Duke Bushido

Right you are. That honor belongs to that one with the guy choking on tears and blubbering out "Have a very Merry Christmas! And a Happy new year!" While the Children of the Corn are behind him, swaying in the wind with "aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAA......" That is a thing of nightmares....

Dude! It's probably because I can't understand a damned word of it until the Khadafi clone speaks two sentences of english, but I kind of like that. It's sort of a reggae/rap blend that, as you say-- has a very cyberpunk feel, and it just kind of works together. All those BMW flatties don't hurt, either.

I understand your pain so very well. I have sworn to throat-stab anyone who, in my presence, uses the word "space" more than twice when describing home decor or floor plans.

There's two words that are strangely close together....

I'll have to take your word for it. A few decades back, I dated a gal who was a huge Dylan fan. I'm pretty sure in the course of those three years, I heard (many, many times) every cussed thing he ever recorded. From all the uncounted hours of direct exposure to his work, I think I actually understood a grand total of six or seven words. The rest of it was a trapped housefly, buzzing angrily from deep within some unfortunate guy's sinus cavity.

Just ignore this. Apparently I have to go manage something to get this picture up, and well.... right now, I don't wanna.

The tragical truth about the Discovery channel is that it hasn't been educational for _years_. That's why the stuff with actual interesting tidbits comes on at odd hours and utilizes the services of narrators guaranteed to cure your insomnia.

Oh my oh _MY_! Thank you, Tribble! Thank you so very, _very_ much! I finally understand what the young guys at the plant actually _mean_ when they say "that is the whitest whiteness that has ever been whited." In related news, I just discovered that the board will not let you post every single thing Bob Dylan ever recorded....

It's not so much about building the drama as it is keeping the modern American's three-minute attention span.

Damn the usefulness! They'd be _fun_! And if they're fun, we'll _find_ a use for them.

I agree with everything Bolo says except for adding "mobile." As not every camera is mobile, we run into the "if you pay for it, you get it" conundrum: what can we do to make it "sort of mobile?" when you decide to look through the skycam mounted on the local suspension bridge? I'd personally just hand wave the "mobile" part: you can continue to see what the camera sees, so long as it is within the range of your power. Once it mobiles on out of range, you're back looking through your own peepers, hunting for another camera.

I totally agree, and all counts. But in the interest of completeness, and to address a specific important point Scott brought up, I need to add just a bit: It's _not_ something I do a lot of. As someone mentioned above, if the characters change the world by screwing up, well that can be fun, too, at least, in a long-running game with multiple arcs, etc, etc. I do it when the players are about to really, _really_ screw up royally because they are not really in it: do something to pull them back into the game. I do it when the conclusion of the entire campaign is in sight and everyone is totally stoked (especially if there are no plans to continue the world). I do it because the players _wanted_ a challenge, and what I prepared for them didn't _quite_ meet it the way I hoped it would. I am most likely to do it in a four-color (I think I have the right name for the "feel" I'm looking for) supers game or relatively optimistic Heroic game. I do it most for new role players-- not new to HERO, per se, but new to role playing in general. Above all else, though, I do it rarely. But every now again, you have to stretch a bit to give the players what they want in the moment, and every other now and again, you have to stretch just a bit to save them from themselves, if only because you have nothing prepared for a post-nuclear setting.....

Oh, and of course, there's the opposite problem: The guys are really off their game tonight. This group of baddies I put together is going to absolutely _kill_ them! Hmm... better take the baddies down a notch or two.... So the next combat round comes around, and "he doubles over your fist, wrapping around it like a meat glove and he chokes sputum in a trail behind you. As your blow completes its arc, he spins half a circle on one heel and crumples over, whacking his head on the stone floor below. He's not moving, there a small bit of blood matting the back of his hair, but it doesn't look serious, and though his breathing is shallow, it's regular unlabored.... All right, Zandar! His overconfidence was his undoing, and he wasn't keeping his mental defenses up as he should have been! Looks like your Mind Control got him at Level Three; anything he might consider doing anyway. You guys _may_ have just turned the tide on this battle....." It goes both ways, but it's still that thing you hate.

Let's assume the GM is here to tell a story _with_ you. Though mini-monologue here (not exactly a rant, because I've had a really bad day, culminating in a house fire (small one), so I just don't have the energy. Moving on: Everyone has a story of some nightmare GM who took the idea of a game as him versus the players. Well I can't help it you had an idiot GM. At some point, I think we all did. Personally, I have never even understood the temptation: the GM has all the monsters, all the universe, all the powers, all the character points-- pretty much _everything_ on his side. It's stupid to even let the adventure go any further than "as soon as you are all on the same continent, you can see the asteroid plummeting toward, just enough under light speed that it's visible, and you know the game is over, and I win." So let's look at why the GM you trust _might_ do this: 1) the players are rolling great, and having a really good time with this particular combat. Two opponents manage to have two STUN more than they should have and go another round. Hurray! We had fun, and realistically, we didn't even notice, but I really liked the way we worked together on that last maneuver! 2) The players are stymied, this last round of asses they are kicking are closer to the big bad than they seem to realize. Since this entire adventure the players have decided "let's beat them unconscious, arrest them, and keep hunting for clues" will actually deprive them of the very clues they are looking for, why doesn't this one guy manage to stay awake long enough to make a comment or two that will put them on the right track? 3) There is something brewing behind the scenes on a timer, something they should have figured out two sessions ago, but they're being unusually thick since they decided to follow this track. By now, the Doomsday Plan is scheduled to go start countdown, and they haven't even figured out it _exists_, let alone the whos and whats are behind it. One of these guys needs to run away so he can be followed somewhere that will get them on the right path. I can assume that this premature butt whoopin' has perhaps upset the plans, and the Doomsday Plot needs to pause countdown until some X I now have to fit into the plot so the whole city doesn't go blooey while these guys pat themselves on the back for reverting to stress-relieving thugs the last five sessions. So he needs a couple of points of Stun left, and he needs to run away and be followed. 4) I've opted not to continue the list, because there are just as many ways that players screw themselves and _need_ some tiny bit of help in the form of a bad guy who didn't go down when you think he should have. I have instead opted to give an example from the conclusion of my youth group game (it wrapped up last week-- went four sessions into school season, which I was really trying to avoid, but it happened. Fortunately, no one minded. In fact, they all seemed more upset that it wrapped up at all than they did about it cutting into their homework. ). At any rate: the final boss is going to make good on his threats of killing every living thing in the city since his plot has been foiled. ignoring two month's worth of clues (or roughly ten gaming sessions) that his geo-destabilizer _is_ ready and _does_ work and _will_ tear a rift through the city (and beyond) that will release a small ocean of magma and a cloud of absolute death that will travel across a couple of states before dispersing, the players have decided to instead wade through wave after wave of villains and thugs and go stomp a new mud hole into Big Bad's anus. It was, I am afraid, terribly, _terribly_ important that as Big Bad retreated to a hasty retreat a villain who, by the dice, was at -1 BODY and -13 Stun (he was the least unconscious super in this showdown) rouse himself awake behind the heroes (as they were paying close attention to all the active villains) and fire a shot over the heroes and directly at the Big Bad, missing him (but "accidentally" destroying the control panel nearest to him). When two of the heroes turned to beat on him some more, he dropped to his knees and cried "You guys are too tough. I thought we'd take you. Stop him. I have two kids. Don't let him kill my kids...." Then-- and _only_ then-- did it even _OCCUR_ to the players that "Holy cats! He really _can_ take out the entire city!" and buckle down to figure out the threat (for what it's worth, the Big Bad then shot Mr. Second Thoughts straight through with his lava blast (Big Bad was a geomancer who had figured out how to build a super-gizmo to amplify his powers, but only briefly, so--- dead city, right?) So folks can bitch and fuss all they want: sometimes you have to cheat to give the players a great game because they won't always let you do it straight by the dice. Good night, all. Duke

Yep; that's pretty much how i play it. Players know how much damage they take; they know how much damage they delivered, but they don't know where the enemy is standing in terms of END, Body, Stun, etc. Sometimes, you just need the bad guy to take one more hit, or deliver one more blow, or be conscious long enough to surrender or run off in a particular direction before succumbing in order to put the players where they need to be. Sometimes you need them to drop a bit sooner than you thought they'd have to, in order to keep the players away from where you need them not to be. It's pretty straight forward.

Tanooki is kind of cheating! You get dog lovers and racoon lovers all in one ball!

You and I have radically different ideas of "cute," Sir. That thing looks like someone put eyes on its butt.....

"i'm tellin' ya! I'm tellin' ya! I swear, I'm goin' over....!" "Damned right you are, Mate!" shove...

That is absolutely correct. Her write-up is page 114.

HA! I was thinking the same exact thing! Didn't know there _was_ a movie. I guess you're the wrong guy to ask if it was any good....?

I think both of these builds are about as solid as it gets, really. Mostly, I think GB(i) brings up an _extremely_ important and often-overlooked point: just because something _can_ be modeled via Powers, not everything _needs_ to be: sometimes it's not a power as much as it is a problem: "well, he's healing nicely, but the enemy will return at some point, and we can't move him easily now that he's encased in ice...." That sort of thing. Now if the "sleeping in ice" provides some sort of Defense, etc-- then you might have to further your build a bit. But like both of the folks above: the simpler, the better. (really nice builds, guys! )

Check your PM box (sorry, I can't say "Check your PMs" without giggling just a bit ), Joe.

That's it? Chat? Geez... All the stuff I found trying to look it up made it sound like some amazing new thing. :/

Uh, have I mentioned just how stolen these are? Just wondering.... Anyway, if you see them missing, well.... They were stolen.

And how else do you know if you have a first printing or a second?!