Ranxerox

Re: Favorite Pulp Character

Fu Manchu, hands down favorite.

Re: Culture HERO

The Culture books make for some fascinating reading. You won't regret the time you spend with them Uhlan.

Originally posted by Zed-F

If you buy a KS as int-based, it becomes a 3/1 skill, not a 3/2 skill. Certainly you can't buy a 3/2 skill that starts at a base of 13- and buy it up to 20- with only 9 character points.

Agreed.

Otherwise people would just buy scholar and then buy all of their other skills as knowledge skills - i.e. KS:Stealth, KS:Shadowing, KS:Combat Piloting, etc. Knowledge skills just allow your character to know things. They don't let your character do things.

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking about but you can always declare the ATRI (see Terran Empire for discription of ATRI scale) level of the each dimension and the maximun active points of magic it can support.

For instance you might wanted yourn players to have an adventure in Western Horror dimension that was in phase with Cynosure. You might declare this dimension caple of supporting ATRI level 6 equipment and up to 40 points of magic. Players trying to use items of greater than ATRI 6 would be unable to as would players tring to cast spells with more than 40 active points.

If this solution doesn't address your question, please give me a more example of what you were talking about.

I'm putting together a play by post Alien Wars campaign and would gladly fork out some money for some artwork related to the game. I imagine that if I was using another hero setting that I would feel the same way about that settings artwork.

Originally posted by zarglif69

Hmmmmm... but this is rectifying problems with drugs, and powerful, dangerous drugs at that. I want something anyone can use, including children and the elderly. but thanx anyways.

If you don't want to have everyone walking about wearing weighted backpacks (and you might), then you are pretty much stuck with drugs or genetic engineering. On the bright side though, now that we have our own genome mapped we should be able to make drugs that accomplish this with much less in the way of dangerous side effects.

Calcium loss from the bones is just the sort of hormone regulated phenomen that a better understanding of our own genes will probably open windows of treatment. So go out and chug a couple liters of soda. By the time that you are old enough to have to worry about the calcium that the soda leached from your bones, there will be a simple pill to pop in order to reverse the damage.

Re: Precog, with a few more bits.

Originally posted by The Mad GM

A really gonzo level of Danger Sense, some variation on Deduction, and several skill levels could add a little extra to the precog option:

Getting a +2 to make the initial roll is usually as good as being allowed a reroll and getting a +3 is always as good (and generally better) than getting a reroll.

Oddly it is the easy rolls that need the +3 to simulate the reroll. Getting a reroll on tough roll doesn't really improve your chances much. Getting a reroll on an easy roll makes it almost a sure thing that one of the two rolls will be sucessful.

My campaign is reign of Emporer Sigismund and the TE is corrupt, paranoid and occasionally genecidal. Many of the rebel groups aren't really any better being xenophobic, repressive or just plain crazy. So I guess you say that my campaign enemies are human.

This doesn't mean that I don't have other species waiting in the wings ready pick up the pieces of the TE when it all falls apart and working behind the scenes to make sure that it does fall apart. Since my players sometimes read these boards, I can't get into specifics there unfortunately.

Uhh, folks. I actually ran my middleweights pole a while back. As I recall, Nightwing won it though this may be because the Marvel vote was split in too many directions with Daredevil, IronFist and Shang Chi all competing.

If someone want to run their own middleweight pole with their own field of candidates that would certainly be fine. I'm not trying to fill out my roster anymore though.

If the character can perform a sucessful called shot to the legs and the target failed to make their dex roll, I would be willing to say that the character had tripped the target.

Originally posted by Kaeto

Also from what I can see Millenium City is a city only for the rich. If you don't have money you can't even get into the city.

Actually almost all major cities seem to have this problem. House and apartment prices in NYC, LA, and San Francisco are out of this world. It is a mystery to me how poor people live in these places, but some how they do.

Originally posted by Mangog

Do any of the game books provide greater detail on the monsters Destroyer used?

The Millenium City Sourcebook says Dr. Destroyer setthe monster Mega-Terak on the heroes who came to fight him in the Battle of Detroit. Unfortunately, I don't know where the write-up for Mega-Terak is or even if an officail one exist. Sorry, I can't be of more help.

Originally posted by levi

I started converting these Word files to HDCs

 

Here is Muerte

Thanks levi

I grabbed all 3 that you've done so far. Good work.

I've always as a rule of thumb have figured that one high point character can X low point character where X = (high point character cost/low point character cost)^2 .

So one 400 point character should be a fair fight for 4 200 point characters.

X = (400/200)^2 = 2^2 = 4

If you play with the math on this you can also figure out how tough of a major villian a super hero team can have a fair chance of beating.

Point cost of villian = average hero point cost x square root of the number of heros

So if you 3 350 pt heros you can fairly throw a 606 pt villain against them.

Villian pt cost = 350 x square root of 3 = 350x1.73 = 606

Of course this is just my personal rule of thumb for these things and YMMV

Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

I will post the pole later today but there is still time for last minute nominations.

Currently we have 2 two poles on this board where Daredevil is getting his butt kicked. In one Batman is doing it and in the other Captain America gets the honor. Neither of these fights seem particularly fair because it is obvious from how these characters are usually drawn that both Cap and Batman have 40 or 50 pounds of muscle mass on Daredevil. As the saying goes, a good big man will beat a good little man every time.

So in order to give DD a fighting chance, I would like to put together a pull of good comic book middleweight martial artist. I already know that the pole will include Nightwing, Daredevil and Shang-chi but I'm looking for other names.

Please, no chicks (that is a different pole) or anyone overly obscure (too difficult for the voting public to judge their credentials).

Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

Originally posted by Agent X

If he gets to slap around Krona, I'm wondering who is waiting in the wings?

 

Are they going to pull a switcheroo and have Thanos and some by-blow of the Anti-monitor show up? Something else?

I don't think that anyone is waiting in the wings. Judging from the items that he has acquired, Grandmaster should be all powerful. I expect issue #3 to start with Grandmaster casually disposing of Krona and setting himself up as the man in charge.

Now what do you do if you are the Grandmaster and now running everything? D'uh, you hold a contest.

As always a very good write up, Susano. I would reduce his STR from 20 to 10 and then buy him an extra 10 which doesn't add to his characteristics and cost increased END to simulate those occasional burst of manical strength. I would probably give him a 5 speed.

These are just personal preferences though.

A sitting president usually receives so little challenge from his own party that they aren't even worth mentioning. So I wouldn't mention them if I were you.

As for Republican and independant opposition, IMO there are are two routes you can go.

The first route is to consider this a wartime president in a deadly serious war not of his choosing. If the public of your world by in large view him in these terms, they will endure the poor economy and the gas lines and stay behind their leader. In other words, the opposing party and any independant candidates won't stand any chance whatsoever. Knowing this the Republicans will put forward a sacrificial lamb type candidate and independate candidates will be unable to find donors and their campaigns won't be able to get off the ground.

The second route you can take this can be summed up in 2 words: Lex Luthor

Re: New Terran Empire Races

Originally posted by KawangaKid

I noticed that there are 51 sentient species living in the Terran Empire, and a number of my players have opted to create their own races and cultures...

 

Has anyone else done so?

One of my players created one and I've created two sentient races for my TE campaign.

The one created by my player (actually he swiped it from another game) is a race of low tech sonewhat feline hunters from a very cold planet. They essentially have anti-freeze for blood and without special equipment overheat on Earth-like worlds. He also decided to make them extremely fast learnings who get bored very easily. There name is the Swara.

I borrowed a race from Hal Clement's Mission Gravity which I decided to in honor of their source name Clementines. Clementines look one meter long centipedes whose three front legs on each side have become fused by evolution into a hand like appendage. There home world Clement is very large, dense and fast spinning. At it's poles the gravity pulls at around 7 gs but at the equator it is only half that due to the rapid rotation. Despite there there diminutive size Clementines are very strong and they have excellent memories. On the downside, Clementines have poor vision, aren't very agile and are slow in there thought processes.

Another race that I invented on my own are the Gaussians. The planet Gauss has very large deposits of iron, nickle and lead. Its spinning molten center gives it a powerful magnetic field. Gaussian are short (around 5') humanoid beings with with scalely gray skin and small beady eyes set inside saucer shaped impressions on their face. The eyes give them limited ability to see in the "visible" spectrum while most of their "seeing" is done with the saucer shaped impression and is done in the radio spectrum.

I started GMing champions when I was 14. I've GMed kids as young as age 11. I've also GMed plenty of players who by their ons admission weren't very good at math. None of the people that I have GMed have ever had any problem with the concepts of STUN, BODY or Knockback past the first adventure.

Knockback in particular I have always found to be popular with newbie gamers. There is just something fun about knowing that your characters punch sent the villian flying 18 feet.

Just explain everything in there simplest and most basic terms. "When your character runs out of STUN he is unconscious. When your character runs out of BODY he is dead." It doesn't need to be more complicated than that a first. Don't try to explain game mechanics in advance, but just intraduce them as they come up. "It's round twelve so everybody gets to recover back some of the STUN that they have lost. You have a REC of 8 so you get to recover 8 and you have a REC of 10 so you get to recover 10."

Just keep it simple and resist the powerful urge to over explain and everyone will understand the basic of combat by the end of the first one and not even have been aware of just having been taught anything.

OK, now that I've actually run a few adventures, I feel ready to respond to my own thread.

First, I would like to thank those of you who were kind enough to offer your own insight. Since I'm running a somewhat dark and gritty future, I could have totally overlooked the convience thing so thank you projecktzero. Also, thank you Blue Jogger for reminding me that I didn't have to change everything and that it would be better if I left some things familiar.

I opted not to include energy-matter replicators. Of course chemical replicators exist but I decided not to have them as a consumer appliance. Thank those of you who gave your views on the subjuct.

Below are some of my own ideas for the 27th century:

"Reminder citizens: We will be having 2 hours of rain today strating at 7:42"

Climate controlled cities are a common in my TE. Day high and low temps are decided in advance along with precipitation, and wind speed. As one might imagine, the upcoming weather is always a hot topic (sorry about the pun) at city council meetings. Some cities have elected not to be climate controlled and some cities are climate controlled on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis.

Faster than a speeding bullet

I opted not to have flying cars as a common element of my TE but instead have very fast ground transportation for longer trips. Trams can get up to twice the speed of sound.

Fish work cheap

As I mention in the favorite alian pole, I like the Osathri and I arranged for them to get out and about more in my TE. So when checking into a hotel or buying somthing from a kiosk it is common to be talking to a fish. Ijust felt that this was a nice 'You're not in Kansas anymore' touch.

Internet? Don't you mean outernet?

The datanet is wireless and can be accessed from just about anywhere except deep space. Some people live physically very active lives while never going offline.

I work for jack

An organizational structure that is common in my TE, is the virtual corporation (VC). Employees of VCs accept corporate software into their neural interfaces in place of having a human (or alien supervisor). Such an arrangement is called a jack. This term has become part of many expession in my TE.

Here are a few:

"I would like to help you but I'm on the jack" meaning my neural interface is monitoring my actions right now for my VC (this can count as a Watched in game terms).

"Can't do it. I'm under jack" meaning my corporate software would prevent me from doing that (this type of jack functions as a Psych lim)

"I've got so many jacks I can't see straight" meaning I have multiple corporate software running in my neural interface. An example of this might be someone working at a starport with a jack to do port cleaning, another to try to sell ground transport to incoming travelers, another to steer incoming travelers to using a particular hotel, and another to keep an eye out for unusual travelers for law enforcement or the mob.

Can't see the writing on the wall

My TE is a post-literate civilization. The acts of reading a writing has been effectively been replaced by other forms of communication. The most notable of these being datastreaming. Datastreaming is a multisensory form of data conveyance done through either a neural jack or neural head unit. It is about 3 times as fast for most people than reading and gives better retention.

This last change has been the hardest for my players to come to terms with. They have difficulty wrapping there heads around a future with no written word. However, I've introduced as an element in my campaign adn am keeping it.

Originally posted by Storn

Yeah, I really like him. I would love to see him get a write up one of these days. Neil has got it right, Steve and Andy were chuckling about how both myself (and sorry, I'm blanking on the name) the other artist came up with the same image demonstrating the 60s superhero.

That is kind of spooky actually, but thank you for answering.

The character definitely could use a name and an official write-up (though I wouldn't mind seeing either of the unoffical ones mentioned).

Off topic question for Storn or anyone who knows the answer: What is the name of black superhero that Storn drew for the picture on pg. 17 of Champions Universe?

He is a solidarity fist symbol on his chest and he is flying up behind a sniper. I've been intriqued ever since I saw the picture (and the one of him on pg.16)

Effects of new building materials

The building materails available to a people to a large extent dictate the sort of buildings that they make. As new building materials and construction techniques become avaialabe they will change the face of architecture.

While my players don't know it yet (ssshhh, don't tell them), they are going to stage a raid on a building that looks like a humongous fruit tree. It starts off as a central trunk and branches out higher up eith each apartment looking from the outside like a giant shining piece of golden fruit.

Currently it would be pretty much impossible to make a buliding that starts off so narrow and then becomes wider. It would also be quite a challenge to get people to their apartments. However thanks to the stronger building materials avalilabe in the 27th century and hover elevators, the building becomes possible and almost practical. Though it remains somewhat tacky.