Christopher R Taylor

Volcanoes are the most destructive terrestrial natural disaster imaginable. They include multiple other disasters as a package deal, AND have their own destruction. Krakatoa blotted out the sky so badly with debris that there wasn't really summer in the northern hemisphere for a year.

This is of course the dilemma all writers face: eventually everyone who wants to has bought your book. Sure every year a few people age in that will be interested and maybe pick up a copy, but the initial flood tapers off rapidly. So you write more books, and people buy them, but for a game company the hard truth is that you have an absolute limit of how many books will sell. Hasbro's answer to that was to try the Microsoft model of renting books, thus ensuring ongoing profits, but absolutely everyone hates that and stomped all over it. Their previous answer was to keep putting out books, even if they were pointless or damaging to the game, just to get sales. And of course, new editions. Hero has resisted this: they put out a new edition when a new edition is called for, not just to mine sales. Game Designer's Workshop is based entirely around the "put out new versions" model. But the truth is, if you're only after profits, gaming is a terrible way to go about it. Put out stuff as a fan who wants to support the hobby, not as a businessman trying to make money.

Plus, the MTG earnings are largely propped up by the speculative buying of the latest Lord of the Rings set which had a one ring card... one of them ... buried in a zillion packs. So speculators bought mountains of cards hoping to get the ring, driving up sales. Now that the ring has been found, the sales have dropped off significantly, and the entire controversy has driven players and buyers away. So you get maybe one year of sales that way then what?

Its rare someone is beaten to unconsciousness in a normal setting without suffering at least some body damage. That, plus if you want it really realistic, impairing and disabling damage combined with hit locations gives you pretty effective long term damage. But not a lot of games call for that or are what players want to play. if you want real world "getting punched in the face takes weeks to recover from" you're probably not going to be playing role playing games. But consider: if you get up after a brutal fight and shake it off with a witty quip, or if you get beaten into a concussion that takes weeks to recover from, you aren't going to be going on adventures until you're healthy anyway, which takes place "off camera" so what's the difference in the end?

The kind of players I like to have are the ones who show up on time and keep coming back for a long term campaign.

Hasbro has all but killed MTG with its idiotic stunts and D&D doesn't look all that healthy these days, either. Role Playing Games will never really die, but they're entering Whist territory these days.

The only holiday adventures I've ever done for RPGs is Halloween, I had a yearly Halloween one shot I'd do. I can only remember a couple but everyone had fun.

Here is an older thread about starting up a champions adventure

See, that kind of thing makes for a fresh take, or at least an unexpected take on disaster. You could do Ragnarok too, or a war between Greek gods, same kind of "not zombies again" approach.

Yeah but most of the really important stuff is shielded and backed up, so as I understand it, while people would lose things like their phones, companies would still have the tech they need. It would be a significant disaster, but a recoverable one unless something else was also making problems.

A gigantic solar flare EMP would be one part of a good apocalyptic disaster scenario. Its not enough to really destroy things (they'd get rebuilt fairly quickly) so you would need something else in addition, like a plague or a war or some cultural destruction like a movement to oppose technology to really seal the deal.

I would be fine with characters being unhittable by physical or energy attacks, if that's their main thing. For example I had a game where a guy played a crossbow specialist with the usual gadget warheads. His OCV was 12 with that thing. He never missed, not once in the campaign. That was his thing. He wasn't the most dangerous enemy, or the toughest or fastest, he just was accurate. That kind of character I am okay with, I like player characters to shine, as long as they don't dominate. But if you're unhittable AND really dangerous AND really fast etc, well we have a problem. Like Lonewolf and Gauntlet said, its about being challenged. If you can create a challenge for them, then its okay.

One comic I particularly liked was Wally feeling a pressure against the back of his neck. Then he noticed that everyone in the movie theater, and the movie, were frozen. He'd had someone shoot him, the bullet touched him, and he went into super speed mode defensively, so fast everything was frozen. And Wally was never as powerful as Barry. No, the Flash shouldn't ever be hit, but its very difficult to find a challenge for someone as powerful as DC makes their heroes. So their powers vary wildly between comic to comic and even page to page in the same comic. That happened constantly in the Flash TV show, he was either faster than a bullet or wasn't, depending on what the scene required. Drove me nuts.

Another rule is that if a hero does a heel turn and becomes a bad guy, they gain 50% or more power level. Conversely, a villain who turns good loses a good half of their power or more.

I cannot imagine writing these posts on a phone, let alone something as long as you often will share.

There seems to be some confusion here. I never said you shouldn't be on the internet, or shouldn't use the internet, or that it has no value or use. I just said you would be surprised how easy it is to do without if, for example, you ever had a chance or reason to. Like a power outage, or a vacation, camping in the mountains etc. Its surprisingly easy to break off and not be plugged in. Peaceful, even.

Well I think there might be a false dichotomy being promoted here of either you are really tightly built with every point squeezed to its limit to make the most efficient and effective character possible... or you make a concept character that is a hapless clod incompetent in every way. I see it more as a combination of elements. You can have a fairly effective conceptual character and a conceptual efficient character. The character who builds in less efficient portions (such as the 10 CON mentalist) might not have quite as many points to spend on everything but its not crippling, either. And a tight concept might be more effective than the super efficient build simply because it is tight and works well as a package. And of course, there's the effect of role playing, where even if a character isn't the most powerful combat machine imaginable, they have other aspects and the game is about more than beating up the next bad guy. I mean, ideally. And then there's the GM who has the power to make things right. A good GM is not like a computer game, they can adjust the encounters, setting, events, and circumstances to give the "weaker character" a chance to shine and be useful or important even in the combat they may not excel in. Well, let's put it this way: if your concept is the full potential of a comic book speedster when logically followed through to their natural consequences and the way they are on occasion depicted... nobody has that many points and you cannot build that character. But you can build a speedster that acts much like a comic book speedster in most of their encounters. No, there's no chance anyone can shoot their freeze ray gun faster than the Flash can dodge it. No, Mirror Master could not reach over and push buttons on his wrist before the Flash could run around the world seven times, eat a pizza, and read a book, then stop the button pushing. And both of those things happen in the comics: the freeze ray goes off before Flash acts, Mirror Master pushes his silly buttons before the Flash can stop him.

I agree, again, that the presentation could be less intimidating. That's what the Champions Begins project was about: presenting the rules in a simple, easily digestible form that even younger, less literate players could enjoy. But then, D&D has a pretty intimidating set of rules as well, its just almost everyone who learns, learns with and from someone who already knows how to play.

...aand I killed the thread

Its amazing how easy it is to get by without the internet. Do without it a few days and you barely even miss it.

I have toyed with the idea of randomizing phases etc (such as roll 2d6 and if you get your speed or under you can act, if you fail, you get +1 to your SPD each subsequent roll until you move, etc). The reason I abandoned all of that is because the way speed works according to the rules is tactics. Having predictable, knowable speed simulates someone's combat ability: you aren't necessarily faster with a higher speed, although often you are. You're just more skilled, experienced, and capable at combat. In the same way someone who practices the piano gets so used to where the keys are and what sequence gives what results that they don't even have to look or think about it, or someone who does a job so long and so often that they are much faster than others at the job, speed represents skill and tactical ability. Randomizing that makes the tactics not work any more and reduces speed to swiftness in combat, so I don't care for it.

Oh, and while I am a Christian, I don't subscribe to the complex prophecy and timeline of dispensationalist premillennial types so I don't think the Left Behind series is Biblical or likely. But I do think it makes a really interesting, unique sort of sci fi apocalypse scenario that could be mined for ideas. Taken without the faith issues, it becomes a very strange setting that suddenly occurs not only without warning but without the ability to predict. It wouldn't even make sense for a while: why did everyone disappear? Where did they go? And why are these tyrannical things happening in the government? Why are people so awful to each other more than even before? Its a great setting for adventure and has a very unique flavor.

I was always more focused on the character i was trying to make rather than ruthless efficiency, so I built bricks with 13 DEX and energy projectors with 11 CON. Was it the best possible build with secondary characteristics? No, but it fit the character design I had, no matter what the breakpoints were. This guy wasn't especially durable no matter how many points of END I'd get for free, so he had a low CON. But I admit that I was an outlier in this.

There is a great apocalyptic scenario in the 4th edition VIPER book in which they postulate a situation where superbeings engage in so much war and conflict that they basically destroy everything except a few domed cities ruled, of course, by superbeings. Basically the supervillains won, and are dictators over cities which are isolated between wasteland and the city states are technological marvels. An uneasy truce remains between the cities. The PCs are a band of rebels who fight against the supers, obviously lose, and are exiled to the wastelands, where they have to try to survive. but they stumble upon an intact Viper base, hidden in the ruins not far away, and start using that equipment as a campaign against the supers, liberating their city, then moving on to other cities if they win. I was always enormously intrigued by this concept and wanted to run it as a campaign but my attempt only lasted one session.

I could see him as Ghost Rider, with some effects on his voice when the demon (or another actor). I know nothing about the Shroud other than that he looks cool as hell. I would like to see Alpha Flight, with Guardian for sure. Not sure Keanu is a good match for him though.