Catseye

Im using the Shrike's suggestion. Package stats add in after everything else and thus arent subject to stat maxima

On the simple side... When i ran champs my rule was pretty simple. You can pick up anything and try to use it during the adventure. I may make you make a skill roll depending on how unusual it is and/or give you penalties to hit with it. If you want to keep it after the end of that adventure you MUST pay the full points to build it. Otehrwise it goes in the super-duper ultra-locked unbreakable trophy case.

Re: Old Hat I watched the Nova adaption. Most understandable common man explanation of String Theory I've ever seen. But I don't remember an M anywhere. Did i miss something?

When I was in high school (and dinosaurs roamed free) there was a national mental-math competition (speed and complexity). The kid who won it was asian-american and explained that the way he did mental math was by picturing an abacus. Lets see these modern high-schoolers get the right answer by mentally picturing a calculator Sometimes modern does not mean better.

When I gvie new players at cons characters I generally give them a tips sheet. If its a "light fighter" (high speed, low armor) then IU generally recommend they hold their action regularly until just before their next action for this reason. Having played such a character, as well as had a whole 6 weeks of fencing, it actually feels quite natural and correct. In fencing the rule is generally block/riposte. You wait for the incoming attack, block it out and then immediately attack back before your opponent his his sword back to a defensive position.

Hey, As someone who couldn't draw a stickman til college I'm definitely in the "those who can't do, critique" category In general I think the art is fine. As I said there are a few I don't like but thats just personal taste. I wouldn't accuse any of it of being "bad art". I do wish there was a bit more though, and I for one would probably pay $5.00 more if it meant an illustration for every monster

Who was it who wrote the Kilgore Trout novel, "Venus of a Half-Shell"? I always assumed it was Vonnegut but recently I heard it was actually another famous old-guard sci fi writer paying homage, and now I can't remember who. Anyway it seems like that would be a contender for the worst novel ever written. It was, however SUPPOSED to be bad as he was writing in the persona of Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout character, whom Vonnegut described as a terrible writer with some great ideas. (Frankly, I always thought KT was a stand-in for Vonnegut himself and his descriptions of KT were how he honestly saw himself. But I could be wrong.)

Okay guys, with the best of intentions this thread has devolved back off topic. Lets take it home and keep it there. Remember, its boring to have a conversation with yourself. If noone else is going off topic then a single person can't pull it there, will get frustrated, and generally leave. SO the topic is MMM. My biggest complaint with the book (which is minor) I've decided is the artwork. Some of it I'm just not wild about but thats personal taste. More importantly though, although there is an illustration for every entry, ----------------------- EDIT: I note people have also found a handful of entries without pictures at all, that I missed. ---------------------- some entries describe a group of monsters that look very different from each other (ie Elementals.) In these case it seems uniformly only one of the group is illustrated. It would have been nice to have an illustration for everything. I often use book illustrations to make cardboard miniatures for my con games so not having a picture of a monster I'm going to use is annoying.

Don't you mean the three gods of the christians?? Sorry, couldn't resist, and I DON'T want to take this subject back to any one persons particular beliefs. But, historically, the One God concept in christianity is the One God of the jews, made 3. I find it odd that so many Christians seem to think they invented monotheism. From a purely philosophical point of view, without debating Truth of religious points of view, they actually took a half step back away from it. As they spread Chrsitianity to places that were traditionally polytheistic it took further steps away (Existing gods became Saints in places like Ireland, Jesus became one of the Loa in the Caribbean.) Actually, monotheism clearly dates back at LEAST to Egypt (the cult of Aten), that can be shown historically. And if you are a believer in the bible as literal fact, or at least embellished history, then you'd have to say it dates back further then that. And the Diaspora predates Christianity by a long time, so Jews were spreading their particular brand of monotheism around the world well before the christians. They just didn't actively convert. 'nuff said.

Not me, but I grew up around Norskis.

That was ofcourse followed by "Red Sophia" in Cerebus the Aardvark. One of my two most favorite Cerebus lines stems from meeting her... Red Sophia: "What do you think of.... these!" (Ripping of her chainmail bikini) Cerebus: "Cerebus thinks they would heal if you stopped wearing that chainmail bikini."

Sure. Do a round. If you can do one round you can do a whole combat I'd also suggest you look at HCS, but its kinda hard to grok before you understand combat Afterward its a great tool. http://hcs.dhis.org/

It also "makes sense" to me. The speed chart really divides what you would think of as a "round" in D&D terms into many sub-actions. So you really CAN attack and then move in one "round" unless you are really slow (movement of 1). But attacking means you need to stop and engage the other person. It makes perfect sense to me that this would introduce some loss of movement time. *shrug*

Re: Keep to the Topic please Index is very good. Page layout is okay. What you expect, nothing special. There are an appropriate number of illustrations, some better then others.

*bump*

There was a wonderful supplement fronm a third party called "All The Worlds Monsters" that was great for surprising players. Alas it went the way of all non-TSR D&D things at that time

Have you included whats in the Beastiary in your count? The other thing to remember is that its arguably easier to build new beasties in Hero because you have the Hero system to work with. With D&D each monster is its own "balancing act" in design. Just reading through the power list has often given me ideas for opponents.

Ayup. Enough on that. back to our scheduled subject

Says the man who runs Challenge of the Superfriends?? Seriously though, part of the point here is to put together enough of an event that we can justify taking over a corner of Open Gaming as "ours". That aught to cut down significantly on the craziness factor. Anyway, consider it and if you can't, you can't

Nope. As a matter of fact I think the more different genres we can have the better

Okay guys, this is officially pathetic. Here in Nor Cal we're at the center of the Hero universe. I know of at least 4 proposed Hero system games for DDC already. if we can't pull together a good Hero side-program here, it doesn't say much for us as a community So come on and ante up. If you've never run at a con before its a GREAT experience and here's a great way to get started! If you're running at the con, you've already done the legwork to create a game to run, how much can it hurt to run it once more?

Okie two last comments on this silly subjects... What we've lost, if anything I think, is our shared agreement to pretend certain fictions. While its certainly true that one can have a close relationship with another human that is platonic (a term the irony of which I'll leave for another time), recent brain scan studys have in fact shown that in the human male the emotion "love" is tightly linked to sex drive. (In the female its more linked to other emotions and community/bonding things. Not to say that, as in all things, there aren't outlying examples in both populations.) On the subject of Sex in literature., It can be handled maturely or immaturely. The same thing can be said for violence. The difference is that, beign a puritan society, we tend to react more negatively to overt discussions of sexuality, mature OR immature, then we do to violence. Just about all "adventure" oriented american fiction is, to varying degrees, imamture in its dealing with violence but noone seems to notice or care.

"They say they make boys into men in the Brittish navy, well I can tell you first hand that they made me!" A lewd line from some comedy i saw. Sorry, I just couldn't resist. But the fact of the matter is there is quite a history of "interesting" man to man relationships in the armed forces goign all the way back to ancient greece. We just pretend by mutual agreement that they don't exist.

Now back to our scheduled topic. Just bought MMM. The positives: Chock full of Fantasy Enemy goodness. Lost of great Steve Long creations to play with and riff off of. The Negatives: at $26.95 for 128 pages its not the best per-page value Hero has brought us. OTOH theres really NO filler here so those 128 pages contain an awful lot of value.

The compliment is returned.... says the husband of the soon to be Anglican priest. (For abyone who didn't know, the Anglican church has supported women in the priesthood for awhile now.) But hey, thats okay, you've got leadership that can be counted among the best minds of the 14th century! (Actually, thats how a liberal Catholic described the current pope to me.) On the question of corruption, it really depends on where and when. The Catholic church of today is a very respectable organization as a whole. As much trouble they've had recently with sexual scandals, you have to keep in mind the size of the church and the number of priests, monks, nuns et al out there. Given that, the number of real problems they've had is really pretty minor. I'm jewish, my wife is Epsicopalian (US Anglican) and I don't think either of us would have trouble sending our child to a Jesuit school if it was the best in the area. The Cahtolic chruch has by far the longest history of any branch of Christianity in the US (with the possible exception of the Greek and Eastern Orthodox churches) and therefor the most time to have had bad periods in. There is no denying that the medevil church became as much a secular empire as a religous organization and many bad things happened because of that. However that is, as they say, history. Ironically, I see the conservative protestant churchs of today heading straight down the same roads of authoritarian stucture and control that led to the medevil abuses. They say those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it and the Catholic chruch IS the history of the protestants. CQ