Bloodshot

Re: Need Stats For A Llama Hey, I wish this was really a joke, but it ain't

The GM of a "Mystery Men" (the movie, not the genre) has asked me to modify my character, and one of the things he asked me to do is add a slot to a multipower where I transform into a llama. Yes, that's right, a llama. So, can anyone point me to a write-up for a llama? I don't own the Bestiary or anything like that.

Re: House Rules I had no coherant thoughts after seeing that picture of two chicks kissing each other...sorry

Re: That's An Odd-Looking Eye You Have... Thanks for all the great ideas...I totally forgot about making the recoverable charge continuous.

Re: That's An Odd-Looking Eye You Have... It's one recoverable charge, so I actually have to go and get it. So I think I will add an activation roll to it.

I'm building a character for a low-powered, Mystery Men (the movie) type game. My character, a sort of Doctor Strange ripoff called Doctor Odd, has a glass eye that he can throw somewhere and then see out of it. How do you build that? Here are my thoughts so far: Clairesentiance, sight group Focus (OIF) 1 Recoverable charge What I am unclear on is how to do the "chuck the eye somewhere and then you can see things from it's current location". Thoughts?

Re: Initiative... Perhaps I should clarify. I do the SPD+6 roll to determine how many actions they get, then I let the players act in order of their DEX.

Re: Initiative... I've been using RDU Neil's method for the last few games, and I have found that it has definitely sped things up. Some grumbling from characters about how all the points they spent on SPD are going to waste, and that high SPD characters are getting hosed. As the GM I simply said "I'm sorry you feel that way, but that's the way I wish to run my combats as my brain can handle this system better." The only difference I've been trying out is having people go in order of their DEX instead of their SPD+d6 roll. Still makes DEX worth someting in determining the order of who goes when. Since our group is a mix of hardcore gamers and those more interested in role-playing, the role-players are staying involved more. Which is a good thing in my mind.

Re: What Do You Consider An "Animated" Style Campaign Thanks for all the great tips! I'll be sure to incorporate as many of them as I can in our session on Saturday!

Our group of irregular gamers (for which I GM) have just started a Pointless Champions game (meaning we don't worry about building characters to pre-defined point limits, just build what you want and don't worry about disads, with me okaying concepts and power levels as required), and I was trying to figure out how to define an "animated" feel to things. What do you consider to be the hallmarks of an "animated" campaign? Keep in mind I'm thinking of western animation, not the tricked out anime stuff since the group hasn't watched much anime at all. I'm looking for things like genre bits, character construction ideas. Generally, what can I do as a GM to impart an animated series feel to my players , who are more the role-playing than combat monster types?

Our campaign group is gearing up to switch to a different genre, which is 4-colour Champions BUT at a high point level, almost looking at not setting a limit. What tools are out there for both running and creating characters for really high-level campaigns. Is Galactic Champions of any help?

Re: Doom Patrol Champions I'm trying to go with the Weird Champions feel on my current game, the Misfits, as I'm a big fan of the Doom Patrol (but sadly misplaced a ton of my Doom Patrol comics from the Grant Morrison run).

Re: Anime based games, have you done one? Although I haven't watched a ton of anime (my favourite is Cowboy Bebop), I'm trying to run my current campaign with an anime feel to it, mostly focussing on big action and character interaction (which I feel is the big thing that anime does really well compared to western animated stuff). I like the anime pacing of the action, with an emphasis on "big actions lead to big explosions" and cool-looking NPC's occupying the universe. For example, in our most recent episode the Misfits (the name of the group) did a prisoner transfer to a paranormal detention centre and then had to face a horde of clockwork crabs. Great visuals!

Re: Fighting In A Subway Train Too bad I can't get my hands on a copy of that book before my next game. It would've been perfect! All your suggestions are great, and I can't wait to put this thing together for our next game. I'll be sure to let you guys know how it went.

I'm getting my stuff together for the my next face-to-face game and I have thought about running part of the combat on a subway train (meaning a few cars chained together). First off, are there any hex-based mapps out there that could help me and secondly has anyone had any experience with that sort of scenrario. I need some info on stuff like: ** DEF of subway cars ** penalties for trying to run through a subway car full of passengers Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Strike Force

Re: Strike Force To me, that's the reason why it's a good resource to have. I'm a computer programmer by trade, one who tries to do as good a job as he can. Sometimes, I get burnt-out and/or frustrated at what's happening. When that happens, I break out my copy of "The Pragmatic Programmer" and read through it again. It (a) helps me relax and focus on something different for a minute and ( reminds me of good programming practices that sometimes escape you in the heat of the coding battle. Strike Force is "The Pragmatic Programmer" for me. It reminds me of the stuff that goes into a succesfull campaign since I don't always remember this stuff. Blue booking will be a great tool for my existing group because a lot of them are frustrated writers, and they are plumbers extrodinaire.

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? Extreme reactions are the ONLY ones you could expect from the general population towards those with super powers. They will either be worshipped as gods or despised as abominations. If you think otherwise, I think you are fooling yourself. I would suggest digging around and grabbing some copies of the "Wild Card" books. I own about 8 of them and I think they do a great job of showing how the real world might react to those with abilities way beyond the human norm.

Re: Strike Force I can't even remember where I got my copy of Strike Force from. I think someone loaned it to me ages ago, and I have no idea how to get it back to him. Oh well... I'm like a previous poster in that whenever I start to feel burnt-out, I break out Strike Force and read it from cover-to-cover. I would've LOVED to have a gaming group like that. My current group is old enough that their lives are pretty established, so I just might have a shot at a long-running campaign like the one described in Strike Force..

Re: Ant-Man's shrinking field Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but couldn't you use Change Environment to do this? I don't have my books with me at work (the boss would notice I think ), but I can see putting together the right combination of modifiers to make it happen.

Re: speeding up combat We ran a fairly large combat with this on Saturday night (17 combatants) and it was pretty fast and furious! But one big question came up, and it was raised by Rebar. The character he was playing has a 6 SPD and said the following to me in an e-mail: ***** For example, I've spent 75 points to have a 26 Dex and a 6 SPD. The 6 SPD gives me only a 1-in-3 chance of having a second action, and zero chance of having a third action. So, 2/3rds of the time I will be able to act only as many times as a normal. That contrasts with the traditional rules, where a 6 SPD normally goes 3x faster than a normal all the time. Also, DEX is less important, as it is now your SPD that determines your initiative. ***** He does have a pretty valid point. Thoughts?

This may actually work pretty good for what I am looking for. How did you handle aborts and game effects that lasted X number of phases or Y number of segments?

Hey...I *really* like the ideas here. Rebar can back me up when I say the players are definitely role-players, not roll-players. Making them expend actions to see what's going on is not only fair but will probably make them focus. Again, a lot of the work is up to ME to make sure the players stay interested in what's going on...

You make some good points, but I guess I should've qualified my statement as follows: I believe END *matters* in *superhero* games. You're absolutely correct when you state that END wouldn't matter in an X-Files game, a Stargate game and that it might only matter for the Bubblegum Crisis game with respect to the power suits. I'm not afraid of breaking Hero. I'm a recovering powergamer, so I'm used to breaking Hero. I think saying not using END was going to "break the system" was not what I intended. I intended to point out that keeping track of END *when the GM decides it's important* shouldn't be cause for complaining by the players. There's enough time between players' action phases to do a little bit of bookkeeping of their END usage. Hero can work just fine if you choose to ignore END. I just think you're missing out on stuff if you toss it out in a situation where it is appropriate, which I think is the superhero genre.

I feel END use matters because Hero decided that it matters. Seriously, if you ignore the role of END in the game, then you are altering the way the system as a whole works. The Law Of Unintended Consequences also will work against you when you do stuff like ignore SPD, or change how you calculate OCV, as the Hero System is a very tightly integrated system and one little change can act like the butterfly's wings in chaos theory. Then again, I've never been the type to suggest drastic house rules. If you want to ignore parts of Hero that the designers felt were important, I feel you are doing so at your own peril. It's nice the DOJ gang tells you to throw out the rules you don't like, but I figure that if it made it into the system there has still got to be a reason.