Lumbering Ox

Re: XP idea And I've seen players take characters they don't really want to, just so they could act, just to get the points.

Re: XP idea I wouldn't see it at controversial. Again, I haven't DMed in ages. Any view I would hold is based on distant and fond memories, not hard opinions. Actually upon further consideration it seems we pretty much agree. Neither of us wants to be seen as favoring. [also I've put up with whining]. IN a way the solutions are pretty simular in the end. Giving out fractional points vs giving out a hero cookie point for amazing things would over the course of time result in the same thing. Both methods reduce the effect of a bonus so as to not make it such a huge factor. Although in terms of avoiding the worry of favoritism, waiting until the minds of GM and players are blown would be better then fractional. The fractional can still be arbitrary, making the bonus point the equivilent of the VC not so much so. OTOH it also means awards are less common which seems to be important to you. Its always good to have options. By the end of the year, we are still talking about perhaps 5 or 10 extra point difference tops out of normally 50 ro 100 under both viewings.

Re: XP idea Perhaps a situation where a bonus XP is givin out but only for those situations where a player has his character do something that serves as a presence attack... for the players. For those times when then other players themselves are stunned into silence by some act of brilance or cleaverness or whatever. Then there is no worry about arbitraryness or the like because it is obvious to everyone that player X deserves the point and to not give it would be a crime vs humanity. For the most part, the party is a team and gets treated as such to succeed or fail as a unit, but occationally a character might earn himself a VC or a CMH* and gets that point. Calling me a shameless individual OK so I am. But one can argue it both ways. I am brainstorming/free asociating here. I have not played HERO in over 13 years, and other then playing 4 or so sessions of D20 have not played anything in about 10... against my will of course. BTW the player I refered to was also a chronic cheater. Why a DM would let a player use a DM sheild I will never guess . The last group he was in kept him around because 1: He *Always* showed up, 2: Its an extra body 3: The DM just halved the damage he did, and doubled the damage done to him, and the player never figured it out and 4: It was fun to them and easy to have him blow up in a viking rage. *Victoria Cross, Congressional Medal of Honour

Re: XP idea 3: There is a difference between giving the character a personality from a character concept and just whipping up something for the xp. Much like the difference between killing orcs because of some goal, vs killing them because they are not worth the xp alive [like in some systems] We had this one fellow in the group who was a hard core combat type/minmaxer. It seemed the only reason he showed up to roll to hits and damage dice and had little interest in anything else. Any attempts to encourage playing more [ie playing in character, having interesting characters whatever] he bitterly resented. He just wanted to kill the monster and loot the treasure. All his characters were basiclly him. Basiclly he played roleplaying games like a war game only without much in the way of thinking or strategy. He was also a hard core minmaxer. Although an ardent homophobe and vs some groups a racist, he would in a split second take a Pakistani homosexual if it meant 25 or 50 extra points but would try to play him the exact same way as any other character he ever had. It was also obvious that every disad he took was an attempt simply to get the extra points so he could kill monsters and had nothing to do with any character concept in mind. We all knew him, and knew the way he thought. It seemed better for everyone to just give up on him, and make fun of him.. but then we were snobbish jerks Seeing someone try to roleplay just for the points is to me and the other players worse then just having him sit buy silently waiting for something to roll his dice against. He did however make one good point. Some people are just better and more confortable with some aspects of roleplaying then others. For example any system that strongly encourages acting, and speaking in role would screw me over totally. By nature I am an extrovert but there are sometimes when even the most extroverted clams up. Others just don't have the creativity to do the things to gain bonus points. As time goes on their characters will start to fall behind not because they don't want to play well, but because they just can't keep up with the others.... assumeing these bonuses are common vs a rare thing. Over a year, 5 or 10 points isn't much, but if some characters nail a point or 2 extra every session... If I GM I would be inclined to give the same XP to everyone, except it extreme situations. I will assume that those who want to are doing as well as they can given the situation I present, and the rest would be happier not bothering.

Re: What's in a Name? That one was easy. Eric Morgan was a bitter phys/chem student who though brillient had little else going for him. One late night while working in the Lab just after being kicked out of the local Dr Who Fan Club there was a massive explosion. The explosion blew the roof off the lab, fortunatly it was on the top floor. However he was not damaged, in fact he felt stronger as he picked himself off the floor. After doing some testing on himself, he found the extra strength and toughness went away. Further testing showed that impact damage would make him a better physcial specimen. He kept quiet on the subject. He stayed at home or at the library for the next month, as with the lab gone there was not much else he could do and it took time to get alternate arrangements set up. His first social outing after that was at a Star Trek fan club meeting which also went bad. During the argueing he notcied that everyone around him was getting weaker, it was as if during his rage at being rejected yet again he was starting to absorb peoples health. He left before he killed anyone but also realised there was no way to keep secret that he had powers. Following through on his roleplaying fantasies, where he always played a Ranger, he decided to become a Hero, working on his own, as he could not control whose health he drained when in battle. And to this day he fights evil as the world most bitter super hero Osmosis. How about hmm Sweaty Betty

Re: XP idea I've said it elsewhere I'll say it here. Its been said that a good society needs no laws and no laws will help in a rotten one. Or something on that theme. When I did I found the similar thing to roleplaying. If you got good players there is no need to encourage them to roleplay well or do nifty thing. When you got bad players, attempts to encourage them to do better only end up making things forced or worse. I would almost rather have a dice rolling killmachine stick to what he likes then have him pretend to give his character personality just so he can min max his character a bit more. All it does is get on the nerves of the non roleplayers and those who care. So the point nazi says, no extra points for you!. And anyways to add to what you said, good roleplaying and other things you generally get bonus points for are also their own reward. Giving a brillient speach at just the right time, or comming up with a fantastic idea that tosses a curveball at the enemy, or taking a hit to stay pure to the character concept are all joys to me.

Re: "Shallow" Purchases So you would summon a yappy dog to walk your AH through the village? I wish I had artistic skills, that would make for an interesting drawing. Dammit I wish I kept my standalone FH. Sigh.

Re: "Shallow" Purchases Much better the other way around. Summon AH, give out the sacrifice and then AH: I will do your bidding, who do you wish to me destroy. DS: Oh nobody, I want you to walk my poodle cuddles. C: yap yap yap AH: What! you dragged me all the way from hell and you want me to walk your dog? DS: Yes. AH: Sigh, wouldn't you rather I kill somebody, maybe take out a village, torment a princess? DS: Nope, just walk cuddles, better hurry, he needs to go. And no eating him either. AH: Sigh, [picks up leach with psudopod and lurches towards the door with cuddles jumping around him yapping happily. Feeding poodles to AH's just dosen't compare.

Re: Filthy Rich Burghers If you can fine out the return the farm makes, subtract the value of the labour the family puts into it, and the value of the rather minimal inputs, then apply some sort of expected return on investment, then add in some modifier for status [if being a land owning farmer gains you status over a dayworker who only owns a hut] then you can figure out the value within a givin game system. Although I am confortable with the math, I would be hard pressed to actually bother come up with an answer. At one time I used real medieval price lists, unfortunatly prices also varied over the centuries. Sigh.

Re: "Shallow" Purchases Getting a summon Amorophous Horror spell for your Demonologist so you have someone to walk your poodle. Caimpaign never did get off the ground though.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... When a game is moveing slowly from too much non game related talking, or if there is a lot of roleplaying going on and no fighting, I will often as I joke say something like. "Come on people this is Rollplaying, I haven't rolled any dice in the past hour, lets kill something" of course in jest. There was a time where the running gag was to toss the attack dice [3d6, or d20] on the table as the GM is about to speak and say, "I hit him!" We've all had encounters with players whose attitudes were not much removed from this, so we made fun like good nerds do. One fellow was noting that his character never got a chance to actually converse with any of the NPC's as they would get butchered by the other PC's before he would get a chance. He figured a typical encounter would go like "Hi I'm.... Covered in your blood" [wipes hands on shirt followed by looking at the other players with disapointment]

Re: Buying up Char in FH I guess I've played with too many bad players, but I find when you require justification from a player as to why their character will do something, they will just make up anything, and the result often sickens me more anything that the requriement would have stoped otherwise. "Uh, my fighter takes ballet so he can up his dex to 20" "But your character is an extremem macho type, 2 months ago he sent a male ballet dancer to the hospital in a homophobic rage, hell all your characters are as homophobic as you are, and in real life you constantly put down things like guys doing dance" "Uh yeah, well, my character had a change of heart" Part of me would like to see things done "right" but much like soceity, the effectiveness of laws [or rules] are about as good as the people [or players] you have. The Paradox is, with good roleplayers, you need not put in any such rules or restrictions, with bad players, trying to restrict them will only make then rape the rules even harder.

Re: Weird Dream The Liberator: I learned in the first scenero that I really needed a ranged attack. It also would have avoided the "do I have to pay points if I use my str to toss things on a regular basis, what If I carry things to toss so I don't have to destory the cityscape" discussion. Surfer Dude: A normal person who got all his powers from aliens like everyone else int he party, none of us players knew the details of out powers, or if we had any extra ones that haven't come out. He could absorb damage and use it to increase strength, but couldn't hit anything. I think he might be tempted to start taking his tai chi as a combat form... or just get a really narly surf board.

Re: Filthy Rich Burghers I can't define it, but I know what it is when I see it

Re: Filthy Rich Burghers From http://www.antiquityofman.com/Egyptian_urbanism.pdf an essay for an MA in archaeology, sure its not a standard source, I am more taking his sources, rather then going to the library and getting them myself. Again I did say it is a disputed point. I am just showing that I didn't make this stuff up, that I am not insane , horridly wrong maybe, but not insane. I recomend the paper, I just skimmed it myself as its late. It would seem the author of the paper disagrees with the idea of a cityless ancient egypt, based on the evidence. True or not, I don't know. Its almost impossible without going into Montreal or Ottawa for me to look into the more recent works on the issue, and I got better things to do when I am in either city. Some quotes from the paper, I bolded some of the quotes myself to direct attention. Although ancient Egypt was once described as a “civilization without cities”, contrary archaeological evidence has mounted as increasing numbers of settlement sites have been surveyed and excavated. Settlement archaeology began taking off in Egyptology in the 1970s and was manifested particularly in the innovative research projects at El-Amarna (Kemp 1977a), Elephantine (Seidlmayer 1996) and Hierakonpolis (Fairservis 1972, Hoffman 1982, 1984), amongst other sites [Figure 1]. These programmes were partly designed to answer the question of what do we know about ancient Egyptian cities, towns and villages apart from their architectural details. ... These developmental differences in urbanisation, as expressed through evolving nature and functions, are the underlying premise of Wilson’s (1960) claim that ancient Egypt did not possess cities until the New kingdom. ... Helck hypotheses that people remained in small villages throughout the Predynastic, Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. The Old Kingdom is held as consisting of state domains comprised of villages, with the major settlements being provincial cult temples and royal mortuary temples for officials and priests. Even the New Kingdom, under this model, continues this pattern of non-urbanisation, with nome centres reserved for administrative purposes. ... The counter claim ... The excavations of predynastic Egyptian sites, particularly in the last three decades, have given lie to the claim that, contrary to Mesopotamia, Egypt developed as a nation without the preliminary step of city-states (Kemp 1989, Midant-Reynes 2000, Shaw 2000).

Re: Filthy Rich Burghers Off the top of my head, the period before unification would be less secure then the OK period, resembling more the mesopotamian region in nature. And I don't think the suggestion was that in Old Kingdom times people had their own isolated homesteads scattered along the Nile, actually I forget what was said about villages. The claim again from memory is that any towns that there were, would be very small, and be more TLO's then actual towns [TLO, town like objects]. A few temples and some admin does not make for much of a town, let along a city. Also IIRC there is some debate on the subject. I suppose I could look it up some more. It was just something I noticed in passing during some recent reading.

Re: Filthy Rich Burghers There would be those who would claim that Old Kingdom Egypt really didn't have much in the way of cities and towns. The administrative and religious centers did not resemble what we would think of as cities and towns at least. A gathering of a few scribes and temples does not a city make. IIRC it is a subject of debate. As for technology advancement, that is just plain wrong. You had farming, in soceities without towns and cities, there is no reason why you need a city or a town in a pre industral situation, in the absence of a need for protection. Trade is a luxury not a need, and can be done via fairs and merchants. Pre industrial production was a craftman basis, pretty much independent. If a blacksmith, potter or leatherworker can work in a village, there isn't much you really need a town for. A village is mostly self sufficent in agriculture and needs no direction to continue doing so, in the absense of river cultures that depend on irragration. New methods and ways of doing things seem to be able to diffuse in even pre agricultural times, so obviously one dosen't need towns and cities. Consider this. Someone can have a plot of land, grow his grains, legumes, veggies, fruit and root crops. Get his tools from the village blacksmith, have the women make clothing from flax or sheep, so on and so forth. Other goods can be done by either part or full time craftmen in the village, or by semi regular visits from merchants to the village, or say a trip to a seasonal fair to gain things not made in the village, or supplies like Iron, Salt etc. Of course it is utterly rare not to have some outside threat to guard against.

Re: What Would Your Character's City Be Like? Surfer dude: A beach with narly waves and lots of pot dude. Lots of acceptance, really laid back, probably without much economic potential, but its warm year round, and needs are minimal... except for the pot which grows and is sold everywhere. Liberator: Downtown, financial center of the world/nation/universe whatever. Tall buildings, lots of old and new money. A government that sticks to the utter infrustructure basics. A city populated by hard driving people who work hard, basicly a place that in real life I would not fit in with. Where ability and ambition are valued but so are honesty and integrety. I suppose the honesty would make sure that siad city would not remain a financial capital for long [evil!]

Re: Disadvantage I had a character who because of a massive run of good fortune [routing armies due to takeing out other sides hero etc] that his overconfidence unknown to the Gm grew from moderate to total. Then Mr Dragon showed up, Moderate confidence which the GM thought I was still running on means running away. When he pointed that out, I said it "was" moderate. Oddly enough I actually thought I might of had a chance, single shot aim for the head, decked out with magic like an Xmas tree... but alas I missed the role by a tiny bit and ended up toast. Sigh. Ah the joys of solo caimpaings, when you don't have to consider the health of the party you are not in.

Re: What's in a Name? I don't know how D-L337 translates into delete but... John Wilson was an odd boy growing up, not quite autistic but not overtly interested in people or the world around him, untill he started to get on the computer. By the time he was 7 he knew his way around pretty much all standard programming languages and had the ability to read through code, even the 1's and 0's while tapping the page down button, and to be able to fully understand everything. In school he barely kept up with his classmates and was taunted without mercy for it. His one gift was kept under wraps for he was odd enough as it was. As time moved on his bitterness and abilities with the computer grew. By the time he was 12 he started taking out his pain on the computer systems world wide. Unlike other hackers he didn't do things for the adulation of the hacker crowd, nor to sell secrets to underworld figures. His sole purpose was destruction. By this time his ability to understand and break into any computer system was unearthly. Never comunicated with other hackers, never sent emails, the only sign he ever left behind was D-L337. Not a high point super, but every point in one area. I am tempted to use Lumbering Ox, but I think it would be obvious where to go on that, so how about. Happy Guy

Re: WWYCD: Let the Hunt Begin!! And don't forget Lumbering Ox who just woke up with 250 000 charater points including all powers and enough defences to be untouchable. Sorry.

Re: WWYCD-Hurricane Katrina Both characters where in caimpaigns that lasted one scenerio, sigh "Surfer Dude" whose only power is the ability to absorb damage as Strength would being new to his power think in a weed indused haze that it would be really narley to surf those waves man, and get himself killed. "The Liberator" being strictly brickish [and solo] wouldn't have the movement powers to get the looters, and although has monster wealth, really is more into the super hero thing because he enjoys hurting criminals, not to actually help humanity. Probably will check his computers and look for a chance at arbatrage profits to be made on the markets... bah gouging, its OK, but so bush league [bush as in out in the bushes, not as in GW Bush]

Re: WWYCD: The Spray's The Thing...(some mature themes) I've had one character who would sell the company stock short, figureing the company will have its best selling line shut down, and with the lawsuits and the crippling damagaes moiven flaven.

Re: Orgasmo, how would you do his gun in the hero system How about a mind control with a limitation, causes orgasam, for say 1 turn. Required Ego roll to perform any action for that turn. What sort of limitation would that be.

Re: Orgasmo, how would you do his gun in the hero system Thing about that is that, it would seem the damage recovers very quickly, all the attack seems to do is leave one unable to act for a short period of time then you are fine. Maybe entangle? Hmmm brainstorming