Duke Bushido

I tend to avoid them. It's a holdover from gaming in college. I just got tired of the fighting between players when they came up on opposite opinions about real world events. Proxies dont work; the mutant thing is proof of that. Every time we start discussing the mutant thing, someone pokes in with "it's a proxy for racism!" Yes. We all know that. It's really, _really_ obvious. Most proxies are pretty obvious. That is the problem with them. When you use a proxy, people still get it, they get the reference, and you are taking that "what if they have opposite opinions" chance. People want to be the good guy championing justice against the forces of evil, and don't tend to react well to finding out that half their friends think they _are_ the bas guy on one or another topic. Real events? Things that have happened? When approached as history- yep; WW 1 and 2 haooened in this universe; yep, the presidents you liked and the ones you hated were also the presidents. Yep, Native Americans were displaced and died- when presented as _history_, folks take it as they take it in the real world. Current events? Nope. Avoid them. Not like the plague, though: current events demonstrates that too many people arent trying to avoid that, and even discussing it brings up ill will in half the people you might trt to discuss it with.

It's a pay-it-forward sort of thing. Shadowcat let me get a copy of each even when he believed they were the last ones. I feel it is proper to help someone else get them if they have a problem I can help with. You know- social animals and all that...

Is this the scene where one of us yells enthusiastically "he broke his foot in that scene! He thought it was a plastic prop helmet, but it wasn't. He broke his foot for real! Then he kept on acting, as if he didnt just break his foot!" Just in case one of the four people on the internet who havent been beaten down to the nubs of our very souls with this information just happens to come by and watch it? Or is this some other scene? I just want to be ready, just in case.

If you score them, BJB, and they cant do international, then you can have them shipped to me- For one, I am safe. I already have them. I will get them to you.

Ditto.

Ah! So the double-thread is so they can keep each other company?

There was a meme circulating my wife's office about that: Man banned from boring after-hours work function as some sort of alleged "punishment." Want to _really_ punish him? Make his attendance _mandatory_.

Nope. Ninja HERO was just the big deep-dive into the entire thing. I have heard_ but do not know for sure_ that Ninja HERO was actually the result of Alston' martial campaign, and carried further after the refinements of playtesting with his group, etc, etc.

So much of this depends on the campaign itself. What is the state od metallurgy? The state od manufacturing? Are we in general relying on restored PRE-war equipment? Are we attempting to restore such equipment? Is this a universal drive throughout the land? Is it possible to manufacture crude repair parts and impossible to aource -prewar parts? Is smelting commonly done? Casting? Forging? If the answer to most of these is yes, then bits of metal by type and weight. If the answer to most od these is not yes, then it won t work well. Your currency, if there is no universal society printing and backing something as worthless as a cloth/paper blend with the understanding that it will be treated as valuable, has to have relatively-consistent intrinsic value- it has to be something wanted and needed- or at least understood to be necessary for the continuation or advancement- better still, the _improvement_ of the status quo. Waterworld used _dirt_, for Pete's sake! Why? Damned important for growing food, and incredibly scarce. Everyone knew that. When it lookes like Obama had a chance at getting the nomination, you couldn't find a .22 long rifle round in the southeastern U.S! (I dont know if this is news to,any of you, but it's true, I am afraid) because the vast majority of knuckle-dragging inbretarded swamp trolls and hill scoggins out _knew_ that society was going to collapse under the gangsta mandates and belt-finches-at-the-knees laws and the outlawing of anythinf but rap music and mal liquor (Dear God, oh Dear God I _wish_ I was making this up..... For what it is worth, I blame Hollywood, the music industry, and most of all BET for making absolutely certain that ignorance, noise, violence, and ridiculously-dressed circus clown antics are relentlessly puahed as the ultra-coil ideal for all black Americans. Guess what?! The black americans aren't the only ones getting that message! Idiots!) Anyway... The swap trolls and knuckle-dragging hill scoggins and other members of the guns-before-brains crowd one-hundred percent knew that a black president meant a new Boys in the HUD ethic for American life, and we would all,be so busy smuggling weed and crack for our black overlords (again- I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS CRAP UP! I _live_ here! I listened to this unbridled stupidity day in and day out!! This is what you get when you spend fifty years consistently,cutting education!) Anyway, they all knew that America was going to descend into into a brutal post apocalyptic wasteland, like mid-nineties Los Angeles, wherw human life would be an endless struggle to just barely scrape up subsistence (like Kentucky, if you aren't horse people) and live another day. The .22 long round was the key! Anyone can fire a 22 rifle, and they can be used to bag all sorts of small game, and to repell the mud-covered, bone-wearing, facially-tattooed survivors of the next town over when they came to steal your canned veggies and make off with your women! In fact, they could be used for preemptive counterstrikes against those redneck savages, allowing you to attack _their_ fortified nightclubs and churches, sex up their livestock, and steal their toilet paper. The 22 bullet, as all these people foresaw, was the absolute _key_ to survival in the post-Obama collapse. (People, did you notice the spike in prepped bull crap on youtube during this era? I am NOT making this up! I am ludicrous and entertaining, but I would have thought to myself "no; this is too far. This is so damned out there that they wont even take it as hyoerbole or bad humor" and nit even _attempted_ to have pursued the insanity required to put such thoughts into words. Alas, for eight months, it was the only conversation in thw southeast US..... Damn! I love it here, but I really hate the people). Stopoing that before it gets even more revealing and heart-breakingly still unfabricated.... But in that particular work of fiction, the 22 long round was foreseen as the currency of the future. Seriously; _that_ qas why you xoulsnt find them _anywhere_: everyone decided that he qas foing to do his damnedest to be a 22 Long mullionaire! (I know way, _way_ to many people who, today, own more 22 Long than they could hope to fire in what remains of their lives, simply because they were expecting to need a couple hundred thousand rounds for barter and trade..... And you know... Dating, I think, given some of the conversations.. Or something kind of like Dating.... (And yet, somehow, the mist eloquent, folksy, charming president we have had in a hundred years- _he_ was, _somehow_, "an animal..." "I am going to murder, rape, and steal my way to become king of the wasteland caused by that filthy animal trying to get me better medical treatment..." I hope that comes across correctly- that last but was sarcasm, ut I havent used it in so long I am not sure I got it right. 😕 so,..... You know..... your currency is eithet backed by an organization large enough to enforce the great pretending that makes it valuable, or it somethinf that actually _is_ valuable and understood my all to be valuable. In this case, it should be difficult enough to obtain that you dont have to lug about thousands of units of it to trade for bread, and you need to be aware of things like "this armor is made from sixty to ninety pounds of steel, lots of smelting and firework, and considerable skill. I bet it is going to cost me more than five strips of hammered steel. do _not_ look at videogames for ideas. Pop caps and other such popular wasteland videogame currency really and truly _only_ work because you are absolutely forbidden and completely unable to question them. No one is going say "wow! Fifty arrows crafted from actual brittle marsh reeds? Man, I have got a full-functioning gieger counter and I will swap you _right now_ for them things! I just love the way they explode into splinters and paper-like bits when you release the string....!" so... There was probably a point here. Just focus on the idea that whatever it is you use, it needs to be universally valuable to the society using it.

It does indeed. It was published after Ninja HERO, and uses a simplified version of the Alston system. You buy the individual maneuvers as listed on the character sheet as "martial X", and there were a few elements for building alien-fu.

Okay, so Canada, Australia, Britain, West coast,USA. This is apparently where all members of this board live. No wonder I never bump,into you guys.

Martial arts from all pre- Ninaj HERO editions: What is your STR? Pay that much. Enjoy 1.5 x punch damage and 2x kick damage. Enjoy a few poorly-explained maneuvers printed on your character sheet. I dont ignore it; I acknowledge that I cannot think of anyone who tried it more than once or twice before figuring out they could just split those points between STR and skill levels and attain the same or,better results, and high enough STR costs meant you could save points and have a more effective "martial artist." I ignore the pre-Alston Martial Arts no more than anyone but the most die-hard MA movie aficionado did during that era. Concept or not, very few people were so taken with "hey! I can buy martial arts skill" that they kneecapped their own characters to have them. Though technically, it is fair to say that I ignore it as much as everyone else ignores that the hyper-unique 'martial Arts system' is just name-brand skill levels. You could use DI for it, or .... Crap. We've been referring to it so long as 'action HERO' that now I actually cant think of the name! anyway, you can use pretty much any heroic level rules to play Traveller. It's All a,matter of what you want to convert, and how you want to do it. Each decision you make has some imoact on the flavir of the final result, though, so keep in mind throughout your chosen conversion just what feel you want for the end product. Me? I like that "died in character generation" feel. Ha! dark Champions! That was it! It finally,circled,around.

Feh. I havent been allowed near it in over sixty. No big deal. I have to thank you folks for,bringing this to my attention though; I woulsnt have known about it otherwise. I was so busy trying to figure out which two bills I couls shortpay to make sure my kiss had groceries that I almost missed multimillionaires slapping each other at the ceremony they use to reward each other for their achievements in one of the nations least productive industries. Thanks again.

That's not Old Man! That's a false beard and three little girls in a trench coat!

Drain SPD was suggested. I like it and have used it to represent a distraction so powerful that you just cant get it together or stay focused: you are literally stopping or slowing down constantly just to look.... I have also use mind control based on PRE (similar to the presence builds above), and I have used mental entangle (with limitations) for that "head in a fog" thing- specifically, allowing cumulative 'damage' for break-out rolls, and a weak DEF. They might be your heart' only desire, but you are not foing to just stand there forever while you are getting shot.

The biggest conversion problem is exactly skills, ironically. Classic Traveller had very few skills- I think seventeen? Going from memory, and the author himself,never considered them,to be that important. I cannot- and would not dream of doing it- speak for him, but having watched him,run a com game decades ago, and having found online accounts from others who were as fortunate, skills were quite literally "does that seem like something your character would know? Do you feel like you would know that?" If thw answer was yes, then "where or how dis you learn it?" And the justification itself seemed,not to matter; only that there was one. "Okay, you know that. Keep track of that; write it on your sheet." In the game I witnessed, Miller, when a roll was called for, invariably selected a characteristic roll and went so far as to allow the player to pick the characteristic. If the roll was successful, he would prompt "how dis that characteristic help you overcome the situation?" You could not re-select any characteristic until you had used each characteristic once. That was thw author's take on skills. During a Q and A, he was asked about his style versus the skills in an the variius published expansions, and gave a nice crowd-pleasing answer to the effect of 'the fans kept demandinf skills- more skills, and more opportunities to gain skills. That is why the new skills and advanced xharacter generation exist. You guys wanted it; I never envisioned it working that way. At any rate, that was my first exposure to "rules light" and "narrative-focused" gaming. I can see that going South with the wrong group, but it was surprisingly elegant the way he handled it. To get back,on track though: that kind od thing is absolute _anathema_ to HERO's die-hard core fandom. Let's take a step back and remember that these are the guys and this is the game wherein once upon a time, one grognard invented a campaign flavor that took _skill levels_ -- not even skills, mind you, but just skill levels- froze their effects, dipped their prices just a bit, and renamed,them Martial Arts Maneuvers, and not only,did the fans _like_ it, but for the last roughly thirty years they have demanded that this interesting flavor game for a single campaign is, in fact, necessary and inviolable core rules of the game itself. This is indicitive of the incompatibility issue with how Traveller uses (or used; I think today everyone plays Traveller like any other game, where a lack of skill means you cant do it, period, and probably don't even know what it looks like. (Sorry, Mate. I just checked my sheet and it seems i don't have "open doorknob" skill. Unless you picked it up, we're stuck here...) Hero, though, went so far as to provide a list of fifty skills and then add three "blank categories" to invent your own skill in case you sisnt see one you liked, and has kind of a tendency to push infinite cascades of specialization into those categories, etc, etc. The upshot of all that is that the base principles of the skill systems are diametrically-opposed as to make-, well, if not the HERO System then the die haed HERO fans- totally,incompatible with the old career path system or any variant "lifeboat" system. If you _do_ want to make it work (and you can, but you have to have people that want to play Traveller more thsn they want to exploit the HERO System, is to create youe charts with their lists of skills, assign the default to either a Characteristic Roll or 10-, and declare that this is _it_; these are all the skills that are availabke in this campaign, period. Like any other campaign, they may or may not go for it. Just for the love of everything you hold dear, make sure you are wearing heavy clothes, padded armor, and a catcher's mask when you point out that Martial,Arts is off the table.

For what it's worth, the option to admit that chasing a perfect equality is pointless, ignore so od this, and have fun like you used to has never once in 40 years left the table.

Even it up. Give them,cloacas. Keep all the advantages, and the first tine he name drops about some great and legendary ancestor, all the other elves in the room drop to their knee, bow their heads and yell "Bless his mighty cloaca!" See just how committed they are to playing an elf versus getting free advantages,

Everything in me agrees with you guys, but having already acquiesced, more than once, it seems, I would be willing to go _once_ more, with the talk mentioned above. Though ir seems he has, at least for the moment, gotten the issue on a string, so anythinf else we add now probably isn't going to help him much this go around. Still, I caution the need to go ahead and make peace with the idea that you may have to En his PC until you can discretely slide him out od the plot.

Seven-year-old Chinese kids.

I cant hand you a trophy (I sm all,out, it seems), but thsnk you, N-B. From you, that means a lot.

Then be honest with him: firmly, but eithout malice and definitely,with the chance to work with you on the revision or try again, tell him that this character does not work for the story or the challenges at hand. If he replies that this xharacter was specifically built for those challenges, explain to him that this is the problem: he won't be challenged. Sorry; I couldn't hear you over the massive chorus of 'saw that coming!" that is coming up,from every person following this thread! I will have to go back and re-read that when the crowd dies down a bit; bear with me a moment.... but yeah: saw that coming. Seems to go hand-in-hand with this type of player. Take a little dramatic license in moments like this and remember Ivan Drago (man, I hope you are okd enough to appreciate that. Ha! ) (It was aomethinf like that, anyway. 🙄 What we used to call "a PC enning." My most spectacular problem player was a guy named,Davien, back in the late 80s/ early,90s. He was so awful that over the years, I have used him as somrthing of an amalgam of various bad players who onky played a few times, just because if there was a way to make the rest of the pkayers (or the GM) miserable, Davien disnt just know what it was; he would _insist_ on it. Davien has been the recipient of more than one PC Enning: "You know what, Davien? Just cool it. Just go outside, smoke, get a drink, whatever. Just get away from this table for about half an hour or so. Vandy will N your PC for you." Or "if you can't knock it off, you will sit there and watch while I En your PC under a carriage...." (Do not that this is _not_ normal nor remotely acceptable GM behaviot in most circumstances, but you just have to aopreciate that Davien was his own sort of special circumstance. Yep. Rhat's a Davien trait, too- the real one; not the amalgam. Sadly, my brother J has a touch of this himself (the older so; not the younger J or the youngest J). We refer to it as "holding himself hostage." Also called "the Black Bart Maneuver" in honor of Clevon Little's stellar performance doong just that very thing. Bingo. You are the GM. You have both the responsibility to _all_ players to do what you can to orovide an entertsining experience, and a right to have one yourself, too.

I am going to take this as a very specifically-tailored personal attack. to answer youe question, though: no. I like neither of those things. I like Queen, and the majority of their stuff, but when I am not putting Queen on the Jukebox, it is specifically Bohemian Rhapsody that I am not playing. and I have never made a secret of my feelings for Star Wars: an excellent children's movie, followed by a decent tween's movie, followed by a slow decent into pretentious yet increasingly bad writing, capped off by Rogue One, where we learned that the secret to an excellent Star Wars movie is to keep George Lucas at least one continent away from it.

Forgive me for not reading anythinf between my llast post and this one, but my time is very limited right now. I jurist wanted to explain that I am only picking at Hugh with my "ideas" for the Killing Advantage because we have had this xome up before, and I know he doesnt like it. To be honest, I kind of do so far as a unfied mechanic goes, but the pricing is all screwy. However, you _can't_ point to any one power ir build and say "there it is.' More STR is 5 pts, and it adds to the STR you already have; it is not even limited by how much or your precious STR you can add. Start with STR 10? Spend 5 more points? It's okay; add thise first ten to those last five; it'll be fine, Blast, like STR l, is 5 pts a die, and comes with Ranged (for "free?"), but you cant add STR. The adding STR for HKA is not a new orphaned mechanic: it is exaclty the very first mechanic of adding strength damage to strength damage; it has just _never_ been discussed, And of course, we have done KA (both versions) to death. Qe can do what we have done since rhe beginning and "assume' certain advantages and limitations into each normal build that make STR and blast cost the same, and we can assume that they are in KA as well. But then we wwnt to know what the _root_ power is, and how to cost it. Assumibg a +1/2 "STR adds" advantage for STR and "ranged" for blast, we arrivwle at 3 and 3 for each. Woo-hoo! Now we jave 3pts /DC and a 10-pt killing die at 10 pts /3 DC, and we can excuse that extra point as rhe cost of being able to tear through Non-rDEF (which creates an adder rhat opens another whole can of worms! Oops.) So there are a couple of options: Re-cost everythinf by determininf the absolute base cost of an unranged no-STR bonus D and work out from there (and I dont think anyone is up for an even longer seventh edition, at least not right now) Ignore the whole problem and remember that this stuff disnt uswd to bother you and you had a lot more fun then Admit that balancing two disparate thibgs via an expenditure of points is a math-obsessed pipe dream and that any sort of perfect is unattainable (and we all know that very few people are foong to do that). Now, if Hugh (or someone else) hasnt yet explained the fatal flaw of the "killing" advantage, here it is: For 100 pts, I can buy STR50, "Killing." I dont need to add my STR, because that is all I am using. I have a 10d6 Killing Attack for 100 points _and_ a 50 STR. There. There arw other glaring problems (yes, I went into this already knowing them, but I really enjoy it when Hugh goes deeper into the nunbers than I can (I distract myself constantly), and I know the idwa of the Killing advantage bugs him just a little bit. So once again, thanks to Hugh for beinf a good sport about it.

We don't have to assume that it is an orphan. (Great. My autocorrect knows racist slurs in multiple languages (not proud of that; it has demonstrated this to me), but _not_ the word "orphan." Nice.) We can just as easily assume that it is an unstated advantage "STR adds." We have built HKAs with limitations "STR doesn't add," and we have gotten used to it, but that doesn't mean we sisnt overlook some underlying commonality to "Killing Dice." If you accept that it is a +1/2 Advantage, you _can_. You can do all of those things. Which I find (yes; it is an opinion, and I am not pretending anything else. All I am really doing it demonstrating get another reason I don't post builds) rather _supports_ the idea that there is something about HKA that supports the idea that it features a specific item that allows STR to add in. Given that the cost is _identical_ to an RKA, which we know has the plus 1/2 advantage "range" built in, I out forth that there is clearly an advantage to HKA that makes the price equal to differently-advantaged power, and that this element is "STR adds to damage." We do that now for thinga that we son't want to be ranged or imoroved by STR. And the price drops down to what I suggest is unadvantaged Kilking Damage. Getting the vakue of your advantage, however, does not. Okay, I have to run, and I was able to address more angkes than I thought I would have time for, but I still want to thank you foe being a good sPort about this, Sir! .