Duke Bushido

I can't speak for anyone but me, but the reason I hate it from a woman is that when a man asks and I say "nothing," they get it immediately, while I have yet to meet the woman (including my wife) who fully understands that I-- and I have always assumed but may be wrong-- and other men can and occasionally do, just to recharge for a few minutes-- turn my brain completely _off_ for a while. No thinking; no data processing; only the barest of sensory inputs at the "if you smell fire or see violence, turn back on" level.

My wife is currently sitting behind me charting (she's a home healthcare nurse). When she works (I have recently discovered, as she didn't used to work from home) she has the unbelievably irritating habit of _loudly_ playing books on tape (Yea; I like them, too, but not at death metal concert volumes, and our taste in books is criminally polar). Making it far, far worse is that, for whatever reason, she prefers books that are read by a speaker with a british accent. I know that like any other nation, there is more than one accent. I don't know how many british accents there are, but I know it's more than two simply because I am aware of the one that "sounds rather pleasant" and the one that is "get this man to a speech therapist and seriously, check his teeth and upper pallet for horrible deformities" severe speech impediment, and I have heard several other speakers sound "british, but neither especially pleasant nor obviously impaired" (John Cleese is a great example of this: it's not the 'well that sounds cultured' or the 'those noises are an absolute war crime;' it is not unpleasant, and is still distinctly british), so I figure the total is "more than two." They probably have names for the accents; I don't know, and it's not the point. The point is that my wife seems to be completely incapable of knowing that there are differences in these accents, and while one is pleasant and the other (or others) are inoffensive, there is one that, for humanitarian reasons, absolutely demands a mercy killing. (it's the one with all the "oi" sounds and where "th" is pronounced "f." Actually, damned near _everything_ is pronounced 'f' on the rare occasion that it isn't just omitted from the word completely). It boggles my mind that she really cannot hear the difference in these accents. At any rate, she's currently listening to a murder mystery (scratch that: she is damned near _always_ listening to a murder mystery. I have tried to explain to here that other genres exist, but.... ). The reader is clearly extremely comfortable switching accents to represent different character (and, unfortunately, is also completely comfortable with multiple voice-cracking falsettos for female characters). The short version is that I have never before heard anyone with the "bad accent" say "Madame Tousard's" before (forgive the highly-likely spelling errors) before. I am now trying to work up a likely reason that the fantasy campaign-- if corona ever ends-- needs an injection of the NPC "Madame Two-Swords."

And tangentially related, I am starting a go-fund-me for plane tickets to England...

I was really, _really_ hoping you would join in on this discussion, just so I could say-- with nothing but love and respect, of course, but I can't pass up the joke-- "Well, now that we've heard from an actual barbarian...." (seriously, Dude: nothing but respect, but I know so few people from your part of the globe)

EEE-deeot!

Got to wondering what was up with the color shift, then I thought "don't worry about it. If it is relevant, we will know in three or four months...."

And I am stuck home sick. Guess I know what I'm doing today.....

No; i am afraid not. I have never at a con had a character.

I dont know if I have it fully, either, Spence, but it sounds like a periodic Radiation Accident where characters bump up to a whole new tier of power. My first thought was XP hoarding would do this, but then he gave a clarification that said simply being in this world for long enough would cause you to advance, even if you weren't adventuring, so any sort of XP scheme is out the window with that. I'm puzzled. The only thing I can think of that would yield this is periodic dumps of unearned XP /additional Character Points- Wait. That might do it, actually. Announce a game for 500-pt characters, have the players build 250-pt characters, and every X unit of game time, drop another 25 CP or so in addition to their earned XP. Granted, you'll have to come up with appropriate disadplications to make that work, but if you have been playing, you should be working on a reputation and an enemy or two anyway, right?

Okay, let's see if this works: Cool! Have fun

Thank you so much for the artist information. I _love_ that picture! Okay-- now let me find something to post....

Yep. Each supplement had a few more pieces to help fill in the gaps, but even then, unless you tracked down complete Fuzion rules elsewhere, you really couldn't completely build anything, and if I recall, there wasnt really,everything you needed to make adjustment powers particularly useful either.

Ah; Sorry- more specifically: What changes in game and build,parameters when selecting one over the other. What allowances should be made to character creation costs and budgeting if you pick one method over the other. How selecting the structure od your skills affects the feel,and playability of the game; what are upside / downside of choosing one over the other, (and again, given the genre book format, I would be happy to see many these in genre books as "we have chosen this sort of skill structure as it helps to convey X about the setting, etc) and perhaps most importantly, why should or shouldnt I do both? Let one guy have six skills related to electrical,engineering and,one guy have "genius gadget inventor?" And like you, it is not some,sort,of,battle I want to,fight over, but it seems glaringly,absence in a rules,set with "when a power with advantage x meets a power with advantage Y, then this situation means Z."

Agreed. But how would you have any understanding of that if you hadn't played those individual games before they were merged into one game? For what it is worth, I _like_ specialization in Heroic games, as it gives players the chance to make their character carve himself a unique niche and minimizes overlap between characters. I also like that it gives somewhere practical to spend those XPs, as they certainly aren't going to buy sixt points of STR or an extra thirty points of BODY or work their way up an 8 SPD. So skill specialization works in Heroic games- frankly, if you are going to have a long-running game, there is a good argument that it is _necessary_ in that sort of game. That is certsonky the only place you found it during 3e HERO Games. When they pushed it all into one system in 4e- and dont get me wrong: it was a great idea, overall, as it let them take everything they had learned and give it an overall coherence. But they left Skills both wide and narrow, then gave rules for making new skills but no actual guideline for them beyond picking a category of skill. That was the first time both tight skills and broad skills appeared in the same book, and there was no real discussion of the difference between them, or even if they ahould both be allowed in the same game. I can speak from experience that this was a populat thing for certain players to try to exploit, shoehoring everything they could into a single,skill, even if they had to back up so far to see the whole thing that they'd be in orbit. The genre books- arguably _the_ source for genre-specific advice about the particular heroic game you had in mind- also failed to even acknowledge skill specialization (or lack there of), in spite of the fact that all of them had lengthy sections of advice for setting the particular tone for your game. That, at least to me, is a great place to discuss what is essentially a mechanic whose importance varies specifically with the tone of the game, but again, I admit that is just my opinion.

No. Those games,were stand-alone games, and that was how those games worked. There was no bloat because there was no "way we did it before." Of course, there would be no "way we do it this time" because there was no new "this time:" HERO Games consolidated everything into Champions-- okay. Sorry: 4e. 4e had lqrge grqnd overskills and much mire specialized smaller skills _and_ had the template for making your own skills (and some awkwardness about how they would differ if they were background ir professional or youTube hobbies or whatever). What it did _not_ have was any sort of useful guidance on the differences of effect and requirement skikls had based on hiw broad you wanted them, any suggestions about when to specify or why you might want or not want to, and on and on- So personally, as much fun as it was, I blame 4e for not taking the time to include at least a short discussion on this- or even doing so in any of the genre books, where specificity is one of the keys to the feel of the game. At any rate, I feel 4e started this tradition-- A proud tradition that carries on even into today"s thousand-plus pages of rules- rules that specify even exactly how each individual power modifier must interact with each power, each other, and modified powers; rules upon rules for corner cases and mandates and power constructs to replace modified powers and modified powers to replace power constructs and guidelines for rolling your own there,too. We,even have rules that can replace other rules in the same set of rules! But to this day we don't have any discussion of the value or ramifications of the proudly-open-ended skill system.

Yeah, Brookside has been a problem for years, but during Corona, it went nuts and they even started taking down their own. Once they realized the locals couldn't afford to fight, it went all kinds of nuts- like Ludowicci, GA, in the sixties and seventies. Best advice is to not go within thirty miles of it, as I have never heard of anyone successfully defending themselves with a jurisdiction claim. Don't even go on the interstate near it. The interstate is something like twelve or fifteen mikes outside of their jurisdiction, but they run it all day long. Thirty miles between you and Brookside, always.

Excellent examples-- picking from that particular universe, I mean, because I recall that Marvel Superheroes (yellow box from years and years ago) had a character sheet somewhere for Dr. Doom (and I think we all know who Destroyer is an homage to ). Anyone still have that game? Anyone have Dr. Doom's honest-to-God character sheet? How many bajillion skills does the good doctor have in "his own universe," as it were?

First, _phenomenal_ image! I have to know who did this art; I absolutely _love_ it! Now, to the game! Tico Valiente was a thug. Abrupt-- even blunt, but that was the extent of Tico. He had no dreams and no ambitions and decided that the easiest way to get what he wanted was theft, dealing, and occasionally hiring himself out as a goon. When he turned 16, he formally quit the high school he hadn't been attending and went to work in the factory with his father and older brother. The job wasn't anything that interested him, but it filled the hours in between his nights on the street hustling, and meant he could still live under his parents' roof. One thing he _could_ say about the job, though: the hard labor put a considerable amount of muscle on him. Although he wasn't an exceptionally large man, at six-foot two, he towered over his parents and siblings. It wasn't too long after quitting highschool that Tico began running with the gang. He wasn't sure how it happened, but so long as he was still free to take whatever he wanted, when he wanted it, he was fine having to fight a bunch of other guys simply because they were on the wrong street. It wasn't like Tico had actual dreams or anything. He just went along with whatever the gang decided they were doing. In fact, none of it really seemed to bother Tico at all-- not until the gang turned on him. "Punishment," they had called it. It seemed Tico had been holding out. What Tico was taking, what Tico was making in sales, whatever Tico stole-- he wasn't giving the gang "their share." It was only when he was called to the home of the leader-- Javier-- that Tico began to understand. Javier didn't live in the neighborhood. Javier lived nearby, in an affluent subdivision. Javier had money. Something clicked in Tico: that money came from the gang. Every dollar that a gang member "earned" was split fifty-fifty with "the gang," through the care of Javier. Tico knew how much money he made, and he figured that some of the others-- the more clever, long-range planners and those guys with runners of their own-- they were probably making a lot more. But no one was making the kind of money Tico saw brazenly displayed in this house and in the garage. For the first time in his life, Tico had a dream.... The beating was brutal-- it was an "example," and likely was meant to be fatal. It would have been, if it hadn't been for the freak. The freak was the last thing Tico remembered clearly. He had been struck hard over the head from behind and had awakened tied to a wooden chair and gagged. The room was large and well-lit. There was a wall of mirrors along one wall with a rail running the length of it, set at about hip height. He had multiple views of three large and incongruously well-dressed men surrounding him just before the beating started. As the pain exceeded his ability to remain conscious, the men relented. One of them reached into his suit coat and retrieved a silenced automatic pistol. Tico's head rolled back, and he noticed the ceiling, too-- at least the half of the ceiling along the mirrored wall-- was covered in mirrors. He saw the man with the gun reach out and grab a handful of Tico's hair. Just before he jerked Tico's face up to the muzzle of the gun, Tico saw the freak. There were three large men in the mirror, too. They were all well-dressed, and one of them had a gun. They were standing around a wooden chair, and for a moment, Tico thought that there was a mirrored version of himself in that chair. But no. It wasn't Tico. It was a freak. He was naked, like Tico, but his skin wasn't honey-colored, and it didn't become a darker coffee color at the arms. It was white-- almost luminous. The limbs were muscular, like Tico's, but the muscles.... the freak was nothing but muscle. There was no sign of fat or softness; the figure he saw could have been craft whole from a thousand lengths of steel cable painted luminously white. Tico couldn't really describe what he saw-- it was hard to focus, and he was too busy savoring the relief that the beating had stopped, and had almost looked forward to the kiss of the gun that was now staring at him. That face, though-- it was as if there was no skin on the face. The skin here, too, was luminous, and like the body, there was absolutely no hint of anything that wasn't muscle or tendon. The skin here was draw so tight as to look like nothing so much as it looked like a skull. They eyes-- black and empty the skin sank into the sockets of the skull, and from deep under the brow, two piercing blue lights blazed a stern and determined gaze. As Tico was snatched forward, the blue lights blazed red. All three men stood still, as if they were mannequins modeling the high end suits they wore. The two on either side whimpered like terrified puppies while the one grabbing his head screamed. Fascinated, Tico watched as the arm that disappeared from view over his own head..... changed. It began to crystalize, traces of frost crept toward the shoulder; ice formed on the creased fabric of the jacket. The man screamed again. Tico snatched his head back, hoping to see in the mirror what his attacker saw-- no doubt he, too, had seen the freak, but unlike Tico, he hadn't been looking forward to dying. Tico stared in the mirror, fascinated. He saw the freak staring back at him; he saw a hand and forearm falling behind the freak, and watched as it hit the floor behind the freak and shattered. The smash and crack of the shattering ice startled him and he looked back to the man in front of him. He was working his mouth soundlessly, like a goldfish contemplating its fate. he cradled the stump of his arm-- now removed just above the elbow, the gun in his other hand completely forgotten. Why was there no blood? Why was the flesh black? Life returned to Tico, and he was again scared-- terrified even more than when he had awakened surrounded by his torturers. The freak had done that, and Tico hadn't even seen him. He had to get away! He had to escape the freak! He leapt to his feet, forgetting his fetters, and heard the chair splinter to pieces as he did so. The other two men-- one on each side of him-- were blubbering like frightened toddlers. Tico moved to push one away, and as he put his arms forward, he saw how lean, muscular, and luminously white they were. He would worry about that later-- right now, he had to escape; he had to get away from the freak before he, too, fell victim to it. As he pushed the man away, he heard him scream, and saw the ice and frost form across his chest where he had been touched. He turned away, confident the freak was somehow there with him, he grabbed the other man, hoping to shove him aside, and watched in fascination and horror as he, too, began to freeze. Understanding began to creep into his mind. He-- somehow-- no; it's not possible. Carefully, he looked at the wall of mirrors and made small, cautious gestures. No-- th-- it-- someh---- no; he would worry about it later; he had to get away from here. He stared in fascination at his skeletal hands-- muscle was clearly there, but it was drawn so tight beneath the white skin...... Suddenly he caught a scent that drew him back to his situation. The men-- the large men who would be his assassins.... had soiled themselves in terror..... Tico awoke under a rail bridge, back in the inner city. He was Tico-- not the freak. Things were.... well, he didn't know what they were, but certainly this was an improvement. He hung around long enough to roll a homeless man for his clothes and made for him. over the next few weeks, he learned to summon and control his powers. When he became the freak-- no; that wouldn't do. There wasn't a separate freak; there was Tico, powered up, but still Tico. When he powered up, he became much more powerful physically, but why, he could not say. (Density Increase, two levels). He was also able to generate fear in his opponents (Drain: Presence, 2d6, Area of Effect 12 meters radius, centered on Tico, requires eye contact to initiate). Most intriguingly, at least to Tico, was his ability to freeze things. It didn't matter what it was-- all he had to do was touch it and will it frozen, and it would almost-instantly begin to develop a delicate even coating of frost as it became colder and more brittle (Drain: BODY: 2d6, Cumulative, expanded maximum-- have fun with it) combined with HtH Killing Attack, 2d6, no STR bonus (consider also Ranged KA, no range). Tico had two things now: he had a dream, and he had _power_, power that he could exercise and work and hopefully improve. He would content himself to the street gang first. Then another, then another. With enough soldiers on the street, he would form his own cartel. When he got large enough, he would begin to take the other cartels, too. Javier would have to go, and soon. There should be no question as to who was in charge. He had the start of a plan. He needed something to reinforce his power-- he wasn't powerful enough-- at least, no yet-- to don a colorful costume and knock over banks, but he should certainly have a look, something that would work with his power, possibly enhance his reputation-- something memorable. Taking spray paint to his black jeans and work boots, and then to a thin leather jacket that he had scored breaking into bus lockers (so what if it was a bit too small? That would just enhance his look), he crafted his outfit. Some gloves from an old Halloween costume would do for now, until he could find something a bit sturdier. He decided against picking a super-villain sounding name: he wasn't on that same level of power yet, and it wouldn't do to attract powerful attention to himself, at least not before he was ready. He toyed briefly with calling himself Mamito as a little joke, but was wise enough to realize that he didn't want anything possibly funny or derisive; nothing should be allowed to undercut the threat of his presence. Eventually, he decided to simply keep his street name, even in light of his new dreams. One day, Sugar would be the emperor of this city....

If I can make an aside request; a quick google turned up nothing particularly useful, and a lot of contradiction. If it's not too much trouble, Scott, can I get you to define that term as you are using it? Thanks.

These. So very much both of these. This is the sort of creep of the "just because we can doesn't mean we should" variety. I know i am in the minority, so I wont ponrificate on it elsewhere in newer editions, particularly in kight of the "it still plays /feels the same" majority opinion, but I would like to say that this problem isnt just with Skills as the editions get longer and less penetrable- literally: "we proves definitively that the last obe will stop a bullet. Let's make the next one four times as thick." I do agree that Skills _is certainly_ the most obvious area where this is happening. For years, I have rooted for an in-the-book discussion of this problem, because there really isn't explanation of it at all beyond "and if this isn't enough, here are three generic categories you can make to add your own!" (Don't mistake my meaning here; I think that is a good thing, but again: it needs to be put into perspective. There should be a discussion of generalization, specialization, and hiw they affect the game,in play, in character expertise, and even in points level requirements. It is entirely possible to spend two hundred points in skills and still not be able to perform rudimentary functions: all you to do is over-specialize. Do you have Janitor:14 or less, or do you have "get that weird yellow-green film out of the tiles,behind flush-valve actuated public toilets 14 or less? Huunting, fishing, tracking, buikd a fire, forage, familiarity with local flora, familiarity with local fauna, camoflauge, find water, build temporary shelters, skin game, sanitation- all at 14 or less? Or Survival at 14 or less? Or woodland Survival? There needs to be a discussion of this in the rules if open-ended roll-your-own skills are going to be the HERO way to do things. Not in supplemental materials- though that would be an ideal,place to really break thijgs down- but right in either the how-to-skills section or the campaign guidelines section.

I have done campaigns with and without barbarians; I suspect I shouldn't be so honest, but mostly it boils down to whim as to whether or not there will be barbarians, and just what it is that qualifies them. A few of the more memorable: One campaign featured a race of giants that were the barbarians. They were barbarians because they lived on a large (think "the size of Italy) island / mini-continent that was a line of dormant / smouldering volcanoes. The toxins, etc, given off by the regular emissions of gas and smoke stunted neurological and brain development. As a result, they tended to travel in bands not much larger than nuclear families, had only the most rudimentary basics of language, and that was usually unique to each clan, were aggressive on sight, and occasionally were cannibalistic. Why? Why would a GM do this?! Well, they were giants, and as such were physical powerhouses. Other side effects of the neurological stunting included a staggering amount of Stun-only defenses on top of everything else. They could periodically be found as slaves elsewhere, but were extremely rare outside their native lands. So they _could_ be encountered or seen-- and perhaps the party should free this slave! But what of the fallout of a free giant with zero rage control, etc? Made for interesting moral and social conflicts. Also, because of the rage and intellect issues, _no one_ wanted to have one as a PC, in spite of their ability to go toe-to-toe with a squadron of any other race. Typically, at least when I do barbarians, they are simply a race of tribal natives discovered by one (or more) of the dominant races, and are "barbarians" simply because they don't have fancy clothes (or... clothes....), wagon wheels, brick buildings, agriculture, and some form of financial system more complex than barter. In this case, "barbarian" is applied the same way white settlers to North American called the natives "savages." I have had a couple of games where the "barbarians" were simply extreme warlike or heavily militarized people-- in one, the society was every bit as "advanced" as everyone else, but all success was measured in terms of conquest, be they financial, military, raiding other lands, what-have-you. Violence was typically embraced as the first-choice tool for getting what you wanted; shopkeepers existed, as did a class of wealthy people, but they were well-armed, with a well-armed entourage, and were always very vigilant, even against their own hirelings. They may or may not have been based very vaguely on House Harkonen-- I say may or may not, because it wasn't done intentionally, and I never even realized it until it was pointed out to me after nearly a year of playing the setting. My favorite "barbarians" of my devising-- and I _think_ I have spoken of them before-- were desert nomads who travelled the continent along well-organized routes, each family having established their own route hundreds of years prior, and all families meeting for a festival once a year in the middle of Sea of Sand. Their social structure was Byzantine, as where there rules of conduct and interaction with each other. They were "barbarians" because they went out of their way to eschew machine-made or slave-made goods, all warfare was conducted with swords and spears (though there were a few bow users, specifically for combat with "outsiders," as killing at a distance was a deep insult to the bloodline of whoever you were trying to kill). Everything was handmade and food was hunted or foraged: agriculture was an affront to the "natural" nomadic lifestyle. Wealth-- gold or what-have-you-- was a means to an end, and never to be hoarded, but used to the benefit of all-- family first, of course, but for all. Fancy complex fabrics and beautiful artistry in wood-- for wagons, weapons, furnishings, or what-have-you-- glass, copper, and brass-- these were the trappings of opulence, as were furs and food stores. The pantheon of seven-hundred gods and goddesses was impenetrable to outsiders, but the religion guided almost the entirety of everyday life. These people were "barbarians" simply because their idea of a society was so far out-of-sorts with everyone else's: most people travelled to support a fixed location. The barbarians travelled because all free creatures are migratory by nature. People wanted homes in which to pack their riches, but hoarding was as unthinkable to the "barbarians" as is giving away wealth to modern Christians. Short version is that the simple difference of opinion about what was universally "valuable" made it impossible for a "civilized" person to make much sense of their behaviors, other than their violence. No; they weren't Conan-level violent, but they thought in the exact terms of "the People (being all the tribes of the nomads), the Clan, and the family." If you made an enemy of any one of the nomads, you made an enemy of not just his family, but his entire clan, and to declare an outsider an enemy of the Clan was tantamount to taking out an irrevocable contract on his life. Amongst Nomads.... it got complicated. No one ever made an enemy of "the People," but likely because of all the stories of the three empires throughout history that had made that mistake.... Their ruins still stand, in some places, where the earth is hard and salted.... Strangely enough-- or perhaps sensibly enough-- they were extremely gregarious, generous, and polite people-- you know: so long as you were, too.

I may have misunderstood your intended point. I thought you were suggesting people who didn't like D&D give it another go; I was explaining why most of us don't: no matter what has changed, there is something of the core that remains, and that's what we are going to notice above all, and we are already prejudiced to notice the things we didn't like first of all.

This conversation is entertaining on a wide number of levels if you didn't like Babylon 5 the first time around.

I'm not saying you"re wrong, but it's like Brussels sprouts: I have had them before, several times, and I remember each contemptable experience quite clearly and distinctly- most specifically the one where, as the young lady I had just started dating had gone to a great deal of trouble to prepare an otherwise amazing meal, I pretended to be absolutely enthralled with them-- right up until I jumped up, raced to her balcony, and copiously and embarrassingly noisily vomited onto her car, four stories below. You can't get me to try Brussels sprouts again; you just can't. And even if you did- even if someone had found a way to make them absolutely _edible_, I am not going to key on why: I am going to notice above all else are those things which are most similar to the Brussels sprouts with which I am far too familiar. it's a leftover survival trait that is being horribly misapplied now that have created a functioning society, but ultimately, it's just the way people are typically built.