Lemurion

Re: WWYCD: Hero with "Questionable" Political Views That's one reason why I'm setting things in the campaign I'm building prior to WWII. Nazis cannot be heroic by our definition because we know where that path leads. However there could be a lot of very good roleplaying if there was a Nazi NPC who truly wanted to be a hero, and was a devout believer in Nazism. You can't do that in a post-war setting, too much of the truth is out. But in the thirties it's something that can be used to great RP effect.

Re: Are HERO gamers more wedded to more "realistic" game physics? How to build a Daxamite without breaking the bank

Re: Elves I'm curious where the 1d6/phase for being in contact with bronze comes from. I know the iron/steel, but in most of the source material I've seen elves use bronze almost exclusively, which this would preclude. They are normally metal tool users, just don't use ferrous metals.

Re: Rarity of Magic? I may not have been clear enough with the quotes. When I said that's what makes it "magic," I meant that's what gives it the feeling that it's something qualitatively different than just another form of technology. Following your example, a light is a light, whether generated by an incandescent light bulb bearing the name "Westinghouse" or a rune-marked crystal sphere encasing a fire spirit. They're both lights, and a character would use either one the same way. It doesn't matter how they're generated, or what the character understands about their generation. Common magic, or "wide magic" would as you say end up being treated just like technology. After all an incantation is no different really than voicedial on your cell phone or any other voice-command technology. It's flavor is matter-of-fact, and in that sort of a campaign setting is just part of the background. The problem I have with this is that while it's still magic, it doesn't feel "magic." It feels just like technology. Now that may be exactly what you want, but for me a big part of the attraction of magic is that it lends a different tone than technology. Ubiquitous magic, especially in HERO, often lacks that tone. That's why I say it's not "magic," and why the quotation marks were there. Perhaps I should have phrased it as being magic, but not magical.

Re: Rarity of Magic? Point the first: I'm not going to argue on that one. Because even for those who say there is real magic, it's very much not the same as the magic in games. The "wide magic" is a good term, but some of those spells you mentioned are far from weak. I'd go so far as to say that some of them are a lot more powerful than the big flashy fireballs and the like. That irrigation spell (and the widespread crop magic) it implies would be a huge boon to the peasantry. It would essentially eliminate famine, and also trigger the migration to cities centuries earlier. It's just one example of how far-reaching simple changes can be. While I'm not fond of the Eberron setting, I do agree that its recognition of the omnipresent changes magic would bring is a good thing. In the end, it all comes back to the fact that the only way to really have magic be "magic" is to keep it rare. Otherwise it does become commonplace and loses the air that makes it magic. It becomes another form of technology. The rarity and mystery is part of what makes it "magic."

Re: The Professions of Arms It could be a complementary skill when bargaining to buy a horse. A successful roll could make it easier to see which horse has the best training, or help lower the by using the warhorses don't make good cart horses argument.

Re: Character: Joe Friday Talk about lucky. One of the characters for my Hudson City 1938 campaign has "Patrolman Joe Friday" as a contact. He's just a patrolman in that setting because I figure the promotions came after the war. Now I don't have to build him. Repped

Re: WWYCD: Hero with "Questionable" Political Views I was thinking of doing something with the Bund. I love the pulp era and supers and think they go really well together. Now if I could just find a copy of the original GAC I'd be styling. PDF would be best (though I don't think it was ever released that way) so I don't have to wait for shipping to Canada. I have the 4E GAC.

Re: Character: Lance Dulak, Private Eye I actually like the concept a lot. I'm planning on running a 1938 supers game and this will fit in nicely. I'll just keep the mystery of whether he's Dulac or not

Re: Paper Minatures I'd probably just use Windows Paint. Any image program will do it. BTW: Hi, I'm just down in Victoria.

Re: Rarity of Magic? As has been said before, common magic, especially common, powerful magic will transform a setting. Traditional medieval societies just can't function with it. The only way to make magic fit into a society without huge changes is to give it the same "cost" as doing it the normal way. If it's just as hard to do something by magic as it is to do it by hand, magic no longer has quite the same power to transform society. It will still change it, but may not result in the same wholescale tranformation. Making powerful magic rare also has the side effect of making PC casters that much more special. In short, rare magic often makes for better games. Not always, but often enough that it's a good default.

Re: Are HERO gamers more wedded to more "realistic" game physics? I'm agreeing with ghost-angel. The big thing for me is the consistency and the control. It just all works well together.

Re: Paper Minatures I'd try this way: Get images of the characters, shrink them to the size you want, then print them out and paste onto cardstock. Instant paper minis.

Re: 6000 non NGD posts. But maybe you can get bitten by a radioactive spider and get Spider-Mutant Ugliness. The hyphen trumps the Cosmic. *Now with extra shiny*

Re: WWYCD: Hero with "Questionable" Political Views I like the "hero" with questionable beliefs, and always thought the Aryan was a great character. As I've said before, HERO is about creating heroes and one of the most intriguing aspects of it is how does one define a "hero." As I'm just in the process of working up a GAC game set in Hudson City in 1938 a precursor to the Aryan could be very interesting. The war hasn't happened yet, and here's an heroic Nazi out showing the world the "justice" of their cause. Meanwhile the SS and other groups are coming along underneath and behaving in a more traditional Nazi fashion. Great idea.

Re: Ultimate Scrapper? Back when I started playing Champions (it wasn't Hero System back then) the first GM I had called them "demi-bricks." This would have been about 1987 or so. His definition was a close combat character based around killing attacks rather than strength. Still it's not that common a character type in most games.

Re: something for all you golden age fans Fantastic I'm just working on my Hudson City 1938 Golden Age Champions game and this is fantastic source material. It's the good stuff.

Re: Hudson City 1938 I see where you're coming from-- reminds me almost of Shadowcat from GAC, however I'm just not a fan of swords and supers.

Re: Lameness Is Not Illegal Sorry, but I don't find "Ultech" to be a cool name. It's kinda "uh" to me. To each their own.

Re: I don't have the ultimate brick If you've got a Ben Grimm type brick maybe he could fire off a rock-blast from the material that makes up his body. This one works well for many earth-themed bricks. Give the character a gem theme (maybe made of solid ruby) and when he puts his hands together and squeezes he can excite the atoms and generate a laser beam.

Re: Hudson City 1938 Interesting ideas-- though I've got a personal thing against supers with swords. The one other idea I've come up with (today there were some slow bits at work) is "Devilcat." A Wildcat/Daredevil homage. I know Daredevil's not GA but Wildcat was. Essentially a boxer who was blinded for not throwing a fight, the mobsters who did it threw him in a crate that ended up being loaded on a Zeppelin bound for the Far East. The crew found his barely living body and tossed him out in Tibet where he was rescued by a secret order of monks. The monks trained him in special tibetan skills, including a "radar" sense, and now he has returned to Hudson City to wreak vengeance on, or save others from, the mob.

Re: What pre-5th Edition Hero books do you still use? There's an excellent 4E writeup of Crusader in the Dark Champions supplement Underworld Enemies. That's the version I sort of keep in the back of my mind in case I ever want to use the character. Yes I still have and use almost all the 4E Dark Champions stuff for source material.

No, this doesn't belong in Pulp Hero. I'm working on a short arc/standalone adventure for our local group. Like many of the games we play it's being done "Con style" which means the GM makes up the characters as well as the adventure. (I have the only copy of HD and the massive Hero library so I do most Hero games). Anyway, the adventure I have in mind is one of the early adventures of the Vigilance Society of America, or VSA. Drawing inspiration from the Vigilance Committees of the old west, the VSA is a voluntary association of some costumed adventurers/mystery men/vigilantes to deal with foes and situations they could not handle on their own. The game is set in 1938, as that's when the first "superheroes" appear. It also gives me the freedom to bring in both classic pulp tropes (zeppelins and autogyros oh my ), and avoid the war. There's a war in Asia, and a civil war in Spain, but the US and most of western Europe are still at peace. I'm setting it in Hudson City, because there's a wealth of information available (and I have a lot of the Hudson City source material). At the moment I'm soliciting ideas for members of the VSA. I'm not sure how many I'll create, but I like to have more characters than players to give them choice. Most of the characters should also be homages to Golden Age adventurers, as that's the whole feel I'm going for. So far I've created the following: Captain Lightning: (Flash Homage) The first superhero, he's a mid-range speedster with a shield. Running and leaping powers-- he uses the shield both for general armor, and also for his move-through/move-by attacks. Guardian: (Superman Homage) Traditional early Superman type, he can already fly. Last survivor of the planet Arisia (yes it's a deliberate borrowing) he has the powers of the highly evolved Arisian race. Bulletproof flying brick, with enhanced perception for the generic sensory powers. Oceanus: (Aquaman Homage) Exiled Sea-King. Lower level brick with brawling to make up for it. Swimmer/Leaper. In addition to his kinship with water creatures he also has low level mind control and telepathy. Doctor Faidon: (Dr Fate Homage/Variant) This one's unfinished, she's a mystic/mentalist with mental illusions/telepathy/ego blast as well as TK and force wall. The catch for her powers is they don't do physical injury to people. What I'm hoping for is some suggestions on other potential members of the VSA. I've attached the three completed characters.

Re: Potential Campaign: Alpha Flight or Superhero Socialism Interesting idea, not sure where there's a "socialist" agenda there. It might make sense to put your "Department O" under CSIS (pronounced Cee-sys) the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. I'd also recommend that the "high speed transport" be called the Arrow and be an advanced and enlarged derivative of the CF101 Avro Arrow jet fighter.

Re: automatons I would say that it's a valid option. We need some way to quantify things like that in the rules, and a power skill is an already existing method. In the meantime, one could rule that a nerve gas has a strange catalytic effect on some of the circuitry inside an automaton and just coincidentally has a similar effect to that which it does on living matter.