The Mad GM

Re: Turakian Age: Drakine Population Dynamics Perhaps their population problems are because the gods created them from two different sets of specs: reptilian and primate, and the long term consequences are just now coming to fruition, say in the last few generations as their gods have been waning in the face of humanities population explosion. It may even be a social problem (note parts of Europe have current negative population growth). The constant wars have forced female Drakine to put off giving birth so they can work the farm or whatever, and (as with humans) the older a Drakine woman gets, the more hazardous the pregnancy, and the less likely they will be fertile long enough for multiple births. Or perhaps so much esteem is placed on soldiering that many young drakettes join the military, and put off maternal instincts for a few years. As far as breasts go, You could have the non-pregnant younger females nursing the young. Their hormonal chemistry migh be keyed very differently from humans. Perhaps pregnancy actually stops lactation - save all the resources for the troublesome delivery. Besides, do the men raise the suckling infants or the children who have been weaned? It's fantasy: gratuitous breasts are more in genre than discussions of population dynamics.

Re: We Need More....CHAINSAWS!!!! I run a woodshop, so most of my insurance coverage nightmares are covered on this thread. so in an attempt at therapy, I'll chime in: Chainsaw: 1/2d6 autofire (6-shot) HKA, continuous, reduced end; OAF bulky (?), noisy, two handed, real weapon, Str Min. Even a little armor will slow it WAY down, but you get in a good hit and you can watch the meat fly. Sawz-all (a reciprocating saw positioned at the end of the tool for getting into tighter corners than a regular jig saw) 1 pip HKA, penetrating, continuous; OAF two handed, real weapon. It will eventually chew through just about anything, but lacks the splatter value of the chainsaw. Nail-gun (I'm assuming a framing gun, either gas-firing or .22 cal loads, though you could do traditional pnuematic by upping charges and making it Bulky & multiple foci: compressor and hose) 1d6 RKA, AP, penetrating (AP & Penetrating are only for point blank), Reduced by range (nails tumble immediately, they'd just be an painful annoyance after about 2m), OAF, real weapon, 32 charges. Die-grinder (essentially a grinding wheel on a short stick, I don't know if they have these with portable power packs, but heck, it's DC) 2d6 HKA, AP, OAF fragile (Not really meant to be swung around at strength), plus linked 2d6 Flash if it hits ferrous metal Arc welder - 8d6 EB nnd, does body, def is non-conductive construction or Force Field (flesh is conductive enough, btw) linked to 8d6 Flash, No range, OAF Bulky, requires 220v three phase current I must go vomit now.

Re: Name My Character... The Dragon Knight (hinting at a bloodline nobility sort of thing) St. George NYDHOGG - nibbled the roots of Yggdrasil in Norse myths. JORMUNGAND, THE MIDGARD SERPENT Or for a native american flair: THE PIASA - originated in North America, and was worshipped by the Algonquins. It had the body of a dragon, the head of a person, a lion's mane, and a tail twice as long as a person. This was a neo-dragon which lived near the Mississippi River. This dragon did not bother humans until it found dead ones and tried the meat. To its surprise, it liked the taste. It now hunded humans and abducted people to bring them back to its lair for dinner. Chances are, you'll get named by what people say when they see you, something like The Beast of AAAGH! or HOLY S**T!

Re: Card Shark I for one, would LOVE to see a Card Shark book, like VIPER. Ooh, ooh, and I want to do all the illustrations!

Re: New to Champions and the Hero system... My biggest piece of advice, and I'm just echoing others here, is to start with a specifc character concept, and reason out the powers from the effect you want them to have. The biggest hurdle for people coming to Hero from, say, D&D, is they want to know what character types are available. There are none. Some people recommend starting by trying to copy your favorite comic book character (though that seems mainly a vehicle for polite argument about minutiae) or other character from popular media, or even a just cool name that suggests powers. The point is, the system works best if you have a goal in mind when you open the book. Since anything is possible, it is very important to start from a solid idea and then figure it out as you go. Steve Long has written a great deal on the topic (pg. 35 of Sidekick, the Character Creation chapter of HS5E), and people on this board are very helpful, especially with new players. Let us know how it works out!

Re: Mystery Disad? What the....?! I always thought "Love for X" would make a great mystery disad, especially if X was also a hunted. This could be a "Love at first sight" sort of thing, make X the hunted for another PC. I have to admit, I usually only offer Mystery disads in games where the characters draw their powers randomly, (first game is radiation accident, or teenagers discovering powers), and then it usually relates to their powers, but not always.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Contortionist lab: air ducts in any given building would work. Animal handling lab: Big empty room with a dirt floor, some rubber barrels, and a thoroughly irritated animal of a random species. Start with hamsters and work your way up to wolverines, Bengal tigers and polar bears -or- use any ordinary classroom full of teenagers.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Nah, just use your team mates rooms for that. That way you can also use it to practice defensive CSLs, running, and PS: Prevarication.

Re: Labs! for every occasion Stealth lab - a room carpeted in bubble-wrap

Re: Labs! for every occasion Some ideas spring to mind: Interrogation Lab - do i need to spell it out for ya? Acrobatics lab - gymnasium with funky jungle-gym type aparatus, trampolines, etc. Martial arts or CSL lab - dojo, with high tech robot opponents Seduction lab - red velvet revolving waterbed, mirrored ceiling, mini-bar, stereo with eight track, fur rug and a fireplace Linguist lab - any taxicab

Re: Super-strong ear muscles? I ran with a demon character (named Wraith) with an extra-limb and stretching defined as a long slimey tongue. He only had a strength of twenty, but that was enough to, say, lift someone. The problem was he had to do siloliquys with his tongue sticking out: Bad-guy: Holy Mother of Mergatroid! I feel unclean! Wraith: er iv eh heket baf? Bad-guy: What? Wraith: er iv eh HEKET BAF!? Bad-guy: I'll tell you anything! Just put me down! Wraith: ER IV EH HEKET BAF!? We called this "speaking in toungues".

Re: Super-strong ear muscles? There is a muscle attached somewhere in the inner ear that responds to overly loud noises by stiffening up the whole works, hopefully preventing strain on the stirrups and anvil and eventually the cochlea. Hearing based Flash defense, maybe?

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen Sign me up. Greatest American Hero: Ralph Hinckley and Agent Carlisle

Re: A Modern League of Extroardinary Gentlemen Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? -Shaft! Damn right. Who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother man? -Shaft! Can you dig it? Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about? -Shaft! Right on. They say this cat Shaft is a bad mutha... -Shut yo' mouth! But I'm talkin' about Shaft... -And we can dig it. He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman. -John Shaft (lyrics lifted from Don Pizarro - http://members.aol.com/PizarroD/)

Re: Primate Power Just a thought... Telepathy, AVLD: Presence Defense, only to get Base Drives in a situation. I'm assuming here that typical PRS Def means maintaining a poker face in adversity. You could try Detect Emotion or Base Motive with all the add-ons, it would be cheaper, but as a GM I would restrict what you could find out. Or you could just buy it as a knowledge skill: Human Emotional/Social Tells, and some Perception pluses for observing same.

Re: Darts A distraction attack using darts could be a dex drain, a change environment, a flash (make them blink or duck and lose a phase), an entangle (based on CON?), or just a drain, with the provision that the attack has to hit an area without armor. OR, you could buy levels to offset targetting mods, and throw a dagger into their eye, and have a linked attack that only activates if the first does body. I once defined a magic sword as 'lucky' by making it Penetrating, only versus combat luck (+1/4 adv, iirc). Never did use it.

Re: Minor player problem ... Not legally. It's all property of Uncle Sugar. He might have smuggled something out, or bought the commercially available equivalents (I use the term 'equivalent' loosely). I don't know about stuff picked up on a battlefield, but I assume that's not legally removeable either. It would be easier to imagine that he bought it black market and it might have come from some supply sergeant that inexplicably drives a Mercedes. He might have brought a personal weapon into the service, a holdout pistol or something like... but that would be about it. I don't know if they even allow that, but it would still have been something he had before.

Re: Alignments Over the weekend I had a change of heart on the whole idea. If you are thumbing through a basic reference or combat sheet, or thumbing through a book looking for just the right enemy for a situation, or a spreadsheet or an index, it would be useful to have something very breif to summarize. The writeups would still need a sentence, IMO.

Re: Alignments I still think that you don't really gain anything by codifying it versus using a short sentence. You could do as KA suggest, maybe classify the key categories using a thesaurus or a scale of one to ten, but it's essentially a self-limited sentence without extraneous grammar. A good sentence will do a better job. If the players learn something about orcs, they'll hear tales told in an inn or by a sage, not a code. Philosophy or not, the purpose is to determine results of a given interaction: whether the tribe of orcs will band together and attack a village, or only waylay travellers that 'trespass' into their turf, or have the biggest warrior issue a personal challenge to the captain of the guard or whatever. All those are sentences (clauses and fragments), and they stand pretty well.

Re: Alignments If you're going to simplify something that potentially complex, you're going to run into situations that don't fit right. I used to say the alignment for most of my monsters was neutral-hungry, but that was mainly tongue in cheek. I think the sentences you wrote might be more appropriate than some sort of code phrase. "Self-centered control-freak with absolute authority who views others as his pawns but has a tender spot for his daughter," says a lot more than "lawful-neutral with evil tendencies." Even incorporating things like: predator, prey, etc. is too limiting to really have much meaning. Even if you get a generic orc down to: "Has an ancient grudge against men and elves, but is primarily a crude, short-sighted, short-tempered and honorless semi-tribal scavenger who will follow any powerful figure that promises and delivers food, rape, and plunder", you still have to establish the in-game reason for the orcs to be there, perhaps by the motivations of the leader.

Curses, foiled again! For a moment I thought you meant that we could buy blasters and powered armor online.

Re: Big City... what rules? GM question I like the Ward (did the High Five put those in place?) but, I'd lower that AP on the wards to something like 30. A handgun can be built for 30 AP, and we restrict those in modern day. Also, I'd make sure your players know, a bodyguard who kills in the pursuit of his or her duty is still guilty of murder. A lisence to carry is not a lisence to kill, or even wound. They get the benefit of the doubt in claims of self defense, but that's it. YMMV. I like the fact that it compels armor-fixated people to find employment with someone, it gives a good hook for High Society related games. Perhaps one of the players will buy Wealth and Perk: Noble and hire the others. Are force fields legally the same thing as armor? What about magic items that aren't weapons? What is the tolerance level for other races? How do religions fit into the political scheme? I like the concept of city games, but I've never been in a campaign situated in a city.

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" Okay, vampires and holy symbols: The big villain is a control freak, and religious convictions are strong. He simply used the symbol of the cross as the 'control' during brainwashing. Ever see "A Clockwork Orange"? The main character was brainwashed, and the control was classical musical (a specific composer, can't recall who). At the end he is tortured by someone who figures this out.Essentially, it is psychosomatic. You must then assume that part of the conditioning of a vampire is that if they don't kill someone, they must subject them to the same sort of conditioning. It creates a sort of psychic/biological computer virus: You brainwash someone to teach him how to brainwash others, aided of course by the hypnotic powers vampires have. This might explain why it takes several bites to transmit it: It several visits to impose the brainwashing on the individual. Anyone that doesn't take to the conditioning is finished off with the third bite rather than let live, and so it appears that it takes three bites to become a vampire.

Re: Need Help with Some Villain "Lackeys" It may sound a little non-politically-correct, but bear with me. If you're gaming group is too immature, you may want to skip this one. Menstrual cycles are basically 28 days, and the lunar tie-in is frankly debatable (I personally think it is a coincidence, and it is also highly variable). It is proven that men have a similar cycle, though miniscule in comparison. Let's assume that the werewolf juice forces a specific cycle on a person, based on when they were first bit, and that cycle just happens to be (or was designed to be) the same as the moon. Now, if someone only expresses the agent in their saliva when they are 'in-cycle', then someone they bite will also start out at the same point in the cycle. Also, studies show that women that live together tend to menstruate at the same time, which means that subconciously these cuycles are self-adjusting. Given the pack nature of wolves, and theoretically werewolves, the same thing may happen. So essentially, they turn at the full moon because: A - the first person was subjected to the serum on a full moon; B - All his 'children' inherited a cycle that matches the lunar cycle because they were started at the same point in the cycle; C - They all hang together for socio-psychological reasons, and the symbolism reinforces it subconciously, blah, blah, blah...