Duke Bushido

Ah-- there were some new posts while I was typing. I think I see the problem, and there isn't any solution except homebrewing something. It seems that what you want is some level of effectiveness just because you paid some points, without actually having to buy enough of something to get the effectiveness designed into the mechanic. If I understand the rest of your replies, it's an "I want to do damage to Iron Man because I paid _some_ points into my Strength, so I should be able to do _something_" kind of thing. Granted, that may be sleep deprivation, in which case I recant it and accept that I am now too tired for proper reading comprehension. Good night again, Folks.

You asked, and I quote: It simulate success or failure. Given that you show tendencies to lead to your actual question or questions with a rhetorical one, I felt comfortable enough answering that second one first. The entirety of the rest of the post is an attempt to answer the first part of the question-- or at least, to answer _why it is_. "Why must it be" is not something I can answer, as it's game, and there is no "must be." See my absolute hatred of the new Combat >ahem< _"Luck"_ for proof of that. Point blank, it can be any way you want it to be. Have fun with it. It doesn't affect anyone who is not at your table, and if they all like it, then it's an improvement. If they don't like it, back up, regroup, and try something else. No one here is going to force, require, demand, or strong arm you to do it a certain way. The same way that I like it and have no intention of changing it, I encourage you to find something you like better. All I can do is attempt to make you understand why this is valid, and why I think it emulates comics-- the same way I understand why Combat Luck is valid. I encourage you to to find mental powers mechanics you like, if you don't like the ones available. I even encourage you to share them around-- we all like to see new ideas. I also encourage you to understand that I am probably not the only person here who isn't going to change the way they work; I am probably not the only person here who finds the current mechanic to work precisely how I need it to work in my games: it provides a handsome boon for those willing to really invest in it, yet doesn't create an inexpensive temptation requiring every Tom, Dick, and Batman to buy EGO: 40 and twenty points of Mental Defense-- just in case. It's absolutely meta balance, but it does balance well enough for my needs. I did the same thing with Combat Luck: Combat Luck: 5- pts. This Skill Level applies directly to your CV, making you harder to hit and upping the odds that you will actually hit someone. Cool! He missed me by one! Yep. I reckon you got lucky.... You tell us. You are the one arguing that it doesn't suit the source material. I gave the only source material references I am familiar with, and the current mechanic jibes quite nicely with them. Hugh raised some excellent questions on that front, too. His examples also seem to play quite nicely with the source material, at least those instances to which he referred. It's your turn. Tell us why it doesn't. So Flight is Extra Time, then? Because to sustain a Flight, he'd have to turn it off and on over and over and over? We are stumbling over reasoning from effect. Unless 6e has done something really whacky, the only requirement for SFX is that they are detectable by X senses, where X varies by edition (I think. Didn't 6e drop it to 2 senses? I really need to set aside a massive block of time to re-read it, but Lord! What a slog when my "free time" is like forty minutes every couple of days). At any rate, I know that Instant Powers are activated, do their thing, and are done unless certain modifiers make them work otherwise. I do not recall reading anything that says "must go bang every half phase and kick in anew." I also know that Mental Powers are Constant Powers: you have to continually expend END to maintain the effect. You don't have to re-roll the attack to keep the effect. Hey, I know! Let's look at a sunburn! If I take my naked Irish butt outside and run around in the sun for a few minutes, probably nothing will happen to it. If I do it for thirty minutes, it will probably color up a bit. If I throw it on the front lawn and leave it there for four hours, it will likely get tender, red, blistered, and all kinds of unpleasant things that I will enjoy for several days to come. Did the sun turn off, turn back on, attack again, turn back off, attack again, turn back off, attack again, turn back off, etc, etc, ad nauseam until the accumulated damage took effect? or did that damage continue to accumulate the whole time that I left my butt out there in it, in one, single hours-long onslaught? Now let's all remember that I do not sarcasm without blatant indicators. I have gone to an extensive, years-long effort to remove sarcasm from my life, as I have seen in my life and that of others the sort of very real damage it does to people and relationships. I have to say that-- out loud-- _constantly_, because the accursed razor that is sarcasm is so damnably ubiquitous today as to make social interaction unsettling in some cases. I have to say that out loud because you can neither see nor hear me, and the odds are high that, given the atrocious ubiquity of it, you will read it into what I have to ask next. It's not there; don't assume it is: Is it _possible_-- just possible, mind you, that you are reading something into Cumulative that simply isn't there? I am going to assume that you are using 6e. Even on 6e1 p 80, the word "cumulative" is used to refer to adding bonuses from Linguist and known languages to gain a point reduction for buying a new language. They aren't firing off one at a time; they both exist simultaneously, and they work together. But that's not the Advantage, is it? So, 6e1 p 153-- First, I want to say that I really, _really_ dislike the "each possible advantage is listed after every single power" approach of this edition. It just drives me nuts, and kind of works _against_ creating a single, unified definition of the power modifiers. There. That's out of my system now. Anyway, back to p 153: The one advantage of the list-every-possible-modifier-and-how-it-interacts-with-each-kind-of-power style of 6e is tailored discussion. Given that there are still conversations on message boards, I don't know that they payoff was worth the trouble the author and printer went to. At any rate, "the target is not affected by it... until the first Phase in which the total rolled by the attacker ... exceeds the amount needed to achieve the desired effect." That seems pretty cut and dry that the power is building to a point-- you can define that any way you want: Lamont is peeling away your psychic resistance; the wheelchair psychic is summoning a large enough "mental push," the dragonball guys are floating over a field for eight episodes talking about how badly they are going to mess each other up-- whatever. The power is one, ongoing thing that is growing more and more powerful. Follow it with "Until that time the Power has no effect," and I really think that Cumulative is the answer your looking for, unless the desired outcome is nothing short of instant one-phase domination of whoever it is your are targeting, even if they have a really high EGO. In those cases, the only real solution is "buy lots of dice," and as I said before, I believe that to be rather justified. I didn't skimp or edit; that is the entire commentary about Cumulative with regard to Mental Powers. At no point is there direct mention or slight suggestion that the Mental Power is cycling off and on. There is every suggestion that the Power is growing in... well, in power! It's _one_ attack, or one contest for mental domination, or however you choose to define it. Just one. Just for kicks, I skipped ahead to Dispel (because I halfway remembered what it said ), and I found this: Sure; it's talking about Dispel, but the point is that it reinforces the idea that Cumulative does nothing but take "Extra Time" and add a real good reason for taking extra time. It turns it into one long power that builds and builds until it is where you want it to be (or it hits your points ceiling). Again: I get where you are coming from: you don't want it because it doesn't _feel_ right. I get that: I have that problem myself-- I was pretty up front about Combat Luck, as a show of good faith that I _do_ think I know where you're coming from. All I am asking you to do is take a hard look at what you believe cumulative means and compare it to what cumulative actually says it is, and to remember that mental powers are _not_ exactly "instant" powers to begin with. I spend END to keep the effect running, just like a Force Field. I can't do that with a gun. Mind Control isn't a gun; it doesn't do what a gun does; it doesn't work like a gun. That's why it has its own mechanic, and that mechanic plays quite nicely with Cumulative. At any rate, I've been on here way too long tonight; I've got to be at work in something like.... six hours? Good night, All.

I had hoped to be able to really dig into this tonight, but I have a pressing matter to attend shortly. I will still attempt a brief skip across the highlights, and hope the conversation is still lively tomorrow. Got that. The specifics of time, Phases, etc were for those playing at home. You never really know how many neophytes are just lurking, and I didn't see any reason to leave them confused. Takes Extra Time: one additional Phase. Cumulative, make two attacks: one additional Phase. Takes Extra Time: one minute Cumulate, make SPD x 5 attacks. Reasoning from effect, as opposed to reasoning from mechanic. It takes Lamont a few moments to cloud someone's mind. Presumably he's not just staring off into the sunset waiting for it take effect or snapping his fingers waiting for them to make eye contact. He's working it. He's digging into that psyche. He's using that power, burrowing through the defenses of their mind, stacking his power by weakening theirs. Cumulative takes extra time by default. Nothing in any of the source material (caveat: "that I am aware of;" remember that I am not a comic book guy. If they aren't "had a cartoon show my nieces and nephews watched while I was babysitting" famous or "had a movie made about them" famous, I probably have no idea who they are, with only a handful of pop culture exceptions (I knew who Cyborg was before he was in a movie, for example. Though the guy he was in the movie is _not_ what I thought he was, so....) Reasoning from effect, if Takes Extra Time will work, so will Cumulative. Honestly, who's to say that the cumulative nature _isn't_ why it takes extra time? Comic book guys who may be following along: has their ever been any running dialogue of the wheelchair x-man working his way into another mind? Like it was taking some sort of effort beyond flipping a switch? That might help us find an answer right there. I am not going to argue the right or wrong of it with regards to the source material (except Lamont, of course. I will maintain forever that his hypnosis is in fact cumulative, which is why it takes extra time, simply because of the number of times the narrator would break in to describe the scene as Lamont peered deeply through his eyes an into his psyche, etc. Actually, I'd probably rule the same with Ghost Rider's "Pennance Stare" as well (bet you didn't think I knew that one, did you, folks? I've got a soft spot for Ghost Rider, particularly the 70's occult-filled books ). If it was just a swing and a hit, I don't think he would be holding them, staring into their souls for multiple panels. I maintain that he was non-stop pouring it on, digging around, burning down everything as he went. As for any other comic-book sources, I can't say. Though anything chemically-induced? Oh yeah; cumulative is perfect there, too. Still: I don't know enough about the source material to say that all the supers are doing this. Linda Carter's lasso seemed to work instantly, but I don't recall her using it on anyone who wasn't completely normal. And, uh... well, being tied up by Linda Carter isn't something one struggles too much against anyway. Succeeding or failing. But you're clearly an intelligent guy, and knew that already, so I'm going to assume this was a rhetorical question to introduce the others. I haven't changed it in a few decades, but I'm a sample size of roughly One, and as such am statistically irrelevant. I can't answer you about comics (except Ghost Rider, where I maintain that what we see there meshes up quite beautifully with Cumulative. As for the second part: They _do_ work that way. Either you do damage, or you don't. The Iron Man v machine gun example comes to mind. If you hit someone, you are _not_ guaranteed to affect them. You're just not. Yeah, there's lots of talk about "you should plan your adventures so that your defenses absorb at or just below a certain amount of damage, so that when you buy an attack, you can assume an average die roll of 3.5 and therefore by enough dice so that on an average roll _some_ of your damage can be expected to get past defenses--" Dude, I won't even go into _that_ conversation; I have avoided it since discovering the internet, and I think I can continue to avoid it for the fifteen or twenty years I have remaining. (Frankly, I think it's a bit nutty. I mean, we all do it, but seriously: Buy defenses that let you shrug off _most_ of a typical attack? Buy attacks that let you apply _some_ damage? Sure: we all do it, but honestly, it makes _zero_ practical sense: If I had some ability to know that "I will regularly be exposed to this level of damage," my next thought is _not_ going to be "how do I protect myself from _some_ of it?" ) Even if you _do_ decide to buy enough of an attack that you can expect to get "some damage" through assuming 3.5 per die, suppose you average 3 per die? or 2.5? It happens. You have a successful roll to hit, and your attack does _nothing_. It's because of defenses. I could digress and move into "the problem you are having here is the exact same problem I have with calling extra DEF "luck" and defining it as "you hit, but no; you missed." I frikity-frakin' _HATE_ it-- I hate it with the intensity of a thousand-thousand suns, and find it to be not just apocryphal, but outright _blasphemous_ to the spirit of the "to hit" roll. But I _understand_ it. I _get_ it. The end result is identical: you did no damage. So what if it's a straight port out of D&D and Armor Class where the guy in a cotton jerkin misses the guy in plate mail because having his plate mail makes him harder to hit for some reason? (sure: the reason is "you hit, but it didn't do any damage." Exactly reverse that: "You didn't do any damage, so you didn't hit," and you've got Combat Luck. ) I _understand_ it. I accept that people like it and will use it (at other people's tables). Precisely! That's it exactly! Oh, he was looking the other way, so was unaffected completely. He had Flash Defense that was higher than your Effect Dice. That's at least _two_ ways that your Flash was, as I think was mentioned up thread, an "Endurance waster" or a "turn waster." Whatever it was; you shot your shot and nothing happened. If the GM ruled that half the guys had averted their eyes or just weren't looking the right way, and so nothing happened to them, or that they all had their goggles on and the Flash Defense did nothing, you wouldn't be nearly as bummed, I don't suspect. Well, other than the wasted END and such-- that's a bummer for any of us, really. It bears mentioning that Flash has its own unique mechanic. It has to, or it's not really flash: it's just some other attack being called Flash. It has a unique mechanic because there is something unique about it-- not just it's effects (Drain CV; Transform to Blind), but in whether or not it actually _does_ effect: If I'm looking the wrong way, you can still shoot me. You can take me out with a pistol, or an eye laser, or a poisoned dart, or whatever Energy Blast or Ranged Attack you want. You could even Teleport over and stab me in the kidney-- it would actually be _easier_ to do if I was looking the wrong way! Not Flash. If I'm sweeping drag on the patrol and I happen to be turned to double-check behind us when you Flash the column, I am _completely unaffected_. If I avert my eyes in time, I can reduce the effects I suffer-- all without actually having a special defense (though there is one available, should I wish to buy it). You can't do that with other attack powers; there is something different about Flash, and a different mechanic was created to better emulate how a Flash would work. And your example is bad: you blind someone based on your roll; you don't define the length of time for which they are blinded. I mean, I get what you're saying, but Flash doesn't work that way (unless you choose to take a series of Advantages and Limitations that make it work that way, of course). There is something that works that way, though: Mental Powers work that way. Mind Control; Mental Illusions, what-have-you. "I want to mind control him!' Okay. I rolled a 46! is he mind controlled? How would you know? Is he doing what I tell him to do? Tell him to do something. It's not like he put on a sign or anything. He didn't even stiffen up and moan "Yessss, Master....." So what's he doing? What he was doing before: shooting your doods; wrecking your plans. But I have him Mind Controlled! What did you do with it? With what? The Mind Control; what did you do with the Mind Control? I rolled some dice. I got 46. So he should.... Well he should stop shooting my doods! Did you _tell_ him to stop shooting your doods? Well, no. So tell him to stop shooting your doods! "Stop shooting my doods, Dude!" He keeps shooting your doods. So I don't have him mind controlled? I rolled a 46! GM stares at "psychotic killer" and "hatred of costumed heroes" in Disadvantages list. "You don't have him mind controlled enough to change his mind about shooting your doods; no." I _get_ that you are having a difficult time with why this is different from Flash or Killing Attack or any other power. Seriously, Christopher: I really do get it. And I sincerely want-- in addition to seeing what sort of alternate versions of mental powers might come out of this-- to help you get your mind wrapped around it. To that end, I have attempted to approach it with several different methodologies between this post and the previous one. You are dead set against Cumulative or against allotting a points budget akin to the powerful mentalists found in comics (at least those with which I am familiar, all of whom kind of suck at everything that isn't being a powerful mentalist. Again: I am certain there hundreds of others who do not suck at things other than being a powerful mentalist) The reason it works this way, I suspect, is because it's demonstrating that you _don't_ know how good a hold you have on them until you try to make them do something. There is no part of the mechanic akin to an ammeter or a fuel gauge. Now, if you want something like that, then there's no reason you can't build one. The obvious thing that presents itself is "Detect: level of Mind Control," or "Detect: target's 'Strength of Will' (ie, EGO score)." Then you can go straight-up meta (which really, almost _any_ "I know how much mind control I have over him before I actually try to use it" is going to be meta; there's just not a way I can see (yet) around that) and compare your roll to his EGO and know before hand just what level of control (if any) you have over your target. Problematically, it requires the GM to dismiss the "Make your command before you roll your effect dice" rule. You could consider an Adder: "Feedback Loop" that lets you know approximately how "in control" you are (I'd advise the GM in this case to use vague terms, but that will likely not be what you're after) before deciding what sort of command to give. There are lots of things, really. Essentially it's akin to doing damage, but rather than chipping away, you have to do overwhelming damage: 0 BODY means dying, but you have to get to -10 kill (or -original BODY score in the earliest editions). In these cases, EGO is both the "damage stat" and the defense, rolled together, which is just another reason the mechanic is different. Ultimately, it's all about Iron Man and machine guns, though: If you want big results, you have to buy big dice. There's nothing inherently unbalanced about that as a concept. As opposed to Killing Attack of Flash or anything else-- Points balance, I have said many, many times, and will say many, many more-- is a fabricated fantasy: it's a Holy Grail for the mathy types. No amount of Killing Attack is ever going to be equal to "breathe underwater" and no amount of "fly through the vacuum of space" is ever going to be equal Tunnelling; no amount of Mind Control is ever going to be equal to any amount of "howitzer shells burst harmlessly against my skin." Trying to find it-- or to force it-- isn't going to solve the problem. Ultimately, what Mind Control is buying you is the ability to pick another character in the game and run him, too. you are paying for the ability to create the Zombie Problem for your GM: Ten guys versus Ten Zombies. Nine guys versus Eleven Zombies. Eight guys versus Twelve Zombies. Wait-- we were evenly matched; now we are outnumbered by 50% ! Five guys versus fifteen Zombies-- we're outnumbered three to one! What the heck?! Having to buy a few more dice to deprive one team of their guy and add him to your team isn't an unfair deal. It's just not. Agreed. I find it absolutely just in all cases where that something else has equal value and utility to the dead thing it would have been. Beyond that; no. It is not the same. It's more than that. It's the Zombie problem: You now have two characters in the game / an extra guy on the team, while the other side has one less. Further, what can you learn from that guy? What does his fingerprint or retina pattern give you access to that you didn't have before? What powers have you taken away from the other side and added to your side? It is certainly more than a dead guy, and this sort of thing should not be as easy or as inexpensive as making a dead guy. Right. Thanks for remembering, Hugh! Breakout rolls existed in the first edition: every time you changed commands, you bumped up against a Psych Lim, you stopped spending END, or re-rolled the attack, the target got a breakout roll. They were replaced in 2e (though I still use them a bit, particularly when it is a PC that is being targeted. Players like to roll dice, and NPCs don't know what dice are ) . In both 2 and 3e, the Breakout roll was replaced with the idea that you were required to re-roll your attack (not your Effect Dice; these remained in play so long as you spend END) any time you wanted to change commands, bumped up against a Psych Lim, etc. No reason was ever really given, but I suspect it was the same reason I allow Breakout rolls for PCs under the effects of Mental Powers: Players like to roll dice. Why have the NPCs roll for Breakout when a Player can re-roll his attack? The end results were more-or-less the same (target is out from under the effect of the Mental power), so let the players have the dice fun. Yes: that is a one-hundred-percent unsubstantiated hypothesis which I will probably never be able to test, but it seems as likely as anything else. Breakout rolls went _nuts_ in 4e, where targets got to make an attempt every Phase after the first Phase in which he was Mind Controlled. I can only suspect that Harlick got targetted with a _lot_ of Mind Controls when he was playing. As the Breakout roll was based on just how powerful the Mind Control effect dice were _and_ received a cumulative +1 bonus _every Phase_, this was really nothing more than a Tax that effectively undermined everything 3e achieved by making the change of EGO x X to EGO + X, as characters wanting to build a Mind Control with the effectiveness of a 3e Mind Control had to really pile on the dice just to get that Breakout roll as low as they possibly could (since the Breakout could be attempted every Phase, and the Law of Large Numbers dictates that with enough chances.... Additionally, the target number for the breakout roll went up by 1 for each step up the Time Chart. Keep in mind that this did _not_ require the attacker to give a new command or make any changes whatsoever; it just _happened_, even if the attacker was still paying END for his Effect Dice. To compensate, 4e added in some "bonuses" for really high Effect rolls-- "target won't remember," etc. Honestly, those were just "gimmies," being as how you had to buy so many dice anyway just to ensure your target wasn't going to walk across the room and shoot you in the face three Phases from now. And thanks for the confirmation of that. I suspected as much, but I just don't know a lot of comic book stuff. Christopher: I am sorry I couldn't really play with your proposed system, but I've already been here too long. Hopefully, I will have time to look it over tomorrow night. Peace!

It's got to be late. It took me like eight minutes to catch that, and I have a passion for puns. I live in the wrong damned time zone to participate on this board. 😕

It's not that I don't want to help you, Amigo. I'm just not versed enough in the source material to be of any good to you.

I one-hundred percent agree with this. Back in the early days, before we started seeing supplements with things like "breaking out of prison cells" and "ripping cars in half," etc, it was _necessary_, just to have an idea of how much power made certain things possible. Sure, we could grab a number out of the air, but without putting any thought into it, you might find that the drywall you want to burst through to surprise your opponent will require you to do three or four move-throughs. Oops. Yes: there is always handwaving, but suppose your players have done something bad-- completely by accident. During the attempt to thwart Doctor Sinister, one hero missed with his patented Lightning Gun and struck the very vault in which the Nogoodium Serum is stored! Did the blast penetrate? Has the serum been destroyed-- or worse! Vaporized, even now wafting out into the air which our heroes are breathing?! Sure-- you can plot device this. But if it's not actually part of the plot-- it's something that just straight-up happened, and you want to make a fair call, well... what do you do? You compare things you understand in the real world and look at analogies in the game. You know that this vault is proof against small arms fire, look up an appropriate gun, and figure the vault needs at least X total DEF and BODY, glance at the hero's sheet and see that- whew! There's no chance he can penetrate it with a single shot. Lucky us! Sure, there's the "how quickly can he drop a normal thug" thing and "can he accidentally KO himself" thing and "how quickly could a thug drop him" thing-- No matter what, there are many, many reasons why I endorse and use this very tool with regularity. And evidently, Christopher and I aren't the only ones: I am not being picky here; I need some elaboration. Mental Powers are not like "other powers," save perhaps EGO Attack, which is a straight up damage dealer that works pretty much like other damage dealers. Beyond that, for example, Telepathy or Mind Control-- aren't trying to achieve the same thing as damage dealers: 4 dice of Killing Attack can liquify a guy; 4 dice of Energy Blast can mess him up pretty bad, but no amount of dice of Telepathy or Mind Control can do those things. Sure, enough dice of Mind Control can make him jump into the 4dKilling machine and liquify himself, but even then, it's not the same thing. That being said, I think you can see that I do not understand what it is you are saying with this statement, and would appreciate some elaboration. Thank you in advance. Hugh pointed it out in great detail, but at SPD 5, the character will have two Phases in five seconds. He will have 3 in eight seconds. If he gets enough effect in his first attack to order "Wait!" then he can get five Phases in 12 seconds. If the cumulative total of five Mind Control rolls isn't enough, then it might be time to examine the build. Wheelchair psychic man is precisely the sort of build I mentioned above: incredibly powerful, with great smoking wads of dice, because that's all he spent his points on. He even took the "legs don't work" Disadvantage to get more points for his mental powers. I accept that this is a source-material example of a high-powered Mentalist. I'm pretty sure that the Power to Cloud Men's Minds was nowhere near as powerful as Do My Bidding or You Are My Slave, but more "fear me" or "forget my face." Additionally, it was used against normals-- way less dice and way less radical results. It's kind of like Iron Man, when looked at another way. In the first movie (the good one), he flies to a village in the desert and confronts a horde of men armed with machine guns. The villagers were (rightly) terrified of the guys with machine guns, because machine guns versus normals gets really, really ugly (10-shot autofire of 3.5D6 RKA versus a 2 non-resistant PD and 8 to 10 BODY? Yeah; bad stuff there). Iron Man, however, was not the normal villager, and bullets left machine guns and hit him by the handsful and then spe-yanged off to who knows where. There is a point in Defenses where, even if you hit, you have absolutely no effect. This is pretty normal in Champions games (somewhat less so at Heroic levels, with the exception of several fantasy games). This doesn't turn the machine gun attacks into "phase-waster" attacks, though. It just means that they are useless against Iron Man. Put another way, Defenses are a normal part of Champions, up to and including the character's native PD. These are all deducted from the attack, and if there is no damage left, then that attack had no effect. The Defense for Mental Powers is EGO (and, for some folks, EGO Defense, unless that's been eliminated or rebranded as "EGO: only for boosting EGO against the effectiveness of Mental Attacks, -1/2. I don't keep track anymore). If you don't have enough points on your dice to overwhelm that 'defense,' then you have no effect. That's a perfectly normal part of every attack in the HERO System: overwhelm or circumvent defenses to gain an effect. Now, all that being said, we could look at remodeling mental "combat" such it deals damage as normal: Something to the effect of doing actual "points" of EGO Damage, and when the EGO gets to-- say Zero-- the target is now "EGO Dead" to you, and you can supplant your will in place of his-- and now I wish I hadn't said that, as the current drive to standardize and fold-in whenever possible, regardless of the logical reaches required, means that just may come to pass. Then we can replace "break out rolls" (which you don't get versus STUN or BODY Damage) with "EGO Recovery" or something, and as he recovers, your control slips and you can only make more and more agreeable "suggestions" to him until he is fully healed and you are no longer in control. No; that was a serious suggestion. It would work, and when it fails to work, it fails to work for reasons that we are already comfortable with: my damage didn't exceed his defenses; my damage wasn't enough to knock him out; etc. However, EGO Defense will likely become much, much more common, as will high EGOs even when they don't really make sense, just to guard against being "chipped away." Ultimately, though, it doesn't do what it is that I _think_ you are wanting: You cannot _immediately_ dominate another human being with a small investment of dice. interestingly enough, it _does_ open up more "like the other combat powers" options, like Amor Piercing and NND. Though really, you're the GM, so what's stopping you from doing that now? I bet no one in your game has bought his EGO as Hardened or as Resistant. Decide that these are viable in your game, and where you were once attacking EGO: 12 you are no attacking EGO: 6. Declare a "killing" option if you want. It's your game, ultimately. Or is that not something that you let characters do with Coordinated Attacks? I do, with the idea that they are pooling their efforts to gain control over one mind. The rest falls down to how well they handle it (it's better if they decide one guy is "in charge" and the others are working to reinforce the given command(s). You're not doing damage at all. I know that you understand that; I simply feel it is worth pointing out that not only is there a different effect with these powers, it is an entirely different mechanic-- one which I unapologetically feel offers a nice balance for being able to control someone else's character for a bit, but that's not exactly the point here, is it? It is an entirely different mechanic. I can't pretend to know _why_ an entirely different mechanic was chosen, but I suspect it was to drive home the feeling of "this works in a different fashion from doing damage." Again: I don't know. I may _never_ know. It doesn't matter, ultimately, because the important part here is that it is clearly not intended to work the way damage works. Further, it models source material mind guys: they dump oodles of points into it if they want big effects; lots of points into it if they want rapid but moderate effects. First, hats off to the "hit me in a rhythmic manner." That was funny. Moving on: Why? Why must there be participation trophy? You tried your power and it was insufficient. I wouldn't expect Grond to nurse a cracked rib if my shotgun failed to penetrate his defenses. I would (after running away really, _really_ quickly, mind you ) get a much larger gun or try something else entirely. Same with the mental powers: get a bigger one, or try something else. Seriously, Christopher: I am game to participate in hashing out a new method of using Mental Powers; I will play with that for _days_, so long as we are all having a good time with it. However, I won't be easily persuaded that the system we have now is broken simply because having a big effect requires a big expenditure; that is something that I think is _right_ with the bulk of this system. I touched on that in my first post: I think the 4e change was done to address what was a serious inequality with Mental Powers. Today's "EGO + 10" requires far less dice to get the same effect _on supers_. Or _on heroic_. Or, dare I say it so bluntly, on Characters With Names. Let's say The Mighty Crime Puncher has an EGO of 16. To get EGO +X levels, his attacker needs to roll 17, 26, 36, and 46. To get early edition's EGO x X levels, his attacker needs to roll 16, 32, 48, and 64. The differences become even more obscene when two Mentalists are dueling it out: Say the target has a 25 EGO. The 4e+ rules mean that the attacker must roll 26, 35, 45, and 55. The Early Editions rules mean that he must roll 25, 50, 75, and 100. I suspect (but don't know, unless Harlick is willing to spill the beans) that this change was made to address the very sort of issue that Christopher is wanting to address. In fact, that may well be the simplest answer: reduce the "per level" adder. Say you need EGO +5 instead of +10. Then you'd go EGO+1, EGO +5, EGO +10, and EGO + 15. Or drop the levels-- eliminate the lowest, and let that first layer of EGO +1 be the level that was once EGO +10; EGO +10 would then equal what was EGO +20. Or combine the two: 1/2 EGO would equal what was EGO +1. EGO +1 would equal what was EGO + 10. EGO +5 would equal what was EGO + 20-- and so on and so forth. Though I understand my long rambles and discussions don't really demonstrate it, I am pretty conservative about making changes to the rules-- I really study on them and play them extensively, and even then, I keep them as minor as I possibly can. So let me offer this minor adjustment in place of every other suggestion or "what if" that I've made thus far: At the consolation prize level-- determined by the GM-- say 3/4 EGO or even EGO, period-- the attacker gains a minor benefit-- perhaps a +1 OMCV against the same target, or the target simply loses the urge to attack the mentalist-- perhaps the target is even _briefly_ Stunned-- one Phase, perhaps-- something that gives a very minor boon that makes it easier to bop the target the next Phase, with the goal of filling up the cumulator. That's relatively minor, and addresses everything short of "I want to subjugate his soul with 4d6 of Mind Control!"

Okay, that didn't help as much as I thought it would. Don't get me wrong! It _did_ help, just-- well, not as much as I thought it would. I'm going to skip right over Transform, because you've already gotten a lot of that. (For what it's worth, Transform is one leg of the Trifecta of Cobble. You'll see it offered _a lot_ as the cure-all for your problems. That's to be expected, because it _does_ work. As has already been said: At any rate: if you are looking for a permanent (at least in a relative "lasts for a really long time" sort of sense), then T-form is probably your easy way out: turn this guy into some completely different guy. Here's you new character sheet; enjoy. If you are looking for something a bit more short-term, well.. T-form is still the easy way out. If you are looking not so much as adding all new powers and abilities, consider some form of AID with the recovery moved down the time chart a bit. I find this works great for Super Soldier serum type: you get a burst of raised characteristics and it doesn't last long. If you _are_ wanting to add new abilities, well... we used to do that will lots of fancy cobbles that likely won't fly in the post T-form world, but this was a novelty we'd dip into every now and again: Usable by Others. Give your power to someone else. Better-- and pricier-- was Transfer: Usable as Attack. Take one guy's power and give them to some other guy. It's awesome; it's fun; it's temporary. The harder part is the changes to the morality compass: How do I turn the armored truck driver and National Guardsman into murdering thief? Well, T-form, obviously, but there's also Mind Control (Christopher currently has a thread going about the expense of this sort of thing; I'd suggest taking a look at it). It's also interesting to note that simply Transforming "regular Joe into a murdering thief" can actually by cheaper than mind controlling him into making you a sandwich. How's that for neat? ) Mind Control is also short-term, and allows the victims a regular chance to break out of it early. So ultimately, it's really about precisely what you are looking to model, and precisely how hard you are willing to work at it. For most folks, T-form is exactly both of those things. Enjoy.

Some months ago, I posted a rather trite and cliche (sorry; I don't know how to do that little accent agu on a computer. Or how to spell it.) "intro to Champions" scenario I've used for years. It seemed to get a lot of response, and in the spirit of keeping the game alive, I gave it to the entire "fans of superhero games" community. You can sort of find it here:

In this way has the universe perpetuated itself for more millennia than even I have lived. There is a draw here, and such things have fascinated me for the entirety of my life. The gasses and particles are indeed infinite, so far as I can tell. I, who can travel for for thousands of years at a whim, and race at such speeds as to make the light hard and brittle-- I who have enjoyed so much passing that speed at which the light falls apart and flows as ripples of liquid, moved each by only the resonance of its companions-- I have never found an end to the particles. I have outstripped the light, but the gasses and the dust exceed me. Even in their infinity, though, they are not ubiquitous. There are great deserts of purest black, so vast as to be unimaginable to the lesser things I have encountered in my travels. Even then, these deserts are ringed by the particles. They are infinite, but not evenly spread. There are currents, eddies, movements-- some no more than simple rotations-- within the gasses. There are places -- places they do not wish to be? I have never been able to communicate with them; I have never been able to fully understand them. I have always been fascinated by them, however. Outside of me, only the particles and the light appear to capable of true movement, and even the light will falter eventually. What makes us different? What lets us move freely? For me, I do not know. I believe it to be my whims and my desires, but that was so long ago, when none of the suns I see now had even existed, nor had those whose discarded matter form the ones I perceive now. I have no reason to want it and therefore no word to express how long ago it was I felt my last whim, but it doesn't matter. The particles entertain and interest me, for I have never cracked their mystery. I know only that they move, and that is enough. I have learned that they are drawn, and after following them to thousands upon uncountable thousands of migrations, I have learned to feel the draw myself. It does not excite me nor pull upon me the way it does the gasses, but I am able to sense it. Soon the particles will begin their slow migration, creeping across the distances of All That Is, making their way here, to the Draw, and begin to press into it, one upon the other. I watch as slowly, meticulously, the first of the particles is caught in the draw. It spends a few thousand years moving closer, slowly increasing its speed, circling the draw, closer and closer, and by the time it is a single rotating speck in the center of the draw, billions of its companions have made their way closer, slowly forming orderly rows spilling from the vast clumps and clouds on the periphery of my perceptions. These few lines becomes hundreds, then thousands, then begin to blur as more pour in, looking like nothing so much as a vast disk of dust, formed by billions and billions of orderly rows of the particles, pressed into gasses, pressed into dust, as they follow their mindless call to the Draw, spinning slowly and lazily in upon each other, pressed tighter and tighter and as I am old now, and tired, and I have no desire to make another mad dash away at the last minute, I move slowly back. I have watched this phenomenon effectively forever. I do not remember a time before I would watch the particles as they spanned All That Is. I do not remember a time before I watched them mindlessly fall together, crushing into each other, tighter and tighter until they created a bubble of disturbance, at which point the Draw would magnify a million fold and the gasses crushed together and in an instant would ignite with a painful roar that tore through the All and a blistering wave of heat that always stirred and ... somehow frightened me. I had a healthy respect for the stars, particularly when they were at their newest. There was something about the heat they shed-- it wasn't like the light; it wasn't like the bubble of heavy nothing. The heat had a unique power, for I could feel it. At the right distance, it would energize and elevate me-- make me feel complete and at peace. Too close, and there was a sensation the heat gave that nothing else could. I have no word for it; it is terrifying, and it reduces me, removes abilities from me and replaces them with warnings and--- I have no words. I do not wish to experience it. I have subjected myself to it several times for study after learning that the effect is not permanent. I will not do it again, because one of those warnings is the idea of a concept I have come to call "yet." The effect is not permanent. Yet. I move far, far out to that distance that should, based on the size of the this Draw and its collection, should be ideal for maximizing the pleasant sensations, and I wait. Something is different this time. The collection has begun to contract and the Draw has bubbled, and the collection ignited, but it was so soon, and so small! It burned the barest fraction of what it should have, even at that size! I had scarcely rotated my existence completely through the zone of pleasure two times when this new miniature star flung apart-- showing burning chunks of itself impossibly far out of the Bubbled Nothing-- I perceived huge chunks of the star material burning their way through my existence, and the sensation... I still had no words. I would have to devote time to creating them, as it was obvious that this unpleasant sensation could be had in varying intensities. This had been the highest. For the first time, I had found myself contemplating the preference of non-existence to continuing to endure the sensation. There was no logic in that, as without existence, I would not be able to perceive the sensation nor decide a preference. The sensation had been so intense as to have deprived me of logical thought! Never before had-- What is this?! There, at the center of the former Heavy Nothing; at the center of the Bubble-- the very heart of what had once been the Draw-- was a thing! A new thing! I had almost not perceived it, tiny as it was-- barely larger than the particles whose dances I enjoyed. No. This is not a new thing. This is a thing I have perceived before. It lay floating, rotating lazily in the heart of the Draw. It was a strange and altogether hideous thing to behold, as it radiated so many energies, and it was so jarring in structure- it had taken many perceptions to determine its symmetry, as it was along only a singe plane! I had encountered many poorly-symmetrical things, but this was the first time I had encountered one in a Draw. It was the first time I had encountered one out among the particles. They were not common, and they were not all alike, but they seemed to be grouped by type and were usually part of the smaller Heavy Nothings that were often cast off by new stars when they exploded as this one had. I pushed my perceptions to their utmost periphery- pushed to a distance I had not attempted since the moment I came to be-- and I found no such smaller Heaviness within reach of the light this star had once generated, even so briefly. I pushed beyond where that light now was, and still found nothing. There was no need to perceive further; I had already established that only I and a certain of the particles could move faster than the light of a star. Why was this thing here? For what purpose had the particles created it? Was it... was it intended for me? Had this happened before, outside of my horribly-limited perceptions? Was this how I came to be? Had I a companion or perhaps even a progenitor who was formed this very way? Had my hypothetical progenitor perceived such a thing? What message was in the energies the tiny hideous thing radiated? What message was in the energies that even now dwindled away from it's envelope? I imprinted everything in my perceptions and began to study them, to develop experiments but even as I did so my perceptions indicated that the energies from the object were beginning to dwindle. What would happen should they cease? I had never done something in haste before. There had never been a need: all things lasted long enough for me to learn everything about them, and nothing had ever changed as rapidly as did this object. I understood that it should be preserved were I to study it further, were I to learn anything from it. The shock of its coming into being had created within my understanding so many questions about things I had never before questioned, and for the first time-- probably because I had begun to understand Yet-- I wondered if a thing might happen that would never happen again. I reached out my perceptions again to the tiny object, which I now understood was delicate, and I understood that it was possible for at least this one thing to be ever more delicate than fragile light, and I probed and questioned and learned and I gathered what particles I could-- those distributed throughout my physicality and those I passed through as I moved. I pushed and squeezed and forced and eventually I had created from them heat-- I marveled at this ability. I had never before wanted to effect anything. It was an interesting phenomenon. I pushed the heat toward the object and enveloped one within the other as I remembered the path to the small Heavy Nothing I had seen that was covered with objects like this one. Perhaps it would be safe amongst those objects sorted similar to itself. I began to move, and as I thought it, we were outpacing even the youngest ripples of light. I had to take care; the object might not survive contact with light in that state. My travel was slowed by the decision to avoid solid light, and by the need of perceiving the state of the object and its responses to the heat and the various gasses I offered. I did not want to destroy the object, but did not know without experimenting what the object needed in order to perpetuate. By the time I had brought it to the Nothing filled with objects like it, I had determined that the object was in deed stable, and radiated similar to how it had radiated at the moment of its creation. I had reveled in my ability to affect the components of All That Is, but did not account for the affect that altering myself to do this would have on me. My physicality had never been so small or so compressed, and the sensations were overwhelming. As we neared the small bubble of the Heavy Nothing I had sought, the bubble was affecting me in ways I had never before been affected. My physicality compressed as if it were merely particles in a Draw, and nothing I attempted could undo or even counter this. I was barely able to place the object onto the warm surface of the Nothing before all my perceptions were overwhelmed with sensations of Self. I could not force my perceptions to the external, nor could I control my movements or my placement in existence; there was nothing but the sensation of being crushed, compacted, tighter and tighter and in my single moment of clarity I wondered if this was how particles were formed, and if I had been wrong to assume their permanence and suddenly I was dwarfed by the object I had placed on the surface of the Nothing and there was heat unlike any star had provided for me-- worse than even having the burning fragments tear through me-- and I felt my form compress and harden and the indescribable heat burned and hardened my physicality and I fought to keep my connection to All That Is and my awareness and my knowledge and then I was surrounded by the strange matter of the Nothing--- I could feel the object. I was deeper into the nothing that it was, and I was unable to move or to use any of my abilities to affect myself. I could still feel the All. With practice, perhaps I could affect the All, and extricate myself. Perhaps I was still eternal, and had, in my haste to salvage the object for study, forced myself into the next stage of my existence. I wondered if I would have a successor, or if perhaps this is the method by which I would sire one. Above me, the object stirred. I reached out to the All. I pushed it to affect the other objects on this Nothing; I willed the All to summon aid for the object above me. I reached out to the object, planting within it the understanding that I alone had kept it alive; that I alone could continue to nurture it. Find me. Find me. ------------------------ There. That's how Gem users and Gems are made.

In the spirit of inclusiveness, I won't point out the number of times you've called me out for refusing to accept that the Champs III / 5e / 6e shapeshift rules are both horribly kludgy and completely unnecessary. That, and, in spite of the fact that we rarely agree, I do appreciate the amount of thought that you usually put into your ideas. All times can be those times, so long as we can all accept that not all cows are sacred to all people. Now forgive me for skipping the details of your suggested change: you've laid it out clearly enough, and Hugh has re-listed the relevant parts, so I'm going to skip straight to the conversation: I don't think you're alone in being unhappy with the EGO powers rules. I think the "+10" rule itself was the first attempt-- the first "coded into the rules" attempt, anyway-- to fix the problem. Remember the early editions? INT x1; INT x2; INT x3; etc? Those early rules meant that your Mentalist was going to be very effective against "normals" at a lower power level, but was going to have to become an absolute specialist to have anything more than the most minor effects on supers. As a correction, the +10 replaced the multiples. I'd like to say it made a difference, but really, it only seemed to make a difference for NPCs. I have yet to see a supers player want to really emulate the source material super mentalists: incredibly mental powers; normal or even feeble physical stats. They want the super Characteristics and defenses and movements, etc-- _and_ the high-level mental powers. Now I will say these characters _might exist_ in the source material, but not at such a high visibility that non-comicbook guys like me have ever heard of them. I am passingly familiar with the X-man in the wheelchair with powers so strong they rotted away his hair or something. I am familiar with the Spiderman villain who was just a _normal guy_ with lots of SFX and hypnodrugs witch which he created illusions (even the movie decided he needed powered armor. Hunh? ). I am more familiar with the pulps and the movie serials of the crazed hypnotists and mad swamis and fakirs-- all of whom were far less physically-impressive specimens than our hero, and accordingly had specialized in refining their craft to nigh-miraculous levels of effect. With those source examples in mind, I think the current system _does_ work quite nicely for emulating those examples. Still, it kind of fails in as much as it doesn't do what the players would like to do: be powerful mentalists with SPD 5 or 6, enough resistant defenses to bounce machine gun fire, powerful blasts of energy from their eyes, and the ability to fly at Mach 6. I can argue all day that the current system _does_ emulate nicely what it should emulate-- that is, examples from the source materials-- but really, if it doesn't let the player build the character he wants, then it really _doesn't_ succeed, does it? My counter to that is, of course, that he "grow into the character he wants to be" using EP as the campaign progresses. I won't, because I have learned over the years that this idea-- while it is pulled directly from the source material at the time I learned to play-- is popular almost exclusively in my groups (admittedly it's likely influenced by the fact that I taught the majority of my players how to play), and it anathema to most others who want to start out with demigods and perhaps build them up to legitimate godhood. This is, of course, also valid. It's not my own style, but if that's how another group has their fun, then they should be able to do it that way, correct? Like Hugh, I have found "Cumulative" to be the solution to a lot of things: Aids, Drains, Transfers,.... and Mental Powers. Just as an insight as to how my games have evolved to the point that I don't post builds: I have always had an issue with Advantages, Limitations, and Adders. I've always felt that if it's an Advantage, it should be able to apply to more than one Power or Power Type. If it cannot do that, then it should be an Adder. If an Adder can be applied to more than one power or power type, then it should be an advantage. If something can only apply to _one specific power_, (my go-to example for this is Teleport "facing," which was a non-issue until someone thought it should be), then it should be assumed to be a basic part of the power, and characters may opt to apply a Limitation that deprives them of it. (Thus, in my games, any Teleporter may choose to face any direction when he reappears, unless he has taken a Limitation that prevents that.) It has lead to some minor power re-writes (Change Environment now affects a single "point," and is increased with the existing Advantage: Area of Effect), but nothing so drastic as to really change the game or even greatly alter the points totals. That leads to this: I have found Cumulative to be an _excellent_ workaround for lots of "how do I make this more effective without having to dump eleventy-nine points into it?" problems. Cumulative, and a bit of patience-- you didn't get them this Phase, but next Phase they will be yours! And as for controlling runaway "cumulation:" There are lots of ways to do that, too. There is the built in limits of Cumulative, but if you feel that is not tightly-controlled enough, consider this still-experimental option I am currently playing with in a fantasy game: The character is required to spend Sway (sorry: in this current fantasy game, "Sway" is the user's ability to influence magic and bend it to his will. For supers, think "END." Sway isn't exactly END, but this is the model we are running right now, so it's the medium in which I have to test this idea) to cast his spells, and Sway costs-out in a fashion like END: the more dice he wishes to cast, the more Sway he must put forth. _However_, on cumulative spells, he must continue to exert Sway for the previous dice as well any additional dice he wishes to add at his next opportunity. He must exert the Sway for all dice until the final effect is achieved. Moving that to an END model, let's take four dice of Mind Control, which the 4e and beyond cost at 2 END, if I remember correctly. So the Mentalist spends 2 END to use his Mind Control, but if he is looking to accumulate it, he must continue to spend that 2END even as he spends the 2 additional END for his next roll. If he wishes to go higher still, then he must still maintain that 4 END and spend 2 more, etc. I'm not saying that this is a _must do_ thing; it's something I'm currently play testing because I was curious to see what effect it would have on the game. Still, it's a valid control over anyone intentionally "buying low" then upping his cumulative limit, etc, if that should become a problem in your game it (for what it's worth, it's not a problem in my game; I was looking to build a magic system that made "big" magic extremely difficult and extremely tiring while making "small" magic relatively common). At any rate, I have now tossed it out there. In summation: Go, Cumulative! You can do it!

It would help if you could elaborate on just what you mean by turning them into heroes (or villains). Do you mean giving them new special abilities, altering their morality and reactions, or a combination of both?

Thank you. I swear, I have spent decades amongst comic book fans (comes from playing RPGs, I guess), and I really thought I was the only one. Hands and feet are not shovels! Heads are rarely square, and faces are seldom completely flat! Careful when you say that out loud. I can do it because 1) it's a drum I've been beating since 2e, and 2) other people telling me I'm playing wrong has zero affect on how I play. Certain subjects-- for whatever reason- -are rather sacred to some folks. The ability to have a different shape is one that just incenses certain people, in spite of the "there's always more than one way to it" mantra.

Given, Sir.

I have the bulk of version 091 of that, actually. Not to sound pessimistic, but after a couple of decades of watching non-commercial websites crumble and die (I've said it numerous times, but I can't ever hope to convey how much I miss the web ring of Heroes), I decided to start snagging a few things from those rare sites that were (at the time) still extant-- not to do anything with, but on the odd chance I found anyone who wanted to make a real effort to finish some of these projects.

Limbaugh had a segment on his radio show at one time (and I may be dating myself here, but I am sure I am not the only old fart on this board) where he would read out loud the names of homosexual men who had died of A.I.D.S., then _cheered_ and laughed and sounded party horns and those little spinning grinder noise makers. I have heard this firsthand, with my own ears, and often enough to know it was a regular feature of his program. I have heard him do segments "proving" that minorities are the cause of all violent and drug-related crime. And most dispicably, at least to me, I have on more than one occasion via both television and radio, I have heard him, like so many others, use the Bible to "justify" not just this, but numerous other vile things he has put forward. To be fair, he is not unique in that. Lots of folks who have never studied it think they know what it says. I have heard him beat the Law and Order drum and blow the Crime and Punishment trumpet so loud and so long as to become his own parade-- and specifically I remember his indignant outcry at the horrors of drug abusers not being cast into prison for decades at a time. And I remember his own pleas for leniency and exemption when he was discovered to be one of these very same hardened criminals. I am commanded to find good somewhere in all people, and to love them because, as my Father's children, they are all my brothers and sisters. Alas, I have to simply assume that there was some part of Limbaugh that was worth knowing, as I have never seen it for myself. All that said, I suspect the tumors that killed him were perhaps the least cancerous thing about him.

Couole of things to follow up with: I typed biweekly when I meant twice-weekly. Sorry about that; I was in a hurry to get headed home. The rise and fall of our vampire game: My brother D picked it up, loved it, pushed it at me. I read it, liked the simplicity of the system and the consistent use of flavor throughout the book, and the extremely high production values, so I pitched it to my group and he pitched it to some of his friends, and within two weeks, we had a game group going. The new-to-RPG folks got into PVP stuff right away; those from the regular group who wanted to give this game a try helped us guide them away from that: it was pretty rare for my regular players to not have characters with a noble or heroic bent to them, but even when they chose to be the villains, they were always a team. We got the new people to understand that PVP wasnt cool, and we played on. After a month, someone pointed out that there was a sign up at the game store in Savannah with a couple of GMs who wanted to start V:TM groups, and one was on Saturday (we played Wed and Friday). We opted To drop our game to just Friday and all seven of us slipped into the Saturday game. That rocked on for maybe four months, and one of my co-GMs stated that he was having "creative burn out" from trying to come up with constant political machinations that could be subtle, powerful, well-concealed, and still somehow discoverable by our plucky band of would-be-Princes. We understood, and he bowed out of collaboration and running. About a month after that, at the Savannah game, we lost a couple of players and gained a couple. Without trying to add any insult, they were a strange style combination of Goth and Punk and generally just irritating people (like going-out-of-your-way to be irritating, as opposed to personality clash). After three sessions, they had a fair hand on the game, and the PVP started. After a few sessions of that, we brought up pregame that we were fine with the murdering and backstabbing and double-dealing and all that, but not with the PVP. The PVP continued another couple of sessions until my brother D and his friend J had gotten a belly full of it, and proceeded to demonstrate how skilled RPG players can abuse the Hell out of the meta if they want, and showed these two just what PVP could look like. I didn't approve (still don't: unless it's something we've discussed before hand related to your character and everyone involved agrees, I do not condone PVP in my games, even as a player.) So these two get huffy and drop the usual "bunch of geeks anyway" nonsense, and we inherit three new players from the other Savannah game, which had concluded a couple weeks before. All were new to RPGs, but had just loved trying this game and wanted to play again. And the PVP started within _minutes_, and when they weren't backstabbing the party (but never each other), they were talking about all the fun they had in the previous game, running around and forming teams and offing each other and breaking alliances- it was like Survivor, but with murder. Two more of our people dropped out before too long, and just stuck with the Friday game at my place. D and I agreed after six or seven months that we, too, were getting hard pressed to keep the intrigue fun and interesting: there are only so many ways to wrap the same mcguffin, after all. One of the players who had dropped out of the Savannah game during the second round of drops mentioned a sign up at the Statesboro game shop, and one more dropped out of Savannah into Statesboro (we had one who also joined and was now in three games a week). Eventually reports filtered back that there were _four_ games going on in Statesboro, and people got hyped. D and I even talked about just wrapping up the current arc and ending this campaign to let somwone else invent the politics for a while. That was when we also both admitted that we were starting to get a little worn out on political intrigue as a whole. Maybe Two months later, we did just that, even as reports from the 'Boro came back detailing PVP being the norm, poor grasp of RPG conventions, and games devolving into massive brooding and fashion talk, makeup sessions, etc. And, as Spence mentioned, there was talk of palpable funk. You can only wear a long coat so long in Georgia before your skin will tear from the sheer force of the sweat pressure, and caked white make up doesn't really help the pores. Still, we were really just _done_ trying to re-spin "major vampire power move behind zoning ordinance 146!" And such. Besides, we had found a place to wind down and end on a high note, and we took it. Our gang of players hadn't become Princes; there wasn't a ruler among them. They had, however, become a force to be reckoned with, and there were nervous rumors about them-- anyway. We ended the campaign. The Savannah game was devolving each week: S and I were the only two of our group still remaining, and the replacement players were- the only way to phrase it nicely is to say that they made sure everyone saw them playing Vampire and brooding about having to be here with "normals"(though there was some other, presumably goth-specific word that clearly meant "unhip"). The PVP had pretty much taken over the game at that point, and the only reason I still showed up was because I was vested in the story and wanted to make it to the conclusion or die trying. S had given up. She still played, but it was mostly because she had now become curious to see if any of the other players would be successful at killing her. Again, this was just a matter of an experienced gamer having a leg-up over someone following just the Rool of Cule. She had, by the time she just gave in to get out of the game-and if I remember correctly; it has been a while- sixteen PC kills under belt. She never went looking for them, but she found herself targeted quite regularly (it took a while for either of us to figure out that these guys thought this was somehow "flirting" with her). Eventually, when she became aware of being stalked (yet again, and ehy), she simply announced "why sneak up on me? Beg for it, and my blood is yours." (I only remember that because it was so damned weird until I realized that she was talking player-to-player). I did join the Statesboro game the week after we wrapped our game (thr one I was running in Hinesville). Three weeks after S left the Savannah game, I played my second (and next-to-next-to-last) Statesboro game, and dropped out of the Savannah game when- Okay, non-smokers who live in cold weather country: have you ever noticed just how freakin' grotesque the air is around smokers in the winter because it doesn't occur to them to wash the jacket that they have been smoking in for the last two months? I realize that most people will never have any reason to learn this, but sweat works the same way! If you wear a greatcoat in sweat weather, for weeks on end, you will attain a level of fetid that can only be described as "gagnificent." They seated a new player who was _truly_ gagnificent, and I didn't last another thirty minutes before I decided I would instigate some PVP of my own just to discourage him from coming back. As I said, I don't do PVP. As soon as I realized I was considering it as a means of nasal (and throat, really. Just like a smoker's winter coat, you could _taste_ the stench just by being too close), I announced that the death of his closest friend (S's character) had been to much, and he leapt into a blast furnace at the foundry below which the party was currently building fortifications. Two more nights in Statesboro, and I quit that game, too. Like I said: it wasnt the game. I enjoyed the game. It wasn't the vampire schtick. I mean-- they're a staple of Fantasy anyway; I was familiar with them. It was the bulk of that game's players that pushed me off of it. Touch screen phone, an autocorrect that studied English as a third language, and I am not quite in the habit of carrying my reading glasses everywhere I go. Hell, I am barely in the habit of remembering they exist! It's a very recent addition to my collection of afflictions, and I haven't gotten the swing of it yet.

I have no idea how. This will the eighth or ninth time i've commented-- on this very board-- that I really enjoyed the system, the setting, and the game; it will be the fourth or fifth time I mentioned playing it biweekly for the better part of a year, and we had a blast until toward the end. The vampire thing wasn't a turn-off; the politicking sort of was. The fans definitely were. Eventually, as players we got tired if the constant political intrigue, and as GMs, we got tired of having to constantly come with up intrigue and soap-opera subplots. It wasn't vampiric things that bugged us; it was politics, which is the same thing that bugs us about most contemporary fantasy settings.

Sorry, Spence; That wasn't for any one person. It was a reference to the rotational cycle of this topic.

And finally: It would be more appropriately named "Vampire: the Marketing." Remember when it came out? Pop culture was nuts for all things Vampire. Anne Rice was Still a hot seller, the hipsters were still pretending Buffy was a niche, and there was a brief revisit to goth style in the youth. As Spence noted, it wasn't marketed to typical RPG players; it was marketed to fang bangers and daydreamers who were spending those vampire bucks. And when the winds shifted, WW sailed beautifully, socializing and generally de-monsterizng werewolves in the same way when Shark boy started taking off his shirt regularly. I don't remember just which way (I had lost interest in Vampire for the exact dame reasons Spence pointed out: the people playing were... Well, the polite southernism is "touched a bit."), but WW made a pretty deft shift to ride the tide of Blair Witch, and that was every bit as in-and-out as it should have been. For those who stuck with it, they kept grinding out supplemental material, all of which amounted to more versions of the same thing that sold, and the fans kept buying. It makes all the WOD stuff less an exercise in how to make a game that appeals to RPG fans and more of a treatise on "how to cash in on a trend at just the right time." I know there have been hundreds of discussions here on how HERO should have capitalized on the Marvel movies, but there is just no way that would have worked: you want instant recognizability and a rules set that can be picked up, learned, and played by any group of never-played-an-RPG-before types in a weekend, a week at most. White Wolf did that very thing. The "HERO System" just won't work that way, and each new revision moves it further from having any hope of ever working that way. A superhero game powered by HERO? That might have worked, but only had HERO had a chance in Hell of licensing known characters. Nobody saw Golden Heroes or Prowlers and Paragons making any new splash via the popularity of the Marvel Movies, right? Supers is a super-crowded market; fantasy is a super-crowded market; steampunk has played out; the last good pulp was Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (don't question it! Just watch it again, with more seasoned eyes!) or possibly Sid and Marty Croft's Land of the Lost, though Brendan Fraser's Mummy movies were awesome; sci-fi that says Star Trek squeaks by; sci-fi that says Star Wars does extremely well, but only Disney makes money on anything Disney owns. Ultimately, its like any other 'going viral' event: we can sit here and armchair just what needs to happen when and why, but its a matter of a perfect storm of random factors- Remember the one true 5e powered-by-HERO game? MHI? Well-loved franchise; an author who is almost his own caricature; books still selling great guns? After the deal is made, the author pulls a stunt that tanks his popularity, and the game went nowhere. There is no magic balloon to carry HERO onward and upward; there is just a lot of hot air about what the ideal solution is.

Well, I live and work primarily outside in the South, so youd be hard-pressed to call me "past-faced." while a large chunk of Job 1 is desk work, its not the largest part of the day, and job 2 is straight up grunt work mixed around desk time. Wierd for a guy with a nursing degree, I guess, but it turns out I hate touching people and my claustrophibia doesnt like walls without windows, so there it is. you want to talk diversity? I have spent years here fairly certain I am one of an extreme minority of blue collar RPG fans, and the only one who plays HERO. Ditto. I think the bulk of us still here drifted over from Red October, but I'm getting old; my memory gets slightly more romanticized with each year that passes... Congratulations on not having internet died yet, Doc D!

As I tend to backport everything new into 2e, I, like Spence, am still doing 1/5 for END. Making it more challenging is that I still do Red END the old way: keep halfing it until you get to .5 for 0 END. I like it better. For one, it controls power leveks and power creep far, far better than any suggested campaign cap or guidelone ive seen; it keeps battles fairly brief, and not always decisive, and brings its own special sort of tactics. But then again, I dont know much about comics, save that I have a preference for the Spiderman / Doc Savage end of the scale to the "why are they not demanding worship and tribute?" end of the scale. I dont need universe-destroying villain power levels to keep the thrill and sense of danger real to the players, and the built-in limits of expensive END and expensive END reduction keeps the PCs themselves from being absolute threats to the nation. I know there has for many years been discussion of Registration acts, etc (I dont use them, as I prefer a more idealized setting of a free nation with responsible citizens), but in my mind, a super with the power to level buildings with ease or do millions of dollars in collateral damage four battles a day isnt going to be forced onto a registration list: hes going to be incarcerated "for the public good" at _best_, and quietly exterminated if containment should prove impossible-- in a "we faer them, so we register them" type setting, that is. Anyway, pros and cons for our own games, I find the 1/5 just yields a better experience for me.

Oh, how I wish I could.....

Given, Sir.

She should market that thing! I'd pay a premium to actually have a cellphone my mother-in-law could understand how to use.

Icant check from work, but disnt one of the fantasy hero books from way back have naval combat? Granted, sail-powered, but it shouldn't be that hard to extrapolate, Also granted that I could be mixing my game system aupplements in my memory.