Karmakaze

Re: Dukes of Hazzard Hero I avoided the Dukes movie just because it was self-evidently going to be about stupid people. I note though, that a lot of modern movie 'remakes' do that. There's a 'remake' of Guess Who is Coming to Dinner with, heaven help us, bernie mac... I'm so sure that the Dukes movie was stupid because culture says hicks=stupid, but because culture says stupid=entertainingh.

Re: Power Armor 'themes' I had a powered armor concept where the armor had a completely customizable surface. It had originally been meant as a stealth function, but the wearer used it to change the logo and color scheme to maintain a few identities.

Re: Negative STUN: Use the Time Chart for Recoveries?

Re: Dukes of Hazzard Hero How about Duplication? I think they went through several of them in the show...

Re: Mai HiME But... you have to have victims... it's in-genre!

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? I can't seem to connect to my usual webradio, so I am playing with last.fm's neighbor radio. So far... interesting. Right now it's "Only for a While" by Anita Baker.

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River The Fox River Vixen The "Fox River Vixen" has turned up several times over the last few decades. It's a traditional codename taken by "special abilties" girls from Fox River. There have been a number of one-shot appearances, and also cases where there has been more than one active Vixen at a time. The Vixen will usually wear something in the high school colors (several times it's been an actual cheerleader or majorette uniform).

Re: So...About Seeker...

Re: How do i Represent a Taunting skill? I've usually just role-played the taunting, largely becuase it's hard to get different GMs to agree on what the exact effects of a non-intimidation-based PRE effect should be. It has resulted in a few great one-liners, though: "Wow, I didn't know Lane Bryant made clothes in that size!" (to a two-story high vilainess) drew fire off of some more vulnerable teammates for several rounds. (Turns out she had a psychlim about her fashion sense - who knew.)

Re: Helpful disadvantages If it comes up once or twice, it's color. If it comes up more than that, then the villains need to have more clever phrasing on the MC. "That's not really Cosmic Lass - it's an impostor. The only way to get your real teammate back is to take down the impostor!"

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River Heroic Hijinxs: Unlike most high schools with "special' students, Fox River High School is categorically not in the business of training the next generation of superheros. They have enough trouble getting insurance as it is! They are in the business of providing a quality high school education to the children of the community - regardless of any unusual abilities they may or may not possess. Gym class teaches only the usual sports, and students with abilities that would affect their performance are prohibited from joining any of the intramural teams (That includes football, but also the debate team). Every few years, some students who think they're clever will try to get the school to sponsor a "civic responsibility club" or some other thinly veiled attempt at a super-team. Such ideas are firmly quashed. This is not to say that there is no superheroic activity at all. The school has hosted a few "Fox River Vixens" (sometimes more than one at a time) or "Cavaliers" (the name of the high school sports teams). The school administration does its best to be clear that they have nothing to do with these 'heroes' and are in no way liable for their actions.

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River The Paper Mill In the mid-80's the Fox River Paper Mill came to the attention of a super-team. They found it was a cover for a sinister secret organization that had been using it as a base of operations. They raided the base. Between the arrest of most of upper management and the collateral damage (from the super battle and the frantic destruction of evidence) to the buildings, the mill was shut down. The community met this with mixed reactions. On the one hand, nobody wants villains in their back yard. On the other hand, the mill was the area's largest employer, and the raid put a lot of local families on the unemployment rolls. The mill buildings remain unrepaired and abandoned. As the mill had been the worst offender for illegal dumping, most people suspect that it was the cause of the Fox River mutations. There was, in fact, a small dropoff of eruptions a few years after the base was shut down, but the numbers picked back up again when the children of the first generation to be exposed began to hit adolescence. I don't use the explicit Champions Universe in my games, but the Paper Mill as a VIPER base works rather smoothly, for those who do...

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River PTA stands for "Parent Teacher Association" - (famously referred to in Loretta Lynn's Harper Valley PTA)

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... We have a PC in a supers game called Sun Emperor, who's becoming a bit of a media hound. When he flies, he's enveloped in "flame". Last game, as he started to fly off, a 'fan' in a trenchcoat ran up, and flashed him, yelling "No Tan Lines!!!" And they wonder why my character keeps refusing to attend the PR events or to pose for the group photos...

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River Imported Freaks Not every student at Fox River is a native mutation. Once it became clear that Fox River High School was a stable environment that was handling its 'special abilities' students relatively smoothly, parents from other parts of the country with 'ususual' children found ways to move into the school district. Not everyone trusts the agendas of private schools that recruit superpowered children, or wants their children living away from home. Most notable are "Mr. and Mrs. Roboto". Mr Roboto is a former robot superhero, retired. For obvious reasons, he and his wife could not have children, so they looked into adoption. They found out that superpowered children are nearly impossible to place. Several were bouncing through the foster system at record speed - and those were the lucky ones that did not vanish under suspiciuous circumstances. They applied for foster parent status. After some trouble relating to the fact that Mr. Roboto has no birth certificate (not to mention the theological implications of a sentient robot), they were able to demonstrate that they could provide a stable home - and were able to handle some of the more exotic complications in stride. It helped that they had a number of extremely reputable citizens vouching for them. They moved to Fox River to take advantage of the school and (relatively) accepting community. Since only the high school and junior high are really equipped to handle 'special abilities' students, they homeschool younger students who cannot be easily mainstreamed.

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River A mutant cluster and subsequent eruptions Over the course of the late 70's and early 80's, it became clear that Fox Run hosted a sort of 'mutant cluster' the way some communities host 'cancer clusters'. Each year one or two teenagers would 'erupt' with some unsual ability or physical change. Some were dramatic, but most were relatively minor. The 'eruptions' of special abilities seemed exclusive to adolescents going through phases of high metabolic change. All of the teens affected had lived in the area for several years. The abilities did not seem to fade post-adolescence. It's theorized that whatever the underlying cause is, it's probably saturated the population, but required the hormonal instability of adolescence to trigger the eruptions. Environmentalists from all over came in, tested the ground water, air pollution, and pretty much anything else they could think of. No specific cause was found, although there was evidence of higher than normal chemical contamination in the groundwater. Several local factories were found to have been indulging in illegal dumping. The largest offender, the local paper mill, was also the town's largest employer and wound up receiving little more than a slap on the wrist and a court order to clean up their act. They paid the fine without comment and at least managed to dump more subtly for a time after that. After the intial furor died down, the high school managed to mainsteam their 'special abilities' students with surprisingly little trouble. By and large, the town takes a "they may be freaks, but they're our freaks' sort of attitude. It also helps that relatively few of the students have really disruptive abilities.

Re: Teen Champions Setting - Fox River Homecoming, early eruptions, and the lawsuit: 1976 - Sophomore Jack Foster attended a Friday night pep rally for the high school football team. As he sat up by the bonfire, he began to melt. The ensuing panic ended the rally as students freaked out, ran away, or frantically tried to scoop up the liquefying boy. Paramedics managed to scrape him onto a plastic tarp. On the way to the hospital, Jack re-congealed, apparently unharmed. The hospital was unable to explain the phenomenon, but were able to repeat it by applying dry heat. Finally, they sent him home, advising him to stay away from radiators and direct sunlight. The next day the news had picked up the story of the Melting Boy. Over the weekend, the community worked itself up over the issue. By Monday the school had received a petition to keep Jack out of class. The school told the Fosters to keep him home until his 'condition' could be 'cured'. The Fosters quickly found that while their insurance covered the hospital visit, it didn't cover treatment for the non-life-threatening and unclassifiable condition. By the time they ran out of their own money, all they established was that nobody could pin down a cause, but as long as he was kept away from extreme heat, he could control the melting and that he was neither toxic nor contagious. Despite this finding, the school continued to refuse to allow Jack to attend classes. With the last of their money, the Fosters tried to find a lawyer. The lawyer tracked down and brought together two other families. It turned out that Missy Carmichael's decision sudden decision to "go stay with her aunt in New York" was not, as everyone had assumed, a cover for an unplanned pregnancy after all. Missy's skin and hair had turned blue, which she'd been able to conceal with dye and makeup until she'd also grown horns and a tail. The Carmichaels had pulled her out of school and were keeping her hidden for fear of exactly the sort of media assault Jack was facing. David Goldstein had been at summer camp when he discovered he could see and hear through the eyes and ears of any one person within several yards. He'd been sent home with a 'nervous condition'. The Goldsteins had been working with him to control the ability and had chosen to homeschool him to be sure that he would not be tempted to use his ability to cheat on exams. The Fosters, Carmichaels and Goldsteins opened a lawsuit against the local school board to have their children admitted back into regular classes. They were joined by two other famiies once the suit was announced. The case became a media circus, the issues debated on national television. Was it safe to allow 'special abilities' students to mainstream with regular kids - for either the special students or the regular ones? Did the state have the right to bar any child of tax-paying citizens from a public education who were not in violation of the behavioral code? Ultimately, after several appeals, the courts ruled that, as long a child does not pose a health hazard to other students, the public school system must accept the child, subject, of course, to the same academic and disciplinary restrictions applied to any other student.

Over the course of reading Teen Champions, I started getting a setting in my head. I'm still working on getting it fully written up, but I thought I might post it here as a works-in-progress and welcome questions, criticism or suggestions. Oddly, I'm getting more adult characters coming to me than teens, which is good from a setting-write-up standpoint, I suppose. I suspect if I ever run with this, it'll be a PTA game... (I'm also posting to my gaming wiki at http://karmakaze.schtuff.com/, but I also post other stuff there for other games I run.)

Re: Hell's Gate Open (My New Game - Comments?) Have you read the Anita Blake books by Laurell Hamilton (http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/)? It also portrays a universe where vampires are granted legal rights. The main character raises the dead for a living ("where did you leave the will, Dad?") and moonlights as an executioner for supernaturals the police can't handle. Only bother with the first three or four books, though - eventually the series degrades into plotless porn. You might also like the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris (http://www.charlaineharris.com/). Vampires are just coming out of the closet in that series as well, athough other supernatural creatures are still not thought to be real by most folk.

Re: Let's hear it for villainous organizations Heh. I use T.H.E.M. Fortunately for my strained imagination, the low level operatives are not cleared to know what the acronym stands for.

Re: secretary to heroes

Re: secretary to heroes Heh. In my modern pulp game, the agency secretary just got promoted to field work (something about being psychic), so I gave them Tracy. Tracy looks barely 14, but has (carefully faked) paperwork claiming she's a 16 year old emancipated minor. Actually, she's 35, but is suffering from a spell that is causing her to age backwards. This frustrates her to no end. "You all remember how much adolescence sucked? Try it backwards!" She is, despite her appearance, quite competent at the job. Then there's Charlene, from the Univeristy of Hellenback games (superhero college students). She's the departmental secretary for the parapsychology department. The coffee pot near her desk contains the best coffee on campus, and she can locate any parapsychology professor who is not actively hiding. She's never displayed any unusual abilities except (a) never being harmed or distressed by the stuff that goes on in the department and ( always being out on vacation when anything really major is going on. She puts in for her vacation at the beginning of the year.

Re: What in genre bit do you like that no one else seems to enjoy ? I do use pregenerated characters, and yet, still the inventory debate creeps in.

Re: What in genre bit do you like that no one else seems to enjoy ? It's hard to say. I often find the level of obsession with items on the part of D&D players to be kind of frustrating. The two D&D conventions games I run take away the PC's stuff because I found out the hard way that you can lose two out of the four hours to munchkin players trying to renegotiate their equipment list. Of course, for a campaign, just enforcing the encumbrance rules and not handing out balance-destroying artifacts in the first place can work quite well.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? A Whiter Shade of Pale - Annie Lennox