Duke Bushido

DUPICATE; DELETED

I logged on this evening to spread appologies all around, and to respectfully ask Hermit or any moderator happening by to strike my posts completely (I will delete the content momentarily) I appologize; I thought some hobby-related social contact would pick me up, but my mind and heart weren't in it. I appologize to all of you.

Chris: I promise I will get back to you on this (I like named powers, too :)) when I'm more in my right mind. I logged on to spread some appologies for my behavior today; i have a problem this time of year, and I try to plow through instead of just letting it out, and gg Anyway, I promise I will get back to you.

Will do!

The Western HERO PDF is very close to existing. I'm finishing up a few annoyances on the scans before compiling the proof-reading PDF. Just a little longer; I promise. Then on to Horror HERO. Well, on to the Adventurers Club (why is there no apostrophe there?!!) issue 1, loaned to me by rravenwood, then it's a toss-up between CyberHERO, StarHERO (for 3e), and more ACs. Having a hard time deciding. Toddbannister: Stumbled across this when hunting for a book last night; thought it might be something you'd want: a "color" glossary of sorts: https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-slang/ It doesn't include a couple of my favorites, but no matter: it's extensive enough! (it's also something of a shock how much of this is considered "old timey" when a huge chunk of it is still in use in these parts)

Good luck, Scott. This sounds like _so_ much fun....

Gentlemen, through the course of our many adventures together, and the bond we formed over the plundered treasures of many an evil warlord and the spilled blood of corrupt kings, I have come to loves you as brothers in arms, and brothers in spirit. Thus, it stabs me body and soul to look at that chart up there and realize that amongst those I cherish lurks my nemesis....

Oh my _God_ did that hurt! I think you just punched me right square in the geriatric....

Ditto. Well, sort of. Mimeograph! There. That should do it. For all the published fantasy settings I've seen from any company, TA is the one I enjoy the most. Is it because it has the least Tolkien? Maybe. Is it because it has the least medieval England? Possibly. I suspect it's because it has the most "not like everything else." So until someone publishes a John Carter setting (or, at least, until I find they one they published), it will always get my vote as "best published fantasy setting." Perhaps because it's not (ugh) "Dark Champions." No; I kid (sort of. I understand that DC is pretty much the source material and suggestions, etc, that go with "Heroic" campaigns, but the emphasis on urban dystopia and psychotic villains and anti-heroes gets really old, really fast)). As LL pointed out, Supers are the company's bread and butter with a pickle on top. And fantasy-- well, the most successful fantasy settings will, for whatever reason, always be, as someone else on these boards once coined: YATRO.

That was you?! I have a player in my Brunswick group who _loves_ that thing! I remember a couple of years ago him reading bits of it during a break in the game. Nothing spectacular to add, there, I'm afraid. We were (and still are) doing a space opera, so it never got used (or at least, it hasn't yet), but I thought I'd mention that you have another fan in Georgia.

My daughter's very first character (the one she based on the artwork of Titan in the 2e rules book) had that as part of his origin, too. I posted his origin on the previous version of this board. Can't find it since I've been back. Common origins are hit-and-miss, like most anything, really. I recall having a GM many years ago who had built and entire campaign world, maps, characters, plot seeds, etc... He had spent the best part of fall and winter building it. Excited at our first session the next spring, he pulled out _four_ huge binders of material, opened one, unrolled a map, started spilling page after page of lore at us, and thirty minutes later, we were ready to begin. We'd played for just over an hour, with him looking more and more dejected. Finally, he closed the binders, pushed them off the table, and announced "so much for that!" (we kept playing, of course, it's just that other than the maps there wasn't anything he had prepared that was going to be useful, at least not for a _long_ time). It _wasn't_ that we didn't like what he had given us. It wasn't that we were trying to break his game. It was simply that we hadn't interpreted it the way he had. More precisely, we _were_ motivated by what he had given us, just not at all in any of the ways he had expected. It wasn't until he pushed his work off the table that we thought "are we doing it wrong?" Somewhere-- again, on the old version of the board, we discussed a similar notion of how to get folks to form a cohesive team. I was running sci-fi, and was tired of a table full of people holding themselves hostages, and finally assigned them all relationships to each other. Most were really pi- -- upset about it, but over the next four sessions, would have absolutely killed for each other. I was _delighted_ at how fast they came together! Sadly, it was the _only_ instance in which doing that was really successful. There may not be a perfect solution. It may lie more in establishing, ever before character generation, that a cohesive relationship with each other is so central to the campaign that it is an absolute _must_. It might even _help_ to get that established before char-gen, before the players have fully-formed ideas for characters. It might help guide them to creating actual team members. I can't say for sure, as most of my groups have gamed together so long they just understand instinctively the need for a functional group that respects each other in order to make the adventure _go_ somewhere.

On HERO Basic: Did they do a bound version? If not, does anyone know where one could get a book printed? I'd like to add a bound version to my collection of "One Thin Book" versions of 6e, next to CC, FHC, and MHI.

Yes it is. No it isn't. Wouldn't have mattered, I'm afraid. : rofl: I'm going to have to find a couple more your posts and stick laughing man on them, too. That was too funny for just one guffaw. Duke

Thanks for bumping this, GMGM-- I never knew this thread existed, or I might have made a more "formal" return to the boards (I tend to come and go as 'real life' demands increase or relax). So here we go: How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? I almost wish I used my actual name, like so many others, just so I could reply with "My parents picked it out." I wasn't clever enough to invent a code or thematically-minded enough to do the clever thing and use a favorite character's name, though I really wished I had after seeing so many people doing it!). My name actually is Duke, like every third bird dog around these parts. The Bushido part comes from what I'd like to say is a really long story so let's skip it, but the fact is it's not a too-terribly long story, I'm just tired of telling it. Suffice it to say that owing to a vast number of opinions my friends have held of me, combined with the conversations held while we consoled a (then) recently-divorced and (possibly still) drunken comrade, I got tagged with then name "Bushido." It came and went, depending on how amusing it was for them to toss it out. A few years later, we're playing Boot Hill, fairly straight to the genre. As the campaign concludes, the GM pitches ideas for a new one, stating he'd like to do something a bit more cinematic, over-the-top-- something quirky, but still Western. I figured this was yet _another_ chance for me to pitch HERO at them (well, it was still Champions then), and they were curious enough to bite this time. So I introduced one group of three to our Champions group of four and pitched the idea to my then-GM (Jim), who loved it. My Boot Hill compatriots, though, needed convincing. How would changing systems make the game any different? "Well," I began, you can just go nuts: you can make _anything_ you want, so long as it's cool with Jim. You want a different old west? You could make a samurai gunman!" to which someone instantly quipped: "Yeah! And you could call him Duke Bushido!" And that was the end of that. "Bushido" had occasional comedic properties. But that one quip.... Well, "Duke Bushido" stuck, and it stuck real good.... So good, that the avatar on my posts was made by a friend some years later. I no longer have the original large image, but it's something of a merger of a stylized Japanese flag and a sunrise over a western clay desert, with a figure dressed in what appears to be jeans, a buckskin jacket, and a cowboy hat, holding a drawn katana. That's one of my bikes in the background (I still have that one, actually. I really like it). Now you know. Well, enough, anyway. What was the first tabletop RPG you played? Like so many other people, I started at some point in the mid-seventies. I can't tell you which was first, though. I can tell you it was either Traveller or D&D, as we did both pretty heavily. (The only way to know for certain would be to look up which came out first, but honestly, it doesn't matter to me enough to do it: who cares when a memory was made, so long as you get to keep it?). We did both back and forth. Not being a Tolkien guy and _really_ not liking the way D&D worked, I was always happiest with Traveller games. We tried other games as they caught our eyes and wallets, and fortunately, did not stick with D&D too long after some real variety started to pop up. What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? Metamorphosis Alpha. I had to actually _buy_ it, but I was willing to do _anything_ to give D&D a smaller slot in our rotation. Terrible game, by the way; I don't get the nostalgia associated with it. Sure, it was pretty much D&D, mechanics-wise, but at least there wasn't any Tolkien in it. Tried Gamma World when it came out, but it was straight-up Dungeons and Mutants; couldn't even pretend otherwise. Stumbled across Daredevils and had a great time running that. Bought a boxed set of Champions 2e (my GM picked up 1e when it hit the shelves, but the game store never got another one), which my GM devoured and we promptly upgraded. When he was ready to split GM responsibilities, I became a Champions GM, but even then, I didn't consider myself one: I was just helping Jim, ya know? I _loved_ the system Champions was using, and it wasn't too long before we were using it for Daredevils and made a stab at Traveller. I didn't _dislike_ supers as a genre; I just didn't have a lot of appreciation for it. I mean, it's easy to be a brave hero when you're bullet-proof, right? And there were no comic books in my childhood, nor televised cartoons (you'd need to have had a TV, which would have been useless without electricity). Besides, Sci-Fi was my addiction at that time, and we were all familiar with Traveller, even though we hadn't played it in a couple of years at that point.' The Traveller HERO failure wasn't the system; by that point, it was just the wrong setting / theme for our group of players (which by then had swollen to nine players, hence Jim needing some relief). Best of all, though, it proved our theory that Champions was universal! Found a boxed set of Justice Inc, noticed the HERO Games tag, and immediately thought "They know it, too!" From that point on, any game I like enough to start an actual campaign in found it's guts replaced with the Champions drive train. And while it's not relevant, I'd like to add, specifically to you Super Hero fans, that I have, in the last few years, developed an appreciation for the genre. You can blame my kids for that. They got into super heroes, and I'm into spending time with them. Supers make more sense, looking at them through the kid's eyes. What are you currently playing/GMing? Everything is on HERO guts, regardless of genre. Mostly it's 2e, modified with a few things from 4e, and a ruling or two-- a couple of Power Modifiers, anyway-- from 5e. I am currently running a Supers game for some kids that I've been referring to as "my youth group." I also run space opera weekly-- or, _mostly_ weekly, on the far end of ninety miles from here. Once a month, I play in an occult-themed thriller, but that's about to wind down, freeing me up a bit of time. And that's it. That's the overly-informative basics.

Welp..... You win. :rolf:

Ford Falcon.

I see! Thank you, N-B; I also missed that the first time through. Very kind of you, Sir. Thanks, Hugh. I spent fifteen minutes sitting here (and waiting for the washing machine to buzz) reading and re-reading what I had said trying to figure out just what the heck I had said to set off that particular accusation.

That, Sir, is a _wonderful_ idea! Instant detail, and instant depth to your world. Very elegant.

I can't tell you what issue it's in (I only own the four or five I've bought for my scanning project), but one of the articles in one of the ones I _do_ own referenced an errata article for CyberHERO. Don't know if it ever actually happened or not, but it might be something to look out for.

How? Because I've rarely seen a campaign, in _any_ genre, with caps set dead at NCM; that's how it's in question. In fact, I hadn't seen anything in this thread until your post that suggested otherwise (though I admit I may well have missed something: it got pretty dry pretty quickly) Would you then at least do me the favor of telling me what the heck you're talking about?

The same place that Harley Davidson picked up the notion that at some point in history they were the fastest thing on the road, or the most popular bike to chop (that honor belongs to Honda, followed closely by Triumph)

Don't sweat it. I've been looking for 30 years now. It will happen or it won't. When I get home, I'm going to take a look at your 4e stuff and see if I have any needs there.

I have to admit, I didn't know there a direct connection between NCM and campaign caps. Though last I knew, the "hard limit" for NCM was mostly set by the GM, with a couple if suggestions (haven't read 4e in a while, but it seems like suggested hard limit was 25 or 30 with a mandatory soft limit at 20,beyond which you paid more. I don't remember anything tying it to campaign limits, but I remember a built-in "in case you want more" mechanic. Your the same guy who just said the discussion is about allowing a build that exceeds NCM, right? Nah; I'm just picking: ignore that except for the humor it was intended to be. Except for this part: I don't think your example is valid, being as how that became the new standard. It didn't get a bonus or a limitation. The rules were revised and NCM was raised. So is this an invalid example or is it an example of the freedom to ignore or change the rules?

Sure. Essentially, anything that pulls your attention out of the book. Bits of noise on the page I may have missed, blurred or missing bits from letters, that random black blob in between two lines of print.... Crooked pages or images that are still crooked in relation to the text, lines that wobble (particularly framing around charts, art: You know: the sort of thing that makes you think "I wish this guy had scanned this better." As noted, I'm looking for something worthy of being a "master copy," from which as-perfect-as-possible books can be printed. Oh: and noticeable pixelation. I scan in stupid-high rez to attempt to eliminate that, but sometimes when you PDF the finished work, it creeps in there. No one wants to print a pixelated anything. If you're still interested, then thank you. I will get the drafts to you and Brian once I've got them put together. Duke

I don't have a huge issue with this. Presumably if they bought it they did so because it's an important part of the character concept, Ala Batmunch. I mean, people who buy Flight and Energy Blast tend to use those a lot more than people who don't, yet few people are bothered by that.