GreyGuardian

Re: Your "2008" Pet Gaming Projects 1) Resume my Terran Empires campaign - It went on hiatus sometime in 2006. The crew of the Golden Fang is searching for their first officer. They've arrived at the right planet. They're nearly sure she's located in city ruins at the center of a wasteland. Automated air defenses prevent a closer approach using the ship. They have to cross hundred's of miles of wasteland by ground vehicle or on foot. Wasteland that's got live weapons left from the war, horrible mutant creatures (caused by Xenovore biological agents), and generally post apocalyptic "fun". 2) Start a second TE campaign for a different group. This group meets more regularly, but has been mostly limited to variations on dnd. The current game (run by someone else) is set in Ptolus and will probably end this June. 3) Resume my millenium city Champions game if I somehow can get it scheduled and find time to run it. In all cases I want to adopt some of the ideas from Robin Laws' gumshoe system and his Page XX articles. Specifically, if a character has the skill needed and the result of a failed die roll is not interesting, don't call for a die roll. Try to encourage more flavorful combat. Write up more of my own NPCs so I don't keep recycling viper combat agents, generic thugs, etc.

Re: Traveller Hero: Campaign re-working: Zombie survival guide by Max(?) Brooks (check for it on amazon)

Re: Urban Fantasy Recommendations The Complete Werewolf by Anthony Boucher (spelling should be close) - short story that's appeared in several collections and was originally published in the original weird tales. Any version (original or one of the ressurections) of Weird Tales in general should be a good source for short fiction fantasy in modern times. Grendel (comic book by Matt Wagner) Marvel's Thor DC's Demon, Doctor Fate, Shadow Pact, Spectre, etc. Both Marvel and DC's comics tend to be more super hero-ish but there may still be elements you'd want to pick up... or it may be relevant for the champions section of the book if there is one. ZBS media's Jack Flanders radio plays. (Fourth Tower of Inverness, Moon over Morrocco, the various Travels with Jack.) Fiction based on the games Shadowrun and Mage (or just the source books I suppose, but that might be a bit troubling to have floating in the back of your head as you write your own take on the topic). Of the books etc. mentioned so far I recommend: War for the Oaks Mage - The Hero discovered (comics / graphic novel) Neverwhere Anansi Boys (American Gods shares the same world but is a serious crunchy novel where Anansi Boys is more of a light screwball comedy) - the audio book version read by Lenny Henry was quite good. Sandman - The new ultimate versions are very nice. Lord Darcy - the stories are set in the year that Garrett was writing them, so they range from the late 1960's into the 1970's.

Re: Traveller Hero... What's Next?

Re: First-aid kit, physicians bag I'm pretty sure there was a write up of med kits / "miraculous healing drug patches etc" in the spacer's toolkit. Might have been one of the other star hero books though. Of course the real question is what effect do you want the kit to have?

Re: movement You can not go from not moving to moving non-combat in one phase. acceleration is limited to your movement. So Character A on phase 5 moves 6" (a full move) and retains his full DCV etc. On Character A's following phase he can accelerate another 6" so can make a 12" move (non-combat velocity full move). When A moves he has moved. If A has a 15 dex and B has a 14 Dex and they get a phase on the same segment - A moves a full move (6"). B gets his action, A is no longer next to him, so B can not make a normal hand-to-hand strike attack on A unless his movement is at least 11" (which gives B a 6" half move) and B makes a half move to a hex next to A.

Re: Help!!! Gate creation question. Why worry about it? Unless you want the players to be able to make or break or affect the gates the mechanism doesn't matter, it's a plot device. The gates exist. If you want to limit the number or accessibility of creating them I'd attach some sort of resource to them - a gadget you can only get from the transport guild, or a certain amount of stored magic (like Vis in Ars Magica). If the thing is continuous, uncontrolled, and independent once the teleport gate power is started the gate would exist and be useable until whatever condition you set to end a 0 endurance continous power occurs. Or you could give them endurance reserves that the local wizard has to recharge or some such once a year or every decade or every week.

Re: Need help building a starship When trying to run vehicle combat and come up with real numbers and all that I got really bogged down and the game went way way too slow. hand wave the space flight and throw in occassional reasons for the pilot to make a skill roll (oh by the way if you miss this roll those orphans die, etc.) and or give him some flight time in atmosphere where hero system movement rules work more cleanly - BUT never ask for a die roll when a failure would not lead to an interesting / entertaining result. Check out Robin Law's see page XX articles http://www.dyingearth.com/pagexxintro.htm The December 2004 installment discusses this tactic.

Re: New scientific discovery? The backbone of pulp...

Re: GM-ing advise Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering Other than that - Keep the plot simple - especially at first. The players should feel like their characters are at risk, are overcoming various conflicts, and making some progress. Make it too easy and they will be bored, make it too hard or so that they don't think they can change anything and it will be bad. For a first time GM a familiar setting can be very helpful - a current day setting (modern) means you don't have to explain everything about the setting to the players. For example modern day setting - you need to get a coil of wire for something - ok I stop at a hardware store. Fantasy setting you need a coil of wire, as a player you... ask the gm if you know of a wire source etc... because as a player you have no idea unless it was covered in the setting documentation the players got (and that assumes the players read it). Not insurmountable, but it adds a layer of complexity that you don't need to deal with when running your first games.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Thanks for the link. My MA/Invulnerability scrapper has no issues solo (or in groups for that matter) but I am curious about the other sets.

Re: Need help building a starship I recommend getting Star Hero. It will have lots of how to sorts of information as well as basic planetology type information. Terran empires might also be worth reading as a further source of how to build ships and gadgets as well as having the "basics" done for you like laser pistols, personal force fields, and AI's. If you are going to assume gravity manipulation you might as well assume anti-matter as a source of energy - I remember seeing an article about a company creating a way to store anti-matter a year or two ago - I'd imagine that gravity manipulation would make that even easier... of course it could also make fusion reactions much more efficient and contained as well. If you want to keep it simple and not worry about fuel and mass and possibly lots of book keeping a reactionless drive with gravity stabilizers (to protect the interior of the ship) is the way to go. If you are going to avoid ship to ship combat and hazards to navigation type game events I agree with the previous poster that you can really handwave the starship technology, although you might want a layout and a write up of the security systems and sensors for use when the ship is parked on a planet.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game

Re: What published Champions Universe Miniature would you most like to see? Viper and Until Agents. Viper and Until vehicles. heck, DEMON and Dr. Destroyer agents as well. And CKC villains would be a good place to start as well.

Re: Need Book Recommendations Asimov had some juveniles as well. Most of Asimov's books are probably appropriate in any case.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game Invention salvage usually sells on the market for a lot more than an NPC store will pay for it. Also, rather than building your own invention enhancements you can buy them off the market, sometimes for very low prices. Invention enhancements (not the recipies the actual enhancement) can not be sold anywhere other than to other players (via the market being the easiest way to do that). Other nifty things with the market, sometimes some very low level single origin enhancements will be available. When my controller hits 14 (1 level) she gets a couple of lvl 17 SO's I got on the market cheap.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game With the marketplace I doubt I will ever need to exit Super group mode to gain influence. I was puttering around with a lvl 5 blaster I hadn't run in months last night and in about 20 minutes had a few bits and pieces of invention salvage. I popped over to the kings row market and posted several of them and a few minutes later I had gone from 3000 influence to 96000. The pricey ones were commons, but they were magic origin low level commons... apparently most people avoid the villains that drop magic aligned salvage. you can see what slavage drops from a villain by right clicking and looking at their info and then clicking their salvage tab. Oddly clockwork drop magic invention salvage. Regarding SG, you can start your own at lvl 10 or 11. If you are looking for one to join I would recommend teaming with people and if you find some players you get along with ask about joining their SG. If you have your own group you definetly get to play with base design... in a larger group it's probably something the officers deal with... still a nicely stocked base does make the game more enjoyable (teleporters to many zones are possible, ours has 8 currently).

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game At high levels influence flows in very quickly. By the time you get to 30ish it's common to have 1 or 2 million saved up so you can upgrade your enhancements. With the market it was less expensive than going to the NPC stores. The rare costume parts are of course not necessary, so having them be very rare (and thus very expensive) makes sense to me.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game You could also broadcast that you want to trade them for the kind of wings you do want. I would probably sell them and not accept less than it appeared it would take to get the kind of wings you wanted. And of course the angel and demon wings will open to you after you have had your account for long enough. .. I don't remember how long that is. I had fairy wings drop for the only one of my characters that might concievably use them... I think I had her in game a total of 15 minutes before I got the recipe drop. I went for it, she looks great with 'em

Re: Newbie to the HERO system Unlike d20 Hero System is internally consistent with the way things work. Even if you have widely different abilities (a gun or the ability to shoot laser bolts out of your eyes) the game mechanic underlying them will be similar. All of the rules are contained in Hero System 5th edition. (Or you can limit the rule set to Sidekick which is a lot shorter than the full ruleset). The other books are very handy as references and as sources of ideas but they are not required. You don't need a copy of the Until super powers data base to build cool electrical powers. However, if you do have the USPD you can see an example of how to build those powers and probably some ideas for powers you hadn't thought of. Whereas in d20 if you want a prestige class or a feat, you have to buy the book it appears in. Dark Champions is the genra book that's equivalent to d20 modern. It has guns, lots of guns, and other info for adventuring in the world today. Champions covers the classic superhero genra which may also be useful but probably won't be as much use as Dark Champions. Hudson city would be the setting book that is intended to work with a Dark Champions style game, a gritty dark city. Heroes characters tend to be very simple compared to normal superheroes in the Hero System. They tend to have one power. That makes them very easy to write up. Even someone like Ted that can produce a variety of effects wouldn't be hard to create. Peter and Sylar - They would be much more expensive to build than any of the others (it would be like comparing a level 5 character in d20 to a lvl 20) and would be more complicated (but not remarkably so). Good Luck!

Re: Traveller Hero, Revised deckplan sample Excellent! That works great. Thank you.

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game

Re: City of Heroes - Online Hero Game

Re: Traveller Hero Launches!

Re: Traveller Hero Launches! agreed. If they have the art files it should be trivial to remove the square grid and overlay a hex grid... and as long as it is being overlayed there is no reason not to use 2m hexes. Design by squares but battle in the native system format. Can I whip out a map on the fly if need be and run a fun game? sure... but fancier props are sometimes nice and having details on the map aids the players in improvising unusual combat tactics.