Supreme

I got my players to agree on "The Academy" because I told them that if they didn't come up with a name by the end of the session, the press would do it for them. The stick doesn't have to be large if it's smelly enough...

I'm sad to say that none of the campaigns I run or play in last so long that the characters have been adventuring for years. While many of the players enjoy the campaigns greatly, few GMs have the stamina to keep things going that long. Generally, our timelines assume that time elapsed "off-camera" between sessions is about a month or so. This seems more realistic as it means that our characters can hold down their jobs and aren't ditching their work shifts to fight evil everyday. As for continuity, we love playing period games; golden age, silver age, etc. We almost always work characters from a previous "age" into the background of each period campaign. In fact, I recently worked out a campaign timeline that includes all previous PCs, most published characters (comics, novels, and pulps), and many historical/folklore characters (Hercules, Robin Hood, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, etc.).

I'm not sure I understand the dichotomy here. How does essentially buying a large volume of skills at a bulk rate invalidate being the person who solves the problems of the campaign? With the Universal skill group option, the character is paying 20 points for each skill area. That's a total of 100 points! Sounds like they paid for the ability to me. I don't see the logic here either. By reducing the cost, and taking on limitations (the VPP option prevents using more than one skill at a time, the UT option only allows you to use each skill at base level) you are doing the same thing as every other character who buys their powers with limitations, foci, or within frameworks. Heck, buying powers within a simple elemental control imposes no limitation except that the powers must use a similar motif.

"Angel" the RPG All of the PCs are people from various time periods previous to the 21st century. One night they are each attacked by a vampire. At the start of the game they awaken at the culmination of a ritual taking place in 2003. You see, they've all been marauding as soulless vampires since they were attacked and turned. A group of good-guy mystics captured a group of random vampires (the PCs) and remerged them with their souls so they could fight evil. If you don't like the "Angel" reference, call it "It Takes a Vampire." PCs can take additional disads for being from a time period in the very distant past (like the 5th Century). Such people will have a hard time understanding things like internal combustion engines, the internet, current women's fashion, etc.

They only thing you should ever tell the GM, or anyone else in the group, is that you'e not enjoying the game and why. Simple, direct, and honest. It's the only way to go (and part of the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism, but that's another story). You may want to be more diplomatic and phrase what you don't like about the game as "combats are too short/predictable/etc." as opposed to "your character/style of play is ruining the game for me." If this character is hi-jacking the game it's all right to object openly. It's your game too. Your character should be just as important as everyone else's. If the GM doesn't want to take any action on this -and the GM is the only person who should- then you can either leave the game (don't threaten, just leave) or you can volunteer to take over for a while.

And finally... This is my Wife Supreme's character from the same Golden Age campaign as Champion & Pennant. The Scarab Sorceress!

This is probably the best Poser/Photodeluxe combo I've ever done. This was for another player's character in a Silver Age campaign that I played in a while back.

Using the same method, I also made Champion's sidekick: Pennant. I decided on the closeup shot because when I zoomed in on her face to fix her hair, I realized that I had made a great expression which would be lost on a larger shot.

Well... I guess I should post a few. We're going to crash the server soon... This one is of my Superman knock-off, Champion. I made the figure using Poser to render the figure and then exported to Photodeluxe (we don't have the $$ for Photoshop) were I made the costume.

Sounds like an 80's euro-pop band. I ran for a group once that debated on a name endlessly. At one point, because they had this sort of mideval (sp?) nordic theme, they joked that they should call themselves the "Teutonic Trio." Eventually they settled on the "Academy." However, the first time that the press approached one of them and asked who they were she forgot and said, "The Teutonic Trio." But she was a new player (and my Wife Supreme) so I didn't hold her feet to the fire for that one.

Hey, let's face it, most "original" super-heroes and villains are themselves reworkings of mythical characters. Superman is Hercules redone in a modern urban setting. I like to make characters that are hybrids. I cross Batman with Iron Man to make "Steel Shadow" Batman's attitude, Iron Man's armor. For two campaigns, one Golden Age the other Silver Age, I made two characters named "Champion". Both were Superman rip-offs in powers, but the changes from age to age was modeled on Green Lantern. Golden Age Champion got his powers from the goddess Athena, and lost his powers when surrounded by seawater (that mean, old Poseidon). Silver Age Champion got his powers from "cosmic radiation" and lost his powers when surrounded by lead.

Re: Re: Shrinking Brick Names That's what cars are for.

All this talk about shrinking bricks makes me want to make one. Anyone have any ideas for names? Lepton? Particle? Plank's Constant?

Your logic isn't very pseudo. It would hurt more. By the same token, I wouldn't have let him or Ogier's character pick up a car unless they grabbed it in a very structurally sound area. They'd just come up with a handfull of metal.

I like that you only gave him 5 points for being blind. It doesn't really hold him back much. But I wouldn't give DD super-human stats like you did for DEX and SPD. I'd give him regular human limit stats, then add skill levels. Also for 5 points each, his PD and ED should be 9 each, not 15.

Well, there is something to be said for the hard way. For one thing, it means a GM can't disallow on the basis of rule-breaking.

I wrote-up, but never played, a golden-age character named Dr. Satori who was blinded while stationed in Japan, but developed a "Zen Sense" of his surroundings. I bought it as Spatial Awareness. I avoided being boring and didn't buy Japanese martial arts (which I feel aren't appropriate for a GA game) and instead gave him boxing skill.

YOW!!! Okay, a little steep, but you have a point. Even so, that'd still be only 20 points for all five groups. What about making this Detect-based, as UT in 5th Ed. is.

Believe it or not, I actually think that VPPs are more abusive because they give you much more for much less. A Universal Skill group is 20 points. A VPP skill pool is anywhere from 4 to 6 points (depending on whether or not buying "cosmic" is considered necessary). The Skill VPP allows virutally any skill whereas the Universal Skill Group only allows skills within that group: sciences, languages, knowledge skills, etc. And skills aren't allowed in frameworks are they? 5th Ed. didn't change that right?

The Brick Everyone Forgets... What about the Atom from DC comics? He can retain his mass when he shrinks. In Champs terms that three levels of Density Increase per level of Shrinking. At four levels, which is about 1/8 M tall (the size he usually fights in) that means a DI-based STR of at least 70!

I want to design a character based on the skill-downloading concept from the Matrix. Basically, the guy was working on a machine that downloaded skills into the human brain. When he found out his boss was getting funding from terrorists he tried to turn him in, but was grabbed by the crooked boss instead. The boss jacked my character into the machine and clicked "Download All" which everyone thought would short-out anyone's brain. Because my character is special (i.e., a PC) it didn't and he became The Expert!!! So, I was thinking why not expand the Universal Translator (with "only known human languages" as a limitation) idea into the other skill enhancers: Universal Scientist, Universal Scholar, etc. So, who amongst us would accept this in their game and who wouldn't?

Thanks for the feedback and welcome backs, fellas. Personally, I'd either interpret Xander as a follower, or as the guy who has all the useful non-combat skills -- and yes, luck. Let's face it Xander has consistently, more than any other character, has been there to pull Buffy's fat out of the fire more than once. The Master drowns Buffy: Xander performs mouth-to-mouth (an experience that I'd trade 100 points of powers for) Buffy and Giles are ambushed by Chumash Vengeance spirits: Xander comes to the rescue. Okay, Willow, Angel, and Anya were there too, but Xander had friggin' smallpox and syphillus when he did it. Buffy runs out of tricks for taking on Glory: "And the glorified brick-layer picks up the spare." And yes, the metaphors should be as sophisticated as you can manage. In the current campaign... COMETEER, I EXPECT YOU TO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT! My current campaign is called "Kick Me". It's about a demon that takes the form of a sign stuck to someone's back. Whoever gets the sign stuck to their back is cursed by having everyone who is around them for longer than 30 minutes to make increasingly difficult EGO rolls to keep from kicking (or otherwise abusing) them. Eventually they either die - or pass the curse along by sticking the sign to someone else. On of my players found the current victim of the sign being beaten by some other kids. He hung out with him for 30 minutes and failed his very first EGO roll. He hit the kid. So that kid stuck the sign to his back. The player's been getting kicked ever since. That was last session. Next session the sign's going to reappear in his notebook. We'll see what he does. I see it as not just being about social exclusion, but about how willing we are to exclude others to be re-included. A fact about ourselves that we're not always so proud of.

Ever watch "Smallville," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," or "Roswell?" Seems to me that this is a nascent sub-genre that needs a little attention. The idea's a little kooky, but effective and identifiable. There's a humble, little town somewhere where things go bump in the night more than other places in the world. These bumping things are something which the authorities are incapable of dealing with so it falls to a single teen, or small group thereof, with extraordinary abilities to deal with this recurring paranormal threat. Granted, in the TV shows there's usually only one paranormal teen, so in a game you may want to make that a small group of teens with paranormal-related powers. There are other distinct aspects of this sub-genre. First, the basis for the paranormal teens' abilities is always directly related to the paranormal threat. On "Buffy" the Hellmouth which resides beneath Sunnydale draws the slayer-protagonist towards it, just as it draws vampires, demons, and everything else. Another aspect is that the paranormal dangers facing the teens are always allegories for various teen issues (abuse, sexual tension, drugs, etc.). So let's talk about this!