Willow

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel Not to the extent it will for front desk personnel. But the hospitality industry does not pay very well. To pull some numbers out of my personal experience, which may not be representative of the industry as a whole, the average front desk manager lasts about eight months to a year, the average cafe manager lasts a few years. I suspect general managers are like professional sports coaches- they last either a few years, or they're there as long as they like. Our accountant has worked here forever. I can't count the number of maintenance supervisors we've gone through. The housekeepers, who are all hispanic, have remarkably steady employment.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel THE FOLLOWING PERSON IS REAL. The downright strangest guest I've ever encounted was 'Robin.' I don't know her last name, and if I did, I wouldn't share it. We didn't have any kind of official documentation on file for her. How'd she manage that one? The room was being paid for by someone else- alledgedly her employer. We had a credit card imprint and photocopy of an ID on file for him, and the room was in his name. Anyway, Robin was staying day-to-day. She didn't seem sure of when she was going to check out, and everyday would come down with $69 in cash to register her room for another night. (I doubt very much she was a prostitute, btw.) Here's some general oddities about her. *Nobody was really sure what her last name was. She had called herself by multiple different last names, and I could never really remember what it was. *Nobody was really sure exactly why she was staying there. Alledgedly it had something to do with her work setting up a new office, and her needing a place to stay. It's my opinion that she wasn't mentally stable enough to hold any kind of extended job. There were also stories of problems with her family. *She was constantly recieving incoming phone calls, from multiple different people. (I know because they have to be routed through the front desk at our hotel.) *She was occasionally accusing random guests, or people who may or may not be imaginary of stalking her. She'd often call down to say that someone was outside her room, or a strange vehicle was outside her window. When I checked, there wouldn't be anything. *General high wierdness in any conversation with her. *I was called up to her room once to kick some random guy out of her room. He was just about as wierd as she was. *She once asked me if it was a full moon, and seem relieved when I said I thought it wasn't. *She once asked me very nervously if I was familiar with 'remote viewing.' I told her I was familiar with the term. She then got very quiet. *She often told me she had psychic powers. She would occasionally tell me that she was having a good feeling or a bad feeling about something. *She confessed to me once that she wasn't taking her medications. I told her she should go back on them, and she acted surprised and said, "you know, that's a wise idea." The next morning I called the guy who was paying for the room and told him that if she didn't go back on her meds, she'd be kicked out of the hotel. He was pretty concerned. She FINALLY ended up getting kicked out because she got behind on her room payments and we had to bill her alledged employer's credit card for the balance. He freaked out and threatened to sue us. It's our policy not to rent rooms to people who threaten us with lawsuits. She ended up checking into a hotel owned by the same owners (not a Best Western), and with some of the same staff. Apparently that hotel *does* have a policy of renting rooms to people that threaten us with lawsuits.

Re: Help Me Populate A Creepy Hotel EVERYTHING IN THE FOLLOWING POST IS TRUE. I've only read the first two pages of this thread, but I have to chime in. Apologizes if any of this info has been scooped. I work full time at a hotel. Specifically, I work the night audit: in addition to running some vital paperwork, I watch the front desk from 11 PM to 7 AM. During these hours, I am the only staff member in the hotel. Yes, that means I get to deal with the crazies. (Caveat to all of this: I work at a good-quality hotel- a Best Western.) Here's some general principles for use of hotels. They have your name on file. You can't legally rent a hotel room without a legal ID. (That doesn't mean the hotel will have IDs for everyone on the room on file.) If you're paying cash, expect to have a photocopy of your drivers liscence on file in the hotel, and if you're using a credit card, they'll have an imprint. In addition, those records are fairly long term- for tax purposes, the hotel has to keep those files for at least seven years. Of course, the degree of discipline in this access is another story. As the quality and price of the hotel increases, you can generally expect higher accounting discipline. Getting around this with a bribe will probably only work at lower quality hotels, or with paranormally high powers of bribery and suggestion. People don't really live in hotels. This is a tax purposes thing; hotels are zoned for short-term residence, not long-term residence. There are ways around this, but living in a hotel is ultimately hideously expensive. At the hotel I work at, our long term rate is usually $50 a night- which comes out to a montly rent of roughly $1500, about two to three times what a single bedroom apartment runs here in town. Sure, it comes with free room service and a free meal once a day, but it's not a good deal. Anyone living in a hotel for months at a time is both desperate, and has money to blow. I wouldn't be surprised if towns that are convergences of the weird would have lax laws governing this sort of thing, allowing hotels to actually have long-term clients. Hotel rooms are not particularly vampire-friendly. It's hard to block out all the light (I'm a light sleeper, I've tried.) Any room modification will be poorly-looked upon by staff. Plus a vampire looking for a, say, 5 AM checkin and 7 PM checkout is potentially looking at paying for two nights, not one, or one plus a hefty surcharge, depending on the hotel's specific policies. Revolving Door Staff Hotel clerks require little training, and don't get paid very well. The competent ones easily find better work elsewhere should they choose to pursue it. The incompetent ones don't last either. In the last year I've trained 12 people to do my job part-time for my days off. I'd put the average job-life at around 3 months. Significantly less if you live in a supernatural world. You can have a different employee working everytime the players come in, and chalk it up to the job market- absolutly nothing sinister required! A great red herring. The staff will talk. If there's weird guests in the hotel, chances are the staff will gossip about them. Occasionally, even in earshot of other guests. I'm on a first name basis with Johnny Law. I know several night-shift policemen by name, and vice versa. If something vaguely criminal or violent goes down, I'm calling the police. (This is less likely to apply in seedier hotels that may be operating less than legally, or in places where the police is corrupt, either supernaturally or mundanely. But don't pick a fight in a nice hotel and expect no one to notice.) I'll have some real life creepy guest anecdotes soon, but I just wanted to share some pearls of wisdom.

Re: Some Throw Questions That was my reading, but I figured might as well get it clarified while I'm asking something else too! So, throw movements- instantaneous, or partitioned over several actions?

So, I'm reading up on the Martial Throw maneuver, and variants on throwing. How fast does a thrown object move? Does it land at it's destination immediately? When the Martial Throw refers to the victims velocity/5, does it refer to this distance, or the velocity the victim was traveling at when he was thrown?

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? (And I realize that this not quite 'one roll' combat, but rather 'fewer rolls.') Good concern, but my experience with systems like this is that they can be extremely fast. I don't see why not either. Alternate forms of conflict would just require different modifiers. Yup. In your example, I imagine the stakes would be something like: GM: "Ok, if I win, these guys keep you busy long enough for the real villain to kidnap the princess." PCs: "Whoa! Ok, if we win, we roust these guys quickly, and are able to get the drop on the villain." Nope. Nothing in the rules that says they have to be on the same side. This is a general principle in my experience with stake-setting games. What I'm particularly trying to avoid here is 'status quo stakes'- i.e. GM: Ok, If my guys wins, this thing happens. Player: Ok, if we win, no it doesn't. I find that boring. But then, your methods may vary. You're right- I wrote this with ~150 Heroic characters in mind, for which 3 or so 25-50 pt characters is a close fight. Depending on what they put their points into 300+ characters can see some very increasing returns. Whoops. That was a typo. Should be -1d6. I very much like that idea.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? So, moving along. I put a little thought into this, and typed something up. It's still in the rough stages. Right now the biggest source of feedback I'm looking for are: how do the modifiers look? Are any of them unbalanced? What else should go on that table? And what should be on the Fallout table? **** Combat By Scene Resolution in the Hero System: Step One: Determine Stakes. There should be two sides involved, and each should be able to state clearly what they hope to get out of the conflict. Some possibilities could be “beat them up,” “get the MacGuffin,” “get away” “drive the attackers away” “look like heroes in front of the media,” etc. Stakes cannot include definitive defeat of the other side- if you want to kill or otherwise permanently take out your enemy, you’ve got to do it the hard way! Note that sometimes defeating your enemy won’t even be important at all to what you really want. If the parties involved can’t be split into two sides, or the players involved can’t agree on a single stake for their side, the conflict is probably too complex to be handled with these rules. The stakes should be agreeable to all sides, and of roughly equal weight. Step Two: Determine Dice Pools: Each side will have a number of dice to roll. This is determined as follows: Participants: 1d6 per participant. High-Power Participants: If a character is worth 100 character points or more, they are instead worth 1d6 for every 50 character points. Majority of Character’s Powers are Unusable: -1d6 Character has Particularly Relevant Disadvantage: +1d6 Character has Particularly Advantageous Power: +1d6 Character has Extremely Advantageous Power: +2d6 Superior Starting Position: +1d6, or more Superior Equipment: +1d6, or more Powers and Skills: Every character involved may make a Luck roll and must make an Unluck roll. Every active Luck or Unluck die adds/subtracts a die from the side’s Die Pool. If half or more (at least two characters) of the characters on a side have Teamwork, their side gets +1d6. If they all do (at least four characters), their side gets +2d6. One character from each side should make an opposed Tactics roll. The winner’s side gets +1d6 for every 2 points they beat the opponent. Step Three: Resolution: Each side rolls their combat pool and counts body. Whichever side has the higher total has won the combat, and achieves their stakes. On a tie, the players have a few options: one is to work out a stalemate or compromise: declare that neither side got their stakes, or each got some part of their stakes. Or for a big unexpected outcome, perhaps *both* sides achieve their stakes- this is great for really big die pools. If compromise or stalemate is impossible, the players may be default to a standard HERO combat. Afterwards, each character should roll on the fallout table to see what resources were expended and injuries were suffered. (Pending)

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? I disagree, there's a poster I think has gotten a little flamey. I'm not going to directly respond to it, because I just want to move on with the discussion at hand.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? To those of you who think this is an unnecessary idea, please do one of the following: 1) Pretend it's a good idea, and join the effort in contributing towards it. Or 2) Discontinue your involvement with this thread. You aren't being helpful. Thank you. --- The reason I don't find "just narrate the outcome" to be acceptable, is that it simply boils down to GM-fiat, and I'd prefer a more objective solution, such as the one that the default combat system, or even a simple skill roll has.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? First off, I think character death is never on the table for something like this- and that goes for both PCs, and 'named' NPCs. Depending on the genre, being captured might also be a no-no. If you want to take out your nemesis for good or put your life on the line, you're going to have to do it the long way! Reading Zornwil's ideas made my eyes gloss over, but it's definately going in the right direction. I like Sean Water's idea- perhaps base 11- chance of victory, and then a table of modifiers, like outnumbering opponents, overpowering opponents, especially applicable powers, etc. I'll probably look over this in detail and come up with something more fleshed out.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? Genre-wise, I'm mostly looking for Fantasy Hero or high-level pulp. (See the HeroFIST info in my sig.). So my way of thinking, starting with one-vs-one fights and taking it from there, is that HERO doesn't really have one skill for combat, so I'd start with 11 + OCV. So in this case, it's just an opposed skill roll. The big question is NOT what happens when you win*, but how you figure out what to roll. Problems here: OCV skill levels become really undercosted if you use this sort of thing alot, and HERO is built with a lot of crunchy, crunchy semi-intangibles. *Easy: you get whatever you were really after: "I foil the bank robbery." "I get away." "I end up holding the MacGuffin." If whether or not people got hurt was important, winner gets a free hit on the loser with an attack of their choice. Little details are typically left up to GM or high roller, depending on your playstyle, interpreted based on margin of success.

Re: Resolving a Combat in One Roll? Where we're coming from is games like Burning Wheel, The Shadow of Yesterday, and other 'indie' games, where one-roll fights are the rule, and the game zooms into a subsystem of the rules for the "boss fights." Ok, here's what I had initially came up with before: Every character has a 'combat advantage' roll. This is base 11 + the character's OCV, plus one point for every five active points of relevant advantages. There would probably be a chart to, like "highest STR" gives +1, or something like that. Then the participants make an opposed Combat Advantage roll (for multiple character fights, I picture this using the helping rules), and whoever rolls better wins.

Something my players clamor for is the ability to resolve non-essential fights in one die roll. I was wondering if there was anything like that already in print- perhaps in the Combat Handbook or Ultimate Skill?

Re: Boring Wow, sounds like some people I know... Anyway, I think there's a lot of different things you could use for this, the question is just how do you want to simulate being bored? The simplest way would probably be a Mind Control: Only to Cause People to Act Bored, (which probably falls under the target of 'something they want to do anyway,' given the attack mechanism), or even a Cosmetic Transform (turn Not Bored People into Bored People). Obviously, the No Conscious Control disad is for you. Of course, neither of those are really 'effective' at doing much of anything, other than causing other people to roleplay being bored. If you want to make this an attack, I'd go with an ego-based entangle.

Re: Herofist Template: “Old Master” Quote: “You Have Offended Shaolin!” STR: 10 DEX: 14 12 CON: 14 8 BODY: 12 4 INT: 18 8 EGO: 15 10 PRE: 15 5 COM: 10 PD 6 (4) ED 6 (3) SPD 3 REC 4 END 30 (1) STUN 24 Acrobatics 11- (2) Acting 8- Analyze Style 14- (5) Breakfall 11- (2) Combat Skill Levels: +3 OCV or DCV with Wing Chun Kung Fu (9) Concealment 8- Contortionist 8- (1) Conversation 8- Deduction 8- KS: Chinese Philosophy 13- (2) KS: History 13- (2) KS: Wing Chun Kung Fu 13- (2) Language: English Language: Cantonese Paramedics 8- Persuasion 8- PS: Instructor 11- PS: Your Choice 8- Scholar (3) Shadowing 8- Sleight of Hand 8- (1) Skill Level: Kung Fu Master: +1 to Acrobatics, Analyze Style, or KS: WCKF (3) Stealth 8- TF: Small Motorized Ground Vehicles AF: Home Country 8- WF: Common Melee Weapons, Common Martial Arts Melee Weapons (4) 10 points of skills, player’s choice. Wing Chun Kung Fu Maneuvers: Block (4) Kick (5) Legsweep (3) Tien-Hsueh Strike (4) Reputation +2: Kung Fu Master 11-, among all Martial Artists (2) Powers: Armored in Life: The character’s PD and ED are considered resistant. (Damage Resistance, 6 pts.) Chi Strike The character does +2d6 in Hand to Hand combat against unnamed characters. This costs 1 end to use. (Hand to Hand Attack 2d6, 10pts, Hand to Hand Attack -1/2, Only Against Unnamed Characters -1/2, 5 pts.) Defense Maneuver I-IIII The character always gets his full DCV, even if attacked from behind, by multiple attackers, or taken by surprise. (10 pts.) Know the Enemy: By spending a half phase, making a roll at 11-, and sizing up the enemy, the character can divide by half a certain type of the opponent’s defense. Only the character can take advantage of this, and it lasts for the whole combat. This applies only to the character’s martial arts attacks. (Find Weakness, Martial Arts Attacks, 20 pts.) Peony Blossom Step: The character can fly at a movement rate of 6”, but must end each turn in contact with a solid surface to maintain any upward momentum . (Flight 6, Useable as Gliding +1/4, Must End in Contact With a Surface When Flying -1/4, 12 pts.) Robust Style: Any attempt to use Find Weakness or Analyze Style on the character suffers a -5 penalty (Lack of Weakness 5, Resistant Defenses and Analyze.: 10 pts.) See The Flows You are an expert in perceiving and targeting chi flows, and gain +2d6 damage in Hand to Hand attacks. This costs 1 END to use, and requires a successful Analyze Style roll at -1. (Hand to Hand Attack 2d6, 10 pts, Hand to Hand Attack -1/2, Requires a Skill Roll -1/2, 5 pts.) The Willow Bends Once a day, you can focus your chi energies to heal yourself. You gain back 3d6 Stun and the appropriate Body. This costs 3 points of END to use. (Healing 3d6, 30 Points. Charges: 1/day -2, Self Only -1/2, 9 pts.) Points: 200