input.jack

Re: Looking for NEW words of transformation: (SHAZAM, Thunder! Thunder!...) In one of the game I ran, one of the PC's used the words: RAY AL KOON! (It's "nuclear" backwards). Of course, then he would transform into his "Hero" ID which was so weird and non-euclidean that the PLAYER would start chanting like something out of a Conan movie for about ten minutes, just to weird people out. Neat character...

Re: Every Good Golden Age Supers Campaign Needs: A team with one (and only one) Hero from each of the Allied nations. A reason why Supers might stay at home and fight on the Home Front, instead of going into battle. (In my GA game, the Nazis had a metahuman whose power was that he shut off ALL superpowers in a ten mile radius. The ALlies found out about him the hard way, and lost two VERY prominent British heroes. FDR decided that, for morale reasons, no SUper could go inot battle on the front lines, as the loss of an American hero would demoralize the troops too much). At least three American heroes who are ignoring FDR's decree...and doing REALLY well!

Re: How to handle RKA? Ive seen several really good suggestions for handling KA's proposed here. The x3 Stun Multiple, and doubling the dice and then applying them normally (count Body, but its only stopped by Res. Def) are my favorites. Id recommend talking to the Player and asking him why the flaming furry heck he ONLY buys KA's. If he cant give you a satisfactory answer for this trait, then you should point out that hes only trying to capitalize on game mechanics, and thats BAD role-playing character design

Re: Players And the Strange things they do. Sombody rep Susano for that name suggestion

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... Ive read Forever War. Youre right, its very good!

Re: Advice on GMing superhero campaigns? I totally agree on the archival thing. Its especially good if you get a Player who likes to keep a journal. They can prompt you on things a year after the game starts, if need be. My main piece of advice would be to start with coming up with at least three "master villians". I mean people like Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Ultron, or Loki. Characters who, while not necessarily -in- the adventure, may have ultimately been responsible for the people involved being in the place they are in. Movers and shakers behind the scenes. I ran a game called Metaworld for well over five years based on the three original "Masterminds" I came up with. Eventually the Players exposed and defeated two of the three. The third they suspected existed, but didnt have a solid lead on. If you -do- go with that idea, you need to also be careful NOT to have them (collectively) be responsible for more than about half to a third of what goes on. Otherwise its X-Files in tights. Superhero games are awesome to run. Its my favorite genre as a Ref and as a Player. I try to keep my games fairly "realistic" with regards to cause and effect, yet maintain a certian level of optimism overall. Good -will- eventually triumph. It just may take a while, and Good may have a black eye, glass shards in its feet, and a limp. (Bruce Willis in Die Hard as the Avatar of Justice! Boo-yah!) Ive also made it clear to the Players that there are two "unwritten laws" in my campaign. One: People in masks do -not- usually try to actually kill other people in masks. If someone wants to play "Killgore Deathblood" the so-called "hero" based on some whack-job from Image Comics, they arent going to last long on Metaworld! This is because, in the social dynamic of the Supers world as it exists in the game, a Hero or a Villain who becomes known as a habitual killer runs a -very- good chance of getting killed right back. If the Villains know that American Eagle will thump them solid, and take them to jail, but Annihilator will disembowl them and decorate the nearby rooftops, theyre going to put a bullet in Annihilator's brain pan at earliest opportunity. Villains know that they run the risk of -very- hard justice from angry Heroes. Heroes know that killing people brings on the District Attorney. Balance is maintained. Second, (and really its a two-parter), there's a campaign "fiat" that secret identities are harder to "pop" through simple observation than they would be in the real world. People dont follow Black Eagle around trying to get a hair sample to run a DNA analysis on. They dont seem to realize that she bears a -striking- resemblance to the lead singer of the Banshees (an all-girl rock group in the game). Even though Black Eagle is five-foot-four, blonde, and latina, with a -clearly- unmistakable mouth (she looks like Jessica Alba), even people like her agent, who knows her in both identities, has yet to put it together. Along with that is the Supers social convention that you just dont go pulling the masks off of people. Sure, once someone is arrested and in custody, the police unmask them and print them, and run an ID check. But if a Hero unmasks a villain before the cops arrive, thats tampering with evidence. If villains unmask a Hero when they have him in their clutches, thats grounds for other Heroes to start -really- gunning for the villain. That, and in the campaign, theres a superstition among the underworlders that unmasking a Hero and revealing his ID is BAD LUCK. (And it is). There was a famous case in the 1950's of a thug unmasking a Hero and blabbing his ID to his underworld cronies, and immediately afterwards the criminal had a run of bad luck that would make Job seem like Longshot. So word kind of "got around". I tried to think of some of the comics genre cnventions, and then think of ways to incorporate them into the game logically. (As logically as I could). Oh! And most important: You need to let your Players know what kind of tone you want for the game. Nothing ruins a good, serious Hero game faster than one yutz thinking its "Stupor-friends" while everyone else is taking it seriously and trying to play more "WB The Animated Series". (Rappin' Rhino killed a game of mine, a while back). Hope that helped

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... While they technically dont count as "fantasy", Ive just finished reading the entire Horatio Hornblower ceries by C.S.Forester (spelling may be off, but I think that's correct), and they are AWESOME! Im running a ship-based fantasy game, and those books have really set me in the mood for it! I strongly recommend the Hornblower series to everyone who likes historical adventure that is both well researched and very, very engaging. There are -alot- of nautical terms thrown about, so either get a nautical dictionary, or just let your brain make up what certain phrases mean Id seen the Hornblower movies that Ioan Gruffud starred in, and liked them immensely. The books, if one can believe it, are even better! I borrowed them form a friend, but Im planning on acquiring the whole set as soon as I can! Enjoy!

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Ive got Winger playing atm

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Im listening to the harmoic hum of the computer and the refrigerator 'cause Im cruising the boards and am too trapped in them to get up and turn on the CD player...

Re: Sky High The Movie Saw it. Really liked it. Recommending it to -ALL- HERO players

Re: Sky High the movie, now with Extra Vitamin "S" (spoilers) *Spoiler* He was NIGH-invulnerable, and a flying parent in diapers. I dont blame him for freaking out

Re: Can't have power defense, limitation or disad? Id have to agree with the Accidental Change when cut off from Mystical Energies, for two reasons. First, as has been mentioned, that would allow you, the Ref, to determine what "counts" and what doesnt, and this neatly side-steps the whole issue of whether or not -all- Power Defense should affect the character that way. Ultimately, the Power Defense power itself isnt the cause of the loss of the character's abilities, its what that represents as far as being shut off from the Xtra-D energies. So this ultimately works in your favor as far as allowing you, the Ref, to control the situation to make it how it should be, instead of the Players (even unknowingly) "controlling" the situation simply thru the use of a power. Second, Id suggest that the Acc. Change, or at least SOME Limitation be taken, simply to get the concept written down somewhere on the character's sheet, in a palce you'll see it when you're running a combat. Cheesy as it sounds, I often throw in small 5-pointers like that on my Villain write-ups to remind ME of how they're supposed to work, since I might not actually get to use the sheet till several weeks after Ive written it!

Re: New Ship Map If Golden Age is who you think he is, who am I?

Re: Sky High Gamer's Eye Micro-Review I just got back from seeing it, and I really liked it. I -loved- the soundtrack, too (Im a child of the 80's, and almost all the tunes were -solid- remakes of some of my favorite music from when I was in high school and early college). The movie also gave me some ideas for my own (more serious) campaign...

Re: to map combat or not to map combat. I generally encourage the mapping of combats, both as a Ref and as a Player. Mostly because, for whatever reason, I seem to -always- picture things "backwards" from how everyone else had things pictured in their head. If everyone thinks the Big Bad Villain is to the right of the door, I had him pictured on the left. If I think my character is sitting next to the Dark Lord of the Sooth, I have my character pictured to the left.....but everyone else (Ref included) thought I was on the right. Darn near every time. That, and some of the Refs in my game group (I wont name names, but the initials of the worst perpetrator are IEPA) are notorious for having a...shall we say...loose grasp on distance. Im told someone is "far away, clear across the huge cavern", but they are upon me and in hand-to-hand on their next move. People appear out of nowhere ("Wait...I didnt NOTICE 10 heavily armed stormtroopers in full armor standing in the open, to the left of the gangway?"). Characters who are widely spread out in a non-mapped combat are suddenly all affected by an AOE spell with a 3 hex radius... Maps solve alot of my problems with envisioning things in the same way as everyone else. However, I do have a story to relate. (I wasnt in this game, but I know the Players who were and they all said the same thing happened). One of the game groups was being run through a Fantasy campaign, wherein the characters were about to assault the forward encampment of the enemy army. Carl, the Ref, laid out the battlemat, with this comment: "This...is a well-run, well-organized military encampment. It is laid out along sound, tactical lines, and is well-defended, and well thought out. Everythig is where it should be, considering the leader of the forces here is a military genius, and knows exactly what he is doing.... ....But this is the map that we're using" (Carl is NOT a tactical military genius. But Im more and more impressed with his Reffing)

Re: Comic books The game group Im in has several campaigns running under different Refs, in different "worlds". So when Ian is running Earth A, the events of the Metaworld game Im running become the events and characters from comics on Earth A. When Im running Metaworld, the Earth A characters are in -their- comics. And when they eventually crossed over, that was alot of fun!!

Re: Bigoted Archetypes I usually have the "man on the street" have the same general attitudes of the era the game is set in, but there is generally a discussion before a game set in an era where bigotry is common about how the characters will view things, so that everyone is on the same page and no one gets a nasty shock once the game begins. I have used the "bone thru the nose" cannibal archetype in a couple of my campaigns, but I generally make them throwback Neanderthals, and thus not people of any modern-Human ethnic type. I was impressed when I saw "13th Warrior" that someone so esteemed as Crichton would so blatantly steal my idea We have had some players who have given their characters reasons in their backgrounds to udnerstand that racial stereotypes are hogwash, such as the British Army officer recently retired from a Welsh regiment that had been stationed at the supply depot at Rorke's Drift when things got...interesting. Needless to say, anyone who has ever seen "Zulu!" would know why he would never refer to African natives as "cowardly blacks" again!! (Before anyone protests that quote, please understand that it -is- a quote from the amazing 1964 movie. If you havent seen it, it is available on DVD now, and one of the best movies about courage in the face of an overwhelming enemy that I have ever seen. And -I- first saw it in a history class, as it is a true story!) Once, during a 1950's adventure campaign I was running, the PC's were faced with the disappearance of an entire crew from a new, off-shore oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. They found some interesting bits of evidence, and took them to the local marine biologist, whom they were surprised to discover was a rather breathtaking redhead! (The campaign had been described from the outset as mirroring the way the 50's was portrayed in cinema, not reality, so much, so a female doctor of marine biology was a rarity, but not unheard of. But being a female marine biologist, naturally, she was stunning, and in her late 20's). Lillian got involved in the adventure, and ultimately the group found itself aboard an experimantal mini-submarine, at the entrance to the undersea passage into the secret lair of the Aquati-men. (I did not name them that. The players did. Bless 'em). The characters only had one deep-sea diving rig capable of withstanding the pressure, as deep as they were, and there was a debate going about who should get to put the thing on and go outside the sub. One of the players (my good friend Owen), was speaking in character. The decision was down to his "Scientific adventurer" character, or Tom's ex-Korean war veteran who had "seen too much" during the war. (Kind of a 50's "Nam vet" kind of feel), when Owen basically said, "All right, I suppose it has come down to the two of us. While I have a better scientific background, I cannot deny that your experiences overseas have prepared you to react more quickly should the unexpected occur. However, due to the nature of the mission, I believe that....that....Ok this is out of character....WE SHOULD SEND THE MARINE BIOLOGIST! SHE KNOWS WHAT TO LOOK FOR! SHES PERFECTLY COMPETENT! SHES SMARTER THAN THE REST OF US PUT TOGETHER! SHE KNOWS WHAT SHES DOING! I CANT TELL A CONCH SHELL FROM A KRAKEN! WE SHOULD SEND HER! SHES THE ONLY LOGICAL CHOICE! WE SHOULD SEND THE WOMAN! SEND THE WOMAN!! ......................*ahem*...............Right...now...where was I.?...Oh yeah. I believe that I am the only logical choice for this mission, and that, meaning no offense, of course, despite your military training you simply would not know what to look for." "What? Why is everyone laughing?" That, I believe, was the perfect way to handle that particular situation. I gave Owen extra XP's to help compensate for the anurism

Re: Can any comic fans fill me in on current Marvel continuity? Egyptoid beat me to it.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Mea culpa. My bad. I read the issue quickly at a friends house, and frankly, I dont like the Authority anyway (mostly -because- they are so kill-happy), so after a while I suppose I must have mis-remembered the exact chain of events. I still think theyre d**ks, tho. Anyway, apologies for the misinformation.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Awhile back, people were talking about the Authority, and whether they should be seen as "villains" because theyve basically killed everyone and everything thats opposed them. Heres an example of their "heroism"... They learn of a prophecy that states that the most powerful uber-villain in the world will be born in a certain hospital at a certain time. They go to the hospital, but they dont know which baby is the foretold uber-villain. So they kill ALL the babies in the hospital ward. (They also MISSED, because the cultist had already snuck the tot out). Theyre villains. Plain and simple. Their continued existence, and the fact that some people still (somehow) regard them as heroes is a constant source of frustration and pain for me. Sorry to interrupt. Proceed as planned

Re: How would you simulate this in combat? Um...-are- there Criticals in 5th edition HERO?

Re: Disadvantages of being Undead True, Necromancers should have an easier time with him (Maybe a Vulnerability to Necromantic Magic?). My roomate suggested Social Lim: Undead American Perhaps he cant regenerate unless he eats raw meat. (I dont know how fast you wanted the regeneration to be, but if its out of combat type regen, this might work). Even with life supports against heat and cold, the cold might still slow him down. (Anyone whose played City of Heroes knows what happens when you hit a Vahz zombie with a cold effect ) You might also give him a Physical Limitation that he is Immune to Normal Medicine, since you said a doctor wouldnt know what to do with him. (I had a Living Dead Girl character in a game a while back, which is where Im drawing alot of this from).

Re: Stat Increase = Skill Increase? Mudpyr8 has a solid point, there. It sounds inherently inconsistent, and to the detriment of the Players, for Stat increases not to increase Skill Rolls accordingly, but for decreases to incur penalties. The same reasoning Intrigue is using to impose the penalties on Skills that are based on a drained Stat is -exactly- the reasoning that demands a raised Stat should increase said Skills. Its your game, Intrigue, and you do, of course, have the right to Ref it as you see fit. But I think that youve been given some pretty solid evidence that perhaps you should reconsider your position on this issue. Were our positions reversed, I know -Id- be changing my position. (Ive had to do alot of position changing since 5th Ed. came out ). As far as I can tell, youre the only person whose posted thats been running "base skill rolls" as -only- applying during character creation. (NBote: Just because youre the only one doing something doesnt automatically make you "wrong"; we could all have misread something that you got right. But in this case I think there a preponderance of overwhelming evidence to the contrary). I agree with Hugh Neilson; the Skill system isnt broken and doesnt need a change. Its just fine the way it is now. If I want to create a character who is a world-class race car driver and a total klutz outside the car, I can. Even with a 6 DEX, a character can buy a Driving roll thats astronomical, if the Ref allows it. Aids to Stats give slight improvements in Skills tied to those Stats, while drains (like alcohol) impair them. Thats both balanced and realistic, as far as I can see

Re: robots and gun ports Personally, Id give him 26 BODY, and a Physical Limitation "Loses 1 emplaced weapon for every 2 Body taken" But thats just me. Its an NPC, and all you -really- need is a way to remind yourself of how to have his weapons disabled consistently

Re: Stat Increase = Skill Increase? Maybe its because Ive been playing HERO in one form or another for over 20 years now, but I find this entire discussion baffling. ....OMG I feel old... Anyway, *Ahem*, where was I? Oh yes... In all the games Ive played in HERO, there has -always- been the understanding that, should a character's stats improve over one of the "break points", the attendant skills would also improve by one, as well. I cant -fathom- not seeing it that way. As was mentioned, if your reaction time and co-ordination improve, so will your ability to drive in emergencies. Or to move quietly, or perform gymnastics. (Driving, Stealth, and Acrobatics). Thats just....common sense. To me, anyway. How could that not be the case? The skill rolls we have in a HERO game represent not only the amount of practice or information that we have been exposed to in a given area, but also our ability to make -practical- use of it when the need arises in the field. Most campaigns are fairly action-oriented, and when the adrenaline is flowing and your heart is thumping, thats when you really find out how well you learned to do something. Also, lets not forget that its very -very- hard for a person in real life to "raise their stats" once they reach adulthood. Physical exercise, unless its of an extreme nature, tends to raise your Strength and Recovery, but thats about it. I cant think of a way to raise your INT. (If I could raise my Int, I would, and then maybe I could think of something...) so its difficult to give examples of what the effects of doing that would "realistically" be. But Ive always operated from the assumption that a character's skill rolls represent what the character can -do- with the information and abilities that they have. Sometimes you can remember what the defenestration of Prague was all about, and sometimes it slips your mind. How many of us have seen a particular actor in a movie or on tv, and spent several minutes trying to remember their name? Yet on other days it comes easily to mind. That, to me, is the difference between a failed or successful KS: Celebrities roll. (Just the other day I completely blanked on the name of Sienna Miller, the cute blonde from "Keen Eddie". Yet today her name came right to mind. Have I bought up my skill? I dont think I have since yesterday...) So, yes, Id say that if a character's INT goes up past a break point for skill rolls, that all that character's skills increase by +1. Think of it as that level of Intelligence coming with its own +1 Skill Level Skills. Approaching the matter from the standpoint of the "base roll" -only- applying during initial character creation doesnt really fit with the rest of HERO, where the formulas apply consistently throughout the game. That would be like saying that, even if your DEX goes up by 3 points, if it happens after initial character generation, your OCV and DCV are unaffected. That just doesnt jibe. If you dont believe me, try raising your character's INT over a break point in Hero Designer, and then go look at the skills