Christopher R Taylor

Nobody has done a great Luthor yet, in my opinion.  Still waiting for the definitive portrayal.  Hackman is a great actor, but his Luthor was a cartoonish idiot.  Spacey is a great actor, but his Luthor was confusing and made no sense.  I haven't seen this one but a young web startup guy just doesn't fit the role at all.  The animated versions have been far better: he's a Gilded Age super tycoon industrialist that wants to own and rule and control everything.  He wants to win, always.  Superman makes him look small and that infuriates him.

Well the big guns are going to be out dealing with planet-shattering stuff, while the PCs are probably going to be helping actual people in the neighborhood and getting to know people.  That means they'll get real feedback and appreciation like a local sports team rather than a big franchise.  Cards, letters, free coffee, hugs from kids, they'll know immediately who they help and why and how important that is to the actual people involved.  Save the world and people probably won't even know what you did.  Save a burning building and everyone knows.

I agree, we need someone to whip up good looking character sheets, and jazz up the simplified one I built.

I'm working on a two-part product, with a book for the GM and a booklet for the players.

Also, I am planning on having as much multimedia as possible.  For example, I want to make double sided card print outs with the PC info on them (no stats, just background, images, etc) with the female version on one side and male on the other.  That way people can look through cards of the PCs to choose one, rather than the character sheets.

Well it doesn't have to go that way.  If you have a lighter tone in your campaign then the heroes might end up being heroes to the world, looked up to and admired for their selfless work for freedom, justice, and the American Way and all that  What makes me curious is why that would come about, what would cause heroes to only show up in the USA?  Not just one guy with powers, but all of them?

This calls for Spirit Rules!

You could just hand wave all that, too: assign it presence and let it attack with DEX, CV, and SPD

Actually that would be an interesting twist: only one nation has superheroes, just one.  Why? how would that work?  What would that do to the rest of the world?

1) VIPER uses snakes to steal things, since they can crawl away to places people can't follow.

2) VIPER uses snakes as little assassins, supercharging their bite

3) VIPER uses snakes as spies.  They crawl in places, hide, and transmit what they see and hear

4) VIPER uses snakes to spread terror ala Hitchcock's Birds then demands ransom

5) VIPER uses snakes to study a special series of venom weapons and bombs, enhacing their arsenal

Personality is mostly SFX, but the Sword can affect itself, like prevent the wielder from attacking, and only that kind of thing, I'd probably add "Side Effect: Sword has a personality, and can occasionally prevent itself from Attacking."

 

This is probably the easiest and most direct way to do it.  Anything else is pointlessly complicated, its just a personality and can try to prevent use of its abilities.

Well you can just assign a personality and intelligence to his magic sword and play it as an NPC.  But it sounds like the sword its self can take actions, which is a bit more complicated to build.  It can be done as a follower (the easiest cheat is to build a basically 0 point desolid/invisible person with affects solid on Strength and let them wield it and not be able to let go of the sword).

A house rule that normal attacks do half body would help a lot.  And making characters pull their attacks more so they don't use full out all the time would be a big help too.

I'm reminded of Ron's broken wand in Prisoner of Azkaban. I think the side effects should be tied to a failed roll. It's way more amusing that way!!

Well that's kind of what I was thinking of, and the hundreds of scenes in various anime and manga where something goes horribly and embarrassingly wrong in a comical way.  But I don't know the magic girl genre well enough, that might be too much a violation of the concept and I want the option to feel like something really familiar and fun.

incomplete but a great resource, and its growing

Constantine was the show that I thought was quite good that was dumped unceremoniously and without just cause.  It had the makings of a great cult hit but they refused to give it a chance.

That's worth considering.  The main reason I put it on there is that it sounded fun to me and it would emphasize the young and inexpert nature of the character, but if it violates the magic girl/Harry Potter feel too much its probably not appropriate for the character.

Yeah the only real objective data I can offer is the statements of gaming store owners (their sales are down over the last couple decades) and the collapse of gaming stores in the area.  At least around here, definitely less RPG playin' going on.  But there are signs its coming back, so who knows?

I like the suggestions, especially the baseball stuff.  Be easy to come up with other names.

Behemoth is built without growth because 6th edition you use growth for people that get that way temporarily, not someone that's just huge.  But Public ID is a natural complication, I agree.

I lined up a guy to GM the set when we have a rough to playtest, he's played some hero but never ran, which is a good test bed.  Then I want to playtest running it at the friendly neighborhood gaming store with random jobus.

Oh, and the "linked to combat running" was a kludge; I couldn't get it to link to just plain old running the stat.  I should just buy it as a custom limitation so it reads right.

The side effects on Spellbinder's powers I figure would be in the notes for the GM, I was thinking comical and goofy stuff like turns him/her entirely orange, or into a cat, or teleports them into a nearby high area, some basic manga stuff that's played for humor and embarrassment to the character but is basically harmless.  Nothing like an explosion or pain, just things they would not want to happen (turn them into the opposite sex, or the opposite sex's clothing, or all bald, stuff like that).  With the wand's dispel magic power, they can fix themselves but it could be pretty fun in the process.

The problem is Spellbinder originally had a magic skill roll for all the powers (the wand made it better) but it was so cheap and efficient I was struggling to spend enough points to reach 300 without getting too powerful or adding too many weird options.  So that's something to talk over and hash out since the side effect only really works if you blow the magic roll, which isn't there any longer....

Well they all made money, including the ghastly Catwoman (they play tricks with accounting, and later stuff like rentals, sales, and streaming make more later).  But from the perspective of the studios, movies like Captain America are losers so only the long-term plan of Marvel keeps properties like that alive.

I suspect Civil War is going to be challenged to make money.  but that could just be me hating the story.

I admit it is hard to tell the two brunette girls apart, but yeah Skye is the one I was talking about.

They lost me a while back.  It never lived up to the promise, the show wasn't really ever about Marvel comics or SHIELD except incidentally to tell Whedon's stories, and the tone has never felt right.  They either wiped out or turned evil all the characters I liked, had the extremely annoying cliche super waif character Whedon is fixated on, and the seasons built up to a semi-satisfying climax but never were worth watching through.

Its really too bad because with a better writer and concept, it could have been quite fun.  They needed to read the old Agents of SHIELD comics to figure out how to do the story.

Its going to be tough to act before someone thinks, but sure!  And it would be kind of funny, because a lot of mentalists are built as frail little things.

Right, you don't want to establish a brutal, destructive campaign then betray your players with something shocking like that.  Ideally they knock the guy out with one shot and he crumples into a Beetle Bailey heap with birds tweeting around, not a pile of blood and jagged bone.

I like that idea, it could be in the sidebar as tips for GMing or in the "keeping it in the comics" section about enforcing genre through encouragement and reward.

Its probably a combo of the two: dark movies sell (look at Man of Steel!) and Green Lantern bombed, so that's the way they want to go.  DC is trying to differentiate themselves from Marvel by being more "grown up" and angsty.  So there's zero fun in the movies, and chinless Superman scowls constantly.

Ninja-Bear I don't insist on the inclusion of that bit, I just think its useful to help teach players in basic Superhero themes and genre.  I'm not the one that's going to be writing the scenario anyway.

I should be able to make it tomorrow at 4 PST.

Seems some pretty bad reviews hitting the themes I was concerned about: Superman is constantly grim and angry, everything is at night, its about grandstanding and epic statements, not story, etc.  If you liked Man of Steel you'll probably like chinless Superman again.  If not... looks like more of the same.