BigJackBrass

This is not just a delightful option that allows some barriers to be more or ess effective that other barriers, you can also find this "alternate" version of Desolidification in any of the first 3 editions of Champions, if you happen to have access to one of those, as this is the "alternate Desolid" presented,in APG 1.  Desolid was originally a movement power with interesting side-benefits.  APG 1's alternate option simply returns it to being a movement power.

I always check this a few times a week, but the problem for me is there is less game discussion, and more RL Sports and Politics discussion. So there isn't a lot of new genre subjects being discussed, and since I don't use 6th edition, not a lot to discuss about rules mechanics.

Hey Herophiles! On the evening of September 27 I'm appearing on Marc Tassin's awesome Out Of Character podcast! Please come give us a listen to hear us talk about fiction, gaming, and all sorts of related topics!
 

Every forum I use has seen a drop in activity (hopefully not because I’m a member…), there are simply too many alternatives. Despite Discord’s chatroom style steam being singularly unsuitable as a forum substitute it does appear to suit what a lot of people like, so it draws folks away. Same with Reddit and the rest.

Handy blog post if you need to dispose of those pesky pulp heroes:
 
Villain’s Toolbox – a list of deadly methods for murder

Was going through some old stuff I had boxed up for a move a long time ago and came across this treasure.
 
I'm not sure why it looks black (lousy camera) but it is actually navy blue.  I wore this so much back in the day!  So proud to own it!
 
Happy gaming!
 
Laser
 

So...my "other COVID project" has been restoring an old truck that my dad purchased back in 1984.  A 1925 International Harvester Model S Speed Truck, to be precise.  All original, but in need of a LOT of love and attention.

Replaced the carburetor with a non-original but same era Stromberg SF-1 -- vastly more reliable than the original, which was renowned for cracking and leaking (which it had on multiple occasions).

Relined and restored the brakes, retuning all of the mechanical linkages.  This was easily the biggest of the jobs we had to perform -- a crazy amount involved there.

Re-wired the entirety of the electric system, including the mains (with era-appropriate wiring)

Fixed and remounted the lights and connection assemblies.
 
Replaced the generator cut-out (and was thrilled to find that the original generator was still perfectly functional)
 
Replaced all oil and lubricant with era-appropriate formulae.
 
Degreased (or at least began the long process of degreasing) the undercarriage.

Restored the dials and gauges in the cabin (in the process of re-wiring)...and found the original ignition key.

And got plates put onto it for the first time today, so it's officially road-legal.  Not an easy process in that I had to apply for a title in order to get the plates....the title my dad had gotten back in the 80's had completely incorrect information (1918 model year rather than 1925...wrong serial number/VIN - they had for some reason used the model number from the engine...etc).  Took it out for a 10 mile drive with multiple hills -- handled it like a champ.
 
IMG_2238.mov  
 
So that's one project done....except for the cosmetics.  It's supposed to be a Red Baby -- found ample proof to support that as we worked through the restoration.  The re-paint to original will come in the next year or so...apart from the lettering (which I have the original schematics for), it'll be more or less like this:
 

So...that's been my past year of side project.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled gaming forum  

Presumably the print on demand version. It's frequently—and confusingly—shown as in stock on Amazon etc without mention that it's PoD or even paperback.

Golden Heroes for me. As a matter of fact we still play it now and again. It’s the only supers game I’ve found where the random character generation is interesting enough to be a point in the game’s favour.
 
Very different to Champions and certainly more restrictive, but we’ve had some marvellous adventures with it.

Touchdown in the UK! That’s pretty quick shipping and the books look wonderful.
 

Touchdown in the UK! That’s pretty quick shipping and the books look wonderful.
 

Touchdown in the UK! That’s pretty quick shipping and the books look wonderful.
 

Touchdown in the UK! That’s pretty quick shipping and the books look wonderful.
 

I received my Traveller HERO books yesterday and I'm over the moon! 😁

having the compilation CD havaiable has been a really good thing, but not everybody likes PDF, thankfully it didnt take much convincing to get Marc to put the PDF collection on CD
 

I do think Ghostbusters is a comedy. Sure there are moments of drama and horror, and the consequences are serious; but almost everything is pushed that extra bit bigger, louder, more incongruous, until it verges on the absurd. And all the Ghostbusters say funny things, although Peter is the only character who's aware he's saying funny things. We laugh at the other characters because they're oblivious to the jokes, but we laugh with Peter because he lets us in on the joke.

I'm trying to figure out how to do this effect in HERO, and would appreciate the help of the Assembly. This is specifically for Illusion spells, but any thoughts about doing it for other types of spells are appreciated.
 
When you have enough experience (high enough skill level) and power (big enough Multipower pool), you can try to "take control of another illusionist's spell", letting you make it do what you want. I've seen writeups in Champions Powers for using Mind Control to simulate "controlling" simple devices (effective INT is Active Points/5; this is covered in more depth in APG 72-73), and I could go that route. But I wondered if there was already something done that was a bit more elegant?
 
Anyone? TIA

My order's in, too, and I'm so happy -- I never thought I'd be able to own this melding of my two favorite RPGs, since the Traveller HERO books go for so much on the secondary market!

I used to play a lot of Traveller.  I think I played D&D for about a year, before the first Traveller books came out. We didn’t quite understand the rules, but had a lot of fun with it, and eventually worked out the kinks. Also, we tried a number of systems as well, until champions was released in the summer of 1981. We still occasionally play Traveller concurrently. I played in Matheson’s fairly vanilla campaign in the Spinward Marches, where we used High Guard to build ships. I also played briefly in Paul Gazis’ Eight Worlds campaign, which was ner total home brew (as he was a NASA engineer at NASA Ames), and had a very 16th Century feel, socially, after a collapse of the Star Empire. In College, even after abandoning most other game systems for Hero, I got an invite into L. Douglas Garrett’s Traveller campaign, which invoked a fair amount of an intrigue of noble house, and Small Unit, Special Operations. Even recently, in Roll20, our D&D group gave Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller a year of play, before returning to D&D 5e. So I have experienced a lot of different flavors of Traveller in my 45 years of gaming experience. 
 
In the early days, the exploratory nature might have been overstated, depending on the group.  Sure, there was a good set of rules for generating sub sectors, and then the planetary ecology, but the enthusiasm for “frontier” style gaming was inversely proportional to the number of women in the group, and we had a few. The women would steer the play more towards social roleplay and interacting with the noble houses in the Spinward Marches, and would shy away from open conflicts and kinetic operations.  Heists and abductions became common as well.  On the other side of things, we also tried out the ship combat rules as a pure wargame for an afternoon, involving a few of us.  Back then we had an embarrassment of riches of gaming groups, and people would swap in and out. 

One of the things I learned was tha different groups has very different play styles. The rules then, and now supported all of them ( even my short lived, all Vargr ship and mercenary unit, that was probably proto-furry, even if there was a moderate body count.) Not everyone was enamored of frontier exploration, the recent campaign was pure trade and profit, with us taking minimal risk if we could help it.  Some campaigns were intricate ASOIAF political maneuvering. It all depended on the desires of the group, and those desires became clear usually by the second r third contract that the ship accepted.  It also generally helped when the players, and the GM, kind of discussed the campaign over the meal breaks, during other campaigns, so when the current champions campaign or D&D ended, there was some idea and agreement on what the Traveller campaign would look like. 
 
My tastes ran towards being a tourist rather than an explorer, enjoying the scenery of other civilizations, and settled planets, going to TL5 planets to buy hand made bespoke suits and shirts for bargain prices, watching the local air races, buying something for my lapel from the little Vargr flower seller, talking to the locals about the news,  and partaking of the local food. Either being a merchant or mercenary suited me just fine.  As such I like the published material. 
 
for those that want to explore uncharted space, there is plenty of blank map out there. Travellermap.com illustrates what has been documented, but also where the edges of the map are. Just use the various generation rules and such to fill in the sub sectors as you go along. It does take time to do it though.  
 
Running Traveller on a Hero I haven’t tried yet, myself, but Duke seems to have had a fair amount of success with it. I would definitely want to give it a try, but then how much of the regular system do you replace with Hero? I would probably not use Hero for ship combat. 

The idea of dropping the tech due to jump energies I thought was preposterous, until I remembered the modular electronic systems I had invented for a Hero based SolarSystem campaign. No WiFi and all programs hard wired in to the modules that would snap together like Legos or Technics, to prevent outside hacking, or failure due to cosmic Ray damage. So you would put the plastic nodes together to make the computer do the thing you wanted to do.  The more nodes, the higher the power consumption, and the more heat it put out, but the system was far more robust and easily repaired than Microchip based tech, that could be fried by a solar flare, or be hacked by malicious code from outside. Little nodes would then themselves become a commodity based on what function they could do and how rare or common they were. The computer room would then be these semi-random looking collections of Lego looking bricks, with fat cables coming out. However, with this system, functions could be distributed all over the ship, so that hits don’t disable all computer functions, and having spare bins of modules would allow for easy repair, or after hours tinkering to improve, or invent new programs.  The other idea was reverting to electromechanical fire control, but that didn’t go too far. I know how Battleships and Submarines did it, but not with too much detail, other than that they were analogue and relied on skilled machining to make the forms within the device, necessary for the ballistic calculations. 
 
I rambled, but then Traveller causes me to, due to my history with it. But part of my twitch about the change in the tech, was it felt like it pushed Traveller into a pulp paradigm. Traveller, to me now has become its own genre. Sure, in the beginning it was a first generation “universal system”, but due to publications, and a lot of cooperation between groups, it has become its own thing. Sure, enough of the universal mechanics are still there that you can homebrew one’s own background. But why pulp, or worse Sword & Planet? 😁 I’d much prefer seeing something more like The Expanse. But that’s just me.  Anyway, these are my thoughts on Traveller, and I kinda want to run a campaign of it sometime.  
 
No. Starships run on water or collected gaseous Hydrogen and Oxygen in RAW. I suppose you could invent your own system, though.  

Waiting on getting paid for an art commission, but yes still interested.  

I haven't heard anything new about this in a month or so. Did I miss out?

there was a goof... I had the wrong e-mail address for people to order the books, this was entirely my fault... DO NOT Blame Polaris for this
e-mail him at uspolaris@gmail.com
I had give his old comcast e-mail instead
 

Golden Heroes for me. As a matter of fact we still play it now and again. It’s the only supers game I’ve found where the random character generation is interesting enough to be a point in the game’s favour.
 
Very different to Champions and certainly more restrictive, but we’ve had some marvellous adventures with it.

Guys:
 
Spence sent me,a debound 4e,for making high-res scans akin to what I did for 4e Western HERO.  I had intended,to get them scanned over the Christmas break and soend the next couple,of monrhs cleaning then up.
 
Unfortunately, I am married, meaning I havent had a day off in twenty-odd years.  Off from work?  Yes.  A day of my,very own?  No; not really.    western HERO got done when she was working nights.  She dowsnt work nighta anymore. 
 
still, it will get done; just bear with me.
 
 

Wonderful!! Well worth the risk of revealing my secret identity.