Duke Bushido

Yep. That"s kind od the point I was making,

Ah'm a gonna cast Cloud of Lead Pellets! Ala- kaBLAM! Right. There are, in all of fiction, six plots: Man versus man Man versus nature Man versus himself Kirk in danger Kirk in love Enterprise in Danger Those first three are probably the most widely-acknowledged. As far as when does game A look like game b- Always. There are three (six) plots. The rest of it is the window dressing that the author selects to put his spin on it, and hopefully keep you entertained. In terms of gaming, "genre" is nothing more than the set of constraints under which you and your friends agree to play Let's Pretend. The "game," be it HERO, D and D, or anything else, is essentially nothing more than the methods you agree to use for arbitratinf (or preventing) disagreement, and while we laud certain "games" for their universality- Champions, GURPS, etc- the fact is that they are _all_ universal. Once upon a time, we called it "home brew" or "house rules," but eventually we ended up with D20 (use 'D and D to fight space pirates in the wilds of the crab nebula if you want, or pummel,supervillains with fiats of Justice!.), Cepheus Engine (Traveller with infinitely-expanded background options and custom,settings), whatever it is that WEG's old D6 dicepool-based Star Wars running gear is called now.... Even within one system, what is true to that system? killer shrike's website contains _how many_ magic systems? Which onws resembke HERO "the most?" How many threads do we have a out emulatinf this game or that? Does HERO itself now have so many optional rules that it is entirely possible to play three different games,and use different options exclusively in each game? Which one is HERO? There are three (six) plots under the sun. The rest is the frivilous details selected by the people writing the story. Game mechanics exist solely as a means to assure that all the participants agree on the twists and turns of the story they are helping to tell. As a f'rinstance, I helped Chris Goodwin design a campaign that changes genres twice, all in the course of a single story. It was pretty easy: there was only one plot. So yes: your observation is astute. There is considerable overlap throughout our hobby, and the xloser you look, the more obvious it becomes.

As interesting as this has become, I think it has become clear that we need to know just how far after "the event" the gsme is set- perhaps even what the event was- how society is currently organized (or not), and how stable that organization is. I can see a point- a time after the knee-jerk rioting and mindless raids to get what the other guy has- when people are soendiing so much time finding food and material that there is no tine or energy (for most people) to keep fighting for what just isnt there any longer. A time,when it makes more sense to cooperate than to fight. Certainly there will always be raiders and warlords (you need adventure, after all), but as ammo and resources are wasted in war early on, they become more scarce, more valuable, and their value begins to grow as a means to more easily hunt larger game more effectively. Certainly they will have a place to defend against attackers or provide a facade of being a well-defended community, but at the point I am thinking, only warlords and the like will waste them in assault- they are too valuable for day-to-day survival: they are tools, and difficult to create from scratch- at least, the machine brass is difficult to create. We may have no trouble makinf funpowder or primers, and we may resort to melting any soft metal for projectiles, but the machined she'll is beyond our reach in most places. At that point, I think ammunition will make an excellent bartering tender.

Okay- finally checked the book, but I got home,too late and too tired to want to post. There is absolutely nothing in the verbiage that prevents invisibility from working in this way. For those arguing the "advantage" of creating a distraction, you can do that with any power- even Invisibility the way you see it working as all-or-nothing: a person was just standing right there! I swear it! Hey! Where did _that_ guy come from?! A completely non-powered grandma can yell "over here, you jerk!" For those arguing that it should cost _something_ because it _might_ be an advantage, I suggest we put those same extra adders on every single construct, or charge that same advantage multiplier, because under the right set of obscure or Scooby Doo-like circumstances, _anything_ "could be" possibly maybe be kind of potentially advantageous, I bet. Now I am going to do something I haven't done in years, and delve into a bit of faceatious sarcasm (great! "Faceatious" autocorrect understands, but "only" is some crazy moon language.... ) I provide this disclaimer because it is not my intention to insult anyone; I just want people to have a clear picture of this discussion from the outside-looking-in perspective. That, and having cleansed sarcasm from my social tools, I am probably not very good at any more. You have all been warned! Let's go! Further, do you charge your fire guy extra because his special effect allows him to light a cigarette or briefly warm a chilly room? I don't know- from what I am reading here, some of you probably do. Just remember to charge the bow-and-arrow guy for the advantage of never accidentally starting a fire, because- under the right circumstances, that is one-hundred percent advantageous (I mean, you will never accidentally start a fire!) and so he should pay something for it because eventually, he just might possibly one day conceivably end up in a raft, fighting opponents while afloat on a lake of kerosene. When that happens, you will completely see why he should have paid for that assurance. All the flying characters should have to buy life support, too. It is just not feasible that they flew at five hubdred miles an hour at 20,000 feet and didn't asphyxiate or freeze to death. Everyone should pay extra for everything because everything has a potential minor advantage in the right circumstances. It is almost like they all have unique superpowers, just a little different from everyone else's, and for that, they should have to pay extra. Clearly, it is time to start evaluating and charging for the special effects themselves- they are so potentially highly advantageous, after all, maybe. Maybe in 7e we will see the value in starting characters being built on one thousand points, because of the valuable clean footprints left in the carpet by the Son of Angels as he crosses the room. Major Transform at the _very_ least, and he should _pay_. Okay. That's done. My own opinion is that you need to talk to your GM. If you are the GM, then you need to decide how big a jerk you want to be about this. As a GM, I cant imagine even having had this discussion, to be honest, beyond "can I do this?" And "sure. It is your character; you get to pick the special effects."

Well Bill S clearly got way, way better over the years. That Transformers,cover, though.... Wow, that was awful.

They can say what they want, but I dont think a moratorium on "stores smaller than Wal Mart" is ever going to be a great thing. And I am not proud of this, but id it wasnt for rhe Dollar General in Lyons, we would have had to five up wheat bread and produce. God know we cant afford it anywhere else in this county.

Perhaps, but either way serves to demonstrate that no one built them: mechanical life can occur, at least in comic books. Given the odds of _any_ life occurring, at all, ever- particulalrly in the light of the pointlessness of it (not philosophy: every living thing of which we are aware will die when the sun goes out, and the sun voing out is an acknowledged eventuality), Errr.... Given the astronomical odds of life happening _at all_, on as objective a level as I can manage, mechanical seems no less improbable than that with which we are familiar. Here is the wiers thing: not knowing "how" to read xomic books, I read every word; even the adds. The credits, etc. The end result is that I read the civer artist's name, and since the art was so spectacularly bad, the name,just stuck. I mean, all I could think was "who would want to be remembered for this?!" (The interior art was okay, I guess. All I remember was how much better it was than the cover. Not much od a benchmark, but hey....) The cover lookes like an abstract pen-and-ink "painting," and was intentionally blurry, but what stood out most was how horribly misproportioned the figure on the cover was (which I eventually figured out was some uber-dark and shadowy T-rec version of Optimus Prime). The guy's name was Bill Something-that-starts-with-and-S-and-struck-me-as-possibly-Polish-or-Slavic-and-I-remember-telling-myself-"give-up;-you-are-_never_-going-to-pronounce-it-correctly." I don't know what other comic book things he might have done, but for you guys that like comics, I really hope it wasn't many.

Here's something so effective I have never seen a GM allow it: EDM, usable as attack, , range, based on ECV (which changes the points based range to line of sight. Now I see you; now I don't. ) Seriously: don't do that. It's hard to get new players. (Don't do it with FTL, either) I only offer it as a gateway to asking just what you mean when you say "get rid of." short of that- powers to neutralize powers- Drain, and Supress are specifically for that purpose. T-form can do it on a long-term (as in "career-ending") basis. it is a matter of what you see happening, how you see it working, and what the aftermath is like.

That takes us pretty much to the point, right there: Folks are wracking their brains trying to force an advantage to this. I cant think of any better proof that there is no points-added advantage here _at all_. No one can see a downside, either! It is selective: the character is not _forced_ to remain semi-visible. So there is no disadvantage. I know that from 5e back, there is no verbiage in the rules that forbids a character from being able to do this anyway, any more than there is a rule forcing him to use all-or-nothing for his movement or laser blast or anything else (except for those editions in which Desolidification is not a movement power. The 40-pt desolid from those editions is pretty much all or nothing). So all that remains is to check 6e (assuming that is what you are using) to see if it's long list of mandates, verbottens, and "advantage X must work this way with this power, period" stuff forbids it. Short of that, I see no reason for forcing an additional cost or effectiveness penalty on rhis guy just because he thought of it first.

We have an air show in town this weekend. I cant tell you how many signs I have seen for the Blue Angles....

According to the first issue of the old Marvel comic, they were a natural result of the coming together the naturally-occuring cogs, gears, and springs that once filled Cybertron. These made life in the form of simple machines, and they evolved from there. No; I am not making that up. I have told you guys before that I am not a comic guy. A lot od my friends where, but I wasn't. At one point in the 80s, I was getting gas and a drink and there was a comic book rack (remember those?) by the checkout. There was issue #1 of GI Joe and issue #1 of Transformers. Neither were superheroes, so I thought I would take a stab at one. In spite of the truly hideous cover art, and because giant robots appeal to me more than commando fiction, I chose Transformers. I chose.... Poorly....

And then there is the methane byproduct, too.

What he said. This is on every edirion since the first. Except CC, apparently. And I dont know about Champions Now: I have yet to find the time to finish reading it. Violent action adds dice; sisplay of power adds dice; soliloquies add dice; reputations add dice. (Though that last one may have changed in more recent editions. Display of power, however, has not). Now to be honest, I have always taken that to mean displaying power in a way that is either intimidating (to control bad guys) or reassuring / confidence inspiring (to inspire good guys. You can ignore that one though, as a couple of years ago I figured out that I am the only person here who uses presence attacks in a positive, "stop panicking; I can keep you safe" kind of way, so..... Anyway... I always felt it to mean displaying a power that clearly backs up your intent or message: crushing something more dursble than the opponent you are facing; darting behind him with your superspeed even as he turns to flee; using your flame blast to melt a seagulls when your opponent spreads his wings to fly away. On the inspirational side, perhaps ripping up a tree and using it to sluice away part of a landslide or walking bravely into the flamethrower's blast to demonstrate the cone of safety behind you, or maybe melting a seagull when the ice ceeam stand wants to open up. That sort of thing.

Not till romorrow, I am afraid. Late night at work; sont expect to be home,before ten or so. Plus side? Company Road Trip!

Yep. That's it. When I get home tomorrow night, I am going to open the 6e book, and I bet there is nothing there that forbids doing this with Invisibility as-is. I know there isnt anything prior, and I expect the onky difference I will find in 6e ia another thousand words or so.

You people are going to make me open that accursed 6e book again, aren't you?

Actually yeah! Depwndinf on how close to the bomb you are chronologically, any kind of radiation-free water (and a means to easily determine it to be such) would make dandy capital: "how much for this flibberty jibber?" "Four ounces, Sir...."

I am lined up with Steve and Tech: there is nothing in the description of invisibility (at least up to 5e) that forbids this in the first place, so if you want to suddenly "decapitate yourself" or cosplay as Thing from the Adams Family, go for it.

Barring the technicalities of how he finds out what is going in in time to do anything, or how gets to the plane far enough out over the ocean to have the time to do anything, there is the simpler issue of knowing what to do. For example: I was sixty-two years and a few weeks old when I leaned that cockpit windows can be opened. Is it something that Peter Parker would know? I understood the movie clip where he levered the wing flaps; since that was the default textbook illustration of Bernoulli's principles in action for three or four decades of elementary students, I had no issue accepting that this was something Peter would know. "The windshield can be opened," though, (while I do not doubt you) flies in the face of everything that I thought I understood about airplanes.

Same here. The idea is that from the source material, most supers are normal people with abilities like strength, or being bullet proof, or shooting lasers, or being super-agile-- But not noticeably faster than their opponents. There are exceptions, of course: Speedsters, spiderman- Before I continue, let me point out that I am not the first or even the fifth person to use this example on the board. Every use of it has been met with "but that all comes down to individual authors or the needs of one particular story" or words to that effect. I would also like to point you that those authors and those stories are the off-touted "source material" many of those same,respondents hold in exmplum of what our games should strive to look like. I point that out as a community service: before deciding to ignore the example, think a bit on what sort of hypocrite you would like be. There qas a story where Spiderman defeated the entirety of the X_men. It wasnt a battle, either. He was in a hurry to get somwhere. He was literally "just passing through," and took them down on the way by. This suggest that the X-men are all lower speed than Spiderman, and that makes sense: being super strong and made,of metal doesnt in anyway imply that you are faster than a normal person. Having claws ans super-senses (and smokong xigars in spite of having super olfactory abilities), or having the ability to shoot lasers from your face or to summon thunderstorms- There is nothing in those power sets that mandates or even suggests being faster (in a SPD sense) that a normal person, who can, through intense training, get up to..... Four? Five if he's a title character? We see,lots and lots of agents in the source material, and more importantly, we see super heroes having a hard time,dealing with them. If you run an agent at SPD3 and a "typical" super at SPD 7, even a well-trained 5-team,isnt going to have a chance in aything sbort of an ambush and /or using weapons that are either specifically-tailored foe the HERO being encounted or so ovwrpowered as to make you think it is more practical to use it to take out entire armies and conquer a small nation. Speed 3 agents are a threat to SPD 3 supers. They have a chance against SPD 5 supers. When you see supers atracked,by agents, they dont win because they have so many more avtions that they can hit and move fast,enough to convince the agents that they are surrounded- at least, not outsise of a Champions game. It doesn't happen in the sourvw material,unless we arw doing a throw-away bit to show off some novel power stunt or a brand new power "I have been working on, but the reader has never seen it, so let's bring everybody up to speed on this new writer's take on the character." In the source material, the supers win because of their powers (they can soak the beating, and return a more severe beating, defeating the agents through simple attrition) or through superior knowledge, cunning, or creativity- finding something,in the situation which their powers allows them to exploit. So yeah: Except for speedsters or the odd Supergodlikeman pastiche, most aupers on my game hover around a 4 spd as well. Because except for their powers of magic, defense, whatever- they are normal people with (at least eventually) lots of combat experience and if they are lucky, some training. If you are running Iron Man and Hawkeye at SPD 8, then where is the Flash? Of some,other speedster? Or those "galactic-level threats" that get talked about a lot? If you are running Batman at SPD 6, he is _not_ a normal well-trained human, and has legitimate super powers of his own.

I find for myself and most of my supers players that it is less about END than it is about Reduced Endurance and Recovery.

For the invasion of Atlantis, no doubt. Anybody else wonder why Georgians and Crimeans arent seeing this as something of an opportunity?

How long did it take before it started resisting?

It is not a sinking! It is a special undersea operation!

"Are You clinging tenaciously to my buttocks...?"