Vestnik

Re: ORCS! What makes them our favourite enemies???

Considering the ease with which orcs typically get slaughtered, one wonders why they went into the warrior race business in the first place. They should give it up and take up shepherding or construction work. It's like D&D kobolds -- no race that weak would ever be f*ing with humans. They should be living on grubs in the forest, HIDING from the humans.

Re: The Italian Connection

Actually I'm not even Russian, just have lived here for a long time.

I look forward to seeing Super Dante. This could be cool. (Wasn't he guided to Hell in the first place by a panther and two other animals? "Midway through my life's journey..." Maybe they could be followers.

Re: The Italian Connection

So you really use the phrase "decadent capitalist"? I always thinked it was an Occidental invention.

 

Yes but he leaved Florence (Firenze) for political problems. He travel as an exile trough Italy (during these voyage he thinked about a travel from Inferno to Paradiso) and find a home in Ravenna where he stayed until his death. Many years later Florence citizens (fiorentini) wanted his body but he rest here again

 

I use a more complex Inferno. I think that is a multidimensional place (formed of 999 inferni. The first and last ones are disabitated or earth-near. The ones which is sometimes visible from our dmension and/or from where some ghsts or demons may escape. The inner ones are the planes of all culture's hell (like nowegian hell, greek hell, etc.) They are a kind of regions. I usually a have a player of deminic origin (it is a human-demon mix resulted from an experiment of Demon organization high positioned in Inferis gerarchies) and he visited some of them. There is a lot of "space" for ideas. One of them, for example, is a complex alien forest where demons hunts humans for sport...

I remember about Dante now -- he put a lot of his Florentine enemies into Hell, in fact. I think Dante may have been a bit spiteful.

Yes, until Gorby time most anything that came from the West was supposed to be a "product of the decadent capitalist West." Western cities were supposed to be dystopias of massive poverty ruled over by a handful of evil fat capitalists (kind of like how Russian cities are portrayed in the West today! ). Which doesn't mean nothing got through -- Tootsie was a big hit in the USSR, as was ABBA. ABBA supposedly had a deal with the Soviet government whereby they would get their records distributed in exchange for cheap concerts, or something like that. Depeche Mode was also huge. The Beatles were on the state record label.

I like the plural infernos idea. If you took Dante too literally the Roman gods and any other non-Christian supernatural whatevers would have to be demons in disguise, which isn't very comic book.

Re: The Italian Connection

The same for Italy.

Well... less mathematics professors.

And what about rpg gamers?

 

 

 

Well... Virgilio guided him the first time. The he come back with super powers (and immortal life support) and simulate his death (did you know that Dante tomb is in my city, Ravenna?).

Now he have Beatrice who bring him some Paradise informations on Inferno minions movement. A demon wich make the same on Angel's movements and Virgilio who assist him in his investigation...

What do you think?

Not a lot of RPG gamers. When RPGs got started this was still the USSR and they would have been seen as a "decadent capitalist" invention, so there's not much of a gaming culture. (There was a Soviet version of Monopoly though, so they could appropriate anything I guess.) But considering how many people here are addicted to World of Warcraft I could see it taking off.

I was wondering where in Italy you were -- I used to date a woman from Milano. I had no idea where Dante was buried -- why not in his native Florence?

I like the Beatrice idea. How is religion going to work in your game -- is the Inferno the real Hell?

Re: The Italian Connection

In MI3 movie a little bit of the action is placed in the Vaticano state.

As many other american movie italian don't make a very good impression.

if you will see it you must know that:

1. Italians don't move faster or shaking the hands while speaking;

2. Don't have strange names which sounds similar to pasta;

3. Italians drive good (or as good as any other civilizated culture);

 

I think that Dante is something like a visionary with mental powers and huge PRE skills. Beatrice is a spirit-like being wich appear randomly with informations or trick to resolve...

After all... she is dead.

 

Dante could a sort of Dimensional Guardian, watching for angels or demons trenspassing (like Constantine movie...)

Don't even get me started on Hollywood's crap depictions of other countries. Believe it or not, not everybody in Russia is in the Mafia. Just imagine, Russia is mostly populated by farmers, students, housewives, mathematics professors, and other such non-Mafia people! What a shock! Oh never mind.

Well, Dante is also dead by this point in history. I like the idea of making him an interdimensional guardian -- he did pass through the worlds, after all. But it was Virgil who brought him through...

Re: The Italian Connection

For some reason I thought Opus Dei was founded by a Spaniard who was close to Franco. But I may be wrong.

I have never seen MI3, or MI2 for that matter.

Maybe Dante returned from Paradiso with - SUPER-POWERS! That would be cool. And with his sidekick Beatrice.

Re: Superpowered Worlds

I could see playing the pity card on triplicate-lass' homeworld. You could always claim that your other two clones were killed in a horrible accident that has left you emotionally traumatized...

 

It is my great fear that when the Legion breaks up, Triplicate Lass is going to end up like the cast of Different Strokes and wind up in the porn industry.

Re: Superpowered Worlds

I'm wondering about dating customs on Triplicate Girl's world. Does every sexual encounter end in a six-person orgy? I am so totally going around Beast Boy world and heading straight to Triplicate Girl world.

Re: Superpowered Worlds

What makes you think there would be any dogs left? Once the species develops shapeshifting' date=' it fits into all ecological niches that are within the limits of its size changing ability and does so with the added advantage of human intelligence. It seems likely that it would displace anything except species that it can't duplicate.[/quote']

 

Here's a creepy thought -- once it displaces all other organisms, what does it eat? Other Beast Boys? Could be a planet at constant war to get prey from the other side. Or some Beast Boys could be kept artificially stunted to serve as food animals.

 

I really don't to visit Beast Boy world.

Re: Autofire Find Weakness

If you fail with Find Weakness, you lose all.

With Autofire, players must hit with all shoot or they don't halve defenses.

(Hope you understand, english is not my primary language)

Just out of curiosity have HERO products been translated into French (or any other non-English language), or do you use the materials in English.

Merci pour l'information! Je serai bien reconnaissant.

Re: The Italian Connection

The other are "holy" spys which have the the job to investigate on misteries of religious type...

Opus Dei?

Re: The Italian Connection

Another interesting period is the Inquisition one.

Even if Torquemada name is attached to Spain the origin are italian

And the Borgias! And maybe Dante really did go to Hell.

This setting has real potential.

Does the Vatican have a superhero team? Swiss Guard Man!

Re: The Italian Connection

Let me expand on that. Julius makes his dark pact and is not murdered but remains Emperor, empowered by dark forces. Since these forces are not Roman, but Celtic, in origin, this p*sses of the Roman Pantheon of gods. So from this point you have a great, long struggle for the soul of Rome between the Celtic and Roman supernatural forces and their human respresentatives, culminating perhaps in the Caligula fire.

Re: The Italian Connection

Here's another idea -- while off conquering Gaul, Julius Caesar comes across some dark temple in which he offers up his soul to some Dark Celtic God in exchange for becoming Emperor. Then, in out alternate timeline, Brutus, Marcus Antonius and Cassius are found ripped limb from limb just before the Ides of March...

Re: The Italian Connection

 

the correct name is Alessandra (is sound like alexander but with double s and the "sea" word in the middle. like Aless se andra. Oh. i don't know. Now I will take some information about it).

Sure they are.

Well Emperor Constantine was located in a far away city, so it is not a strictly an "Italian affair" but it is the Rome Empire so... Take in present that

the Bizantine side was the most rich of these culture. There were a lot of masters of arts that leave their country to find fortune and fame out there. So is probable that (with commercial or artistic wave) most of the relics were tranported there...

And vampires too...

In war battlefields the blod sucker rules!

By the way, the Djugashvili (Stalin) family is huge. His daughter Svetlana lives in the United States in the Midwest. One of his great-grandsons is a filmmaker in New York. The rest are mostly in Georgia I think.

Anyway, perhaps the Fall of the Roman Empire had something to do with the vampires. Maybe they fled to Constantinople and continued to live an underground existance there, secretly manipulating politics in the Byzantine Emoire until the Ottomans took over?

Re: Superpowered Worlds

Here's an idea. In a society of Beast Boys, would there be the problem of "going native"? If a Beast Boy starts spending a lot of its time as a dog, say, after a while does it start to identify more with dogs than with fellow Beast Boys? Perhaps it would eventually defect from Beast Boy society and go join a dog pack.

Re: Superpowered Worlds

Dare I ask what it is advertising?

It's some kind of mobile phone payment card thing with a bunch of different cards. One of them has your emu on it, the others have other animals.

Re: The Italian Connection

Well... I think it is a legend (even if Calligola was... strange). But we can consider this a way (it died 3 years later) to hide a failed assassination plot from the vampire slayers.

I also think about a european organization project that an evil organization of undead vampire could exist in Rumania. It can be a modern reorganization of the old vampire survivors. They leaved Italy hunted by Cartagine hunters and sheltered in a remote mountain location. Then they growth and take the Vlad family name...

 

 

 

well... She exist and she is a politician so I think is not usable to talk bad about her grandpa...

 

Indeed the 2nd world war is an interesting period. In such terms it doesn't need of imaginations. Do you know that Hitler had an advanced weapon project? the Nazis were near to the atomic bomb. The only thing that stopped them was that the most important scientists were ebrew.

Think about tha Duce was a personal friend of hitler and when he (Duce) was killed, Churchill arrived in Italy for 2 weeks of "Holidays" in the house of Mussolini. What he was searching for..?

I like the vampires idea. Did Churchill really stay at Mussolini's place? I did not know that. (Perhaps there is something sinister up there in Salo.)

I loved seeing Alyssandra (spelling?) Mussolini's election posters: "Vote for the party with the name Mussolini!" Anyway, I have another idea. If I recall correctly, Attila the Hun claimed he had Alexander the Great's sword, which made him unbeatable, and Emperor Constantine countered by saying he had a sword crafted from the One True Cross with magical powers. Maybe these artifacts were real?

Re: DOLPHINS! How would you GM them?

Maybe the dolphins could use a kind of sonar spellcasting -- instead of incantations, they would project specific sonar patterns. (Inaudible to the human ear, but detectable by dolphins and maybe sea elves.)

Re: The Italian Connection

 

Caligola died in 41 AC after 4 years or reign.

In the 18 of october of the year 38 a fire destroied the Quartiere Emilio (a district of the capital). These are the facts.

You must remember that, even if in the movies Rome was a stone and marble great city, in the poor quarter peoples lived in dilapidated wood buildings with no space from one to another. It were a fire dept but probably it was unsufficient for great fire...

But in the game... All and nothing.

If Caligola was a vampire and had planned to conquer the city transform all citizens it's probable that a group of vampire slayers could blocked the evil undead beings in a district and light fire to all corners to stop them...

Didn't he supposedly order his soldiers to fire arrows into the sea to kill Neptune? Perhaps we can posit some battle between Neptune-worshipping vampire hunter/paladins and the Forces of Darkness.

What could you do with Il Duce? I know his grandaughter's alive. Maybe make her into a supervillain? (Though she is kind of cute.)

Re: The Italian Connection

Geeez...

That's interesting.

If I remember right even hei death circumstances was not clear, isn't it?

Something like a death in the night and a very fast bury...

 

Historically there aren't confirmations about the fact that Calicula burned Rome but legends are legends and all them have something real.

But If Caligula was a vampire he couldn't started the light which destroy Rome. Vampere don't like fire very much. Probably it was an idea of the "heroes" to annilate the vampire plans... I suppose.

It's generally thought the Father of the Peoples (sic) died of natural causes, but Beria did engage in some funny stuff immediately after his death. Almost all the documents in Stalin's safe were burned. I have an image of Zombie Stalin bursting forth from the grave and going on a rampage.

Maybe Rome could have been burned by some leftover Carthaginian vampire-hunters? I don't remember when Carthage was destroyed. But I'm pretty sure it was way before Caligula.

Re: The Italian Connection

Caligula was a MAD immortal vampire.

 

...

I thought about doing something like that here in Moscow with Stalin. Stalin is buried under these huge underground metal slabs. It's like they're worried he'll get out...

Re: Superpowered Worlds

I'm thinking you couldn't pay me enough to be in charge of taxation and government on a world full of shapeshifters like the Skrulls or whatever Chameleon Boy's race is called. I guess anything we'd recognize as social order implies that the race themselves developped a way to tell each other apart; this might be useful for the heros if they can find out how...

Maybe they smell differences in each others scents?

Re: The Italian Connection

How far back in Italy's past are you planning to go for ideas? I think you could do some pretty cool stuff involving the Roman Empire. Maybe Caligula was an immortal vampire...

Re: Superpowered Worlds

That's what I was wondering since I read the first post. Why the people and not the animals? For that matter, why not the plants? Would metelgury be developed until the need for electricity if wood were as strong as steel? Gunpowder and archery would still be developed because while you could chuck a spear a long ways, there is the problem with accuracy. Throwing is less accurate than using a bow or rifle.

 

Which brings up another issue. If you're stronger, then you're tougher. The Ultimate Brick even talked about what happens if your PD is less than the DC from Strength. So how would increased toughness affect society's developent?

Are these super-people disease-free, or does their planet have super-germs? How long do they live?