zakueins

...every month, Game Trade Magazine did an article using the various Superhero Systems to simulate the Cool Game/Character of the month? Seeing the Hulk done for Hero 5th, Marvel, SAS, and M&M was interesting. It'd be fun, be cool to see how different systems take different characters.

Next month...hm...how about either Hellboy or an anime character?

Re: What would your Character Do?

Fire Knight (manga-inspired swordsman)-Check to make sure this is The Real Dr. Destroyer In All Respects. Then cut off his head and mount it on a pike.

The Hammer (brick/martial artist)-Peel the armor off, revive him, use every entangle known to man to ensure he doesn't escape, drop him in Stronghold personally. If he so much as whispers a word of disagreement, pound him into pulp.

Originally posted by SuperBlue

You are in the middle of a battle (along side 6 other super-Hero teams) with Dr. Destroyer when he clutches his chest and falls over (Heart Attack). His armies are still attacking people, and overall just reaking havoc.

 

What do you do?

How would a fully ready-to-go Heromaker file do?

And, how does it go "wrong"?

Originally posted by Susano

can you send methe character as an rtf ot text file?

 

To susano@guisamre.net

 

Oh, and I read the all of them comics upto the current one. It gets pretty *wrong* at times!

Sure, just make sure to note where you got it-and send a URL, too.

Originally posted by Susano

Obviosuly, I have to read this webcomic!

 

Say, wouldyou care to submit this to my anime/manga character archive? I'd love to host it.

Yea, it's a cool comic, IMHO.

The more I think about it, I'm probably gonna revise her a little bit-bump her PD/ED up 1-2 points (she's purely a HTH combatant, so she has to get to close combat range, so she has to take the abuse) and do some minor tweakes.

Originally posted by Logan D

Ohmigod!! I just got pointed to this webcomic by a friend of mine the other day, and it is HILARIOUS!!! And that's a great write-up, BTW. Consider it stolen.

 

Here's an image of her.

http://thejar.keenspace.com/kittyhawk/illus/jump_sgvy.jpg

Built on a lot of suppositions, from-

http://thejar.keenspace.com/

Kanazuchi Yuuki

Player:

Total Character Cost: 354

Disadvantage Points: 150

Base Points: 200

Experience Required: 4

Total Experience Available: 30

Experience Unspent: 26

...as in what you've seen in Matrix Reloaded?

So far, I'm looking at a pretty hefty multi-pool, using the whole "stop bullets" as a tricky form of Missile Deflection, various movement powers (to represent battle leaping and flying), and a LOT of martial arts skills. ;-) What did I miss?

There's a lot of good anime soundtracks that'll be great for a Superheroic game.

http://www.jameswong.com/ykproject/core.html

Yoko Kanno does some of my most favorites, including Cowboy Bebop (my MA in one game was named Spike, had a Pickpocketing skill of 21-.... There's a story about when he stole the Campaign Master Villan's Superweapon key that's worth two beers at a con.)

Ghost in the Shell (the movie) is great for a Miami-Vice type of vibe in music. Speaking of Miami Vice, Jan Hammer's music for Miami Vice (especially the two soundtracks and Escape from Television) are spot-on for any '80s game. Also, the GTA 3:Vice City soundtracks (which are a cool compliation of about 1/3rd of my favorite '80s music and bands).

Honestly....

I was a bit disappointed by Terran Empire.

(Puts up 1.3x10^17th rPD/rED Hardened force field....)

My two biggest pet peeves were how the Imperial Government was organized (in that the system seemed to have remained static from start to finish, without much changes), and that the game's universe felt flat....as if there wasn't any real "get up and go" motivation towards any real adventure. For an example, GURPS Traveller has the whole upcoming Fifth Frontier War on the horizon, Imperial spying of Zhodani core expeditions via Longbow II, the mysterious death of Duron, etc, etc, etc, etc. Referencing the future of the universe is nice, but there should be more data about the game PRESENT....

It's got good info, tho-I did buy it, and I'm going to keep it.

10D6 Major Cumulative Transform (Add Psych Lim-"Must Always Tell The Truth, Without Exception or Evasion"), Explosive, Mega-Scale, 0-END, Personal Immunity.

Watch the crazyness result.

How about "players to villans"?

We were running a game of Champions set in the late '50s/early '60s, teenage heroes, and we were up against Dr. Doom himself.

(Yep, THE Dr. Doom. We'd stuck into the Lavertian embassy via the sewers, as Dr. Doom was about to pull the Kryptonian Generals out of the Phantom Zone using a Phantom Zone Ray projector stolen from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, and he had mind-control bands for the generals and everything-he even made sure to steal enough Kryptonite, just in case....)

Anyways, the players wake up after getting thrashed by Dr. Doom's robots, escape their death traps (mostly by thinking their way out), get their foci, and go after Doom. During the battle, my PC (a martial artist/gadgeteer/brick) was "playing unconscious" on the floor when Doom came by.

I asked the GM if I could use acrobatics as a 0-phase action to leap to my feet and whack Dr. Doom into the wall. He said yes. I did it, rolled my dice to hit and rolled....

A three.

House rules said that a 3 or a small range of numbers greater than 3 (I forget which, I think it was 1/6th the to-hit roll or something), means you have considered to have rolled the max for the damage-all 6's and all 1's on the knockback dice.

On a 20D6 Double Knockback attack.

One game inch away from a force field, then a solid concrete wall, one inch past that.

Dr. Doom's feet were sticking out the wall when it was done, and he was OUT (-30 stun, GM option to recover) of the running. That brought such a smile to my face....

Heh, I'm just about finished with one of the independents that I'm going to put in Allies&Associates. Digital Hero, here it comes.

And, the universe does need some more rounding out-which is what this product is for. My biggest complaint about UMA (Ultimate Martial Artist) is that there aren't sample characters, running the gamut from "normal human MA" to "ultimate metahuman MA".

Originally posted by Enforcer84

This sounds interesting. I really liked Allies. I don't mind the books of NPC's especially when it adds to the establisehed universe. I mean the Champions Universe needs to evolve over time, old heroes and villains fade as new ones come to the fore. Since the game simulates comicbooks they tend to be trapped in the present with the same group, but DOJ has set the scene for change, Destroyer is old and can't seem to fix that; in a few years he may simply die of old age. Think of THAT power vaccuum. Eurostar lost some members, Menton left destroyer, Terror Inc. was destroyed from the inside. They managed to do away with "overstock" power types (yet another Powered Armor Master villain, or flame weilder, or Electricity weilder) while not just saying they never existed. I think that an allies book would be welcome, as would a Watchers of The Dragon type, which is still one of my favorite books Hero in any incarnation put out. If a book can give me another piece to the universe I' enjoy it. Heck I am adding to my unverse at breakneck speed. And I don't have a problem adding more.

Peter Christian, probably the best CHAMPIONS GM I've ever played under (sadly, he games much less these days, he's MAKed), ran his campaigns under some simple principals. As a GM myself, I've tried to uphold the tradition-

*One game session (more or less) is a single "real time" month.

*Almost as a rule, a character starts out new, levels up to a level of power pretty quickly, then doesn't change very much, and EP totals should reflect this.

*Supers tend to have (reasonably) a super-career life of about 10-12 years, then they burn out, get cynical, get very badly injured/killed... Most players should understand this in ther character creation.

There's some more, but it's mostly deep rules stuff.

(Ed note-the term MAKed means "Married and Kids". Hey, happens to the best of us.)

Like anything, it's all in the details.

If there's a problem with continuity, we'll thresh it out. If it's a problem with copyright, I'll toss in and pull out groups and characters to get them to fit the theme, but not be violiating somebody's intellectual property.

One thing that I've always wanted to have as a "fill out" item is a bunch of characters that aren't villians, aren't quite heroes, but are super-powered and fill a niche. That's why it's called Allies and Associates.

Hey, they might reject it anyways, then I'll figure out some use for all the characters that I've created.

(Hm....perhaps we can pull the Redeemed out and put in VA-Villians Anonomyus, working their twelve steps, one good deed at a time... ).

Originally posted by Monolith

Zakueins, your stuff does not sound bad, but much of it will not fit into CU continuity. Now if you are doing this for Hero Plus as a pdf then I say go for it, but if you actually wanted this published, I do not think you will be able to make if fly. Much of it is too far out of continuity.

 

Also keep in mind that it is entirely possible that DOJ does not own the rights to many of the characters in Allies. If you try and duplicate them you could be dealing with copyright issues from the original authors. I do not know this to be a fact, but I do know that Hero Games did not buy many of the characters used in their books during that time period.

One thing I'm gonna include in the book is, at least for one of the superteams and some of the various independents, is "Villan Team Conversion"-how to quickly turn this same team into a bunch of supervillans.

Danger, Inc, isn't too lilly white (it also acts as a hiring front for supermercs such as Lazer and his ilk), but a lot of what it does is good stuff. There's one or two characters in it that could easily become Hunteds or Rivals (and if you ever get Darkness on your ass, just fill out your will now-she DOESN'T do anything less than "kill her Hunted"), and there's a lot of neat little character things that Danger, Inc can do, even be the sponsors of the player's own team.

So far, the super-team list is as follows-

SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF HUMAN EVOLUTION-If you can't figure out who's serial numbers I've filed off for this one, you flunk Superhero 101 and have to re-take the course. One hint-they have a school in Boston.

ZEN TEAM-There's been some swapping of characters, and some power improvements. Also, the Zen Jeep and the Zen Jet have been written up.

ORDER OF THE QUEENS OF HEAVEN OVER EARTH-Yes, a sailor suit team. Yes, they're barely post-pubesent. No, they are not going to be naked. And no, you're gonna be suprised at what they can do.

CYBERKNIGHTS-Like Zen Team, a partial port from Allies, but there's a new member and some other adjustments.

THE REDEEMED-Pretty much unchanged, with two new people.

JUDGEMENT-An entirely new group of vigilanties, based around a mystical character that claims to the the Angel of Vengence.

I'm thinking of adding these two groups as well, as "starter seeds" for a GM needing a group NOW and to fill out the universe-

SAN FRANCISCO SENTINELS-A newly formed group of superhumans in the San Francisco Bay Area, built around two other, defunct teams and with a few new members.

THE UNION JACK-England's premere superteam, badly decimated by an attack of the Crowns of Krim, but rebuilding slowly.

The independents are coming together pretty good. One thing which I'm emphasizing is a good number of "white hat" or "samuari" mercinary characters-more like contractors in the Metahuman world. There's one guy that I'm really starting to like-a powerful mage that one day decided to try and rob a bank, and just as he walked in, he realized, "How much money is there in preventing people like me from stealing stuff from people...?"

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

I really enjoyed the Allies book for its variations on "standard" superheroes (The Redeemed, the Flashmen, Zen Team), but I think you and I are in the minority. From remarks I've heard over the years in and out of the company, NPC hero books don't sell all that well, since for many gamers "NPC hero" equals "screen time taken away from PCs". If this project gets taken up at all by DoJ, I suspect it would probably be done as an e-book.

 

To make the appeal as broad as possible, I'd suggest filling in niches in the established Champions Universe that aren't occupied yet. My first notion would be to give a lot of attention to international supers. These would take more research to write up (although the names in the "Project 3000" thread might help), but they're more likely to appeal to Champs players who don't have the time to do such research. There are several countries mentioned in CU as having significant populations of "capes" but few named heroes or hero teams. These would be good for color-adding encounters or jurisdictional conflicts with American supers. Probably best to use countries with whom such conflicts are likely to occur: Mexico, Canada, Russia, China, Middle East, etc.

 

You might also consider "corporate heroes" who work for a particular company and protect its interests (like Zen Team), or villains who pretend to be heroes to mask their nefarious activities - these are always good for interesting encounters.

 

Your "Supertemps"-like group sounds good, but you should probably dump your plans for PRIMUS; that territory looks to be officially ceded to Shelley Crystal Mactyre, who's already put out one PRIMUS sourcebook and several Digital HERO articles on it. My suggestion would be to develop a high-tech private security firm, like Starguard International from the old Super Agents book or World Security Services from HERO System Almanac 2. Because their priorities are often less altruistic than a lot of "pure" heroes, such organizations can be allies or enemies, as desired.

 

Hope that helps.

Not yet, I haven't run out of character ideas yet.

At a rough guess, I'm going to bring a quarter to a third of the original characters from Allies, if possible, into this book.

Originally posted by Ghost Archer

Need submissions?

Re: War

The PCs could start to get their powers DUE to 9/11....

(One of these days, that game WILL be run. By whom, nobody knows.)

Originally posted by Patriot

In my campaign, real world stuffhappens, but the heroes stay at home, and fight to protect the US and earth from adversaries

 

That way nothing has the chance of being downplayed ,or becoming offensive.

 

9-11 happened in game, but the pcs were not allowed to intervene, due to the fact they might have had a chance to stop the attrocity.

 

 

It is not good ground to tread on.

One of my favorite non-"Ultimate" books for Champions has to be Allies. It's just so useful to either pull them for DNPCs, Hunteds (with the serial numbers filed off), filler characters, and sometimes even a character to give a new player to help them out.

So, shortly (as soon as the outline is done), I'm gonna send Hero Games a proposal for Allies and Associates, which is like CKC, except that they're good guys (mostly).

Here's my question-what do you want in a book on Allies and Associates? What I'm thinking of is-

1)Two big super-organizations (Primus and Danger, Inc (Danger, Inc is the huge contracting firm for low-to-mid powered superheroes, like GURPS Supers SuperTemps, but with more variety).)

2)Three to four Mega-Heroes (on the scale of Dr. Destroyer and ilk). There won't be a "Superman with serial numbers filed off" in the group, but there will be some pretty close clones, and one quirky Mega-Hero.

3)Groups ranging from the very powerful to newcomers, probably about 4-6. I'm gonna have two big "theme" teams, based on Semi-Popular Comic Mythos, with the serial numbers filed off. The rest will be more like most gaming groups, with a variety of character types.

4)Independents running from very powerful to talented normals. Around thirty to forty, wide variety of power levels and skills and powers.

So, anything I should add? Think about? Change around or otherwise tweak?