Flames

Re: Designing a show stopping villain Kill Ratio has a power called "Death Punch." That should have been his name!

Re: Designing a show stopping villain Wikihow has an article on creating credible villains. It's good to give a villain a quirk or two, some sort of mundane obsession. Gonna beat the Buffy horse a bit more and mention Major Wilkins from Season Three. He was an immortal sorcerer, one who was going to let nothing get in the way of his ascension to powerful demonhood, but he also discouraged his minions from using profanity, and had an odd phobia of germs. He was like a wacky sitcom dad, even when ordering his lackeys to murder those who oppose him.

Re: "Your girlfriend works for VIPER!" Huh? Sounds like something Joss Whedon would do. Buffy & Riley, for instance, in Season Four.

Re: Master Lists in Danger I think we can count on ghost-angel to take care of it. He's a take-carey kind of guy. Don't forget that we still have the HD3 prefabs.

Re: No way to win...? I think a mature group of players shouldn't be flipping tables over a plot like that. That's just the kind of thing that would happen on a TV show or in a comic book, and as long as they eventually have the chance to set things right in some way, they should be happy.

Re: Wizard of Oz: perhaps a one shot or short campaign. Because it's all in the public domain, no-one has to worry about copyright, and at least the first two of the books in the Oz series are available to read online for free.

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations There sure are a lot of recommendations in this lengthy thread. If I were to put up a simple database for Steve's benefit (and ultimately our own benefit), would any of you be willing to stop by and populate it with your recommendations? If so, Steve could just print out the list or even just add each book to his Amazon "Wish List."

Re: Macbeth -- in Tuala Morn I'm trying very hard to resist the urge to jump into this discussion... I'm a big fan of Hamlet, and I could carry on about it ad nauseum.

Re: Halloween Themed Session...ideas? I'd say go for the classic, the Halloween Party Episode. The PCs attend a costume party in their secret identities, a party being thrown by Brendan Zingapan, a successful corporate CEO one them knows, and wackiness ensues. The setup is that the Zingapan tells his PC friend (in his secret identity) to dress up as him for the party, since that would be a great gag. By a funny coincidence, Zingapan comes dressed as that PC's costumed hero identity. While the PCs are standing around trying to guess whether or not Zingapan knows any of their secret identities, a group of VIPER agents crashes the party hoping to take Zingapan hostage and gain access to a secret military defense system being developed at Zing Labs. The agents are convinced by the PC's "Zingapan" costume, and attempt to herd him into a waiting armored vehicle. Will the PCs ditch their pirate and ninja costumes and fight the agents in the street, or will they let their teammate be taken away to the agents' nest and bring the fight to them there?

Re: Macbeth -- in Tuala Morn Akira Kurosawa had the story play out the same in feudal Japan, so I bet the story could play out just about anywhere. I remember watching it as a teenager for the first time, not knowing anything about what it was about, and exclaiming over and over, to the increasing annoyance of my friends, "Hey, this is MacBeth!"

Re: Jumper Looks like he's got a lot of points in Teleport... I mean, look at the mass multiple he's got, teleporting semis around. I'm almost always up for a superhero movie, although more than half of them suck.

Re: Character idea I love the part where the player uses the portal to have a heavy box fall on top of a menacing gun emplacement.

Re: Coming To A Western Front Near You DULCE ET DECORUM EST Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. -- Wilfred Owen, 1918

Re: cost of membership Some folks and I discussed a while back that a nice idea for a supplement would be one that details how various organizations are structured, such as armies and militias, non-profit and government agencies, churches and cults, colleges and universities, partnerships and corporations, criminal enterprises and gangs, and so on. There could be exact Rank Perk charts for various positions within those types of organizations, and tips for GMs on how to use such hierarchies to add flavor to a campaign. How 'bout it, Steve?

Re: Help get the heroes to the kidnapped The PCs find out from a street contact that an unusual amount of a material and equipment of the kind used in the the PC's father's research was stolen from a corporate storage facility by a group of local thugs (VIPER, maybe?) under the command of some creepy guys at a waterfront warehouse. The government people might not get their hands on this lead, but the PCs do. They get to the warehouse, start poking around, and BAM, there are heavily-armed agents everywhere, and even a couple of villains-for-hire!

Re: Why would I put Fast Draw on a superheroic character? Perhaps for a weapon with the "Real Weapon" Limitation, Fast Draw would be appropriate in a Superheroic-level campaign.

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations On the subject of urban fantasy, I was going to link to this YouTube video but I'm afraid of getting in trouble for making a reference to this late-60s British sketch comedy series that I'm sure no-one here has ever heard of. okay, here it is

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations Is there going to be a thread going on this supplement in regards to suggestions for sections or topics? I have some ideas about it that have been rattling around in my head as I try to come up with a homebrew urban fantasy campaign setting of my own. Whether I ever get to run it, well, that's another matter. I can tell you one thing, though, it won't have friggin' Jedi in it.

Re: [Campaign Design] Starting Small... I think the mistake was letting players in on the fact that they were going to develop powers at all. It might have been a pleasant surprise.

Re: Help with Character Acroynym Battle- Ready Unified (damn, Rubric got to it first) Tactical Equalizer (or Engine)

Re: Vikings? Yeah, and let me get back to my table before my gazpacho soup gets cold.

Re: Vikings? You actually used the forum's infraction system against me for that? Why don't you just delete my post? I could see using the infraction system in the case of something truly offensive, like posting another user's full name and cell phone number, or making a racist or otherwise inflammatory remark, but for posting a tiny screencap from a Python movie? I feel like I walked into a restaurant unwittingly wearing the wrong color of tie and promptly got tossed out into the back alley.

Re: Vikings?

Re: Negative STUN and Body HERO System was originally conceived to simulate 4-color comics, and often in comics, especially older ones, heroes and villains would be pummeled into complete obliviousness but would otherwise be intact and unharmed, getting up after being unconscious and complaining of a slight headache and not much more. And on TV shows, characters are beaten senseless without breakage of bones or shedding of blood all the time. A house rule to bloody things up a bit would be fine with me as long as it were being applied fairly.

Re: Healing from a major transform I don't think I've ever seen a cure for lycanthropy that wasn't death.