BigJackBrass

Re: GMs: Funniest Character Sheet Mistakes You've Seen. Fits neatly with the intriguing ability Regenital Powers, which I eventually worked out should have been regenerative. Reading other people's character sheets is one of the secret joys of being a GM.

Spotted an interesting set of power effect markers released this month: http://www.gf9.com/store/index.php?cPath=57&osCsid=04c9002a24752f73d0ea3263fe1e4f62 Much nicer than a cardboard circle, I'd say, although they do seem awfully expensive.

Re: Best and Worst Costume/Appearance Changes It put me in mind of the episode of Project A-Ko where B-Ko's dad nicks her battlesuit and uses it himself. I feel I ought to mention the superb Edna Mode sequence from The Incredibles, which shows a different - and perhaps fuller - view of the whole costume change process. Sooner or later I think that Edna will be cropping up in one of my supers games.

Re: Best and Worst Costume/Appearance Changes I must admit that I preferred Beast when he was just a chunky Hank, rather than a furry animal. But let's be honest, it's been long enough now that I should just get over it... Captain Britain is one change I have never liked, moving from a very stylish and original red costume (with heels!) to Generic Super Costume #14. The latest version is an improvement, but still not a patch on the original from the weekly comic and the wonderful cross-overs with Spidey.

Re: Bizarre Spell Ideas Don't Worry, Be Harpy Transforms the target into an ugly bird-woman with a hankering to spoil food. However, they're no longer worried.

Re: Strontium Dog: Before I re-invent the wheel... Interesting approach, thanks. Luckily most of my group are good - and friendly - roleplayers who are more into enjoying the game than trying to 'win' at every turn, but that said I want to avoid inflicting the disadvantages and unhelpful mutations on them in what might seem an arbitrary manner, just in case someone feels that I have given them a bum deal. Your cut-up approach might well get round that particular hurdle without the inevitable problems of matching random results to player choices.

Strontium Dog, the long-running strip from Starlord and 2000AD about mutant bounty hunters in the future, has been mentioned a time or two on these boards, mostly in passing as far as I can tell from my searches. As it happens I've been considering running a game or two using this setting, largely thanks to the excellent audio plays published by Big Finish and starring Simon Pegg (of Spaced and Sean of the Dead fame) as Johnny Alpha, which I've been listening to at work. Well worth getting if you have any interest in the genre. Specific items such as SD Agent body armour, guns, Smokers and things like the Time Grenades aren't really a problem, since I can work them up or use something close from published Hero books, but I'm wondering how best to tackle the issue of mutations. Essentially, mutations in this setting are caused mainly by radiation and the like and - unlike your average Marvel mutation - they are not always useful. They're rarely pretty, either. I'm considering how best to give the players a degree of control over what they get without having them entirely design the mutation; after all, it's appropriate to the setting to be stuck with something you would rather not have and certainly would never choose for yourself. So far I've thought about letting the players design any power aspects of the mutation, then making them roll on a simple chart to indicate what sort of other manifestation the mutation might have. For example, Johnny Alpha can see through walls and has glowing eyes; Middenface McNulty, on the other hand, has a lumpy head. A player might choose to design a character with telekinetic powers, then make a couple of rolls resulting in something like "Minor physical deformity," "Powerful body odour" or whatever. Workable, but it seems clunky. Any suggestions for a better way of approaching this?

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero You might well find much of what you are looking for with Fudge and in particular a new RPG built on the FATE system, which is a variant of Fudge, called Spirit of the Century. The basic system is very, very simple, using descriptive attributes and skills rated on a "ladder," so if you roll well your result moves up the ladder and if you roll poorly it moves down. This means you have results such as a "Good" punch or "Suberb" bluff. That in itself doesn't make for an excellent pulp game, but the chaps at Evil Hat, who publish SotC, have included a very interesting system to encourage creative use of the environment and having players take actions that might have negative effects for them. In essence, it amounts to bribery from the GM, but they couch it in more sophisticated terms More than almost any game I have seen, this one captures the spirit and the feeling of pulp action. For anyone having trouble with Hero in this instance I think you'll get a lot out of reading Spirit of the Century, even if it's only to pinch the good ideas and adapt them.

Re: The Tech of Torchwood Never apologise for a pun! Good heavens, if you set a precedent like that I'll be spending half my days saying sorry.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? Tokyo Storm Warning, Elvis Costello. And bloody good it is too.

Re: The Tech of Torchwood Nah, just a front! Everyone loves Jack!

Re: The Tech of Torchwood The spray that makes one instantly sexually irresistible to a member of the opposite sex (or indeed to the same sex) is probably more useful. I imagine that Captain Jack fell into a cauldron of the stuff as a baby. The small scanning device is interesting too, since it can copy the text of a novel without opening the book... but what was it actually designed for? One thing I like about Torchwood is that most of the alien technology is only partially understood, so they're using items without having a clear idea of the limitations or potential problems. The series is looking good (sorry for those of you outside of BBC Three range, but hopefully you'll get it shortly), although anyone hoping to stat Captain Jack is going to have to keep watching. We learn a little bit more about him, but clearly the full story is intended to be an ongoing mystery.

Re: Stretching a point That definitely sounds worth a read (ahem... worth a Reed, geddit?) and I've been steadily picking up the Essentials books recently... but hadn't made it as far as FF 4. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Bizarre Spell Ideas Well, that's me: Master of the Blindingly Obvious. It's a gift And thanks for the rep

Re: Stretching a point Oh heavens. I remember that cartoon... Thanks so much for dredging that memory from the vault... Read the original comics, or even Kyle Baker's recent revival, which isn't bad. Avoid almost everything from the 1960s. It does seem a much underused power. Perhaps players feel that there is nothing they can do to personalise a stretchy character - they'll always be thought of as Reed Richards or Plas clones. Even The Incredibles doesn't seem to have created a boom in stretchy characters, at least in the games I'm seeing.

Re: Stretching a point Oh you big spoilsport It's probably true, sad to say. That Richards guy is just so damned serious all the time, though. Maybe if he dressed like Plas it would improve his attitude... The difference, as I see it, between a couple of bricks slugging it out or two martial artists blocking every attack and a couple of stretchers practically tied up in knots is pretty much down to the entertainment value. I'm pondering a few ideas to encourage players to respond with more than just strangleholds, basically creating a villain who fights more like Plas does.

Re: Stretching a point The potential for a stalemate is definitely a problem. On the one hand I could see our rubbery combatants jumping from one innovative attack and defence to the next... or they could simply end up entwined in a fairly static wrestling contest.

Re: Bizarre Spell Ideas Detect Magic When cast this spell instantly reveals to the caster that a magic spell has just been cast...

Reading the "Worst Superfight" thread I started thinking about fights I'd like to see. Wolverine vs Sabretooth in, um, Uncanny X-Men 213 I think it was counts as one of the best running fight scenes, but has anyone ever pitched Mr Fantastic against Plastic Man? My money would be on Plas, because he's something of a favourite of mine and his Warner Bros version of physics ought to be able to out-gonzo Reed at every turn. Then it struck me that in all of the supers games I've run not one single, solitary player has ever created a stretchy hero, which means that I've never had to tackle multiple elastic characters in combat. Does anyone have experience of stretchy supers fighting each other? I'm of a mind to contrive such a scene and I'm wondering if my fellow Heroes have any particular tips, suggestions or pitfalls to watch for.

Re: Question: What different Game Systems for Superheroes?

Re: Question: What different Game Systems for Superheroes? Dream Park, based on the novels by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes, is set in a futuristic amusement park, basically an incredibly high-tech LARP. Superhero is one of the possible character types and there are enough rules included to run supers-only games, but the main gimmick with Dream Park was mixing all sorts of characters and genres together. There was one supplemental adventure dealing with supers, The Fiendish Agents of Falkenburg, which is essentially superheroes and Nazis. It's a bit like Chaosium's Worlds of Wonder in some respects: there is information enough to use it as a fairly decent supers game but it is not solely devoted to superheroes and is much more limited than something like Champions. The presentation of the supers rules in the current version of Fuzion, incidentally, owes a great deal to Dream Park.

Re: Question: What different Game Systems for Superheroes? There's also Superdudes, the superhero sourcebook for TWERPS. Ken St. Andre produced a set of supers rules based on Tunnels & Trolls called The Power Trip, but to the best of my knowledge it was only published in his TnT magazine, so probably not eligible for the list. Necessary Evil, on the other hand, is a complete superhero supplement and adventure set for Savage Worlds so probably deserves inclusion. There are also a few RPGS which allowed supers but did not focus specifically on them, such as Dream Park. Not sure where they stand.

Re: Comicbook gaming: something's missing...

The store shelves are once more groaning 'neath the weight of superhero RPGs, after a few years of drought. Each game claims to offer the best way of playing action-packed comicbook-style adventures, but something has been nagging at my mind... Not the fact that Champions already does it (always room for an alternative, I say). No, it comes down to how well these games really simulate the complete four-colour experience. An important element seems to have been overlooked: What was the best part of a comic? The art? The story? The anticipation of next month's issue? Nah, be honest, it was that full-page ad for undreamed of wonders like X-Ray Specs, Radio-controlled Hovercraft, Spy Radios, a Footlocker full of Soldiers... Sea Monkeys, by the gods! Can we really enjoy the full comicbook superhero experience without these miracles of the age? So I think we should address this vital deficiency and stat these items in Hero terms. Any takers? (And the first person to create Mutant Sea Monkeys with Frickin' Laser-Beams on their Heads will be subject to a stern and disapproving look)

Re: World encyclopedia