Duke Bushido

Yes on the history! And tell us what's for sale!

You're right. Your little brother _is_ awesome!

Dang it! I thought you'd added some more. Good stuff!

Here you go: Unless you'd rather have a paper copy, in which case: what have you got to trade? (I've got a couple of extras) Duke

The last fantasy I ran was the occuktish western I've mentioned before (it didn't start out that way; we sort of drifted into it). The biggest sources of magic were ancestor magic and shamanic magic, so there weren't a lot of traditional magic items: most of them had serious limitations like a four-hour ceremony to recharge, single or double use only, certain rituals or rules that had to be adhered to or the item would disappear /lose enchanment-- the magic was real, but rarely extremely powerful; those things that were powerful were rare and difficult to maintain. Wierdly, the most popular things were the hides of enchanted animals (certain random animals would bear enchantment by either having served as a spirit guide or hosting a particularly powerful soul (or ancestor or minor God) and, if properly treated, would provide clothing that granted immunity to certain environmental conditions, etc. Jackelope boots were popular: extra movement, silence, bonus OCV, etc, depending on breed and season. Arrows tipped with jackelope antler gained a +1 Stun multiplier or created an aggravated wound (REC Drain versus this one wound: heals very, very slowly) and no jackelope antler wound could be healed magically (fortunately, these arrows and spears were rare). Painted symbols and lengthy ceremonies could provide extra Def to certain garments, etc. Lots of things that could turn the battle, but nothing that could turn the war, if you follow me. Petty items: paint mortars that never emptied, waterskins that never quite emptied (but could be ruined by holing them, or desecration) torches that burned for hours-- little stuff.

Okay-- so what we're doing is bitching about the idea that in this-- In _THIS_, and _this alone!_-- the way to determine a character's general attractiveness to the rest of his or her kind / social group-- should _never_ be handled any way but X. Damn that makes sense, because we all _know_ that the ultimate rule of HERO is "one way to do one thing, period. All other way are WRONG!" Makes sense, considering how there is only one true way to achieve any other effect, right? If you want a character who moves twice as fast as another one, you _must_ by more movement, because it is absolutely forbidden to by more SPD. If you want a character who can walk through walls, we all know that only Tunnelling allows this; characters with Desolid are just ass-out when it come to passing through barriers: just can't be done. I'm out-- for a couple of reasons: I've been cautioned by people way smarter than me to not get too deeply involved in the Great COM Debate (ironically, some of those same people are here in this thread already), and I've read through some of the old threads from the period during which I was absent; it _never_ ends well. Never. It doesn't even stay civil more than about four pages, and I'm going to drop out while it _is_ still civil, and never get back into another one of these. I got suckered this time by simply answering an opinion question: "what do you think about..." Frankly, I had no idea my -- or any other one person's-- opinion had such an impact on so many lives, or was so incredibly important to so many complete strangers that they would spend all this time and effort (as witnessed in previous threads; I'm not going to hang around in this one long enough to find out) to change it. We should all feel very special: we have global influence. For those of you who want to play around with Google Maps satellite view: I live in Toombs County, Georgia. I am in the absolute _heart_ of redneck country. I get enough of this stupid-assed Ford / Chevy / Dodge crap any day of the week, and the answer is always the same: the best truck you can drive is the one that's paid for and does the job you want it to do. Anything else is going out of your way to piss on an otherwise perfectly content person. This says a Hell of a lot more about you than it does about them (for the record: this applies to _both_ sides of this COM debate thing) Those of you who want to carry this thread until it dies in a fire, go ahead. I'm taking my COM stat and getting out. (In all serious now: I love all you guys; I really do. But history tells us how stupid this is going to get, and I just don't want to see it happen to anyone here, so I'm out.) Duke

I'm not the original poster, but I suspect you are seriously misreading that. I take it as the character reacting: how does Character X react to a particular COM score? Sure, you could use a mechanic to tell you how you react rather than deciding for yourself. But then, you could pop a disk in the X-box and run _everything_ on rails, too.

The funny thing is that I _remember_ the little plastic "dinosaurs" that contained both the Bullette and the Rust Monster. My youngest brother drove the librarian nuts when we went to Anchorage-- he kept wanting to find the book with that specific "dinosaur" in it.

This rather implies that there is a correlation between INT and vocabulary, world-travel, television shows, and knowledge of famous renaissance painters....

To the best of my knowledge, we are the last nation on earth that still uses the stupid thing. It seems most other countries have figured out that it does not measure intelligence in any way, shape, or form: it measures exposure and retention, and compares them to a predicted norm for your age group. For the reason, incredibly intelligent people with bad memories tend to get shafted, and people who are better-travelled or better-educated tend to score higher. And of course, as you age and enter the workforce, you are no longer exposed to new things they way you were in childhood and in school. However, there are newer and newer concepts, sciences, etc out there, and you're not being exposed. By default, this means your IQ is getting lower. I can't find it on the net, but I remember back in the 80s reading an interesting study on the whole IQ test thing, and one thing that could really skew results was not having cable television. Children without cable television tended to watch the news with their parents. They were exposed to all kinds of things-- even if they didn't understand them. And of course children have remarkable long-term memories. These children always scored higher on IQ tests, even if they were complete idiots otherwise. The whole thing was preposterous-- much like standardized testing lead _away_ from a rounded education and teaching towards the tests, this obsessive need to compare everyone and everything that lead to IQ testing also lead to throwing all kinds of things at people, and finding them somehow deficient if they failed to be interested in certain things. It's asinine, and it needs to die. But I digress: INT does not equal IQ, not in HERO and not in the real world. In HERO, INT seems to be more about quick-wittedness and making connections between disparate things, and even just the ability to quickly analyze and understand what you know and what your senses tell you. I strongly suggest keeping it that way.

Not into it. That's pretty much what "Striking Appearance" is as I understand it. I prefer a gauge to a mechanic for social interaction. What I liked about COM, and apparently I was (again) the odd man out, was that it was a _gauge_ to where your appearance fits into your society's scale. And I preferred that because it allowed the modeling of something that doesn't work when you have a mechanic telling you "this means this, period:" There are people who will react negatively to very attractive people. There are people who will react _differently_ from the expected norm, and there is a tendency for people to naturally feel more comfortable around people they perceive to be "on their level." Sounds weird? Maybe, but it's true. If you tend to think of yourself as medium ugly, you tend to gravitate toward other people you perceive as medium ugly. Some people prefer "cute" to "beautiful." For what it's worth, cute tends to last longer as we age, too. Shame I missed out on that. I'd go on, but my "RETURN" button on my keyboard has gone out again. Gah! At any rate, I find that many things role-playing wise are better-served by _roleplaying_, and thus a gauge is far, far more useful than a mechanic. As noted by someone else above, HERO has _plenty_ of mechanics. However, it is _not_ a computer program; it's a game for sharing stories _that we make up_. Unless the APG 4 includes new mechanics for generating campaigns, too, of course.

Go for it. I'm good either way.

If it's like the original-- well, just the one in your head, I would think.

Holy carp! I just watched the video. I'm pretty sure that Australians are essentially British Floridians.....