Supreme

Re: Missing SW-Brand Mono-Climates

But not all of Naboo is ocean, so does it qualify?

 

What about the planet where the clone army was created...the one missing from the star maps? Isn't it a candidate for "storms" mono-climate?

That's a good one. I was thinking that the Cloud City of Bespin wasn't "sky" enough. I'm thinking of whole communities made up of sail-driven air-ships and what-not.

And I'm thinking no-one has done an all-volcanic planet, though a planet with virtually all CO2 in its atmosphere would be poisonous, so everyone would have to bring their O2 tanks.

One of the things I always liked about Star Wars was the planets with mono-climates. That always added a great bit of flavor to the movies. So these are the ones I remember:

Desert: Tatooine

Swamp: Dagobah

Urban: Coruscant

Forest: the Ewok Moon of Endor, Yavin

Arctic: Hoth

Air/Cloud: the Cloud City of Bespin (? - Lando's place, it's been a long time)

Oceanic: Naboo

So what's missing? I can think of a few. What about you guys?

Re: Astronaut Package Deal

I know its a convention' date=' but I hate seeing stats in most package deals.[/quote']

But in this case I think it's appropriate. Those guys had to be in peak physical condition. I'd say that you'd have to have a minimum of an 18 CON and a 13 STR to be an astronaut from that period. You'd also have to have a minimum of a 13 EGO. I don't think INT should have a minimum, but have skill requirements instead. As for those skills, you should have at least three vehicle familiarities with experimental aircraft. That was a hard requirement which kept women out of the running for astronaut positions during the Mercury program. Also, computer programming from that period might not be appropriate as few of those guys could program (IIRC) and programming itself was completely different than it is today. You should also add engineering to the list of optional skills. Many of those guys had engineering degrees.

 

The Watched should not be NASA. They are not an investigative or intelligence-gathering agency. Those guys were watched very closely by the FBI, though, and I imagine the CIA and Secret Service may have kept tabs too.

Re: Sexuality and the Silver Age

Don't forget the "Melrose Place"-esque Legion of Superheroes. Lotsa affairs goin' on there, and a lot of implied intimacy for a group that was supposedly made up of teenagers (well, primarily). Some were 'respectable', like Lightning Lad & Saturn Girl and Bouncing Boy & ...um...who was he married to again? Star Boy and Dream Girl, Colossel Boy and...um...that SP chick he dated. Elemental Lad and his SP chick.

 

Mon El and Shadow Lass had an interesting relationship, as did Dawnstar and Wildfire. Plus the whole Ultra Boy & Phantom Girl thing. Princess Projectra & Karate Kid turned out well, but it was touch'n'go for a while there.

 

Some of these weren't developed fully until the 80s, but there were definite origins for all of these relationships back in the 60s and 70s.

Bouncing Boy married Duo Damsel. In the current Legion it's shaping up to be Brainiac-5 and Dream Girl.

Re: Sexuality and the Silver Age

Marvel had very healthy sexuality. Reed and Sue dated, adventured together, got married, and had a kid (who was then turned into a hopeless freak by bad writers).

 

DC Sexuality was more often repressed and unhealthy in the same time period, though they got better. The Flash was married and had a good relationship with his wife, but Supes and Bats had an endless string of very-strange never-consummated relationships. Supes in particular was endlessly making out with superhuman women, only to go back to the endlessly tricked and deceived Lois.

 

Wonder-Woman was an implied rough-sex bonage babe. Bats was a gay man in the closet, using Sellina as his beard.

 

What?

Reed and Sue argued endlessly and took years to actually get married, during which time no sex took place at all (if that isn't repressed...). Superman's relationship with Lois was very sick and twisted. Batman used Kathy Kane, aka Batwoman, as his beard back then. And Wonder Woman was like Freud on mescalin.

Re: Sexuality and the Silver Age

Speaking mainly from reading Marvel as a kid during the so called "Silver Age" and looking back now' date=' I didn't see it as "repressed". It was pretty clear who was knocking boots with who and whom. You didn't get allot of gratitous T and A and character typically didn't seem to act more like horny teenagers than grown men and women, but I wouldn't call them particularly "repressed" just fairly normal sexuality portrayed in a medium where children were assumed to be a large part of the audience. So was DC different, am I looking back threw the mists of nostalgia and misremebering these books or what?[/quote']

Maybe. I've more recently read the Marvel Masterworks editions from this period, and NO ONE was "knocking boots." Yeah, people were falling in love right and left, but there was barely even any kissing. The Fantastic Four was absolutely scandalized that Sue was keeping a picture of Namor (a head-shot for you salaciously-minded) hidden in a bookcase. When Jean Grey showed up at Xavier's School the other three boys started vying for her attention like idiots.

 

I suppose this discussion should have an agreement about what defines the "Silver Age". I usually end the "Silver Age" at 1970 when the #1 selling comic in America was Archie. I also separate the "Marvel Age" from the "Silver Age" as they are both so stylisitically different and have different starting points.

 

Though I suppose that

Re: Reduced Gravity Effects

Astronauts tend to lose calcium in their bones after a long-time in a low-grav environ. Maybe you can work an attack or disad around that ?

They lose bone and muscle mass after being in micro-gravity for weeks at a time, if they don't exercise. This guy will be flying around in 1/6 G for a couple of hours a night fighting crime, so I don't think this will be necessary. Also, I don't want a character who gets weaker the more he uses his powers.

Re: Character: John Carter of Mars

That is one faithful adaptation. I've always been a big ERB fan. And yes, Superman did indeed have an influence on Superman. Ever notice that Carter's Martian home is Helium and Superman's home planet is Krypton? There's a reason.

Re: Blanket Esoteric Defense

Not all Defense Powers are Special Powers.

True, but Lack of Weakness, Mental Defense, Power Defense, and Flash Defense are and those are the ones I'm talking about.

I guess for me the really kicker is Flash Defense. If I want a little flash defense - say five points worth - for all my senses I have to buy it for sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. That's 25 points!!! Maybe there should be a cost break for non-targetting senses.

Re: Humanity 2.0

Ageless? Hah! My car has all replaceable parts, but I'm pretty sure it won't run forever.

Re: Blanket Esoteric Defense

"Characters cannot purchase Special Powers and Talents in Power Frameworks, except with the GM's permission..." Page 203.

Re: Blanket Esoteric Defense

I thought VPPs were for everything, I don't remember seeing this restriction.

 

TB

Any power that's normally 0 END and persistent is off limits to any framework, without GM's permission.

Re: Reduced Gravity Effects

Rhanks, Sinanju, I like the Clinging idea. The reverse-grav effect is out though. The idea is supposed to come from the reduction of mass using superconductors and nagbetic fields. Yeah, this isn't confirmed yet, but we're talking about supers here, so...

Re: Blanket Esoteric Defense

Sounds like you want a version of the "nemesis defense" which I usually build as a small cosmic VPP' date=' uncontrolled, limited power set.[/quote']

Hurm... Sounds kind of borderline to me... VPPs aren't supposed to make defensive powers and all...

Re: The Essential Bad Golden Age

Totally off topic' date=' but I recall a story (in Spawn of all places) that kind of explored the "thuggish" way to solve problem and how it wouldn't work. Spawn beat up and humilated a crooked cop that was abusing one of his kids to make him change his ways. He didn't. He went home and took it out on his kid as soon as the Hero was out of sight, forcing the boy's brother to shoot his father to save his life. Very dark, but surpringly effective story.[/quote']

Wow didn't think Spawn had such intelligent writing. Was that a MacFarland story?

 

For me the worst parts of the Golden Age were:

• The only well developed characters were the white males.
  
• The sick levels of nationalism and patriotism were found primarily in Timely Comics which later became Marvel. In DC such issues were basically ignored (which is not such a good thing either), or were dumped once the original writers like Siegel went off to war.
  
• The stories were ridiculously simple. While this allowed a certain cavalier attitude that is more or less lost to us today, it also meant that plots and characters remained a bit too stupid
  

Of course these are largely my complaints about the Silver Age too, so you won't see me posting to that thread.

I wanted to make a character who has a certain limited amount of defense to all the esoteric attacks: drains, flashes, find weakness, etc. I'd like to avoid the trouble (if not the expense) of buying and writing out fourteen different defense powers. Can anyone thing of a way to buy one big defense power that would cover all of those?

I'm working on a character who has the technological ability to reduce the effects of gravity on him allowing him to fly with the use of artificial wings. So, I worked up the following concepts, some of which I can work out in game terms easily enough, but others I'd appreciate some help with.

• Flight, restrainable (duh)
  
• Superleap (without the wings he should be able to do this)
  
• If his wings were disabled, he should be able to prevent a catastrophic fall by making himself weightless for a short period (he'd be running the anti-grav engine in the red until it conked out). If he were already falling, though, that would prevent him from continuing to fall, but it would prevent him from accelerating. How do you do that?
  
• Anything else?
  

For disads I could take some vulnerability to knockback, or even negative knockback resistance, but I'd rather just accept the one die knockback resistance that all flyers have.

Re: I'm Looking for thoughts on Distinctive features and Invisibility.

If someone has the ability to conceal their distinctive feature, then the feature is concealable. Turning yourself completely invisible is not the same thing. Making your force attunement invisible means that you can now move amongst the Jedi unnoticed. You can talk to them and ask them for seemingly innocuous favors. Someone who is completely invisible is someone who has completely removed themselves from all interaction, like Desolidification. You should also consider whether or not the invisibility is constant, persistent, 0 END, etc.

Re: Tetrodotoxin

Puffer fish toxin causes complete respiratory paralysis on top of everything else - HKA NND does BODY - DEF is anarobic metabolism. A linked TRANSFORM into a the same character with the Physical limit - Flaccid paralysis (V. Com' date=' Total) on top of the HKA would mimic the venom.[/quote']

My understanding was that, unless too much toxin was delivered, the paralysis was not complete. There is still a minimal amount of cardio and respiratory functioning going on, but so little that even a doctor can't find a pulse.

 

And if you don't like the Entangle (Oddhat's seemed the best representation with that power-combo) then you could try to do a transformation attack. True that'll be expensive, but it shouldn't be cheap to instantly render someone helpless.

Re: Master List of Distinctive Features

...Corona When Powers Are Used...

I'd never allowed that unless the "Corona" included something like the number 666 appearing above you in red, flaming letters or a pink triangle or something. It would have to be something that would mean something to people and make them act in some kind of unfavorable fashion towards you. A distinctive feature should be disadvantageous, not just descriptive.

And I'd add "Unsettling," "speaks at an odd speed" (too fast or too slow, people will respond negatively either way), or "speaks with an unfamiliar regional accent".

Re: Favorite Abuse

It doesn't conform to Gary's restrictions, but my favorite has always been:

 

Simulate Death, Usable as Attack, add a few advantages to taste, such as One Hex Accurate and No Range Mod, and it still costs less than 20 points. It is guaranteed to take out an opponent*: if he makes the CON roll, he is immobile and helpless for hours; if he fails the CON roll, he's dead.

 

*Unless the opponent is the GM.

Oh that's clever!

How 'bout:

 

Buying lots of STR and CON and then selling back all or most of the STUN you'd get. You essentially get STR and CON for half price and still get the associated PD, ED, REC, and END. In fact, you can leave out the CON and just get Xd6 HtH damage** for 2.5 points per die!

 

**You can do damage at range too, quite easily, by simply throwing something.

Back in the infancy of the game we used to make characters with 10,000 CON, reduce the figured stats to a few hundred each, and that would leave you with HEAPS of points to spend for nothing. 100 point characters that could pimp-slap Galactus.

We never played them, but it was fun to be that sick for a little while.

Anyone ever use "Hunted by Galactus" or "Hunted by the Earth?"

Re: Favorite Abuse

Okay, it is time again to play your favorite abuse, the rules for you all:

 

The abuse MUST BE book legal

 

There are two types of abuses: reasonable and Munchkin. The reasonable is one that you can normaly get past a GM (say 90%), the munchkin one is one that you could not get past 90% of GM's

 

My personaly ones:

 

Reasonable: I am a charge whore, I love having a MP with lots of slots and charges on most (My current character has something like 15 powers in his MP with a combined charges around 120)

 

Munchkin: If you take a MA (Ranged or Melee), Find weakness with one manuver, and a MP of different attacks defined as a weapon of some type you can use all your MP with the one manuver that you can find weakness on. You also can use the one manuver for all your skill levels etc...

You'd better be paying for multiple attacks on that find weakness...

I can be a bit of a charge whore too. Taking sixteen charges is basically free 0 END on the power. If it's a major attack power, and you have a five or six speed, that's attacks for at least two and a half turns. How many combats last that long???

For nostalgia's sake, I have to chime in with the old "not in an intense magnetic field." How many characters did we all make with that thinking that it'd never come up? I know a guy who GMed for a group where everyone was point-crunched to the max with NIIMF as the lowest common denominator. So he threw an intense mag-field-projecting villain at them. Ever see a character with 40" of flight nose dive into the ground without his PD?

The Wife Supreme and I agree that I'm not a rules rapist, but a rules lothario. "How ya doin' rules? You look nice tonight... Oops! I spilled something on your top. If you take that off right now I can wash it before the stain sets in..."

Re: Early Marvel Age x Silver Age

This is exactly why I cringe when people describe the "Silver Age" as spanning the 50's to the 70's or even the 80's. It's ridiculous to ascribe some common set of characteristics to heroes across that time frame. Comics (at least Marvel comics) underwent a pretty drastic change in the mid-late 60's that to me undeniably sets them apart from what came before.

I would say that you can't extend DC's Silver Age to the 70s. Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and Dick Giordano ended that by sending Batman back to the streets of Gotham to fight crime, Robin off to college to grow up, told Green Lantern he was a de facto racist, and got Speedy hooked on drugs (who else?). The art and the stories both became really gritty and urban (as opposed to the suburban feel of the 50s). DC comics from that period became VERY issue-conscious (and preachy, for my money). They also slipped in sales. The #1 selling comic of 1970 was Archie. If that doesn't signal a change in era...

Marvel (or at least Spider-Man from what I can tell) did it's transition into the issues in the early 70s as well, but they retained most of the same people so the overall style didn't change much (except for the change from Ditko to Romita for art). Spider-Man himself remained more or less unchanged as a character.

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form

Why not just tweak the legality a bit and give him Fast Draw on his OIHID powers? If he makes the skill roll, it only takes a half phase. He can change and punch in the same phase.

 

Keith "OK, ya big Russian galoot, draw! HOLY @&^@*!!!" Curtis

Or just play it right and save your action until the phase before you go, change, then punch on the next phase.

Re: YOU KNOW THE d20 WELL HAS RUN DRY WHEN...

I'm Waiting for John Updike D20.