David Blue

Re: [iron] Why do you dislike the Four Color/Silver age (No Flames please) Storn (after various examples): " The Silver Age, to me, introduces these wonderful elements and then stops." OK, now I get you. I agree. It detracts from the wonder and interest of these fantastic people, these amazing discoveries, if no matter what happens they have zero impact. If, like Wonder Woman, you've come to teach mankind a better way, total failure is guaranteed because it's a world-rule that nobody mundane learns anything from anybody marvellous. That's not right. I think DC has been better than Marvel about this. Technology gently creeps forward in DC. In Marvel, it seems like trying to teach mankind anything has been like trying to teach cows algebra.

Re: [iron] Why do you dislike the Four Color/Silver age (No Flames please) Stron: "My problem with Silver Age is that while it has a great sense of imagination, wonder and awe, it is so hollow when exploring how folks feel about things." Could you give another, non-combat example of what you mean? With combat, I'm distracted by thinking of people who do love it, for example some boxers. Muhammed Ali had his mouth working constantly at double-superhero-quip speed. Like many top fighter he kept fighting long after he had nothing to gain and should have quit, because he loved to fight. I would like a different example situation to illustrate what you are saying.

Re: [iron] Why do you dislike the Four Color/Silver age (No Flames please) Just to elaborate on the code versus killing issue. Can we have Silver Age heroes that solve Iron Age problems? Sure. Captain America ending Baron Blood's career was perfect, as was his Earth X hit on the Red Skull. Knowing when to make the exceptions and acting decisively only added to his heroic stature in my eyes. (This kind of situation should not come up too often - just often enough to make it clear that when push comes to shove the hero knows what to do,) But if it has to be one or the other, pure Silver or Iron without compromise, I prefer the very best of Iron. Let's take another modern nightmare: suppose we see a figure we know is a suicide bomber loaded up for his trip to the 72 virgins getting onto a school bus. Which would you rather see in the next panel: 1. A Silver Age character like the Human Torch, conflicted, unwilling to kill/burn the terrorist, and deciding to try to solve the situation without that - or being protected from a dilemma he couldn't handle by some writer's miracle, or 2. A virtuous version of the Punisher, say the Thomas Jane movie version, not a lunatic version, killing the terrorist immediately for the right reasons, thus ending the nightmare threat to the kids. I pick option 2, ten times out of ten. So much for pure Silver.

Re: [iron] Why do you dislike the Four Color/Silver age (No Flames please) OK, I say this as a strong Silver Age fan who has adversarial feelings towards (the usual poor standard of, not the best of) the Iron Age. In a lot of little ways, and some serious ways, the Silver Age was broken, and the Iron Age when done right was an improvement, or at least a step in the right direction. The most critical thing I think was wrong with the Silver Age was that the heroes had to be protected from more and more problems. They had to remain pure, protected from all kinds of embarrassments. For one thing, the code against killing, which was good in itself, was made absolute, and in a lot of situations the hero could not make the necessary exceptions. So either the hero would look weak in the face of some problems, or the writer/gamemaster had to prevent certain problems from arising in the first place, or miraculously solve them for the character. (It would be painfully obvious that the character was pure/good only because he had writers to resolve his dilemmas for him.) Superheroes should be virtuous figures of strength and protection. If they give that up, in my opinion they're meaningless. But if they're kept so pure that they can't be in the same panel with the things that inspire fear, if they are protected from that, then they are no good. We should see superheroes confront and defeat modern nightmares. Scale for scale, I am not aware of anything more wicked than the terrorist massacre at Beslan School #1, ever, anywhere. The terrorists could have been evil on a bigger scale, but I do not think they could have done anything more wicked. So that's an example of a modern nightmare. If you think of hearing a news report that terrorists have set up like that at the school where you dropped off your kids that morning, I think most parents would agree that is, or that's close to, Nightmare Number One. And it's not the kind of abstract, nebulous, systemic threat heroes can't be expected to focus on. But a strictly Silver Age hero operating within strictly Silver Age conventions can't confront let alone defeat evil like that. The heroes have to be protected from such ugly stuff. But the children were not protected! (I find it hard not to be aware that such things happen off-panel and out of story-lines, because I think that beating evil like this is what heroes are about.) Hero-Man remains pure, and if nobody effective fights the child-slaughtering terrorists, that's an acceptable price for the hero's purity. It's infuriating to me when I dwell on it, that "heroism" can be defined in such a cowardly way. It is a complete triumph of the commercial value of a "safe" image over heroic values. I'm not saying anything about heroes controlling the world and forcing progress. I am fine with heroes leaving government to democracy. There is nothing here about shades of grey either. The abduction, humiliation, torment, rape and massacre of children is the purest black evil human beings are capable of. All I want, and it should not have been too much to ask, is for the heroes to show up on the battlefields where evil and terror reign, and fight bravely for good.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Lightray: "You know, in my campaign we've ... " [snip] Sheer beauty.

Re: Setting up super-prisons After thought: If you like the kind of death-trap prison I built for my super-powered dark Pulps game, you might want to make all the modes of execution as visual and nasty as possible consonant with cost-efficiency and common sense, and have a big monitor wall in the control room, so that electricity-controlling man or your appropriate hero can see exactly what's happening to dozens of prisoners by way of electrocution, flooding napalm, exploding slave collars, automated gunfire or other continuous killing attacks, or what's about to happen as soon as prisoners stop holding their breaths against the clouds of gas surrounding them and so on. Lots of silent screaming and clawing at walls. The prisoners should be aware of the locations of the monitors too. Let's not make "death" an invisible abstraction. Your choice, hero - so let's make it an informed choice. That's what I did. "Thou shalt not kill; but need not strive officiously to keep alive?" Also, if the heroes somehow see the prison records, there should be plans for the imprisonment and panic-mode execution of all known supers in the city, especially the heroes - just in case they get caught if they are vigilantes, or in case they go bad, or in case somebody changes a law or a less sympathetic government gets in and starts enforcing old laws in a different spirit, or whatever. This will let them know what the prison system thinks their vulnerabilities or susceptibilities might be.

Re: Setting up super-prisons I set up a super-prison in my modern Pulp/dark-supers game set in Sydney, and I got good value out of it, first in having a place that could and did hold villains, and then with one (1) big break-in scenario. The physical arrangements were elaborate and well-thought-out but mostly mundane. (No wonder materials were available at any sane cost.) Bank vault security was going to be enough for almost everybody without desolidification or teleportation, and super vigilantes (who had sent the majority of supers to the slammer) hadn't happened to have handed anyone like that in alive. A couple of the prisoners were restrained not by the immediate physical barriers but by desire to serve their time and become members of society again (they had jobs that would use their super-powers to make money legitimately waiting for them outside), and a couple of others were restrained again not by the immediate barriers but by a wise fear of the consequence (singular) of trying to break out. One of the prisoners was also restrained, in effect (though the authorities did not know this) only by concern for a loved one in another cell. One of the features of the prison was a panic mode. In the event of a break-in, or general or spectacular breakout, all the prisoners in the super wing would be lethally gassed or otherwise killed very, very dead. There had never been a break-out since this system was instituted. Hero vigilantes had come to rely on this. This gave rise to some problems. How do you know what will cetainly kill a given superhuman till you try it? (In this low powered game, it was very easy to tell what would kill most-if-not-all supers.) I didn't have high-powered invulnerable characters, but I did have some prisoners with sneaky and hitherto un-revealed powers. They were ... displeased when they handed themselves in or were arrested for relatively minor crimes, expecting decent treatment, then had the rules changed on them, then years later were in effect "executed" by the state for somebody else's actions, while having remained model prisoners themselves. There's not a whole lot of incentive to play nice after that happens, is there? The incentive for prisoners and their friends to sabotage the panic-kill system as it applied to them was of course maximal. You want to do it as subtly as possible, so that nothing but an actual attempt to kill would reveal the difference. Most prisoners couldn't achieve anything like that. One could. With this system, a break-in is (or seems to be) a great way for super-criminals on the loose to kill their potential rivals or old enemies inside, particularly those near release. (Of course, if you can arrange a really good break-in, you will want to rescue and release your own allies and lackeys at the same time.) Heroes who object to state-assisted mass slaughter (and may have friends of their own inside, as with Nite-Owl and Rorsharch) may want to consider responding to a break-in, if they get to it in time (which would require a start of some kind), by crippling the prison's panic system and thus in effect releasing many of the prisoners who are still alive, from serial killers to compulsive car thieves. It's your moral choice, hero! There's huge value in putting together a villain team that can crack a super-prison. That may not be an issue in a campaign with effectively unlimited supers of all types, but it was an issue in my game. If only Magnetic Woman can do what it takes to get the right people out and let the prison's panic mode kill everyone else, then she has to be part of your team, even if she would never want to work with you because she has a code against killing and the rest of you are cold-blooded killers. I had a break-in-team with wildly divergent attitudes and agendas, which the heroes were able to exploit.

Re: Avenger/Justice League in the "real" world Wanderer: "Sorry, super-powered guys with real-world psychologies meekily submitting to the vagaries of ordinary courts, and people being like they are, being flooded with specious and politically-laden criminal charges and vicious punitive lawsuits is completely, totally unplausible, barring the kind of near-psychotic boyscout mindset the supers seem to be burdened in comics." This is where we part company. I don't consider the "boyscout mentalities" we see in some comic characters "near-psychotic". Rather, I consider them admirable and possible, and I admire them. I certainly wouldn't bar them. Go, go the big blue boy scout! I think OddHat already said this, but the problem with "real world" adventures is that we have different opinions on what the real world is like. This applies to all sorts of things. I partly agree with you and partly disagree with you about what things might happen. But there's no way to resolve this. All we can do is politely make clear what we think - and then plunder everything for gaming purposes, because that's ultimately the point. "They would either: a) run by ironclad Secret Identities (you cannot enforce litigation on them) arm-twist the government on passing laws exempting them from litigation and allowing them to be tried by their peers only for criminal charges c) simply declare themselves above human laws and daring governments to risk superpowered war to oppose." a) and c) might suit only some members of the world-wide guardian team. If one of the aliens is twelve foot tall all the time, he might want a solution that works for those who can't comfortably remain disguised. And if you go with the classic hero types, there are bound to be at least some members of the team that will say c) is no solution as far as they are concerned. (Of course if you bar the boy-scout types and anyone else who would object to option c) from being player characters, then that's not a problem. This is why it's good to spell out some of our assumptions about what kinds of people there can be in the game or in the comic world.) I also think option c) is politically inept to say the least, since it neglects the advantages of legitimating the way you need things done, regularising relations and easing tensions. I pick option , though I think the arm-twisting could and should be as polite as possible. Like I said, I don't think the super-team should or in the long run would cooperate with people who wanted to condemn and even attack them as law-breakers for doing merely reasonable things, while being sure that the team supreme would always pull their chestnut out of the fire anyway. Wanderer: "Besides this, I think it shouldn't be too difficult to persuade giving the supers a lawsuit-break, given the proper incentive, like:" [snip, all good stuff] If the politicians don't get their own affairs in order, which they might well not, I agree with this. You can do it off-panel or on-panel depending on what tone you're going for in the game. Or you can make it more or less subtle. And it doesn't have to come early in the game (though it might), or in one big package. But if the politicians are that crude about not moving till they hear the ultimatum, then there yes will be a conversation like that. And the bottom line is that the law will come to reflect that sort of understanding. Mr. Incredible "Ahh, I was sure you were coming to understand our viewpoint. Cosmic Legion to the Rescue!" Just so.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Mike W. Superskrull, thanks for the feedback. If you treat the thrown character as an area effect attack, that would change things. (looks at own character sheet - Last Hero, three levels of Growth Always On, therefore already a one hex area effect, and potentially throw-able) That's something to look out for, definitely. And use too, when occasion offers. The bigger they are the harder they might fall-on their team-mates.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Are you sure that's true for both sexes?

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Megaplayboy: "Mental powers are much more effective in the comics(and sometimes much less effective) than they are in Champions. Yep. I can't blame the game for being more consistently middle-ish though. Megaplayboy: "The biggest difference, imo, is that nobody fights their archetypes that much in most games i play." Yeah-yeah-yeah! This is the sort of thing in principle you can do, and some happy people play in games where it is done - but in practical politics the gaming experience is so often so different from what we see in the source material. OK, stepping well away from my self-made quality-of-play quagmire, which I regret, let me take it from the top, again: 1. Does grab-and-throw enjoy anything like the eminence in Champions games that it does in the source material? 2. Is this a problem? I suggest that the answer to those questions might be "no way" and "very much so".

Re: Gladiatrix: Character for review. Source material: the novel Far Arena, by Richard Sapir (one of the original authors of the Destroyer series). Far Arena was also meant to set up a series with a virtually superhuman character - a supreme quality gladiator from Ancient Rome, frozen and revived in our day. It didn't, because it didn't sell well enough. The plot has a suspect point, in my opinion, the story's pacing is an issue, and the gladiator just isn't a terribly nice person by our standards (or even by the standards of the people who condemned him to death, resulting in his being frozen). But I thought Richard Sapir's picture of the gladiator as a man out of his time, and how scary the world's best gladiator might be, was great. It wasn't exactly the take I went with myself, but it has stuck in my memory and I considered it seriously before making my decision. Scutum = the excellent Roman military shield. Lorica = lorica segmentata - Roman military armor based on bands of steel, also very good. Either might be used by a gladiator (especially for naval battles) but neither necessarily would be. Your call, not a given.

Re: Help! I created a PC without thinking of good plot ideas for them! What's his car like?

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Lightray: " I sincerely hope this was intended as some form of humor, and not the way your games tend to be run... HERO GUY: "I pat Keen-Man on the shoulder for a job well done." KEEN-MAN: "Ha! My DCV is 17! Your well-intentioned congratulations miss their mark!" OK, here is a made-up example: An artist can draw "Y-Man grabs X-Wife's hand" and the writer can insert "Doesn't this diamond ring mean anything!?" and it's an unopposed action, no roll. Next panel, Y-Man is pushed aside, and X-Wife runs away through the hex Y-Man was occupying, even though he has 60 strength. In a game, X-Wife may have double digit defensive combat value, and immediately you have a contest of flying hands manoeuvring for position. If there was a next panel Y-Man would be way too strong for a wimpy martial artist to push. (I've seen that.) Player dialogue, not made up: "I don't think so - go on, roll if you think you're tough!" Now, I'm not sure if that quote was 100% right, I can't quite pin down where I heard it - but I did hear it in game in a situation a lot like that, not with the guys I used to adventure with regularly, but not in a convention game either. I mean, this is how plenty of people play. I think it may have been from the game where I played a Daredevil clone who, like several other players had a total code versus killing. The campaign ended after about two or three sessions, when the big enforcer villains turned out to be from Robocop: huge mechanical killers that couldn't be affected at all unless you Found Weakness in the backs of their heads (which I could do) and stabbed them in the brain, killing them. I and some other players tried to carry civilians out of the way of the cyber-massacre till autofire killing attacks mowed us down too. Does that give you a sense of the level of play I'm referring to? (half-joking) Are we discussing Champions here, or just excellent Champions, played by expert gamemasters and players? Because there's an awful lot of the other kind, and I've played a lot of it, and made my own mistakes. Which I try to learn from. One of these chronic mistakes is thinking that things will happen in a game the way they would happen in a comic, when they won't.

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions I should clarify: That wasn't one game. That was a selection of "hits" from a variety of failed games over several years, including some that aborted in a single catastrophic session, mostly with a bunch of guys I no longer game with at all. They had good days as well as the bad, as I did, no better or worse. These examples were from the bad days. But I did encounter this sort of stuff often enough to decide that gaming ain't comics. Much more than with a comic writer's character, a Champions character sheet represents somebody's ego in spandex, and that has a big effect on what you can expect to do smoothly and what's better to leave alone. Sometimes it's good to look back objectively and say: "Hey, maybe none of us were too smart. I might want to learn from that."

Re: Things that work in comics but don't work in Champions Grabs in Champions are so un-comicy it's a crying shame. Look at the Incredibles - great movie. What was the Omni-Droid doing all the time? Grab-and-throw! It looked great, and boy was it in genre! In a game? Forget it. If the brick grabs at someone he's not doing his main job, which is to bludgeon helpless targets, it's a miracle if it comes off, and if a brick grab does come off you use it for all it's worth: to squeeze while the rest of the team savages the held victim. Grab and throw (except in unusual circumstances like a weak invulnerable foe who should be thrown as far away as possible) - no way, only happens in comics. Also, comic characters out of combat routinely grab each other (usually by the upper arms or shoulders) to make some emotional point. You've got to remember never to do that in a game, even if the character is a physical/emotional type that would do that, because the answer is that that other character was ready, and due to his/her/its superior defensive combat value and/or dodge - you missed! Phase twelve … From an emotional discussion to a ridiculous fight in one easy move. That's pure gaming, not a comic reaction at all. In a comic the result is that the other charcter's panel comes up, the "grab" ends, and the confrontation continues (or else someone walks away). Doug McCrae: "10. Whenever two superheroes meet for the first time, they fight. Tends to create bad feeling if they're PCs, in my experience." Or, one of the characters dies. Constitution stun, your force field goes down, and a hail of autofire through zero resistant defences takes you to character generation. Maybe next time you'll be wise enough to generate an Iron Age killer who strikes first without mercy, instead of a Silver Age Sucker. Doug McCrae: "11. Breaking the fourth wall. Example: John Byrne's She-Hulk knowing she's in a comic book. The roleplaying equivalent would be characters that know they're in a roleplaying game." I've always let player characters use game knowledge, for example building a pseudo-pillbox with six blasters pointing out, "because as we know the universe works on a hex-grid" said the cheeky character. Why penalise him? He was right! I agree mind control works very poorly. I used it to set up a scenario, where the mind-controller forced the player characters to start exploring a dangerous alien site with cool technology that I intended the player characters to receive. (The mega-mind-controller lacked the brute durability to do her own exploring.) Then an assassin knocked her off, leaving the player characters in charge of the expedition. The players were so angry and upset that their characters were controlled that when they were left in charge - when the real scenario began, from my point of view - the atmosphere was already no good for gaming. Another ubiquitous dramatic bit that doesn't work at all is the long chase, like in the Terminator movies. Even though the player knew his character had a mighty battle-suit on the far side of the country, and if they could just stay ahead of the hunters till they got to it the worm would turn with a vengeance, the player simply quit on the scenario and let the character go too. Players really, really hate to flee, they have to advance, conquering. It's partly because of this that the limitation for foci is practically unenforceable. (Hence I am now reluctant to give any points at all for it.) Though maybe that's not a real comic-book bit anyway, more of a universal dramatic situation. What RDU Neil said about gadgeteers is smack on, in my experience. And I too have succumbed to the lure of doing stuff that's effective and easy to describe in rule-crunching terns but is like using a sledge-hammer to crack an eggshell in terns of engineering. And it was stupid and bad roleplaying.

Re: Gladiatrix: Character for review. "Great reply David, thanks." You're most welcome. It did my heart good to see that name being upheld with pride. "I mulled over the PS Galdiator and decided to pass as Helena has never been in an Arena to fight." Not even against Bone Saw McGraw, in an amateur cage match? OK, you might lose without your weapons, depending on what Bone Saw has, but until you remedy the defect in your education with experience points, there'll always be a little voice in your head whispering: "Go on, you know you want to!" I agree that if you've never tried it, you don't have the skill. KS: Rock and Roll is one thing, performing in front of tens of thousands of wild, screaming fans is something else entirely. "She has been trained by Illyria who has so maybe I should buy it? Perhaps acting as well? Extra presence is a future shopping list thing." Future shopping lists are endless, or what's experience for? "I just realised she needs the Science Skill Mathematics to fully explain her reality manipulation powers. Granted she only has Teleport at the moment but that'll change with XP's I'm sure." I missed that. "Other things to consider with XP's is to buy another slot for her shield to give her bonuses to block with it." Tick. "I'm a firm believer in every character having a weakness so I think the mind control stays." Okey-doke. It's certainly not the worst disadvantage you could have. Any kind of Enraged or Berserk would instantly blow the character conception. "BTW I'm the GM I only made the character to get the name out of my head. :wink:" You're being haunted!

Re: Power level for God Have you decided what god you want and what he does? The storm god Enlil is hard to top in my opinion: he'll be everything you want, without a lot of complications you don't want. "The goat-burning, baby-smashing, graven image war god type." Close enough, you won't do better. Originally Ani, a calm sky-god (god of the heavens), was ruler of the gods, not by violence but by an innate divine authority recognised by everyone in the parliament of the gods. People just didn't talk back to the sky god. After slaying a demon that did talk back, Enlil, god of storms and berserk violence, decided that since he was supreme in brute force, he should be king too. Since he was doing so much of the indispensible head-smashing stuff, the other gods decided to recognise his claim. And so it is to this day. The Sumerian gods continue to be a well-organised polity (though they have long since fallen in the relative standings), but with a lot less of that "we all agree" stuff and a lot more "because Enlil says so!" Sound like the kind of god you're looking for? Enlil also gets to be the god of water and wisdom - but for what you want, I suggest you just ignore that. There a chapter in Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man by Henri Frankfort (also published under other titles) that makes a superb introduction to the politics of the gods of interest to you. You might see if your local library can get it on a loan for you. At least glance at the Amazon review, which makes one of the essential points: the ancients took everything personally, including storms, floods and the growth of crops. A Sumerian god is going to be like that too. "Don't take this personally" is going to get you absolutely nowhere with him, and he will not recognise any "higher authority" in whose name he should suffer annoyance meekly. For everything down to who gets the last Pepsi in the fridge, the issue will not be "how things are done in general" but whether Enlil gets shorted or whether someone else gets shorted, and Enlil will not be the one who gets shorted. Points? You don't need no stinking points. The limitation on Enlil is that you can lobby other gods in your favour. Enili is at the top of the divine state, he's not outside and above it, and he will listen to what "everyone" is saying if you make a good impression and word gets around.

Re: Gladiatrix: Character for review. Hi. I am a former player of a character called Gladiatrix, who was really, really, really into her job, and I am cheering for you to make a big hit with your character and carry on the name with pride. Overall, broad first impression without attempting to crunch the numbers: Gladiatrix looks good, really good. Solid concept, sensible execution. Still, you posted your writeup to be picked on, right? First point: I think Gladiatrix should have a professional skill in being a gladiator. She's got everything she needs for it, with presence, comeliness, agility and combat abilities. (Later, with experience, you might strongly consider buying up Gladiatrix's presence to match her comeliness.) But she still needs to be able to, well, gladiate. A good fighter is not yet a gladiator. Elite troops sent to the arena still needed extensive gladiatorial training before they could perform. Killing is not enough, and by itself it does not earn you rewards or even survival. A real gladiator can wow the crowd, like a professional wrestler - and a real gladiator wants to do so. As long as your skill holds up, you always look good, you will get the "thumbs up" if there's any way you can, you can cheat and make it look fair (though your morality may prevent you from doing it yourself, you at least know all about the tricks that your rivals get up to), and you will be on track for the gladiator's ultimate reward: the wooden sword, retirement with fame and riches. Note that this is a grace and favor thing - if people don't like you, they can decide you should fight a dozen lions with only a dagger, every morning and every afternoon, if need be, till you fall. The gladiator skill does not make what happens in the arena fair. What happens in the arena has nothing to do with fairness. Assuming you can fight (without which: nothing), the gladiator skill enables you survive and thrive in an environment that is fundamentally unfair, where a sweet smile (and the ability to hold it like a stone mask even when wounded) or the ability to present yourself as an exemplar of Roman virtues (when you may well be no such thing) can mean life or death. And of course it includes the tactics that go with the unusual weapons (which you have the skills for - bravo!) and armour, mock naval battles, fighting with animals, making fights that are essentially executions seen fair (as opposed to letting them be seen to be unfair and thus turning the audience against you) and so on. I love your other skills and that you've taken 3 Analyze Style: Combat 12- Good for you! That's thoughtfulness and thoroughness! Psychological Limitation: Can't resist the challenge of combat., Common, Strong 15 Psychological Limitation: Peoples champion: Must protect the weak and innocent., Very Common, Strong 20 Both excellent limitations, very appropriate for the character. I think you should keep them as the are - let's not over-complexificate things - but talk to the gamemaster a little about what they mean. What's a "challenge"? A born gladiator is someone who loves the crowd. (And who is likely to be loved by the crowd, even beyond what their characteristics and skills might indicate. If she shouts "I'm fighting for you!" it's obviously true, and even if she doesn't say it, she radiates it.) Even though it might be smart to say: "let's get all the civilians out of here," and even though your character would (rightly!) never want the crowd to be hurt, a challenge to fight is going to be much, much harder for the Gladiatrix to turn down if people are and will be watching. With experience (because let's not muck around too much with an initial writeup that already looks good), I think some levels linked to audience reaction are very viable. Gamemaster: "They love you, they really love you. They're cheering now. +2 (or more) to your combat values." Of course that depends on a gamemaster who pays attention to such things - wait and see how that looks. Dependent NPC: Flavour of the week., Normal, 11- (Occasionally) 15 I think you should at least ask if you can take "the crowd" or "the audience" or even "the people" (the mob?) as your dependent non-player character. The answer will likely be "no," but it's worth trying because it's appropriate. Vulnerability: Mind Control , Uncommon, Vulnerability Multiplier (2x Effect) 10 This is a huge disadvantage for your character. I can see the rationale, in your openness to mediumistic influences. It's good roleplaying design - but it's so easy to make you do things that will make you look terrible, and it's only 10 points. I would take this disadvantage only if you have a lot of confidence that you have the kind of gamemaster who gives you credit for a non-twinked, non-uber-optimised character. I think in dealing with Illyria, you should emphasise the positive side of the relationship any time it becomes an issue (if it ever does). After all, she has an audience of at least one: Helena. Love your audience, right? Sir Arthur Wellsley should be fine too: his main regret later in life was that he should have given more praise. This is not a spirit that should be hard on someone like Helena. He'll do his job with an absolute minimum of fuss: that's what he always did. But I think Sir Isaac Newton should never appear without an air of intellectual superiority, which he can back up, to Helana's advantage.

Re: The UnMentalist... Descant: "The catch is, I want his powers to work like mental powers, to some extent (bypassing armor, not easily dodgable, etc.), but I don't want them based on EGO." Something that can't be readily dodged and isn't EGO based either - that sounds like in might be an area effect of some kind. What else will bypass both DCV and ECV?

Re: The UnMentalist... Descant: "He is able to control the neural and endocrine impulses of the body." If Sapphire tags Crusher Creel with the power, he hits Creel's constitution (which is probably substantial) and disregards his EGO (which is a pity for Sapphire), because the power is hitting the actual neural and endocrine impulses of Creel's meat and bone body. So far, so good. Crusher reels and falls, but he's not out. His next action is to absorb the concrete of the street he fell on. Now his wrecking ball, shoes, socks and entire body are concrete, including his nervous system, which continues to work just fine. (Don't blame me, this is comics.) What happens to the effects that have been imposed on him so far, and will a new dose of the attack affect him as it did last time? If Creel just negated Sapphire's whole attack, there is a fairly common defence to it. Lots of people have bodies of rock, steel and so on. The only problem is, you're already taking such big limitations that another one barely benefits you. Still, this seems worth defining on general principles.

Re: Why that costume Hermit: "From a GM perspective, the putting on the costume is one of my favorite parts of running an origin story. It is great fun to have players' characters "slapping on a costume from various outfits in a warehouse" in a hurry to "protect their secret identity" as they save the day." Great post. I've never gotten into that aspect of hero-ing. I should have, and when the chance comes, I will. As I said before, in every case the costumes of my characters are as functional as possible from their point of view. I never thought before about why all my characters make that decision. It's because I think that strong motivation makes the hero (assuming you have enough power to act effectively). A character who shows in every way down to the shape of their belt buckle that they are focused on their purpose and striving to achieve it is more heroic, from my point of view. So, for example. I have a lot of respect for characters in flag suits. If your aim is to show the flag in a favorable light - do it! And not by halves. I like minimal costumes. If torn purple pants are all you need (to comply with the Comics Code Authority), so be it. Don't wear more. Crusher Creel has a perfect costume. Professor X has usually had a perfect costume, given that he's a teacher first, and he has no powers that require him to wear anything fancy. Many heroes need people to react to them in a certain way. Superman has a perfect costume for how he wants people to react. He's more like a circus performer than a threat. Batman wanted a costume that would contribute to his being a scary guy. Obviously, it worked. But if someone has a simple purpose (or worse, no clearly discernible individual purpose), and powers and methods that don't call for them to wear anything in particular, and they haven't got an item (like Magneto's anti-mentalist helmet) that does anything for them, yet they're tricked out with every sort of elaborate visual device and a gaudy color scheme, to me that raises a question mark next to their focus.

Re: Avenger/Justice League in the "real" world Rubric: "Anyway, if magic weapons exist, I would still rather have a magic gun than a magic hammer." The Glock of the Gods, eh? I agree that it would be convenient to start and finish your fights like Indiana Jones disposing of the sword-flourishing would-be foe in Raiders of the Lost Arc. Rubric: "Take Dr. Doom. He has powered armor and he can build robots. Does that provide any plausible reason for him to want to conquer the world, if he wasn't already that way before?" No, because Tony Stark can build powered armour and robots, and he was never like Doom always was and always will be. Heroes and villains can have similar or identical powers but be differentiated by their motives. Doom was a bad guy and Stark was a good guy, and the armor just made them both more confident, more ambitious (in different directions) and more effective. Rubric: "In reality, the ability of one guy to cause serious change is limited. In the rare exceptions, charisma is the main factor that allows change, not super powers." (straight-faced) Yes. ? On the corporate hero thing: I made up and ran a world like that for a while. I didn't like it, the players didn't have fun, and it felt surprisingly "hollow" and unconvincing. Even if you have benevolent billionaire retired heroes running the corporation and putting the higher good above their corporate interests, which I did, it feels very iffy. Ultimately, frivolous lawsuits can break any bank, and grievances expand as long as you can gain by complaining. A global guardians team will be involved in heavy, heavy scenes in the defence of mankind. The U.S. Army couldn't function for a day if it accepted legal liability for every little thing. (Somali warlords would be drawing unlimited compensation for the damage done in the Mogadishu fiasco, if they could.) And patron corporation can't work like that either. The whole idea felt unreal, and just made the hero team seem like a bunch of lackeys. Against that, there's good precedent for corporate heroes: the DNAgents!

Re: Role play during combat First: everything Storn said is right. Except that the social contract that has to be there often isn't, and can't be obtained, so you have to (suck on a lemon and) adapt. OddHat: "If the GM and other players want to war-game, going for drama in combat is a good way to get your character taken out of the fight, and to piss off your fellow players. If the players want to role-play, then as a GM you will make them angry if you war-game your way through the combat." Bingo! What are the peer pressures in your group in combat? The typical Champions combat routine, in my experience, is: freeze or reduce the defensive combat value of the most vulnerable member of the opposing team, triple-team, rinse, repeat. The main function of the brick is to haymaker mentally entangled martial artists, tinkers and the like as viciously as possible. This dictates not only tactics but character construction. (That's why you can have a character with a mental entangle and no follow-up attack of his own in the first place.) So now in combat: Self-Doubt Man goes first and strikes, paralyzing the agile but fragile Paper Dragon. It's time for Mightor, son of Hercules to act. If he insists on fighting his brick peer on the opposite team, is he being a selfish lame-brain and letting down the team tactically, and do other players (maybe subtly) let his player know that? Or is he doing just what you'd expect the Son of Hercules to do, whether he has a specific psychological limitation that requires that action or not? If he does have a relevant psychological limitation, do the other players hand Mightor's player dice and wish him luck with his EGO roll? Peer pressure has a lot to do with what combat is like. The gamemaster isn't responsible for everything, and may be better off just accepting how the players play and adapting to it. If your players only role-play out of combat, and seem stuck on that (shrug) maybe you have to get them out of combat more.

Re: Avenger/Justice League in the "real" world Comic-book examples: Probably my paradise would be Miracleman's future world, with Miraclewoman and a few other people keeping things same, and everyone gradually becoming immortal heroes. I'd fight for that, had I the power. But I suspect it only works because Miraclewoman remembers that "Perfection is nothing." Kingdom Come represented a really honest balance of good and bad, or it seemed that way to me. The Authority is a prime example of what to fear. Another dystopia would be: Kingdom Come: the nuke worked. The next generation of supers, after everyone including the best and purest of the old school were killed off, would see mankind as a deadly enemy: it would be an established fact. Without Superman (and some other extraordinary paladins), there is no forgiveness or stopping point in that conflict. I think one way to get a real-feeling world hero team would be just to build every member of the Watchmen on 750 points.