massey

Our office reopened today. Fortunately we've got plenty of room, we can maintain a 6 foot distance really easily. Downtown here is dead, and the phones aren't ringing, but I guess the boss didn't want to pay us to sit at home anymore. It's a huge stress reliever to be able to get back to some semblance of normalcy. I've been worried that our office just wouldn't reopen, so sitting here at my desk (even with nothing to do) makes me feel better. Although I do have to say, I did sort of get to have my ideal vacation. My wife has been pushing me to take some time off for like the last six months. And while she wanted to go somewhere, I would have preferred to just stay at home, watch TV, and relax. Well I got my wish. I know some people are going stir crazy, but introvert that I am, if it wasn't for the money issue I'd have been perfectly happy to stay home for another month or two. I really am one of those people who could stay in the cabin for a year for five million dollars.

The real problem is that people are assigning special effects to a power and absolutely refusing to let people change it. There is no game mechanic for an attack passing through a target and hitting someone behind them. That doesn't exist. So why are people trying to assign that penalty to a desolid character?

Putting a limitation on Speed brings up a lot of arguments about exactly how it works, so I figured this way was easier to handle.

It normally wouldn't. That's why he's got a higher Speed. The intent is for him to abort to whatever the best defense is, so that he doesn't have to face that issue. If it were drawn on a comic book page, he wouldn't be doing anything other than standing still, shrugging off the attack. Now obviously, he's not always gonna know what the best defense is. That's life though. Here Superman uses his held phase to go desolid. Story-wise, he's not using an action (even though in game rules, that's exactly what is happening). Story-wise, it's just the other guy's turn to go, and the attack harmlessly bounces off of Captain Invulnerable. Now when he gets attacked by the ghost blaster power, the player may choose to switch away from Desolidification to some other power, but the character is just standing there. Occasionally you'll get a situation where he guesses wrong, and an attack that doesn't seem that it should be particularly damaging will do a significant chunk of Stun to him. That happens in comics too. Sometimes you just get a weird interaction of powers. And you can either come up with some BS explantion ("the ghost blaster is interacting with the strange energies I encountered earlier! It's harming me even through my invulnerability!"), or you can have him pretend it doesn't hurt. Instead of saying "yeeaargghh!" when he takes 25 Stun, he just laughs it off. He's got 60 Stun, after all.

Captain Invulnerable Str 60 Dex 20 Con 30 Body 15 Int 13 Ego 14 Pre 20 Com 12 PD 20 ED 20 Spd 7 Rec 18 End 60 Stun 60 15" Flight x4 noncombat 1" Flight Megascale (1" = 1 km) 15/15 Damage Resistance 40 point Multipower "Invulnerability" --Desolidification, cannot pass through solid objects --20/20 Force Field --Missile Deflection (all), and +4 DCV +2 OCV w/ punch, grab, and missile deflect Breakfall 13- Deduction 12- Electronics 12- Mechanics 12- Paramedics 12- Persuasion 13- Teamwork 13- Scientist Biology 11- Chemistry 11- Physics 11- Physical Limitation: In combat, 2 points of Speed per turn must be used for holding action/aborting to defensive actions (max Spd 5 for attacks) 350 points total ----- There you go. That's a quick and dirty, 5 minute character. He's super strong, he's got an array of what I consider to be classic competent superhero skills, and as long as you aren't stupid with him he'll be really hard to hurt. His multipower lets him shrug off all kinds of stuff. He just looks tougher when he's using it. He practically... umm... glows with toughness, or something. He gets actions on 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 12. To prevent him from being lazy and just leaving his multipower in Force Field, he's got a physical limitation where he's supposed to use 2 actions per turn defensively. Most phases he should probably hold until after everyone else has acted, but use it before he would lose his action. So we'll say he starts the turn with his force field active. Then on segment 2, he holds until towards the end of segment 3. Nobody shoots at him with anything major (no Giga-Buster attacks, nobody throws a fuel truck at him), so as you get down to about Dex 10 on segment 3 he decides to fly over and punch somebody. On segment 4 he holds again, knowing that the bulk of the opponents will probably be acting on segment 5, he holds until near the end of 5. Again, nobody does anything crazy, so about Dex 10 of 5 he punches somebody again. Then on Dex 30 of Segment 6, Death Ninja jumps out of the shadows with his Atomic Blade and takes a swipe at our hero. The player has peeked at the bad guy's character sheet and knows that it's an NND that Does Body. So Captain Invulnerable aborts his Segment 6 and activates Desolidification. Special effect-wise, it looks like the blade just bounces off of him. Or the energy of the blade goes right into him, maybe even coming out the other side, but when the blade is pulled back out there's no injury apparent. Game-wise, everybody knows it's Desolid and can react appropriately, because he didn't buy it invisible. But for coolness and description, it just looks like it harmlessly bounced off. Captain Invulnerable has now used one of his actions defensively. On Segment 7 Dex 30, Death Ninja decides to go elsewhere. He's an ambush hunter, and his best attack failed to do anything, and he doesn't want Captain Invulnerable to smack him with a car. Since that was the good Captain's plan, and now he doesn't have an immediate target (and he likes to appear invulnerable), he holds action until the end of 8. He's still Desolid at this time. On Segment 8, Dex 20, Crazed Scientist Man whips out his Ghost Murderer Beam, which looks exactly like a Ghostbusters proton pack. Captain Invulnerable thinks "Yipe!", and knowing it probably Affects Desolid, he decides to use his held action to switch to his Missile Deflection power and DCV levels. His DCV goes up to 11, and he uses OCV 9 to try to block the incoming beam. So whether he blocks it, or whether the scientist misses his new higher DCV, the visual effect is the same. Captain Invulnerable performs a chest block and the beam harmlessly scatters off of him. The hero has now used 2 of his actions defensively, and he's free to attack the rest of the turn. On Segment 9, the player knows he wants to get in his attacks, so he's done holding action for now. He switches back to Force Field, and flies over to the evil scientist and starts pounding him. On segments 11 and 12 he does the same thing. There you go. Now, yeah it's possible that he'll get caught with his pants down. He could blow a missile deflection roll, or switch to desolid and get hit with an affects desolid attack. Them's the breaks. Even Superman gets hit by things that lay him out on occasion. That's why Captain Invulnerable has a really high Speed, so he can burn actions defensively to preserve his "I can't be hurt" mystique.

Have graffiti start appearing in places it normally wouldn't be. One of the PCs lives in a trendy part of town, but he walks out of his apartment building one morning and sees that the fancy store across the street has its windows busted out. You don't have to rely on the news media, have the players see it in person. One of their neighbors comes home crying late at night. She's been mugged on the street. The hero in his secret ID comforts her and calls 911. The call takes forever before it is answered, and the hero waits up all night with her until an exhausted officer finally arrives the next morning. He's been responding to calls all night. He half-heartedly writes down her info, gives her a dismissive response, and leaves. One of the players comes home to find his house burglarized. At first he thinks it's the act of one of his enemies. Did they find his secret room with his costume in it? Nope. It turns out it's just random crime. A DNPC (or the DNPC's child, husband, wife, whoever) has started behaving strangely. When the PC investigates, he finds out the DNPC has started taking a street drug. It's called Zoom (or Pep, or Zip, or whatever), and the drug is supposed to give you a lot of energy and make your mind sharper. All the college kids are taking it, the PC learns. The DNPC has been really busy with their work and family life (work in something that they did with the PC recently) and has been burning the candle at both ends. Unfortunately it caught up to them, and now they're crashing, and you see Zoom's awful side effects. Now that the PC is looking for it, he starts to see a lot of people with the same bloodshot eyes, drawn pale faces, and nervous twitches. Somebody is pushing this stuff hard, and if he analyzes the drugs it looks like it's coming from the same manufacturer. One of the PCs stumbles across a robbery in progress. It's just normal people, so he decides to handle it on his own. He's doing fine until one of the criminals pulls out some hi-tech hand cannon and puts a 12D6 double knockback energy blast into the hero. Yeah, I stole this one from Spider-Man Homecoming. How did a guy robbing a liquor store get such hardware? Unfortunately, the bad guy tries to fire it once too often, and the thing goes kablooey. The hero doesn't get a chance to look at it, but clearly somebody is supplying advanced tech to dirtbags. Just some ideas. If you can sprinkle them in over the course of a couple sessions, it will feel more organic.

Easiest way to do "Invulnerable" is to just buy up his Defense, Con, Recovery, Body, and Stun to a level higher than would normally be allowed. In a 12D6 game, a guy with 35 PD and ED and a 30 Con might as well be invulnerable. It doesn't matter if you get through 7 Stun on an average hit, if the guy has 70 Stun and a 20 Recovery. Just describe part of his power as the ability to "no sell" attacks and that's good enough. A guy who focuses heavily on defensive powers can be close enough to invulnerable for government work.

If I shoot you with my fire blast, you don't know if it's a 10D6 Energy Blast, a 5D6 Drain, or a 3D6+1 RKA. You just know it's a fire blast. You can't instantly identify the game mechanics just because an attack is visible. Likewise you won't know if the guy you're shooting at has Desolid, a Force Field, or what. You'll just know he activated some kind of full-body power, probably defensive in nature.

Yeah I was gonna say, many gamers possess this power by default.

Well, you wouldn't have to know about sailing with me, because I don't know a damn thing about sailing. You could fool me pretty easily. But there are other areas where I know quite a bit about a topic. That's one advantage to just glossing over things. Keep it simple and you won't have players have to correct you all the time. That's also why I don't like mysteries in RPGs. Just because it makes sense in the GM's head doesn't mean it makes sense to the players.

And it's perfectly fine if people want to do that. But can you really say it ruins your immersion if it isn't there? Things that ruin my immersion are modern pop culture references in a fantasy world. Taylor Swiftfoot the elf and Kanye the giant must rescue Queen Beyonce from the evil wizard Lord Weinstein. My immersion also is ruined when somebody loses a character, and immediately their twin brother shows up. He's got the exact same stats, is the same level, and has the same personality (except he's pissed at whoever let his brother die), and he wants you do hand over all his brother's equipment and gear. Knowing it's a game world, where real life mundane issues aren't fully fleshed out, isn't an immersion breaker for me. I don't need to know how often dragons poop, and the GM doesn't need to know it either. You've also got the issue that we can only worldbuild to our own level of competence. I've listened to too many people lovingly describe the detail of their worlds, and think to myself "this guy doesn't know how XYZ works..."

See I just like to fight dragons and stuff.

Yeah, sailing captains probably do know about trade routes. No argument there. And the Dread Pirate Roberts is basically Fantasy Batman. But I'm not sure that they're going to know much beyond the seas that they normally operate in. If you are raiding ships off the coast of the equivalent of Europe, you probably know ship schedules and the like, going from port A to port B. That doesn't necessarily mean you understand the entire network of worldwide trade though, not enough to require detailing out a Silk Road equivalent. Or that the players want to know about it. What about planting seasons? Do you work out what crops each region grows? Do they let certain fields lie fallow every seventh year, or have they uncovered nitrogen fertilizers? Do they use crop rotation? Do wars end at certain times of year because that's when the harvest comes in? Those things are all real, and people would know about them, but is it important for us to talk about it in the game? Is it fun?

No problem man. We're good. I wasn't trying to crap on anybody's opinions. Sorry if you thought that I was.

You seriously need to chill out.

You clearly haven't seen my Facebook feed for the last 5 years.

Sure. Excalibur Camelot Conan the Barbarian Conan the Destroyer The Black Cauldron The Sword in the Stone Krull Dragonslayer The Sword and the Sorceror The Princess Bride Legend Red Sonja The Lord of the Rings (animated) Jason and the Argonauts Clash of the Titans The 7th Voyage of Sinbad The Last Unicorn Those are the fantasy movies that I was familiar with when I started playing D&D. Now tell me, apart from Merlin the Magician in The Sword in the Stone, which protagonist from these movies is skilled in matters of international trade (and Merlin cheats, because he travels through time to a place with TV)? Which characters have an interest in studying the silk road of their world? In an age of no internet, no newspapers, no public libraries, and 95% illiteracy, why is it important to detail something that I have a never ever seen a player ask about, and that a character has no way to know?

I'm really questioning how effective these lockdowns are. "Essential" employees are still working, and at least here that includes people at fast food restaurants. I got a bacon cheeseburger the other day at the drive through. I gave my credit card, which could have been a bigger germ farm than that monkey in Outbreak, to the guy at the window. Wearing gloves that had touched a thousand other credit cards, he ran it through the card machine that had processed every other card in the city, and handed it back to me. I grabbed it with my ungloved hand and put it in my wallet. Then I used that same hand to hold my tasty bacon cheeseburger and shove it into my mouth. The drive through was absolutely packed. I've never seen Whataburger so crowded as I have the last few weeks. Every person who can't cook has lined up to interact with the same guy at the window. Right now we're basically the people in zombie movies who do really obviously stupid things, and are then surprised when they get bitten.

This is what I'm hoping for. Like I said earlier, I have two friends who were hospitalized with it. I saw both of them during the period when they should have been infectious but not yet showing symptoms. When I found out one of them was in the hospital for it, my throat immediately felt scratchy and I was coughing a little bit for the rest of the day. Allergies? A psychosomatic reaction? Or do 95% of us shrug it off like it's nothing?

None of those things matter to me, because they aren't something that the PCs would really know about. Bob the illiterate fighter is probably not going to know about international trade. These are all things that take place away from the action.

One more thing. I think this could very easily slam the door shut on trade with China. The longer the shutdown goes, the more likely it becomes. What good is a cheap iPhone if it makes you vulnerable to a global pandemic because of their non-existent health regulations? This has the possibility to be one of those once in a generation economic and political realignments, something on the order of the Great Depression, World War II, or the end of the Cold War. We just went through 30 years of ever-increasing free trade, with factories moving overseas and prices of consumer goods coming down. I think that's about to get thrown into reverse.

Unfortunately, right now we lack basic information on how this virus works. We don't know the right thing to do, and people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. We don't know for sure if certain medications are working, or if people can be reinfected after they've had it. Everyone is in the dark on the best way to handle this, but we're also in an election year and so we're all on edge and ready to point fingers. Combine that with the fact that a lot of stay at home orders are probably legally suspect. In my state we don't have a shelter in place order (just a strong recommendation), but if we did you can't even challenge it because all the courthouses are closed. We don't have a particularly bad outbreak, but I don't think our governor even has the statutory authority to order something like that. For now, staying at home is definitely the wise move. But for how long? I work for a small firm, and my office has been closed for the last three weeks. No money is coming in at all. While I have a job right now, that could change tomorrow. My wife got laid off because of the virus, and has been getting unemployment checks, though that doesn't last forever. Eventually you have to brave the Mongols and go out to get the turnips, otherwise you starve. People are going to lose their houses over this. People are going to commit suicide over this. But we don't know how many. We don't know if it's more than the virus would kill, or less. It depends on variables that we don't have solutions for. Two good friends of mine were both recently released from ICU. They'd been in there for weeks, some of the first people in my state to get Coronavirus. One guy's office was on the floor below mine. The other said he was so miserable he wanted to die. So I'm certainly taking it seriously. An economic recession is better than millions of people dying from a plague. But an indefinite shutdown that could continue for a year or more... people just aren't going to follow it, regardless of the consequences. It is not a choice that is available to us.

As I see it, Fighters are a dime a dozen. There are always out of work soldiers or young strong guys willing to grab an axe and go kill some orc for money. The ones who survive a battle or two are probably Fighters instead of 0 level Commoners who just thought they were Fighters. Rogues are the same way. There are plenty of people who think they can sneak into a dungeon and grab some treasure like they're Indiana Jones. Rangers might be employed by the king or other authority to patrol the wilderness. They can show up in town because they noticed higher orc activity or whatever and the king told them to grab some people and go take care of it. Now you've got a level-appropriate challenge for your fledgling group. Groups of adventurers form up when something exciting is happening. That doesn't mean that there are always an endless number of adventurers being generated by the world.

I wasn't in this game, but one local group used the cry "Let's f*** 'em up!!!" I think they called themselves The Brute Squad.