Christopher R Taylor

I don't mind so much being a captive, its the failure, loss and misery of being captured that's frustrating and depressing. Like a lot of players, I suspect, I play RPGs to be someone better than me, who doesn't have the awful parts of life I have to deal with, and who triumphs. Being defeated and captured violates that sense of enjoyment for me. As a GM I try to keep that in mind, and if I have a scenario that requires the PCs be caught, I will tend to have the scenario start that way, with the capture happening "off screen."

I always thought that a group of PCs should take over Quasqueton and turn it into their base of operations. Its in the same area and closer to the caves of chaos.

Sadly my GAC campaign is going on hold indefinitely, as one of the players wants to run a Savage Worlds Star Wars campaign. While I like the idea of playing this game and trying out Savage Worlds, I have so many ideas and there's so much interesting stuff coming up in the next months in my planned golden age campaign I hate to put it on hold. The next month, the Battle of Britain starts, Captain America is born, and a battle with German saboteurs is going to rage across the city. So many plans, I hope some day I can get back to them.

I've used the mass combat rules a few times in Fantasy Hero; once with a siege on a castle with the heroes moving from hot spot to hot spot, once in a war out on a battlefield, and once on board a ship being swarmed by Deep Ones. Its almost there, but the rules don't quite work. They try to turn squads and groups of units into a quasi character then run them as usual with Hero but it feels like something isn't quite working; too complex but not quite deep enough in effect. I don't really know how it could be done better, I just feel like it should be.

All three of those villages are great. I particularly liked the village in Against the Cult, although Saltmarsh had a better storyline. Those UK modules were really well done.

In Search of the Unknown was fun to convert as well, but instead of leaving it up to the GM to populate, I filled it and put in a few storylines to follow through, including a complicated vault in the lower level that you have to use a special sequence of devices in the upper level to open. Related to the first question, I find it interesting to take these old skeleton modules and fill in a story to flesh them out more while converting. All the design work is done, its just a matter of updating them to modern gaming sensibility which is more than "kick the door down, kill what's inside, and take their loot."

While Keep on the Borderlands is the more famous, Aaron Allston's Treasure Hunt was a better intro module and was a lot of fun to convert.

There's no need for programs, you just have players run different factions like any miniatures game. they choose what each group does.

Sorry, yes, complications after characteristics, but before skills and powers.

My wish list would return Comeliness, Suppress, and Transfer to the rules again. I'd add an extension to drain allowing it to add limitations and complications to opponents, and I'd come up with a way to use AID for short-term, fire and forget granting powers. Further, I'd dig through the Advanced Players Guides and add some of the parts of those. Barrier needs a bit of reorganizing (to examine the "trap people in bubble" effect, if it should be part of barrier or not), and skill levels need to be repriced vs CV costs. Another useful thing to add in is at least some version of the spirit rules from 4th edition supplements, and a new look at vehicles, bases, and computers would be good. I would also consider restructuring the entire array of mental powers to work more like transform, and eliminating the requirement to state a target level and instead an intended effect. I'd also suggest HTA lose the -1/2 limitation which seems to be left over just from old rule and not because it makes sense any longer (if it ever did). I think Power Defense should be costed differently: 3/2 for all effects and 1/1 for specific effects (like magic, radiation, etc). Shapeshift seems a bit expensive for what it gives, and that's worth rebuilding. Structuring the book I'd put characteristics before skills and powers; sort of a psychological effect to help players realize they're part of the character's creation rather than a tack on at the end. I would prefer missile deflection be returned to the rules and defined more specifically and clearly; the present system is a bit odd. Being able to bat arrows and bullets out of the air shouldn't be something anyone can do with GM permission but a specific power you buy. I'd call the whole line Champions rather than Hero, so its Fantasy Champions and Pulp Champions. That ties the whole rule system together to its flagship and best known game.

You can just take each side and not use the GM at all, have one guy run the bad guys and one run the PCs, or the other group of minis. O was a bit underwhelmed by how it plays out, but the rules work.

The upcoming Fantasy Hero Complete will have a magic system built in that you could try as well.

I'm in the process of slowly updating the adventures there to 6th edition, but I have a lot of other things that are higher priority. The storyline that I built into it is basically a quest to clear out the entire caves of chaos because something in there is attracting the creatures. I put a lot of work into adding in faction and quest elements (so you can build esteem with the locals for greater access and treatment in the keep by doing various minor and major quests) as well so that it has a sort of MMOG/computer game feel that would be familiar to newer players. Since KOTB was designed to be an introductory dungeon (along with In Search of the Unknown, also converted to Hero on my page) I wanted to make it a sort of Hero 101 for GMs and players to use. That makes it kind of a big product, but it was fun to work on.

One way to build 'negative powers' you can apply to others is through drain: use the same mechanics but let it apply complications and limitations to characters. For example: give the enemy delayed phase extra time on an attack.

Yeah that's kind of a concern, its so easy to be fancy with maps now and clutter them up with details but all the GM really needs is the layout and relative size of things, not the floor tiling and where cobwebs may be found.

Killer Queen was about a record exec that Freddie Mercury had finally had enough of and savaged in a song. I have made a couple of characters about the Veteran of a thousand psychic wars from the Heavy Metal soundtrack

My favorite kind of golden age character is the Dr Mid-Nite or Crimson Avenger type, a guy that has one or two interesting powers and is other wise just a two-fisted detective type.

I would consider allowing someone to put a focus limitation on a computer put in a base if it was especially vulnerable or easy to access, destroy, or remove. If your computer is like the Bat-Computer and takes up a wall, then no, it is just part of the base. But if its a laptop or something small that anyone in the base can get to and affect easily, I would consider it.

Barrier, Transform, and movement usable by others all work for this; it depends on how permanent and durable a structure the spell creates really. If its just a temporary effect, usable by others with a special effect of being the stone or earthen construct works fine, and its cheap as dirt. If its more permanent but has a limited amount of weight it can hold, then barrier is a good choice, because you can apply damage to the barrier by weight, and too much will collapse it. If its just a permanent structure the spell molds out of the ground and stays until eroded or destroyed but weight isn't an issue, then a minor transform will do the trick.

We went with 250 points for my GAC in 6th edition, and a few pretty low caps. The characters ended up not vastly powerful but with some flexibility in design. They have around 30 points in xps so far and going strong, with room for growth but without feeling too weak. Since super powered beings only VERY recently began appearing in the world (1937), the entire concept is new. In fact, all the super powered guys until the PCs got their powers in April of 1939 were bad guys. Super villain-based mobsters controlled and were destroying NYC. The PCs started as pulp characters and ran a couple adventures without powers before they got theirs.

I have a pretty low damage cap on my campaign so 10 or 12 d6 would be a major hit. One useful Golden Age style device is the limitation from Fantasy Hero so that a power can only be used every x time period so like once an hour or once a day for the super punch would be fine.

Radio cars were very rare until the 50's and 60's in most departments. Even in NYC they relied on phones mostly; particularly since few car patrols were used in the city (it was mostly an LA thing for a long time).

I do it a bit differently, prorating the size of the explosion to the radius. So I buy the radius I want, then break down the dice by the size. A 12m radius explosion of 6 dice loses 1d6/2m for example.

Back then the cops had to use police phones set up around the city to contact each other. Listening to old crime shows helps a lot with getting a feel for the legal culture.

I'm less interested in god builds like characters and more interested in them being forces the players interact with; more story-driven than numbers on a sheet. I don't want a game where you fight Thor, I want a game where Thor fights with you or on your side, or simply causes trouble you have to deal with.