Supreme

Re: SPD based on Active Cost Suggestions like this all seem the same to me. They are attempts to prevent players from "raping" the system to make characters who are too powerful. For me the best way to go about this is to look at the character and say, "that's too powerful."

Re: An Alternate Superman To me the point of Superman being raised as humble Clark Kent in rural Kansas is a demonstration of our unspoken cultural belief that Urban America is morally bankrupt and that the rural heartland of America is where we get our morals and values. I'm not a big fan of that idea, so I'd like to see a story where Kal-El is adopted by a middle-class family from New York or Chicago or even Atlanta.

Re: must keep topic alive!

Re: I' m in a philosophical mood tonight. If any of you don't own "Unbreakable" rent it, and check out the DVD featurette. There are a number of people talking about comic books and super-heroes (and even how overly intertwined they are). One of the people is Trina Robbins, who does "Go Girls," according to her you can be a good person without the presense of evil but you can't be a hero. Without evil, you'd just stay in Smallville and be a really good person.

Re: I Can't Believe He Played That! Ooh... You've got a serious genre fiend on your hand. One of my problems with Anime-fiends is that they focus on what I always considered the worst of superheroes -- gory violence, cliche, cynicism -- and leave out the best -- flashy costumes, hope, unique style. For you Anime fans here, keep in mind: I'm not making a statement about Anime, only Anime-fiends.

Re: I Can't Believe He Played That! Worst Ever: I don't remember the name, though he probably never had one. The player wasn't too big on names or even costumes. He played Champions as if it were Car Wars. The character was a vampire gadget-archer with light and darkness powers. The capper? He actually tried to put all of that in an Elemental Control. I said, "pick one -- and not the vampire." He went with the gadget archer, I suspect, so that he could take -1 for OAF on all of his powers. He killed three agents (who weren't even evil) by firing an explosive arrow at them when they were getting away on a skiff in a swamp. They were knocked, the boat was in pieces, and they drowned. "Why the HELL didn't you just shoot an arrow into the propeller?!?" The player was a nice guy and would play ball once you explained things to him. You just had to explain more to him than the other players. I think that Anime/Manga fans and Classic American Comic Book Superhero fans just don't mix all that well. The morality and outlook are just too different.

Re: WWYCD #118?: The man from UNTIL. What better way to preserve his cover than to toss his butt into jail? If he really is an UNTIL agent, then his agency can arrange for his release/escape.

Re: Gravity Control tricks. Increased Knockback, Usable by Others TK, only in straight lines (-1/2) Transformation Attack: anything into a singularity

Re: Best way to strip someone down. Keep in mind that for characters who derive their powers from their costumes, this is no cosmetic transform. For the pants around the ankles, I don't see that as being major in a Heroic or better game. Most characters are fast enough or strong enough to either pull them back up or burst right out of them. You might want to add in a PRE suppress. It's hard to be threatening in your tighy-whiteys.

Re: Why is Superman being called stupid?

Re: WWYCD? #113: What If God Was One Of Us? Pretty much any character I've ever played would destroy the glove. Champion (my version, a cross between Superman and Captain Marvel) fought the Axis and would understand the pitfalls of having too much power. Freedom Fighter would destroy it because he wants to run his business (and R&D Engineering firm) not rule the world.

Re: Superhero Day! This'll screw with their heads: In some cities like San Francisco and New York an "Exotic/Erotic Ball" tradition where people dress up like the super-heroes (especially the PCs) as a sexual fetish and cavort about in sex-clubs and fetish bars.

Re: Re-tooling an Old Concept: Herakles I was thinking that if they though, for instance, that it was a blanket with holes punched in it, then I could calculate the mass of a blanket 25,000 miles long or something. Anyway, this is becoming silly beyond the limits of fun. I think I'm just going to go with an 80 with an Aid to a ceiling of 120 with no conscious control. Thanks for sparing the brain cells, guys.

Re: Re-tooling an Old Concept: Herakles Aristophanes got the circumferance right to within a few percent. Not a bad feat considering that he had two poles and a runner to measure it with. Don't know about their measure of the weight, though. You're hurting my brain too!

Re: Re-tooling an Old Concept: Herakles

Re: Re-tooling an Old Concept: Herakles Hmm... Good idea. The GM has to really be willing to play ball though as it's extra work for him.

I want to do the classic Greek hero as a super-hero. Trick is getting the amount of strength correct. Now we all know that one of Herakles' adventures included having to hold up the sky in Atlas' place for a while. So... how much does our atmosphere weigh? Second question: I don't want this character running around with sky-lifting strength all the time. I want him to be able to Aid his STR up to that level -- but only under appropriately dramatic circumstances. So how do you write up "only in dramatically appropriate situations"? I'll entertain any and all ideas no matter how small the limitation is.

Just to keep you all up to speed... To recap: I told my players to make chatacters with different power levels. The 200 point character level dictates that the character cannot be especially effective in combat, but has all kinds of abilities and skills which are useful for advancing the plot out of combat. The 500 point character is expected to be the combat monster, no real useful non-combat abilities. The 300 point character stands between the two. He (or she in this case) has a reasonable amount of both combat and non-combat abilities. What my players created: Dr. Claw is a 200 point scientist who had his left hand mutated into a scaly green claw in a lab accident. His most frequent gadget is a visor which gives him various enhanced senses. Kir is a 300 point alien brick. Kir comes from a race of hunter-gatherers who shunned her for being too small (a mere 8 feet tall). She was transported here from another dimension, and in the process had her strength increased to 75. Kir is definitely a fish out of water, but brings with her a lot of hunting skills and instincts. Ice Queen is a 500 point energy projector who is the daughter of Aphrodite and an Antarctic explorer. She was born fully grown in the ice from Aphrodite and subsequently developed all kinds of ice powers. I ran another session and things seemed to go all right. More or less. The main trick has been to keep everything from centering too much on Dr. Claw. A lot of that is incomplete plotting on my part. I think the other players have the mistaken impression that when they're out of combat there's nothing for them to do.

Re: Character Challange: Superman Clones This is the second, which follows a more traditional Superman origin. We all know how hard it is to replicate Kryptonian DNA. The best you can hope for is to graft sections of Kryptonian DNA on to human DNA. So some yutz (probably at Cadmus or STAR) grafts sections of Super-DNA on to three babies. The result is a trio of super-powered teens (forgive the names, I've never bothered to come up with any). Super-Blue Has all of Superman's strength and invulnerability. Wears a predominantly blue costume with yellow accents. Personality contains all of Superman's passion and righteousness (think Golden-Age activist Superman). Super-Red Has all of Superman's senses and Heat Vision. Wears a predominantly blue costume with yellow accents. Personality contains all of Superman's moral and ethical standards. Super-Yellow Has all of Superman's flight and speed. Wears a mostly yellow costume with a red "S" and other red accessories. Personality contains all of Superman's compassion for humanity and humility.

Re: Character Challange: Superman Clones I've had two particular ideas in this vein. This is the first. First, is to change the origin. My Kryptonians are actually humans abducted by an alien race called the Krypt-ona. The technological forte of the Krypt-ona is genetic manipulation. Unfortunately, they've been forced by previous bio-wars to innoculate themselves which makes their DNA too difficult to safely manipulate. So they "import" their labor. They take humans, supplied as infants from orphanages by -- you guessed it -- Lex Luthor, and genetically manipulate them to perform various types of specialized labor. The ore-miners, called "Kal-El" in Krypt-onan, are designed to have special senses to locate the ore, super-strength and invulnerability to dig it out, heat vision to smelt it on the spot, super-breath (pure nitrogen at incredibly low temperature) to cool it, and flight to haul it away. As the heaviest elements are found around third-generation stars, like our yellow sun, the Krypt-ona designed the slaves' to absorb radiation from such stars. To make sure that the slaves stay in line the Krypt-ona take two steps. One is to make a police-slave series, called "Zod" in Krypt-onan, which are designed with similar abilities to keep the other slaves in line. The other step is to design all slaves with an inherent weakness. The energy aura which is the basis for all of the slaves' powers operates in a particular frequency. All frequencies have an antithesis. There is an artificial particle with the antithetical frequency, that the Krypt-ona have designed, which causes massive neural feedback in the slaves. It also reduces the strength of the aura itself. This particle can be imbedded in heavy elements, like lead, making them radiate this particle. The only side-effect is that the elements tend to radiate visible light when they change energy states, usually in the green frequency. Kal-El is the last survivor of a slave rebellion which destroyed the whole Krypt-onan home planet (which circles a red sun).

Re: The original Jewish Superman! Just when I think I'm an expert on the subject... I've never heard of this. From my readings, the biggest inspirations for Superman come from Hercules, Samson for having a weakness, John Carter of Mars for getting his strength from the difference in gravity (and Krypton is "named after" Helium being the next noble element), actors Clark Gable and Kent Alexander for their names, Doc Savage for being perfect and a man of metal, and Siegel and Shuster themselves for their appearances (Siegel wore glasses). I think S&S felt inspired by many sources including possibly the Midrash. As for other Jewish super-heroes... Almost all of the super-hero creators back in the Golden Age were Jews. It was a reviled artform (according to Eisner) and thus the people who worked in it were generally unwanted elsewhere (acccording to Chabon). I think it doesn't take much to see certain cultural characteristics in many of the early characters. Of course keep in mind that culturally those artists and writers were from a very specific groups of Jews: barely post-depression-era, Ashkenazim, usually Reformed - if practicing at all, from the New York area (either originally or from early on), teenaged, and male. Eisner once said of the Spirit, "Yeah, he had an Irish name and a short nose, but he was really Jewish." In terms of characters being "officially" Jewish, I think Ben Grimm was probably the first ever printed, though it was several years after FF#1 that he was "outed."

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER I think it's photo-manipped. First, on the model on the left, the strap behind the breast is not straight and I don't see how in that position it could not be. Second, the model on the right's head is too small for her body. Third, the model on the right's bikini is too bright for something that's supposed to be in shadow. Keep in mind that I really don't care either way.

Re: Leagacy of Iron: Power Suit characters... Well, if someone has the ability, through technology or inherent ability, to project forcefields which are as solid as normal matter -- and can be assigned the various charactertistics of normal matter (volume, weight, friction, etc.) then why not build a suit of powered armor out of such things?

Re: Need (More) Help With Marvel Age Game The Comics Code also prohibited the military from being shown in an "unfavorable light" yet who did the Hulk fight every month? Marvel, even in the 60s, paid little attention to the Comics Code.

Re: Need (More) Help With Marvel Age Game I thought I should also add something. A lot of you are coming up with good ideas about the vamps being programmed. Unfortunately, I have a built-in theme about that with the vampires. They are supposed to be very hard to control. Omenus' minions are a spectrum of control vs power. The easiest to control, the golems, are the least powerful, whereas the hardest to control are the werewolves who are also the most powerful. The vampires, are very hard to control but Omenus can make deals with them. Though he creates them, they operate essentially as independant contractors.