MarkusDark

Re: Licenses? Currently, Hero games has their work for the next two years already laid out in front of them. I believe that at anytime someone says "What about this?" the generic response is "Probably around 2006". Hero, however, is MORE than willing to entertain any proposals so if any individual wants to aquire a licence and then develop for Hero, I'm sure they'd look at it.

Although the thought has merit - perhaps even having the "End Roll" be a comp roll to the Magic Skill, I think that it opens up other areas as well. Wouldn't a fighter have an easier time hacking apart a dragon, or a thief climbing a wall and so on if they were fully rested? You do EVERYTHING better with a good night's sleep and not after hiking for 6 hours, running up a hill, battling lil crunchies along the way. I know that if I was playing a mage, I'd feel a lil 'pissed' about the double standard of no matter how tired a Fighter is, he can still heft his sword and swing as well as a fresh daisy.

Wolverine's Response... *BURP

Oh, and as far as bein' on track with the subject of the thread... In my game world Magic does exist but it is 'kept secret' from the general populace. Before recorded time a contest was held between man and fae and man won. For it, he won the right to live on earth, however, in the contract he could never practice magic. Over the centuries there has been a few violations and finally the creation of a core group of 'wizards' who look out to try and keep the contact solid. If everyday man knew about and learned how to use magic, the contract would be void and mankind's "Lease" upon the earth would be terminated. Playing a Mage in my Champions game requires a great deal of roleplaying and stealth of his powers in order to not be condemned by the committee.

Re: Re: Moses Too simple actually, because his response has weight and merit. There were many a witch tried and condemned who 'practiced magic' but actually only did rudementary apothecary formulas that are now accepted as simple fact - like penicillin. As a society advances, so does their conception of magic. Magic, by definition is to produce supernatural effects, supernatural being a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces. less than 200 years ago, it was beyond natural forces for an airplane to fly, 100 years ago it was beyond natural forces to break the sound barrier. Currently teleportation and the conjuration of flames with nothing more than your voice is beyond natural forces - but in 50 years, who knows? Modern day "Magic", as in the wiccan sense, is a religious arguement that I prefer not to get into. My personal belief was that those who practice magic are people who feel incapable of surviving in the real world through their own power so they try to conjure supernatural power to aid them. However, a dear, wiccan friend of mine stated "If I 'cast a spell' to help me find a job, and I go out and find one - was it actually the spell or the belief that the spell would work that gave me the drive and confidence to get the job? Truthfully - who cares? I got the job." Being a Bay Area Californian, I have adopted the attitude of us 'tree huggers' which is - as long as your ideas don't impact upon mine and you don't force them upon me, then believe in whatever you want.

Re: Re: I have similiar troubles with Detects I can understand that, but going along those lines, during that time he is 'seeing 3 seconds into the future' is he now completely blind in the here and now? To me, to use such a precongitive 'sight' one would have to continuously look at the timeline in front of him and not just get the half phase 'snapshot' and "HOPEFULLY" hit the exact 3 second gap of when he gets nailed. Sure, he can 'precog' that in three seconds he'll be hit but in some cases, such as with a ranged attack, I wouldn't then allow the person to buy discriminatory and such like as the chances of him noticing the exact hit, where it came from and from whom. Also, if the darkness affected sight, wouldn't it then affect his precog ability as he couldn't see anymore? That is if the darkness remained in effect for those three seconds? Not really trying to split hairs here, just showing how one SFX can have both plus and minuses built into it

I have not read the books But your writeup seems good. Question - when shields blow up, do they always take out the wearer? If not, I'd probably lower the side effect a bit. Also, are the Las guns Energy attacks? If so, the Shields are extremely dangerous to use as one shot from a Las would blow them, and anyone around them, up. Don't forget the 0 range on the FW I would probably use an end battery and have them cost at least something to maintain - maybe even something like 16 charges that last for one turn each. In the movies, I remember hearing someone say that they don't normally use Shields on Dune as the sand quickly fouls/destroys the electronics. When I created a "Dune Style" shield, I bought it as an ablative FF with some Damage Reduction thrown in. Of course, I probably missed the mark by a mile with it.

Something I heard from a friend... He told me about a system that uses an 'overall damage per TURN' idea. This idea is that the faster a character moves, the less damage he does and this helps to balance everything overall. For example, to have a 300 point turn means that you could have a speed 6 character that has a total of 50 active points in an attack, a speed 5 that has 60 active points or a speed 3 that has 100 active points in an attack. Something my gaming group is getting around lately, or perhaps it is an old trick, that they purchase low dexes then add levels for a single attack, usually involving a martial manuver. So suddenly the lumbering brick with a CV of 4 has an 11 OCV with his haymaker. I have always thought of levels being bonuses from extensive training. I plan on balancing them by stating that certain level limits will be in place depending upon their backgrounds. For example, a tough street fighter who's been around the block for the last decade could get a maximum of a +3 on any of his combative abilities. The same street fighter who joins the army could get another +2 on top of that for military training and, if he left the army and found a martial arts master, he could get another +2. For the record, I hate OVERALL levels. They just don't make sense to me. Also, by having large numbers of levels means that they have started to become experts in that area, and probably should develop a rep for it - and have people looking to try their hand at taking the title away from them.

I have similiar troubles with Detects Many of my players have such things as 'Detect Lifeforce' or 'Detect Aura' with analyze, discriminatory, etc. The use of these is multi-faceted. First, there are rarely powers that target Detects (Flash, Darkness,Invis, etc). Second, it is difficult to describe HOW this power is working - is it through sight or more of a mental awareness style? To help combat this, I require that ALL Detects need to be specifically categorized as to how it is being perceived by the person "Well I can see the aura." "Then anything that effects ALL sight will effect the detect". Granted, just because you are in the dark, you could still see an aura being projected but to avoid the difficult issues, it is the way that I go. As for Danger Sense, it is almost a style of mental ability be it precog or instinct or something else. I feel that anyone that has invisibility to Danger Sense is a person who has trained themselves in attacking so much that they give off no sort of anticipation or special thought to the attack and thereby the detector doesn't sense it. Likewise, if it was a Darkness field (and I would love to know the rationale behind it), it would simply lower the overall 'vibes'of the area to neutrality. Another way to make an attack less detectable by Danger Sense is to puchase minuses to the Per roll for the attack. Danger sense is perception based, afterall. A -10 Per to an attack could seriously hinder any danger sense. Also, check out the Digital Hero #5 article on Danger Sense http://www.herogames.com/digitalHero/Samples/dh05dangersense.htm to give you some more ideas. Often Danger Sense is played much more powerfully than it actually was intended.

On a side note... There was a post a while ago about creating a 'secure' radio channel - one that scrambles and descrambles. Without it, theoretically anyone with high range radio hearing could pick it up. By the same token, couldn't someone intercept a mental communication the same way? I often have groups that have a mind link communication established. I have, in the past, allowed anyone with the ability to detect mental abilities to know it was in effect and if they had mind link themselves, they could 'tap' the communication with a successful ECV attack. Of course, anyone with a mental sensing power could see the tap but I just didn't see why people who can communicate mentally wouldn't "hear" others communicating that way.

Have run games like this... What I usually like to do in modern day settings with conspiracies is to have the players create characters that are 'normal people' - this can include such things as police agents, intelligent scientists and even someone who 'dabbles' in the occult. Then have the PCs, for one reason or another, be in the same, general area at the same time - if all else fails, just have them all at the supermarket at the same time. Then something involving a conspiracy happens (a demon comes through a portal). Since they are PC's, they will almost always act in some 'heroic' way of note - even if it is just directing people out of the place. If a PC decides just to turn tail and run, I have the conspiracy item (the demon) focus on them. In the end, agents come in and dispatch the demon. They then 'round up' the PC's, thank them for their help and 'reveal' the trouble that is in the world, why it needs to remain a secret and as they already know about it AND seem that they can handle themselves, would they like to help? The Agent then sets them up with a small 'base' (perhaps just an office), a moderate bank account and a number they can call 'if they get in trouble'. From there on out, they are sent missions everyso often, follow up on suspicious leads and so on. This has the selling points of allowing the players to play people who don't know the 'agency' inside and out like an actual character from the agency would. They can 'learn' about it through their dealings as a 'splinter cell'. Also, by being a splinter cell, they can be given just enough information to keep them happy without revealing everything. That will allow other groups to try and 'convert' them, revealing what their agency is REALLY hiding. By not being full agents, that will give them the flexibility to investigate their own agency. Meanwhile they will have some resources at hand but you won't have to keep dealing with "Why can't I ALWAYS have the BFG-3000?".

I am currently using Hero to balance the short leg of my sofa.

Only thing I posted Was that the Dose grenades were too expensive/chaotic to make in Hero so just make them an automatic AE 30 min knockout -1 min per point of con.

Really? I remember him (or was it Apollo) who wound up stranded on a desolate planet for the rest of his life with a 'damaged' Cylon who didn't have the kill all humans programming. It was a "So, what happened to your father?" question turned historic flashback in the Galatica 1980 series. I actually can't remember if the Cylon survived the gunfight with two other Cylons or not but Starbuck and he became friends.

It isn't really dead... The idea has been brought up many times by the actor who played Apollo (can't remember his name). However, the person who owns the rights to Battlestar Galactica refuses to do it. So the project was never really slated. The pic is cool, but I would imagine that it would need to be a different style for the production. I'd imagine they'd go with major CGI so maybe having only one or two suits might work afterall...

Re: Re: As I had stated earlier I saw it in a book a friend showed me about 8 years ago. I have just left a message for him to give me Title, Author, Chapter and possibly page number. Of course he enjoys recreational activities that have been having an adverse effect on his memory so I won't promise anything. But you bring up a perfect point. If you have a source that says swords weighed 15 pounds, give the source name. I don't personally like shows, I prefer the hard books as anyone can go to a good library and look it up. Likewise if you have a source that says that they never weighed more than 7 pounds, that'd be cool too. Oh, BTW, if anyone thought I was implying that they were a 'know-it-all', I wasn't. The argument began to seem a bit like the ones I would witness with SCA people who, for the most part, ARE (IMO). It got so bad that I just agreed with whatever they said. "What? Hitler was skilled in the use of a crossbow? Okey." ((Actually heard it at an SCA event!))

It went well I think that the seminar was extremely informative and it seems that Hero will be around for a while. The idea of publishing 18 books this year sounds insane to me, but as I only reap the fruits of those insanities, I good with it. Also, the very honest answers to the questions I gave also gives me faith in the company of not only having the business sense to continue in the market but also that they don't blow smoke to cover things. If you want to know, just ask them and they'll tell you. I wish I could have played more Hero games that were listed at the con but I had too many people beggin' me to run games in open gaming so I never got to them. I need to get more into the loop as I didn't know about the party until Darren told me that is why no one from DoJ showed up to my game to say hi - no hard feelin's - honest. I look forward to seein' DoJ back in 2004 - and hope to see them around my table sometime. Mark

If they use the same crew for SpiderMan to make IronMan, then I could see Ramis suggesting the part to Bruce Campbell. Although he is often waaay too animated, I have seen the possibility of Stark in some of his more subdued moments. As for the armor, I don't know. I have been REALLY impressed with the lastest movies (Spiderman, Daredevil) keeping extremely close to the original design. It would depend upon how dark of a world they want to create. Go into Batman or X-man type, then you'll get the ol' War Machine. If it is a bit brighter, like Spiderman and you might just get the Red & Gold. I personally would like to see the eariler versions (before his first change to silver and red - I believe it was the Mark 4 armor). Of course, having a lovely series of armors set up along the wall will look cool too.

Lawsuit already happened There is a prototype battlesuit the army is working on. It's scheduled release is in 2020. I bought a "Popular Mechanics" magazine that had a whole bunch of articles on the future of warfare - including tanks who's outer surface is self healing and can change colors to fit camoflage. In the magazine, the battlesuit was detailed and I tried to recreate the suit for a Champions game - came out to about 200 points overall. The original design concept included a wrist launcher with 4 mini-missles and a mult-weapon 'toolkit' that can be quickly assembled to create a plethora of offensive choices. The original artwork/design of the battlesuit, however, was apparently 'stolen' from a comic whose title escapes me at the moment, but they put out a suit against the Army who admitted that the concept artist did indeed take the character from it. Sorry I don't have more details - I am studying to be a Pentagon Spokesperson so I am working on my vagueness. Mark

There hasta be disads on the power I don't see how a ref could let a 10d6 KA slip by without seeing it unless there are some disads on it that kept it from leaping out of the page when he was looking at active costs. I would find out what those disads are and exploit them.

And Bruce Campbell for the title role!

Oh, be maintenance workers. Ever see the episode with those two that float around in the background, repairing things while everything is going to hell? I LOVE those types of shows. Just like Star Trek TNG's episode "Ensigns of Command". The plot depends on if you want to have it stationary at B5 or be out in the galaxy ala Excalibur. Any area within the series could be expanded upon. You could be members of the IPE searching out for techology to battle the shadows or be a mercenary company working to help the Narn homeworld. Blip hunters would be interesting as could be the shadow's answer to the Rangers (which you never saw but, hey, maybe they were there).

A thought... If this is about building characters and such, I would suggest something along the lines of a 'plug and play' outline. Give set variables to create certain 'archetype' characters. For example: 350 point characters Energy Projector: 3 - 60 point attacks in a Multipower 1 - 30 point defence Don't know if this is making sense or not. Ideally, I loved a random character generator a friend of mine made for 4th edition rules based upon the archetypes. Something like that would be killer for cranking out characters.