segerge

Thanks.  I was a little busy this afternoon/evening...

BUMP!

Until Hermit finishes the last chapter, I shall NOT let this fall off the first page of NGD!

For what character ideas have you thought..."On second thought I am never going to be able to use this.">

 

Example:  Suicide Squid.  This extremely agile thrill-seeking molluscoid alien swings through the city on his long tentacles performing feats of inexplicable daring-do.  

For a moment, I thought you were going to go with the classic 1990's character from the old USENET rec.arts.comics newsgroup that resulted from a typo.

There really isn't anything in this event directly connecting it to the Death Dragon, so there's no apparent reason why that monster would appear here. And I for one feel that would be evil overkill.  

Well, that makes me feel bad   The TASK FORCE version of Leap Day had Shadow Destroyer masquerading as Chantal in the Inner Circle waiting for the correct moment to subvert the ritual.

How about this? Instead of DEMON working exclusively for the Kings of Edom, under Archimago new factions are allowed to arise within it. Some Demonhames could work for Hell, some for the various extradimensional powers, some for the Kings of Edom and some for the Solipsist. It would be the "big tent" of mystical evil.

The idea I had after posting yesterday was that the energies released caused... something... to happen with the Kings of Edom.  Something which has been sensed by the leader of each surviving faction of the original DEMON.

In short, think of Game of Thrones, with the Kings of Edom playing the part of the various claimants to the Iron Throne and the surviving parts of DEMON fighting the Kings' proxy civil war on Earth to determine which King wins.

I swear I was sober when this idea originally came to me.

I could see something like what happened with VIPER, the group fragments for a time into individual mystic terror cells and then re-consolidates under a new leader.

 

If I was going to pick a new leader, I'd go with Archimago. From his 4th Edition write-up in Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies, he was in debt to the Kings of Edom. Perhaps they could welcome him back as the new leader of DEMON.

5th Edition had him pledged to the Solipsist at the time of his death (The Mystic World, p. 54).

Having said that, I'm with Lord Liaden on this one.  Given the nature of the entities involved ([cough]Sharna-Gorak[/cough]) and the rather spectacular nature of the canonical working's failure, it's not that much of a stretch to see something like this happening.

Even worse, have both Archimago and a surviving Black Shepherd competing for control of the remains of DEMON.  You all thought the Leap Day working was bad...

However, I noticed that the account in D:SOD doesn't mention that the Inverted Trinity also perished with the other leaders. Assuming that isn't simply an oversight, the way I would handle the situation is this: at the moment of Black's extinction, his control over the Black Shepherd slipped, allowing the consciousness of Aganju Lambo to cast out the demonic Imhullu that Black had placed in him to control him... and cast them into the Left Hand. Lambo regained his free will while retaining the powers of the Black Shepherd, and the Left Hand became his slave.

 

This would put the Black Shepherd at the head of the Inverted Trinity, and in a position to take effective control of DEMON. No one knows more about the inner workings of DEMON, including the role the Morbanes' Soul Gems played in Black's monitoring of them. The Morbanes were already accustomed to receiving their orders from the Shepherd on behalf of DEMON's mysterious leader, so most might not even be aware of the change in leadership. DEMON could thus go on much as it had before, but with a greater focus on acquiring worldly power than it had under Luther Black... which could make it an even more aggressive foe.

I like that handling of the Inverted Trinity post-Leap Day. 

I do, however, have a question concerning their regeneration ability, which was specifically tied to Luther Black being alive.  Are you saying that the backwash of the ritual's failure gave the Black Shepherd enough points to buy that limitation off (so to speak) in addition to casting out Imhullu?

As an aside, the fate of the Inverted Trinity was something I wrestled with when plotting the TASK FORCE version of the Leap Day working.  I had almost resigned myself to them surviving the ritual in my version until I noticed that limitation with all three of them.

Hmm, Valorous is a flying brick with a noticeably bulky belt and an extremely defensive reaction toward Partials.  I'm guessing he's either a Partial who's supplementing his powers with invisible forcefield augmentation, or had a sibling/parent/relative who was a Partial and got into major trouble.

This is a good read -- as in "multiple binge-reading sessions in one day" good.

I believe I saw stats for Argent related things somewhere, if not I think I can put something together.

Or use Viper, yeah

5th Edition Champions Universe, p.140 recommends using the standard VIPER agent as a template for ARGENT, then provides some sample equipment in the sidebars on p. 140-141.

Suggestion:  NPCs are a great tool to flesh out your campaign world.  In the past 2 Champions campaigns, I offered each player 5 free extra points if he/she provides me with 5 NPCs (note:  NOT DNPCs; I promise not to put them into harm's way or make the hero rescue them) - at least names and how they are connected to the character (family, friend, coworker, etc.).  They can even be helpful, though not to the level of being free Contacts.  But these NPCs can provide a GM's voice into the game (asking the PC hero key questions, mentioning something the player might have forgotten, etc.) and just generally make the world seem more real.

That's... awesome.  That idea belongs in APG III should it ever get written.  That's also something I've only ever been able to achieve in written stories and not game sessions.

Just to expand on this idea. . .

 

Complications and Limitations are basically a way for players to say, 'I want you to complicate my character's life in these ways.'  The frequency toggles and value of these constructs basically inform the GM as to how often and to what degree the character's life will get complicated.  Make sure your players understand this concept as well.

Don't forget that complications can sometimes be entertaining as well.  That one player's 2d6 Instant susceptibility to Teleportation defined as "throwing up", for instance, can be good for more than a few laughs out of combat.  Like one of the earlier editions of Champions said, the primary purpose of the game is for the GM and the players to be entertained.

Also, if the player in this example is quick enough on the uptake and realizes that vomit and electronics don't mix very well, they might learn a valuable lesson in how to role-play turning a weakness into a strength.

And what is the chaos ? Universal sufferage ? Women's rights ?

I abort to Martial Dodge

Sure.

In the Champions Universe timeline, Menton's writeup in CV1 (page 118) mentions a secret UNTIL mission to prevent him from becoming President of Guamanga.  The definitive version of what UNTIL exactly did in the CU is in News of the World, starting in page 101.  Short version (which I followed in "Jungles of Guamanga" except for changing a villain or two in my version), UNTIL worked through back-channels and contracted with TWO teams of supervillains for the takedown -- a decoy team and the real team of shooters.

I needed an organization within UNTIL which was willing to hire supervillains Suicide Squad style to do this in-story.  From what I remembered thirty years previously, SAT was an almost-perfect fit for the type of agency which wouldn't be too concerned about morals or ethics to get this type of job done.  So, I reinvented them as a non-canonical UNTIL Section 13, doing the jobs the rest of UNTIL is unwilling (or unable by treaty obligations) to do.  I even borrowed Major Barrington as their leader...

Hopefully, this makes things a little less confusing.

There was a reason SAT came to my mind so quickly when I made that post.  Using only memories of their original writeup from the very first editions of Champions, I had recently repurposed them as UNTIL Section 13 for the TASK FORCE story "Jungles of Guamanga".  They were the in-universe explanation for why UNTIL would hire supervillains to try and assassinate Menton.

2016: What happens if Americans are freed from their dependence upon reality television?

Horrible things.  HORRIBLE...

I would like to see a group which operates in the seven seas. A criminal salvage and pirate organization.

Like what the CIA used to have?  Look up "Glomar Explorer" on Wikipedia.

Even mild animal friendship effects can be formidable if a character puts the planning and training time into it.

A suite of magical spells which can only be cast through animals the caster has made their Animal Friendship roll with would be highly useful and very much in-concept for druids and shamans.

Honestly, I don't know why animal control should automatically be considered a "third-string" power.

If I or my DNPC were superpowered animals, I'd be very worried about Animal Control.

Oh, wait...

Valuable lesson yesterday, or reminder, of why players don't get allotted the kinds of points we see from NPC arch-villains.  We were talking about a 700 point Champions game that is running (500 base + 200 disadvantages).  I knew there's a 693 points version of Dr. Destroyer in BotD so I thought I would consider just changing the disadvantages and a few skills and abilities to make it fit my concept.  Then the guy started describing his character and another character in the game and I realized that, on the same points, any one of these PCs would absolutely curbstomp Destroyer because almost every single point is dedicated to being as invincible as possible.

In my experience, the 700-point optimized invincible combat monster usually comes at the cost of buying those points through an almost-crippling series of limitations.  If that GM is not derelict in his duties, your Destroyer rebuild should still be combat-effective in situations which would leave those other characters ineffective.

By startling coincidence, I am GM'ing a scenario for a gamer's reunion in late July or so with a 500 base and 200 in disadvantages.  On the off-chance you're one of the players for that, I'll just say that based on the characters I have already seen and approved they're in for an... interesting run.

 

There are also references on BotD to other characters such as Vanguard.  Are there actual writeups of these characters?

The subject of a Vanguard write-up comes up here occasionally (most recently last year sometime), and some of us have taken unofficial cracks at his stats until such time as Silver Age Champions becomes a thing.  A forum search should turn up the last thread where he was discussed.

At a minimum, he should probably be equivalent point-wise to Doctor Destroyer in the 1980's -- call it roughly 1700 to 1800 points in 5th Edition.

In either case, DEMON was so much the tool of Luther Black, and so focused to his ultimate purpose, it has to be substantially different now. I wouldn't necessarily expect major changes up to the Morbane/Demonhame level, but the leadership must have seismically shifted.

A civil war among surviving Morbanes to determine who leads and rebuilds DEMON.  Now that is a scenario worth writing...

I would dearly love to see PRIMUS finally get an updated book treatment; but as the proposed book is in the Champions Villains series, I'd be very surprised to see it or UNTIL more than mentioned there.

Then how about going really old-school.  SAT, anyone?

The only problem with DEMON 5th/6th edition is this: they put a date on the master plan, which came and went. Now the writers have to decide "what happened", and how DEMON can go on in the aftermath of what they tried (and mostly failed) to do.

The closest thing we have to a canonical fate of the Leap Day working is in D:SoD pages 155-156.  Whether the writers of CV4 decide to stay with this explanation or go with a new one is entirely up to them.

Am I wrong in thinking that anyone who can come up with a credible mass destruction plot requiring time travel as one of its elements probably has the resources to acquire pretty destructive weaponry or materials in the present day? I mean, it's got to be easier to steal Smallpox or Ebola samples from the CDC and weaponize them than to build a time tunnel and jump back to 1917.

But... but... Comic Book Plot Logic!

Snarky answer aside, enough samples of the original Spanish Flu genome exist in modern research labs that any supervillainous mad scientist worth his reputation could get enough to synthesize his own mass outbreak today.  That in itself would make a good Dark Champions plot, now that I type it.

You then, of course, lose the Rule of Cool factor involved with any Time Travel story, plus the "layers upon layers of misdirection" element behind the original idea...