Duke Bushido

On a totally unnot-related note, why is there no "groan" smile in the bank here?

I can't remember the author's name, but if you count "Armor," then there was at least one other, yes. Excellent book; I've been trying to get my wife to read it for twenty years. I hold it up there with Santiago for "books that really aren't my style but blew me away in spite of that." It was almost a love letter to the concept of Starship Troopers, with the focus squarely on war and its effects on one particular man.

Same here.

"Champions Pi." I rather like that! I've been leaning toward "Champions Jet" for my own compilation project. Of course, now that western HERO and Horror HERO are done, and there are already PDFs of all the 4e and back stuff (except Champions 1e: that could be much, much better, and have the actual 1e character sheets instead of the 2e sheets), I may have time to play with it again. I've also decided to use the colored-on images from my first couple of books (my players--and especially their kid siblings - and later their children-- found colored pencils and HERO Games books to be a smashing combination. And truth be told (there will likely be a lot of hate for this), I didn't mind it: whatever increases the satisfaction of the player experience, I figure. Anyway, I think I'm going to scan those and clean them up and include those colorized Mark Williams pictures in my Jet edition. . What can I say? They are quite sentimental to me.

Old Man: I always had a grievance with the necessity of a sword for decapitaion: Given enough bullets and a sustained rate of fire, you can completely remove a head with a gun. Or a grenade. Or a weedwhacker. Why was the sword so important?

Is there a way to counter or recover from martial throws: landing on your feet with full or half CV or something like that? I only ask because it _is_ possible for a skilled driver to counter the Pit maneuver--not just race car drivers or stunt drivers; I mean, we've all seen that video clip with that kid in the Mustang, right? It _does_ take skill (Ala martial arts, in this build), but if there is no way to counter or recover from a martial throw, it might not be the best way to model the Pit.....

For what it's worth, you can, from time to time, pick up an old print copy for about the same price--I got my back-up copy for about five bucks and 3 dollars shipping. It even still had the arena maps (though the Car Wars counters were missing). Its just me. Eventually, I want PDFs of _everything (that's how the Western and Horror HERO books came to be here) - and I've got a huge selection of them already, to be sure! - but I will always prefer to hold, smell, hear, and read a book. To _that_ end, I've been slowly working on getting a minimum of ywo copies of everything 4e and older, and two copies of 5e Revised and Sidekick revised rules books. I also intend to get one copy of each of the blue books for 6e (and _possibly_ a second copy of 6e Sidekick (sorry, "Basic") but I kind of doubt I'll bother). Not _exactly_ sure why, but let's remember I'm the guy with 13 copies of the 2e rules book, so..... Hey: On that subject, is there anyone who needs and _will use_ the 6e blue book HERO System Skills? I ordered Skills and Grimoire on a single order (used, excellent condition) from a book finder service, and ended up getting two copies of Skills. Caveat: if you have 5e "Ultimate Skill," then you do not need this book. It is a word-for word reprint of that book. You will find that references to a page number in one of them is equally valid for a page number in the other. Worse still, the splash page is a black-and-white version of the cover of Ultimate Skill. I seriously dislike that cover. Absolutely nothing wrong the art; nothing at all. I just think it would be more suited for "Ultimate Gadgeteer" or something, given that the guy on the cover is running and cobbling some tech, and looking far to frantic to be someone in possession of "ultimate skill.". ;). I don't know: as much as I don't like him, the phrase "ultimate skill" conjures immediately images of Batman or Terminator (is that right? Black and orange one-eyed mask with scale mail sleeves and legs?), who have unflappable faith in their skills, and not some guy running through a cluttered apartment in a near-panic. Great art; bad match. Anyway, if you need and will use it, it's free to a good home. A few weeks ago I found myself with a second copy of CC and gave it to Ruggles; some time before that I had too many 3e bestiaries, and gave one to Goodwin. Either can attest that the packing will be postal-worker proof. You'd have to go straight to UPS to get them damaged.

DUDE! Thank you so much for this! No- I don't recommend it for a redo or a sequel or anything like that: personally, I am against all remakes of all things, period: if they were _good_, then leave them the Hell alone! They were good. This means they were loved as-is, and look what you did to RoboCop, Predator, and a thousand other things that _were_ good. Stop it. Go out and _prove_ you have the skill and are with the money by doing something _new_, period. If something was bad, it is almost never bad exclusively because of casting, or because of effects, or anything else. People _forgive_ flaws for good movies. Look how many black and white Sci fi movies are still loved. We _know_ we can do better effects and way more colors, but we love them and leave them alone. If everyone did that, we wouldn't have had that last God-awful War of the Worlds thing. Fine: it had moments. They did _not_ save the film. Rebooting, re-doing, re-imagining: no! Don't do it, not now, not ever. I can't remember the name of it- the crap... Well, it wasn't even a crap_fest_, as the was nothing festive, or even lively--in it, so let's say "the crap.". The crap that was the sci-fi movie with the farm spaceship (hydroponics? I don't remember) and the three robots Huey, Louie, and Dewey? The curly-haired belong guy with the cold dead eyes? I can't remember the name of it, but that thing was crap. Absolute crap. And it wasn't crap because the hallways did t look like hallways. It wasn't crap because the robots didn't look like robots, or the ship was practical effects instead or weirdly-lit or over detailed CGI. It was crap because it was boring, with no script to speak of, nothing for the actor to bounce off of, a premise that had nothing to do with the bulk of the movie, etc, etc, etc: the thing was just a massive collection of loose stools, and remaking it is going to do nothing but make it a steaming pile with modern SFX and freakin' over-the-top melodrama (because it's the only drama anyone seems capable of writing anymore: the BSG remake could have been amazing, if it had been an action movie type thing, or even a drama, but no: a GD melodrama in which Susan Lucci would have been at home, and it made it ridiculous. Too bad, as BSG has always been dear to me. My local cable doesn't do SciFi channel, either: I had to buy a sixty dollar set of disks to find out it was garbage filled with pretty people). Anyway: no! No remakes! You cannot prove anything about your own abilities by wrecking the work of someone else, period. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for saying, out loud, that you've seen the movie "Looker.". It's a personal favorite of mine, and I have never been able to discuss it with anyone because I have never met another soul who has seen it. In the words of M'Gatu (the Zoolander one; the Star Trek one didn't talk. ), "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" So thank you for confirming it wasn't a kick-ads dream I had. Duke

And if you really want to avoid Claisentience and have a reasonably inexpensive build, go with Telepathy. Moreover, Telepathy may be more appropriate because of a built-in limitation that Claisentience does not have. A Claisentience-based build is essentially "here; use my eyes!" (or ears or tongue or what-have-you). There is no inherent limit to what the recipient will perceive, so long as it is in the range of the borrowed perceiving neurons. So if you want to build "take another look" or "am I missing anything?" (both wonderful ideas that I am now in love with, by the way, and will have to work into Danica. Thanks! ), then I suggest Clairsentience is ideal: the borrower gets his own perception roll to notice whatever might be in the lender's field of perception. But there's a drawback as well: if you're building "Let me show you something," well, they might not see it. They might, using the same eyes you saw it through, not actually see it because of a flubbed perception roll. With Telepathy- Well, Telepathy is a communication medium. You can use it to describe, in as exacting a detail as you wish, everything that you are perceiving. Owing to the odd "monologuing takes no time" rule, it's barely even a hand wave to turn that into "describing what I see in absolute minutiae takes no time," which actually makes _more_ sense when you apply the SFX of this power as "you can see what I can see." mostly because you don't _actually_ have to describe every little thing: the borrower is seeing it with you. Now how are these builds functionally different? As noted, with Clairsentience, the borrower is borrowing your senses to make his own perception roll. He is seeing what _he_ sees with your eyes, and not necessarily what _you_ see, with all the pros and cons inherent to that concept. With Telepathy, he needs no perception roll, as he sees exactly what you see (because that is all you would ever be able to describe to him, after all) making it a certainty that, if you are trying to show him a specific thing, he _will_ see it. Of course, he will never be able to perceive what you do not perceive, even if it is in plain sight: he is getting the exact image that your brain is recording, so to speak. At first blush, the differences don't seem significant, as they both do _generally_ the same thing. The most critical difference is if the two characters are seeing _from the same vantage point_, or if they are seeing _the same thing_. If you will bear with me for an anecdotal example, some years ago my wife and I attended a rally in north Georgia. Short version: The entire group ended up at an observational pull-off in Tennessee and we pulled off for chatting, clothes changing (those wanted to) and rest (for those with tender backsides). A lot of us wandered over to a line of post-mounted binoculars to peer into the valley or the hills the other side of it. My wife was quite impressed with what she saw, and begged me to take look. I saw a _sweet_ looking Suzuki Samurai, silver with red stripes and a beige soft top; it was an exact copy of the one I owned before Dan "the Fraud" Rather faked his investigative report into the dangers of the Sammy (I think you Aussies call it the Jutney or something like that?), prompting no end of hell from the woman I was with at the time until I sold it just to keep the peace. (I loved that stupid thing: best camping and fishing car _ever_!) I giggled, commented to my wife that it brought back memories, and I thanked her. And she asked me what the hell I was talking about. Apparently, I was _supposed_ to notice the home with the creek running behind it and the for-sale sign in front. I missed that completely. And that's how the Clairsentience build will work without handwaving it otherwise.

Run up to the HERO store on this site. Never cared for that one myself, but I did toss the counters and maps in with my Car Wars stuff way back when. (oh, if I remember right, you'll need Car Wars as well. Stev Jasckon Games periodically releases a super-stripped down version as a give away, but when it's not a give-away, it's still guite cheap. Seems goofy, but Car Wars already does everything your suggesting, and it's extremely fun. We did this a time or six for car chases in Espionage games. It was awesome.

Yes, in spite of my going to see it SEVEN TIMES!

Effectively, we had that in 5, re5, and 6: Sidekick then the rules. Didn't seem to bring the waves of new players we've all been hoping for. I'm not a naysayer by nature, but I don't see the point anymore. We had 5-- "to address and correct problems with 4, and introduce stuff that players really wanted to see," etc, etc. Was it what? Eighteen months?-- we had Re-Five. And it wasn't too many months before Steve mentioned the need for a 6 and shortly after that the SETAC was formed, etc, etc, etc-- to solve all the problems and quibbles a quirks of the Second Coming of 5. So.... 5, as evidenced by the existence of a successor, failed. 5 revised also failed. 6, by nature of this very discussion and others like it-- with it's broad sweeping changes and tearing down of a couple of long-held traditions-- failed. And at this point, I can't see it not failing no matter how many tens of thousands of pages are written. It's not the fault of the game: Hugh and Duke and Christopher and Brian and Ed --- we all want something different out of the game. There is no way in Hell anyone is going to write a rule book that gives each and every player exactly what he wants. Hell, life itself has _way_ fewer rules, and even that can't make us all happy.

I can't tell you for certain, but I'd start with Scott Bennie's Champions of the North: a 4e sourcebook that got a 5e revision. I'd check for you, but I'm at work. And, because sometimes things just come together like that--- I have this page bookmarked in my phone as I was reading it yesterday at lunch. Not official, but still a nice start: https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/champions-the-wendigo/

Dude, let me take a minute to thank you: Thank you so very much! It's extremely well-done, and I have very much enjoyed reading it through three or four times now. (Never got to use it, but I'm the only ST fan in any of my groups, so I wasn't really surprised by that). It's great work-- wonderful work-- and best of all, I now have (sort of) someone to whom I can attribute it in my records. Thank you, Sir. Duke

Hugh, my man, I have never loved you more than I did right there.

I agree. All that time and effort could be spent making a _good_ movie instead.

What happened to Skype? I remember eight or nine years ago running a game over Skype. Not too terribly buggy, even with the video feeds. Don't think I could ever do it again, though: so many people breathing heavily into headsets..... I can't explain it, but that's got a seriously high gross-out factor for me.....

I have no idea where to best place this, but I have been up well-beyond bedtime looking for something-- anything-- and I though maybe you fine folks might know something. I recall a few years ago (a couple years ago? Hell; I'm not sure. The older I get, the faster they go by. Seems kind of crappy as a life path model: the closer you get to the end, the faster it comes. Who the Hell thought _that_ was the way to do it?! ) Anyway-- "some while back" an Italian doctor was going, by "X" date, to transplant the head of a disabled Russian man onto another body. I've spent the past two hours looking for updates on that, but I've come to the conclusion that it just didn't happen (not that I thought it would, at least not successfully, but hey-- crackpots advancing science? Well-known for its significance: as anyone who has had heliobacter pylori completely cured. Anyway-- has anyone heard different? Did this nut actually convince someone to do the whole "Head of Vekna" thing? Thanks. Duke

Thanks, Amigo. I live to amuse.

Samo Hung? That fella could do _insane_ things, even when morbidly obese, and well into his golden years. Again, choreography, but the fact that he was doing all that stuff with the body of an elderly Wal Martian is mind-numbing.

Anybody else remember when flerkin' was an adjective?