Am I getting closer?
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

Reading the article, I'll say that Ashcroft almost has a point in saying that Democratic efforts to keep Trump off the ballot invite Republican attempts to do the same to Biden, and that a determined person can find (or invent) insurrection to justify the attempt. He is quite correct in that it can result in electoral chaos.
 
He and the Texas lt. gov. are wrong in claiming migrants at the southern border as their grounds for attacking Biden, because the Biden administration seems to be following the law as best it can. It's just that the laws don't accommodate conservatives' cultural and racial paranoia very well. Which is why Ashcroft only almost has a point. But such legal nicety is irrelevant when one is motivated by white-hot cultural grievance.
 
Dean Shomshak

"Unstable Molecules" are a Special Effect for powers such as Instant Change, not a thing that needs a write-up in its own right.
 
Dean Shomshak

What is this thing about realistic costume damage you speak of, kemosabi?

Greetings everyone. I wanted to announce the official start of my work on Strike Force Organizations, a sequel to 2016's Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.
  The book will focus on three groups, the Blood, the Circle, and METE (all previous presented in Champions Organization products for early editions of Champions. My intent is to combine the content written for the PDFs with content Aaron wrote for his proposed (but never complete) Strike Force Universe series of books.
  I intend to update the content to HERO 6e, update the text to correct any errors and issues, and update any references to current game mechanics. I will not fill in any gaps -- I am not so arrogant as to assume what Aaron would have wanted, but I will acknowledge areas where content is lacking (if such a need arrives). I hope to find updated character sheets for many of the early NPCs, but will work with what I have.
  I also intend to present bases, vehicles, scenarios, and villains, just as they all appeared in the early releases.
  I will change names (for example, METE will be called Alien Research Laboratories) in accordance to Aaron's wishes and per his list of corrections for setting names.
  This product will be released as a collaborative work between Surbrook Press and High Rock Press.
Finally, the book will contain stats for Prowlers & Paragons UE and I hope to have a P&PUE add-on detailing all of the characters from Aaron Allston’s Strike Force.

PS: that last item has already been discussed with Jason. I am seeking to support two systems that I greatly enjoy and I hope to draw both fan-bases together to support this product.

PSS: I will endeavor to provide frequent updates. Please bug me via this thread if I forget.

Never had it (yet), though my brother did. I had to bring him his meals at the far end of the house, both of use masked, and do his covid tests until we were sure he was over it.
 
I was pretty seriously worried after spending a few hours unmasked among hundreds of people to visit a Lovecraft=themed Hunted House attraction in Tacoma, then out to a Lovecraft-themed bar afterward for nachos. (Devil's Reef, also in downtown Tacoma. Tki bar, but the drinks all have names inspired by "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Proprietor recommends you not have the Third Oath of Dagon.) But it's ten days out and I've still shown no symptoms and my tests are negative.
 
I live with and help care for my very old, very frail mother. If she caught covid, it would certainly kill her. So I dislike taking chances.
 
Dean Shomshak

Reports on Maine's secretaty of state ruling Trump ineligible to be on the ballot don't generally say anything beyond that fact -- at least, most of what I've seen in passing hasn't -- which sounds awfully arbitrary. But today she appeared on All Things Considered to explain exactly what she did and how Maine law operates in this respect. Short take: Yes, she acted under the authority of Maine law; but this is only the first step in a long court process to *actually* keep Trump off the ballot. Trump is receiving due process.
 
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/01/1222405966/maine-secretary-of-state-discusses-decision-to-disqualify-trump-from-primary-bal
 
Dean Shomshak

What Hero campaign starts with the universal expectation that costumes are vulnerable to destruction, no matter the source?  And if that is the expected norm, why isn't everyone at similar risk of sudden exposure from enemy attacks, environmental stuff, etc.?  Further, if you want a bunch of naked supers at the end of many fights why would you then include "unstable molecules" that make people who buy it immune to the whole problem, and how much it need to cost to let a player skip something that you've gone out of your way to work into your game?  This feels like  strange thing to lampshade in the first place, and even stranger if people without magic costumes aren't also susceptible to involuntary nakedness when the exhibitionist flamethrower guy hits them with a fire blast.
 
In most comic-trope-using settings this is an SFX, and most likely a near-universal one.  You could still have people who explicitly don't have invulnerable costumes or censor boxing when they wind up naked, but that seems like something you'd do because solely for the roleplaying possibilities.  Or maybe because you bought a bunch of "The More Skin The Better" skill levels or PD/ED that gradually activate when enemy attacks damage your costume...kind of a Mirror Universe version of Adam Warren's Empowered, whose whole schtick is a comedically fragile supersuit and powers that (supposedly) get weaker as it gets more and more shredded.  But she's the only one in the setting with that problem, with everyone else's outfits winding up with nothing worse than artistic tears and tattering.
 
I get that this is probably about a Johnny Storm type, but the whole unstable molecules thing came about to lampshade the fact that 75% of the Fantastic Four don't work well unless they're naked (which the CCA would object to) or their costumes are made of Comic Science.  That's just an SFX unless the stuff gives you other bennies that reproduce a power or skill levels or whatever.

Not sure whether to put this here or in the Advice thread.
 

A little good news: In the last year, New Jersey has reduced its population of unsheltered homeless people by 23%, and its latgest city Newark has done so by 58%. Here's a brief story on how they're doing it.
 
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/20/newark-may-have-found-a-fix-for-chronic-homelessness
 
Evidence that government cansometimes  solve social problems if the people in government want to do so.
 
Dean Shomshak

Reports on Maine's secretaty of state ruling Trump ineligible to be on the ballot don't generally say anything beyond that fact -- at least, most of what I've seen in passing hasn't -- which sounds awfully arbitrary. But today she appeared on All Things Considered to explain exactly what she did and how Maine law operates in this respect. Short take: Yes, she acted under the authority of Maine law; but this is only the first step in a long court process to *actually* keep Trump off the ballot. Trump is receiving due process.
 
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/01/1222405966/maine-secretary-of-state-discusses-decision-to-disqualify-trump-from-primary-bal
 
Dean Shomshak

Reports on Maine's secretaty of state ruling Trump ineligible to be on the ballot don't generally say anything beyond that fact -- at least, most of what I've seen in passing hasn't -- which sounds awfully arbitrary. But today she appeared on All Things Considered to explain exactly what she did and how Maine law operates in this respect. Short take: Yes, she acted under the authority of Maine law; but this is only the first step in a long court process to *actually* keep Trump off the ballot. Trump is receiving due process.
 
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/01/1222405966/maine-secretary-of-state-discusses-decision-to-disqualify-trump-from-primary-bal
 
Dean Shomshak

A little good news: In the last year, New Jersey has reduced its population of unsheltered homeless people by 23%, and its latgest city Newark has done so by 58%. Here's a brief story on how they're doing it.
 
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/20/newark-may-have-found-a-fix-for-chronic-homelessness
 
Evidence that government cansometimes  solve social problems if the people in government want to do so.
 
Dean Shomshak

IIRC somebody said they'd like to see one of the Great Beast's experimental victims. Yesterday I wrote one up. I think it's best treated as a monster rather than a character, since it's so badly damaged in mind and body. Here's the physical description:
 
Just an update to show that work continues.
 
Dean Shomshak

A concept I used in a campaign (which ended before the nature of the enemy became completely apparent) is the incursion of old evils (evil gods' cults, archdemon slaves, the less human the better) coming in, not because they were always around, but because the old regime/dynasty/whatever as things were coming apart for them cut deals with whatever they could get to listen to get the magical power they needed to try hanging on to temporal power.  Now, despite the deals (too little, too late) that regime was ended forcefully and rendered fully extinct.  But, since the evil powers had had sense enough to require collateral of actual land, landmarks, neighborhoods, etc. when they made the bargains, those bargains remain valid and the evil things are showing up to collect their payment.
 
So the players (and whatever alliances they form/join) have a multi-level task in front of them.  First, they have to recognize that it's not just one big evil bad guy; it's half a dozen or disparate bad guys, each with their own calling cards, themes, modus operandi, preferred l00tz, etc., despite having crudely similar but completely disparate goals in their incursions.  Then comes something of a desperate hunt through the ruins of the Bad Old Days to see if any records of the old regime's deals still exist, and to make clear that the bad stuff happening now is not just evil entities trying to reestablish the old defunct regime, which is an easy conclusion to jump at.  The campaign got into the transition from the first stage to the second, but broke down before getting further.  The next stage never got underway, which was trying to compose a unified countereffort to stave off the not-actually-united evils trying to break into the realm and consume their own parts of it (parts which, from a purely legal view, they did have a legitimate claim to).
 
That multiple-evil-influences let me grab whatever cool-looking bad stuff I happened to read, and slap it into the campaign without worrying about any integration into a coherent plan: it's just another infernal debt collection coming in and there was no coherence to it.  ("If you have no plot, you can't have plot holes.")
 
How could it all be resolved?  Well, I didn't worry about that too much; the evil creditors varied from pretty punky as cosmic evil things go, up to things that (once fully awakened) could eat entire kingdoms.  I was explicitly hoping for creativity among the players in building solutions to the individual problems.
 
 

An ancient constellation map that includes a star that's no longer visible? Plug that into your "Stargate: SG-1" campaign. Or maybe your "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, as there could be far more sinister explanations for a missing star than it going supernova.
 
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1222056316/an-ancient-celestial-map-recently-found-in-italy-includes-an-unknown-star
 
Dean Shomshak

The End.

An ancient constellation map that includes a star that's no longer visible? Plug that into your "Stargate: SG-1" campaign. Or maybe your "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, as there could be far more sinister explanations for a missing star than it going supernova.
 
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1222056316/an-ancient-celestial-map-recently-found-in-italy-includes-an-unknown-star
 
Dean Shomshak

An ancient constellation map that includes a star that's no longer visible? Plug that into your "Stargate: SG-1" campaign. Or maybe your "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, as there could be far more sinister explanations for a missing star than it going supernova.
 
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1222056316/an-ancient-celestial-map-recently-found-in-italy-includes-an-unknown-star
 
Dean Shomshak