BarryB

You might locate your neighborhood gaming store and post an ad there. Some gaming stores host gaming groups.

I don't know what you mean? You mean a word-processing document or spreadsheet of the values in the chart? Or do you mean a program that would let you input the total advantages and limitations and output the values?

I'm recording the episodes. My 5-year-old daughter is so into the Justice League. It's great. She plays Wonder Woman frequently. I just wish there was JL t-shirts or hats with *female* members on them. I only find kids ones with the male members of the League. I guess they assume only boys like superheroes.

Huh. I'd assumed it was one of those shows that went for a season or two and went away. Aren't the episodes like 2 years old now? I have no knowledge that it's being made or not being made.

My group tried WebRPG once. It worked okay, but it wasn't as much fun as face-to-face. WebRPG just couldn't handle the tangents and off task behaviors that we engaged in. The immediacy of seeing the GMs face when the players pull a rabbit out of the hat or the look on the players' faces when the GM pulls out a surprise villain is lost. I've also tried Champions MUSH. It had some good ideas, but there were aspects of it that didn't match my expectations. Once I managed to get a character approved, I found myself wandering the streets looking for a plot in which to be involved. I was in one combat as part of a story arc that involved the entire city. My presence was scarcely acknowledged by the players (although the GM slotted me into the fight). I recall being quite ineffective. The bad taste I had after approvals, the boring evenings I spent trying to get involved in a plot, and my failure as the combat machine I had envisioned the character to be turned me off to the MUSH completely. That said, I do look forward to City of Heroes.

Ah, but Courtney Cox was in Misfits of Science.

Re: Just a theory That's interesting. I've felt that Superman was an inherently conservative hero. (not that there's anything wrong with that) I enjoy Superman a great deal, more so now that I'm over 40 years old. It makes me wonder if maybe the basic decency of the character makes him more attractive to older males. Perhaps, as we age, we appreciate the moral straight arrow more than we did as a kid.

We have a campaign newspaper, the Atlanta Chronicle, up on our website. Since shortly after I began GMing a Champions campaign, I've always put out a newspaper. There are a number of reasons to have a newspaper besides the plot clues that it allows. 1) Because it provides the man-in-the-street point of view to the activities of the characters. Sometimes I don't do a good job of describing the gasps from crowds as Invincible Man survives a building falling on him. In a news article, I can do so. 2) After a while, stopping a robbery of a convenience store gets old. But the characters still do so, even though the challenges now lie with world-threatening villains. So newspaper articles help to keep the players grounded. The previous two reasons can provide ego boosts to players, describing their actions and abilities in colorful ways that, at least in our group, get lost in the shuffle. 3) Articles can provide summaries of "what went before" as well as what society as a whole knows. If the characters defeat alien criminals and the fight is reported as an accidental explosion, the players know that society doesn't know about aliens and isn''t supposed to know.

I've built several types of vampires in the course of campaigns, not all of whom were called "vampires." The overarching rule I used in anything that was called a vampire is that it lacked some or all of the classic vulnerabilities. This keeps the players/characters from using their own knowledge of horror movie vampires to their advantage: "Weapons-man, why don't you construct wooden bullets so that Marksman can peg the vampires with his ten-shot autofire with which he has 10 skill levels." Of course, you can add in new vulnerabilities based on what you consider vampirism to be in your campaign. If it's a disease,then maybe a good strong dose of antibiotics or Clorox will kill it. If it's undead, how would it handle an exorcism? Make your vampires as you wish. Just make 'em drain *something* from the victim. Oh, and act mostly at night, whether from necessity or preference. Put those two together and I think you've got something that you could call a vampire.

I've used the "Fist of Allah" in a previous campaign. As the name implies they were a five-person team. They wore powered armor developed initially by the Egyptians, but obtained by other groups. They did not support any specific nation, but were pan-Islamic. One element that degenerated was that the Fist could not speak English and so used recorded monologues against their enemies: "Fist One presses a button on his chest and a recorded voice is heard saying 'Die, infidel dog.'"

My character's personal quote is in the signature of my email: "Agggghhh... I'm stunned...can't maintain flight *THUMP*" Or something to that effect.

I agree with those that argue that desolid ought to be a useful ability. Whether the desolid with an affects solid attack is overbalancing really depends on the GM. Some GMs can find ways of challenging the character; others cannot. I don't consider it a flaw in the GM that he or she cannot or will not challenge the character. Otherwise excellent stories might not admit of such challenges. The special effect of the affects solid attack allows for a number of potential defenses. In my opinion, no defense should be used frequently. Damage shield is one of most obvious, affecting the hand that is solidified. Since the hand remains solidified for the segment, there are all kinds of potential attacks, depending on whether the target can access the soldified hand. I would force a DEX roll on whether the hand has penetrated through and so is accessible or not. A question that should be considered is the power of the affects desolid attack. Can it take down most megavillains with a single shot? Then it probably is overpowered. If you look in comics, the affects desolid attacks take out agents with a single shot or act as a coup de grace with lower level villains, but rarely takes out supervillains in a single shot. You might consider limiting its power, thus allowing the character to be effective, but not overbalancing.

JmOz has it right. "Hit Me and the tactile force field I have will detonate a bomb. Somewhere. Just about a half-second beyond your maximum flying speed." The other thing to remember is that people like the Joker and the Penguin and Gorilla Grond and the like study their opponents. They know their strengths and weaknesses. So you've got an armored superhero with full life support. Turn his teammates into grinning zombies. Make his armor grow snake heads and hiss at him after applying CobraGas . Remember. You're the GM. You have an infinite number of power points in your GM power pool. Imagine it first, then build it with points later.

Oh my goodness! That's great! One of the problems I've had with the Character Templates that were put out by Hero Games a couple of years back was trying to color them in Paint Shop Pro. Now I know how to do it! Thanks, Nato!

If the item is written up as a multipower, you could just have a limitation on some of the slots, "Must wield the item for XX minutes/hours/days/weeks." The specific value of the limitation would depend on how long a period the owner must wield the item. The value of the limitation would be higher if the period were longer and lower if the item simply had to be near the owner rather than being held or attached. You might consider the Dependence time scale under character disadvantages to get some sense of possible values for the limitation. Take into account that once the time period has passed, the slot in the multipower will be completely accessable to the character. Also, consider what happens after the item is stolen or taken away. Does the character have to re-acquaint himself with the item to release those powers again? If so, that might raise the limitation.

You could handle it either way. The problem that I've encountered with VPPs is the effort required to specify the powers of the VPP during a gaming session. Personally, I would suggest a multipower with an advantage of Variable Special Effects to simulate the different types of weaponry. Thus, there would be an 8d6 EB slot, but the special effect in one adventure might be a flintlock rifle and in the next might be a Colt 1911A1. The multipower would have a limitation of "Only change effects between adventures: -1/2" and "Cannot change slots during adventures: -1." Of course, the specific values of the limitations are open to debate. On the other hand, a VPP in which the powers are specified prior to an adventure and can't change in an adventure is pretty much a gadget pool. I would strongly urge the player to design weaponry outside of the session rather than spending time during a session doing all the calculations and book-thumbing.

I never make it up to Origins, though it should probably be on my list of 'things to do before I die.' It would be neat to have a couple of prints hanging on my wall of the hero groups of the two major Champions campaigns I've run. Do you charge more for group shots? No individual portraits would be needed unless the players request it. Okay, maybe one for a character of whom I would be interested in seeing your conception. Of course, that one would be the standard rate. Oddly enough, he's not really a favorite character; I've always had trouble visualizing him and would enjoy seeing what you could do with him.

When I had a Dark Champions campaign, it was set in the same world as the super supers. This did pose problems that have come up in other threads, notably involving a Batman write-up. I came to feel that some characters required two write-ups: one for Champions and one for Dark Champions. While I agree that the thing that makes Dark Champions "dark" is the small-scale and gritty nature of the scenarios, it's a lot easier to enforce the genre conventions if the characters are fairly low-powered. When you have a martial artist who is tough enough to take damage from robotic killing machines and who can carve up a tank for breakfast, then it's kind of hard to challenge him in a DC campaign.

Firestorms also create winds as the hot air rises and creates a low-pressure area. There might a Change Environment in there. More Change Environments would be to raise the temperature in an area and give combat minuses. Suppress or Dispel cold-based powers. Tranforming a victim by raising the victim's temperature, increasing metabolism, and thereby rapidly aging the victim. (Standard pseudo-science babble) Images made of flames. Flash against IR Vision Invisibility against IR Vision Overheating, well, anything! Making toast in the morning. Crack an egg into a frying pan and have it cooked before you reach the table. Entangle with rings of fire. Using control of thermal air currents to keep an airplane from crashing. Hope these help.

Great post, Emerged. Even after over a decade, I still have trouble at times challenging my players' characters in combat. You gave some good guidelines. On a related note, the 3rd edition Danger Room rules were also quite nice. I need to pull those out again.

I can print at higher resolutions than that, but I'm more interested in keeping as much information as possible in the file. Are you limited to 300 due to technical reasons? Or would paying more than $45 allow for higher resolutions? Just curious; I'm casually interested. Any chance you'd be at DragonCon in August?

There is actually a very interesting material out there called Ferrium C69 that I've incorporated slightly into my current campaign. It's a metal that has been designed to have specific properties. The manufacturer, QuesTek, can design the metal on a computer to have particular properties. It might be hard to keep an edge or softer to resist breakage. It's supposed to have been used to forge a Dragonslayer sword, incorporating meteoric iron. I don't know if that was actually done, though. In a previous campaign, I've used a metal called Adaptium. Supposedly the molecular bonds were such that it was extremely stiff; bonds on the compression and expansion sides of the bend were very strong, making any deformation extremely difficult. Thus the metal adapted to any deformation. With regards to 'protomatter', I've used that terminology as well. I used protomatter to refer to (steel yourselves) the information content of an arrangement of mass-energy. This refers back to a notion that mass and energy are different forms of information, a notion present in simulational physics and current efforts to simulate quantum mechanical systems with computers. As I applied it, protomatter is the information that tells matter and energy how to organize. Without protomatter (literally 'pre-matter') matter and energy would be in a state of maximum entropy.

How about this? Cowboy - Entangle (lasso), Animal Control, Trick Shooter, Ambidexterous. Highway Patrolman - Vehicle (Souped up hovercycle, natch!), Flash Defense (mirrored sunglasses), Billy Club or Tonfa, Minor Armor, Rams villains with his vehicle in a passing strike.

Clearly we need rules for superhero football or baseball.

Every game is won due to sickness on the part of the opposing team. Mental illness, to be precise.