bigdamnhero

Seems like you could also handle this as some sort of Susceptability: Powers Are Half Strength (or whatever) During The New Moon. Tho personally I feel this sort of thing - powers that fluctuate based on external factors that the player can't control, and that the GM can control completely arbitrarily - is one of those comic tropes that doesn't translate well to RPGs. I don't know about you, but we don't normally track dates all that closely. So do you just roll randomly at the start of each episode to determine where in the Phase we are? And I've known some players that would simply say "It's the new moon, so my character stays home" which gets problematic quick. It's just hard to GM fairly without being completely arbitrary. IMO, YMMV, etc.

Our last two Champions campaigns have both up having 1 speedster PC with Megascale Running, everyone else with either normal or maybe x4 NCM...and a Base-based teleport system. In both cases they started out mostly operating in one city, moving up to regional operations, and finally world-wide once the teleport system got up and running.

Are all these aliens still supposed to be Ft Roz escapees? All last season, they always made a point of calling them "Ft Roz Prisoner Number Such-And-Such" every time a new one was introduced. The fact that they didn't do that with any of the aliens in the bar, and didn't seem too fussed about recapturing them - or at least evaluating which ones are truly dangerous and which they can let slide - led me to assume these were not former prisoners. But I don't know that they ever said so either way...

My wife & I re-watched the first season of WKRP In Cincinnati. It holds up pretty well today, far better than most sitcoms from that era IMO. The only downside is they didn't retain licensing rights to most of the songs they used in the show, so they had to replace them with utterly generic studio music tracks. The music was such a big part of that show, and it's just not the same without it. According to Wikipedia, there's a later DVD release that managed to restore most of the original music, but that ain't the version I have - so if you're going to pick this up, make sure you get the right one. Speaking of music: fun fact! As a kid, I was always annoyed that we could never make out the lyrics of the closing theme because the station was always talking over it to plug the next show or whatever. Turns out, there aren't really any lyrics! Apparently the musician originally recorded a bunch of nonsensical mushmouth half-words as a placeholder, but the show runner thought it was funny and kept it as a bit of satire. Who knew?

And hey, if my parents named me "Snapper" I'd probably turn out to be a dick too.

That was my take on it as well. "Waking Up Violent" isn't an uncommon genre trope, and CW seems to really like it. Ah, true dat. I stand corrected. [shrug] If I stopped watching every TV show where law enforcement act like complete idiots, my TV would be cold and dusty.* Particularly in superhero shows, the whole premise of which often depends on the cops being incompetent. I don't like it (especially being ex-law enforcement myself), but as long as it's not the focus of the show I can usually ignore it. * Actually I watch most shows on my laptop, but you know what I mean. Yeah, no one would ever accuse the CW of being overly subtle, but that was more heavy-handed than usual. Well the Bearded Dude Alex beat up in the bar didn't seem to have much in the way of powers. But I admit I'm finding it weird that Earth (or at least National City) is suddenly crawling in aliens for no clear reason, most of whom have superpowers, and meanwhile there are zero human superheroes, and only a literal handful of human supervillains? That really changes the focus of the story to be less superheroes and more Men In Black. It makes sense that would be a focus of the show, given Kara's origin, but I do feel like they're overdoing it to the exclusion of all else.

Yeah, they're clearly setting them up as Future Bad Guys. The idea of her origin being a mystery to be investigated is exactly what I mean by "show us something new." It seem the Netflix shows get a bit more latitude to deviate from the formula.

Yeah, I own and enjoy guns, but the level of Gun Porn - there's really no other term for it, particularly in the first book - was honestly embarrassing.

That would be tricky, since MTM didn't premiere until 1970. I don't normally like those sorts of shout-outs, because they take me out of the story. But yeah, I smiled. And I guess Lynda's going to be a recurring character, so that's cool. (Tho did anyone think her line deliveries felt a little stilted?) Nice to introduce Maggie Sawyer too. Tho for about half the episode, my brain Maggie confused with Renee Montoya and I had... (wait for it...) Questions.

Agreed. Tho in that case, they were able to build on residual cultural awareness of the TV show and co-opt that backstory. Personally I loved Jessica & Luke trading origins. "Accident. You?" "Experiment." Later episodes went back and filled in the blanks, but that's enough to be getting on with. I think we're past the point where audiences need a detailed explanation for how they got their powers; superpowers are just something that people get. Similarly, part of making superhero movies "respectable" was highlighting the person underneath the mask and why they chose to put on a costume and fight crime. But by now we've seen that so many times, I think people are prepared to accept that with making an entire movie revolve around it. Again don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to seeing Strange's origin. But I think *after* that, they should try and mix it up a little. Nobody needs to see another Peter Parker get bit by another damn spider.

Yeah, the combination of Author Insertion, Mary Sue and LET ME BEAT YOU ABOUT THE HEAD WITH MY POLITICAL VIEWS! was too much for me.

Is the character limited in any way from not having eyes, ears, etc? If not, then don't worry about it. Might be worth a Distinctive Features Complication, but the fact that their sense of sight comes from something other than their eyeballs is more of a sfx than a Power/Complication in itself.

Yeah, it's not so much that we need to see how they got their powers, but we do need to see who they were before they got them and how that changed them. Iron Man & Batman Begins pretty much cemented this. Even Jessica Jones & Luke Cage, we got to see via flashbacks. I just think the filmmakers need to come up with some different ways to show it rather than following the same(ish) Origin Story Format.

It occurred to me that Supergirl is a perfect illustration of what they mean under the Striking Appearance rules in 6ed, when it says a character can define their character as looking however they want, but it doesn't have any in-game effect unless you put points into it. Supergirl/Kara is indisputably adorable, but it's hardly ever commented on, let alone a plot point. Basically "My character is pretty, but I don't care if it comes up in play or not." I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all, but it is fairly unusual for the genre.

I thought X-Men: Apocalypse was okay. Not great, not sorry I didn't see it in the theater, and certainly not as good as Days Of Future Passed. But okay. I finally finished Luke Cage. Enjoyed it, and it was certainly well done, but can't say it grabbed me quite as much as previous Netflix-Marvel shows. Definitely worth watching tho.

Yeah, would be trickier to work it into the low fantasy game we just started tho...

This looks brilliant!

OK, now I really want to run a Traveller game...

...am I the only one dying to know how this came up in a Star Hero game?

That's been a problem with our SW game - trying to agree on what constitutes canon and what doesn't, and the implications of that. We agreed early on to exclude most of the Extended Universe since most of the players aren't familiar with it. Me, I'm of the opinion the prequels are not canon and are in fact a story Theerpio told while drunk on android homebrew and bear about as much resemblance to actual history as your average "Based On True Events" movie today; but the GM disagrees. And all of the headscratchers in canon where if you think about it for a second you realize "If that were true, that kind makes the Jedi all look like morons/assholes/evil..." he has taken the approach "Well then the Jedi must have been evil moronic assholes." Add to that the fact that the GM has made his own changes to canon in order to fit the story he wants to tell, which is fine - I've done similar things myself when GMing - but those changes aren't always clear until we trip over them. For example, he decided that Leia calling Chewie a "walking carpet" is actually some horrible racial slur and therefore his version of Leia is a spoiled, self-absorbed bigot who treats everyone around her like shit, especially non-humans. Speaking as someone who's had a crush on Leia Organia since I was 11, I didn't actually enjoy that episode much.

Given that in the comics we didn't get Strange's origin story until after his 4th issue, it would've been funny if they'd saved his origin story for a sequel. Of course then people would complain we don't know where he comes from...

I totally get "origin fatigue" and think it's past time for Hollywood to move past that particular model. But not with Dr Strange, who has one of the best (and least-known) origin stories in comics.

FWIW, here are the guidelines I put together for my current campaign set in 11th Century Europe. I mostly went with Keep It Simple: Tldr - We're going to use “silver marks” as a generic/abstracted unit of currency. I don’t expect you to be hurting for money much, and this game isn’t really treasure-driven, so I don’t feel the need to count pennies unless you’re really into that. This is mostly to provide context/color. A lot of 11th Century Europe’s day-to-day economy is still barter driven. And even for nobility, most of their wealth is in land, not cash. But most countries do mint their own coins nowadays; in fact, minting coins is considered one of the signs of being taken seriously as a “legitimate” country. The names, sizes and value of coins vary widely from country to country. Their value typically exceeds their actual metal value, but this depends heavily on the perceived strength and legitimacy of the issuing government. As a result, the value of most coins drops the farther you get from that country. (“Meath? Never heard of it, this probably isn’t even real silver…”) So when you reached Constantinople, you probably traded most of your Roman coins in favor of either Byzantine coins or better yet coins from the region you’re headed towards – with of course some loss in actual value. It can get more complicated if say the country you just arrived in is mad at the country you came from, so the King has banned that country’s currency. We’ll mostly handwave this in actual game play, but it may show up as background color. Banking is just starting to be a thing, mostly for money changing. It is theoretically possible for you to get a loan from a bank in Constantinople based on the value of your lands in Wales, but in practice the communication time necessary to verify that value means it’s probably not going to be practical in game terms. Anyway, for simplicity I’m just going to abstract prices as being worth so many “silver marks.” The word mark at this time was used by many countries as more of accounting term than a coin per se, so I’m adopting it. 1 silver mark is roughly equal to the day’s wages of a yeoman or craftsman. Regional examples: English shilling, Cordovan dirham. For commoners, most daily transactions are conducted in pennies, which is a small silver piece roughly equal to the day’s wages of a peasant. (Not that peasants are paid in money, but you get the idea.) 12 pennies are worth 1 mark. For smaller transactions, pennies are frequently chopped up into halfpennies and farthings and so on. Regional examples: English pence, Byzantine bronze follies. Gold is rare but not unheard of. I picture trying to pay for your meal with gold coins being like handing over a $100 bill at the 7-11: it’s legal tender, it’s not like the clerk hasn’t seen one before, but he’s going to squint at it closely and may not have enough change to cover you. A gold crown might be worth 12-20 silver marks. Regional semi-equivalents: English crown, Byzantine solidus, Cordovan dinar.

Huh. I had forgotten that Sweep was originally a Weapon Skill, not a Maneuver. So +1 Trivia Point for you! But I don't think Reduced Pen was introduced until 4ed? Regardless, I think you're mixing apples & oranges. The purpose of Red Pen as I understand it has always been to reflect the fact that animal claws (and similar attacks) are not as good at penetrating armor as metal weapons; basically the opposite of Armor Piercing.* If the target is making more than 1 attack, then that's Combined Attack. (Which 6ed simply combined Sweep & Rapid Fire into a single Maneuver.) If you want a true claw-claw-bite, then what you want is a Combined Attack, the individual attacks of which may or may not have Red Pen. * In fact, we once played around with a House Rule where instead of splitting Red Pen into two 1/2 attacks, we just doubled the target's armor; I remember we hated it and wound up dropping it, but I can't quite remember why at the moment. Edit: Sorry, I just realized you're talking about Combined Attack, not Multiple Attack. Nevermind.

This old thread might have some helpful/relevant info.