Duke Bushido

I just miss good clean line art. Portraying the most with the least. Line art is poetry amongst the prose of flashy colors, cell shading, washes, and filters.

Agreed with LL. I always liked Conan specifically because he was a cut above his stereotype. Violent? Yes. Murderous? Yes. Barbaric? It's in his name. But "on a broad scale" does not mean "indiscriminately," and- admitting I cant remember everything- I can't at the moment think of an incident that could be considered unjustified. Specifically because of Conan, most of rare fantasy characters are "noble barbarians," even the more tongue-in-cheek Koloth the Virile. (Yes, if you remember that thread, that is /was a real character that I played for quite some time.)

Yay; Friday! Only two more working days until Monday, when I have to ga back to work.....

Yep. See "Penetrating Points" in.... Champs III? to do Body against any Defense.

Now that is the most thought-provoking response I have ever gotten; thank you. I say that because even though Empire's systems were a bit wierd and cumbersome, the Tekumel setting itself has been relased more than once over the years, and for more than one system. However, it has _never_ caught traction except with a very small handful of people. For what it is worth, I liked it. I didn't _love_ it, but I wouldn't have minded playing in it for a bit. However, remember that I was exposed to it during an era when your only other choices for Fantasy were YATRO or "kinda Nordic, maybe?" and I will always have a bias towards anything that isn't Tolkien-esque; that's just me. Your comments about having to learn the intricacies of an unfamiliar setting actually dovetail nicely into my own complaints about overly detailed setting books, and my suggestions for thinner, lighter setting books that can be slowly expanded on with subsequent adventures- get into the world when you need to, as you need to, instead of four-hundred page info dumps that read like history textbooks- mostly because they _are_ history text books; they are simply focused on a fictional history. Dont get me wrong: I, like many GMs, read them for entertainment as well as for potential use, which probably goes a long way toward explaining why I rather liked Tekumel. We point at D and D a lot in these conversations, so to take a break from that, let's point at another equally-beloved and richly-detailed setting: Traveller's own Third Imperium setting. (First the open honesty: I don't use it that much, but I _love_ reading up on it) If the Third Imperium had been handled from the get-go the way it was handled in T5 or Mongoose Traveller ("here are three colossal text books with every detail of the setting and its history), I don't think it would have caught on like it did. Instead, it grew initially as a few disjointed ideas in response to the fanbase clamoring for _something_ of a setting, and grew and grew as needed or demanded. Miller's Traveller as initially conceived was a lonely place for humans: we were all there was. As fans wanted to ask about aliens, and grumble for aliens, we got aliens (I blame the entirety of the Asian on the screaming popularity of the Man / Kzinn War books of the time). It became one of the most published RPG setting of all time, starting with Traveller Deluxe (well, starting even before that, as there were pieces in every adventure and magazine prior to the Deluxe set- the last of the Little Box editions- and on and on until we couldn't fight the universal scream of RPG players who aren't Duke and we ended up with freakin' Space Elves (the Darrians) and I got so disgusted I didn't buy another Traveller product into (or after) The Traveller Book /The Traveller Adventure combo I found in a game store in Athens. (I cannot fully express the extent of it, so let's instead just understand that it not possible to over-estimate the amount of hatred I have for Tolkien elves and their many knock-offs. If I said "brooding, Anne Rice -styled metrosexual vampires," I am sure I could get a similar reaction from many of you). Stepping from Traveller to another vast universe with half a million pages of lore, we can look at Catholic Traveller. I know people- in fact, I work with a truck driver-! Who will spend hours on the internet reading 40k lore and he doesn't even play- he doesn't play anything! He thinks RPGs are "weird," but he still loves the 40k lore! And again, that didn't start off with a 400 page tome of what's what; it grew as it was needed. To get back on course: I think the relative failure of Tekumel for forty-odd years suggests that it is possible to over-do your setting, and that a massive information dump to process before play begins is something of a barrier brought on by the current approach.

It's all good, Dude. The Furries are on the side of freedom!

Before throwing in with the "I don't think we'd ever need it" club, I will show you the proper courtesy of due diligence, because I think there's always a chance I could be wrong: How do you see this being different from AVALD or existing Advantages? (and I agree with Chris: the APGs are less "guides to getting familiar with the rules and playing more smoothly" than they are "hey! Want to twist the rules and do some really goofy stuff?" or "We know you love rules for corner cases; now let's check out some fractals!" books.)

Agreed-- that's too much. Way too much. You can call stuff like that short with a simple NPC interruption: May I help you find something, Sirs? That sort of thing. The hour is getting late; the Master isn't comfortable with his guests milling about while he sleeps. Please, let me show you to your chambers. Would you like a nightcap first, Sirs? That sort of thing-- anything. Just because they are on a dead end doesn't mean it can't be entertaining. Like I said: if you let them, the players will build the greatest world you've ever played in! All you have to do is decide that even if they are on the wrong path, they will find _something_, even if, in the grand scheme of things, it is absolutely nothing. The last time I told the werefish story on this board, I got a few guffaws, and all kinds of scolding about "letting them waste time" and a few other things that I forgot even before I finished reading them. Why? Because to this very day, the werefish story comes up, and it elicits laughs. I have one-- ONE-- original player from that group left. I also have-- sorry, had: Corona, etc-- three groups going and meeting regularly. All three groups have "yeah, that's probably a werefish" in their lexicon, meaning "it might pan out, but I don't think it's something we need to get really deeply into right now." Today-- what? Forty years later? I can call anyone from the Old Guard (well, two of them are no longer on this earth, but you get what I mean), mention the werefish, and there are nothing but laughs-- pure laughs. Frustrated or not, they enjoyed it immensely. It's not like letting them search a library for six hours and getting _nothing_. The spent two whole sessions at this, but they did manage to learn everything there was to learn about Earl, and got themselves such an out-of-left-field revelation for their troubles, and have nothing but great memories of the whole fiasco. It's not hard: you just have to _want_ everyone to have a great time.

No-- _leave_ the gun. Take the cannoli....

It's not too terribly exciting, really. I was trying to fill in a gap in activity / conversation. The denouement had... denouement...ed? -- after the completion of a long story arc (four or five months of sessions on the one arc), everyone was feeling deflated (in a good way, I mean), and there was suddenly a very long pause-- no players spoke; no characters did anything, so just to keep the silence from hitting that "awkward" stage, Earl- the maintenance guy at their base-- chimed up with "well, it's Thursday already; I've got to be going! Welcome home, folks. Don't call me if you need me; I've got custody this weekend, and I'm unplugging the phone!" Hmm.... Think the Players. What could that be about? "HHHmmmm....." grunt the Players. "What was that about?" "Earl's divorced. It's his weekend with the kids. He's done this before. It's on the calendar in the office, but you guys have been so busy the past few week...." "He's up to something--!" And for the next hour-- real time; a couple days game time-- the start gathering intel on Earl-- everything they can get their hands on. The next two game sessions they are _obsessed_ with Earl! To the point that they follow him, looking to see what he's up to. It was funny for about ten minutes, then it got weird.... Problematically, they got really _excited_ about the idea that Earl-- a pop-up NPC who had been running their base for honest-to-God _six years_ of game time-- was secretly a villain, or a spy, or some sort of mastermind--- Toward the end of the second session of "What's up with Earl," I had put up with all I could handle. I dug in-- Earl left his apartment an hour before sunset, took a cab to the drug store, and bought skin cream, lotion, a humidifier, and stopped at a hardware store and got rock salt. "Where's his kids?!" You don't see any kids-- "I _knew_ it! He's up to something! He's probably building some kind of bomb! What kind of bomb can you make with salt?!" Truth was I had focused so hard on giving Earl something to _do_ that I had forgotten it was custody weekend. That's all there was to it. You've already learned he lives on the top floor-- "Skylight! What do I see through the skylight?" The skylight.... what would you do in a tenement building with a skylight? Hmmm.. ooh! Better lighting in the shower!-- the skylight is directly over Earl's bathroom-- Is he building a bomb in the bathtub? What's he doing-?! Well, as you watch, set back from the grimy glass so as not to cast a shadow on it or to accidentally be seen, he appears to be --- running the bathwater! "What's he putting in it? Ammonia? Bleach? Nitrogen? crap... what did he buy.....? A hasty side glance at the notes-- uh... he's carefully measuring out the rock salt! What? What's he up to? There's a... Thermometer! He's checking the temperature of the water very-- he looked up! Good thing the sun is setting and you're setting back a bit, or he would have looked dead at you! The water! The thermometer! What's it for?! He appears to be checking the temperature of the water-- I call John! This could be it! (john, in character) Jetstream here. Jetstream, I don't know what it is but it's going down! Earl's measuring rocksalt into a bathtub full of temperature-controlled water! This could be it! (jetstream) I'm on my way! Call the others! Within moments, all the heroes are gathered, staring at Earl as he carefully checks the salinity and temperature of the water. Then he darts off to another room and comes back with a mysterious sealed container! What does it look like...?! Well, it's brownish, maybe quart-sized (I had been winging it, but at this point, I had made a decision). It says "Country Crock" on the side.. What? Butter? That's margarine, idiot! Yeah, and it's pretty--- What's he doing now? He's lighting candles-- A ritual! Is he summoning something?! They need salt for that! Where's Mysteria-- I'm right here-- Yeah; make a skill check! Is he summoning something? Can you tell what it is--? oh, why not.... "Go ahead, if you think he's summoning a demon." I push her player (Straight John) three dice. Natural 18! Under the circumstances, hilarious to me; frustrating beyond measure to them. Wait! He's putting something in the tub-- is it the butter? No; it's a small device of some sort. There's a cord that runs to it and plugs into the wall--- (to Mysteria) Are there electro-demons? (to me) is a bomb? Is the water crackling with electricity? No. make a PER Check.... You see some kind of clear tubing hooked to the machine; it's laying on the floor- Is it pumping the water out?! No. The candles are lit in a pattern (now I'm just having fun with it). There are three arranged in a triangle around the tub, five in a circle beyond those, and nine outside of those. He's pressed on a button on a gizmo that looks like CD player-- at least, same size; same shape-- Does it vibrate?! No, but when he throws a switch in the cord, the small device in the tub appears to-- a small, steady stream of bubbles begins to percolate to the surface of the water--- it's pretty dark; you can probably get closer if you want-- Yeah! What do I see? What do I see? Can I see what he's doing--? He's opened the plastic tub and he reaches in... he appears to be sprinking something into the water-- like bits of potting soil and.. something you can't really see what it is-- I have telescopic vision! Where's my dice? I rolled five! What do I see--? it looks like small worms of somekind-- not earthworms, but hundreds of small worms.... Demon worms! nanobots! Alien parasites! (if you're wondering: tubifex. Tubifex was the correct answer. No one got it). You see Earl start to tremble-- his hands are shaking, and he's having trouble with his balance-- He's in a trance! It's beginning! Mysteria, get up here, front and center! Be careful! All of you, make an easy PER check (no failures) The moon is coming out, and you're perfectly silhouetted against it--! Crap! (rolls dice) I want a stealth check to creep silently to the other side of the skylight! No problem; you make it. You see-- oh, me too! I don't have stealth! Can I just creep over slowly-- Got an 11-! You're all on the other side of the skylight, and have the perfect vantage point to watch a fifty-four year old man strip. Clearly, this is one of your finest moments. No; he's up to something--! He's also naked. He's staggering; he can barely stand-- Should we help him? maybe he's being possessed! No; he's summoning something, or building some kind of weird bomb I don't think Earl is a bomb.... Maybe it's the control pod for like an entire mech hidden on the floor below-- In someone else's apartment? He probably rents that one, too! (to me) How much do we pay him? "Not enough for him to catch you watching him undress, or rent two apartments.... He kneels down beside the tub and rolls over into it and begins to spasm. Here it comes! And as the moon finishes rising, complete and full, and its silvery light shines through the skylight, you see him twist and writhe and--- He's shrinking! Something's happening! He is getting smaller, his arms are shrinking and his fingers are getting nightmarishly long-- It's a transformation! He's becoming some kind of Hell beast! He's becoming a fish- WHAT?! Right there, before your eyes, you-- The Seven, the mightiest defenders Campaign City has ever seen-- stand aghast as you watch a naked old man (this was long enough ago that I thought 55 was ancient) shrivel and shrink and gasp for air and sprout scales and turn as silver as the moon-- and within moments, where Earl had been, there is a smallish fish, swimming around the bathtub, lazily eating tubifex worms..... WHAT?! THAT'S _IT_?! THAT is what we've wasted two entire sessions on-?! No one is more upset about it than I am; I promise. Why would you do that-- _I_ didn't do it! _I_ was getting tired of telling you that know Earl, you know his ex-wife, and you know his sons, but _you_ wierdos decided he was some sort of Soviet spy---! Well how where we supposed to know--? And more and more in that vein... I have said it before: Players do the most confounding things. Just roll with it. If you don't leash them too tightly, they'll build you an entire world. And Earl the werefish.

Yep. I played it exclusively as a solitaire game. I wanted to pick up III when it came out, but by then the only game store within two hours of me had folded. I enjoyed the solitaire game, and generally when I was done with a game-- suddenly I had new systems that converted ridiculously easily to Traveller, so it was all a win-win. That right there. I won't say I don't make mistakes, but I throw out so much stuff-- _just in case_ I need something to reach back to later, something to either tie it all together or something for the players to revisit for whatever reason-- I throw out so much "could be extraneous" stuff that for the most part, if I were to make the man / woman mistake, my players would automatically assume it was some sort of clue or intentional distraction or whatever. I'm not a good GM; I just play one at the table. (where you here when I told the board about the werefish incident a decade or so ago?)

I thought SAS was playable. I played it a couple of times, and I have to say that I liked the d20 version _way_ more than I liked the tri-stat version. Don't get me wrong: for a quick-and-dirty fast action game, Tri Stat is right up there with the original Traveller engine. It's just that playing supers with Champions since the early days-- I just found that tri-stat wasn't meaty enough to make me happy. The d20 version was buggy, and there were bits here and there were you just accepted "this is how that works; keep movin'...", it worked perfectly fine for what it was.

Yes. You are quite correct: detailed, colored, even cell-shaded art _is_ what sells. I won't argue that. I just want to say that I hate it. Good, clean perfect-pencil line art will always be my favorite. I don't even want too much shading, if it's not necessary. I can't explain it: it captivates me. The ability to create and sell _so much_ with just a few strokes.... no painter on earth will ever impress me as much. Still: you are right: if you want something to sell, don't listen to old people. It occurs to me that Scott has that World Traveler hair..... We just need a few other equally-stylish and distinguished looking people.....

Egad, I just remembered one! In corresponding with a dear friend earlier today-- we were discussing Traveller; his primary experience being with Mongoose and mine being with 1e / 2e, I had been curious enough about Mongoose to study up on it a bit and I must say, I wish I bought in on it when it was in stores: evidently they took great pains to keep it as much like the original as possible. (sorry: 2300, TNE, and MgT were just _terrible_; they just were!), right down --well, it's not the point: I want the corebook now to add to my small Traveller collection (I chucked almost all of my RPG stuff when we moved here-- had kids planned, a wife, all that-- didn't think there would be a lot of time. The only thing I kept was my HERO stuff, my CT stuff, and FFS from TNE (The only book of that entire era of Traveller actually worth owning!), and my old xeroxes of Starfire. Everything else went bye-bye. My brother D got all the vampire stuff (since it was his fault I owned it), the rest was unceremoniously shoveled into the lobby of a game store in Savannah with a cheerful "No charge; Fred! Get what you can for it; most of it is vintage and all of it is complete!" Alas, it did not save the store.... Anyway.... Anyone else here familiar with Traveller? LIke the culture and gadgets and day-to-day stuff? I know Scott seems to be quite up on it; I was hoping maybe some other folks were. It's kind of important for this... You know what? Skip it. Either you don't know what Patches are and you're about to learn, or you _do_ know what Patches are and you're about to get a refresher course. Patches were super-ungodly sticky squares of steel-reinforced polymer. Most ship's lockers had a dozen or so. As they were constructed in the order of "super-thin layer of metal, polymer, alloy reinforcing mesh, polymer, paste of pureed gecko feet," they were lightweight, remarkably flexible (you couldn't fold them, but they moulded easily to contours) and incredibly tough, they were used as emergency hull repairs for small arms (as in "not ship-mounted weapons" strikes, micro-meteorite penetrations, and anything else that might poke a hole in the hull. I am not certain, as I haven't looked at the source material in years (since our primary Traveller game got ported to Champions legs), but I think they were roughly 24 inches by 24 inches, square? At any rate, they had to be applied to the inside of the hull, as the difference between one atmosphere and no atmospheres is apparently way more than 14 psi or so (I don't think sea level matters much in the void) and these same things-- these things that if you dropped them on the deckplate, they were a permanent fixture-- would be blown right off the outside of the hull.... (as you can see: I questioned some of the science there). Finally I just accepted "well, you can probably get to the interior side of the hole before all the air disappears; putting on a vac suit and going outside probably slows you down a bit......." as a reasonable justification for "must be applied to the inside of the ship." Anyway, the set-up: The PCs have been hired by a trans-stellar shipping concern to address a problem with piracy that is affecting several members of their trade co-op. Random ships will be struck by pirates. No one has been able to intercept them, and all they have to go on is that the pirates, after boarding the ship, kill all but one person, program the ship to return, and somehow wipe all the nav data, leaving no clue as to where it happened or where they came from or went. The PCs, itching to do some brain work and maybe engage in a little gunplay after their last adventure (salvaging a ship that went down on in an ocean) gladly accept. During the initial investigation, they arrange to get hired on as hands on a ship with a particularly desirable, hard-to-trace and easy-to-carry cargo (beanie babies or something; I don't remember. Maybe it was Pogs ). As they begin to thoughtfully review all the evidence from the previous hijackings (there have been eleven in the last eight months), they come to the (correct) conclusion that someone on the ship has to be involved. They (again, correctly) theorize that it is the "survivor," (he is lightly injured, sedated, and treated with chemicals and enzymes that trigger horrific-looking but generally harmless reactions to make his injuries look more severe than they are, and returns with the story that he was made to watch the crew's execution, was tortured, and left alive "to tell the tale of Solomoni vengance!" They begin to investigate the individual crewmembers-- carefully, of course. Ooh! If there had been a "quote of the week" forum back in '82 or so, I might have entered this one: "This has _got_ to be our guy!" "No; we don't know what. We need something definite; something straight-up criminal. Then we can alert the captain." "He's got six different sets of ID!" "Yeah? _I've_ got six sets of ID!" "_And_ you're a straight-up criminal, moron!" "Oh yeah.... Then-- we need to find his partner!" "Partner?" "I wouldn't do this alone; someone has to keep their eyes open while I'm working." "But only one guy comes back alive--" "Yep; that's the way I'd do it, too. You never know who's gonna get one of those conscience thingies..." They begin to keep an eye on him (he's the navigator), and double-check (carefully and secretively) everything he does, and carefully track his comings and goings. The alert comes on, and the captain does an all-ship hail to brace for a coming out of a misjump. (in our universe, you didn't immediately know that you misjumped: your clue was that the drop out of jumpspace was going very, very badly.) One of the players is on the bridge, serving as an engineer and monitoring the jump drives. He has Astrogation- 4. In CT, that's _a lot_, and he thinks it's peculiar that the navigator isn't here for the drop out of jump. Unwilling to tip his hand and yell "Look out, guys! The navigator is running around the ship!," he instead does an all-ship to request the navigator come to the bridge. The PCs are tipped off, and begin to get suspicious. They start to go looking for him. The drop out isn't smooth, but nowhere near as bad as a misjump is reported to be. The engineer notices that the maneuver drives have been firing crazily and randomly from the moment the drop out started, and that they have shut down completely just seconds after reentering normal space. Suspicious, he pulls the nav tape and swaps a blank into the navigator's console while reviewing the real tape on his own console. This was not a misjump. It was a full Jump 4, and the maneuvers were programmed to do what they did when they did; it's all on the tape. The Jump 4 is a direct violation of company policy, as it leaves the ship's fuel almost completely spent: there is nothing for an emergency jump away should something be very, very wrong. They are exactly where the navigator wanted them to be, and the first thing the PC on the bridge notices is that there are thousands of stars, and no sun..... with Maneuver 2 as their only option, they are effectively dead in the water. Just as the PC on the bridge puts this together, a decompression alert sounds, and the PCs and NPCs scramble for the nearest locker, grabbing masks and tanks and patches (training says ignore the Vacc Suit at first. If you don't find the leak in ten minutes, then start worrying. If it was explosive decompression, you wouldn't make it to the locker anyway, right?) Following the screams and the banshee-like screams of escaping air, the two PCs (there were only three PCs on this adventure) make their way to a narrow maintenance shaft that leads to life support. The navigator and another NPC crewman (the gunner-- two of the other PCs were serving as gunners) are fumbling around with the patches, but they cannot get them to adhere. Figuring that at the moment, everyone was in danger, they put aside their concerns. "Give me that!" shouted the first PC, taking the patch from an NPC gunner who was getting tangled up in his own carbine and throwing it to her partner. She then grabbed the patch from the other guy and pulled the wire that removed the liner and started the heating process to activate the adhesive. "Where are your damned masks?! Get to a locker and get some masks, now!" shouts the other PC, both because they weren't wearing masks and in the hopes that these guys-- one probably villain and a guy who _could_ be his accomplice-- would vacate the shaft. The two step back and let the PCs turn toward the wall... I am _so_ clever! I am _so_ brilliant! The third PC didn't get a lot of spotlight or glamour in the previous adventure, and thus far, his player has felt kind of third wheel spending most of his time checking the computer behind the navigator every time the navigator did something. He's going to have his spotlight, though! because he's going to have to rescue these two! I am _brilliant_! "Javohn, you haven't had any reports about the progress on the leak, and it's been nearly six minutes...." "Okay! Javohn unstraps, grabs his SMG (stashed in the locker on the bridge), a mask, and a handful of Patches and heads out." "The captain looks at you confused. 'The ship's not that big, Boy! They'll find-- where the Hell did you get that weapon and what do you think you're doing--?" "Saving your butt, Sir!" and down he drops into the main corridor. He hears the shrieking of the air leak and heads toward it, checking at corridor intersections to determine direction. Meanwhile-- 'Okay, they take a step back and let you squeeze by to repair the four holes--' Are they blown-in or blown out?" "? Oh, uh-- they look like they were burned, like with a laser. " here it comes! They don't suspect anything! "squeeze by? I thought we were in the corridor to life support?" "No. You're in a mantenance shaft that leads to life support. There's a corridor, but this shaft is for direct access to lots of the conduits and plumbing, etc. It's pretty tight in here; that's why the gunner kept getting his rifle hung up while he was trying to open the Patch." "Okay, so we squeeze in and get busy!" HA! This is going to be _great_! "As you waste time studying the holes you should be patching, you hear an ominous ratcheting noise as the navigator cocks a pistol. "Turn around! I won't shoot a woman in the back!" "I turn around." "You see the navigator, no expression on his face, gesturing with his revolver that he wants you to move out of the shaft." "And he sees _nothing_." "Come again?" "I still have my Patch, right?" "Well, yeah, I guess-- you were studying the holes--" "And we opened them when we took them from these guys--" "yeah, but--" "I shove it on his face and wrap it around his head." PC2-- "Yeah; I'm thinking I can patch his gun arm to his chest" Bridge PC gets there just in time to see one of them slapping Patches (remember they had brought some, because this wasn't their first rodeo) on the holes while the other held a dagger to the gunner's through (he had spent the entire charge of his weapon burning three holes though the hull, and the PCs had suspected he was out of juice. He couldn't swing the weapon as a club in the confines, but it was pretty easy to push a dagger point to this throat....) and one navigator in the final throws of suffocation with an arm-and-gun-shaped lump showing through the patch (yep. Dex roll went in the PCs favor-- by a lot)). Everyone knows what's up: the navigator and the gunner would have gone through the ship, taking the other NPCs one by one, then hand over the ships when the pirates arrived. The gunner would be killed, the navigator roughed up a bit, etc-- Knowing the pirates were coming and that they were dead in the water, the gunners (the two PCs) took their stations and fought it out when the pirate ship showed up just a few minutes later. While the other PC has nothing to do but plan the refueling trip for when the battle was over.... There are a lot of great memories from that adventure, but in terms of hitting my own goals for it, well.... it was a complete disaster.....

Howzabout this, then--- Right at the height of the craze: The guy who used to be dedicated tractor driver had just had some sort of procedure done-- not surgical, but diagnostic, so not too terribly invasive.... I guess? Anyway, they were trying to rule out /rule in IBS and Crohn's Disease. He's dragging a load up onto the truck and suddenly just goes wild with a sneezing fit that generally you'd have to observe a housecat to witness. As he comes out of it, his face drops and he gets that horrified thousand-yard stare. "Yo, Matt (pseudonym)! What's wrong?" His head starts bobbing just a bit, we can hear the humming, and he proceeds to climb off the tractor. "I'm goin' home. Bye." "Matt---?" He turns, and starts singing: "Baaaaaby shart, doot doot to-doo-do-doo; Baby shart, doot doot to-doo-do-doo...." We laughed until we were in tears.

The second-sexiest voice ever. Damned shame.

Looks like my son's cat, Ollie.

To be fair, I have never had an issue personally with splitting the party, even when I was trying very hard to convince myself I liked D and D. The flack comes from two sources: the general community hates it-- it may well be a holdover, but mention doing it with any sort of regularity, or allowing it to happen because one player announces "my character is going to to x place and do y," and you'll get ten condemnations for every curious inquiry. The other source is the players in the group that isn't rolling dice right now. Not all, to be fair, but there is a particular caliber of player who just assumes that whatever group he is with is the group that is going to get all the action. Sure; I try to make sure both groups have something to do, and even-- because everyone likes it-- a chance to roll some dice. But as soon as it is time for the other group to roll a die or two -- "Man, this sucks! We should be there, too! Why aren't we doing anything?" Uhm... you are. You just finished doing a thing, and as soon as these guys do their thing, you'll likely have another thing to do. Alternatively, you could split from your splinter group and wend your way back to this group, but they'll be done by the time you get here, and the guys you left will be doing something, most likely. "This sucks! Why did you do this to me?!" And, as noted, I find it absolutely _mandatory_ in a supers game, lest Mechanon just decide that Crusader is aesthetically unpleasing while fighting some Superman pastiche. GIven time, I could dig through my AC magazines and find it, but let's just say-- while it is _far_ beyond anything I could do, all the improvements you've made since might be blocking it from your recall. Nope; just honest. You have quite a talent, and should preen on occasion. Now I can't find the post to quote it, but referencing your comment on the Traveller artist with the hauntingly beautiful artwork--- give me a day or two, and I can probably come up with it. I kept an interview I stumbled across some years ago simply because his artwork was discussed (remember, I have spent my whole life trying to develop two talents that just never happened-- drawing is one of them.) I loved his art, too, and it _looked_ so simple, so do-able, but damn do you have to have a rare ability to decide what the absolute minimum amount of drawing yields the maximum amount of impact. And the early days-- when the books were just black and white with a splash of red? I can't think of anything else that would have made his art look as phenomenal as it did. At any rate, I kept the interview because one of the parties was a friend of his, and he commented something akin to this: Yeah; he said all he ever did was get an idea of the type of face he wanted, then he drew the eyes. He would spend hours on the eyes. He said once the eyes were done, they told him what the rest of the face would look like, and it took him just a few minutes to draw the rest of the face. After that, he was just whipping his pencils around and done. He said the face was the key to everything: if you could read the face, you knew everything you needed to know about the background. I found that to be rather profound, even beyond artwork. AH! Does Craig Farley sounds right to you?

Love it! Mostly because I borrwed heavily from Shadow World maps myself to get a campaign off the ground a few years back.

Well then the solution is to form our own hot group! Quick! Who here is way less ugly than I am?!

Someone on this board once mentioned that PS238 was just about as perfect a superhero game as has yet been cobbled from HERO. I am not saying rip it off, though! no, really; I am not. But I would suggest styling a settong / free campaign book along those lines. my POV throughout this thread has been using CC as the Champions rule book, and then stripping out a light version of whatever fans of the setting feel to be the most "iconic" Champions city (I really dont think it is Millennium City, though. I cant think of a singular so-popular-even-a-non-comic book-fan-has-heard-of-it city of super-science and high-tech wonder.) A thin set of adventures that can be strung together and that are set (softly, in case the GM prefers to use them elsewhere) into this setting, featuring relatively simple version of extant NPCs- the only thing really new here is the book itself, and of course, the adventures. Everything would come from existing material, which will be (also softly) pointed out to the prospective GM.

Thanks for the correction, Mark!

The correct answer, of course: "It's a male mentalist!" "Wait! he was a she last time!" "A very powerful mentalist." "But last time--" "See what I mean?"