novi

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! How about Costume Business?* They all cos-play characters from various shows, and have through various means gained powers related to those characters. At least part of it is that no one believes you when you tell them that you were robbed by Sailor Moon, and even if they do, they can't give a good description of what they really look like, because they confuse them with the character. They are pretty light-hearted for villains, mostly out for kicks, but robbery and property damage does add up. *from Venture Bros.. Upon the suggestion that he did cos-play, the villain retorted that this was not play, but Costume Business!

Re: Query's Art & Stuff Thread I'm with Log-man here. Seems like one more than I needed. I have no faith in my laptop's color fidelity, so no help there.

Re: Superhuman Ecology In terms of how power levels are distributed, it's hard to say. Perhaps it depends on what precisely the characters motivation is. One person might just be concerned with protecting the slums of Mumbai from drugs and general violence, and he doesn't need to be too powerful to accomplish his goal. A frustrated astronomer who wants to protect the earth from asteroids is going to end up with a lot of active points so he can fly into space and nudge asteroids into different orbits. And the supervillain who is convinced that only he is fit to rule mankind is going to need a lot of power to be a credible threat at taking over the world. How this translates to your game is currently beyond me. I just thought this might put it in perspective.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Not that I am aware of.

Re: Create a Villain Theme Team! Dismount was a talented and skilled gymnast, with a really strong competitive edge and a mean streak. And it was so totally unfair when she wasn't selected for the Olympic team. Just because she called the national coach a hack in that one interview didn't mean she had a right to deny her a place on the team. She would show them who was the best gymnast. So she crashed the Olympics, using her acrobatic skills to get past all the security. And evade capture after security mobbed the venue. Shortly after that, she was contacted by a man asking if she had ever considered a career in cat burglary. She doesn't like to get into fights, but woe be to someone who dismisses the five-foot-nothing girl as harmless. She is a master of the gymnastic fighting style, and she will stick her landing on your face.

Re: Superhuman Ecology First rule of gaming/storytelling - focusing on numbers gets in the way of the story. Trying to work from a nice mathematical model is not the best way to go. The big question is what kind of story do you want to tell? And what details are important to support it? Do you want a lot of heavy hitters around? Or would you rather a more level playing field? As to power level, should a guy with a bazooka be lethal or a joke? You should decide whether or not normals are be a threat to supers or not. I'm not sure I'd be too worried about everyone have similar point totals. I mean, part of the story is that superhumans have just appeared. I mean, Superman couldn't even fly at that point in his career. So it seems to me that people should be fairly similar in terms of active points. Most variation is going to be in what the person is like out of the suit, and how fast they are gaining xp in their own story. NPCs don't have to follow the same rules as PCs. So even though the PCs can only have X regular ID points, NPCs have as many as required for the character, even though they all get a suit with Y OIAID points. As to the occurrence of power types, various titles/companies do seem to favor certain powers, even as bricks and blasters are the most common overall. And since this is your universe, you get to decide what the rules are. Does the Tailor (aka you) have a preference? Is it based on what he thinks would help a person, or is it based on what the person thinks would be appropriate? Come to think of it, would players design the whole character, or do they just design the base person and you give them a suit?

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine That was just bad, Legatus. I refuse to quote that so as to disrupt the fabric of space-time as little as possible. Though, I am wondering - are they all just blasters, or is there some variety? And is it safe to have a photo-op with them?

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes

Re: Top 10 Insupportable Premises in Comic Book Universes

Re: Icons - The Costume and Superpowers Store Just to be pedantic, are you working off cities or metro areas? For instance, the population of the Twin Cities are is about 3 million, yet Minneapolis proper only has a population of 400,000. Would there be Icons there?

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine And I keep forgetting smileys.

Re: CHAMPIONS VILLAINS -- What Do *You* Want To See? I know it's more work for you, but I'll also toss my vote in for more than just doing a straight port from 5th edition on the characters. Not necessarily all of them, but it would be nice to see write-ups taking advantage of all the new options in 6th edition. I don't know about anyone else, but I always find it illustrative to have example characters to look at and see how its done when I'm trying to grok a game. And another vote for making Grond's write-up match his reputation better.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Re: A super school Just to make sure I read that correctly, you're planning on a large school with all the students having powers? Remember, you don't need to create all the students, and only some of them need personalities. How many people did you know in your high school? A more low tech solution is to make this a boarding school. A reason to have all the students take codenames is for privacy - all official school records use the codename so that it's that much harder to break secret identities. I've thought about a similar setting, and my solution was to have among the various wards, sensors, and other defenses around the school, to include a somebody-else's-problem field. That way, everybody knows there is a school there, but nobody without a good reason to be there or know about it really cares. A good way to explain why the tabloids and paparazzi don't trouble the school. And the reason why very few supervillain attacks occur is that it has been declared a safe zone by all the rational supervillains. Some of them are donors, some of them have kids that go there, and beyond that, it's a recruiting center training ground for potential future henchmen. As to the homeroom sized, I would suggest working out how many instructors and counselors there are on staff and giving them one homeroom each, roughly. You may also break it down further into training teams, aka party sized groups. Quozaxx, are you familiar with the Whateley Universe? It's a massive bunch of stories all taking place in a school much like the one you're thinking of. It may be worth a look, if you have a colossal amount of free time. Also, it might properly be termed fan-fiction about an original subject, and the writing quality various widely among the authors.

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen That is awesome! That is the coolest thing I've seen this week, and I watched Mayhem of the Music Meister again. Don't know them, but I must vote for Ianto from Torchwood. As much as I like Captain Jack, he'd steal the scene too much.

Re: Champions movie Bruce Campbell as Foxbat. I can't think of anyone else who possess the necessary aura of sheer awesomeness required for the character.

Re: A super school Well, there are three main criteria. And just to check, is this a super high school. or all grade levels (as necessary)? One, what is the setting, since that may influence who things get named after, and to a degree why the kids have powers. Another criteria to decide on is how many teen heroes there are, and if there all the students at the school. The main levels are less than a dozen, a few dozen, and hundreds. All can be done, and influence the type of story to be told. Lastly, location. Are you thinking urban, suburban, or rural? As to other things you need, how public is it, and what kind of relationship does it have with various authorities? Who funds it? What is it's stance on heroing and villainy? Let us know what else you need.

Re: How to model Jade (from Whately) And she's one of the more normal characters... Okay, normal as far as main characters go. Most students are said to be fairly normal and not insane. They're not the viewpoint characters. Except Aquerna, but that's sort of the point, in her case. Oh, and what they said for build advice.

Reading Champions 6th, I saw that Defender's origin has been left unchanged. Which is to say, his dad fought in WWII, and he's still in his late thirties. While that is just barely plausible, with multiple marriages on his dad's part, it just doesn't feel right to me. So is it time for a ret-con? Making him James Harmon V would make the math work out much nicer, these days. And as changes go, how big is it, really? The only question here is who would the new James Harmon IV be? Specifically, what impressive thing did he do? He might have been a hero in Vietnam, but that's almost too obvious. What else is there for him to be famous for, from the 60s, 70s, or 80s?

Re: League of Champions The first thing that strikes me is that you can run three different power levels and/or gaming styles. A team of heavy hitters for those who like combat and a political wing for people more interested in character interactions. It also makes it easier to have Batman, Green Arrow, and Black Canary on the same team as Superman, Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern; they are technically part of the same team, but they have different adventures. And it's easier to explain why they only fight supervillains of their power level. You might want to have everyone give you a concept before you tell them the power levels and see how things break down - it'll let you see who wants to play and how, and you can tailor each team based on that. It also might help you in choosing a mastermind if there's strong preference towards any of their shticks. The big question on the team structure is whether it's pre-existing or just happens during the first adventure, and whether it's the characters' idea, or some benefactor who convinces them all to join. Also, does everyone join the same team to start with, or are there three teams that gradually merge as the campaign goes on? It almost sounds like the best campaign might be world-domination chess between Dr. D and Menton. You know, each is conducting a intricate and massive plan to take over the world, and there is conflict between the two and the PCs. And the PCs shouldn't know that it's all because of those two until month 11 of the campaign. But that would also be hard to plot out. If you want aliens to attack, you might have it be retaliation for VIPER or ARGENT managing to get out there and really tweak them by stealing a bunch of their stuff. And then the PCs have to help track it all down, lest the villains figure it out and upgrade their stuff with advanced alien tech. And also figure out how they managed to steal from the aliens in the first place... On the other hand, depending on what you mean by modeling societies, another option might be to run a non-stupid version of Civil War. And figure out which villain is behind it all, and how this helps their master plan...

Re: Champions Universe--Megavillain teamup idea... Those are about the strongest choices you could find for a general team-up it looks like. Menton is the obvious choice for organizer/leader, but that seems almost too obvious and cliche. I tend to favor Molnya as the man behind the team. He's not quite the world-beater many of the others are, but he's no slouch, either. Since he likes to be the man behind the throne, it's quite natural for him to back-up Holocaust and Gravitar on some scheme to take over the world. Also, he's probably running a Xanatos Gambit on this, so that even if the heroes defeat the villains, he's still furthered his own objectives.

Re: First Known Binary Star Is Discovered to Be a Triplet, Quadruplet, Quintuplet, Se On the one hand, the current thinking is that for planets in binary star systems, the factor is actually three (i.e., 1/3 the separation, or 3 times the separation between the stars). So more room to work with. The system itself? To start with, all the stars are Type A, bigger and brighter than the sun, and a life span of under a billion years, so if they have planets, they've barely had time to settle down. Steve's guess in Star HERO is that the habital zone for such a system is about 3 AU to 9 AU. Mizar A has a period of 20.5 days, which doesn't rule out planets circling both stars. Mizar B does it in 6 months, which is probably about an AU seperation, so it might also have planets around both. The seperation between each pair is at least 500 AU, so there's plenty of room between them. But this is subject to the caveat that the eccentricity of the whole system is not known. The pairs may pass close enough to scatter their planets, And who knows what Alcor is up to in its million year orbit.

Re: Likelihood of a Country Producing Costumed Heroes My biggest problem with your question is that you haven't completely defined what it is you want. Specifically, what are your criteria for defining costumed heroes? What are the whole nine yards you speak of? My take on it is that you'll find costumed sorts everywhere except places with a strong, centralized authority with a policy of state service, with China and North Korea being the obvious ones. I'm not so certain about Russia. Do they still have a draft? All cultures are full of characters with supernatural abilities and distinctive modes of dress, so most people would be familiar with the concept. The context of why might be different, but anyone not hiding it will end up with a costume or uniform of some variety. Some will be for functionality, others for sheer flamboyance, and some for secret identity. Codenames will follow fast, largely just from cultural expectation. But another aspect of your question is in what countries are people less likely to hide their powers or just use them mundanely/for work. And that I can't help you with. At the rarity you've mentioned, and with a truly random distribution, it would really depend on who was selected and their personality.

Re: And 6e print books start to arrive Oh, the one that surprised me was the way that the packing peanuts had been completely flattened. Not just a little squished, but totally annihilated. Hadn't seen that one before.

Re: And 6e print books start to arrive Yay. Mine showed up yesterday. Also, I can't wait to see the results of the 6th ed ballistics test - these have to have more defenses than FRed.