David Blue

I agree with what you say, Lord Liaden. Reportedly Ron Edwards wants Champions Now read, interpreted, played, and gamemastered as though we had never read or played anything before. One should go into it with complete naivety, and learn it as a wholly new thing. I don't know that I like that idea, but judging by the way the book is written that is indeed what the author wants. He has a different starting point from any version of Champions or Hero System that we've seen before, and he puts that before the rules, or rather doing things his way and not in some way one has experience with is his first and most important rule. In that context, with gamemasters and players forcing themselves to stick to an attitude of fearless naivety, there is some simple rule like the ratio rule to limit what will go wrong, or the limit will be reached when your campaign crashes, rolls, and burns at the outset. I support the ratio rule. It is not an adequate substitute for a gamemaster who is experienced, and who wisely remembers and applies his experience, but it is a lot better than what would happen without it.

The first Champions character sheet I ever saw was several pages of -1/2 this and -1/4 that, and Powered Armor Guy (as I'll call him) was well over 700 active points, on a base of something like 100 character points and 100 disadvantages.. He was not the most powerful character in the game; that honor went to Wimp To God Guy, who bought all his stats down, then back up again through his -1 OAF magic amulet. But Powered Armor Guy was quite strong. The player was proud of himself, and the young and eager gamemaster was impressed by all the hard work that the player had put into the game. Then there was Power Ring Guy. Superheroes are a power fantasy, and you should expect power fantasy behavior from young men who learn a game where you get more super-heroic if you take more limitations. Then there were characters who were not built on limitations; we simply had Acrobatics, Martial Arts, Stealth, and Detective Work, or whatever our ideas called for. So it would be 200 points spent, and say 220 points active, give or take an OAF baton and a swing line. According to the logic of the Hero System, all these character should have been equal and should have adventured well together, because limitations pull you back as much as the active extra points help you. That theory didn't work. In my opinion, this campaign, and many like it, would have benefited greatly from a ratio rule that said that if your active points are 1.2 times as great as your real points, your power build is too sophisticated and you need to pull back. I am sympathetic to the ratio rule.

In Iron Man 2 I saw Tony Stark spending experience points in his home boxing ring. Iron Man is a good advertisement for being generous enough with experience points that player characters can do reasonable things to improve themselves and have those things work like they should.

I too. A month ago an idea for a superhero campaign started tickling my imagination. When I started writing things down, just to get the idea out, it was in Hero. I would need a few key non-player characters, with solid definitions of what they thought they were doing, and why. Hero is good for detailed descriptions of a small number of human characters. I would need at least one vehicle, probably three. Hero has solid vehicle rules. I would need at least one base, probably three or four. Hero does bases. I would need one small agency and one big one. Hero does agencies very well. I would need a stack of small gadgets. Hero does gadgets, and what I needed most was already in a supplement. I would need some beasts. That wasn't a problem. I wasn't being forced to break the flow of my imagination. I could keep going till I had an overall, internally consistent picture of how the conflict would arise and how it might play out. From my point of view as a potential gamemaster, what I don't want is to have the key points of a new world swimming into view, and have that interrupted by some thought like this: "and I'll need to define that space ship / submarine, since the player characters will be spending a lot of time in it, but there are no vehicle rules (or there are but they are so bad that I'd rather not use them). Maybe I need to make some house rules for that, or swap in rules from another system."

I used to play, in Hero's great Psi High campaign. Since Hero Central closed, I haven't played or gamemastered. Without a place to play, Hero System is useless to me.

Re: Dating Catwoman plot seeds? If the relationship is stalled, or to get it started, be sure to use the ever-popular amnesia gag. This works particularly well with an isolated environment, such as a tropic island after a plane crash, or an icy environment requiring the two characters to cooperate closely to survive, and snuggle up warm at nights. Affected by the amnesia gas or whatever it was, neither character remembers their past run-ins or what any conflict would have been about; similar costumes (likely) and the simmering attraction between them are the only clues to what their relationship might be. Maybe they're already married, or at least engaged? Maybe if they haven't been, they'd like to be, and this is the time! In order not to railroad a player character completely, you can slip in hints from time to time that something is wrong. Going through the character's costumes and utility belts to pool survival tools could be sexy, practical and disturbing, as he wonders about his beautiful partner's lethal cat-claws and mini burglar's tools while she wonders what sensible, profitable purpose a miniature fingerprint kit could serve?

Re: Billionaires: Supervillains earn, Superheroes inherit Other inheritors: the Black Panther (T'Challa), the Sub-Mariner (Namor).

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans

Re: Common superhero types you've never seen in play There's not many sidekicks in games. (Unless they're build on equal or nearly equal points, which is not correct in my opinion.) People want to play Batman, not Robin, Aquaman, not Aqualad, Green Arrow, not Speedy. Even when I've volunteered to take the sidekick role, other players and even the GM have been uncomfortable with the concept. For a comic book writer, it's reasonably easy to come up for things for the sidekick to do, even though Batman does everything better than Robin, and Green Arrow does everything better than Speedy (as well as never having been hooked on heroin). In games, everyone is pessimistic that it's going to work that way. Probably realistically.

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans OK. Luck can be fine, in fact it can be built carefully and deliberately as a group advantage, in which case: great! The military might try to create statistics on fortunate and unfortunate events associated with supers. I'm thinking of the movie Master and Commander: the far side of the world. The men on the ship (including the unhappy man himself) were convinced they had an unlucky shipmate, and therefore an unlucky ship. Super or not, nobody wants to ship with a Jonah. And everybody would want to ship with an albatross. So, particularly for military applications of supers in that era and at sea, luck and the reputation of luck or unluck would be of great importance.

Re: How can mutants be discriminated against while other "supers" get a pass? There are similarities between mutants and a political party, since both are relatively cohesive groups with a strong sense of us-versus-them and chronic conflicts with other groups. But there are differences that make mutants more problematic, as a relatively impermeable in-group strategizing to some extent against non-mutants as an out-group. Unlike with a political party, which you could ultimately join if you wanted to, you're born a mutant or you aren't. And if you aren't, some of the things I suggested are taken from the comics, or speculations that are not inconsistent with the comics. The Angel has been seen with lots of hot human babes lying around his house, but he wasn't going to marry any of them. (I assume they were human, because no mutant seemed to regard them as anything but Warren's furniture, which is my point.) If you're human, you don't get to marry into the mutant tribe, or certainly not on anything like equal and honorable terms. The way Maddie Pryor was treated was stunningly abusive. What does it take to be someone Captain America regards as his kind of guy (or girl)? Any patriotic American qualifies. Doubly so if you've ever served in the armed forces. And though he does visually represent a certain antique White America, he casts his net wider than that when it comes to romantic partners and comrades that really count. An English girl, a German scientist, war buddies of different nationalities and colors - all of these can really count, for Captain America. He's just a kid from Brooklyn, he's not special or aloof. What does it take to be someone Professor X regards as his kind of guy (or girl)? Yes, it is possible to be his friend and not a mutant (Moira McTaggart), but there is a widely shared background assumption operating in Professor X-'s world that non-mutants are uninteresting, except to the extent that they are prejudiced, ignorant, dangerous and in need of careful watching. The rise of Captain America means more pride and power for people like him, which means you if you like the Red, White and Blue or would be willing to. The rise of Professor X means ... well at least more tolerance for mankind than Magneto would allow. But it's tolerance on limited terms. Ultimately humans have to accept that the "Tomorrow People" are to be mutant, not human, and that in the mutant telling of history those bygone, unloved humans are going to have a nasty, inferior, bigoted, heavily criticized image. I don't find it at all surprising that humans react to these different kinds of heroes in terms of what they stand for, and treat them differently in consequence, rather than lumping them all together because they are all powerful.

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans I haven't noticed any problem with small arms resistance. Whereas the lucky guy who's never there when the hammer falls is a military cliche we had experience of.

Re: Military Applications of Superhumans Mark Milton can relieve you of most military necessities except wisdom. If, instead of telling him, "find out if there are weapons of mass destruction there, and if so destroy them" you tell him "smash the military forces of country X, in order that we may occupy it and remove its weapons of mass destruction", then a short while later you may be the owner of a traumatized, defenseless country, minus much of its draft-age male population, and you could be looking at a very unpleasant diplomatic situation, as well as a long term drain on your military forces, trying to bring order to this mess. Ultimately, the only way for a Hyperion-class super to protect his country from the consequences of unwise "successful" wars is to stop taking orders. And in time, however much propaganda you feed him, he will think of that.

Re: Mook Archtypes #9: The Hero Killer Also Called: The Turk (based on Turk Barrett, from Daredevil comics) General Description: Medium brawn, strong on shamelessness and vengeful ambition, light on pretty much everything else. The Hero Killer is determined to kill a particular hero, but he has just enough awareness to appreciate that his odds of doing so solo are not good, so he works for a villain, waiting for The Day! When that day arrives, The Hero Killer will leap, elbow, shout and argue his way to the head of the queue to be the (sole) executioner. With big occasion nerves and a wildly over-elaborate imagination, he will thoroughly botch the task. (If he introspects on this afterward, he'll realize that he was nervous before but he'll be fine next time, and that what he really needed was a fancier plan.) Typical Abilities: Moderate to good strength and toughness (for a normal), surprisingly high PRE for a thug, and the ability to go straight-faced and with full confidence into schemes that even other bottom of the barrel thugs think are embarrassing. Since killing super-heroes doesn't put supper on his table, what gets him by from day to day is shaking down the disabled, dressing up as Santa and robbing kids at Christmas, kidnapping de-clawed cats and other family pets for ransom, and so on. If a scheme might just work, but only when carried out by a goon with immense effrontery and no character at all, the Hero Killer is on it, and any embarrassment when a hero frustrates the scheme Must ... Be ... Avenged!