Jhamin

As I understand the effect, you don't roll dice.  The victim just dies.

I'd say it's a physical complication: Dies if control signal is sent. (Infrequently, Fully)

I would almost say that Strange removing everyone's knowledge of Peter's dual identity is uncharacteristically irresponsible of him.. except that is kinda Mordo's whole beef with him in the MCU.  Also there was that time in the comics where Black Cat's unluck power was starting to "stick" to Spiderman.  When he went to Strange for help the good Doctor noticed and dispelled the unluck without checking where it came from and casually mentioned that it might also affect the source.

Black Cat started regularly getting her ass handed too her now that her unluck based defenses no longer worked reliably.

He rarely is reckless in his own comic, but he seems to be when he shows up in other peoples'.

We user 1 meter hexes, as per 6th edition, but it rarely matters.  We tend to use narrative/mind's eye rather than maps and movement rates tend to matter relative to each other or in MPH for really fast characters as opposed to absolute values.

17 hours ago, Tjack said:

 

    Well....This does confirm a long held belief of mine.   Peter Quill is a moron.  He couldn’t pour pi$$ out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the sole. The episode does however show what a clever character can do when played smartly. (All players & GM’s should take notes.)

No disagreement there, on the other hand T'Challa is by all accounts a pretty above-average person even without the heart-shaped herb.  So we went from Starlord being a man-child with daddy issues to being one of his generations greatest.  Apparently they instill that nobility of character young in Wakanda.  

My memory of the old "What If" comics was that everything was horrible in the new world like 60% of the time, different but about a draw about 30% of the time and unambiguously better than the prime timeline about 10% of the time.  I feel like Captain Carter was about a wash in terms of universal good/bad, it just substituted Peggy's sacrifice for Steve's but the Red Skull still got stopped and presumably the Nazis still lost WWII.  

I'm really kind of digging that T'Challa as Star Lord is just an unambiguously better universe for most everyone.  Thanos, Nebula, TazerFace, Korath, Drax, The Collector's servant girl and his prisoners, and about half the universe seem just much happier with life.  The Black Order fared about as well as in the MCU universe.  The Collector may or may not be worse off..

The only thing I couldn't come up with a fan-theory on was why he was still called Star Lord.  Peter insisted on that name because that is what his Mom called him.  I'm not sure why T'Challa would use it.

On 8/8/2021 at 10:11 PM, Tjack said:

  I think at some point there’s going to be a subsection of Disney films...”The Ride Movies”.   Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, Tomorrowland and now Jungle Cruise.

The Country Bears got a movie, and I'm fairly sure the "Mission to Mars" movie with Gary Sinise was a ride spinoff as well.

Then there was that Tomorrowland movie which wasn't as direct a ride-to-movie but is sorta broadly inspired.

I voted for Adventures.  They are actual content I can use in a game.  As for which game should get them?  I am actally playing Champions right now so I'd love to see some Champions content, but if there is a desire to do some Luche Libre or Star Hero I'd be down for that.

For what it's worth: My last $100 of money spent on gaming went $60 for Pathfinder Adventure Paths and $40 for some Mutants and Masterminds adventures I am actively pirating into Hero Content.  The book of Templates II looks good and I'll pick it up eventually but it isn't on my "must have" list.

My Higherarch of needs for a Genre is:

1 - A Genre Book that lays out how Hero handles the conventions of that sort of fictional adventure.

2 - An Enemies book that establishes what typical opposition looks like and has a bunch of fun NPCs with plot hooks to help me get things rolling

3 - Adventures that take place in that setting

4 -  Setting Info.  Things that put the above into context and give me a framework to go "offroad" with my own stuff inspired by the first 3

So if we are talking:

Champions, I have 1=Champions, 2=many Enemies Books, 3 = Nothing 6E, but a decent amount of stuff from older editions but I can work with that, 4=More than I can list

Pulp Hero I have 1=Pulp Hero 2= Masterminds & Madmen, 3 = A ton of mini Adventures by Steve, 4= Thrilling Places

Star Hero I have 1=Star Hero 2= Scourges of the Galaxy, 3 = Nothing, 4= Name Escapes me but there is a book of Worlds

Fantasy Hero = 1 Fantasy Hero, 2= Nobles, Knights, and Necromancers, 3= Battlegrounds, 4 = Valdorian Age

Luche Libre, Urban Fantasy, Post-Apocalypic Hero, etc I have 1= A Genre Book, 2 = Nothing, 3= Nothing, 4=Nothing

So as I look over these, the thing about Genre books is that by themselves they are fine.  Some are even a lot of fun, but while they point me in a direction I'm still homebrewing 95% of everything.  I'd love me some Luche Libre but it is just such a lift to get it off the ground.  My players need more of a framework than the example characters.  They need Heels to fight and while I can make everything I can barely get an evening's worth of content ready for the actual game every week let along all the NPCs.  I actually played Pulp Hero back in the day because I could pull stuff from the books and have a game, I didn't need to do it all myself.

I am super good with the amount of rules stuff we have now.  I *like* that Hero is self-contained and doesn't need an endless list of feats and new classes.  I have the APGs but rarely use any of them.  I super don't need a new book of advantages.

On 8/8/2021 at 10:33 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Who thought Twilight dude would be an ideal batman I can only guess about but the entire thing feels like a train wreck that's too far along for WB to back out on.

I'm old enough to remember them saying that it was stupid to expect Mr Mom to be a good Batman.. but that worked out OK.

I'm not holding that franchise against the actor.  It wasn't all his fault.  The stuff he is pulling on set?  Go ahead & be mad at him about that.

This reminds me of all the mileage I got out of The Flashmen from the old 4th edition Allies book.

They were basically a bunch of superpowered conmen that decided it was easier to play hero and pocket some of the loot they "saved" than it was to keep fighting superheroes all the time.  They had a team vehicle with smuggling compartments, a foundation they administered for charity (and a reasonable handling fee), were paid guests of honor at all kinds of events (fees for charity, honest!) Two of them even disguised what their powers actually were (they were actually a telekinetic and a gadgeteer who combined their efforts to look like they were a living video game character and a Ninja)

The PCs *Hated* these guys, and could never prove anything, but if they pushed too hard the leader of the Flashmen (This foppish cyrano de bergerac type who used drugs to fight at a superhuman level) would shame them publicly for having such delicate egos they couldn't handle another superteam in town when it was clear that they needed the help with all the crime going on.

9 hours ago, fdw3773 said:

My goal is to keep everything on one page, hence the split columns and combining of skills at times

A noble goal to be sure, but it always seems to fall apart for more complex characters with more powers or longer power writeups.  I notice you don't include her everyman skills for example.  Powergirl is relatively simple next to a version of Batman that has martial arts, a utility belt bought as a multipower, paid points for the batmobile, and a long list of skills and contacts.

How would your template work if a character had to bleed over to a 2nd page?

Not trying to be negative, I'm curious as I feel that my character sheets always go off the rails because the PCs have too much info to fit on one page.

This is one of my character sheets (Made in MS Publisher).  It manages to hold enough info for me to actually put a whole PC onto one page, but I'm the first to admit it isn't as pretty as yours.
The character is a 300 point starting Teen Champions character.

On 6/7/2021 at 8:26 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Working hard to spell out MARVEL with their primary characteristics is just a bonus

I suspect that there is someone out there who is still a little irritated that the best remembered Marvel RPG is called the "FACERIP" system.

On 5/29/2021 at 8:14 PM, Old Man said:

 

The key Bond tropes are womanizing, gadgets, glamor/tuxedos, exotic locations, and action.  The first two have to be strongly adjusted in 2021 (though Casino Royale went a long way towards flipping the womanizing trope).  Craig-Bond has been a little short in the high society area, though he does get to dress up at least once an episode.

While Bond hasn't been lighting fires with their franchise for a long time now, I think their biggest problem isn't Jason Bourne, it's Austin Powers.  Those movies not only made a zillion dollars they skewered the Bond conventions so successfully that the people making Bond movies are afraid of using their own tropes.

On 6/5/2021 at 4:29 PM, armadillo said:

It just occurred to me that it would be funny to have a campaign where the PCs are the "clean-up crew" for when the Enterprise leaves loose ends. You'd have to know the TNG episodes pretty well for this. 

This is kinda sorta the plot for the "Lower Decks" animated Trek that aired last year.

"First contact is a delicate, high-stakes operation of diplomacy. One must be ready for anything when Humanity is interacting with alien race for the first time. But we don't do that. Our specialty is second contact. Still pretty important. We get all the paperwork signed, make sure we're spelling the name of the planet right, get to know all the good places to eat." - Ensign Boimler, USS Cerritos
 

19 hours ago, Echo3Niner said:

I thought this was interesting...

Isn't there a new Marvel Superhero RPG every 5-10 years or so?

There was the classic FACERIP, the SAGA one that used cards instead of dice, the Marvel Universe one from 2003, Marvel HEROIC from 2012,
.. I'm honestly kind of amazed the MCU didn't get its own yet.

15 hours ago, steriaca said:

Here are some adventure ideas. 

 

1) The King Of Stronghold: A criminal with superpowers is still running his organization from inside Stronghold. Can you find a way to stop it?

 

2) The Stronghold Experment: A mad scientist gains access to criminals for inhuman experiments. When supervillains with enhanced powers start being released, can the hero find out who and end the experiments?

 

3) The Rat: A hit has been given on the minor villain The Rat. The heroes must protect The Rat from the inside. 

 

4) The Stronghold-Raser (name pending): A DEMON Morbain uses an religious rite and a strange object to summon his gods to Stronghold.

5) The new Warden of Stronghold is abusing the prisoners in the name of "keeping them in line".  The Villians actually try to reach out to the Heros for help.  (See the "Lockup" episode from Batman: TAS)

For what it's worth, one of the Cyberknights from the old 4th edition Allies book had a hovercycle that he flew around on while shooting bad guys with his super-crossbow.  (He was basically an even-higher tech Hawkeye/Green Arrow type)
I remember thinking it looked fairly balanced, sort of a goblin-glider in motorcycle form.

On 5/31/2021 at 6:36 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

OK I am looking at trying to rebuild and reboot Escape From Stronghold for this year, along with work on my Fantasy setting.  I'll give it my best shot to make it as fresh and useful as possible, which was pretty easy with Island of Dr Destroyer because it was so old and simple in structure.  And yes, I have an actual plot for an escape to take place, one I ran as a CON game once.

It probably dilutes what you are doing, but the Murder in Stronghold adventure from Champions Presents 2 would be an awesome add.  Masquerade is basically a direct 6th edition replacement for Proteus.

But I'm probably biased because that was such a well-liked adventure by my players back in the day.

22 hours ago, Armitage said:

 

 

There was also the intelligent cockroach swarm that could possess human bodies, that infiltrated and destroyed the SHIELD Helicarrier in the 1985 Sensational She-Hulk graphic novel.

I think this and Swarm are the real answer to pest control in a superhuman world.  The genre convention isn't that they become super-organized pests that we have to live with (ala Joes Apartment, if anyone remembers that) its that once a swarm gets intelligent enough it gets a cape, organizes into a humanoid shape and starts making supervillian speeches.

Way back in 4th edition (which also takes us back to the 80s and 90s) the 4th edition universe had magazines named HeroTalk, MetaMag, Villainy Unbound (Which was apparently bought by the same sorts of people who collect serial killer trading cards), SuperHype and Super Star that were all monthly print magazines devoted to Superhumans and a "Compu-Board" named HeroNet.  (I say again, the book that mentioned that came out in '92).  There was a "DNPC Wannabe" in one of the books that had a side business selling VHS compilation tapes of various Supers in action.

My Teen Champions campaign has a whole subculture of "Super-Influencers" that try to get famous for broadcasting their antics on the Internet.  The PCs keep running into them while they are trying to stop actual villains only to hear that their Super-Identities are way more famous among their schoolmates because Alpha-Geek Prime badmouthed them on his channel than for saving people.

I should also mention one of the NPCs from Teen Champions who is a superhuman teen pop sensation (Think Brittney Spears/Taylor Swift/Selena Gomez) who is actually a vat-grown genetically perfect pawn of Telios.  His evil plan is to let her get more and more famous, more and more influential, and basically take over the pop-music business.  The great thing is that she doesn't actually know she is a clone or that her entire entourage are also clones loyal to Telios.

The question I keep coming back too is how much of all this stuff would be available?

PRIMUS gets energy blasters, but the US Military still uses Assault Rifles that fire bullets.  There may be force field generators and teleport beams in various labs, but do they actually show up at earthquake sites?  If so, what is the mix of super-science and victim sniffing dogs like we have in the real world?

On the one hand, the Champions universe is, as Lord Liaden points out, a lot higher tech than ours, but there also seems to be an effort by Hero Games to keep it from being too different than the world we live in.  On the other hand, with all the Super-Fights the CU probably get a lot more buildings flattened than our world does so their response might be a lot better developed.

I might also expect that Millennium City would have better resources than most other urban areas given how high tech the rest of their infrastructure is.  I don't think that (say) Omaha Nebraska has legions of Robots to clean up flood damage.

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

To many of them it is old news and would be surprised that many of us care about this. Depending on how they feel, it might be either "you shouldn't care, our campaign isn't your campaign" to "if you want to include character x, your free to do so in your private game" to "go make your own legacy characters dam zit."

I suspect there is some truth to this.  I have several friends who make a living doing boardgames, and several came from RPG backgrounds.  Folks who create this stuff tend to have a very different view of content than those of us who play.  It is a job and they have nostalgia for it the way you remember a good boss.  Nice, you may have stories, but you don't remember all the details decades later.

As for making this a product, outside of the people on this forum, how many people would care about the stats for the guy on the cover of a book 5 editions and 40 years out of date?  Hero can barely get people to buy 6th.

On 5/16/2021 at 2:52 PM, Steve said:

Since this is Gotham City, the Joker’s death at the hands of a cop would probably incite a horde of his “fans” to carry on his craziness. It could be like BLM on steroids in that city.

That is more or less what happened in the old Batman Beyond cartoon that was set in the future of the 90s Batman/Justice League cartoons.
The Jokerz were clown themed street gangs that roamed the blade runner future Gotham after Joker died.

On 5/11/2021 at 12:37 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Just curious how would handle (in Hero terms) OAF and only OAF. I mean I get their overall  feel. But I believe that if you use the optional character creation then OAF should be worth something.

The thing about the old Marvel FACERIP was that there was *no* consistency from those optional character creation rules.  You might roll up Rick Jones with a shotgun, you might roll up Colossus, you might roll up The Invisible Woman (at least as far as power levels went).  They defended it at the time by pointing out that Thor and the Black Widow were on the same team so you should be able to play with widely disparate power levels in the group.  
I knew no one who did that.  Most the FACERIP games I saw back in the day that had original characters have everyone roll, but then basically "normalized" power levels by letting everyone reset their main power to whatever the group had agreed on beforehand for power level.
I wouldn't read a Hero book or discover the concept of OAF gear for years to come, but looking back on it, I might let people reset a couple powers to a higher level than "normal" for the group in exchange for them being OAF.

5 hours ago, slikmar said:

So, to me, the only time paradox, provided Steve really put them all back correctly, is Past Thanos perishing before he collected them. That is what I would have expected to split the trousers.

This is where we don't have enough information.

Given that Thanos has been killed twice in one timeline, as I see it we have a two different options as to how this can work and still keep the "you can't change the past" rule in place:
(It also occurs to me that the Black Order & very likely a bunch of the chitauri all die twice as well)

1) Past Thanos is from a different timeline which existed briefly but no longer does.  That timeline was created the moment the stones were taken, existed to the end of the universe, then "unwound" once the stones were put back. If we accept the Ancient One & Banner's discussion this timeline shouldn't exist, but it clearly does (its where Nebula gets captured & interrogated after Rhodey takes back the Power Stone).  If putting the stones back prevents this reality from existing, we can suppose that it will "unwind" once the stone is put back.  If this is true, Thanos using the Pymm/Stark time travel device allows him to escape his sinking ship of a timeline only to get killed in another one.  If the Thanos in the "main" timeline hadn't been dead, they could have met & because they were from different realities they would not have affected each other
If we think Banner & the Ancient one got it wrong and the alternate timelines do exist even after the stones are replaced, then this timeline where Thanos vanished before he could gather the stones & snap half the universe way still exists somewhere in the multiverse.

2) We see that you have to have a strong idea what you want when you use the Infinity Gauntlet.  The Avengers talk about exactly what Hulk will "wish" for before he uses it, and Stark reminds him not to undo the old snap and just bring back everything.
We don't actually know what Stark "wished for" when he used the Gauntlet to erase Past Thanos.  It's possible he just evaporated all the "bad guys" around him.  It' also possible that a tired and battered Stark, who understood he was about to die, wished for an effect instead of an action.  Something like "Thanos and all his minions should not exist anymore & my loved ones won't have to deal with any cosmic fallout from all this Thanos crap"  In which case the Infinity Gauntlet not only evaporated Past Thanos & minions, it also papered over all the time paradoxes that had been created so the universe could keep going (thus fulfilling the "let not deal with any more fallout from Thanos" part of Stark's Snap.

I admit these are both purely fannon/conjecture on my part and the 2nd answer puts words in Stark's mind, but I think both fit what we see on screen. (Stark was very worried about the Infinity Gauntlet undoing his daughter who was born after the first snap, so I can easily imagine making sure she didn't get erased by unforeseen circumstances was on his mind when he made the third snap)

Also; If you can use the Infinity Gauntlet for anything, but the big wishes do damage to the wielder, could you use your first activation of the Gauntlet wish to be immune to Infinity Gauntlet damage and instantly heal any you do somehow receive?  That way you could then do all kinds of crazy things after that without crippling or killing yourself.
Just a thought.

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

As I understand it, the Vision in the TV show was a construct created by her and not the real one, so no gem.

There was no Gem.  As for the Vision... it was complicated, but in a comic booky kind of way so I was fairly down with it.

Spoilers for Wandavision:

There were two Visions in Wandavision.

The "Normal" red and green one was created by Wanda, but there was mention made that both Wanda's Powers and the original Visions personality/Soul had come from the mind stone, so her version was pretty accurate, self-willed, and had a "spark" of life that was beyond her control.  The implication was that she had conjured him, but her Infinity Stone Derived power made him "real" in a way outside her control.  However, he could only exist inside the radius of her powers.  If he went too far away (a distance measured in miles) he started to come apart as her powers stopped holding him together.

We also meet the "White Vision", who is explicitly created from the body of the old Vision which was taken apart and put back together by a government project but didn't work until the scientists working on it tried siphoning some of Wanda's Hex energy into him.  The notion was that this Vision was the original body, animated by residue from the Mind Stone still woven into her powers, and had the Visions memories, but was otherwise an empty vessel just running on programming.

The Wanda Construct Vision had a construct of the Mind Stone, but it wasn't real and only worked inside her altered reality.
The White Vision had a blue gem with a circuit like pattern inside it on his head where the Mind Stone had been, which he could use to fire energy beams, but was not at any point implied to be an Infinity Stone.  Interestingly, he could use his Desolid powers, so those are apparently built into the body and are not a function of the stone.

Extra Spoilers:

When the two Visions met, they initially fought (because superheros always have to fight when they meet), then talked it out and decided they were *both* the real Vision but were made from different things.  (This was the best part of their arcs IMHO)  The construct Vision imparted his "spark" of life into the White Vision, who then retreated from the events of WanaVision to deal with having a soul.  The implication was that he was now a "complete" Vision with a non-conjured body. 

The Conjured Vision went away when Wanda (Now officially the Scarlet Witch) unwove her conjured reality and we didn't see the White Vision again, but he is explicitly still out there with a non-conjured Vibranium body, all his old memories, and a soul.  So I'm expecting we will see him again. 
No Mindstone though.

48 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Spelled out that way in the comics, yes. The only discussion there was in the movies about it was Banner and the Ancient One, and her whole argument was about not splitting the time stream.

I understood her argument being that it wasn't that they cant split the time stream, it's that if they do they are dooming all the people in the split timelines to really hellish exitances if the Infinity Stones aren't around to deal with problems.

The discussion goes:

1) removing the stones from The Ancient One's present would create alternate timelines where they didn't have the stones and would be overrun without them (There is good reason to think Dr Strange couldn't have fended off Dormammu without the Time Stone for example).
2) Banner argued that if they took the stones to the future, used them, then brought them back to the moment they were taken, then there wouldn't be a time that didn't have them and the alternate timelines would never exist.

3) The Ancient One seems to concede this, but points out that if they loose they won't bring the stones back so their good intentions are basically too risky for her to bet reality on.

She agree to let him have the stone when she finds out that Strange *chose* to let Thanos have the Time Stone.  She doesn't trust Banner enough to bet reality on the Avengers, but she trusts what she knows of Strange enough to bet reality on his judgement.

I fully acknowledge this is as full of holes as any time travel theory (there is a "How it Should Have ended" video that has a lot of fun with Cap realizing half the stones had containers in the past that they don't have anymore when he puts them back).  Still, it works within the context of this movie if you assume that we haven't been given enough info to figure out where Cap was when he was with Peggy and are content to wait for more info in the future.

As a side statement, if the Infinity Stones are needed to make time work right and keep terrible things at bay.... how is the Universe doing now that Thanos destroyed the "current" set and Cap put back the "past" set?  They *are* kinda screwed the next time someone like Dormammu invades.  I guess that is what the next phase of movies will deal with?