Evil102

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Now. Back to superheroes. Although Dirk Centipede is sure an odd one. I gave him a sorta scifi tool use to make him look a bit more than a huge centipede. And Dr. Dark, mysterious baddie.

 

I have this weird image of Death Tribble's players looking at this and saying "Y'know, I always pictured him with a hat"...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Whoo! Welcome back!

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

Interesting. Is the spear she's wielding Gungnir?

Not quite. This is a new weapon Ovinrbitr (Foecutter) made by the same dwarves. I wanted the character to have a throwing weapon but thought a hammer was too derivative, so ran with the idea of a spear like Gungnir but with some of the properties of Mjollnir.

The spear is out of proportion to the character herself, because the dwarves were commissioned to forge a weapon for a child of Thor so they assumed it would be a great, strapping lad rather than a wee slip of a girl...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

And an extra. A very late commission for a Scion game (White Wolf) I believe and this is the daughter of Thor. I drew her for the patron one time before and this is her "more experienced"... and there hopefully will be a third. The patron was very specific about the "power pose" and provide reference for everything from the goat head, the motorcycle to what the t-shirt sez. I LOVE working with patrons like that, who do a lot of the reference grunt work for me!!!

 

 

This is from White Wolf's excellent Scion game.

'Anka Zaleski' (below) was from the Hero stage of the campaign. 'Anka, daughter of Thor' (above) is from the DemiGod stage. If the campaign reaches its conclusion, I'm aiming for 'Anka, Goddess of Protection' sometime next year...

Re: Where oh Where has Storn Gone?

He's baaaaaack!!!

 

(see his art thread)

Sweet!

*reads thread*

Ah, it was deadlines AND health-related.

Re: Where oh Where has Storn Gone?

I am waiting on four commissions but I did notice he popped in and had a look around last week

That's a relief. I'm waiting on a commission myself, and I've hoping that it was just due to overwork & commitments rather than anything health-wise.

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

One of our GMs got annoyed with the players passing notes between each other. Part of it was that we were using them to pass humourous comments and he wanted us 100% serious (we liked to joke around, and this seemed less disruptive than actually joking out loud), part of it was that he felt any character-to-character communication should be heard by everyone.

So he insisted that any notes had to be passed to him first, for him to read.

So we decided to roll with this, and write any old gibberish on our notes.

"Cry havoc, and loose the chickens of unpleasantness!" led to him scratching his head and trying to decode what our characters were really saying, and I think he'd given up by the time we started planning how to use the "poodle cannon"...

Re: WWYD - Marvel's Civil War

Get a copy of the law' date=' read it through first. I gotta know what I'm gonna be fighting, after all...[/quote']

 

Which is more than the CW writers seem to have done, given that the demands & implementation of law change from title to title...

Re: What Marvel/DC storyline have you ripped off...err been inspired by?

"Days of Future, Past" of course. It's such a classic it just has to be used.

One of the main plots in my campaign was the villains trying to force through an anti-hero law (from Champions Presents #1) and I'd already introduced the conflict between Genocide and IMAGE. Naturally, the heroes have to see the disasters that will ensue if they don't stop the villains, to spur them onto the climactic battle.

Plus they get to see some of their familiar NPCs after ten years of terrible times. The changes you can put an NPC through off-camera can also give rise to some interesting complications...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread.

What's that on her upper left arm?

The team's crest - a stylised picture of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Because if you're doing a game with cheezy characters who've just turned up from the seventies, it's gotta be set in San Frascisco...

Re: Don't Buy Everything In a Good Story (Topic: Supers and the Law)

Supervillains are already doing stuff the government and the public doesn't like. They're not going to stop being Supervillains. A "ban" against Superheroes isn't going to last very long when the Evil Society takes over the Island of Manhattan and threatens the rest of the world with its storm-making machine. The minute the Supervillains have done something like that' date=' the public and the government would be forced to revisit their position and change it.[/quote']

 

There's always the possibility that the Supervillains weren't stupendously super.

 

In the downtime between Act 1 and Act 2 the authorities find that the cops can't handle the supervillains without the heroes around and change their policies. No more "Book 'em, Danno". Now it's "shoot on sight" with teflon-coated rounds. If it's got a cape, it's going down hard.

 

Most of the low- to mid-powered villains get out of the game, or develop toe tags. The higher-order villains start working behind the scenes before the PD start upgrading their weaponry to something that could even hurt them.

 

Naturally, since this is an upbeat Pixar movie, all this unpleasantness happens off-camera...

Re: What Marvel/DC storyline have you ripped off...err been inspired by?

We love some of them, we hate others. Some are whispered as legends only the elders of our kind or the rare versed know of such as "the Korvac Saga", or the tale of "The Dark Phoenix", others such are relatively young ("Identity Crisis"/"House of M"). Some, no matter what their age, we deride.

 

But I'm asking about the ones that you couldn't help 'borrow' for your own Champions storylines. Sure, maybe the names were changed to protect you from lawsuit and maybe throw your players off the scent (though that doesn't always work), but you otherwise took the story line gleefully and played it out.

Days of Future, Past.

It's such a classic, you just can't resist it.

The main campaign was the Spectrum adventure from Champions Presents #1, but there's nothing like ramping up the tension like showing the PCs what will happen if Prism's scheme works...and sets off the fireworks that's been brewing between Genocide and IMAGE...

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Hi - the 2 meg version doesn't seem to be coming up' date=' it says the page is not available?[/quote']

 

That's odd. I've just tried it now and it seems okay.

 

Here's the direct URL if you want to type it in a different browser, maybe.

 

http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/15140/GG12_Mindscape_Plain_2M.jpg'>http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/15140/GG12_Mindscape_Plain_2M.jpg

 

 

...blast. The formatting abbreviates the URL and hides half of the address. Here's the address in two halves. Copy and paste the two together and give it a go.

 

Pt 1: http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/

Pt 2: 15140/GG12_Mindscape_Plain_2M.jpg

Re: Favorite Marvel 'What If?'

Cheezy as it was, I think I'll have to plump for "What if Wolverine was an Agent of SHIELD?".

Not because it was particularly good, but because it's just about the only one I can remember that didn't have one of the two standard endings:

1) Oh no! Everyone died! The standard 616 continutity was much happier than this alternative!

2) Yay! Everything turned out pretty much the same! The standard 616 continuity is the template that all alternatives try to emulate!

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Here's that underwater lab I mentioned.

One of the characters in the campaign - an inventor with a suit of powered armour - had said that he had a hidden lab under San Franscisco bay. No further details. This map was intended to get some creative juices flowing, rather than being a final product.

Left to right, we have the docking bay for the team's submersible car; computer room; main storage; life support; main lab; living quarters; electronics and robotics lab; secondary storage; main airlock.

I figure the emergency pressure suits near the airlocks were placed there by nervous team-mates after their first visit. They're certianly nothing the inventor would've thought of without prompting...

Larger 2 meg version

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

About Dunjinni...is it a real easy and quick 'drag-and-drop' type interface? I love being creative' date=' but I'd only buy it if it was something that could make attractive maps like you did in a snap.[/quote']

 

Pretty easy.

 

Most of the walls and floors are done by either drawing freehand or dragging a regular shape (rectangle, elipse, etc) and filling either the shape, or the boundary line with your chosen wall/floor. Objects can be dropped anywhere on the map and just about everything can be resized or rotated. Cover (such as shadows, smoke, blood) can be placed on the map too and things can be moved above/below each other as needed. The line-drawing tool can be set to different thicknesses or properties, and the eraser can be tweaked to only erase certain types of things (e.g. erase the wall, but not the floor or the objects).

 

There are other useful facilities, too. You can either draw & place things wherever you like, or have them snap to a square or hexagonal grid. The snap-to function can be turned on and off whenever you feel like it. The maps can be viewed as plain or with raised walls or shadows from the walls.

 

To give you an idea, the mindscape temple took about three hours to make, the mad scientist's lair about four. Bear in mind, however, that these were the third and second maps I've generated with this program respectively. (When I get back from Christmas, I'll post the first test map I made, a small underwater lab for an eccentric inventor). As with any program, the more you use it, the faster you go.

 

And the forums... a LOT of user generated art there, ready to be placed in your image directories. Nice place.

 

Geez, I feel like I should be getting kickbacks from Fluid right about now...

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Another map done with Dundjinni.

This was used for the climax of our campign. One of the team's foes was apsychic vampire who fancied himself something of a gourmand. He knew that the team's mystic had a Mindlink with the other four members, and theorised that it he drained the mystic, he'd get all five at once in one delicious treat.

When the mystic was attacked, the rest of the team fell prey to the attack through the mindlink. They found themselves inside the mystic's head, trying to defend the mental representation of the mindlink.

The mystic's relegion had an elemental basis (earth, water, wind, the sun and the spirits) and several of the team had elemental themes with their costumes or powers (Golden Phoenix, Green Mother, etc), so the mindlink was represented by an elemental temple, with each link becoming an elemental chamber. The shadows were, of course, their foe - who was but one step away from swallowing them up...

Larger 2meg version[ATTACH]20112[/ATTACH]

Re: Featuring Special Guest Star...

Do any of you use real world celebrities (alive or' date=' alas, dead) as characters in your games? Failing that, would anyone care to write up Barry White in [i']Champions[/i] terms?

Not on a regular basis, but the team did have an adventure where they visited Hollywood and got caught up in the movie that was being made about them. Much strangeness ensued...

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Your map Evil?

 

The style is interesting, like the maps for the Serenity in the new Serenity RPG and I was wondering what you were using.

Yeah, the players psychically scouted the base before I'd gotten off my *** to actually generate a map , so I had to sketch something on the fly and then turn it into a proper map for when they busted in properly.

The mapping software is Dundjinni. Very nice for generating maps - flexible, and the forums provide a lot of additional artwork. I'd definitely recommend it.

http://www.dundjinni.com/

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Here's a map we used for the hidden lair of a mad scientist. Little more than a few labs, holding cells for the subjects and accomodation for the guards & staff, but it did the job. The entrance is via the steps at the top of the map.

http://www.myfilehut.com/userfiles/15140/cricklab-yahoo-2M.jpg

Re: Calling All Evil GMs

No good deed goes unpunished, eh?

The scale of the side effects will obviously depend on how upbeat/downbeat/grim&gritty the campaign is.

1) Public response. While the overwhelming local response will be positive for the heroes, there'll probably be some who wonder why the heroes didn't use this power last week when their dear old aunt martha was dying of cancer. This sort of feeling will grow stronger outside of cities hit by the healing field, and will be particularly bitter in any cities or countries that have recently experienced large casualties from disasters (such as earthquakes, hurricanes, etc). Expect an even larger backlash the next time such a disaster strikes and the heroes don't immediately drop everything to fly out there and whip up an uber-heal...

2) Healing mechanics. While I agree it would be a bit vindicive to have the heal undo corrective surgical measures, I'd say that cosmetic surgery is fair game. If the heal restores people to their undamaged template as determined by their genes, then we can expect a large number of people with face lifts, boob jobs and tummy tucks being unhappy. Especially if one of the cities affected is L.A. Thinking about it, lasik surgery would probably go too.

3) Unexpected beneficiaries. How wide-ranging is the healing power? What if Stronghold or an equivalent is within range of the mojo? Things could turn bleak if Firewing or someone is prematurely woken from the Hotsleep program... or a theoretically-destroyed vampire rises from his ashes...

4) The Source of all things. There's no mention of how/why the healing power works. What if the characters are just a conduit, and the healing force is actually the power of a being/godhood/race/celestial personification? Using the power on one or two people would have a negligible effect on the Source, but what would the effect be of healing several million people all at once?

Re: Original Supervillain Groups -- Get Creative!

The Supremes

A bunch of Z-list hoods who gained superpowers due to an accident ... and became a group of Z-list supervillains.

It was the first session of a Champions campaign and I wanted to throw together a threat for the disparate heroes to come together and fight, and then remain together and form a team. Hence the Supremes. They gained their powers when the police van that was carting them off to jail crashed into a building where Viper had stored a mystical mcguffin that had been stolen. One burst of energy later and a bunch of losers have superpowers, but are still a bunch of losers.

They had enough power to be credible threat, but no cohesion, experience or strategy - which enabled the heroes to beat their much-tougher opponents by working as a team. And laugh at them.

Heatstroke - Gained flame powers. Utter psycho. Was horribly burned when his flame blast backfired (gotta love those 18's eh?) and was last seen being carted off to Stronghold's ICU.

Absolute Zero - Gained ice powers. Bit of a weasel. Busted loose from prison by Demon who turned him into their pet gimp.

Reflex - Became a speedster. Overconfient incompetent who really regretted trying to do a high-speed move through on the superheavy brick... Whereabouts unknown.

Alchemy - Became a metal-based brick. Only one who actually wanted out of the game. Managed to build himself a new life under a fake ID and give up crime.

The amusing thing was that the mystical artifact was simply meant to be a quick plot device to empower their opponents. but the PCs devoted so much time into investigating it that it became a major part of the campaign.

Re: Let's hear it for villainous organizations

Not a villain group, but I wanted to show off an acronym...

The senate subcommittee that tries to regulate dangerous high-tech and keep and mad scientists on a leash:

Senate

Oversight

Committee for the

Regulation of

Advanced

Technology and

Emergent

Software

Re: Advice on GMing superhero campaigns?

Couple of recommendations I'd put forward. These aren't specific to superhero capaign, but definitely work well in them.

1) Use the old A plot, B plot, C plot approach. It's worked for TV for a long time, it works well in a campaign. In one issue, the A plot may be Dr Badguy trying to steal the fuel rods from the nuclear reactor, the B plot is a bounty hunter trailing one of the PCs because of a case of mistaken identity, and the C plot is the dirty tricks campaign being run at the university for the next prom queen.

The plots may run completely independently, or may cross over. The bounty hunter may end up getting drawn into the final confrontation with Dr Badguy and may complicate matters or help save the day. One of the PCs may be unable to honour his commitments to his girlfriend and her prom queen campaign when the power station gets attacked. The bounty hunter may go undercover at the university to trail the PC and get mixed up in the campaigning.

Plots may not be fully resolved, and may change precedence. In the next issue, the bounty hunter (who had only been a minor annoyance) may become the A plot when the PCs discover that he has taken photos of the PCs that - if shown to the wrong people - could blow their secret IDs wide open. Meanwhile the B plot involves strange behaviour by the security robots that the PCs' base, and the C plot has one of their old adversaries trying to get released from prison on parole.

2) Know your players as well as your characters. If you're going to have soap opera elements as well as the superheoric elements, figure out which players respond well to them, and which styles they go for. I've got one player who enjoys being misunderstood at work and dragged onto dates that aren't really dates, another who has no social skills but has to deal with a neice he's had foisted off onto him and one who's fighting to keep his company in the black and clean of dirty tricks. They're all enjoying the soap-stuff they've been dealt, but I don't think it'd work so well if I switched things around, simply due to the style of they they normally use.

3) Once you've got a handle on the characters and what the players want out of them, work out a story arc for each character. This could be developing the charcater's potential, resolving an old secret, dealing with a long-standing nemesis. Weave these into the campaign as you go along.

Thus while one issue may have Captain HeroicNPC going rogue as the A plot, the B plot may be a series of crimes being committed with technology from an old suit of power armour that the gadgeteer PC lost some time ago. Two issues later, the C plot has the city's traffic lights going haywire and the PCs eventually discover a hacker has used the PC's old security scrambler to spread a little chaos. The A plot an issue of so later is breaking up an auction of death-rays that many supervillains are attending. As the heroes bust in, the PC notices - gasp! - his old sidekick Gadgetboy in the crowd. Has the kid gone bad? Is he being blackmailed? Is it really him?

This allows each of the PCs (and their players) a chance in the spotlight. As well as the major storylines you have in place for the campaign, each player gets a spell in the sun as well.

4) Decide which style of campaign suits you. This one may seem a bit of a no-brainer, but it's still worth bearing in mind. As I'm a control freak, my last campaign was fairly tightly plotted in terms of which bad guys and plots would drive each adventure, and how they would tie into the main storyline. My current campaign, however, is a lot more fluid. I've got a bunch of ideas and concepts, the occasional fixed adventure, and a bunch of PC-driven ideas - and it seems to work a lot better.

As I said, figure out how you run a campaign best, and plan your campaign accordingly.

5) Get suggestions from the players. This can range from "I'd like such-and-such to happen to my character at some point", to their idle speculations ("The GM wouldn't do that to us, would he?") or general comments on the campaign. A simple comment of "Are we going to have a Halloween issue?" when we were playing in September led to some very amusing oddness a little while later...

Re: Help: Mr. I Can Do Anything You Can But Better Man!

Problem #1: How do you build something like that? He has eidetic memory, lightning calculator and find weakness as a start.

Problem #2: How do you keep this guy in check? After a few game sessions, he would have everyone’s fighting style memorized and every skill in the book. I thought about him having memory problems so that he doesn’t just pick up skills and abilities left and right, but that defeats the whole eidetic memory thing. Any thoughts?

Hold back character points.

If everyone else if generating 350 point heroes, he starts off with a weedy little 250-pointer (okay, okay, weedy by comparison). He's been raised in an institution, remember. He's less rounded and developed than regular folks.

As soon as he starts observing people, those missing point are used to buy the skills he's accquiring. Assuming he's only buying the basic 3-point basic skill when he first learns it, this should last him a while.

Additionally, you could also garnish his experience. For every three points of experience he'd normally earn, he only gets to spend two freely. The remaining point goes in the pot for when he picks up a new skill.

As for keeping him in check, the top two contenders are:

1) A good player. Or a bad player who responds to being slapped with a ruler when he gets out of line.

2) Flowers for Algernon. The procedure that created him was experimental. What if there's an upper limit to the skills he can pick up, or a maximim rate at which he can learn? Even worse, what if there are serious side-effects if he pushes himself beyond this..?