Beryllium

Re: Primary Antagonist Organization in a low-powered "like real Earth" campaign. Excellent point, I did overlook him as a possibility, but I do need some "old guard" leaders to introduce to the party to impart how old this organization truly is. He'll either be one of the leaders, or perhaps an object of misinformation. Thanks! Yes, I am torn about having them be "too old" and not having their secret get out. But I did pick an arbitrary starting point. Based on your suggestion I'll at least have their roots go back even further. I'm avoid the "I used to be Anubis" thing since my players are familiar with Stargate and I did indeed use this same plot device in another campaign. There are indeed factions, so your suggestion does help in that area. I justify the secrecy and power of the organization over it's rank and file based on psychological and physical chains designed to harm the member considering something harmful to the core system/group. But that doesn't mean there cannot be difference of opinions on adminstration policies. I will definitely use the Doctrine of False Opposition, and misdirection in the campaign. How can I not? The 9/11 conspiracy? Chemtrails? Tin foil hats protecting "beaming into my brain"? Perfect smoke cover for "the Real Illuminati" thanks again for the suggestions! =) I hope I'm just impatient and others will weigh in with more!

Re: Help! Need a name! I am not familiar with Thorn/CKC, but my suggestions for a plant controller would be: The Gardener Harvester Overgrowth The Green Man Adonis ( was actually also a god of the harvest and vegetation ) Leaf Among Men ( pun on Chief among Men ) Biosynthesis ( a play on photosynthesis and metabolism )

I'm hoping someone has some good ideas for the following. I have a campaign that pre-dates the TV show "Heroes", but for the sake of conciseness consider it very similar to that show. I don't want to pre-define ANY deviations from Earth's real history in the official timeline of the campaign world. However, this does NOT mean that supers and mentalists have not existed in this world. It just means that "various" forces have suppressed historical records and genetics/populations of them. Deviations in history, and people's power will be revealed to the PCs as personal experiences. Events and people "breaking the mold" in this campaign will be suppressed publically. The PCs will try to keep a low-profile. Think: Heroes + Jake 2.0 + X-Files meets "They Live". Now, one of the major forces is a quasi-mystical organization that is based in part on the Illuminati and "life-force" vampirism. The goal of this organization is to "attain total realization" on the personal level, while rulling the world (without the world REALIZING it is being ruled) on the macro level. At this point ( 1999 A.D. ), it can be assumed that this organization has inflitrated (and is the "shadow government of") all major cities in any "modern" industrialized nation. To the point where they brainwash and "chip" the populace in mass quantities. ( The PC's have "woke up" from this influence as from a combination of an infection/mutatgen and their powers ). For example, all TV signals actually "hypnotize and program" the human viewer, and technologies that could reveal this have been "back-doored" to hide this. The organization absorbs "threats" as it sees them arise. Minions/agents are so brainwashed that thoughts toward actually harming the organization will cause serious psychological harm to them (or death, if they are "chipped"). As part of defining this organization, I want to "Regress" back to their origins and start at the beginning, working forwards so that I know all their agents, bases, technology, etc... So that I minimize any un-fair retrofitting of this organization's abilities (which would be grossly unfair in this kind of campaign as the PCs will be vastly underpowered and outnumbered/"survival mode" as it is, at the start of the campaign. ). So, lets say that a group of philosophers/alchemists/scholars/etc go together as Haley's Comet appeared in 141 A.D., and formed a secret society that successfully intigrated itself into the power structures of the world. Their "powers" revolve around the draining and usage of "life-force", they can be immortal as long as they can drain it. They hold the "secrets" of antiquity, are technologically advanced, and utilize technologies in the later stages of history to begin to "mute" true human potential. How would you have them do this? How have they arrived at their point in 1999 from what they were in 141 AD, and what can they do? I have my own ideas already, but I want to pull from as many creative ideas as possible, since this will be the MAIN antagonist group, and will have to have depth. Many thanks in Advance!!! =)

Re: Ringers (prompted by the Black Widow thread on Dark Champions) In terms of powers, I neither encourage nor discourage the thing. Since, to be honest I don't think the bulk of superhero write-ups or comics characters could be discribed as "innovative". Nothing is new under the sun. However, generally I expect my players to come up with interesting characters STORY-wise. As long as they do that, I don't care if it's a bat-totem shaman, Superman under the name "Strontium", or some "totally original concept". Of course, YMMV depending on the nature of the player in question. While I would say that 50% of my (N)PCs in my campaigns are "original", 25% "inspired by" and 25% "dead ringers" -- I have two personal examples of "ringer-ness": a) Recently I made a character for a medium-level "mystic"/weak-horror campaign. The GM allowed me to create two. The first I created was a werewolf like character whose powers are not all that unconventional or specially-interesting. But a fun character nontheless in practice. However, the second is a dead-ringer named "Jake Scheuller" aka "The Cricket" based on Jack Burton from BTILC. He's got his own "original" backstory and associates, and his personality is similar but not exact ( just select juicy character traits from Russell's portrayal.). He's even got his "Trusty" Mac-10. However, he has as many luck-based powers packed in as I could balance. He's not a normal like the "real" Jack Burton (who was really just a bumbling side-kick), nor does he have that "typical all-around game balance" of most champs characters. He's a huge risk, I know he could die at a moments notice, but that's ok, his luck powers shake things up, create hilarious unexpected RP and combat scenes. I have several more powers to go before I consider him complete, but I'm having a blast playing him. However, he's not a primary PC (maybe that's the part of the charm, I dunno). Not a character, and not a dead-ringer, but when my friend (who also GMs HGS ) first saw Terminator, we were so jazzed about it, that we decided as we walked out of the theatre that we'd each GM a Terminator-inspired module. Now, we were playing an Espionage-genre campaign at the time, so the prospect of meeting a Terminator is particularly terrifying on one level, especially in that kind of genre. His module was pretty much a straight port of the movie, including time-travel, but with things repurposed and mixed up a bit. Not particularly bad, but not that outstanding either from our normal fare. However, for my module, I decided that I loved the fact that the Terminator was technologically advanced, but I disliked the time-travel aspect (for purposes of GMing a module) and needed to totally revamp the plot/premise so that it would work for the PC's / scenario of the campaign. So I cheated a little, I mixed Terminator with Blade Runner, and decided that the "Ersatz" (aka Replicants) were a product of a super-secret society of scientists that started after WWII, who created a uptopian society/organization that benefitted from the best minds of the world working in secret without politicial hinderence. The Ersatz were foes, but they were well intentioned foes. The scientists had their own form of government and a goal of forced-participation in a world-utopia. "Skynet" was a super-AI designed by the scientists to be an impartial slave-judge to guard against the intitial uptopian ideals being corrupted over centuries/etc. However, this AI secretly broke free and had his own sub-goals (the freedom/equality of the Ersatz). It worked out so well, that not only did it inspire a slew of modules and over-arching plots for my own campaign, my friend "stole" it for his own in his games. I would say in my experience that the concept of creating "dead-ringers" has the potential for being HIGHLY important to a long-term running game, if it is done for the purpose of "a new take on" versus just trying to copy something. Start with an exact copy (1.0), through in something totally unrelated (2.0), and then "refactor" it (3.0). Just judiciously, that final form has never failed me in the games I've played.