Talon65

I want to start up a Urban Fantasy game using 5th Ed. Hero and could use your ideas, help and/or opinions. I've always been able to come up with one shot adventures but I'm really bad at coming up with on going or overreaching plots. I have an idea for the intro adventure (which I'm calling Murderer's Row) to introduce the season or series plot if you will, in which each character rudely awakens from sleep, having just murdered a complete stranger and not knowing why or how they got there. Ex: GM: "Player A, you hear a loud "BOOM" and awaken standing over a dyeing transient in an alley. He's just taken a shotgun blast to the chest and he gurgles something as you watch him die. You're hold your gun. Your shotgun. Your smoking shotgun... strange, you don't recall ever owning a gun. What do you do now?" GM: "Player B, you awaken at the sound of a car crash and you're in the driver seat. A man in a business suit with a gun and a badge on his belt is pinned between your car and a brick wall. As you watch his life ebb away you realize... you don't remember going anywhere and this isn't your car. What do you do now?" GM: "Player C, a splash of warm liquid on your face awakens you from slumber. You stand in an abandoned warehouse, over a young women tied to a large table with arcane runes painted upon it. Tears roll from her eyes as the life leaves her body. A large ornate knife has been plunged into her heart. Your hand is on the knife, her blood is on you and you smell sulfur and inscense in the air...but you have no idea what's happening as you know nothing about magic. What do you do now?" GM: "Player D, You jolt awake at the sound of shattering glass as the stranger, you just pushed, plunges out of the window of his hi-rise office. He screams something as he plunges to his death but you can't make out his words. What do you do now?" There will be other adventures not realated to this but the overall plot will be to figure out who did this to them, how and why. What I have in mind so far is someone calling himself or herself "CROW" has possessed or dominated them to kill these people. Though the players won't know this yet, there will be no witnesses to these murders and the players are not connected to the victims in any way that they know of, so as long as they escape, they won't be immediate suspects but it will be hanging over their head. I plan on having all the players know someone else in the group in some form or fashion (which could be why they were chosen) so they may go to another for help and discover the others involvement. I want CROW to appear to be an individual at first but eventually be revealed to be a group. So my big question to you is, who are these people? Why would CROW want them dead? What should CROW's overall objective be? And why did CROW chose our heroes to commit these murders?

Re: Fantasy Gambling Ideas You might try a web search for "dice games" or "bar games". My grandmother owned a bar for several years and they always had a cup and dice behind the counter for all sorts of drinking games. Usually patrons would play to see who bought the next round. The only one I remember is "Ship, Captain and Crew" This is the game as I was taught: You used a cup with 5D6. The object of the game is to get a six (your ship), a 5 (your captain) and the highest possible on the other three dice (your crew). You had to have a Ship before you could get a Captain and a Captain before you could collect a Crew and you had three rolls to do it with. Whomever had the highest total in crew, won. For example: If on my first roll I didn't get any sixes I'd have to re roll all the dice. If I rolled a six, it would be put aside and I would roll all the rest of the dice to try and get my Captain and my Crew. If I rolled both a six and a five in my first roll I could keep those and any high dice I wanted to use for my Crew and still have two more rolls to to try and get the highest Crew. So the best I could possible do would be to get a 6 for my Ship, a 5 for my Crew and three more 6's for my Crew. *Player 1 rolls his Ship on his first roll, Captain on his second roll so he can also keep a 6 from that roll. He rolls the last two dice with his last roll and ends up with a Crew total of 9. *Player 2 rolls his Ship on his first roll but rolls no Captain on his consecutive rolls so can collect no Crew so he loses. *Player 3 rolls no Captain nor Ship on his three rolls so he loses. *Player 4 rolls a Ship and a Captain on his first roll and on his two other rolls ends up with a Crew of 12, so he wins. As a betting game there could be an ante and then individual betting on rolls or everyone could ante and make bets after each round of rolling. Also, you could always change the terminology of the game IE: "Captain, Sgt and Squad" or "King, Queen and Army", "Dragon, Lair and Horde" or some such to give it more of a fantasy feel.

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs She's Alison Doody. She played "DR. Elsa" in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs HEE! I'll have to remember to use that at some point! Woot! I got rep!

Re: league of extraordinary PULP HEROs I hope this is something like what you had in mind. This is the write up for Veronica Dare, my current PC in our adventure pulp game. This Veronica Dare is actually the second incarnation of the character although the background is the same. I came in about half way through that campaign and Veronica was a surprisingly affective skilled normal with no powers what so ever in what turned out to be (to my surprise!) a Pulp Super/crime fighting hero game in which everyone had powers! The GM asked me to run her again in his new adventure pulp game after that Super Pulp hero game came to an unexpectedly early close. It’s not easy growing up in the shadow of a world famous adventurer… Born Veronica Elizabeth Dare to Jonathan “John” Dare, the famous adventurer and leader of his “Daredevils” and the wealthy heiress, Elizabeth Rockefeller. Veronica’s parents divorced when she was quite young. Elizabeth expected John to settle down to a life of luxury and leave his adventuring behind after they were married but he would have none of it. The world still needed John Dare and his Daredevils. She remarried and while she stays in contact with her daughter, she does not approve of Veronica’s globe trotting and the wanderlust she has inherited from her father. She is also on good terms with her stepbrothers as they enjoy hearing about her escapades when their mother is not in ear shot. Veronica had thus been forced to lead a double life. She had spent most of her life between boarding school, finishing school and college and spending summers digging in Aztec ruins in South America, hunting Indian ghosts in Arizona and on safari in deepest Africa with her dad and his crew. She has nurtured a great thirst for adventure but also has the looks, social skills and contacts to hob knob with New York high societies’ finest. Veronica has stocks and trust funds to finance most adventures and is an admitted thrill seeker out to make a name for herself. Always looking for something new and exciting to do, she is fluent in over half a dozen languages, can ride, hunt and out shoot most any man she’s met. If there is a gun made, she probably owns one, can take it apart and put it back together with her eyes closed and almost always seems to be armed with a pistol upon her person. Veronica has long blonde hair, blue eyes and always appears expensively and fashionable dressed. In the field, she wears her long blonde hair in a braid and dresses in a safari shirt and hat, breeches and riding boots and is armed with her favorite Webley revolver. A personally modified MK 5, given to her by one of her father’s Daredevils, in a shoulder holster. A Lee Enfield SMLE MK 5 and on occasion, if things get truly unpleasant, she’ll unpack her Lewis MK 1 machine gun that she has dubbed *“King Louie II - Bane of the Mongols”. After our Buffy campaign we are in the habit of picking an actor or actress to play our character. *The first King Louie was lost in an adventure involving a false sultan in India. RIP

Re: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor And most, if not all of them were already in the trailers which didn't help. I didn't mind the new Evylin but she lacked the comedic timing that Rachel Weiz had. There was at least more chemistry between Maria and Brandon than there was between the two kids. While the girl playing Michelle Yoe's daughter was a hottie I felt no connection what so ever on her part. I didn't even get an impression that she had any interest in kid O'Connel until the script started bashing you over the head with it. I also think the Director made a lot of poor choices in this one. I thought it felt like a lot of story was cut as well and there was way to much slo-mo going on. You have two of the most well known martial arts actors on the screen and their fight lasts for about three seconds AND is in slo-mo! WTF! That's the most amazing thing about watching martial arts movie actors is their speed in a well choreographed fight. I will say that it was worth seeing because, how many pulp movies do we get these days? It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great.

Re: One shot Game Ideas I had a one shot idea I want to do for my gaming group. I'm a little bit of a WWII buff and wanted to do up a stick of US paratroopers on D-Day. The plan was they were going in, pre D-Day to get the drop on a Nazi weapons lab involved in rockets or buzz bombs in Normandy. The players had to get there before the invasion starts to capture any plans and more importantly, destroy everything before the Nazis start moving it. Of course, everything goes wrong. The paratroopers get all split up and it's not rockets the Nazis are working on... I figured on pre-made paratroopers, a french underground contact and one of the paratroopers would really be an OSS agent and have some idea what the Germans were really up to going in and can't let the Nazis let it loose on the invasion forces. Haven't decided if the Nazi "experimental" weapon will be zombies, demons or horror from beyond the stars yet.

Re: Affecting desol help...

Re: Timm style Heromachine Nat little program but how did you save your character after you made it?

Re: Affecting desol help... Thanks for the ideas. I've already talked to the GM. He didn't think holy items was something someone would normally use as a weapon but I'll keep it "on file" incase we don't come up with something better. Actually, Jefferson was qouting Cesare Beccaria so I've modified my sig just for you.

Re: Affecting desol help... Well, her background is kinda unknown. The character is a ripo..eer "homage" to Adam Hughes' "Ghost". Hey, I was in a squeeze to come up with a character... She woke up in a buried coffin and in a panic, popped out of the grave (desolid) with no memories whatsoever. In game, she has found out that she's a spirit of vengeance and Death himself has paid her a visit and lamented that she was taken from him by a "superior". The group has assumed that she died violently herself. She's currently taken the alias "Rebecca White" (the name on the head stone of the grave she arose from) and works as a secretary for one of the other player characters (who's a private dick) and is looking for clues to her past. She's a little on the cold side, professional and aloof in regards to her personality as Rebecca White. She's even colder as the Wraith. She has no problem with taking out someone guilty of murder in front of witnesses and has point blank, shot dead an unarmed serial killer that was begging for his life because justice must be served. Even The Shadow has looked at her askance. As a spirit of vengeance, she has Desolid, Flight linked to desolid, Retrocog with no conscience control (the dead come to her to ask for retribution against their murderers), Regen linked to Simulate Death, Two handed ranged fighting (two Colt 1911's 'natch), Rapid Fire, Life Support: Does not need to eat, sleep or breath (she's dead or at least something in between) and Insta Change. She also has psych lims: Vengeful and Vigilante Mentality. So far, her skills include Deduction, Criminology, Seduction, Persuasion and few others she's picked up since rising from the grave. That help? I'm thinking along the lines of traditional folklore regarding ghosts or spirits. After posting the OP I thought about something like simple salt. Folklore is that spreading salt across your doorways and windows will keep out spirits. Maybe she could not go disolid if in a circle of salt or can't cross a line of sat while disolid and of course any one shooting rock salt out of a shotgun would hit her while desolid. I'm not to sure that will be what he has in mind since he can't tell me what he has in mind... So any other ideas that might fit in with ghost folklore?

I'm currently playing a character in a Pulp crime fighting game that has desolid. The Wraith has been returned from the dead to exact vengeance for innocents that have died by violence. When taking the power the GM and I agreed that she would be affected by ego powers (as the rules require) and magic when desolid. Well, we've been playing for several months and now the GM has decided that I have to come up with something else that she is affected by since magic isn't common enough and I'm coming up blank. I can't think of anything that fits within her "Spirit of Vengeance" concept. He made suggestions like fire, water or wind and one of the other players suggested cold iron like the Fae but even the GM doesn't think any of these are fitting (including his own) and now I have to come up with something... Any ideas or suggestions?

Re: Dark Champions Guns Table Errata? The Thompson M1928A1 could use the 50 rnd drum, 20 and 30 rnd stick magazines. This is the model used by the US and the British early in WWII. It's easily recognized by the cuts compensator, the square looking rear adjustable sight and cooling fins on the barrel. The M1928A1 was replaced in 1942 in the US arsenal by the Thompson M1A1which lacked the above mentioned distinctions and could only use the stick magazines. The M1928A1 would still be seen in use until the war's end. The C96 Mauser had an internal magazine with max capacity of 20 for some models. The 20 round was quckly retired according to "Military Small Arms of the 20th Century" with the 10 rnd being most common. I would like to see your referance for the 40 rnd magazine during WWI. The M1711 modification (which changed to a detachable box magazine) gave it a 10, 20 or 40 rnd magazine capability. This was not available until 1930 tho'. As for the P08 Luger, both the 8 rnd and a 32 rnd "snail drum" could be used and were available during WWI. The drum was usually issued with the Artillery or Navy models of the Luger which came with a longer barrel and a clip on stock similiar to the C96 Mauser. Matter of fact, the MP18 submachine was designed to use this same "snail drum" but the drum magazine was known for being finicky and easily malfunction when exposed to dirt and mud. Of which there was an abundance of in the trenches of WWI. In 1928 the drum magazine was adandoned all together for the MP18 when it was redesigned as the MP28 which had a standard stick magazine. My referances include the 5th ed. of "Military Small Arms of the 20th Century" and the "Army Service Forces Catalog Government Issue Collectors Guide".

Re: Pulp Anime Series you should be watching Amazon shows Black Lagoon 3 in stock as well as several used: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Lagoon-Vol-3/dp/B000OYCMLC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1206149526&sr=8-2 Unfortunately, that's not gonna help you much since Pioneer has stopped distributing anime in the states, so there's no telling if or when any other volumes will be coming...

Dave Stevens, creator of The Rocketeer died yesterday. Details here: http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2008_03_11.html#014911