Karmakaze

Re: How to deal with a "remote control" Superhero (or Villain)?

I've done something like that with a convention game pre-gen (with any luck I linked that right) who does his heroic work as an astral projection. I did it as Duplication. There is one of the convention modules where, in fact, villains turn up at the secret id's house as a plot point.

Generally I do like Duplication for this sort of concept, optionally with Feedback. The robot duplicate would need the appropriate Complications to reflect what happens when the link is down (and then actually have that sort of thing come up from time to time.) I think the danger to the human behind the robot isn't much worse than the same problem some characters have with powered armor characters who never leave the battlesuit.

If the man behind the robot is really onle ever going to come up as color, then I might also go with making him a Follower, since at that point he's as much a SFX as a character.

Re: Undead Labor: why not?

“Let me see if I understand this. Your company is overrun by Zombies of your own making?”

Re: How To Build: Unwanted Familiar

Depending on how you do it, Hunted might also be stretched to fit.

Re: Where do gangsters get pool babes?

I may regret asking this' date=' but what's "filthy lucre"?[/quote']

 

"lucre" is just Latin for "money". "filthy lucre" is a phrase for having lots of money, with connotation of it being undeserved or accumulated in shady ways.

Re: Would your hero register his Secret ID with Primus?

Of the two supers games I'm in one is a villain campaign -- no registering for Eris. Beater would only have registered at the beginning of the campaign when she was recruited to run the organized local team -- they are tacitly approved by the government and it was probably part of the application process. She wouldn't have for the solo dark-avenger-of-the-night phase of her career.

Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress.....

It’s not Thor hate. It is WTF for how they have turned Asgard into a shiney marble greco-looking brothel effect. All they need is some throw cushions' date=' gauzy curtains and a few satyrs for the effect to be complete. I don’t have the entire run of Thor from back then, but I do have several issues. Some with Odin on his throne. Yes they had the High techyness in there. And yes the distance shot of Asgard was future looking. But inside they always managed to contrast the high-tech with the rough Norse primitive. I have a great picture with Odin on his throne pondering. The throne looks like it was hewn out of granite and there is a open fire pit. Behind are things that could be high tech. A striking visual. But nowhere was there a glitzy polished marble love palace. [/quote']

 

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and figure that it's a case of some things work better in artwork than they do in photo/film. It may be they found that they couldn't get wood and hewn stone to not look fake against the shiny props, or that the wood and stone made the tech look like plastic.

Re: Tropes Revisited: Beautiful Female Martial Artist. Ideas sought

This was actually a mage, but someone could actually fight in this outfit:

Re: Toolkitting: Relative versus Absolute

I've considered running multiple campaigns in the same world' date=' with a JLA type supergroup as one campaign and a bunch of street level types as another. If I ever did such a thing, I would have no problem with someone writing the same character up on two different point levels/stat caps so it could represent the same guy in two different comic titles. I've never put any real thought into making it a standard part of the game, just something to do on a case-by-case basis.[/quote']

 

Ars Magica used to (any may still) have something called "troupe-style play". Characters came in three types: mages, who were overwhelmingly powerful; companions, who were heroic; and grogs, who were cannon fodder. According to the book, each player might have a mage and a companion, and the grogs could be played by anybody, but in our game, we all had one of each. At the beginning of each adventure, we decided who we'd play. This sometimes meant roleplaying the politics of the mages, giving an order, and then switching over to companions or grogs to complete the mission we'd ordered. It worked out fine. I even had a mage at one point who was "passing" as a companion, and played her (more or less) at the lower level, at least when there were witnesses.

 

 

I also considered running a game where we'd have pulp, silver, and modern age versions of each sheet with the conceit that we're just pulling our favorite stories from the team's entire run. Sadly, I currently have trouble prying one full sheet out of all of my players, and the paperwork involved defeated me.

Re: Conan: The Current Movie in Progress.....

Not to mention the headaches. When Avatar came out' date=' I was hoping the new 3D would fix this problem for me but no such luck. Half an hour into the film and I had a splitting migraine. Last I read, 3D does this to about 10% of the population.[/quote']

 

Sadly, I'm part of the small percentage of people who get motion sickness from shakeycam. I feel your pain. So often this stuff is put into movies because the directors think they need a gimmick rather than to actually serve the story. I guess the extra audience they get from the flashy stuff makes up for the folks fleeing the theater, crying and hurling...

 

Aside from the nature panorama or roller coaster films that only exist to showcase 3D technology, I rarely see any improvement to live-action scenes rendered in 3-D. Some of the computer-generated 3D stuff is worth something, though possibly still less than $5/experience.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

As opposed to all those non-racist rednecks that were so prevalent in the 20'3 and 30's... ;-)

Technically, all "red-neck" means is someone who does enough labor out in the sun to get sunburned on the back of the neck, so, yeah, there probably were one or two non-racist rednecks out there...

Re: Religions in SF settings.

I had a set of nomadic aliens who didn't have a specific god as such but had a lot of opinions on how the physical and spiritual interacted. One of the belief was that any emotional connection between living beings was a sign of a connection between souls, which continued indefinitely. This meant that negative emotional connections needed to be resolved as soon as possible to prevent the souls from damaging one another (which, in a culture of people trapped on ships with one another, makes sense.) It also means that it's very important to stick close to someone who's grieving, because their attachment to a soul that's passed on can drag them too close to death. So they need positive connections even more at that time. They also believed it's important to "bless" your surroundings, especially when moving to a new ship. (The blessing ceremony turned out to require a tour that mimicked a safety inspection, which probably did have some positive effects.)

Re: Where do gangsters get pool babes?

They're probably just hangers-on. They turn up when there's a party and the attractive ones are allowed in. The ones who hang out at the villain's secret base may be harder to explain.

If the villain hasn't had time to develop a reputation, but needs women around as props, then they probably just called an escort agency.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Hey' date=' at least they can find their common sense![/quote']

 

Fortunately she made the roll, and had the common sense not to flirt with Zeus. Those relationships never end well...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

"hang on... I need to make a perception check on my common sense."

Re: What benefit does a Familiar grant a Mage type? What good are they?

In Mage, familiars were tremendously handy, because they helped absorb some of the negative side effects of performing magic.

Since Fantasy HERO is a general system, whether or not a familiar is worth is is going to depend on your setting, and on how you build your magic system (or how you build your specific powers).

Consider "Bob" in the Dresden Files (urban fantasy, granted, rather than sword & sorcery, but the underlying point applies) - I'd call Bob a familiar. His primary function is as a research aid, and he's tremendously useful at that function. In HERO terms he's a follower who provides a host of knowledge skills and can provide a complimentary Magic Skill roll to Harry's.

In Harry Potter, I'd file Hedwig and Crookshanks both as familiars, but only barely. A better example would be Naagini, Voldemort's snake. Naagini is (7th book spoiler)

Voldemort is also capable of seeing through her eyes as well as sending her to scout on her own. In HERO terms, that makes her the SFX for Clairsentience and a follower, respectively.

The daemons in His Dark Materials could also be considered familiars. They seem to be necessary for any magic performed in the series. In HERO terms, they also provide a Complication, as damage to or separation from a daemon causes damage to their human - perhaps a Dependence.

Re: (5th Edition) Social Limitation: Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

Not quite the same thing but in a similar vein. Would sterility count as a advantage' date=' disad, or neither.[/quote']

 

It's really going to depend on the campaign. I'd say that in most games, it would be a 0 point complication.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

The Commander: Just don't loose any of your equipment. Too much paperwork.

Kalain: Does she (points at fellow pc) count as equipment?

The Commander: No... she's personnel.

Kalain: Is it more paperwork if we lose personnel?

The Commander: Of course - normally personnel are carrying equipment.

Re: (5th Edition) Social Limitation: Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

I did have a brick character who'd gotten her powers from insect DNA and we had a running joke where she'd gently put off suitors by mentioning that there'd been preying mantis in the mix and she really didn't want to find out the hard way that she had some... problematic instincts. I never bothered taking points for it, though.

The head-biting thing aside, note that this doesn't need to be restricted to male bricks. Consider the rather unfortunate risk of, er, crushing damage on a male partner.

There are also other power sets that can result in this sort of thing. A significant amount of Rogue's screen time centers around the fact that she can't touch anyone, and she's put at least one lover into a coma. Any character with trouble controlling their powers when upset could also have similar trouble when excited.

Re: 6th Edition Books on eReader?

Here's a link that includes how various e-readers handle PDFs:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

Re: What support DNPCs do GMs make for their games?

Younger siblings always work, even if the hero has an orphan backstory. Other relatives can show up as well (clones, half-siblings, etc.) After all, Superman's backstory destroyed his entire planet/race, and the writers still found him a cousin.

Re: d20 feats in .hdc format

Are there any specific d20 feats you'd like replicated? I don't play d20, but I could probably work something up if I had the original writeup to look at.

Most of the packages I had like this were for 5th edition and I didn't port them over when I installed HD on my current machines. (Thanks to a lost thumb drive and some other hardware issues, all of my HD installations are less than a year old.) Did you need them for 5th or 6th?

Re: SyFy Television Movie Genre:

I don't know how you can logically justify in this day and age a group of people being completely incommunicado. One person or a couple maybe' date=' but in this age when nearly everyone has a cellphone, smart phone or other device hermetically sealed to their hands you'd need to use a lot of handwavium to keep them from calling for help.[/quote']

 

If you're far enough out into the boonies, there are still zones with no cell service -- http://www.cellreception.com/deadspots/

Re: Women!

Wow, that's some thread necromancy there. I'm thoroughly unsure what the point was of resurrecting this thread from 2005 with a context-free clip from MST3K.

I'll grant you, I can pick up pretty much every one of the books and spot the white male perspective, but seriously, we're crossing table-top roleplaying, which is a pretty male-dominated hobby and superhero comics, which is all about boys. (Yeah, HERO has grown beyond Champions, but that's still the core fanbase.) There's going to be a skew.

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family"

I missed that. How old a kid are we talking about? I used to ride the subway into Manhattan when I was fourteen or fifteen on a regular basis. I never found it any more complicated than riding a bus. The public transportation in New York was sketchy back then' date=' but the only times I ever feared for my life growing up was when I had to walk on my own to school through my neighborhood. I had to fight more than once, and running was the only option a couple of times. Danger is just out there and kids need to know that and learn to navigate it at some point. Now, I wouldn't send a ten year old out on his/her own, but that's a different story.[/quote']

 

As it happens, the kid was 9:

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone/

 

At that age I was walking a mile to school on my own and nobody thought anything of it.

Re: Campaign Concept Source: "No Ordinary Family"

the characters or the actors?

I was thinking of the characters. Although, if the actors are underage, then it would also be convenient that both kids have powers that don't really require extra time on the set. (Voiceovers for telepathy and the animated diagrams demonstrating supersmartness are both presumably added in postproduction.)

Mostly, it seems to me that modern day takes on superheroes are more likely to take the approach that dragging a teenager into physically dangerous crime fighting is irresponsible. Not all, of course -- we still have our share of teen sidekicks. But the concept's common enough that I thought the writers might have wanted to avoid the issue. After all, about a year back there was a big news and internet kerfuffle about whether or not letting a kid use mass transit on his own was reckless.